The Supreme Court has granted the government's request for review of Second Circuit Appeals Court's decision finding Microsoft did not have to turn over communications stored overseas in response to US-issued warrants.

This is a pretty quick turnaround as far as tech issues go. The Supreme Court is finally willing to take a look at the privacy expectation of third party phone records (specifically: historical cell site location info), following years of courtroom discussion... which follow years of Third Party Doctrine expansion.

That being said, a resolving of sorts is needed to clarify the reach of US law enforcement going forward. The Second Circuit twice shut down the DOJ's requests to extend its reach to offshore servers. Even as the Microsoft case was still being litigated, other courts were coming to contrary decisions about data stored overseas.

The target in these cases was Google. Google's data-handling processes contributed to the adverse rulings. Unlike Microsoft -- which clearly delineated foreign data storage -- data and communications handled by Google flow through its servers constantly. Nothing truly resides anywhere, a fact the DOJ pressed in its arguments and the one two judges seized on while denying Google's warrant challenges.

The Supreme Court's ruling will be needed to tie these disparate decisions up into a cohesive whole.

Or not. Rule 41 changes that went into effect at the beginning of this year remove a lot of jurisdictional limitations on search warrants. On top of that, the DOJ has been angling for expanded overseas powers, pushing Congress towards amending the Stored Communications Act.

This, of course, is what the Second Circuit Appeals Court told the government to do: take it up with legislators. But if litigation is a slow process, legislation can be just as time-consuming. The DOJ wants permission now and the Supreme Court gives it the best chance of being allowed to grab communications stored outside of the United States using a warrant signed by a magistrate judge anywhere in the US.

In the meantime, the DOJ will continue to pursue amendments to the Stored Communications Act -- a law it's already taken advantage of, thanks to it being outdated almost as soon as it was implemented. Further rewriting of the law in the DOJ's favor would allow US law enforcement to become the world's police, serving warrants in the US to gather documents stored around the globe.

While this may seem like a boon to law enforcement, it should be approached with extreme caution. If this becomes law (rather than just a precedential court decision) the US government should expect plenty of reciprocal demands from other countries. This would include countries with far worse human rights records and long lists of criminal acts not recognized in the US (insulting the king, anyone?). The US won't be able to take a moral or statutory stand against demands for US-stored communications that may be wielded as weapons of censorship or persecution against citizens in foreign countries. Whoever ends up handing down the final answer -- the Supreme Court or Congress -- should keep these implications in mind.

This has gone on for a while, but in the last year especially, the complaints about "bad" speech online have gotten louder and louder. While we have serious concerns with the idea so-called "hate speech" should be illegal -- in large part because any such laws are almost inevitably used against those the government wishes to silence -- that doesn't mean that we condone and support speech designed to intimidate, harass or abuse people. We recognize that some speech can, indeed, create negative outcomes, and even chill the speech of others. However, we're increasingly concerned that people think the only possible way to respond to such speech is through outright censorship (often to the point of requiring online services, like Facebook and Twitter to silence any speech that is deemed "bad").

As we've discussed before, we believe that there are alternatives. Sometimes that involves counterspeech -- including a wide spectrum of ideas from making jokes, to community shaming, to simple point-for-point factual refutation. But that's on the community side. On the platform side -- for some reason -- many people seem to think there are only two options: censorship or free for all. That's simply not true, and focusing on just those two solutions (neither of which tend to be that effective) shows a real failure of imagination, and often leads to unproductive conversations.

Thankfully, some people are finally starting to think through the larger spectrum of possibilities. On the "fake news" front, we've seen more and more suggestions that the best "pro-speech" way to deal with such things is with more speech as well (though there are at least some concerns about how effective this can be). Over at Quartz, reporter Karen Hao recently put together a nice article about how some platforms are thinking about this from a design perspective... and uses Techdirt as one example, in how we've created small incentives in our comment system for better comments. The system is far from perfect, and we certainly don't suggest that every comment we receive is fantastic. But I think that we do a pretty good job of having generally good discussions in our comments that are interesting to read. Certainly a lot more interesting than other sites.

The article also discusses how Medium has experimented with different design ideas to encourage more thoughtful comments as well, and quotes professor Susan Benesch (who we've mentioned many times in the past), discussing some other creative efforts to encourage better conversations online, including Parlio (which sadly was shut down after being purchased by Quora) and League of Legends -- which used some feedback loops to deal with abusive behavior:

In one experiment, Lin measured the impact of giving players who engaged in toxic behavior specific feedback. Previously, if a player received a suspension for making racist, homophobic, sexist, or harassing comments, they were given an error message during login with no specifics on why the punishment had occurred. Consequently, players often got angry and engaged in worse behavior once they returned to the game. League of Legends reform card.

As a response, Lin implemented “reformation cards” to tell players exactly what they had said or done to earn their suspension and included evidence of the player engaging in that behavior. This time, if a player got angry and posted complaints about their reformation card on the community forum, other members of the community would reinforce the card with comments like, “You deserve every ban you got with language like that.” The team saw a 70% increase in their success with avoiding repeat offenses from suspended users.

However, the key thing, as Benesch notes, is getting past the idea that the only responses to speech a large majority of people think is "bad" is to take it down and/or punish the individual who made it:

“There is often the assumption in public discourse and in government policymaking and so forth that there are only two things you can do to respond to harmful speech online,” says Benesch. “One of those is to censor the speech, and the other is to punish the person who has said or distributed it.” Instead, she says, we could be persuading people not to post the content in the first place, rank it lower in a feed, or even convince people to take it down and apologize for it themselves.

Obviously, there are limits on all of these options -- and anything can and will be abused over time. But by at least thinking through a wider range of possibilities than "censor" or "leave everything exactly as is" we can hopefully get to a better overall solution for many internet discussion platforms.

Meanwhile, Josh Constine, at TechCrunch recently had some good suggestions as well specifically for Twitter and Facebook for ways that they can encourage more civility, without resorting to censorship. Here's one example:

Practically, Twitter needs to change how replies work, as they are the primary vector of abuse. Abusers can @ reply you and show up in your notifications, even if you don’t follow them. If you block or mute them, they can create a new throwaway account and continue the abuse. If you block all notifications from people you don’t follow, you sever your connection to considerate discussion with strangers or potential friends — what was supposed to be a core value-add of these services.

A powerful way to prevent this @ reply abuse would be to prevent accounts that aren’t completely registered with a valid phone number, haven’t demonstrated enough rule-abiding behavior or have been reported for policy violations from having their replies appear in recipients’ notifications.

This would at least make it harder for harassers to continue their abuse, and to create new throwaway accounts that circumvent previous blocks and bans in order to spread hatred.

There may be concerns with that as well, but it's encouraging that more people are thinking about ways that design decision can make things better, rather than resorting to just out and out censorship.

Readers of this site will hear the name Disney and immediately begin rolling their eyes. By virtue of its insanely aggressive and expansionist views on intellectual property matters, Disney manages to find itself on the wrong side of nearly every issue. Disney is in the business of making money and it often looks to do so in the most draconian of manners, but the company also bills itself as being dedicated to children's entertainment, growth, and happiness.

Which is why it's somewhat odd to see the giant media company going to IP war against a company that sends unlicensed, poorly-disguised homage characters to children's birthday parties.

Characters for Hire in New York has been hit with a lawsuit after being accused by Disney of infringing upon "highly valuable intellectual property rights" (via the Hollywood Reporter). This includes Star Wars and Frozen characters, as well as superheroes such as Iron Man.

Except that those characters are altered ever so slightly and renamed in an obvious attempt to get around the exact intellectual property laws -- copyright and trademark -- over which Disney is suing. Darth Vader, for instance, is listed as Dark Lord, while Chewbacca has been rebranded as Big Hairy Guy. No, that's not a joke. On the company's homepage, it displays the following disclaimer:

DISCLAIMER: ALL COSTUMED CHARACTERS ARE GENERIC/INSPIRED AND ARE NOT AFFILIATED, LICENSED OR ASSOCIATED WITH ANY CORPORATION OR TRADEMARK. It is not our intention to violate any copyright laws. The characters that we offer are NOT name brand copyrighted characters, and Characters for Hire, LLC. costumed characters are named of our own creation. Any resemblance to nationally known copyrighted characters is strictly coincidental. Should you have the need for a licensed, copyrighted mascot or character at your event, we encourage you to contact the company/copyright holders for your specific targeted character. If you have any questions regarding this issue, we encourage you to contact us. We DO NOT offer nor do we present any licensed and/or copyrighted characters.

For that reason, Characters For Hire is claiming that both the copyright and trademark claims from Disney aren't valid. The characters are altered and renamed in an effort to gain protection from the idea/expression dichotomy, with those same changes and the disclaimer making it clear to the public that the company has no affiliation with the IP owners of the original characters from which these generics are inspired.

That said... yeah, but no. The point made in the disclaimer that the likenesses are strictly coincidental is laughable at best. It's very likely that the copyright portion of Disney's claims will hold up in court. The trademark claims have less a chance of success, as it's abundantly clear that these are not licensed characters or associated in any way with companies like Disney. But, still, the so-called generic characters of Characters For Hire appear to be more than merely "inspired" by the originals and are instead near identical characters with alterations made only to get around copyright law.

But the larger point is: hey, Disney, why? Given that the copyright claims are the most substantive, there was nothing requiring Disney to take this action. Certainly it is laughable for Disney to claim any serious harm from a copyright perspective due to Characters For Hire's actions. All this is really doing is keeping some fun, if unoriginal, characters from entertaining kids and people at birthdays and related events. Is giving up the stated aim to make children happy really worth smacking around a relatively small company that works these sorts of parties?

For years, the FCC's "Form 477" data collection program has required that ISPs provide data on where they provide broadband service. Said data then helps determine the pace of broadband deployment and level of competition in key markets, informing FCC policy and broadband subsidy application. Unfortunately, this data collection process relies heavily on census block data, which doesn't always clarify which specific addresses in these large segments can actually get service. This has proven handy for ISPs looking to obfuscate their refusal to upgrade broadband networks in many areas.

This inaccurate data collection is a major reason for the Kafka-esque experience many new homeonwers have when they're told their new home will have broadband service, only to discover it doesn't. Last August, the then-Tom-Wheeler-run FCC issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (pdf), seeking public input on changing the Form 477 program so it tracked individual addresses, providing a far more accurate picture of U.S. broadband deployment. At the time, the FCC admitted that it historically hasn't done a good job ensuring this data matches reality, aka the "consumer experience":

The Commission to date has not systematically examined the precise underlying methodologies that are used by service providers in generating their data nor has it investigated whether actual consumer experience has diverged substantially from the Form 477 filings. Moreover, providers’ minimum advertised or expected speeds have, to date, been treated as confidential, limiting the ability of policymakers and consumers to compare offerings among service providers from this data collection.

In other words, the FCC was acknowledging that our broadband maps aren't very accurate, and the FCC hasn't done a very good job holding ISPs accountable for dubious availability data or flawed methodology.

Not too surprisingly, large ISPs have come out swinging against the previous FCC's attempts to improve things. In a filing with the FCC (pdf), Verizon tried to argue that more accurate data collection would be an undue burden on the company:

The Commission should reject any proposals that would require fixed broadband providers to report deployment data below the census-block level. Such proposals would impose enormous costs on fixed broadband providers without providing any real benefit to the Commission or the public.

Verizon fails to document the "enormity" of having to do a modestly better job telling the FCC where it provides broadband, or the fact that a painful lack of competition in the sector -- and the inability to determine how extensive the problem is -- helps pad duopolist revenues. Similarly, the NCTA -- the cable industry's biggest lobbying group -- cites ambiguous additional costs in opposing the improved mapping in its own filing (pdf):

...the Commission must ensure that the costs of any new broadband data collection requirements do not outweigh the benefits. With respect to the Form 477, the Commission should avoid collecting data that is so detailed or voluminous that it is expensive for providers to produce, difficult for the Commission to process, or unhelpful to the public.

Of course it's not really the added costs that are worrying these providers. Better mapping means a more accurate picture of where these industry giants have refused to provide service or upgrade last-generation connections. That would be of considerable concern to Verizon, which has been under fire for years for taking taxpayer subsidies in exchange for fiber that never gets delivered, and for outright refusing to upgrade or repair millions of aging DSL lines it clearly no longer wants to service. Less accurate census-block data also makes it easier to obfuscate the overall lack of competition in the U.S. broadband industry.

Given the current FCC's tendency to rubber stamp every whim of incumbent broadband providers, it seems more than likely that Ajit Pai and friends will scuttle this improved mapping effort proposed by the previous FCC. If you have a better understanding of the scope of a problem, you might then ponder actually doing something about it -- and we certainly wouldn't want that.

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The Intercept has obtained a leaked asset forfeiture guide for seizures performed by ICE. (It has, unfortunately, chosen not to share the original document. Then again, the last non-Snowden leak it published appears to have helped out the document's source.)

For those familiar with the process of civil asset forfeiture, the contents of the guide are mostly unsurprising. Despite the document dating back to 2010, ICE did confirm the version seen by The Intercept is its most recent guidance. ICE is allowed to seize property without bringing charges or securing convictions -- something still permitted by federal law (your state laws may vary) and greatly encouraged by the new head of the DOJ, Jeff Sessions.

What is surprising about the document is how much emphasis is placed on the seizure of real estate. As Ryan Devereaux and Spencer Woodman point out, ICE's forfeiture teams are pretty much property flippers, albeit ones working with the undeniable advantage of making zero initial investment.

Much of the handbook is devoted to describing the process of seizing real estate — homes, farms, and businesses — and it is in these pages that the dual priorities of financial gain and law enforcement objectives become most apparent. While the handbook contains little discussion on how to utilize asset forfeiture to maximize crime-fighting outcomes, there is extensive discussion of how agents should painstakingly determine whether a property is valuable enough to make seizure worthwhile

[...]

More than a dozen pages of the document describe an important — if perhaps surprising — role of AIRG agents: as real estate appraisers. Using the example of “houses used to store narcotics or harbor illegal aliens,” the manual walks agents through a comprehensive process of assessing homes and landed properties to determine the financial appeal to ICE of acquiring such real estate.

If ICE can obtain a warrant to search the property it plans to seize, it will usually send a private real estate appraiser along during the search. AIRG [Asset Identification and Removal Group] agents apparently ballpark property values using public databases -- something that tells ICE whether or not it should move forward with the forfeiture.

As is the case in most civil forfeiture operations, the connecting tissue of criminal activity doesn't need to be much more than gossamer-thin.

The manual instructs agents seeking to seize a property to work with confidential informants, scour tax records, and even obtain an interception warrant to determine whether “a telephone located on the property was used to plan or discuss criminal activity” in order to justify seizing the property.

You would think the phone would be the "guilty" property -- at least as far as you can follow forfeiture's twisted logic. Apparently not. According to ICE's guidance, the entire house around the landline is equally culpable.

The handbook also points out civil forfeiture is preferable to criminal forfeiture, thanks to its general disdain for due process. The key factor is the conviction itself -- something you'd think a law enforcement agency would value over seized property. In criminal proceedings, seized property is generally returned if the charges don't stick. Not so with civil forfeiture. ICE's guidance says when in doubt, go civil. That way the agency may still keep something, even if the alleged perp goes free.

ICE is by far the biggest contributor to the DHS's total forfeiture take. This can be expected to grow with the new administration's intense focus on illegal immigration. As with any government program experiencing sudden growth, one can expect an exponential leap in abuse.

Over the last few years AT&T and Verizon have been desperately trying to pivot from stodgy, protectionist old telcos -- to sexy new Millennial media juggernauts. And while this pivot attempt has been notably expensive, the net result has been somewhat underwhelming. Verizon, for example, spent billions to gobble up AOL and Yahoo, but its lack of savvy in the space has so far culminated in a privacy scandal, a major hacking scandal, a quickly shuttered website where reporters couldn't write about controversial subjects, and a fairly shitty Millennial streaming service even Verizon's own media partners have called a "dud."

AT&T's efforts have been notably more expensive, but just as underwhelming. The company first decided to shell out $70 billion for a satellite TV provider (DirecTV) on the eve of the cord cutting revolution. And the company's putting the finishing touches on shelling out another $89 billion for Time Warner in a quest to gain broader media and advertising relevance. That was paired with the launch of a new streaming service, DirecTV Now, which the company hoped would help it beat back the tide of cord cutting.

But things aren't really working out quite like AT&T planned. The company's stock took a beating last week after it acknowledged it would be facing a 390,000 reduction in pay TV subscribers this quarter. AT&T, in an 8K filing with the SEC, tried to partially blame hurricanes for the mass exodus occurring at the company:

"The video net losses were driven by heightened competition in traditional pay TV markets and over-the-top services, hurricanes and our stricter credit standards. The decline of traditional video subscribers negatively impacts our Entertainment Group revenues and margins, resulting in an adjusted consolidated operating income margin that will be essentially flat versus the year-ago third quarter."

Unmentioned is that AT&T also lost 351,000 pay TV subscribers the quarter before, as the company gets hit harder by cord cutting than most pay TV providers. One of the real reasons for these departures? While AT&T was willing to spend hundreds of billions on megamergers, it has spent the better part of the last decade (especially in places where poor people live) neglecting necessary network upgrades. As a result, in countless markets Verizon & AT&T users on last-generation DSL lines are switching to cable providers for faster broadband, and bundling cable TV service that's priced cheaper than broadband alone.

In short AT&T neglected its core business in order to daydream about matching Google or Facebook's ad revenues, but (so far) lacks the core competency to jump the gap from telecom to Silicon Valley-esque Millennial marketing. Both AT&T and Verizon have spent so many years operating as government-pampered protected duopolies, they believed they could pivot on a dime, ignoring that years of regulatory capture left them with only a few key skills: charging too much for too little, lobbying to thwart competition and bullshit.

To its credit, AT&T was at least willing to take a risk and launch DirecTV Now, a streaming alternative. And while the company did manage to add 300,000 streaming customers on the quarter, those users pay a fraction of what traditional cable TV customers do - and AT&T still saw a net loss of 90,000 pay TV users. Still, most other incumbent pay TV providers have responded to the cord cutting threat by raising cable TV rates (ingenious!) or by pretending to keep pace via the launch of streaming alternatives that are intentionally designed to be underwhelming, lest they cannibalize more lucrative legacy customers.

One of the core problems here is that Wall Street isn't satisfied with ISPs simply doing a good job and making a reasonable profit. The relentless, myopic need for quarterly improvements has companies like AT&T and Verizon trying to use megamergers and vertical integration to magically elbow their way into markets it's unclear they lack the competency for. And only after mindlessly cheering these deals do some Wall Street analysts realize some of these arrangements don't even make coherent business sense given the current market climate:

"Though the company partly blamed recent hurricanes for these trends, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett notes that weather was only the third of four reasons that AT&T listed. “Heightened competition in traditional pay TV markets and over-the-top services” came first. In other words: cord cutting. “It is becoming increasingly clear that the wheels are falling off of satellite TV,” he writes, meaning that Dish Network might announce similar results."

In an ideal world, AT&T would realize its core competencies (building and maintaining wireless and fixed-line networks) should take priority. That $70 billion spent on buying a doomed satellite TV company could have gone a long way in shoring up broadband service that in many regions still doesn't even meet the FCC's base 25 Mbps definition. But in the world we live in that's simply not sexy enough for Wall Street, and the need to grow simply for growth's sake will likely result in AT&T making even more expensive deals of dubious net benefit down the line. Next up: Waffle House?

Back in July, Techdirt wrote about China's plan to build a massive surveillance system based on 600 million CCTV cameras around the country. Key to the system would be facial recognition technology that would allow Chinese citizens to be identified using a pre-existing centralized image database plus billions more photos found on social networks. Lingering doubts about whether China is going ahead with such an unprecedented surveillance system may be dispelled by an article in the South China Morning Post, which provides additional details:

China is building the world's most powerful facial recognition system with the power to identify any one of its 1.3 billion citizens within three seconds.

The goal is for the system to able to match someone's face to their ID photo with about 90 per cent accuracy.

The project, launched by the Ministry of Public Security in 2015, is under development in conjunction with a security company based in Shanghai.

The article says that the system will use cloud computing facilities to process images from the millions of CCTV cameras located across the country. The company involved is Isvision, which has been using facial recognition with CCTV cameras since 2003. The earliest deployments were in the highly-sensitive Tiananmen Square area. Other hotspots where its technology has been installed are Tibet and Xinjiang, where surveillance has been at a high level for many years.

However, the report also cautions that the project is encountering "many difficulties" due to the technical limits of facial recognition and the sheer size of the database involved. A Chinese researcher is quoted as saying that some totally unrelated people in China have faces so alike that even their parents cannot tell them apart. Another issue is managing the biometric data, which is around 13 terabytes for the facial information, and 90 terabytes for the full dataset, which includes additional personal details on everyone in China.

As the South China Morning Post article rightly notes, it won't be long before 13 terabytes will fit on a single portable USB hard drive, which raises the issue of facial recognition data being copied and used for other unauthorized purposes:

But a network security vendor for the Ministry of Public Security dismissed the possibility.

"To download the whole data set is as difficult as launching a missile with a nuclear warhead. It requires several high-ranking officials to insert and turn their keys at the same time," the vendor said.

Given all that we know about the lamentable state of computer security around the world, even for highly-sensitive data, that claim seems a little hyperbolic. Since the Chinese government is apparently determined to build and operate this huge facial recognition system despite all the challenges, the unnamed network security vendor quoted above may find out the hard way that exfiltrating some or even all of that data really isn't rocket science.

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As much more attention has been brought to copyright trolls and the unethical manner in which they operate, it was inevitable that the tactics of the trolls would begin to shift. For some of us, it was immediately obvious what a PR problem these trolling operations faced. It all comes down to the "settlements" offered in a copyright troll's letters. The amounts, while designed to look small compared with the threat of a lawsuit, still tend to be quite high. Certainly the amounts make no sense when compared with the costs of simply viewing a movie or television show, which is the natural standard that lay person is likely to set. For that reason, some trolls, such as RightsCorp, have already started down the path of lowering settlement offers to levels that are more likely to cause the accused to simply pay up. Also, the fact that these letters, with all of their threatening language, even refer to the offers as "settlements" rings much closer to extra-judicial extortion than anything resembling justice.

Well, it seems that one copyright troll is attempting to correct against both of these concerns. Rights Enforcement, contracted by the studio behind the movie The Hitman's Bodyguard, is sending out letters to those it claims pirated the film with a much-reduced amount of money requested. And these requests are being called "fines" as opposed to "settlements."

Rights Enforcement sends automated ‘fines’ via DMCA notices, which is cheaper than expensive lawsuits. At the same time, this also makes the settlement process easier to scale, as they can send out tens of thousands of ‘fines’ at once with limited resources, without any oversight from a court.

TorrentFreak has seen several notices targeted at The Hitman’s Bodyguard pirates. While the notices themselves don’t list the settlement fee, recipients are referred to a page that does. Those who admit guilt are asked to pay a $300 settlement fee.

Beyond those changes, the letters are classic copyright trolling dreck. The letters are sent out on the basis of an IP address being associated with the torrenting of the film, with threats of a lawsuit still in the text. It then sends the recipient to a site where the accused offender can pay the fine -- although on that site, it refers to the "fine" as a "settlement" -- and also includes a link to where the accused can find legal representation. Legal representation that will, of course, easily cost more than the $300 fine.

The notice also kindly mentions that the recipients can contact an attorney for legal advice. However, after an hour or two a legal bill will have exceeded the proposed settlement amount, so for many this isn’t really an option.

It’s quite a clever scheme. Although most people probably won’t be sued for ignoring a notice, there’s always the possibility that they will. Especially since Rights Enforcement is linked to some of the most prolific copyright trolls.

It's not so much a reworking of the copyright troll's business model as much as it is one troll attempting to refine its process and fee structure to maximize its conversion rate. While that sounds like any business, it's worth noting that these letters are ostensibly about a harmed party looking for justice. The threats of lawsuits are, if not entirely empty, certainly not the desired outcome for the trolling operation. Any such lawsuit would cost the rights holder far more than it wants to spend.

It's still extra-judicial extortion of a kind, in other words. It's just a cheaper form of it, with a little clever wording thrown in to boot.

A little over a month ago, body cam footage of a police officer trying to bully a nurse into breaking the law went viral. Salt Lake City police detective Jeff Payne wrapped up his failed intimidation attempt by arresting nurse Alex Wubbels for following her hospital's policy on blood draws. If there are no exigent circumstances and the person not suspected of criminal activity, police need a warrant to draw blood.

None of those factors were present when Detective Payne demanded the hospital draw blood from an accident victim. The victim was, in fact, a reserve police officer from an Idaho law enforcement agency, who had been hit head-on by a fleeing suspect. This officer later died from his injuries. He was in a coma when Detective Payne began demanding the hospital hand over some blood, obviously in no condition to consent to the search.

The entire bodycam video of the incident can be seen below.

Payne argued, after being fired for violating department blood draw policies (and for violating a Supreme Court decision, but Payne isn't expected to know the laws directly affecting his position on the PD's blood draw team), he arrested Wubbels because he "didn't want to create a scene" in the emergency room. If he hadn't arrested her, or demanded she violate both the law and hospital policy, there would have been no scene to be concerned about.

Instead, Payne thought he could intimidate his way through this. Now he's out of a job and attempting to sue his way back in. (Side note: Payne also lost his moonlighting gig as a paramedic as the body cam footage also caught him saying he would start routing "good patients" to another hospital and bring Wubbels' ER "transients.")

His lawyer is making a hell of an argument: Payne was unfairly fired because the public saw him violating department policies.

Attorney Greg Skordas, who represents Payne, said his client plans to appeal a firing he considers unfair and over the top. Skordas said Payne would still be employed if the body camera footage hadn't generated so much attention and blown the events out of proportion.

There are (at least) two ridiculous implications contained in this statement.

First is the implication that the only "proper "investigation is one that clears the officer of wrongdoing and/or results in the most minimal of discipline. The second follows the first: Skordas is basically affirming law enforcement agencies rarely hand out proportionate discipline unless forced to by public outcry. Neither are good looks for Skordas, his client, or his former employer.

The internal investigation reached the same conclusions anyone would have after viewing the body camera footage: both Payne and his supervisor, Lt. James Tracy, acted in bad faith during the incident, using both intimidation and a profound -- perhaps even deliberate -- misconstruing of applicable laws in hopes of taking blood from an accident victim (and fellow police officer).

Beneath Skordas' argument is another ugly assertion: his client feels he's being unfairly treated because a police camera captured him behaving exactly the way he behaved when he arrested a nurse for following hospital policy and a Supreme Court decision. Detective Payne deprived someone of their liberty -- albeit briefly -- for daring to stand up for the rights of her patient. That's about as ugly as it gets.