Here’s Hoping This Takes Them Down

A judge has ruled that the output from Flock spy cameras are public records which must be made available to the public.

Hopefully this will turn over rocks and to see the corruption beneath. 

A judge in Washington has ruled that police images taken by Flock’s AI license plate-scanning cameras are public records that can be requested as part of normal public records requests. The decision highlights the sheer volume of the technology-fueled surveillance state in the United States, and shows that at least in some cases, police cannot withhold the data collected by its surveillance systems.

In a ruling last week, Judge Elizabeth Neidzwski ruled that “the Flock images generated by the Flock cameras located in Stanwood and Sedro-Wooley [Washington] are public records under the Washington State Public Records Act,” that they are “not exempt from disclosure,” and that “an agency does not have to possess a record for that record to be subject to the Public Records Act.”

She further found that “Flock camera images are created and used to further a governmental purpose” and that the images on them are public records because they were paid for by taxpayers. Despite this, the records that were requested as part of the case will not be released because the city automatically deleted them after 30 days. Local media in Washington first reported on the case; 404 Media bought Washington State court records to report the specifics of the case in more detail.

Flock’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras are used in thousands of communities around the United States. They passively take between six and 12 timestamped images of each car that passes by, allowing the company to make a detailed database of where certain cars (and by extension, people) are driving in those communities. 404 Media has reported extensively on Flock, and has highlighted that its cameras have been accessed by the Department of Homeland Security and by local police working with DHS on immigration cases. Last month, cops in Colorado used data from Flock cameras to incorrectly accuse an innocent woman of theft based on her car’s movements.

………

The case highlights the lengths that police departments and cities are willing to go to in order to prevent the release of what they incorrectly perceive to be private information owned by their surveillance vendors (in this case, Flock). Stanwood’s attorneys first argued that the records were Flock’s, not the city’s, which is clearly contradicted in the contract, which states “customer [Stanwood] shall retain whatever legally cognizable right, title, and interest in Customer Generated Data … Flock does not own and shall not sell Customer Generated Data.” The attorneys then argued that images taken by Flock cameras do not become requestable data until it is directly accessed and downloaded by the police on Flock’s customer portal: “the data existing in the cloud system … does not exist anywhere in the City’s files as a record.” The city’s lawyers also argued that Flock footage is police “intelligence information” that should be exempt from public records requests, and that “there are privacy concerns with making ALPR data accessible to the public.”

The degree to which the state security apparatus is using private vendors to conceal theoir violations of our privacy is truly appalling.

Save the URL

There is n organization called Psst which is looking to be a one stop shop for whistle-blowers.

………

Then, while working at a media outlet that connects whistleblowers with journalists, she noticed parallels in the coercive tactics used by groups trying to suppress information. “There is a sort of playbook that powerful entities seem to use over and over again,” she says. “You expose something about the powerful, they try to discredit you, people in your community may ostracize you.”

In September 2024, [Amber] Scorah cofounded Psst, a nonprofit that helps people in the tech industry or the government share information of public interest with extra protections—with lots of options for specifying how the information gets used and how anonymous a person stays.

Psst’s main offering is a “digital safe”—which users access through an anonymous end-to-end encrypted text box hosted on Psst.org, [← This Is The Link To Save] where they can enter a description of their concerns. (It accepts text entries only and not document uploads, to make it harder for organizations to find the source of leaks.)

What makes Psst unique is something it calls its “information escrow” system—users have the option to keep their submission private until someone else shares similar concerns about the same company or organization.

As the organization was preparing to launch, members of Psst’s team helped a group of Microsoft employees who were unhappy with how the company was marketing its AI products to fossil-fuel companies. Only one employee was willing to speak publicly, but others provided supporting documents anonymously. With help from Psst’s team of lawyers, the workers filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission against the company and aired their concerns in a story published by The Atlantic.

We really need better whistle-blowing support in our society.

The Spirit of Openness

US District Rudolph Contreras has ruled that the CDC policy of deleting emails when staff leave is likely unlawful.

Yeah, pretty much.

Trying to bury the bodies?  (Literally)

The CDC has likely been violating federal law for years by systematically deleting lower-level employees’ emails, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Gee, ya think?

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras came in a lawsuit brought by a legal group allied with former President Donald Trump and was accompanied by an order forcing the public health agency to immediately halt the erasures.

“The Court concludes that CDC’s policy and practice of disposing of former employees’ emails ninety days after the end of their employment is likely unlawful,” Contreras wrote in a 36-page opinion.

Contreras, an Obama appointee, found that the agency had been employing a records-retention policy that had not been approved by the National Archives. That policy led the agency to delete lower-level employees’ emails 90 days after their departure from the agency, rather than the three-to-seven-year retention required by standard National Archives procedures.

The group that filed the lawsuit, the, "America First Legal Foundation," (AFL) is a virulently bigoted  and highly partisan group, it was founded by Stephen Miller (יִמַּח שְׁמו), but on this issue they are correct.

Even for lower level employees, the swift deletion of these records runs counter to the spirit, and likely the letter of, of the federal Freedom of information act, and NARA policies in particular.

It doesn't matter if this is a journalist, or in the case of the, "America First Legal Foundation," an attempt to harass CDC into suppressing facts based research and instruction regarding the LGBTQ community.

Specifically, they were requesting the emails of the authors of a paper titled, "LGBTQ Inclusivity in Schools: A Self-Assessment Tool." The obvious goal here is to use this to intimidate the authors as well as any school that has received the documents.

I am concerned about this, but I am more concerned that the CDC will cover up its role in the mismanagement of the Covid epidemic, and if that happens, then we will be equally unable to address something like Bird Flu or Monkey Pox.

Taylor Goes Full Elon

So, Taylor Swift's lawyer, one would assume with her approval, has sent a cease and desist letter to Jack Sweeney demanding that he stop publishing her flight data, as he has done with hundreds of celebrities.

This is public data, and he's reposting it on social media.

It's tail number, arrival, and departure, no information regarding who is on the plane, or where they are going after landing.

He also started doing this with Ron DeSantis after he signed a law concealing his flights on state aircraft.

I know that Taylor Swift has a real problem with stalkers, but this is public information, and naming and shaming over private jets is legitimate public interest:

Taylor Swift’s attorneys have threatened legal action against a Florida college student who runs social media accounts tracking the flights of her and other celebrities’ private jets.

Jack Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida, has for years run accounts that log the takeoffs and landings of planes and helicopters owned by hundreds of billionaires, politicians, Russian oligarchs and other public figures, along with estimates of their planet-warming emissions. The accounts use publicly available data from the Federal Aviation Administration and volunteer hobbyists who can track the aircraft via the signals they broadcast.

Sweeney’s accounts fueled a free-speech debate in late 2022 when X, formerly Twitter, banned Sweeney for sharing what the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, said were his “assassination coordinates.” The accounts don’t say who travels on the aircraft or where they go once the planes land.

In December, Swift’s attorney at the Washington law firm Venable wrote Sweeney a cease-and-desist letter saying Swift would “have no choice but to pursue any and all legal remedies” if he did not stop his “stalking and harassing behavior.”

Let's be clear here:  Elon was embarrassed that he was caught making private jet hops hundreds of times a year spewing tons of CO2, when he was claiming to save the world.  He does not like to be shown to be a hypocrite.

………

Sweeney, 21, told The Post that he saw the letter as an attempt to scare him away from sharing public data. The accounts offer only an incomplete sketch of which cities Swift might be in, similar to the public schedules for her concerts or any NFL games she might attend, he said. And the letters, he added, were sent to him at a time when she faced criticism over her flights’ environmental effects.

“This information is already out there,” he said. “Her team thinks they can control the world.”

Private-jet flights are routinely criticized for their “disproportionately high” impact on climate change, and Sweeney’s accounts have often been used to name and shame their most famous passengers. In 2022, the accounts were cited in an analysis that estimated that Swift was the “biggest celebrity [carbon dioxide] polluter” of the year.

Her publicist told The Post then that the analysis was flawed because her jet was often loaned out to other people. Paine told The Post on Monday that Swift bought more than double the “carbon credits” needed to offset her travel before her recent tour kicked off.

That bit from her publicist is 6 lbs of sh%$ in a 5 lb bag.

Taylor Swift is a sharp cookie. When offered a chance to endorse cryptocurrency for a fee, she declined, responding that they were unregistered securities.

She knows that carbon offsets are a scam.

If she does not want to be shamed over her carbon emissions, take a tour bus, like the other bands do.

Almost Makes Me Long for the Days of Cuomo

Almost.

New York's Governor, Kathy Hochul, has in response to large bribes aggressive lobbying from slum lords and money launderers, she has neutered a bill intended to expand the transparency of LLCs (Limited Liability Corporations) which have been used to obscure ownership of, and facilitate money laundering in, real estate.

When push comes to shove, she sides with the criminal side of real estate.

Maybe she should be Donald Trump's choice for VP running mate this election:

After receiving $2.2 million from real estate interests, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul watered down an anti-money laundering bill, ensuring that information about the shadowy corporate landlords that control a wide swath of Manhattan real estate remains inaccessible to the public. These property owners have been associated with money laundering and other financial crimes, and Hochul’s move means tenants and workers abused by the system continue to have limited ways to seek justice.

The LLC Transparency Act, which was designed to crack down on anonymous shell companies operating in New York, required limited liability companies to report their owners’ identifying information to an online database. However, before Hochul signed the bill last December, she amended the language so that only government and law enforcement agencies can access business owners’ names.

As an aside here, the New York Governor has WAY too much power.

………

In a December memo that accompanied her revisions to the LLC Transparency Act, Hochul wrote that the bill was “overly broad, and required changes to ensure it serves the core purpose of exposing unlawful activity while balancing personal privacy.”

Earlier that month, those involved in New York real estate had publicly pushed back against the bill. A Sotheby’s International Realty broker told real estate publication Brick Underground the act was “extraordinarily invasive” for luxury buyers who “don’t want others to know how much they’re spending.”

To paraphrase George W. Bush, "Who cares what they want."

People are using real estate to launder money, and to insulate themselves from defrauding their tenants and their employees.  F%$# their privacy.

………

One of the benefits of having an LLC is that these types of companies allow owners to make purchases under their LLC name, rather than their actual name, which is appealing to many investors who wish to keep their identities concealed.

“Anonymous shell companies have been used for far too long to break the law and harm New Yorkers,” a coalition of 24 advocacy groups including Reinvent Albany wrote in a letter to Hochul in support of the LLC Transparency Act. “Detractors seem to come from exactly one place: the real estate market for luxury condominiums in New York City, a market historically rife with money laundering facilitated by anonymous shell companies.”

………

LLCs’ secrecy provisions attract foreign buyers, who can make multimillion-dollar purchases without much scrutiny. For example, business oligarch and former Russian lawmaker Vitaly Malkin purchased a luxury condo at Time Warner Center in Manhattan for $15.6 million in 2010. Malkin, who owned 111 condominiums in Canada but was denied entry into the country because of his alleged connections to organized crime and suspected money laundering, made the purchase under an entity called 25CC ST74B LLC. 

For tenants and workers, LLCs can prove to be shadowy and abusive landlords, linked to deteriorating housing quality and lack of accountability, not to mention wage theft and tenant abuse. By hiding their identities, their owners can protect themselves from angry tenants and lawsuits.

New York State politics is ruthlessly and structurally corrupt.

I do not know how it can be changed, but my guess would be lots of criminal prosecutions would be involved.

Florida, Man!

In response to a new Florida law, which requires that elected city and county officials disclose their holdings publicly in order to make conflicts of interest more visible, droves of said officials have been resigning.

It appears that they don't want people to know that they have been doing favors for clients, or for themselves, though they themselves cast it as an infringement on their liberty.

Yeah, fuck that:

You might be excused for wondering if a strange disease that only affects local government officials is suddenly sweeping across the state.

• Most of the North Palm Beach Village Council have resigned, including the mayor, and Eagle Lake barely avoided losing a quorum.
• The Naples vice mayor announced his resignation on Dec. 31.
• Dunnellon’s mayor and a council member stepped down.
• Four out of the five St. Pete Beach city council members resigned.
• The mayors in Cedar Key and Williston announced their departures.
• At least eight elected officials in Pinellas County have left office or plan to, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
• Two Daytona Beach Shores city commissioners bailed, as have one in Fort Myers Beach. one in Jacksonville Beach and two in Bartow.
• Four of the five McIntosh Town Council members, two city council members in Orange City, and one n Sanibel are gone.
• The Town of Reddick lost the entire town council and the mayor.

Why are so many small-town elected officials across Florida abruptly resigning?

Among the other new laws that took effect on Jan. 1, they had to reveal their finances in detail for the first time. A change to the Ethics Commission laws requires city and municipal elected officials to fill out something called Form 6, the same disclosure form that state and county elected officials have had to fill out for years. So would new candidates for office, which could frighten some people away from representing their communities.

 Let me correct that last bit for you, it should read, "Which could frighten some corrupt rat-fucks from seeking elective office to enrich themselves."

………

Officials must reveal their entire net worth, including the dollar amounts of bank accounts, 401(k) plans and other assets. This includes household goods, personal effects, property, cash, stocks, bonds, CDs, business interests, beneficial interests in trusts, any money owed to the official, and investments in assorted accounts including the Florida College Investment Plan.

They must also list any source of income that provided more than $1,000 in the previous calendar year, and liabilities in excess of $1,000 with the name and address of each creditor.

So, if you owe a  $½ million to a realtor looking for a zoning variance, you have to deduct it now.

You also have to declare clients, so if you are an assessor who gets 80% of your revenue from that same realtor looking for a zoning variance, you need to disclose that too.

To all those people leaving over this, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

You will not be missed.

Snark of the Day

The good news is cops have lost every single one of these lawsuits so far, despite being backed (initially) by then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (who for some reason is now heading the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services, despite indicating he cares little for humans’ health or services.)

—Techdirt

This is well deserved shade thrown at Becerra, in a discussion of the continued efforts by law enforcement to obstruct a law which makes police misconduct reports public records.

Becerra's record on police accountability is awful, and the fact that he failed up to head HHS is profoundly depressing.

We Should Have a Few Hundred Names Now

The court papers from the Ghislane Maxwell lawsuit have now been unsealed.

This means that over a hundred of individuals who were in some ways, "Friends of Jeffrey," (Epstein) have been outed.

Who flew on his plane?  Who took a trip to Fantasy Island?

You can find this list in a number of places, including a torrent that I am sharing for at least the next 24 hours.  (The magnet link is here. Note that I am a BitTorrent tyro, so I might have gotten it wrong.)

I have not had the chance to read this, but putting it out as a torrent should make it almost impossible to scrub if the judge changes their mind.

Support Your Local Police

It appears that the LAPD, in response to legislation mandating more open access to police records, is unlawfully clawing back data that has already been released, and threatening people who have legally accessed that data in an attempt to cover the information up.

One of the tactics that they are using that they have redefined an undercover cop to be any cop who had ever been undercover or who might possibly be undercover in the future.

So basically, all cops that are on the force, or any cop that ever was or will be on the force, can have nothing released about them.

So Reed and Malloy are safe, I guess:

Last week, the city of Los Angeles filed a lawsuit against Ben Camacho, a local journalist, as well as the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, a community watchdog group that opposes police surveillance, in an attempt to censor a database of Los Angeles Police Department officer headshot photos. The lawsuit alleges that Camacho and the watchdog group are in “wrongful possession” of 9,310 headshots, which the city itself released to Camacho as part of a settlement in response to a public records lawsuit.

The city’s lawsuit was denounced as meritless by First Amendment experts. “Once the government gives you information in good faith, you have the right to publish it under the First Amendment,” David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, told The Intercept. “This is not even a close case.”

The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition launched a website called Watch the Watchers that includes the LAPD headshots. The dataset has also been published by Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets, using the censorship-resistant technology BitTorrent, and posted on the Internet Archive. Even if the court ruled in favor of the city, these public records have long since escaped the LAPD’s grasp.

………

At its core, this case appears to be about the definition of the word “undercover.” The flash drive full of LAPD headshots that the city gave Camacho excluded undercover officers. But after the police union took note of the Watch the Watchers website, they argued for a vastly expanded definition of the word in an effort to claw back the public records.

According to an interview in the Los Angeles Times by the union’s legal counsel, Robert Rico, the expanded definition of “undercover” includes any officer who conducts surveillance (even if they wear normal police uniforms) and any officer who has worked undercover or at a sensitive assignment in the past. The union’s director, Jamie McBride, argued in a TV interview that it should also include any officer who may work undercover in the future.

………

To Shakeer Rahman, an attorney with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, the implications are troubling. “They’re openly calling for a secret police force,” Rahman said.

While most of us are not enthusiastic about the idea of a police state, the cops love the idea of a police state, because it preserves their privilege and removes accountability.

………

Last month, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition launched Watch the Watchers, which allows the public to look up LAPD officers by name to see their headshots and includes information such as serial numbers, ranks, ethnicities, and email addresses — all public information that LAPD itself publishes. “This website is intended as a tool to empower community members engaged in copwatch and other countersurveillance practices,” the website states. “You can use it to identify officers who are causing harm in your community.”

“LAPD has always published full rosters of all of its officers,” Rahman said. “They had already published a roster of all of those names, identities, rank, positions, division. These aren’t secret identities. They’re very, very public.”

ACAB.

Don’t Throw Me in That Briar Patch!

Kevin Brady (R-TX) warns that releasing Trump’s tax returns could lead to the release of tax returns of Supreme Court Justices pic.twitter.com/ggwOPFKvFj

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 20, 2022

Horrors

Representative Kevin Brady (R-TX) has the vapors over the House Ways and Means Committee releasing Donald Trump's tax returns. It appears that he b elieves that this could lead to could lead to the release of tax teturns for Supreme Court Justices.

Maybe it is a matter of concern if you are a hypocrite from Texas, but for the the rest of us, this appears to be an unalloyed good:

The House Ways and Means Committee released the executive summary of a report on former President Donald Trump's tax returns late Tuesday, and the findings were about what you'd expect. The headline seems to be that the IRS was not conducting its mandatory audits of a sitting president while Trump was that president. Longtime viewers may remember that Trump used to promise he would soon release his returns, but they were under audit so he couldn't. (He could've.) After a while, he stopped even offering the audit excuse and just waged an all-out legal war to keep them out of public view. You'll be shocked to learn that the returns in question feature red flags regarding charitable contributions, "related party loans," and various deductions Trump has claimed since 2015.

But maybe the funniest element here has been the extended histrionics from House Republicans at the prospect that Trump's tax returns could be released. As a reminder, every presidential candidate since Nixon has voluntarily released their tax returns except Trump, the guy whose eponymous foundation and university have been shuttered for extremely above-board business practices, and whose flagship company was found guilty of criminal tax fraud earlier this month. If you're curious whether Joe Biden is getting shady kickback payments from Hunter Biden via his laptop or whatever, you could start your investigation by reviewing his tax returns for the last few years. They're posted on his website! But the public getting a look at the tax returns of his predecessor, Mr. Legal Man, is a national emergency.

It's such an emergency, in fact, that Rep. Kevin Brady took to the microphones to warn of the slippery slope we're toeing up to on this dark day in American history.

The Supreme Court is the most opaque institution in the Federal government.  We do not know how corrupt they are, though between Clarence Thomas and Bret Kavanaugh, I am pretty sure that there are some snollygosters on the court.

Releasing their tax returns would go a long way toward deterring corruption at the court.

Turning Police Transparency into a Sham

Baltimore County has gutted the section of the 2021 Maryland Police Accountability Act (Anton's Law) dealing with police records, by giving the officer in question 5 days to review the request and file an objection to stop its release.

With the help of a PBA lawyer, you can be certain that every single request for disciplinary records will be objected to:

Under new Baltimore County Police policies, officers whose disciplinary records are requested under the Maryland Public Information Act as well as the union representing police will be notified of such requests within two business days.

The officer and a designated representative — an attorney or member of the Fraternal Order of Police lodge, for example — will then be permitted to review the documents five days before they are released to the requester.

And the officer or representative will be able to object to the records’ release and file a “reverse MPIA” in the state court system.

………

Anton’s Law advocates have serious concerns about Baltimore County’s policy, which is similar to a Montgomery County agreement that is the subject of ongoing litigation.

David Rocah, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland, called the policies a concerted effort to “gut” transparency and accountability provisions in Anton’s Law and said they are “explicitly aimed at facilitating” reverse PIA lawsuits he called improper.

………

Baltimore County Police said this week in response to questions from The Sun that the FOP has the opportunity to review policy changes under its agreement with the county and that it “was done in this case.” 

So, they knuckled under to the police union, which is implacably opposed to transparency and accountability for police officers. 

The FOP will literally have a lawyer on speed dial who will file an objection within minutes of any request being made.

………

Anton’s Law went into effect more than a year ago on Oct. 1, 2021.

It is named for Anton Black, who died in 2018 at age 19 shortly after a physical altercation in which police officers fired a Taser at him, pinned him down, cuffed him and stayed on top of him for almost six minutes. One of the officers involved in Black’s death, Thomas Webster IV, did not disclose use-of-force reports from his previous job in Delaware; his law enforcement certification was later revoked.

There were about 30 use of force incidents on his record, including assault charges, which Webster did not disclose when applying for a certification in Maryland.

Any cop who is opposed to even these most basic accountability measures should not be allowed to carry a badge, or own a gun, even in a civilian capacity.

Whiny Bitches

I am referring to the San Diego Police Department, who has a sad because they will be required to reveal the technology that they use to spy on their citizens, because cops are always about, "Accountability for thee, but not for me."

They don't want any sort of civilian review of how they do their business, because the police believe that they should not be subject to any sort of accountability by the citizens whose taxes pay their salaries.

The term for what police want is a police state:

There’s very little that seems to anger public servants more than mandates requiring them to serve the public. For years, the San Diego police department has expanded its surveillance programs. And for years, these expansions have gone unchallenged.

But now that the city has passed an ordinance requiring more direct oversight of police activity, cops are singing the thin blue line blues and claiming the public has no business overseeing the business of public agencies. The cop pushback against slightly increased accountability has begun, as David Hernandez reports for the San Diego Union-Tribune. (h/t Michael Vario)

After years of work to create oversight of surveillance technologies in San Diego, an ordinance that will govern how the city uses the technology received final approval from the City Council this week.

The work began after residents learned in 2019 that the city had installed a network of about 3,000 cameras on streetlights three years earlier, and police used the technology to investigate certain types of crimes. Some residents expressed concerns over potential civil liberty violations and over-policing, particularly in communities of color.

Under the ordinance, the City Council must approve the use of technology that can monitor and identify individuals. City staff members will need to issue reports that outline the intended use of such technology, and the public and a newly created privacy advisory board will be asked to weigh in.

I know, this seems pretty anodyne, allowing civilian review of what sort of technology is being purchased by the police department, and how it is being used, but the police don't see it that way:

But this minimal push towards accountability has been greeted by the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) as a declaration of war on the department. Cops may have guns, badges, and a shitload of power, but any time someone demands a little more accountability, police officials make it clear cops have the thinnest skin and the most extreme sense of entitlement.

San Diego police Capt. Jeffrey Jordon said the department uses a host of technological devices that will require approval, including body-worn cameras, polygraphs and forensic lab equipment.

“I’m not aware of any other cities in America that have to report out this many pieces of technology,” he said.

If there is anything that the past 100 years or so of professional policing has shown us, it is that police cannot be be trusted with these decisions.  They will always abuse these powers for their own benefit and their own convenience.

That is what the whole corrupt "Thin Blue Line" is all about.

Your Charter School Update

We lead with the story of how Clark and Jeanette Parker of Beverly Hills used charter schools as a piggy bank, following a long history of dodgy accounting in the "charity" sector, moving to a new location whenever their self-dealing and underperformance became known by the local educational regulators.

………

The Parkers have cast themselves as selfless philanthropists, telling the California Board of Education that they have “devoted all of our lives to the education of other people’s children, committed many millions of our own dollars directly to that particular purpose, with no gain directly to us.”

But the couple have, in fact, made millions from their charter schools. Financial records show the Parkers’ schools have paid more than $800,000 annually to rent buildings the couple own. The charters have contracted out services to the Parkers’ nonprofits and companies and paid Clark Parker generous consulting fees, all with taxpayer money, a Times investigation found.

Presented with The Times’ findings, the Parkers did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

How the Parkers have stayed in business, surviving years of allegations of financial and academic wrongdoing, illustrates glaring flaws in the way California oversees its growing number of charter schools.

Many of the people responsible for regulating the couple’s schools, including school board members and state elected officials, had accepted thousands of dollars from the Parkers in campaign contributions.

Like other charter operators who have run into trouble, the Parkers were able to appeal to the state Board of Education when they faced the threat of being shut down; the panel is known for overturning local regulators’ decisions. A Times analysis of the state board’s decisions has found that, over the last five years, it has sided with charters over local school districts or county offices of education in about 70% of appeals.

California law also enables troubled charter operators to escape sanction or scrutiny by moving to school districts more willing to accept them. The Parkers have used this to their advantage, keeping one step ahead of the regulators.

“They’re like cats,” said Kawamoto, who began working at one of the couple’s charter schools in 2006. “They have so many lives.”

Charter schools are technically public schools operated by private entities.  Make the subject to the freedom of information acts that normal schools do.

That Which Can Be Destroyed By the Truth, Should Be

        —P.C. Hodgell

On the "Good News" side, we have a public education advocate turned public education advocacy lawyer Robert Skeels, who has been beating the Charter School establishment like a drum in court:

On Tuesday, March 23, 2021, I got my second big win in court against a charter school corporation. It was also a major victory over their California Charter Schools Association (“CCSA”) trade association, which tried to use the case to carve out immunity to the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”). I represented @DotKohlhaas in the action.

………

My first win against a corporate charter school was a year ago as third chair in a suit to overturn a wrongful expulsion of a student of color. The Partnerships to Uplift Communities (“PUC”) charter chain (of convicted felon Ref Rodriguez fame) had violated the student’s due process rights. Violated isn’t a strong enough word for what they did. PUC unilaterally changed the charges at the appeals hearing and then branded the child as a terrorist in his permanent record. Under the tutelage of the brilliant partners at the law firm I was a part-timer at the time (I am currently transitioning to full time there), plus sage advice from @DrPrestonGreen, we built a strong case.

It was my argument that the charter corporation never proved specific intent — a crucial element to Ed. Code § 48900.7, as well as PUC’s glaring lack of notice afforded to the student, that saw the court overturn the wrongful expulsion and give the student their life back.

This latest case was a charter trying to hide all its dirty secrets by not complying with the CPRA. The scandal-ridden The Accelerated Schools (“TAS”) charter chain’s leaders absconded when the community started pushing back and started asking questions about union busting.

………

I suppose I can’t blame them. The charter industry — long used to unaccountably spending tax dollars in total secrecy — fought tooth and nail the imposition of the CPRA and Brown Act added by Ed. Code § 47604.1(b)(2)(A). When the statute took effect January 2020, charter school corporations were already looking for ways to skirt the law. At the firm where I’m a junior associate, we use the CPRA for pre-discovery work against charter corporations. Michael Kohlhaas dot org, on the other hand, has used the CPRA to expose some of the ugliest, scandalous conduct by an industry already infamous for scandal. Uncovering the vile Nick Melvoin’s sharing of Los Angeles Unified School District’s (“LAUSD”) confidential legal strategies with their then party-opponent in a lawsuit (the CCSA) was a blockbuster revelation enabled by the CPRA.

When one looks at the corruption, self dealing, and opacity of the Charter School industry, it's almost as if the entire process was designed to serve the dual goals of resegregating public education and allowing private operators to loot the public coffers. 

Oh wait, it was.

That Which Can Be Destroyed by the Truth, Should Be

A number of California police departments are ignoring the law and refusing to information about their surveillance technology  documents, claiming copyright.

Let me the first to call bull sh%$:

California police are refusing to release documents about the surveillance technology it uses, despite a new law that requires their release.

On January 1, SB 978 went into effect, which requires the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) to "conspicuously" publish all law enforcement agency training materials. The agency has said that it will not comply on copyright grounds.

Any attempt to download training materials concerning facial recognition technology or automated license plate readers (ALPRs), as well as materials relating to courses on the use of force, lead to a Word document that reads "The course presented has claimed copyright for the expanded course online."

This is complete crap.

They don't want the public about the technological terror that they have created, because they are afraid that the public will want to take away their new toys.

The police can go Cheney themselves.

^*Credit to the author, P.C. Hodgell’s from her novel Seeker’s Mask.

It's a Start

Maryland just passed a law requiring that the state pension fund publicly report all fees charged to it by Wall Street.

While this is not my preferred solution, I would prefer the Banksters be kicked out of public pensions completely, but I think that this is a step to that path:

A new Maryland law requires greater transparency in disclosing millions of dollars in fees paid by the state’s pension system to Wall Street investment firms.

The Maryland State Retirement and Pension System has reported paying about $370 million annually in fees to the firms that invest its $51 billion in assets.

But the real amount of fees paid is anywhere from $460 million to $570 million. That’s because so-called “carried interest fees” — a cut of the Maryland fund’s profits that goes to the outside investment managers — have not been not disclosed publicly.

That’s about to change.

………
At one point, the legislation sought to cap the amount of fees the firms could charge the pension system, but it was amended to become a bill requiring greater disclosure. Both chambers of the General Assembly passed the revised bipartisan legislation unanimously and Republican Gov. Larry Hogan signed it into law.

The pension system now must publicly disclose the amount it pays in carried interest fees by the end of each calendar year. The first report, due Dec. 31, will include the fees from fiscal years 2015 through 2019.

It's a start.

The FBI Says ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

With the rise of white supremacist and white nationalist groups in the age of Trump, it is increasingly obvious that law enforcement is generally supportive of these movements.

So, count me as dubious of the honesty of the FBI when its for response to an FOIA request on its files on the notorious Nazi website Stormfront was, "Oops, I lost everything,"particularly when their response, which were just reprints of a previous request, took 2½ years to provide:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in response to a Freedom of Information Act request that it had lost many of its files on the neo-Nazi website Stormfront, MuckRock reported.

Journalist Emma Best filed a FOIA request more than two years ago for the FBI’s information on Stormfront, at one point the most prominent white supremacist website. After years of back-and-forth, the bureau finally responded with just 104 pages. The organization acknowledged that there were likely more files, but that they couldn’t locate them.

Best requested rolling release, which meant that the papers that she did receive, which had already been processed for another request, should have taken 2½ weeks, not 2½ years.

Additionally, she requested that a search be made at field offices that was not done.

You can see the (maddening) exchanges with the FBI over this here.

Do I believe that the FBI slow-walked this request?  Yes.

Do I believe that the FBI is actively supporting white supremacists? No.

Do I believe that the FBI is concerned that some of its agents, contractors, or paid informants might be actively supporting white supremacists, and a review of the records might reveal that?  Yes.

In any case, it's a profoundly troubling development.

Pass the Popcorn

The New York legislature just passed a bill authorizing Congressional access to Donald Trump's state tax returns, and Governor Andrew "Rat Faced Andy" Cuomo is expected to sign it:

New York State lawmakers on Wednesday gave their final approval to a bill that would clear a path for Congress to obtain President Trump’s state tax returns, injecting another element into a tortuous battle over the president’s refusal to release his taxes.

The bill, which is expected to be signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat and regular critic of Mr. Trump’s policies and behavior, will authorize state tax officials to release the president’s state returns to any one of three congressional committees.

The returns — filed in New York, the president’s home state and business headquarters — would likely contain much of the same information as the contested federal returns, though it remained unclear whether those congressional committees would use such new power in their investigations.

The Legislature’s actions put the state in a bit of uncharted legal territory; Mr. Trump has said that he is ready to take the fight over his federal tax returns to the Supreme Court, and it seems likely that he would seek to contest New York’s maneuver.

Republicans have called the effort in Albany a “bill of attainder” — an unconstitutional piece of legislation aimed at a single person or group — while also decrying the potential invasion of privacy, suggesting that federal officials would conduct improper “fishing expeditions.”

………

Once signed into law by Mr. Cuomo, the legislation would require the commissioner of the New York Department of Taxation and Finance to release returns to the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation for any “specified and legitimate legislative purpose.” Such a request would be have to be made it writing, and only after a request for federal returns has been made to the Treasury Department.

While the bill clearly targets Donald Trump's particular circumstances, it does not appear to my non lawyer eyes to rise to the level of a bill of attainder.

The real question is whether any of the members of the Ways and Means Committee have the stones to actually make the request, as the other two committees would have such a request blocked by Republicans.

My guess is that Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) won't have the requisite intestinal fortitude to actually make a formal request, because Democrats.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

This is the first time ever that I have heard of the Office of Government Ethics refusing to certify a disclosure form from a cabinet official:

The top federal ethics watchdog has rejected U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s 2017 financial disclosure form.

The Office of Government Ethics declined to certify Ross’s latest financial disclosure because after reporting that he had sold off his shares in BankUnited Inc. that year, he actually sold the stock in October 2018. According to a later filing, he said he mistakenly believed that the shares had been sold earlier.

In a letter sent to the Commerce Department’s top ethics officer, OGE Director Emory Rounds wrote that Ross’s 2017 report,“inaccurately reported that he sold all of his stock when in fact he had not done so.” Rounds also said that Ross was not in compliance with his ethics agreement when he filed the annual report in 2018.

………

OGE has no enforcement authority, and relies on inspectors general or the Justice Department to investigate whether federal ethics rules or conflict of interest laws have been broken. In his letter, Rounds said that Maggi had informed him that Commerce was providing its inspector general with copies of all of Ross’s financial disclosure reports.

Ross may have the dubious distinction of being the flat-out worst member of the Trump cabinet.

He is, after all, the mook who suggested that furloughed federal workers take out bank loans to address their missed paychecks.

The Further Adventures of Everyone's Favorite Slum Lord

I am referring, of course, to Jared Kushner, who is being sued for an exceptional level of slum lord sliminess.

They have been trying to move the suit to Federal court, where the jury would be less sympathetic.

Unfortunately for him, being in Federal court would require his company to reveal all the investors, and a judge has ruled that this information would not be kept under seal, so going to stay in Maryland state court:

Jared Kushner’s family real estate company has backtracked on its effort to have a lawsuit filed against it by tenants of its Baltimore-area apartment complexes moved to federal court, after a judge ruled that this transfer would require it to reveal the identities of its investment partners.

The tenants’ class-action lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City in September, four months after a ProPublica article co-published with the New York Times Magazine described the highly aggressive tactics used by Kushner Companies to pursue tenants and former tenants over allegedly unpaid rent or broken leases. The lawsuit alleged that Kushner Companies, which owns 15 large apartment complexes in the Baltimore area, was improperly piling late fees and court fees onto tenants’ bills, often in excess of state limits, and using the threat of immediate eviction to force payment.

In early November, the various Kushner affiliates named in the lawsuit filed a request to have the case moved from the state court, where it would be heard by a Baltimore City jury, to the federal courts, where it would be heard by a jury drawn from a broader geographic swath of Maryland. To get approval for this request, Kushner Companies had to show that none of the investors it has brought in as partners on the complexes are based in Maryland.

The Kushner affiliates also filed a motion in federal court seeking to have the list of the investment partners shielded from public view, citing the high degree of media interest in Jared Kushner, who as Kushner Companies CEO presided over the purchase of the complexes before moving into the White House to serve as senior advisor to President Donald Trump, his father-in-law. “Given the tenor of the media’s reporting of this case, including politically-motivated innuendo no doubt intended to disparage the First Family, there is foreseeable risk of prejudice to the privacy rights and reputations of innocent private investors,” the Kushner lawyers wrote.

So, who do you think that his investors are?

For real estate in general, and the Kushners in particular, helping people launder money with real estate is a core operating principle.

My guess is that it would be mobsters, drug lords, with Saudis, Chinese, and Russian oligarchs thrown in as a garnish.

Well, We Finally Knows What Makes a Federal Judge Call Bullsh%$ on the FBI

The FBI was saying that it needed 17 years to accomodate a Freedom of Information Act request.

The judge was having none of it:

Getting answers to Freedom of Information Act requests is often a protracted and tiring process, but how long a wait is too long?

One federal judge just came up with an answer: 17 years.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler bluntly rejected the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s proposal that documentary filmmaker Nina Seavey wait until the year 2034 to get all the law enforcement agency’s records for a request pertaining surveillance of anti-war and civil rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s.

The request involved an unusually large amount of material — about 110,000 pages of records at the FBI and more at other agencies — but Seavey said waiting almost two decades for the complete files wasn’t viable for her.

You can run the numbers: 110,000 pages taking 17 years with 50 weeks a year working 5 days a week, and you hve a processing rate of less than 26 pages a day.

This is bullsh%$, and it's a coverup in an attempt to protect the reputation of J. Edgar Hoover, who should be remembered primarily as a Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria

“Literally, they were talking 17 years out. I’m 60 years old. You can’t do that math,” the George Washington University professor and documentarian told POLITICO this week. “It wasn’t going to work for me.”

The FBI said it has a policy of processing and releasing large requests at a pace of 500 pages a month, while Seavey, represented by D.C. transparency lawyer Jeffrey Light, had proposed 5,000 pages a month. (At one point, the FBI thought it had about 150,000 pages of responsive records, which would’ve meant a 25-year wait.)

Justice Department lawyers and the FBI argued that going faster than 500 pages a month would disrupt the agency’s workflow and create the possibility of a few massive requests effectively shutting down the rest of the their FOIA operation.

Kessler didn’t buy it.

………

Ultimately, Kessler ordered the FBI to process 2,850 pages a month, which should get Seavey the records she’s seeking within three years.

………

It’s not the first FOIA case to produce staggering estimates of how long the government would need to make records public. Last year, the State Department rebuffed a request for emails of aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying it could take 75 years to work through the material.

Yeah, that's a f%$3ing coverup too, but tragically, it was a coverup of basically nothing driven by unreasoning paranoia, which created the appearance of guilt.