This is the sort of English up with which I shall not put - Winston Churchill
|
|
|
Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team cops a lot of stick
FORMED BY GOOD INTENTIONS, Silicon Valley's high-tech law enforcement task force has been getting a lot of stick over the way that it acted as Apple's secret police,
Last month the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) broke into the Fremont home of a blogger-editor for the website Gizmodo looking for evidence about a secret, next-generation Iphone prototype that had been left in a Redwood City bar by an Apple engineer.
It turns out that one of the missions of the Silicon Valley task force, spelled out in state statutes, is to protect company secrets, something that effectively gives the tech industry its own police force.
The team's website guest book, which until then had featured a handful of thank-you notes, has suddenly got very busy as it exploded with 90 messages, most of them very hostile.
"How's it feel to be Apple's secret police?" a critic wrote.
"You violated not only the 4th Amendment, but also the 1st Amendment rights of a journalist," said another.
The only defender of the unit on the page said that people should not insult them for "doing their job". Of course you could say the same thing about the good people of the Gestapo.
No charges have been filed in the Gizmodo case, and the investigation is on hold while the San Mateo District Attorney's Office reviews the claim of journalistic protection under federal and state shield laws.
According to the San Jose Mercury Times REACT is one of five regional interagency task forces formed in 1997 by the Legislature in response to a growing number of high-tech thefts and other complex tech crimes such as hacking and identity theft.
That makes sense until you realise that the cash strapped state allocates roughly $12 million to $13 million a year to the task forces from the vehicle license tax and in this case they were actually being used at the request of Apple to put the frighteners on a journalist who was running a story that had not been approved by the company press office. The phone had not been stolen and had already been returned to Apple.
REACT has had better days. It cracked a major Lexisnexis hacking case in 2005. It has helped break up several identity theft rings. It assisted in nabbing someone burglarising Yahoo's and other corporate campuses last year.
The law provides for each task force to be directed by a local steering committee composed of representatives of participating agencies and members of the local high-tech industry. Critics have said this affords Apple, which is on the local steering committee, more law enforcement protection than the average citizen.
Tom Nolan, who is representing Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor whose home was searched, said he was very concerned that REACT was becoming a tool of large corporations. µ
Share this:
Share
a group of thugs with no search warrants are called un-lawful trespassers so you have legal right to arm your self with non projectile weapons unless they have some visible.in America that is......
Not necessarily good citizens... but hasn't it been established quite recently that companies are citizens under U.S. law, with a right to freedom of speech, although not, as you point out, to vote? And not, strictly, to have the doors broken down and homes ransacked of people who have annoyed them.
Many companies are conspicuously rich citizens, too, which can be better than being able to vote, if you know what I mean.
- George W. Bush "sold" his unauthorized wire-tapping of US citizens and expropriating of information from Telcos/ISPs as "helping to fight terrorism".
- Of course there were those who complied with this patriotic brain-washing: "I ain't got nothin' to hide, I ain't no terrorist!". Rights taken away by a PR campaign...
- Similarly, this REACT is "sold" as a way of stopping "cybercrimes, ID theft, IP theft", but is used to violate a citizen's First Amendment rights. As well, the rich Media Industry is allowed to sue citizens into poverty for possessing a few songs on the hard drives of their computers (which are removed via a search warrant). Big campaigns "justify" these atrocities as preventing "stealing and supporting terrorism". Rights taken away via a PR campaign...
I think the best current barometer of this brand of madness can be found in Steve Jobs, chairman of the Apple corporation. Directing Apple employees to attempt to search the home of the person finding the "iPhone 4G prototype", threatening Ellen Degeneres with legal action unless she apologized for her "iPhone spoof" comedy act, banning Pulitzer Prize winning authors from publishing in "His" app store (and removing any apps or method of making them that "He" does not approve of), directing the invasion of the Gizmodo editor's house, filing lawsuits against anyone and everyone for stealing "His" ideas (and so on...). He seems to be the very embodiment of this feeling that rich and powerful companies are "entitled" to "run the country" and "tell everyone what to do" (and he seems only too willing to share -- I mean "inflict"-- his opinions on the rest of the world). Microsoft's Ballmer is not much better (he/they just go about their dirty business in a more clandestine manner).
I suggest that the number one "enemy" in this whole issue is the subversion of democracy by Big Business. A corporation is considered ONE legal "person", but one that does not even have the right to vote, let alone have politicians in its back pocket, and otherwise exert the disproportionately large degree of influence they currently seem to have over the government.
My hope is that the President of the USA will see through this brainwashing of himself and the American public, and assert the rights of US citizens (and the rights of citizens throughout the world) over those of corporate special-interest groups. You can encourage him by voting for those who support citizens' rights. Companies have no "right" to take your rights away.
The police are always minions of The Rich.
And this clearly points up that statutes are designed *by* corporatists *for* corporations, enacted by bribed politicians, and then funded by general revenues. -- Statutes are *NOT* law when outside of common law, merely legalisms backed by force and fraud.