Police reform efforts are being mounted all over the nation, but very few appear to be capable of creating any lasting, positive changes. Reforming law enforcement is difficult to do. Legislators, for the most part, still "back the blue," if for no other reason than cops are also government employees. Powerful police unions are firmly entrenched, providing the biggest obstacle to reform -- fully capable of gutting reform bills by leaning on legislators and threatening less law enforcement activity.

The Louisiana legislature has finally agreed to some recommendations from a state task force. The best recommendations, however, were excised from the final proposal, leaving state residents to deal with law enforcement agencies which won't really have to change much of anything to comply with the minimal changes.

Perhaps the most significant change is this, which shows you just how little will be changing for the state's cops.

Reduce the amount of time an accused officer has to secure counsel from 30 days to 14.

This just means officers will be answering questions a little bit sooner when under investigation. On the other hand, the task force approved extending the length allowed for internal investigations from 60 days to 75 days, meaning it will be at least another two weeks before the public is informed of the outcome… if it's even informed at all.

There's a chokehold "ban" that isn't an actual ban, allowing officers to use chokeholds if they "believe" they or someone else is in danger. The same sort of faux ban now exists for no-knock warrants.

Ban “no-knock” warrants unless an affidavit establishes probable cause that such a warrant is needed to protect an officer from death or bodily harm. Officers still would have to identify themselves as uniformed officers and provide audible notice that they are entering a building.

So, pretty much the same standard as before for no-knock warrants. The only difference is officers will have to identify themselves when serving no-knock warrants -- something they still won't have to do until after they've already entered.

There are demands for additional training and a mandate for the hiring of minority officers. The reforms address things that should have already been in place, like requiring agencies to report anything that might harm an officer's credibility to prosecutors (but not, notably, to defense lawyers) and "incidents" triggering investigations.

Another small positive is a mandate to create a process to revoke an officer's license if they commit misconduct. Currently, an officer's certification can only be pulled if they are convicted of a crime. There's also a new requirement that officers activate dashboard cameras when exiting their vehicles. The reforms will also apparently lead to similar body camera requirements, indicating nothing approaching this is already in place.

But it could have been a much stronger set of reforms. But the task force -- composed mainly of government officials -- voted down recommendations that could have resulted in lasting, positive change.

First, the task force rejected a recommendation that all investigations of officers be performed by an outside law enforcement agency. The status quo will remain in place, allowing departments to investigate their own officers -- something that tends to lead to exoneration.

And the task force also refused to hold officers to the same standard the government holds citizens accused of criminal wrongdoing.

The group voted down [Rep. Ted] James’ proposal to ban officers under investigation from reviewing their body camera footage before meeting with investigators. He said going over the footage with their attorney before making a statement to an investigator could help an accused officer fabricate a story to escape punishment.

Other members found James’ proposal excessive. They said taking a look at the footage helps an officer refresh their memory about the incident.

Sure, it might "refresh" their memory. But it's more than accused citizens get to do. They're not allowed to review recordings of any alleged criminal acts before talking to investigators. There's no reason officers should be given more due process than the people they serve, but government reps and law enforcement officials often seem to believe accused officers should be given a head start on investigations, building up a defense before even being questioned.

This isn't really reform. It's the enactment of bare minimum expectations. This is what Louisiana should already have had in place. There's no reason to applaud something other states would consider to be the foundation to erect reform efforts on.

Readers here will not need to be reminded that BMG, a prolific music label, is also a prolific enforcer of copyright. BMG has been party to some of the most notable instances of copyright enforcement, from its lawsuit against Cox, to its use of Rightscorp to troll internet users and lie to them, up to and including taking down news videos of President Obama singing an Al Green song. There are plenty more examples after those, leaving anyone perusing them with the distinct impression that BMG super-duper respects the strictest enforcement of copyright laws, presumably in order to protect creators of content.

But that wouldn't seem to be the case if the accusations from the Jehovah's Witness affiliated Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society are true. See, BMG is the publisher for artist Aled Jones' album Blessings, which is essentially a collection of religious songs from a wide variety of faiths. Jones included a Jehovah's Witness song, kicking off a shit storm.

The problem lies in a song on the album called “Listen, Obey and Be Blessed”, a work owned by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, the supervising body and publisher for the Jehovah’s Witness religious group. The appearance of this song on a commercial album immediately raised alarm bells among the religion’s followers who, through their teachings and knowledge of their faith, knew this track shouldn’t have been used in this manner.

And so a lawsuit was filed. BMG is listed as the defendant alongside various John Does, all of whom Watch Tower accuses of violating its copyrights on the song. The group has a copyright registration on the song via a song book it constructed. Watch Tower also is the only authorized entity for licensing the song, which it has only licensed to other parts of the Jehovah's Witness organization. Watch Tower also reached out to Aled Jones prior to the album's release informing him that he didn't have permission to use the song. At that point, BMG responded, indicating it had a license from GEMA, the German rights society. And that, friends, is where things get really weird.

Despite the claims from both music outfits, Watch Tower insists it never approved licenses. This appears to be supported in a response from GEMA, which told the religious group that BMG UK had asked for a license but the request was denied because GEMA had no rights to license the work.

The buck was then passed to BMG in the US, who were apparently in the process of obtaining a compulsory mechanical license to use the song. However, Watch Tower says the necessary procedures weren’t followed so that licensing opportunity failed. As a result, BMG is guilty of copyright infringement and causing reputational damage to the entire religion.

I mean, if BMG published the album including the song before it had gone through the process to obtain the mechanical license then... yeah. I suppose there's a chance that at trial BMG could come up with some kind of evidence that it had procured a proper license for the song, but it sure seems like if such evidence existed it would have been presented prior to the lawsuit being filed at all.

Which would make BMG, fervent protectors of copyright, nothing but a bunch of dirty ol' pirates. Hypocrisy of this kind is by no means rare, but it still always amazes me how much you can rely on the most ardent enforcers of copyright eventually being found out to have violated copyright themselves.

South Carolina's civil asset forfeiture programs are abusive and unconstitutional. That was the conclusion reached by a South Carolina court late last year.

This Court finds that South Carolina's forfeiture statutes violate both the federal and South Carolina constitutional protections against excessive fines by permitting the government to seize unlimited amounts of cash and other property without regard to the proportionality of the crime that may have been committed. Indeed, they allow the government to seize unlimited amounts of cash and other property when no crime has been committed, without a criminal conviction and without proof of a crime having been committed beyond a determination of probable cause.

The programs in South Carolina lend themselves to abuse by allowing state law enforcement and prosecutors to claim 95% of anything seized. Law enforcement agencies see the largest portion: 75 percent. Another 20 percent goes to prosecutors. The state itself takes the other five percent.

This is why the state's drug warriors do very little to stop the flow of drugs into the state. Officers patrol the outbound lanes of interstates, hoping to grab cash from dealers after they've offloaded their goods in the state. And, with 95% of the seizure in play, it makes more sense to let the person leave than go through the trouble of pursuing a conviction.

Once the process starts, it barely moves forward at all. There is no time limit on forfeiture proceedings. The law only says proceedings must be started in a "reasonable amount of time." In some cases, prosecutors have waited more than two years to initiate forfeitures. During that time, the person whose property has been taken has no way to contest the seizure, much less attempt to reclaim their stuff.

The state government -- at least the agencies that directly profit from it -- don't want to see these programs ended. The state's Supreme Court has been asked to make a final declaration on the constitutionality of civil forfeiture in South Carolina. While the question is still open, all forfeiture cases in the circuit where it was ruled unconstitutional have been put on hold.

The government wants these moving again. But its arguments -- and its legal rep's apparent inability to provide straightforward answers to the court -- seem to be pushing the state Supreme Court towards siding with the circuit court.

State Supreme Court justices pressed an attorney defending South Carolina’s civil asset forfeiture law with dozens of questions on Wednesday about the practice’s legitimacy, the timing of cases being resolved, and whether the state’s system of seizure and forfeiture leads to frequent abuses by police.

The state's legal rep, James Battle, appeared to be evasive when questioned directly about the programs' potential for abuse, leading to his being shut down by an SC justice before he could start talking his way around the question.

“Wouldn’t you agree that the application of our forfeiture statute, I’m talking generally about application of the statute, has resulted in abuses, disproportionate forfeitures and is a legitimate cause for concern?” Justice John W. Kittredge said.

Battle started to answer, and Kittredge said, “I don’t want you to answer the question by filibuster, and I think you just answered because you’re not willing to acknowledge that the application of our forfeiture statutes in South Carolina have resulted in abuses.”

Battle finally acknowledged the system could be abused, but refused to acknowledge it had been abused.

Battle also claimed the courts could prevent abuse, even if the initial seizure was abusive. While it's true courts are a check against abuse, very few forfeiture cases are actually handled by judges as the small amounts of cash most frequently taken aren't worth the expense of challenging in court.

Justice Kaye Hearn asked Battle if law enforcement having a financial stake affects how they operate. Battle said it can, but a judge must approve the forfeiture.

“So I guess your answer is, even though it may have been improper on the front end, at the tail end of this process it gets fixed by the court?” Hearn said.

“Exactly,” Battle replied.

Another justice pointed out Battle's evasiveness, even as he evaded another direct question about the number of times cases are dropped in exchange for seized property. Battle's response was to claim he only worked with civil cases so he had no idea if this happened or how often. This prompted Chief Justice Donald Beatty to flat out state he "didn't believe" Battle's claim of ignorance.

This isn't over. And oral arguments can sometimes be misleading. But a system that has been repeatedly abused -- and provides all the incentives needed to encourage perpetual abuse -- looks to be on the ropes in South Carolina. The programs are so problematic the government's lawyer can't answer questions directly or honestly without confirming the suspicions of the state justices. That doesn't bode well for the future of forfeiture in the state.

For the last year, we've been highlighting how Australia's rush to create a Google News tax is so stupid. It follows similar efforts in Europe and a few other places, where newspapers that spent years dismissing the internet and doing little to adapt, are now whining that Google is... sending them free traffic and not paying them for it.

It's truly bizarre. Google sends lots of traffic to news organizations. Tons of news organizations employ search engine optimization experts who work hard to get even more traffic from Google. But... around the globe, many of them are demanding that Google also pay them for sending them traffic. Back in 2014, Google shut down its Google News offering in Spain when that country passed a similar law. Over the past few months, Google has tried to explain to Australian officials just how incredibly stupid this plan is, but Australian officials (and the newspaper lobbyists down under) don't seem to care.

Last week, Google finally pulled out the nuclear option, saying that it might just pull out of Australia entirely if the law passes. That's an even bigger threat than the one Facebook made a few months back, when it claimed it would likely block the ability of anyone in Australia to share news on Facebook. But Google says it may shut down entirely in Australia:

“If this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google search available in Australia,” Silva told senators. “And that would be a bad outcome not only for us, but also for the Australian people, media diversity, and the small businesses who use our products every day.”

Australian officials flipped out that a private company that they're looking to tax at ridiculous levels might... no longer want to do business in their country. The country's Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, claimed that the country won't "respond to threats," but his administration seems to have no problem issuing more threats. Australia's Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said that it's "inevitable" that Google and Facebook will have to pay news organizations for daring to send them free traffic.

Frydenberg also claims that Australia can be a "world leader" in passing such legislation, apparently totally ignorant of how many times other countries have already passed similar legislation, and how poorly it's gone. The Bloomberg article there mentions that pulling out of Australia would open up the market to competitors, but that assumes any of them would want to pay the pointless news tax as well.

The hubris level here remains astounding. Google and Facebook send these companies traffic. For free. It's free advertising. These news orgs hire experts to help them perform better on Google and Facebook. And now they want to be paid for it too? While politicians are pulling out the fainting couch in saying "how dare" Google and Facebook threaten to block the entire country, perhaps they might want to look more closely at why they're driving away these successful companies that their citizens (and constituents) clearly like using.

With Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai and his giant coffee mug headed for the revolving door, the Biden administration has tagged existing FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel as the new boss of the agency. Rosenworcel is well liked by consumer advocates and industry insiders, and largely opposed the Trump FCC's efforts to lobotomize the agency's consumer protection authority, kill net neutrality, eliminate decades-old media consolidation rules, and effectively turn the agency into a rubber stamp for Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon's every policy pipe dream.

Outside of that time when she helped scuttle an FCC effort to bring more competition to the cable box because the US Copyright Office (falsely) claimed doing so would violate copyright, Rosenworcel has a good track record as somebody genuinely interested in real data and real solutions. That makes her a notable improvement to Ajit Pai, who literally could not even admit US broadband is expensive, spotty, and generally mediocre, or that this is due to rampant, unchecked monopolization. It's a willful blindness Rosenworcel clearly doesn't share:

Granted, with the recent rushed appointment of Trump Section 230 sycophant Nathan Simington, the FCC's currently gridlocked at 2-2. Meaning Rosenworcel will be notably limited in what she can accomplish until Biden and Congress appoint and seat a third Democratic Commissioner. That third Commissioner could be the permanent boss, and conversations are still ongoing on that front in the Biden camp. As a result, restoring net neutrality with a 3-2 vote (and all the discourse shenanigans that entails) is likely to be some time away yet.

That doesn't mean Rosenworcel will be powerless. For example, she could pull FCC support from the ongoing (and likely now doomed) DOJ lawsuit against California for passing its own net neutrality law. Much like when (then) new FCC boss Ajit Pai pulled the rug out from under his own lawyers in court as they were busy trying to fight against prison telco monopoly price gouging at the behest of the previous, Wheeler FCC.

Granted the Biden FCC could still go several ways here depending who they appoint as permanent agency boss (which could very well be Rosenworcel). I can see them picking an aggressive consumer advocate to lead the agency who'll immediately set about restoring the FCC's consumer protection authority and net neutrality, then using that power to hold telecom monopolies accountable for pandemic price gouging, improving broadband mapping, and reverse Trump era apathy to Comcast monopolization.

But I can also see them appointing a bland centrist like Obama's first FCC boss Julius Genachowski. Somebody who'll talk a lot about Covid and their breathless devotion to closing the "digital divide," but won't be eager to restore FCC authority to more efficiently meet these goals because it's "divisive" and we need to "move forward." Somebody who'll say all the right things, but, like Pai, won't be capable of clearly acknowledging that monopolization and regulatory capture are the cause of most US telecom market dysfunction.

I think the political pressure being created by Covid (42 million still lack access to any broadband whatsoever, 83 million are stuck under a monopoly) will result in the former and an aggressive Biden FCC reversal of Trump-era policies. But since kissing the ass of telecom monopolies and powerful media conglomerates is a bipartisan tradition some forty-plus years old at this point, it's something I'll need to see before I believe it.

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In Netflix's recent release, "Death to 2020," Lisa Kudrow does an absolutely pitch perfect parody of whiny "conservative" upset about non-existent "cancel culture" over "conservative views." Kudrow, playing the role of a Trump campaign spokesperson/conservative commentator, talks about how she has to keep saying that "Conservative Voices Are Being Silenced," including on a variety of popular media interviews and, of course, a NYT best-selling book by the same title:

Of course, it's becoming harder and harder to create satire and parody these days when you have terrible people like Senator Josh Hawley making such parody obsolete within days. We've already talked about how Hawley, a lying demagogue, who apparently has been plotting how to run for President since he was a child, threw an absolute shit fit when Simon & Schuster told him it no longer wanted to publish his book. Hawley, who was (briefly) a constitutional law professor, has a law degree from Yale, and clerked at the Supreme Court for Chief Justice Roberts, ridiculously claimed that a private enterprise deciding it didn't want to do business with him was an attack on his 1st Amendment rights. It was not. And, of course, within a few days, he had a new publisher.

But, Josh Hawley is going to Josh Hawley, which means never letting a chance to play the whiny, disingenuous victim go to waste. He's now been given column space in one of the most well known newspapers in the country, the NY Post, to whine about how he's being "muzzled." And, of course, as soon as that was published, he immediately ran to his Twitter account, which has over half a million followers, to post a link to this op-ed in a major American newspaper, to whine about how he's been muzzled.

I wish I were so muzzled.

Nearly everything about the article is bullshit. Josh Hawley, who is trying to restore his reputation after he was, correctly, seen as a key instigator of the insurrectionist mob at the Capitol, clearly has no compunction about just making shit up in an attempt to change the narrative. He wants to blame everyone, but refuses to take any responsibility. He's the antithesis of every stupid "conservative talking point" he spent decades spewing. He's refusing to take responsibility for his own actions. He's demanding government action to stop the free market. He's attacking actual free speech when it criticizes him.

I'm not going to quote any of it, because that's sinking to the level he wants. If you want to read it, you can see it above, but Prof. David Karpf's hilarious thread critiquing it as if it were a draft handed in by a student is basically all you need to see:

Oh yeah. Also, it seems worth noting that Josh Hawley, for all this bullshit about how he's being censored, silenced, muted and whatnot, actually... refused to grant an interview to the newspaper in Missouri that did a front page story on him this weekend. I almost called it his "hometown" newspaper, since he is "the junior Senator from Missouri," but that would be misleading, since he doesn't actually live in Missouri, and (while complaining about voter fraud) may have violated voter registration laws by claiming his sister's home as his Missouri residence for the last election.

Beware Josh Hawley's attempt to rehabilitate his reputation with this nonsense. He's a lying demagogue who appears unwilling to ever accept any personal responsibility for his role in inspiring a literal insurrection and mob that ended with five people dead.

Late last year, the Tampa Bay Times broke the news the local sheriff's office had set up a "pre-crime" program targeting schoolkids in Pasco County. The same program used by the Pasco County Sheriff's Office to harass residents into "moving or suing" (yes, those are the Sheriff's words) had been retooled to target minors, utilizing highly questionable access to students' records.

Some deputies made dozens of visits a year to residents that the Office had declared pre-criminals, citing them missing mailbox numbers or overgrown grass. What's in line for students being subjected to the same scrutiny isn't clear, but the Sheriff's broad list of indicators is pretty disturbing. According to the Sheriff, potentially criminal minors were students with low grades, spotty attendance, and/or were victims/witnesses of domestic violence.

The program itself was disturbing. But the Sheriff's access to student records appeared to be illegal. A privacy group dug into the laws surrounding the use of student records and came to the conclusion this program violated federal privacy protection laws, namely FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act).

While educators may have been able to share some records with School Resource Officers working with the Sheriff's Department, they were forbidden from sharing those records with the Sheriff's Office -- at least not without parental consent. Parental involvement in any of this pre-crime BS appears to be minimal. In fact, most parents (and administrators) appeared to be unaware the program even existed before the Tampa Bay Times uncovered it with public records requests.

Now the program has drawn the attention of Congress.

Denouncing the program as promoting “racial bias” and further feeding the “school-to-prison pipeline,” a U.S. congressman Tuesday called for a federal investigation into the Pasco school district’s practice of sharing student data with law enforcement.

“This use of student records goes against the letter and the spirit of (the federal student privacy law) and risks subjecting students, especially Black and Latino students, to excessive law enforcement interactions and stigmatization,” said U.S. Rep. Robert C. Scott, a Virginia Democrat and the chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, in a letter to the acting federal education secretary.

The letter [PDF] points out the Sheriff's program blatantly ignores FERPA to give the Office a way to turn students into criminals, even if they have never committed a crime in their (short) lives.

Despite these clear restrictions, a recently uncovered “Intelligence-Led Policing Manual” indicates that a public school district has been releasing FERPA-protected education records to its local sheriff’s office, so that the sheriff can “identify at-risk youth who are destined to a life of crime.” The sheriff’s office collects information from FERPA-protected records on “student’s grades, attendance, and behavior.” Using these records, the sheriff categorizes students by what it claims is their likelihood of “becoming prolific offenders” effectively creating a school to prison pipeline and determining their outcomes for them. Additionally, the sheriff collects data from other state agencies on children’s social networks and whether children have experienced abuse or other trauma, which it claims “significantly increase[s] their likelihood of developing into serious, violent, and chronic . . . offenders.” To be clear, though the sheriff’s intelligence report refers to these children as “potential offenders,” this is not a list of juvenile offenders, but a list of children that may have committed no crimes.

More locally, the Pasco County Parents and Teachers Association is calling for the school district to reconsider its data-sharing agreements with the Sheriff's Office and to ensure its participation is actually lawful. More reasonable parents are demanding the program be stopped completely.

So far, the school district has only offered this vapid statement:

The school district said it planned to “assure the PTA County Council that our agreements with the Sheriff’s Office are routinely reviewed and, when appropriate, revised or updated.”

Obviously, this isn't true. If they were routinely reviewed, someone who actually gave a damn would have spotted the federal privacy law violations well before a local newspaper and privacy activists did. This statement means nothing more than the district is waiting for the furor to die down before getting back to pre-crime business as usual.

And the last sentence of this paragraph pretty much directly contradicts the hollow claim data-sharing agreements are "routinely reviewed."

But asked directly, [the district] declined to say whether it would act on any of the PTA’s requests, whether it was reviewing the Sheriff’s Office program, or whether Superintendent Kurt Browning had learned anything about the program since he told a reporter he was unaware data was being used this way in September.

The district's apparent plan to wait this thing out isn't working. At least not yet. It's been on the radar since last November. And now it's going federal. Someone's going to be forced to take some action soon. Hopefully, it will be the school district reaching for the program's cord and pulling the plug on this abomination attempting to pass itself off as good police work.