Kafka Lives In Roadside Drug Testing Kits

These two people were held in an Arkansas jail for
two months because authorities thought baking soda
found in their truck was cocaine, and didn't bother
to properly test it to prove their suspicions. 

A couple from Utah learned the hard way that in today's America, if you have a baggie full of baking soda in your truck and the cops decide it's cocaine, then it's cocaine and you're in a heap of trouble.

Talk about living in a post-fact world!  

According to KUTV in Salt Lake City, Gail Griffin and her husband Wendell Harvey are truck drivers who haul explosives for the military.

At least they did until the fine law enforcement officials in Arkansas went into stubborn batshit crazy mode over a couple bags of baking soda Harvey had in the truc.

As KUTV describes it: "They have top security clearance, and they've never been in trouble with the law. So in May, while driving through Arkansas, they weren't concerned when police stopped them in Fort Chaffee."

They should have been concerned, it turns out.

Police found the three baggies full of baking soda. The cops used a roadside drug testing kit to see what was in the baggies. The widely used drug testing kit is known to be wildly inaccurate, coming up with zillions of false positives, but it's used by lots of cop shops anyway.

The road side drug testing kit decided that the baking soda was $3,000 worth of cocaine, so police locked the couple up.

For two and a half months if you can believe that, because nobody in Arkansas would do a more accurate follow up test to see if the baking soda was really cocaine and not, you know, baking soda.

Only after lots of pleading from the Arkansas Public Defender's office that the stuff was tested. According to television station KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas, the couple didn't have phone numbers memorized and so were not able to call relatives for help getting an attorney.

No easy phone access was provided. Prosecutors dragged their feet getting the substance authorities found in the truck tested correctly. And you guessed it, the powdery stuff in the baggies was baking soda.

By the way, the truck drivers arrested were African-American. This being Arkansas, there is the possibility of racism, though I know I can't prove that here

The Fort Chaffee Police Department is basically shrugging its shoulders at locking an innocent couple up for more than two months and quite possibly destroying their livlihoods.

Fort Chaffee Police say they tested three times using the faulty device and it came up cocaine three times. Good enough for them.

Sure, hold the couple until you get a more sophisticated test, but why did authorities wait two months to do it, and only when prodded?

A reporter for KUTV got his hands on one of these road side test kits and received instruction on how to use it. He tested common household items like Comet cleanser, aspirin, cold medicine and chocolate. Four of the ten tests he did came up (false) positive for illicit drugs.

Now that's a REALLY inaccurate testing device!

Even if Arkansas authorities were trying to demonstrate how "tough" they were on drug criminals, they wasted a lot of Arkansans' tax money on incarcerating the pair.

Says KUTV: 

"As for Harvey and Griffin, they only recently got their truck back from Arkansas authorities. But they say the truck has major damage that requires repairs. 

The couple also said they have not worked since they were released from jail. They said they are still trying to get their security clearance reinstated, and that they are running out of money.

Harvey said what is expecially concerning to him and his wife is the fact that other people may have been victimized by the test."

Or by Arkansas and perhaps other states. As I said, I can certainly see holding a suspect for a day or two until it's determined whether the stuff they had was drugs.

Shouldn't Arkansas authorities compensate Harvey and Griffin, since they were punished severely for not doing anything wrong?

I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Why I Won't Ever Get an e-Book

News about Amazon cutting a woman off from her Kindle library, permanently, without explanation confirms why I'll stick to old fashioned paper books.

Beware the Kindle.

Amazon wiped away her library, and when she asked for an explanation, Amazon said she violated the terms of service.

She didn't realize she did, or how she performed such violation, so she asked what she did wrong. They wouldn't tell her. She did get this:

"We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, yoru Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and any open orders have been cancelled."

The woman responded: "I am very surprised to read your email. What do you mean by "directly related to another which as been previously closed for abuse of our policies"? I can only remember ever having this one account, and I use it quite regularly to buy books for my Kindle, as you can probably see by my purchase history. How can there suddenly be a problem now? I use amazon.com and no couk for my Kindle, does that make any difference?"

Her questions seem reasonable enough, but the response from Amazon was basically "f*** you." They refused to give her any more information.

Even if she inadvertently did something wrong, is that any way to treat a customer? Apparently it is.

Now, if you buy a traditional non computerized book at a bookstore, as long as you pay for the book, the person who owns the store won't come to your house and take back the book if he doesn't like what you're doing with it.

Amazon, and presumably all e-book sellers, have no problem with taking back whatever you bought. Because you didn't really buy the book, as Wired points out.  In the e-book world, you just bought permission to read it on your device. The book isn't actually one of your posessions like it would be had you purchaased it from your neighborhood book store.  .

If you do something illegal, like shoplift from the bookstore, the cops get involved. You get due process. Unless you plead guilty, you get a trial where prosecutors have to prove your guilt in a courthouse, open to the public, before you are punished.

With the ebooks, there's no due process. A private corporation decides whether you are guilty or innocent, and that's that. Nobody has to prove anything. It's the corporation's way or the highway.

I suppose with ebooks, there's the risk somebody can illegally sell multiple copies of the publication, which violates copyright laws and screws over authors, publishers and others.

But, that's illegal, as I said.  Somebody can press charges and whoever is doing the illegal selling of ebooks goes to court and if found guilty, is probably punished. At least in a world that makes sense.

In the case of the Norwegian woman who had her library wiped away, there's apparently some complicated issue over territorial rights between different publishers in different countries that's involved in this, according to Forbes.

But how is the nice Norwegian woman supposed to know the intricasies of international publishing law? Couldn't they just tell her she was screwing up, and how she was doing it, in plain English, and make her promise not to do it again?

However, explaining this would make too much sense, and besides, cost a small amount of money better made available to billionaire CEOs.

I'm sure there's something in the terms of service verbiage that explains all that. But my theory is the companies that put out these long, complicated terms of service written in incomprehesible legalease that way so we're confusesd, we don't read them, and they can get away with murder. "Well, you agreed to the terms of service," they could say.

As if anybody in their right mind could read, much less understand that garbage.

When the media started poking around this case, Amazon responded with this:

"We would like to clarify our policy on this topic. Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library. If any customer has trouble accessing their content, he or she should contact customer service for help."

She did contact customer service and got no help, people!  No more details. Apparently, the media has no business asking Amazon about this, according to the brain trust there.

I know this type of incident doesn't happen too often, but it's enough for me to decide that my decision to keep buying traditional books is a good one.

People complain about government over-regulation taking away our freedoms. And there certainly is the potential for that. But why doesn't anyone complain about corporations coming up with dense incomprehensible rules. Doesn't that diminish our freedoms, too?