How Not To Advocate For Pot Legalization

Booking photo for Spencer Alan Boston, who lit up a joint in
a Tennessee courtroom. The judge was not amused.

A lot of people are pushing for the legalization of pot, and those efforts are gaining some successes.

That's fine.  I'm so not into pot, but then again, I'm really into beer. Some people hate beer, but they don't want to outlaw it.

Similarly, I see no point in opposing pot. If you like it, and you're responsible with it, hey, light up a joint.

However, there are right ways to advocate for changes in the law, and there are wrong ways.

Meet the Goofus who did it the wrong way.

As Newschannel5 in Nashville, Tennessee reports:

"The inmate, Spencer Alan Boston, appeared in court on a marijuana possession charge. He appeared in court Monday, and the sheriff says Boston approached the bench to discuss his sentence and that's when Boston pulled the marijuana from his pocket in front of the general sessions judge."

From there, Boston started discussing his support for pot legalization. Maybe not the right format, but OK. But then, he lit his joint and started smoking in front of the judge.  Actually, I'm a little impressed the guy got the pot into the courthouse in the first place, but nevermind.

Next, said Newschannel5:

"The sheriff said Boston was led out of the courtoom through a small cloud of smoke. He was booked on a second charge of simple possession and received ten days for contempt of court."

No word yet if legislators in Tennessee take up any pot legalization bills.

If you don't believe all this, here's the video:

Mad Gardener Might Have Booby Trapped The Pansies With Bombs

Gardening usually makes people happy, like the pair in this stock photo.
But a German gardener apparently took his job very, very angrily. 

One of my jobs, in the warmer time of year, is to tend peoples' gardens.

I'm happy to report I've never had any kind of serious dispute with any of my clients. But if I did, rest assured I wouldn't go to the lengths a gardener in Germany seems to have done.

BBC reported this about the German gardener:

"Bernhard Graumann 59, was found dead on Friday. Police believe he may be behind an explosive trap that killed a 64-year-old doctor on the same day. Two other people with connections to Graumann were injured by an exploding piece of firewood in their home."

A 37-year old woman threw the log in a wood stove, unaware it was booby trapped. It exploded, injuring her and her daughter, age 4. The mother and daughter's injuries weren't life threatening, but still.

Another booby trapped log was found at another house where Graumann had dispute with the homeowner, but the homeowner found it. Police were called, and they blew it up away from anyone and anywhere it could cause harm, the Associated Press reported.

At least 60 people have called a hotline set up after these incidents. The people were worried they'd had a dispute with Graumann and might have been targeted.

Authorities suggest anybody who had a conflict with Graumann while he tended their gardens maybe ought not totally trust their plots of daffodils and early spring vegetables.

You never know what might explode.

Police searched Graumann's home, where they found gunpowder and other items covered by German explosive regulations, says the BBC.

I've always thought of gardening as a peaceful endeavor. It gives me a sense calm, serenity, even when I'm working for a nitpicky client. I think that's true of just about everybody who gardens.

Which tells me this Graumann character in Germany really had problems.

Supreme Court Nails Local Cops For Stealing Stuff

The Notorious RBG wrote Wednesday's U.S. Supreme Court
decision restricting civil forfeiture. 

I've complained before in this here blog thingy about something called "civil forfeiture."

It's been increasingly popular among some local law enforcement agencies across the country. It's basically "legal" theft.

Though as of Wednesday, it wasn't so legal anymore. The U.S. Supreme Court decided unanimiously that the Constitution's ban on excessive fines applies to individual states as well. That makes total sense to me and should be obvious.

Nonetheless, if you can get the most conservative and the most liberal Supreme Court justices to agree on something, that probably means they want to get rid of something that's terribly wrong.

There's no doubt about it. Civil forfeiture is indeed wrong.

Civil forfeiture essentially occurs outside the court system. It started as a pretty good idea: Civil forfeiture targeted large criminal enterprises by siphoning their money and supplies and resources away. No money supply and the cartel or whatever shrivels.

But then, many police departments discovered forfeiture was a way to boost their budgets. They would seize money and goods from people they arrested, which might be OK if the people involved were actually convicted of a crime and the amount of stuff taken was in line what the fines and such would have been anyway.

However, local law enforcement in some jurisdictions got into the habit of seizing cash, cars, real estate and other property from people who were not convicted of a crime, or in many cases, not even charged with a criminal offense. Then, these law enforcement agencies would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for people to get their property and cash back.

It's gotten so bad that some police departments have taken to randomly pulling over people with out of state license plates over for trumped up traffic violations. The police would then take any cash that was in the vehicle and that's it. To me, that's theft. To these corrupt police department, they called it "law enforcement."

Yeah, right.

A lot of people besides the nine members of the Supreme Court are saying good riddance to civil forfeiture, although I'm sure it wil continue in some form as crafty law enforcement agencies find loopholes around the ruling.

Again, forfeiture opposition makes strange bedfellows. I mean, the ACLU and the conservative Cato Institute are against civil forfeiture. If you can get those two groups to agree, that's something.

There are countless horror stories out there about civil forfeiture. One of them was the case the Supreme Court decided on Wednesday, Timbs v. Indiana. Police confiscated Tyson Timbs' $40,000 Land Rover after he was caught selling $400 worth of heroin.

Nobody questioned the fact that Timbs needed to bear consequences for his crime.  But Timbs had purchased the Land Rover legally: He used a life insurance settlement from his father's estate.

As the Huffington Post describes the case, Indiana law says people convicted of crimes like Timbs' should pay no more than $10,000 in fines. The Land Rover the cops seized was worth four times that.

One Indiana judge said the seizing the car was disproportionate to the crime. But Indiana's highest court overruled that lower court judge, saying the U.S. Supreme Court has never said that the Eighth Amendment's ban on excessive fines applies to states as well as the federal government.

So, the U.S. Supreme Court had to state the obvious today, in a ruling written by the Notorious RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsburg: That the Constitution - not just parts of it, but all of it, applies to the states.

The Supremes also based their decision in large part on the 14th Amendment, which says "no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law."

Well, again, duh!

I guess Supreme Court watchers could see this decision coming since November, when the Supremes had oral arguments in the case. Justic Neil Gorsuch scoffed at Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher, who was arguing that it how the 8th and 14th amendment had supposedly never been tested this way. "Here we are in 2018 still litigating incorporation of the Bill of Rights... Come on, General," Gorsuch said.

Indeed!

Even before Wednesday's Supreme Court decision, states had been feeling the heat and beginning to at least consider cracking down on civil forfeiture.  Frankly, I think the only people who liked this grifting was corrupt so-called law enforcement agencies.

In South Carolina, the Greenville News recently published the results of a two-year investigation it conducted with other news organizations regarding civil forfeiture in that state. The Greenville News reported that South Carolina police collected $17 million in forfeiture money and property between 2014 and 2016.

In almost a fifth of those South Carolina seizures, people whose property was taken by police were never even charged with a crime, never mind convicted. One South Carolina example that Reason cited was of an elderly woman whose house was nearly taken away by the cops because a few small-time drug deals were conducted on her property.

The woman had nothing to do with the drug deals, and any time she became aware of somebody dealing drugs on or near her property, she tried to shoo them away. (Which is brave of an old lady. You never know what these drug dealers can do.)

The Greenville news investigation results were so odious that the conservate law-and-order South Carolina legislature began considering a bill that would require a criminal conviction before any property could be seized from someone.

That legislative effort might have something to do with something that Jarrod Bruder realizes now that he shouldn't have said out loud, but it is what everybody assumes.

Bruder is the Executive Director of the South Carolina Sheriff's Association.  As the Greenville News reported: 

"(Bruder) said without the incentive of profit from civil forfeiture, officers probably wouldn't pursue drug dealers and their cash as hard as they do now. If police don't get to keep the money from forfeiture, 'what is the incentive to go out and make a special effort?' Bruder said. 'What is the incentive for interdiction.'"

Um, maybe police incentive to enforce laws is because it's their job? Wild suggestion, I know.

Reason said three states had already passed similar laws and 29 states had passed some sort of civil forfeiture reform, so you know this was getting pretty unpopular.  Still law enforcement is still  resisting the trend, and many of them will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to comply.

New Mexico passed a law last year in which civil forfeiture could only take place if there is a criminal conviction. Incredibly, some New Mexico cities ignored the law, saying the municipalites could opt in to the law if they wished, but didn't have to.

Nope. New Mexico courts said, again, being a version of Captain Obvious, that a law was a law and everybody had to obey it.

In Oakland, California, the FBI cracked down on a crooked landlord who was illegally trying to evict residents so he could make a lot more money on rent. So far, so good. But then, says KQUED, U.S. Marshalls seized the property.

They now want to evict the residents so they can have an empty building that would sell for a huge profit in the Bay Area's tight housing market. Who cares if they make people homeless if there's profit to be made, right?

The residents, and Oakland, and California officials are fighting this.

All this means that the Supreme Court ruling was a victory, but local, state and federal jurisdictions better keep an eye on rogue law enforcement agencies out there.  They're supposed to enforce the law, but some of them are stealing just as boldly as a guy with a gun holding up a liquor store.

Was Barbie's Boyfriend Ken's Black Sheep Brother Arrested In Tennessee?

Jullian Mitchell, arrested in Tennessee on identity theft
charges, looks like Ken's bad little brother.
I bet Barbie does NOT like him. 

The crime wasn't too spectacular.

A man named Julian R. Mitchell, 20, was recently arrested in Tennessee for identity theft.

Television station Fox 17 in Nashville says Mitchell tried to use somebody else's debit card at a bar, but the business system at the tavern said the card was lost or stolen. Mitchell was asked for his ID.

He handed over a Tennessee driver's license, but police said it was "plainly obvious" to the barkeep that this wasn't Mitchell's license.  

The real story here is the mug shot when Mitchell was booked. As you can see in this post, his photo is......stunning.

Stunning enough to cause a stir on social media.  When local media began tweeting about Mitchell's arrest, lots of people decided to add to the news story. You know, fill it out a bit.  I opinied that in an exclusive interview, Barbie's boyfriend Ken has no idea why his brother turned to a life of crime.

Other comments indicated Barbie might not be so squeaky clean: "Suspect was last seen in a red convertible with accomplice Barbie."

One person asked incredulously: "Identity theft? There are TWO people who look like that?"

Other people guessed at Mitchell's day job. I agree with one person who said he's Roger Stone's eyebrow consultant.

At least the guy isn't all match-matchy, given the blonde hair, red beard and very black, big eyebrows.

Anyway, enjoy my early nominee for Mug Shot Of The Year, 2019

Florida Again: Woman Has Gross Way Of Ruining Kid's Birthday Party

Heather Carpenter of Florida, naturally, is accused of spreading
crap all over tables and grills at a park because a school principal
she hates planned a birthday party for her daughter at the
park later that day. 

A now presumably former substitute teacher in, yes, Florida apparently really hates the principal at the school where she worked. 

This idiot, Heather Carpenter showed up at Urfer Park in Sarasota County, Florida at 6:30 a.m. on December 1 and spread feces all over the wooden tables and grills at the pavilion in the park, says Fox 13 News in Tampa. 

The alleged reason: The principal at the school where she worked planned a birthday party for her daughter at the park. All the kids in the class were invited, including Carpenter's kid. But Carpenter was having some sort of dispute with the principal, so she decided to act like the shitty person she is.

The party had to be canceled, and the county had to replace all the tables and grills. They were too far gone to be cleaned. In all this cost the county $2,310, including labor costs. And the principal's poor kid didn't have her birthday party.

Lots of people use parks in a busy place like Sarasota County, and there's people milling about, even at 6:30 in the morning. One of them was a guy named Mike Hutchinson, who caught Carpenter doing this, spreading the crap around while wearing a surgical mask and blue rubber gloves.

She fled, but police later figured out who she, in part because of Hutchinson's description of her, and they arrested her. She faces felony criminal mischief and properth damage charges, Fox 13 says.

On the bright side, of sorts, she upheld Florida's reputation as a place where people go to commit weird, weird, crimes.

Why Did This Weirdo Lick A Doorbell For Three Hours?

This weirdo was caught on home security cameras licking a
doorbell for three hours. I'm sure when they catch this
guy some people will want to know why. 

This story has gone viral, and I can see why.

People in Salinas, California, and pretty much everywhere else are wondering why some weirdo was licking a doorbell on a pleasant looking house in that city.

The homeowners had installed video surveillance about a month ago. They weren't home when this happens, but they get alerts on their phone when there's a lot of activity at the house.

They reviewed the surveillance footage, and found this idiot licking the doorbell. For three hours.

The video went viral and this guy now has a nationwide reputation as being, well, EWWWWWW!!

Police said the images on the surveillance video were pretty damn clear, which helped lead them to Roberto Daniel Arroyo, 33, who is the alleged doorbell licker. He could face two misdemeanor charges of petty theft and prowling.

He didn't take anything except for an extension cord, which was later found at a nearby neighbor's house. Arroyo did apparently stop his doorbell licking long enough to take a pee on the front lawn.

The family that owns the house, as you might imagine, spent quite a bit of time cleaning the doorbell with antiseptic cleanser.

Here's the news video, with some footage of the oddball doorbell licker:

Ex-NASA Engineer Exacts High Tech, Glittery, Grand Revenge On Porch Pirates

Engineer Mark Rober designed an elaborate revenge package that turns
porch pirates' lives into a glittery, stinky mess 

Tis the season for porch pirates.

You know, they are the legions of creeps and idiots out there who see packages delivered to porches, doorsteps and whatnot and help themselves to them.

It's a huge problem, and everybody who has victimized has revenge fantasies against the porch pirates.

Who doesn't love that surveillance camera footage of a porch pirate running off with a package, slipping on the home's muddy lawn, and painfully falling and breaking her leg. 

I'm guessing none of these revenge fantasies is extensive as the one a guy named Mark Rober had.

He's a former NASA engineer who worked on the Curiosity rover, which explored Mars a few years back. So Rober knows how to design stuff.

Rober took design to a whole new level to combat porch pirates. Or at least make them pay.

He spent six months designing a package that, when opened by thieves, causes a big explosion of very fine glitter that gets all over and into everything.  The glitter is so extensive that it will make a permanent part of the porch pirates' home or car, wherever they opened the package

Rober's bait package also emits repeated mists of fart spray. Really!

A view of Rober's glitter bomb exploding. 

Plus, it's designed with cameras that start recording when the package is stolen, and captures the reaction of the thieves in all their glitter-covered glory.  The viral video you'll see below is a bit long and involved, but it's certainly worth watching the whole thing.

There is a segment in the middle of the video that shows a slow motion view of when the glitter explodes. It's really quite pretty. I don't know what the porch pirates are complaining about in the video.

It's interesting to watch all the contigencies and design elements he put into this package, which gives you a window into how smart engineers work. Then, toward the end, we see the glitter explosions after the porch pirates have stolen these boxes.

I wonder if it will make these people rethink their line of work. I don't know that it will, but it certainly makes their "job" more complicated. Here's the video:

Classic Florida Crime, Classic Canada Crime

This advice should be obvious, but a Florida man learned you should
never bake cookies on a George Foreman grill indoors while
drunk, high and naked. 

Both Florida and Canada have reputations for seeing some of rthe world's most unique crimes and police incidents.

The two locations have crimes that are totally different from one another, but they can be entertaining.

The following two incidents perfectly tell us the difference between Florida and Canada. Let's start with Florida.

The headline in nwfdailynews.com gets us started perfectly: "Naked man starts house fire while baking cookies on George Foreman grill."

Boy, you want to read more after seeing that headline and nwfdailynews.com delivers. Here's an excerpt:

"When firefighters got to the home around 5:30 p.m., they could see smoke coming from inside. A naked man opened the front door, said, 'I'm sorry' and closed the door. Police arrived shortly after to assist. The man came to the door again, left it open and went back into the house."

Police said since the man showed no signs that he cared for his safety, they removed him from the house.

It turns out the guy drank two liters of vodka and smoked marijuana for three hours when he decided to bake cookies indoors on his George Foreman grill. That started a fire. The moron put dry towels on the grill in a failed (obviously!) attempt to put out the fire. The towels caught fire, naturally.

Somehow, the man was not hurt.

Yes, this is classic Florida: It's bizarre, and to most people there, the bizarre seems routine

Meanwhile,  Canada had its own quintessential crime caper. This one involves bear spray, a glass bong, inept robbers and an intrepid pot shop owner.

In this still from security camera footage, the guy on the right
wields a glass bong to ward off the guy on the left, who
is trying to rob the pot store with bear spray as a weapon. 

According to the CBC, a clerk at a Shannonville, Ontario cannabis dispensary used a glass bong to fight off thieves who were attacking him and another clerk with bear spray.

No, we don't have armed robberies in Canada. No guns. They use bear spray, apparently.

Says the CBC: "A security video shows the suspects approaching a man and woman standing behing the counter, then squirting them with what appears to be bear spray. The male clerk came from behind the counter and found the men off, swinging the bong at them until they fled the store."

I think of people who are involved with pot to be pretty mellow, but watch the security camera video below. Look at the store clerk's face towards the end. This guy is fierce!

Convenience Store Crime Goes Hilariously Off The Rails

The video in this post is so ridiculous I at first I thought it was fake. A set up.

Watch the video at the bottom of this post to find out why the shelves
in this Alberta convenience store are slightly bent. 

But apparently, it's real.

As Deadspin described it: 

"A man and a woman visited the King Street Reddi Mart in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada.... and the convenience store owner eventually called police on the suspicion that the man had been using a stolen credit card. 

By the time the couple left the store, they had lost a shirt and shoe, gained a deep understanding of the store's layout, and earned themselves a smorgasbord of charges: Using a stolen credit card, resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, attempting to disarm a police office, resisting arrest from someone aiding the police, among others."

You'll see at about two minutes into the video why the CBC reports that some store shelves are now "slightly bent." It is one of many highlights in this video.

Exciting day at the convenience store, I guess.

Watch:

Brazen Thieves In Ireland Go Over Top To Loot Store

Remains of an Irish supermarket after looters stole an
excavator during a snowstorm, knocked the building
down and looted it. 

There was a big snowstorm in Ireland last week, and some thieves really got brazen during the event.

They stole an excavtator from a snow removal crew, demolished a supermarket, and then went into the wreckage to loot the merchandise.

Geez!

Video of the event is at the bottom of this post.

According to The Guardian, eight men have been charged with theft, burglary and trespassing after going on the rampage amid Ireland's worst snowstorm in decades.

The theory these guys apparently had was emergency services were stretched thin because of the storm, so maybe they wouldn't notice the supermarket being torn down and looted.

The Guardian says this group also looted a second supermarket and vandalised and destroyed several cars. We're not sure why a snowstorm would inspire this, but whatever.

Here's the video:

The Show Doesn't Go On, At Least For This Actor

David Neese led Wisconsin Police on a chase
after telling them he couldn't be arrested right
away because he had to perform in the play
"Noises Off." That didn't go over well. 

The show must go on, they say in the theater world. But it didn't go on for a very dumb Wisconsin.

According to Fox 6 in Wisconsin, David Neese, 61, of Sheboygan, Wisconsin was in a production of "Noises Off" in the Calumet County Community Theater.

He was on his way last month to one of the performances recently when Sheboygan County Sheriff's Deputies pulled him over.

The deputy quickly realized Neese was wanted for theft and wanted to take him into custody. But Neese told the deputy he couldn't be arrested at that moment because, well, the show must go on.

I don't know if THE show went on, but A show went on. He said he had to perform in the play and will be arrested later. Neese took off in his car, chased by the deputy. Neese stopped, but then floored it again.

Which, of course led to a whole bunch more charges against Neese. And there's a viral and embarassing for Neese video of the police chase. The video is at the bottom of this post.

So, alas, Neese never did appear in that Sunday performance of "Noises Off."   Presumably, an understudy filled in.

A Calamut County Community Theater board member confirmed to Fox 6 that Neese never showed up for Sunday's performance, but didn't know why until the reporter told them.

"Noises Off," by the way, is a hilarious farce about the cast of a failing theatrical production who falls into chaos, infighting and all kinds of confusion.

It gets worse for Neese, so "Noises Off" has nothing on his life. Neese is, or at least was, a district sales manager for the local paper, The Sheboygan Press.

Neese has a bit of a checkered past, anyway. Sheboygan.com said he received probation in 2014 or pawning church hand bells, of all things,  worth $10,000. He told authories he sold the bells on EBay.

Hope he has remaining revenue from that sale to pay for his court costs.

Here's the stupid video of Neese and the chase:

Spam, The Meat Product, Is One Of The Most Stolen Items In Hawaii

Spam is a popular choice of theft among
criminals in Hawaii lately.

The paradise state of Hawaii is being hit by a crime wave.

A weird one.

Thieves are making off with lots and lots and lots of Spam.

Of course we'd all like it if someone were to steal the spam junk that we get in our inboxes and take it away, but that's not what I'm talking about.

It's Spam the meat product, says television station KHON.

Thieves, a large proportion of them drug addicts, are stealing it so often that some stores have been locking up the Spam, like they do watches and medications to protect their stocks.

Apparently, there's two reasons why Spam is suddenly such a hot commodity on the crime circuit.  For one, a lot of people in Hawaii love Spam for some reason, so it's easy to sell to gain cash to feed drug addictions.

Secondly, Hawaii lawmakers recently passed a law raising the threshold level for felony theft from $300 to $750, says KHON.

Thieves often try to stay just under that $750 threshold and they've discovered an easy way to do that is to just steal boxes or shopping carts full of Spam.

Of course, there are other items that are newly popular with thieves with the raised felony threshold, such as clothing, electronics and power tools.

But Spam seems to be the biggy.  This would make a great weird episode of Hawaii Five-0 wouldn't it?

Worse, some of the criminals are getting more brazen. Instead of just running when confronted by store security, a few of them have increasingly been responding with fists, knives, even guns.

Which puts these thieves back into the felony category, but I guess they didn't think that through very well.

We hope this crime trend doesn't spread. I'm not a huge fan of Spam, but I'd hate to see stores hit with thefts like this.

Another Example Of Why You Should Not Road Rage

A stupid road rage incident caught on camera injured
an elderly man who was not involved in the road rage

The video in this post was captured on a California freeway recently.

In it, we see a motorcyclist and a car going at it. The motorcyclist kicks the car, which then intentionally swerves into the motorcycle.

The motorcyclist somehow stays upright, but the car goes out of control, swerves across some lanes of traffic and collides with a pickup truck, overturning it.

The occupant of the pickup truck was injured, and of course that person was the only innocent party in that collision.

The motorcyclist took off, and has not been found yet, though police are looking for him. The driver of the sedan involved in causing the crash has not been charged yet, mostly because police want to talk to the motorcyclist first bfore deciding what to do.

Here's the video:

Don't Block This Woman's View When She's Watching Fireworks

This woman is accused of assaulting a teenage girl
because the kid was blocking this woman's view
of Disney fireworks. 

In today's installment of totally overreaction, let's meet Tabbatha Kaye Mature, 41, of New Baltimore, Michigan, who police say was NOT happy when a group of teenagers blocked her view of a fireworks display at Disney's Magic Kingdom.

This is Florida, folks, so you have to kind of expect this. Florida people can be weird. And people who visit Florida can catch the weird bug.

If police are accurate, Mature objected when the teenager girls in front of her stood up as the Disney Magic Kingdom fireworks went off recently, according to the Orlando Sentinel. 

Mature's family, who were seated behind the teenagers, objected when the the youths stood up, blocking the view.

Mature "became aggravated," police said. Enough so that the girls decided to leave. Which was probably a smart move.

But too late! One girl told Mature, "You can take our spot."

Reasonable enough, you'd think. But not for Mature.

Police and the Orlando Sentinel said Mature responded to the offer by wrapping both hands around the girl's neck and began squeezing.

Said the Sentinel:

"When the student started screaming, Mature released her and said, 'You dont want to mess with me.'"

I love that this woman's last name is "Mature."  Talk about a misnomer!

The girl wasn't hurt, but she and her mother want to press charges. Mature faces a felony charge of child abuse. She was briefly jailed, but released on $2,000 bond.

I hope those fireworks were spectacular enough to be worth it.


 

Check Out What This Drunken Driving Suspect Was Wearing

In Newville, Pennsylvania recently, police arrested a guy named Elwood R. Gutshall III, 44 for allegedly driving under the influence. 

Police there said he committed several traffic violations and that his blood alcohol level was up there at 0.217 percent.

He was also driving with a suspended license.

Gutshall's booking photo is in this post.

Check out what he was wearing

Will Poachers Use Scientific Tagging To Hunt Endangered Animals

Canadian scientist Steven Cooke is concerned that people
will hack into scientific tracking devices on animals to
harm or kill the animals. 

It seems like every day, I find new ways in which bad people use good technology to do something horrible.

The other day I wrote about the possibility of people making fake news out of virtual people to blackmail, destroy reputations or worse.

Today, I came across another one:
Scientists and researchers often put electronic tags on wild and endangered animals so they can track their movements, behavior and habitat to learn how to keep them safe and prevent them from going extinct.

That, of course, is wonderful.

Now,  however, we learn that scientists are worried that poachers will gain access to this tracking data to learn where animals are in real time, so they can hunt them down.

Nothing like the corpse of an endangered wild animal to prove you're a real he-man. Especially when you cheat and use technology to illegally kill the animal

According to Phys.org,  Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) biology professor has found lots of ancedotal evidence that tools scientists use to study and protect animals are being hijacked to cause harm or exploit animals and fish.

Cooke is the lead author of a a paper on this subject that appeared in the journal Conservation Biology.

Complicating the issue is many scientists get government funding, and people who want to access the tracking devices say that since public funds are being used to conduct the studies, the public should have access to the data.

Plus, scientists are usually eager to share data with colleagues to advance knowledge about the subject at hand, which is usually a good thing.

However, even as scientists use and share the data to gain more understanding of the natural world, others get access so they can destroy that natural world for fun and profit.

For instance, Phys.org says, anglers in Minnesota petitioned for access to data on northern pike movements, arguing that the data was publicly funded. (The anglers wanted to use the data to find the pike and gain prize catches.)

In India, there were attempts to hack GPS data on endangered Bengal tigers to engage in what's being called "cyber poaching."

Cooke said ranchers were interfering with tracking data as wolves were being re-introduced in Yellowstone National Park and divers in the Bahamas were removing satellite tags from sharks.

Phys.org said Cooke got the idea to look into this issue when he took his family on a vacation to Banff National Park in Canada last summer.

There, park rangers banned VHF radio receivers after they learned photographers used telemetry to track tagged animals.

True, the photographers did not intend to harm the animals, but the park rangers worried that too much human interaction would make the animals spooked, stressed or habituated to people.

Once again, then, we have people using technology to be total creeps.

Cooke told the CBC the issue is a wake-up calland he hopes the scientific community can discuss strategies for working with animal tracking data that advances science, protects animals and preserves the interests of the public as well.

"Bringing Back" Virtual People Has Scary Orwellian Implications

Will the Light Stage technology shown here someday be used
to make it look like to the world that somebody who's innocent
is doing something not innocent?
Photo by Al Seib, Los Angeles Times

I was watching "CBS Sunday Morning" and what started out as a quirky fluff piece quickly scared the hell out of me.

The segment began by noting that the recent Star Wars movie "Rogue One" had in its cast the British actor Peter Cushing.  

Cushing died in 1994, so how can he be in a recently released film?

It turned out actor Guy Henry performed the new scenes, and a special effects engineers replaced Henry's face with Cushing's.

Here's where we begin to turn scary, when they introduced a guy named Paul Debevec.

According to CBS, Debevec invented something called the Light Stage. It has more than 10,000 LEDs, inside of which a subject - a person - is photographed with roughly 20 high quality DSLR cameras, which produce a series of high-resolution photos from different angles to reconstruct a 3-D model of the subject's face.

Debevec told CBS: "We'll have the actor make a succession of about 50 different facial expressions. And that produces all of the different motions of their face. But we also can record a facial performance from all these different angles, and then create a digital performance of that character that does exactly what they did in the video."

Adds CBS: "Once an actor has been scanned into Light Stage, engineers can digitally insert him or her into scenes, even if the actor is unavailable, much older or younger or deceased."

That's all fine and dandy if we're talking about the make-believe world of Hollywood. At least 100 famous actors have stood in this Light Stage to be scanned for movies, notes CBS.

The Light Stage was wicked expensive to build, but the price of this type of technology is coming down, and like most technology, will continue to come down fast.

Here's the scariest part, brought up by CBS Sunday Morning: What happens if someone scans a person, even unwittingly, and tries to pass it off as reality?

I'll take it to a ridiculous level. Remember that insane wacko rumor that Hillary Clinton was running a childhood sex ring in the non-existent basement of a Washington DC pizza restaurant?

So imagine scanning all these images of Hillary Clinton and making a film that "proves" she was running the child sex ring.

There are so many gullible people out there. An insane number of people believed the Clinton sex ring story. What if there was a computerized film to "prove" that it was true.

People are also always looking for blackmail opportunities, or to make it look like people did something bad that they didn't do.

Already, people hack into computers, making it look like they were committing crimes. Imagine using this Light Stage technology to produce videos for blackmail or worse that "show" the victim doing something terrible.

The lines between reality and fiction are blurring, be it politicians who do it by repeating false things, or people who use technology to make things up and pass them off as real.

This is another example of this blurring.

What kind of world will we live in when we can't distinguish the difference between what is really going on before our eyes, and what is pure fiction?

"Telltale Heart Implant" Gets Guy An Arson Conviction

Investigators used data from a man''s pacemaker to help
convict him of setting this arson fire at his home. 

Seems like everything is watching us nowadays.

Security cameras are everywhere, and all kinds of devices are telling somebody, somewhere what we're doing and what we're thinking.

Here's a new example that has me torn on whether it'singenious or creepy.

Police in Middletown, Ohio used data from an electronic heart device that had been implanted in Ross Compton, 59, to help convict him of arson and insurance fraud, says NetworkWorld.com

It all started with a fire that caused $400,000 in damage to his house and its contents

Authorities had already gotten very suspicious of Compton before they got the data. The fire at his house was clearly arson, as investigators noticed the fire had started in several spots on the exterior of the home.

Police said Compton's stories of what happened the day of the fire were inconsistent, The 911 call he made to report the fire seemed weird, too.

In the 911 call, "an out-of-breath Compton claimed he had 'grabbed a bunch of stuff, threw it out the window.'  He claimed to have packed his suitcases, broken the glass out of a bedroom window with his walking stick, and tossed the suitcases outside," says NetworkWorld.com

Here's where the medical device data comes in. Police obtained a search warrant to look at the data from Compton's pacemaker. Authorities wanted to know "Compton's heart rate, pacer demand ad cardiac rhythms before, during and after the fire."

Court documents said, "A cardiologist who reviewed the data determined 'it is highly improbable  Mr. Compton would have been able to collect, pack and remove the number of items from the house, exit his bedroom window and carry numerous large and heavy items to the front of his residence during the short time period he has indicated due to his medical conditions."

This piece of evidence was among the factors that helped lead to Compton's conviction.

It's still a more than a little spooky, though that authorities are using data from computerized systems to investigate crime. For instance, cars now have data recorders that can be used to determine who was at fault in a crash.

What I worry about is, can people be framed and/or falsely convicted using computer data? It seems easy to hack into data and alter it, and I'm guessing many people might not be able to determine if evidence was falsified or altered through hacking.

We already had a case in Vermont where a school teacher got in big trouble for possessing child porn. 

The teacher had visited a web site with malware that placed child porn on his computer. He didn't know it was there, but investigators found it.

Charges against the teacher were eventually dropped because the guy never willingly looked up child porn and never wanted to see it,  but by then he'd been fired from his job and his reputation was in shambles.

I wonder how often this kind of thing happens?

I guess like anything that involves computers, investigators use data as a tool. Like any tool, it can be used for good or for bad. The only problem is computer data can be good or bad writ large.  Computer data can either cause great good or great harm.

Scammers Use The Word "Yes" Outrageously To Screw You

This is the most outrageous thing I've heard in ages and there's a lot of outrages out there.

We're all used to getting scam phone calls. We generally hang up, but sometimes we respond a bit before hanging up.  

Here's how the Worst Scam Ever works.

You get a call, and it's a recording and it sounds like a real person. Or it really is a real person. The voice asks "Can you hear me?"

Any normal person would say "Yes," if you can indeed hear them.

That is when you're totally screwed.

Consumerist reports that police departments all over the country are saying that the moment you say "Yes," the scammers have a recording of you doing so.

Here's what that means, says Consumerist:

"Even if you never agree to buy anything, you might later find out you've been signed up for a home alarm system, a cruise, some added service for your phone or any other thing you couldn't possibly want. 

If you dispute the charges, the company may take legal action, sticking that recording of you saying "yes" into a recording of a different conversation as evidence that you agreed to the transaction."

There's lots of variations to this scam, says Consumerist. The con artists will use the recording to "prove" that agreed to a number of charges on your credit card whose information they've already stolen.

The scammers in this case might have called you posing as pollsters, asking innocuous sounding questions like, "Do you have a dog?"

These horrible people will often use phone area codes from your area, making it look like the calling is coming from somebody local, somebody you know. That makes you more likely to fall for it.

This "Yes" scam has spread across the country, with police from California to Virginia reporting victims of these creepy con artists who frankly ought to be shot.

Of course, any time you get a phone call from an unfamiliar source or number, you should just hang up quickly without saying anything.

However, this is what pisses me off the most. You have to be so on guard, all the time, no matter what you do and where you are and no matter how distracted you are with what's' going on in your life.

Make the slightest mistake, have the slightest moment of inattention, and you're totally screwed.

Why should we have to go through life so totally on guard?

This is a whine, because nothing is going to be done about this.

Because it's so hard to catch the scammers. Plus regulators and lawmakers are not really into protecting people.

It's commerce after all.  While I'm certain few lawmakers approve of scams, they also don't want to do anything that would make it even a teeny, tiny bit harder for legitimate companies from making money by, say, obeying "Do Not Call" registries.

So, we're in a wonderful world where we always have to watch what we say, what we do, what we with our phones because an army of scammers is out there trying to get us.

Incredibly frustrating.

Another Overreaction: Woman Drives Through T-Mobile Store Because iPhone Cracked

Screen shot of a woman driving into and through at
T-Mobile store in Florida because they wouldn't give
her a replacement phone. 

It seems like every time I turn around, somebody is upset with a retailer or other service provider and just totally overreacts.

I mean, big time.

The latest, as you'll see in the video at the bottom of this post, involves a woman in Florida (it's always Florida, isn't it?) who got a new iPhone but its display was cracked.

She went to a T-Mobile store in Palm Springs, Florida seeking to get it replaced, but she said the store wouldn't do it, even though she had insurance.

Now, most people who are dissatisfied with a retailer do things like never shop there again, tell their friends about the lousy experience, or maybe write a nasty Yelp review.

But this woman, Shinobia Montoria Wright, 26,  took it a BIG step forward. She returned to the store, drove her SUV through the front window and into the showroom and started smashing glass display cases with a squeegee, said police, according to the Palm Beach Post. 

She still doesn't have a new phone at last report, but she now DOES has a variety of criminal  charges, including aggravated battery, battery, burglary, criminal mischief, and of course, reckless driving.

Wright hasn't been arraigned yet because she's still hospitalized for arm injuries from the incident. Plus - Surprise! - she is undergoing a mental health evaluation.

Two employees at the store had minor injuries. The store suffered $30,000 in damage and was declared temporarily unsafe by Palm Beach County officials.

The Palm Beach Post said Wright told police that she did all this because of the phone and because she was having a "bad day."

Next time she has a bad day, she ought to just climb back into bed. It's safer that way.

Here's the video: