Category: Uncategorized

New York, NY — An NYPD officer with an apparent drug addiction has avoided being fired after being arrested, not once, not twice, but three times.
Stacy Staniland was most recently arrested last week after she crashed her motorcycle in Staten Island. When police arrived, they found that her motorcycle was not registered. She was also in possession of a controlled substance and a hypodermic needle.
According to police, when Staniland reached into her purse to get her license, police saw the needle.
Prior to last week’s arrest, Staniland was arrested in December for breaking into the home of her mother’s boyfriend. She …read more

The title is a great question. As the Joker once said, “hubba-hubba-hubba…who do you trust?” There are plenty of companies and organizations telling you they are concerned with your human liberties, your privacy, your security, or in building a future for humanity that allows for a much freer way of living, but who is really doing something about it? Who’s actually delivering on those claims?
So for the Dark Android Blog today I thought I’d throw together a little post that has a few organizations that I–as a cypherpunk, an anarchist, and a million others descriptive terms–feel comfortable donating to. These …read more

The Richmond Times-Dispatch has this news story about Virginia’s presidential primary ballot access petition requirement. The link goes to a reprint of the story in another Virginia newspaper, the Star Exponent. …read more

We’re excited to announce the release of Coinbase API v2, now in “general availability.” We introduced API v2 into developer preview two months ago and received great feedback and suggestions from the community. Since then, our API team has been busy adding new features and endpoints and refining the API.

The final version of API v2 is now available for all developers and merchants to use. At a high level, the improved API is easier to use and has new functionality that we hope will enable new types of bitcoin applications to be built. All developers and merchants currently using API …read more

This Bloomberg Politics article authored by Steven Yaccino notes problems with the Fox News Republican debate criteria. Fox News still has not said which polls it will depend on to determine which Republicans will be invited into its August 6 debate. By contrast, CNN, which will host the September debate, has already said which polls it will use.
The article also quotes statisticians who say that using polls to determine the top ten, at a time when many polls show ties for eight, ninth and tenth place, is arbitrary. One statistician is quoted as saying, “Methodologically, they might …read more

On June 26, the Pennsylvania Senate voted to confirm Timothy Reese as Treasurer of the state. He is a registered independent. Treasurer is an elected partisan statewide office in Pennsylvania. That office is on the ballot in presidential election years. It will be interesting to see if Reese runs for a full term next year, and if he runs as an independent candidate. Only one Senator voted against Reese. Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, had nominated him back in April 2015, but it took the Senate quite a while to act on the nomination. …read more

The Secretary of State has released current registration data. It shows: Democratic 46.25%; Republican 28.01%; Libertarian .39%; Green .072%; Reform .048%; independent and other 25.23%.
The percentages just prior to the November 2014 election were: Democratic 46.79%; Republican 27.69%; Libertarian .36%; Green .069%; Reform .049%; independent and other 25.05%. Thanks to Randall Hayes for the new data. …read more

THIS WEDNESDAY, two stacked — rigged! — Senate committee hearings will conclude that the feds should be free to hack into your machines.

I told my Senators AND my Representative that I OBJECT through DownsizeDC.org’s I Am Not Afraid campaign.

Please do the same. You may borrow from or copy this letter…

I KNOW that two Senate Committees will hold kangaroo hearings where federal agents will whine about their lack of technology.

They’ll say “national security” is at stake, unless there’s a law _forcing_ tech companies to allow federal access into MY computers and devices.

That’s like forcing safe-makers to give the government the combination …read more

Another 4th of July has come and gone, and another president has demonstrated that the idea of freedom under American democracy is an illusion. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, at the request of President Obama, ruled on June 29th that the National Security Agency (NSA) can resume its massive domestic spying program—in spite of judicial and legislative action to stop it.
The FISA court said that it “respectfully disagrees” with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in its ruling that NSA’s spy program is illegal, and believes that the public court has no controlling precedent for the secret …read more

Former Federal Judge Nancy Gertner recently spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival about the damage that she saw the drug war inflict on people during her time working in the system. Gertner spent 17 years as a federal judge, and she now regrets a vast majority of the decisions that she made while she was in power.
“80 percent I believe were unfair and disproportionate. I left the bench in 2011 to join the Harvard faculty to write about those stories––to write about how it came to pass that I was obliged to sentence people to terms that, frankly, made no …read more