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Columbus State Awarded NSA Grant to Develop Cybersecurity Tool – Government Technology

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

(TNS) -- Further cementing its ambitions as a national powerhouse in cybersecurity education, Columbus State University announced Tuesday that it received a $174,000 grant from the National Security Agency to develop a new tool for rapid cybersecurity training and curriculum development.

The award makes CSU one of the top universities in the nation in providing technologies for cybersecurity workforce development to universities, government and private sector across the nation, said Shuangbao Wang, a professor in CSUs TSYS School of Computer Science in a press release.

The tool will be internet-based, allowing it to be accessed anywhere in the world. Wang expects it will eventually be used by global Department of Defense installations and other private and public organizations.

A key part of the tool will be the use of visual mapping, a technology developed by researchers at the university to assist in military decision making.

We are building a tool that people across the nation can use to develop cybersecurity training, which guarantees compliance with government and industry standards for cybersecurity workforce development, said Wang.

The grant is the latest in a string of awards the university has received for developing cybersecurity programs. Earlier this month, CSU announced that it had partnered with the Muscogee County School District to develop a yearlong cybersecurity course at Rothschild Leadership Academy with the help of a $50,000 grant from the NSA.

The university also hosted a weeklong cybersecurity summer camp in June with another NSA grant, this one for $28,000.

The investments may well pay off, with worldwide spending on cybersecurity estimated to reach more than $100 billion by 2020, according to research by the International Data Corporation. That spending is butting against an expected shortage of about two million jobs by 2019.

National cybersecurity workforce development is one of the key areas of this action plan, Wang said. Upon completion, universities, government, and private sector across the nation can use the tool to quickly develop training and curriculum that otherwise would not be possible due to lack of experts, knowledge and skills.

2017 the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, Ga.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Columbus State Awarded NSA Grant to Develop Cybersecurity Tool - Government Technology

Judge sides with prosecution in Reality Winner NSA leak case | The … – The Augusta Chronicle

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

A federal judge has sided with prosecutors in the case against former Fort Gordon contractor Reality Winner, finding that her defense team should be muzzled from speaking about any information deemed classified by the government, even if it has been widely reported in local, national and international media publications.

Winner has pleaded not guilty to a single count of violating a provision of the espionage act. She is accused of leaking a classified document to online media news publication, The Intercept.

That document was extensively reported on by The Intercept and numerous other news media organizations in stories on Winner, who is accused of leaking a national security document she allegedly obtained through her job with a NSA contractor on Fort Gordon.

The document is an analysis of the extent of Russias efforts to hack into state election boards. Russian meddling is the subject of U.S. Senate and House intelligence committees investigations and a special prosecutor who is looking into possible collusion between Trump supporters and the Russians during last years presidential campaign.

In his order released Thursday, Magistrate Judge Brian K. Epps wrote that determining what is classified information is a function of the executive branch of government, not the judicial branch.

Just because the defense team has expressed concern of accidentally mishandling classified information is no reason to relax the strict procedures required, Epps wrote. The defense is not prohibited in using classified information in Winners defense, but it must follow the strict procedures, he wrote.

Both sides have until Aug. 16 to weigh in on Epps proposed protective order that describes the closely guarded handling of materials in the case. A classified information security officer is in charge of ensuring such information is handled only by those on the defense team who have obtained security clearance, and only in a secured location.

The defense is to have free access to that location during regular business hours, although other times may be allotted with proper notice and consultation with the U.S. Marshals Service, according to the order.

Any notes or other papers the defense may create using classified information is not allowed outside of the security location. Any document filed with the court that contains or might contain classified information must be filed under seal. Only those portions deemed not classified by the classified information security officer will be unsealed for public review.

At the end of the case any such defense-prepared material will be destroyed by the classified information security officer. The confines of the protective order are a lifetime commitment and any violation is punishable not only by a finding of contempt but criminal prosecution.

The publication of any classified information does not change the classified status unless a member of the executive branch of government with the proper authorization declares the information to be declassified.

Winners trial is tentatively set to begin in October.

Reach Sandy Hodson at sandy.hodson@augustachronicle.com or (706) 823-3226

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Judge sides with prosecution in Reality Winner NSA leak case | The ... - The Augusta Chronicle

The Curious Case Of Ex-NSA Inspector General George Ellard – Cato Institute (blog)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

On August 3, The American Conservative ran a lengthy piece of mine dealing with the whistleblower protection nightmare that is the Department of Defense. One of the subjects of that piece is now former NSA IG George Ellard, and because I had even more on his case than I could fit into the TAC piece, I wanted to share the rest of what I knowand dont knowabout the allegations against Ellard, the final disposition of the case, why the Obama administrations whistleblower retaliation fix is itself broken, and what might be done to actually provide meaningful protections for would-be national security whistleblowers in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the national security establishment.

Regarding what little we know about the specifics of Ellards case, I had this to say in the TAC piece:

As the Project on Government Oversight firstreportedin December 2016, a three-member interagency Inspector General External Review Panel concluded in May 2016 that the then-Inspector General of the National Security Agency (NSA), George Ellard, had, according to POGO, himself had previously retaliated against an NSA whistleblower[.] This apparently occurred during the very same period that Ellard hadclaimedthatSnowden could have come to me. The panel that reviewed Ellards case recommended he be fired, a decision affirmed by NSA Director Mike Rogers.

But there was a catch: the Secretary of Defense had the final word on Ellards fate. Outgoing Obama administration Defense Secretary Ash Carter, apparently indifferent to the magnitude of the Ellard case, left office without making a decision.

In the months after Donald Trump became president, rumors swirled inside Washington that Ellard had, in fact, escaped termination. One source, who requested anonymity, reported that Ellard had been seen recently on the NSA campus at Ft. Meade, Maryland. That report, it turns out, was accurate.

On July 21, in response to the authors inquiry, the Pentagon public affairs office provided the following statement:

NSA followed the appropriate procedures following a whistleblower retaliation claim against former NSA Inspector General George Ellard. Following thorough adjudication procedures, Mr. Ellard continues to be employed by NSA.

After Id finished the TAC piece, Ellards attorney, Terrence ODonnell of the Washington mega law firm of Williams & Connolly, sent me the following statement about his client, George Ellard:

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (ASD) examined and rejected an allegation that former NSA Inspector General, George Ellard, had retaliated against an NSA employee by not selecting that employee to fill a vacancy in the OIGs Office of Investigations.

In a lengthy, detailed, and well-reasoned memorandum, the ASD concluded that Dr. Ellard had not played a role in that personnel decision or, in the terms of the applicable laws and regulations the ASD cited, Dr. Ellard did not take, fail to take, or threaten to take or fail to take any action associated with the personnel decision.

This judgment echoes the conclusion reached by the Department of Defenses Office of the Inspector General. An External Review Panel (ERP) later came to the opposite conclusion, leading to the ASD review. The ASD concluded that the evidence cited in the ERP report as reflective of [Dr. Ellards] alleged retaliatory animus toward Complainant is of a character so circumstantial and speculative that it lacks probity.

In assessing Dr. Ellards credibility and in rendering its decision, the ASD also considered Dr. Ellards distinguished career of public service, spanning more than 21 years of service across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, culminating in almost 10 years of service as the NSA IG. Dr. Ellard, the ASD noted, has been entrusted to address some of our nations most challenging national security issues; successive NSA Directors have consistently rated Dr. Ellards performance as Exceptional Results and Outstanding; and he has been commended by well-respected senior officials with whom [he has] worked closely over the years for [his] ability and integrity.

Dr. Ellard is serving as the NSA Chair on the faculty of the National War College, a position he held prior to the ERP review.

Quite a bit to unpack in that statement. Lets start with the ASDs decision to overrule the External Review Panel (ERP), a key component of the Obama-era PPD-19, the directive designed to prevent in all government departments or agencies the very kind of thing Ellard allegedly did. Here are the key paragraphs of PPD-19 with respect to ERP recommendations:

If the External Review Panel determines that the individual was the subject of a Personnel Action prohibited by Section A while an employee of a Covered Agency or an action affecting his or her Eligibility for Access to Classified Information prohibited by Section B, the panel may recommend that the agency head take corrective action to return the employee, as nearly aspracticable and reasonable, to the position such employee would have held had the reprisal not occurred and that the agency head reconsider the employees Eligibility for Access to Classified Information consistent with the national security and with Executive Order 12968. (emphasis added)

An agency head shall carefully consider the recommendation of the External Review Panel pursuant to the above paragraph and within 90 days, inform the panel and the DNI of what action he or she has taken. If the head of any agency fails to so inform the DNI, the DNI shall notify the President. (emphasis added)

Taking the ERPs recommendations is strictly optional.

Whats so significant about the ERP recommendation in Ellards case was that the ERP not only apparently believed that the whistleblower in question should be given a fair chance at getting the position he or she originally applied for within the IG itself, but that Ellards actions werein the view of three non-DoD IGs who examined the caseso severe that they recommended he be terminated.

ODonnell quoted from a Pentagon memo clearing Ellard that is not public. The ERPs findings, along with their record of investigation, are not public. Nor do we know how thoroughor cursorythe ASDs review of the Ellard case was prior to the decision to clear Ellard. Given all of that, who are we to believe?

There are some key facts we do know that lead me to believe that the ERPs recommendations were not only likely soundly based, but that the whistleblower retaliation problem inside the Pentagon is deeply entrenched.

ODonnells statement also claimed that the ASDs decision to reverse the ERP and clear Ellard of wrongdoing echoes the conclusion reached by the Department of Defenses Office of the Inspector General. But its the DoD IG itself, as an institution, that is also under a major cloud because of other whistleblower retaliation claims coming from former NSA or DoD IG employeesspecifically former NSA senior executive service member Thomas Drake and for DoD Assistant Inspector General John Crane. As Ive noted previously, the independent Office of Special Counsel found adequate evidence of whistleblower retaliation and document destruction to refer the matter to the Justice Departments own IG; Cranes case is getting a look from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congresss own executive branch watchdog.

The DoD and NSA IGs have clear conflicts of interest when employees from within their own ranks are implicated in potential criminal wrongdoing. PPD-19 was supposed to be the answer to such conflicts of interest, but its lack of teeth from an enforcement standpoint renders it a badly flawed remedy for an extremely serious integrity problem.

And what about Congress? PPD-19 speaks to that as well:

On an annual basis, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community shall report the determinations and recommendations and department and agency head responses to the DNI and, as appropriate, to the relevant congressional committees.

But Congress doesnt need to wait for the IC IG to tell it what is already publicly known about the Ellard, Drake, and Crane cases. It has ample cause to not only investigate these cases, but to take action to replace PPD-19 with a whistleblower protection system that actually protects those reporting waste, fraud, abuse, or criminal conduct and punishes those who attempt to block such reporting. Two options that deserve consideration are 1) empowering OSC to examine these kinds of cases and issue unreviewable summary judgments itself or 2) revive the expired Independent Counsel statute, rewritten with a focus on whistleblower reprisal case investigations.

One thing is beyond dispute. The PPD-19 process is not the answer for protecting whistleblower and punishing those who retaliate against them. We need a credible system that will do both. The only question now is whether anybody in the House or Senate will step up to the task of building a new one.

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The Curious Case Of Ex-NSA Inspector General George Ellard - Cato Institute (blog)

Why Robert Mueller’s Grand Jury Isn’t a Big DealYet – TIME

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Legal experts warn not to read too much into a report that special counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury as part of his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The decision was likely made for practical reasons, such as making it easier to call witnesses to testify, and does not necessarily indicate that the former FBI chief is ready to issue indictments, experts say.

When conducting an investigation, prosecutors commonly work with a grand jury, said Melinda Haag, former U.S. Attorney in San Francisco. Because of its significant legal power and investigative reach, Haag says, impaneling of a grand journey can happen at almost any point during an investigationnot just near the end.

The use of grand juries, which serve as forums for testimony and evidence gathering before a potential trial, is not uncommon in federal cases. Its a unique environment with special rules: because there are no defendants, legal counsel is not present, and the prosecutor has significant control over the proceedings. The process can lead to indictments if criminal evidence comes to light.

In part because it echoes the events of Watergate, Muellers decision to specially impanel a grand jury has been seen as revealing. That means that Mueller opted not to use a sitting grand jury to handle the case, or continue using the grand jury in Alexandria, Va., that had been used by federal prosecutors to investigate former national security advisor Michael Flynn.

But while the special formation of the jury is a highly visible and certainly important move in the ongoing investigation, it may be less dramatic than it initially appears.

Given the nature of the things that Mueller is investigating, it would be odd for him not to use a grand jury in the District of Columbia, said David Sklansky, a co-director at Stanford's Criminal Justice Center, adding that it would be weird for Mueller to rely on a standing jury for the investigation.

There are a number of reasons for that. Under law, grand juries are held to a certain term length and sometimes called to multiple cases, so for a complicated and potentially lengthy investigation it makes sense for a prosecutor to convene a new jury that can devote its entire term and attention to a single case.

And a sitting jury would not have been screened for participation in a high-profile and high intensity case like this one. A dedicated grand jury will be an administrative convenience, in a case that could involve numerous documents and participants, said Robert Weisberg, a criminal justice expert at Stanford Law School.

At an extreme, the formation of the jury could mean that Mueller believes he hasor could soon haveenough evidence to issue an indictment that could lead to a criminal case, says Hadar Aviram, a law professor at UC Hastings. But it could also simply mean the Mueller is hoping to utilize the powerful evidence-gathering machinery that a grand jury provides.

Aviram calls the grand jury process a powerful mechanism that has the capability of generating more evidence through its powers of subpoena, meaning the prosecutor can compel testimony and the handing over of documents. The latter is particularly potent, because, unlike with testimony, its nearly impossible for documents to be protected under the Fifth Amendment. And Weisberg points out that because those who testify are under oath and could end up as defendants in a later trial, and prosecutors can grant immunity in exchange for testimony, the grand jury tends to be a productive environment for revealing testimony and naming of further witnesses.

But Haag emphasizes that the impaneling may simply mean that Mueller plans to start subpoenaing documentsand, even if they are at a stage where they want to take testimony from one or more people, that, too doesnt mean theyre reaching the end of the investigation.

Regardless of the strategy behind the formation of the grand jury, many aspects of it will be mysteries for some time. The proceedings could be lengthy and are legally protected under strict rules of secrecythough witnesses are free to talk about their participation. If witnesses do choose to disclose their involvement, or any details of the subpoenas are leaked, it could provide clues into the shape of the investigation.

But for now, were mostly in the dark.

Everything is just a kind of tea leaf reading at this point, Wesiberg saidadding that any conclusions should be drawn with caution.

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Why Robert Mueller's Grand Jury Isn't a Big DealYet - TIME

Interactive Constitution: Grand Juries and the Fifth Amendment – Constitution Daily (blog)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

What are the basic underpinnings of a federal grand jury? In the excerpt from the National Constitution Centers Interactive Constitution, Paul Cassell and Kate Stith lookat their origin as related to the Fifth Amendment.

The first part of the Fifth Amendment reads as follows: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger

Cassell, a University of Utah law professor, and Stith, from the Yale Law School, explained the presence of Grand Juries in the Constitution, in a common interpretation of the Fifth Amendment:

The first of the criminal procedure clauses requires that felony offenses infederal courtbe charged by grand jury indictment. (A grand jury is a panel of citizens that hears evidence that the prosecutor has against the accused, and decides if an indictment, or formal criminal charges, should be filed against them.)

This is one of only a few provisions of the Bill of Rights that the Supreme Court has not held to apply to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (the others being the Third Amendments protection against quartering of soldiers, the Sixth Amendments requirement of trial in the district where the crime was committed, the Seventh Amendments requirement of jury trial in certain civil cases, and possibly the Eighth Amendments prohibition of excessive fines).

That the Court has been reluctant to apply the grand jury requirement to the states is unsurprising. While the origins of the grand jury are ancientan ancestor of the modern grand jury was included in the Magna Cartatoday, the United States is the only country in the world that uses grand juries. In addition to the federal government, about half the states provide for grand juriesthough in many of these there exist other ways of filing formal charges, such as a prosecutorial information followed by an adversarial but a relatively informal preliminary hearing before a judge (to make sure there is at least probable cause for the charge, the same standard of proof that a grand jury is told to apply). As early as 1884, the Supreme Court held that the grand jury is not a fundamental requirement of due process, and Justice Holmes lone dissent from that judgment has been joined by only one Justice (Douglas) in the intervening years.

Recent scholarship has upset the previous understanding that the grand jury was from its inception venerated because it was not only a sword (accusing individuals of crimes) but also a shield (against oppressive or arbitrary authority). In its early incarnation in England, the grand jury was fundamentally an instrument of the crown, obliging unpaid citizens to help enforce the Kings law. Over the centuries, the idea of a citizen check on royal prerogative became more valued. By the time of the framing of our Constitution, both the grand jury (from the French for large, in sizetoday grand juries are often composed of 24 citizens), and the petit jury (from the French for smalltoday criminal trial juries may be composed of as few as six citizens) were understood, in both Britain and the colonies, to be important bulwarks of freedom from tyranny.

Few in the modern era would espouse such a view. The former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals (that states highest court) famously remarked in recent years that because prosecutors agents of the executive branchcontrol what information a grand jury hears, any grand jury today would, if requested, indict a ham sandwich. While this is a useful exaggerationthe Supreme Court has held that federal grand juries need not adhere to trial rules of evidence, or be told of evidence exculpating the defendantfew prosecutors, fortunately, are interested in indicting ham sandwiches! Rather, the greatest advantage grand juries now provide (at least in federal courts, which are not as overburdened as state courts) is allowing the prosecutor to use the grand jury as a pre-trial focus group, learning which evidence or witnesses are especially convincing, or unconvincing.

At least in federal court, grand juries are here to stay. The institution is written into the Fifth Amendment too clearly to be interpreted away. Moreover, neither pro-law enforcement forces (for obvious reasons) nor allies of those accused (because occasionally grand juries do refuse to indictin the legal parlance, returning a no true bill) have reason to urge their abolition through amendment of the Constitution.

You can read more from Cassell and Stith on the Fifth Amendment, and matters of debate from different perspectives, at our Interactive Constitution at: goo.gl/dsDFKb

Filed Under: Fifth Amendment

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Interactive Constitution: Grand Juries and the Fifth Amendment - Constitution Daily (blog)

Symposium: Millions of tiny constables Time to set the record … – SCOTUSblog (blog)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Alan Butler is senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which filed amici briefs in support of petitioner David Riley in Riley v. California and in support of respondent Antoine Jones in United States v. Jones.

The Supreme Courts Fourth Amendment opinions, especially those involving new surveillance technologies, are well stocked with metaphors and similes. Lower courts are faced with the challenge of applying abstract contours of constitutional law to techniques unimaginable when previous cases were decided. Usually courts reach for similes first this new technique is like the old technique considered in that famous case several decades ago in hopes of maintaining consistency. But, more recently, the Supreme Court has relied on new metaphors to explain how to adapt old doctrine to new facts. These doctrinal course corrections are necessary where the routine application of old rules to new facts produces absurd results. We will likely see a similar correction in Carpenter v. United States.

Multiple appellate courts, including the lower court in this case, have held that cellphone location records are not protected under the Fourth Amendment because they are similar to the logs of dialed numbers that were at issue in Smith v. Maryland. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in Carpenter, despite the lack of a circuit split, to address this important Fourth Amendment question. Now the court has an opportunity to set the record straight, and should avoid the conceptual pitfalls that have bedeviled lower courts over the last decade. The court should build upon its unanimous judgments in Jones and Riley to establish strong constitutional protection for location data.

The facts in Carpenter are similar to other recent location-data cases. Law-enforcement investigators obtained several months of the defendant Timothy Carpenters cellphone location records without a warrant. These records were obtained from Carpenters cellphone providers, and included a historical log showing which cellphone towers the target phones were connected to when they made or received calls during a six-month period. Unlike some other cellphone-tracking cases, this case does not involve real time location tracking or the use of GPS data.

The Supreme Court has made a point in its recent decisions in Jones and Riley to reject the wooden application of decades-old Fourth Amendment precedents to modern problems. In Riley, the court declined to apply the traditional search incident to arrest exception to permit the warrantless search of a cellphone in the defendants possession at the time of arrest. In a unanimous decision, the court dismissed the notion that a cellphone was materially indistinguishable from a cigarette pack or a wallet (That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.). Instead, the court found that the search of a cellphone is even more revealing than the search of a home.

In Jones, the Supreme Court considered whether the attachment and use of a GPS device to track the location of the defendants car was a search under the Fourth Amendment. The court had previously held in a pair of cases in the 1980s that the use of radio beepers to track the movement of a car on public roads over a month-long period was not a search. Some lower courts had found that a GPS tracker was like a beeper and that use of the device therefore would not trigger the Fourth Amendment. But the court unanimously rejected that conclusion, albeit under two distinct rationales. Four justices joined Justice Antonin Scalias majority opinion finding that the attachment of a GPS device was a physical trespass, akin to a constables concealing himself in the targets coach. Three justices joined Justice Samuel Alitos concurring opinion, which found that the tracking violated a reasonable expectation of privacy. Alito was skeptical of the usefulness of Scalias metaphor, because it would have required either a gigantic coach, a tiny constable, or both, but nevertheless agreed that prolonged location tracking triggered the Fourth Amendment.

In both Jones and Riley, the Supreme Court re-evaluated long held assumptions in light of new technological developments. The result in both cases was the unanimous conclusion that digital tracking and surveillance techniques trigger close Fourth Amendment scrutiny because they are more intrusive than their physical analogs. The collection of cellphone location data at issue in Carpenter v. United States is another example of changing technology that has enabled a level of intrusiveness that was impossible in an analog world. If officers can warrantlessly track every phone, then they can essentially deputize millions of tiny constables, hiding in our pockets and constantly recording our movements. Under the courts rationale in Jones, such extensive tracking is unreasonable, but lower courts have continued to apply analog cases to this new digital problem.

Lower courts have struggled for more than a decade to determine what Fourth Amendment and statutory protections apply to cellphone location data. In particular, courts have grappled with intersecting provisions in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (the Stored Communications Act and Pen Register Statute) and with technological developments that have continually increased the precision of location-tracking methods. Three general trends have emerged from these cases. First, some courts have drawn a distinction between historical and prospective location data, finding that warrants are only required for prospective (or real time) tracking. Second, courts have focused on the precision of the location-tracking method in order to measure the degree of intrusiveness or the privacy interest at stake. Finally, courts have relied on the holding in Smith and the content/non-content distinction to find that location data are not protected by the Fourth Amendment.

None of the concepts used by lower courts real time vs. historical, precise vs. imprecise, and content vs. non-content provides a principled basis for crafting a Fourth Amendment rule. The Supreme Court would be wise to avoid these distinctions because they all present major pitfalls.

First, while some courts have assumed that real-time location tracking is inherently more intrusive than collecting historical data, the opposite is actually true. Historical data is more frequently used in criminal cases because it is inherently more revealing historical tracking can reveal patterns, associations, behaviors and other personal details that cannot be so easily derived from records in real time. It is the duration and extent of the tracking, not its temporal relationship to an investigation, that matters. Alito reached a similar conclusion in his concurring opinion in Jones, noting that the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.

Second, attempts to distinguish cases based on the precision of the location-tracking methods at issue have been inconsistent and arbitrary. The government has argued that collection of cellphone-tower data should not trigger Fourth Amendment scrutiny because the data do not reveal the users precise location. Many courts have assumed that cell-tower data are necessarily less precise than GPS data (the type of data at issue in Jones). But that assumption is wrong in many cases (tower data can be more precise than GPS data in urban areas) and is inherently short-sighted. The precision of location-tracking methods has only increased over time and will continue to do so as the density of cellphone towers increases and data analysis methods evolve. Indeed, federal law requires all cellphone providers to develop the capability to locate 911 callers precisely in an emergency.

Third, the traditional distinction between content and non-content (or metadata) does not map well onto location data because it does not provide a useful analytical framework for evaluating the privacy interests at stake. The Supreme Court protected the contents of the phone call in Katz v. United States even though those contents had been disclosed to another person (the recipient of the call). The fact that cellphone location records are held by a third party does not mean they are not entitled to protection. Indeed, Justice Potter Stewart recognized in his dissenting opinion in Smith that even the mere numbers dialed can reveal private facts, and thus are not without content. But the data generated by modern communications bear no resemblance to the minimal billing data generated by the analog telephone system in 1979.

Lower courts refusal to protect cellphone location data is especially troubling when, as here, Congress has already established higher privacy standards for location data in some contexts. When Congress enacted the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act in 1994 at the behest of the FBI, it prohibited law enforcement from obtaining location data with a pen register (the same type of device at issue in Smith). But rather than view this statutory protection as an indication that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their location information, courts have held that cellphone-tower data are similar to the call records at issue in Smith and thus are not protected.

A better way to resolve the issue in this case is to re-evaluate Smith in light of the changes in our communications systems since 1979. Justice Sonia Sotomayor alluded to the need to do so in her concurring opinion in Jones, positing that the rule adopted in Smith is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. Even Alitos concurring opinion in Jones implicitly recognized that long-term tracking was fundamentally different from the short-term, analog tracking methods in the 1980s beeper cases. If the Supreme Court rejects the conclusion that all personal data held by modern service providers are unprotected, and that the world has fundamentally changed since Smith was decided, then lower courts and Congress can finally begin to adopt appropriate digital-privacy rules.

Posted in Carpenter v. U.S., Summer symposium on Carpenter v. United States, Featured, Merits Cases

Recommended Citation: Alan Butler, Symposium: Millions of tiny constables Time to set the record straight on the Fourth Amendment and location-data privacy, SCOTUSblog (Aug. 3, 2017, 10:50 AM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/08/symposium-millions-tiny-constables-time-set-record-straight-fourth-amendment-location-data-privacy/

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Symposium: Millions of tiny constables Time to set the record ... - SCOTUSblog (blog)

Federal Judge Rules Unlicensed Dogs Aren’t Protected By Fourth … – Reason (blog)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Benjamin Beytekin/picture alliance / Benjamin Beyt/NewscomA federal judge ruled Wednesday that a Michigan woman has no basis to sue the Detroit Police Department (DPD) for shooting her three dogs because they were not properly licensed.

U.S. District Court Judge George Caram Steeh dismissed a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Detroit resident Nikita Smith last last year after a marijuana raid by Detroit police left her three dogs shot to death.

The ruling is the first time a federal court has considered the question of whether an unlicensed petin violation of city or state codeis protected property under the Fourth Amendment. Federal courts have established that pets are protected from unreasonable seizures (read: killing) by police, but the city of Detroit argued in a motion in March that Smith's dogs, because they were unlicensed, were "contraband" for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment, meaning she had no legitimate property interest in them and therefore no basis to sue the officers or department.

In his Wednesday opinion Steeh agreed.

"The Court is aware that this conclusion may not sit well with dog owners and animal lovers in general," the judge wrote. "The reason for any unease stems from the fact that while pet owners consider their pets to be family members, the law considers pets to be property."

"The requirements of the Michigan Dog Law and the Detroit City Code, including that all dogs be current with their rabies vaccines, exist to safeguard the public from dangerous animals," he continued. "When a person owns a dog that is unlicensed, in the eyes of the law it is no different than owning any other type of illegal property or contraband. Without any legitimate possessory interest in the dogs, there can be no violation of the Fourth Amendment."

And without any Fourth Amendment violation, Steeh continued, there is no basis for a civil rights claim against the city. Steeh also ruled that Smith's suit would have been dismissed even if she had a cognizable property interest in the dogs, finding that the animals presented an imminent threat to the officers.

Smith's lawsuit characterized the Detroit police officers who raided her house as a "dog death squad." She claimed officers shot one of her pets through a closed bathroom door. Graphic photos from the raid on Smith's house showed the dog lying dead in a blood-soaked bathroom.

Smith's case is only one of several lawsuits that have been filed against the DPD for dog shootings over the past two years. The city of Detroit settled one of those suits for $100,000 after dash cam video showed an officer shooting a man's dog while it was chained to a fence. It was also one of three lawsuits against DPD for shooting dogs during marijuana raids. The most recent was filed in June after DPD officers allegedly shot a couple's dogs while the animals were behind a backyard fence.

A Reason investigation last year found the DPD's Major Violators Unit, which conducts drug raids in the city, has a track record of leaving dead dogs in its wake. One officer had shot 39 dogs over the course of his career before the raid on Smith's house, according to public records.

That officer is now up to 73 kills, according to the most recent records obtained by Reason.

Two other officers involved in the Smith raid testified during the trial that they had shot "fewer than 20" and "at least 19" dogs over the course of their careers.

The court's opinion notes that the "police officers conducting the search had not received any specific training on how to handle animal encounters during raids."

The ruling also noted that Detroit police supervisors found that the shooting of Smith's dogs by officers were all justified. "However, as in many other cases, the ratifying officers did so without speaking to the officers about what had transpired," the court wrote.

Reason's review of "destruction of animal" reports filed by Detroit police officers did not find a single instance where a supervisor found that a dog shooting was unjustified.

Detroit police obtained a search warrant for Smith's residence after receiving a tip that marijuana was being sold out of it. Police confiscated 25 grams of marijuana as a result of the raid, and Smith was charged with a misdemeanor.

However, the case against her was later dismissed when officers failed to appear at her court hearing.

Neither an attorney for Smith nor the Detroit Police Department were immediately available for comment.

Originally posted here:

Federal Judge Rules Unlicensed Dogs Aren't Protected By Fourth ... - Reason (blog)

The Second Amendment Won in Washington; Why Won’t the Supreme Court Enforce It? – Patriot Post

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

The Right Opinion

Washington, DC, residents, you dont have to holster your Second Amendment rights anymore. Unfortunately, residents of many other states like California dont have the same ability that DC residents now do to protect themselves.

In a stirring victory for those who live in the nationals capital, a panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals recently threw out a DC ordinance that denied concealed carry permits to anyone who could not show a special need for self-defense, what is referred to as a good reason requirement. The problem is that other courts of appeal have upheld such restrictive laws and the U.S. Supreme Court has turned down appeals of those decisions, refusing to take up the issue of the Second Amendments application to carrying a weapon outside of the home.

This happened most recently at the very end of the Supreme Courts 2017 term in June when it refused to take upPeruta v. California,an appeal of a decision of the Ninth Circuit upholding Californias good reason requirement.

In a scathing dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas (joined by Neil Gorsuch) castigated the other justices for treating the Second Amendment as a disfavored right."He said it was long-past time for the Court to decide this issue and that he found it "extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen.

In theopinionover the District of Columbias concealed carry law written by Judge Thomas Griffith of the DC Circuit, Griffith pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Courts first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment occurred in 2008 inDistrict of Columbia v. Heller, where the Court threw out DCs complete ban on handguns as unconstitutional.

That decision is younger than the first iPhone. The Supreme Court did not outline how the Second Amendment applies to the carrying of a weapon in public, but as Griffith says,Hellerreveals the Second Amendment erects some absolute barriers than no gun law may breach.

AfterHeller,DC implemented a complete ban on concealed carry. That was struck down in 2014 inPalmer v. District of Columbia. DC responded by restricting concealed carry permits only to those who could show a good reason to fear injury. That required showing a special need for self-protection distinguishable from the general community as supported by evidence of specific threats or previous attacks.

Living in a high-crime neighborhoodwasnta good enough reason for a concealed carry permit under DCs regulation. In essence, you had to prove you had a good reason to exercise your constitutional right, a bizarre situation unique in American constitutional jurisprudence.

DC argued, absurdly enough, that its ordinance did not violate any constitutional right because the Second Amendment doesnt apply outside of the home.

Judge Griffith dismissed this claim, saying that the fact that the need for self-defense is most pressing in the home doesnt mean that self-defense at home is the only right at the [Second] Amendments core.

Obviously, the need for self-defense might arise beyond as well as within the home. Further, the Second Amendments text protects the right to bear as well as keep arms. Thus, it is natural that the core of the Second Amendment includes a law-abiding citizens right to carry common firearms for self-defense beyond the home.

Even underHeller, governments can apply regulations on the possession and carrying of firearms that are longstanding, such as bans on possession by felons or bans on carrying near sensitive sites such as government buildings. But preventing carrying in public is not a longstanding tradition or rule.

This opinion goes into detail discussing the long American and English history applicable to weapons and self-defense, going back as far as the Statute of Northampton of 1328 whose text, as the court says, will remind Anglophiles of studying Canterbury Tales in the original. But the state of the law in Chaucers England or for that matter Shakespeares or Cromwells is not decisive here.

What is decisive is that the Supreme Court established inHellerthat by the time of the Founding, the preexisting right enshrined by the Amendment had ripened to include carrying more broadly than the District contends based on its reading of the 14th-century statute. According to Griffith, The individual right to carry common firearms beyond the home for self-defense even in densely populated areas, even for those lacking special self-defense needs falls within the core of the Second Amendments protections.

Unfortunately, other federal courts of appeals have upheld similar good reason laws for concealed carry permits. But as Judge Griffith points out, those courts dispensed with the historic digging that would have exposed that their toleration of regulations restricting the carrying of a weapon is faulty.

The constitutional analysis that should be applied to all government gun regulations is that they must allow gun access at least for each typical member of the American public. Because DCs restrictive good reason concealed carry law bars most people from exercising their Second Amendment right at all, it is unconstitutional. At a minimum, the Second Amendment must protect carrying given the risks and needs typical of law-abiding citizens.

The court drew together all the pieces of its analysis in this way:

At the Second Amendments core lies the right of responsible citizens to carry firearms for personal self-defense beyond the home, subject to longstanding restrictions. These traditional limits include, for instance, licensing requirements, but not bans on carrying in urban areas like D.C. or bans on carrying absent a special need for self-defense. In fact, the Amendments core at a minimum shields the typically situated citizens ability to carry common arms generally. The Districts good-reason law is necessarily a total ban on exercises of that constitutional right for most D.C. residents. Thats enough to sink this law under Heller I.

One of the judges on the DC panel, Karen LeCraft Henderson, dissented, arguing that the core right in the Second Amendment is only to possess a firearm in ones home and she saw no problem with DCs good-reason requirement.

That dissent, along with the contrary decisions of other appeals courts, shows why the Supreme Court needs to follow Justice Thomass admonition and finally settle this issue. As Thomas scolds in his dissent inPeruta:

For those of us who work in marble halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it.

Republished from The Heritage Foundation.

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The Second Amendment Won in Washington; Why Won't the Supreme Court Enforce It? - Patriot Post

Historic Battle of Athens Shows Importance of Second Amendment – Newsmax

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Some American political and human events in history are intentionally overlooked by those responsible for teaching and analyzing them.

The nation rightfully celebrates the civil rights movement and the March on Selma. Our children are taught about womens suffrage and Susan B Anthony. The left loves to evoke memories of the Vietnam antiwar demonstrations. Modern day movements such as gay and transgender rights, the Womens March, and the Occupy movements are celebrated in the media.

How many of you have ever heard about the major event that occurred in our country that shows the importance of your Second Amendment rights? The "Battle of Athens" was the perfect example of why our founding fathers were so brilliant as to include "the right to keep and bear arms" in our Constitution.

On August 1, 1946, there was a primary election in McMinn County, Tennessee. The two major towns in the county are Athens and Etowah. Political corruption and election fraud were concerns of the local citizens. The United States Department of Justice even investigated the allegations in the three elections prior. During those elections, most of McMinn Countys young men were off fighting World War II. There was even an incident where two servicemen home on leave were shot and killed by the sheriffs deputies.

At the end of the war, approximately 3,000 experienced veterans returned to McMinn County. The GIs had known about the troubles back home, even while fighting overseas. They were not happy about what had been going on. They organized and actually put forth an "all G.I." political ticket for the primary. These ex-servicemembers promised fair elections and ballot counts.

In response, the local sheriff brought in 200 armed deputies. Poll observers, mostly GIs, were intimidated and beaten. One poll watcher was even shot. Multiple other incidents occurred and the sheriff decided to take the ballot boxes to the jail for counting.

Not trusting the sheriff, the local veterans gathered firearms and ammunition. After organizing and planning, they surrounded the jail. There was many exchanges of gun fire. Sometime during the early morning hours of August 2, the GIs made their move. Using dynamite to damage the building, they forced the surrender of those inside. The GIs posted guards to secure the ballots. When the votes were counted, the corrupt officials had been voted out.

I encourage you to research and share this event as a celebration and illustration of law-abiding American citizens using our Constitutionally-protected firearms for the betterment of our society and protection of our freedom.

The Battle of Athens is a major event in American history that is wrongly ignored by our educational system, our media, and our government officials. That alone should demonstrate why we Second Amendment supporters should hold the event up for all to see.

Use the Battle of Athens as an example to show your children what free men should be willing to do to protect that freedom.

Use the Battle of Athens to demonstrate to the media why gun control is antithetical to the Constitution and our freedoms.

Use the Battle of Athens to let our leaders know that we are in charge.

John Cylc is an eight year U.S. Army veteran. He is also a contributor to LifeZette. To read more of his reports Click Here Now.

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Historic Battle of Athens Shows Importance of Second Amendment - Newsmax

How the First Amendment could save Don Jr. – The Hill (blog)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Certainly subsequent White House news has pushed Donald TrumpDonald TrumpBorder patrol was ordered not to engage with congressmen, lawyers during travel ban Trump says he never called White House 'a dump' Trump to sign memo on Chinese intel property trade practices Friday: report MORE Jr.s June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer allegedly pedaling Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonCongress wants Trump Jr. phone records related to Russia meeting Zuckerberg hires top Clinton pollster amid rumors of presidential run: report Democrats new 'Better Deal' comes up short for people of color MORE dirt to the sidelines. But as more details emerge, even Trump Jr.s brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, has tried to distance himself from the meeting in a statement before his recent closed-door testimony to the Senate intelligence committee.

Some have dubbed the Russia meeting a category 5 hurricaneand many have called for a federal prosecution of the Presidents son. Still, the debate has ignored the First Amendment, a constitutional bulwark that may save the younger Trump.

The right to free speech shields the receipt and dissemination of information. Indeed, truthful information about candidates for high office lies at the heart of constitutional protection. In this case, there is no suggestion that Trump Jr. thought the Russians would feed him falsehoods about Democratic presidential hopeful Clinton. He wanted to learn and perhaps disseminate facts damaging to his fathers opponent.

The First Amendment exists in part to serve this very function the disclosure of truthful information about the people seeking to govern us. As James Madison put it, a popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.

What makes this situation complicated is that the Russian government might have obtained the information by breaking hacking or espionage laws in the first place.

Trump Jr. says Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya did not actually have any meaningful information in the June 9, 2016 meeting. But for the sake of argument, lets assume the worst about Trump Jr.s state of mind going into the meeting.

Lets assume he thought he was going to receive information that he knew the Russians obtained through criminal activity.

As long as Trump Jr. did not participate in or encourage the Russian governments illegal activity and there is no evidence in the public domain that he did he has a strong argument that the First Amendment immunizes his conduct. He was just agreeing to receive truthful information.

The Supreme Court considered a similar situation in Bartnicki v. Vopper, a 2001 case in which a journalist received a tape of a conversation among union leaders that someone had recorded in secret, in violation of federal wiretap laws. The journalist did not put anyone up to the illegal recording. The journalist did, however, publicize the recording, and the Court assumed that the journalist knew that the person who made the recording broke the law.

Drawing on the famous Pentagon Papers Case, the 1971 decision that allowed the media to publish classified documents about the Vietnam War, the Bartnicki Court held that the First Amendment protected the journalists right to publicize the recording.

In the current situation, Trump Jr. stands in the shoes of the journalist in Bartnicki, and the Russian government stands in the shoes of the illegal recorder. Like the recorder, the Russian government may have obtained the information illegally.

Like the journalist, Trump Jr. may have known or strongly suspected that the information was obtained illegally, but there is no evidence at present that he participated in or encouraged any illegality.

If special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election sought to prosecute Trump Jr. for the meeting, he would likely rely on a campaign finance law that criminalizes accepting money or other thing of value from foreign nationals.

Surely a thing of value means that a campaign cannot accept stocks, bonds, bars of gold, and Renoir paintings from foreign nationals. But deciding whether truthful information about a competing presidential candidate is a thing of value under the statute is more complicated.

The question is so thorny that judges would likely rely on a doctrine called constitutional avoidance. That rule posits that if a statute is ambiguous between two meanings, one of which is potentially unconstitutional and one of which is safely constitutional, the court should opt for the more narrow, and safely constitutional, interpretation.

A narrow reading of the term thing of value that does not criminalize mere information avoids any potential First Amendment problem. Courts would likely adopt that reading of the law. Good news for Don Jr.

To be sure, trouble may lie ahead for the Presidents first born if evidence emerges that he encouraged or participated in Russian criminality. Perhaps Mueller has or will find statements to the Russians from Trump Jr. or others in the campaign like this is greatget me more. The First Amendment does not protect people who join or abet a crime. Or perhaps the presence of Rinat Akhmetshin, a possible Russian spy, at the meeting will lead to evidence that Trump. Jr. was colluding in espionage.

If anyone in the campaign or the family actually were recruited, that would be a serious crime, but the emails released to date suggest that Trump Jr. had no idea that Akhmetshin would attend.

Such is the irony, and the power, of the right to free speech. It protects to everyone, even members of President Trumps inner circle who may well hold the First Amendment in contempt. The elder Trumps disdain for the media is legendary, and he was just sued for First Amendment violations related to his Twitter account.

The Trump family may not like the First Amendment, but they are going to need it.

David M. Shapiro is the director of appellate litigation for the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, a clinical assistant professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Chicago, and a Public Voices Fellow through The OpEd Project. He worked previously as a First Amendment and media lawyer in private practice.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

Police confront ‘First Amendment auditors’ – Post Register

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Post Register

Police confront 'First Amendment auditors'
Post Register
Search First Amendment Audit on YouTube, and you'll likely find hundreds of videos of people recording law enforcement in public areas and refusing to share their names with officers even when requested. One such incident happened June 12 outside the ...

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Police confront 'First Amendment auditors' - Post Register

RTDNA Joins Free Press Groups in Tracking First Amendment Abuse – Broadcasting & Cable

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Furthering its efforts around the First Amendment, the Radio Television Digital News Association has joined more than 20 organizations in launching the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a website dedicated to documenting abuses against journalists.

The tracker is a repository of data tracking incidentsarrests of journalists, equipment searches and physical attacks among themat a time when journalists in the U.S. are facing increasing hostility, RTDNA said.

Reporters covering protests in Washington and North Dakota, for instance, are among 19 journalists charged with crimes so far this year. Ten are currently facing charges, RTDNA said.

Twelve journalists have been subject to equipment searches, and 10 have been physically attacked, the tracker shows.

The tracker shows data collected from news reports and submissions. The Columbia Journalism Review, Investigative Reporters & Editors and Knight First Amendment Institute are among partnering organizations.

RTNDAs support of the tracker is part of the groups larger multi-faceted initiative fighting the range of threats, from limits to ugly rhetoric, that impede journalists from doing their jobs. The group launched a First Amendment task force earlier this year.

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RTDNA Joins Free Press Groups in Tracking First Amendment Abuse - Broadcasting & Cable

Loudoun County resident’s First Amendment case may benefit free-speech group’s suit against Trump – Loudoun Times-Mirror

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

After months of a pending verdict in a case that raised consequential questions about the constitutional limitations on politicians' social media accounts, a federal court ruled last week that Loudoun County Chairwoman Phyllis Randall (D-At Large) violated Lansdowne resident Brian Davisons right to free speech by temporarily banning him from her Facebook page.

From a circuit court in Richmond to a federal district court in Alexandria, Davison, a software engineer and father of two, has won and lost battles in courtrooms in his pursuit of defending the First Amendment and accessing public records.

But the latest outcome of Davisons suit is one likely to affect politicians around the country, and maybe all the way up to the White House.

What started off as a pro se free speech suit by Davison against the countys chairwoman and Board of Supervisors could now play a key role in a recent lawsuit against President Donald Trump brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University alleging the president suppressed dissent by blocking critics from his Twitter account.

More and more elected officials are turning to online tools to conduct policy, to engage their constituencies, to advance their political agendas. But theyre also using the tools of censorship in those online platforms, and theyve been doing so without an honest conversation about what the First Amendment has to say about that censorship, Alex Abdo, senior staff attorney at the Knight institute, said. We wanted to start that conversation, and the case in Loudoun County has provided an excellent roadmap for how to think about governmental use of social media in the digital age.

Both Davison and the institutes lawsuits grapple with what is becoming a growing trend of politicians barring critics from their social media pages.

The issue has created a legal gray area around public forums in the digital age and peoples web protections under the First Amendment.

Do the social media accounts of politicians create a public forum protected by the First Amendment when they open up their pages to constituents? And if an elected official blocks or deletes critical comments of a user in that forum, does it violate their rights under the First Amendment?

According to U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris July 25 ruling, yes, it does.

By prohibiting Plaintiff from participating in her online forum because [Randall] took offense at his claim that her colleagues in the County government had acted unethically, Defendant committed a cardinal sin under the First Amendment, Cacheris stated in a 44-page ruling.

Although Cacheris admitted the consequences of Randalls overnight ban of Davison from her page were fairly minor, he said the court could not treat a First Amendment violation in this vital, developing forum differently than it would elsewhere simply because technology has made it easier to find alternative channels through which to disseminate ones message.

Loudoun officials say the county is considering appealing Cacheris ruling.

Meanwhile, the Knight First Amendment Institutes suit against Trump and his associates argues the presidents @realDonaldTrump Twitter account is a public forum protected under the First Amendment that he uses as a key channel for official communication to make formal announcements and defend the administrations positions.

The institute alleges Trumps view-point based blocking of the seven users from his @realDonaldTrump account infringes the Individual Plaintiffs First Amendment rights and imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their participation in a designated public forum.

A murky outcome

But as lawyers from the First Amendment Institute point to Judge Cacheris ruling to help their case against the president, other legal experts say litigating the institute's case and similar suits going forward will be difficult.

A separate ruling just three days after Cacheris' on a free speech suit Davison brought against members of the Loudoun County School Board from a different judge in the same federal court is already showing signs of the legal conundrum.

In a 20-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga said it was unclear whether Davisons First Amendment was violated by several members of the School Board after they removed his critical posts on their Facebook pages.

Here, the law is less than settled as to whether the plaintiff had a right to post on a Facebook page maintained by a public official and that this right was violated when those postings were removed or when plaintiff was prevented from posting his comments, Trenga said.

Trenga noted it was not clear as a legal matter whether the Facebook pages in question were limited or public forums.

These [cases] are relatively new and every court could come up with a different decision, said Clay Hansen, executive director of the Charlottesville-based Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. ... I think until we have some conflicting rulings where we have a split among courts that is at the federal circuit level and we can see this being resolved by a supreme court until we get to that stage we wont have any clear sense of how any particular court will handle it.

Hansen said the Trump case will likely be harder to litigate because the president uses both the @realDonaldTrump handle -- an account he created before assuming office -- as well as the official @POTUS account that has been handed off from one administration to the next.

In the case against Randall, the chairwoman tried to argue her Chair Phyllis J. Randall Facebook account was a personal page, but Cacheris pointed out that Randall created the page the day before she assumed public office with the help of her chief of staff. He also noted she created the account for the purpose of addressing her constituents and asked them to post on the page in question, thus, the account was born out of and inextricably linked to the fact of Randall's public office.

Following Trengas decision, County Attorney Leo Rogers said an appellate court would need to clarify how and when social media constitute public forums.

Eric Goldman, a California-based law professor at Santa Clara University who heads a blog that has closely followed Davisons suits, thinks although Cacheris ruling will be persuasive evidence in the First Amendment Institutes case, but the contrasting set of facts in the Randall and Trump cases could be problematic in litigating a case against the president and similar ones in the future.

I think this ruling gives the plaintiffs additional support for their legal arguments. So, I'm sure they'll be citing it and I'm sure that the judge will be interested in it, Goldman said. Whether or not the facts are extrapolatable enough is I think going to be a point of contention. And so, the defense arguments will be this is different and here's all the reasons why: Trump is in a different position than the supervisor in this case, or the implications of blocking somebody on Facebook are different than the implications of blocking someone on Twitter.

Goldman said the judge in the Trump case will also need to consider, from a philosophical perspective, the implications a favorable ruling could have on the nation.

I think that any judge is going to have to think very carefully about what it means to say that the president violated the Constitution, Goldman said. ... Judges are going to see in their career dozens of burglaries, but they're probably not all going to have one case where they rule on the top elected official in our country having violated our foundational principles.

The cost of activism

In addition to Davisons two suits against the county's Board of Supervisors and School Board, in a separate suit he has challenged Loudoun Commonwealths Attorney Jim Plowman (R). All of the suits accuse the defendants of either blocking him from their Facebook pages or deleting critical comments he posted.

In March, Judge Cacheris ruled that Plowman did not violate Davisons First Amendment right by deleting the Lansdowne residents Facebook posts.

However, Davison is in the process of appealing Cacheris March decision and says he plans to also appeal Trengas ruling in his suit against the School Board.

Davison is now in the midst of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Act suit against state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant (R) in Henrico County.

He says a victory in a Richmond Circuit Court last year in his request for the Virginia Department of Education to release test score data showing student growth instilled a sense of confidence in him to pursue his First Amendment cases.

But his legal pursuits have not come without a cost. Davison says the repercussions of the suits will follow him for the rest of his professional career.

If Im a politician or Im an attorney, these cases help me, Davison said. In no way shape or form do these cases help me. When we have government clients, if they look my name up and see, Oh wow theres controversy around this person' that can only hurt me. There can be no near-term advantages that I can see, only consequences.

Still, he believes he's fighting for a fundamental American freedom.

From my perspective, it was just, 'Hey, am I going to sit here and watch it and put up with it? And I finally just got tired and thought I could help, Davison said of his lawsuits.

Related coverage:

-"Loudoun resident files civil rights suits against county officials over social media censorship" -"Federal judge sides with Loudoun commonwealths attorney in First Amendment suit" -"Loudoun County chairwoman, Lansdowne resident meet in federal court" -"U.S. District judge rules Randall violated Lansdowne residents First Amendment right" -"Federal court dismisses Lansdowne residents free speech suit against Loudoun County School Board"

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Loudoun County resident's First Amendment case may benefit free-speech group's suit against Trump - Loudoun Times-Mirror

Justice Souter, the First Amendment and the case of the synagogue standoff – Reuters

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

(Reuters) - Thanks to the First Amendments Establishment Clause, U.S. courts have to be extremely wary of taking sides in doctrinal disputes between religious groups. On the other hand, as retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter pointed out Wednesday in his opinion for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Congregation Jeshuat Israel v. Congregation Shearith Israel, the Free Exercise Clause means courts cant interfere with religious autonomy.

Judges have to navigate between those twin risks, Justice Souter said, using the map the Supreme Court provided in 1969s Presbyterian Church v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull: When property disputes reflect religious cleavages, courts should avoid entanglement with the doctrinal issues and hew closely to civil law.

So, according to the 1st Circuit, no matter how fascinating the history of one of the oldest synagogues in the U.S. nor how rich the tale of the divide between the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews who worshipped there, the dispute between two warring congregations comes down to ordinary documents: 1903 and 1908 leases, a 1945 agreement with the U.S. government and a 2001 deal with the National Trust.

It is these common instruments for establishing ownership and control that most readily enable a court to apply the required, neutral principles in evaluating disputed property claims, wrote Justice Souter for a panel that also included Judge Sandra Lynch and 10th Circuit Judge Bobby Baldock, sitting by designation. When such provisions of deeds, charters, contracts, and the like are available and to the point, then, they should be the lodestones of adjudication.

Reversing an epic 2016 decisionby U.S. District Judge John McConnell of Providence, the 1st Circuit found that the documents proved New York Citys Congregation Shearith Israel to be the rightful owner of a 250-year-old synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, even though Newports Congregation Jeshuat Israel has worshipped there and maintained the building for more than 100 years.

The Newport synagogue - formally known as the Touro Synagogue in honor of two brothers who bequeathed thousands of dollars to keep it standing in the 1800s embodies the divide between Americas original Jewish settlers from Spain and Portugal and those who arrived two hundred years later in a wave of immigrants from Central Europe.

The first Jews to arrive in Newport, in 1658, were Sephardim, mostly of Spanish and Portuguese descent. By the mid-1700s, their community was sufficiently well-rooted to begin raising money to build a synagogue. Sephardic Jewish communities from around the world, including the New York City congregation known as Shearith Israel, contributed to the Newport appeal. In 1763, the Newport congregation, Yeshuat Israel, or the Salvation of Israel, celebrated the dedication of its brand-new synagogue. Myer Myers, a colonial silversmith who was a member of the congregation, created elaborate silver-and-gold finials, known as rimonim, to adorn Yeshuat Israels Torah scrolls.

Alas, most of the Sephardic Jews who founded Yeshuat Israel left Rhode Island when the Revolutionary War decimated Newports shipping industry. The last of Newports Jews died in 1822, according to Judge McConnells utterly compelling 2016 opinion.

As Judge McConnell recounted the story, many of the Sephardic Jews who left Newport ended up joining New York Citys Shearith Israel. The New York congregation cared for the Newport synagogue and the synagogues contents for several decades in the 19th century, when Newport didnt have enough Jews to sustain it.

But over the last half of the 1800s, a new wave of Jews arrived in Rhode Island. Unlike their Sephardic predecessors, these Jews were mostly Ashkenazi from Russia and Central Europe. The two cultures followed slightly different religious rituals. The crucial doctrinal difference, as it would turn out, is that the Sephardim prohibit the disposition of ritual objects and the Ashkenazi do not.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Newport Ashkenazi staged a year-long occupation of Touro Synagogue at the turn of the century, after the New York Sephardim from Shearith Israel shut them out of the building in a dispute over the appointment of a new religious leader. The warring congregations eventually put aside their differences to execute a 1903 lease agreement allowing Congregation Jeshuat Israel to use the building, although the lease specified that the Ashkenazis must conduct services according to the ritual rites and customs of the (Sephardic) Jews as at this time practiced.

The two congregations renewed the lease in 1908. In 1945, the New York group reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior to preserve Touro Synagogue as a national historic site. The Newport congregation signed the agreement as a leaseholder. Congregation Jeshuat Israel similarly affirmed its leaseholder status in a 2001 agreement between the congregation, a group known as the Society of Friends of Touro Synagogue and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. That contract, according to the 1st Circuit, described the Newport congregation as having possession of the site through a lease with Congregation Shearith Israel as owner.

Despite their mutual respect for Touro Synagogue as a landmark of American Jewish history, relations between the New York and Newport congregations were prickly. (Justice Souters exceedingly dry description: a want of cordiality.) Matters exploded in 2011, when the Newport group proposed selling the historic Myers Torah ornaments to establish an endowment for their congregations activities. Bostons Museum of Fine Arts offered more than $7 million. The New York congregation protested that a sale would violate the terms of the lease agreement, which required adherence to Sephardic practices. Litigation ensued.

Judge McConnell concluded after a nine-day bench trial and copious historical research that the New York congregation was actually a trustee for Touro Synagogue, not the owner, and that the Newport congregation has a right to oust the New York group as trustee. The judge also found the Newport congregation to be the outright owner of the Myers Torah adornments.

The judge tried to follow the U.S. Supreme Courts directive from the Presbyterian case, grounding his opinion in the legal agreements between the two congregations, as well as ancient deeds, wills, trust documents and congregation account books.

But when the 1st Circuit reviewed his opinion, it concluded Judge McConnell wasnt quite careful enough. As Justice Souter put it, with great delicacy: These are circumstances in which we think that the First Amendment calls for a more circumscribed consideration of evidence than the trial court's plenary enquiry into centuries of the parties' conduct by examining their internal documentation that had been generated without resort to the formalities of the civil law.

In a strict reading of the documents, the 1st Circuit found no reference to a trust in the lease agreements between the New York and Newport congregations, which assumed the New York group owned Touro Synagogue. The appeals court also held the Torah ornaments are encompassed in the leases reference to paraphernalia, so the New York congregation owns them as well.

The New York congregation is represented by Greenberg Traurig and Locke Lord. Greenberg partner Louis Solomon, who argued before the 1st Circuit, told my Reuters colleague Chris Kenning that his clients will continue to uphold their obligations to Touro Synagogue and look forward to putting this unfortunate litigation behind us. Gary Naftalis of Kramer Levin, who argued for the Newport congregation, said hes exploring the groups options.

Originally posted here:

Justice Souter, the First Amendment and the case of the synagogue standoff - Reuters

Tor Co-Founder: There Is No Dark Web The Merkle – The Merkle

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

At the DEF CON hacking convention in Las Vegas, one of the three co-founders of Tor, Roger Dingledine, corrected a few misconceptions regardingwhat the Tor Project is really being used for and slammed journalists for the negative way it has been covered in the media. According to Dingledine, a mere 3% of Tor users employthe browser to access .onion websites.

According to The Register, Roger Dingledine decided to use part of his speaking time at DEF CON to criticize journalists for the way they have painted the Tor Project in the media as a tool for drug dealers and pedophiles to hide from law enforcement and get away with criminal activity.

He added that only 3% of Tor users connect to hidden (.onion) websites, meaningthe other 97% use the browser to anonymously browse clearnet sitessuch as Reddit, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and The Merkle. In Dingledines mind, most Tor users are just people wishing to hide their identities from website owners, not new-age criminals.

Dingledine even dismissed the concept of the dark web, implying that what people call the dark web is so insignificant that it should not even get its own term. He notably stated:

There is basically no dark web. It doesnt exist. Its only a very few webpages.

During his talk, he also addressed the fear of law enforcement agencies infiltratingthe network and running a large number of nodes. The concernis that this would allow them to reveal the true identity of Tors users.

Edward Snowden had previously revealed that nodes were being run by intelligence agencies. According to Dingledine, however, there were only a few such infiltrators and these could not compromise the network. He added that he himself knew two-thirds of the people running Tor relays, and that agencies do not need to set up nodes of their own. If they really wanted to compromise the network, they could merely monitor those who do run them.

The Tor Projects co-founder revealed that the most visited website by Tor users is Facebook, which opened its doors to Tor back in 2014 when it launched an .onion address. At the time, Facebooks senior engineer,Alec Muffet, stated:

The idea is that the Facebook onion address connects you to Facebooks Core WWW Infrastructure check the URL again, youll see what we did there and it reflects one benefit of accessing Facebook this way: that it provides end-to-end communication, from your browser directly into a Facebook datacentre.

Facebook had barred Tor users from accessing its website in the past, citing security concerns. At the time, it claimed that the network could be used to attack its servers. Now, according to reports, as many as one million people use Facebook via the Tor browser. This may be an insignificant amount for Facebook, but it is a major figure for Tor.

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Tor Co-Founder: There Is No Dark Web The Merkle - The Merkle

The Attack on Global Privacy Leaves Few Places To Turn – WIRED

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Digital privacy has had a very bad summer. As China and Russia move to block virtual private network services, well over a billion people face losing their best chance at circumventing censorship laws. First, China asked telecom companies to start blocking user access to VPNs that didn't pass government muster by next February. More recently, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law to ban VPNs and other anonymous browsing tools that undermine government censorship.

As citizens of these countries and people around the world scramble to understand the repercussions, US-based companies that operate in the countries have been swept up in the controversy. Apple complied with a Chinese government order to remove VPNs from its Chinese iOS AppStore, and the company that runs Amazon's cloud services in China this week said it would no longer support VPN use. Even hotels around China that offered VPN services to foreign visitors are largely curtailing the practice.

China and Russia's recent actions aren't new movements toward censorship, but they are escalations. And they leave citizens with few viable options for accessing the open internet.

While the suppressive efforts share the same end goal, they do take different forms. China has laid the foundation for its "Great Firewall" for more than two decades, attempting to control citizens' internet access on a very large scale. Creating and upgrading such a system over time takes massive resources. While Putin has praised the approach, Russia doesn't have a comparable apparatus. Instead, since about 2012, the Kremlin has gradually built up a web of legislation that shapes and controls the Russian internet through legal force more than technical control.

"These crackdowns and ratcheting up of internet censorship in China tend to ebb and flow, and so it is possible that eventually we may see VPNs sort of silently reappear," says Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "In Russia what theyre doing is theyre passing more and more draconian laws that are extremely difficult to implement. The reason for this is it makes sure that at any given time everyone is breaking the lawanyone that the government wants to target and wants to lean on for information is in violation of the law."

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Both approaches have made Russia and China insular markets, challenging for international companies to operate in. Apple, which has been accused of hypocrisy for pushing back against government surveillance in the US while complying with VPN takedown requirements in China, worked for years to enter the Chinese market. "We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries we follow the law wherever we do business," company CEO Tim Cook said in an earnings call on Tuesday. "We strongly believe participating in markets and bringing benefits to customers is in the best interest of the folks there and in other countries as well."

The VPN crackdowns in China and Russia came as no surprise to those who follow digital rights closely. "We expected it at some point, it wasn't like we didnt know where it came from," says Robert Knapp, the CEO of the Romanian VPN provider CyberGhost, which had its app removed from the iOS AppStore in China. "We had seen the Chinese government putting more and more pressure on VPN providers in a technical senseblocking our IPs, blocking the server infrastructure we were using, detecting traffic from certain sources."

After years of investing in technical control, China now seems focused on experimenting with regulatory enforcement as well. In the Xinjiang region of western China, reports indicate that the government is requiring citizens to install spyware on their smartphonesostensibly for anti-terrorism initiativesand is doing random stops to check whether local residents have complied. They have also arrested citizens over conversations in private chatrooms, indicating that the local government may be actively taking advantage of the spyware. "We are extremely alarmed. This is about as far as a nation-state has gone to submit its people to monitoring," Jeremy Malcolm, a senior global policy analyst at EFF, said of the situation in Xinjiang.

For its part, the Russian government has moved swiftly since 2012 to regulate both infrastructure and content such that is has extensive control of the internet at this point. After the Russian government took broad control of television and media in the early 2000s, the internet was the only place left for free communication. "Now the government is trying to close in on that," says Rachel Denber, the deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch. "Its the logical progression of things. Once you go down the road of trying to expand state control over online communication, [banning VPNs] would be the next post to hit."

The Russian government may also be reacting to the current geopolitical situation, in which the country has been called out for hacking numerous Western countries , particularly leading up to democratic elections. "The authorities may also be looking ahead to the 2018 [Russian] presidential election, and they might want to take preemptive steps to ensure that no opposition mobilization takes place online," Denber notes.

For now there are still some ways around the Chinese and Russian governments' internet barriers, if you're willing to accept the risk. iPhones can only download apps from the App Store (unless a unit is jailbroken, which is not impossible but technically difficult, and introduces a host of security vulnerabilities). Android phones, though, can still sideload VPN apps from third-party app stores, since users aren't required to get apps from the Play Store. Google doesn't even operate its Play Store in China. For now, it's also easier to download desktop VPNs than mobile ones.

Other anonymizing tools besides VPNs remain a viable option as well, like the Tor Browser . That may carry more risk in Russia, though, given the recent arrest of someone who ran an Tor exit nodea gateway between the service and the internetthe country recently [lost a Tor exit node] for participating in protests. Using Tor Browser in China, meanwhile, requires extensive technical skill, to get around the Great Firewall.

It's also possible to install VPNs on devices while in other countries, and then use them in Russia or China. And end-to-end encrypted messaging services like Signal are a totally separate way of communicating and potentially receiving uncensored information without dealing with VPNs at all.

Experts report that both China and Russia may enact anti-VPN enforcement through checkpoints and arrests to intimidate citizens. "We are still used in Russia, we still count downloads, our Russian community is actually still growing," CyberGhost's Knapp says. "But instead of simply blocking VPN traffic, the Russian government is pulling another string now. They forbid it and they are going to enforce itmaybe brutally enforce it."

There could be unforeseen side effects as well. At the same time that eliminating these tools helps governments expand surveillance and control access to information, banning them also has the potential to degrade countries' overall security posture. Institutions that don't have access to VPNs could be at increased risk of being infiltrated or breached by foreign attackers. And if repressive governments set their sights on encryption next, they could undermine the integrity of basic economic drivers like secure digital transactions.

The dangers of banning VPNs are clear and pressing from a human rights standpoint. But countries that pursue it regardless may find they lose more than they intended.

Bitcoin Slide Looks Limited Even After Cryptocurrency Splits …

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Bitcoin might be dividing into two separate blockchains, but its downward slide has so far been contained, signaling confidence the biggest cryptocurrency will come out of the split unscathed.

The debate over how to scale bitcoin came to a head Tuesday as some cryptocurrency miners started using software called Bitcoin Cash and splitting a new blockchain off the old one.Blockchain is the technology used for verifying and recording digital currency transactions.

Bitcoins price should reflect the split by discounting the new coin, according to Charles Hayter, who runs the cryptocurrency data platform CryptoCompare. He likened it to a stock trading ex dividend -- when the buyer isnt entitled to collect a dividend on the shares.

After four days of gains, bitcoin was down $157,or 5.4 percent, to $2,729 at 11:05 a.m. in New York. Earlier in the day, the cryptocurrency fell as much as 8.4 percent,its biggest decline since July 25. Bitcoin cash futures rose 19 percent to $331, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

The price of bitcoin has risen ahead of the split on the expectation that youll get that extra cash from bitcoin cash, so it should drop after the split, Hayter said. This has happened before in other blockchains. Its a trading event where theres number of hoops you have to jump though and people are trying to make a profit.

Bitcoin Cash started gaining traction in the past week, just as miners fended off another split by rallying behind the scaling mechanism known as SegWit2X. Bitcoin Cash wants to increase the block size -- the files in which transactions are recorded -- while SegWit2X would transfer some of the operating power outside of the main blockchain. In other words, Bitcoin Cash would be one lane with bigger cars, while SegWit2X would be two lanes with smaller cars.

The great majority of miners and developers support bitcoin, while ViaBTC, which has almost 6 percent of bitcoin processing power, is the mining pool backing bitcoin cash.

Read More: Bitcoin Moves a Step Closer to Acceptance

Theres a role for both of these coins, said Cathie Wood, the New York-based chief investment officer at ARK Investment Management, which oversees the first exchange-traded fund with indirect exposure to bitcoin. One is much more natural for store of value and the other one for a means of exchange.

Some are less bullish. Ryan Taylor, chief executive officer of Dash Core, the sixth-biggest cryptocurrency, sees little chance that bitcoin cash will succeed in the long term.

First, Bitcoin Cash has not solved scaling. It has merely kicked the can down the road with slightly larger blocks, but still lacks a credible technology to scale to massively larger numbers of users,he said in an email. Second, bitcoin will retain the network of integrated services that make the bitcoin network useful to businesses and consumers.

Bitcoin holders are set to receive the same amount of bitcoin cash as they have in bitcoin if the exchanges and wallets they use support the new coin. Exchanges including Kraken and ViaBTC have said theyll support both, while others like Coinbase and Poloniex have said they wont, citing uncertainty that bitcoin cash will have lasting market value.

Kraken said that its working on crediting accounts with bitcoin cash, and that its sites login function is down due to heavy traffic. While some miners are already using the Bitcoin Cash program, the real differentiation of the two blockchains will emerge when they mine more than 1 megabyte in one block, Hayter said. Bitcoins block limit is 1MB while Bitcoin Cashs is 8MB.

Video: Prospects of Bitcoin Splitting Into Two

Im not as concerned about this except for the administrative nightmare that some people are going to have to go through or have gone through already pulling out of the various exchanges that werent going to support it, ARK Investments Wood said.

Bruce Fenton,founder of Atlantic Financial Inc. and a board member at the Bitcoin Foundation, said both currencies should trade heavily Tuesday.

There are some very large holders who own bitcoin, who dont like bitcoin and do like bitcoin cash, he said. But you also have a lot of people who cant stand bitcoin cash, and as soon as they have the ability to get those coins theyre going to sell them on the market.

It could be a crazy day, he said.

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Bitcoin Slide Looks Limited Even After Cryptocurrency Splits ...

What You Should Know About Cryptocurrency – Lifehacker Australia

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Cryptocurrencies are having a moment. Youve probably heard a thing or two about Bitcoin and Ethereum. Namely, their prices seem to be skyrocketing (or plummeting, depending on the day). Theres more to the story, and as the investing cliche goes: dont buy what you dont know. So lets find out more.

Cryptography has to do with coding to keep data secure, and cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual asset that uses cryptography as a security measure. For that reason, its hard to counterfeit. Bitcoin is one of the first cryptocurrencies to hit the scene. It was launched in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym that could be a person or a group (it was open source and peer to peer). The thing is, theres no central agency (like the government) that issues or regulates these cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin, the decentralized digital currency dominated by white men, seemed on the verge of

Which is why its been such an attractive option for shady business activities, like money laundering. You can buy and sell it just like any other investment, from company stock to Beanie Babies. But while companies have IPOs, or initial public offerings, cryptocurrencies have ICOs, initial coin offerings, and any entity can launch it as an investment. The Atlantic illustrates the problem with not having a central authority regulating these currencies:

Last month, the technology developer Gnosis sold $12.5 million worth of GNO, its in-house digital currency, in 12 minutes. The April 24 sale, intended to fund development of an advanced prediction market, got admiring coverage from Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. On the same day, in an exurb of Mumbai, a company called OneCoin was in the midst of a sales pitch for its own digital currency when financial enforcement officers raided the meeting, jailing 18 OneCoin representatives and ultimately seizing more than $2 million in investor funds. Multiple national authorities have now described OneCoin, which pitched itself as the next Bitcoin, as a Ponzi scheme; by the time of the Mumbai bust, it had already moved at least $350 million in allegedly scammed funds

As they put it, ICOs are catnip for scammers because there are no checks and balances the way there are with IPOs. So if youre going to invest in a coin, which is an iffy enough move as it is, you certainly want to make sure its not just any random cryptocurrency that could just be a scam.

So what about tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which are popular, widely covered options? (And that are actually used as currency.) Are they smart investments?

Some people say investing is like playing the lottery. Thats not entirely accurate, though. Long-term, broad investing, the kind of investing weve advocated here and the kind that will help you build a nest egg over time, is very different from speculative, active trading, which is a lot more like gambling. Cryptocurrency, a volatile, unpredictable investment, falls into that category.

Many people dont invest because it seems overly complicated. But if you want to build wealth,

With active trading, youre taking a guess at how a specific investment (or investments) will trade on a short-term basis. The goal isnt to simply keep up with the stock market like it is with long-term investing; the goal is to make a bunch of money and get rich quickly. And you know, some Bitcoin and Ethereum investors did get rich quickly! Seems like a good deal, right? But the thing is, the price of these cryptocurrencies often swings from one extreme to another. (In one day in June, the price of Ethereum plummeted from $319 to $0.10!)

Plus, any time the value of something skyrockets too quickly, a bubble often follows, and thats exactly what Forbes contributor Clem Chambers predicts:

Crytocurrencies, of which bitcoin is the leader, will fall back in value and more than the fat drop bitcoin has already had.

Despite its reputation for getting constantly hacked, cryptocurrency like Bitcoin remains a hot

Not to mention, theres also the old investing adage, buy low and sell high. If you bought Ethereum right now, youre buying high. If you still need reasons to avoid it, though, the Motley Fool makes a good case for keeping digital currency out of your portfolio: your investment options are limited, there arent any safety protocols, and most of us dont really completely understand how they work. Most people have no clue how Bitcoin or Ethereum work, or understand how theyre challenging monetary theory. Thats a dangerous formula for volatility and potential money loss, writer Sean Williams says.

The bottom line: get rich quick schemes rarely work out well. Sure, people occasionally win the lottery, but for most of us, investing shouldnt feel like playing the lottery. It should be a long game, allowing you to gradually build wealth over time with much less risk.

That said, if youre going to invest in cryptocurrencies anyway (maybe you dont want to replace your entire retirement portfolio, you just want a small taste), heres how to go about it.

Website Coinbase seems to be the most popular option for buying Ethereum, Bitcoin, or Litecoin. Its also the easiest, according to Inc.coms Brian Evans. You have to verify your account and then you can add different payment methods for buying your tokens (bank accounts, wire transfers, credit or debit cards). Evans explains:

Other options for exchanges that will take U.S. dollars for coins are Kraken, and Gemini in the U.S. Typically you will need to verify your account with a drivers license and add other details to expand your buy limits. Since cryptocurrencies are hard currencies, the exchanges dont want to risk getting ripped off, since you cant reverse a cryptocurrency transaction once its done.

These websites will also let you sell your coins when youre ready. If you have extra cash to invest on hand, it might be an interesting experiment. Ive dabbled in day trading myself, just to understand it better, and while I earned a decent return in a short amount of time, I also lost a lot of money after that. Over time, it all evened itself out. Some short-term investors have much better luck; others have much worse luck. The point is, you dont want to put most of your money to work this way.

You might get lucky with these new, shiny investments, but in reality, wealth building is pretty boring: buy some broad, diverse funds and hold onto them over the years. Its not quite as sexy as cryptocurrency, but its probably a safer bet for your hard-earned cash.

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What You Should Know About Cryptocurrency - Lifehacker Australia

InvestFeed Unveils New Cryptocurrency-Based Social Investment Platform – CoinJournal (blog)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

investFeed, a social investment network for digital currency traders and enthusiasts, has released the first version of its new platform; a combination of Facebook, cryptocurrency and the Bloomberg Terminal, according to CEO Ronald Chernesky.

The New York-based startup, which launched in 2014, said the social network aims to integrate cryptocurrencies into the traditional financial world and create an access point that is open, transparent, and rewards-based for all our users and content contributors.

The release of the new platform comes nearly a month after the company pivoted from US equities to digital currencies amid strong demand from its 15,000+ user base.

Chernesky said that the companys strong belief in the future of cryptocurrencies prompted our decision to pivot from equities to decentralized digital assets.

We feel that investFeeds future should fully embrace the greatest technological breakthrough since the Internet. We decided to refocus our offering in order to take advantage of the vast opportunities in crypto, including the exponentially-growing number of people globally interested in trading, finding accurate ticker prices, and seeking out peer ideas.

Andrew Freedman, CTO of investFeed, added that the switch from equities to cryptocurrencies will attract a millennial user base that has shown disinterest in traditional investments. Millennials are more excited by this new technology because they feel empowered by the ability to participate in markets without traditional third party interference, he said.

The new investFeed platform combines social network features, such as private messaging and comment posting, information sharing, and digital asset trading analytics and insights.

Through a data partnership with Bravenewcoin.com, the platform also showcases a list of 235 high-performing cryptocurrencies and their associated price tickers, channels, pairings and weighted averages in USD.

The company said it will soon add more features, including buy and sell functionalities, instant notifications on user-assigned price alerts, as well as alerts on moves made by peers and high performing traders.

One of our goals was to give mainstream users a simple, aesthetically pleasing UX and remove the technical barriers and complicated language associated with blockchain and cryptocurrency, said Chernesky.

Just like we linked every top online stock trading brokerage to our original platform, we will begin to form relationships with digital asset exchanges so that users can link their accounts on investFeed and make informed decisions, using the most accurate market data possible.

The end-goal is to become the one-stop shop for everything cryptocurrency, and unite a growing community in one of the most nascent industries of our generation.

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InvestFeed Unveils New Cryptocurrency-Based Social Investment Platform - CoinJournal (blog)

What you need to know about cryptocurrency mining – PC Gamer

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Cryptocurrency news has been hot of late, thanks in no small part to the skyrocketing prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two largest cryptocurrencies right now. Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies are also up in value, and given the prices on graphics cards that are supposed to be useful for gaming, some of you will inevitably wonder: should I get into the mining business?

That's a big, open-ended question, and the answer depends on many factors. I'm not going to try and cover every aspect, because Google is your friend, but let's quickly go over the basics of what you would need to get started, and I'll include some rough estimates of how much money you can make at the end.

The core of mining is the idea of block rewards. For most coins, these are given to the person/group that finds a valid solution to the cryptographic hashing algorithm. This solution is a mathematical calculation that uses the results of previous block solutions, so there's no way to pre-calculate answers for a future block without knowing the solution to the previous block. This history of block solutions and transactions constitutes the blockchain, a sort of public ledger.

What is a block, though? A single block contains cryptographic signatures for the block and the transactions within the block. The transactions are collected from the network, typically with a small fee attached, which also becomes part of the block reward. There's a difficulty value attached to the solution for a block as well, which can scale up/down over time, the goal being to keep the rate of generation of new blocks relatively constant.

For Bitcoin, the target is to generate a block solution every 10 minutes on average. For Ethereum, block solutions should come every 16 seconds. That's obviously a huge difference in approach, and the shorter block time is one reason some people favor Ethereum (though there are others I won't get into). Simplistically, the number solution has to be less than some value, and with 256-bit numbers that gives a huge range of possibilities. The solution includes the wallet address for the solving system, which then receives all the transaction fees along with the block reward, and the block gets written to the blockchain of all participating systems.

Think of it as panning for gold in a streamyou might get lucky and find a huge gold nugget, you might end up with lots of flakes of dust, or you might find nothing. If the stream is in a good location, you make money more quickly. The difference is that with cryptocurrencies, the 'good location' aspect is replaced by 'good hardware.'

There are many options for cryptocurrency mining. Some algorithms can still be run more or less 'effectively' on CPUs (eg, Cryptonight), others work best on GPUs (Ethereum, Zcash, Vertcoin), and still others are the domain of custom ASICs (Bitcoin, Litecoin). But besides having the hardware, there are other steps to take to get started with mining.

In the early days of Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies, you could effectively solo-mine the algorithms. That meant downloading (or even compiling) the wallet for a particular coin and the correct mining software. Then configure the mining software to join the cryptocurrency network of your choosing, and dedicate your CPU/GPU/ASIC to the task of running calculations. The hope was to find a valid block solution before anyone else. Each time a block is found, the calculations restart, so having hardware that can search potential solutions more quickly is beneficial.

These days, a lot of people forego running the wallet software. It takes up disk space, network bandwidth, and isn't even required for mining. Just downloading the full Bitcoin blockchain currently requires over 45GB of disk space, and it can take a while to get synced up. There are websites that take care of that part of things, assuming you trust the host.

In theory, over time the law of averages comes into play. If you provide one percent of the total computational power for a coin, you should typically find one percent of all blocks. But as Bitcoin and its descendants increased in popularity, difficulty shot up, and eventually solo-mining became an impractical endeavor. When you're only able to provide 0.00001 percent of the mining power, and that value keeps decreasing over time, your chance of finding a valid block solution becomes effectively zero. Enter the mining pools.

If solo mining is like solo gaming in an MMO, block rewards have become the domain of large mining guilds, called mining pools. For blockchain security reasons, you don't want any single groupa mining pool or an individualto control more than 50 percent of the computational power (hashrate) for the coin network, but for mining purposes, being in a bigger pool is almost always better.

The reason is that, unlike block rewards where everything goes to the winning system, mining pools work together and distribute the rewards among all participants, usually based on a percentage of the mining pool hashrate. Your hardware gets smaller portions of work from the pool, and submits those as shares of work. Even if you only contribute 0.00001 percent of the hashrate, you still get that percentage of every block the pool solves.

To give a specific example, suppose a coin has a total network hashrate of 1Phash/s (peta-hash), but you only provide 0.1Ghash/s. Your chance of mining a block solo is about as good as your chance of winning the lottery. If you join a pool that does 25 percent of the network hashrate, the pool should find 25 percent of blocks, and you'll end up with 0.00004 percent of the block rewards. If a block is worth 50 coins, that's 0.0002 coins from each block the pool findsoften minus a small (1-3) percentage for the pool operators. That might sound like a pittance, but when coins are worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars, it can add up quickly.

There are many places that will provide calculators for cryptocurrencies, so you can see how much you could potentially earn from mining. But ultimately, you'll want to join a mining pool. As a side note, I'd recommend using a new email address for such purposes, and then I'd create a unique password for every pool you happen to joinbecause cryptocurrency thefts are far too common if you're lax with passwords. #experience

If you want to actually collect a coin, like Ethereum, you'll need to take the additional steps of downloading the Ethereum client, syncing up to the blockchain, and setting up the mining pool to pay out to your wallet. It's possible to have pools deposit directly to a wallet address at a cryptocurrency exchange, but again, there are risks there and long-term I wouldn't recommend storing things on someone else's servers/drives.

If all this sounds time consuming, it can beand the people who are really into cryptocurrency often do this as a full-time job. And the real money often ends up in the hands of the pool operators and exchanges, but I digress.

You've got your hardware, you've joined a mining pool, and you're ready to rock the cryptocurrency world. All that's needed now is to download the appropriate software, give it the correct settings for your hardware and the pool, and then away you go. Sort of.

Most pools will provide basic instructions on how to get set up for mining, including where to download the software. But all software isn't created equal, and even things like drivers, firmware revisions, and memory clockspeeds can affect your mining speed. So if you're serious about mining, get friendly with scouring places like Bitcointalk, Github, and other forums.

The easiest way to mine a coin is to just point all your mining rigs at the appropriate pool and load up the necessary software. The problem is that the 'best' coin for mining is often a fleeting, ethereal thingEthereum's real value came because other market forces pushed it from $5-$10 per ETH up to $200+ per ETH during the past several months. Prior to that, it was only one of many coins that were potentially profitable to mine. But switching between coins can take a lot of time, so there's other software that will help offload some of that complexity.

One popular solution is Nicehash, which will lease hashing power to others that will pay for it in Bitcoin. In effect, it transfers the job of figuring out which coin/algorithm to mine to others, though again there are fees involved and the going rates on Nicehash are lower than mining coins directly. The benefit is that you don't end up holding a bunch of some coin that has become worthless.

A more complex solution is to set up multi-algorithm mining software on your own. To do this, you would typically have accounts for all the coins you're interested in mining, and then create rules to determine which coin is best at any given time. Sites like WhatToMine can help figure out what the currently best paying option is, but naturally others would be seeing the same data.

The thing you need to know with cryptocurrency mining is that beyond the initial cost of the hardware, power and hardware longevity are ongoing concerns. The lower your power costs, the easier it is to make mining a profitable endeavor. Conversely, if you live in an area with relatively expensive power costs, mining can seem like a terrible idea.

When many people think about cryptocurrency mining, the first thought is to look at Bitcoin itself. Now the domain of custom ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits), Bitcoin isn't worth mining using GPUs. Where a fast CPU can do perhaps 40MH/s and a good GPU might even hit 1GH/s or more, the fastest ASICs like the Antminer S9 can do 14TH/s. But the Antminer S9 costs $2,100 or more, and still uses around 1350W of power (so you need to add your own 1500W PSU)and you'll net about $8 per day.

Can you do better with mining using graphics cards? As you might have guessed given the current prices of RX 570/580 and GTX 1060/1070, the answer is yes, though not necessarily at the currently inflated GPU prices. But let's start with a basic system cost. You'll need a cheap CPU, motherboard with six PCIe slots, 4GB DDR4 RAM (maybe 8GB if you want), budget hard drive, six PCIe riser adapters, and 1350W 80 Plus Platinum PSU. For the case, you're usually best off building a mining rig using wire shelving and zip ties or something similar. Add all of that up and it will cost around $560 (with 4GB RAM).

The sticking point is the graphics cards. If you could buy RX 580 at the original MSRP of $230 for the 8GB card, $200 for the 4GB model, or $170 each for the RX 570 4GByeah, those are the actual launch prices!that would be $1,380, $1,200, or $1,020. With prices skyrocketing on the RX cards, GTX 1070 became the next logical target, with prices increasing from $350 per 1070 a few months ago to $450+ per card today.

I've got good news for gamers, as I've put together a table showing expected returns using various forms of mining, using current graphics card and ASIC prices. Some of these (like the Antminer L3+) are difficult to find or are still pre-order, but you can sometimes pay a significantly higher price to get one. Here's what things currently look like:

Is there still money to be made as a cryptocurrency miner? I think a lot of this goes back to what happened with Ethereum this past year, with the value going from under $10 per ETH to a peak of nearly $400 per ETH. Selling all the coins you mine can earn money, but if you had the foresight to mine and hold ETH and sold near the peak value, you literally just hit the jackpot. Or if you prefer mining slang, you hit the motherload.

Ethereum prices have since dropped down to $200 (give or take), but there's this hope that eventually another bubble will occur, driving prices up into the thousands of dollars per ETH. Sound like fantasy land? Tell that to all the Bitcoin miners and investors who got in for hundreds of dollars. But without a price spikeand with the potential for the price to drop instead of going upthe above table is something of an optimistic view of the cryptocurrency market.

Price volatility combined with increasing difficulty could radically change things over the span of months. Instead of 200-400 days to recover your hardware investment, it might take several years. Or it could go the other way and take 3-6 months. I wouldn't count on most GPUs surviving 24/7 mining for several years, however.

The bottom line is that at current GPU prices, which remain supply constrained, it's no longer a 'safe' investment to put tons of money into new mining rigs. So the bubble has burst and things should be settling down again.

Perhaps even better (for gamers), early estimates of mining performance using the Vega Frontier Edition suggest it won't be substantially faster than current AMD cards, and with higher power draw it won't be particularly attractive either. But be warned that software optimizations could shake things up. If someone figures out a way to get twice the performance out of a Vega card, it could become the new mining wunderkind.

Should you quit gaming and start mining, then? I wouldn't recommend itbecause if you haven't gotten started already, you're already behind the bubble and will may end up taking a loss. Besides, playing games is more fun, and doesn't serve to heat up your office. That unfortunately won't stop miners from continuing to buy graphics cards, so long as they see a potential profit in it.