Houston writer who was wrongfully arrested wins lawsuit!

"Article" was arrested for allegedly resisting arrest (WTF?) while painting during a legal workshop he was giving at an arts festival, in 2006. He stood up for his rights and finally won the case against the city of Houston, Texas. He and his lawyer will get nearly $20,000 in the settlement.

How posting online can get you busted UPDATE

UPDATE: Burning Black says that with a little work you can change your computer's MAC address as needed.

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Recently, writers have been arrested for:

* showing throwups and tags on MySpace
* showing videos of their illegal actions on YouTube
* posting bombing photos to forums
* other people posting their trains on forums

The way this generally works is that everything you do online technically requires that the IP (internet protocol) address of your computer be recorded by the web servers at the sites you visit. Sometimes the IP address simply points at your ISP (internet service provider, for example: AOL, Comcast, BT etc.), but those companies can figure out who was doing what at a particular time, and web servers also record the time. So together, quite often, the webserver info and the ISP info lead straight to your bedroom. So if you have a local cop or reporter who hates you, s/he may do the work to track you down over the net.

Sites that care about your privacy, like Art Crimes, do not keep logs of user activity. Unfortunately most sites want to keep that information so they can count visitors and sell more advertising or simply have some way to ban some people temporarily from a forum. Some sites keep webserver logs forever and others dump them after some amount of time.

Google tracks everyone's search terms, for example, but now they say they will throw the IP addresses away after 18 months. But they have been forced to give massive amounts of YouTube logs to Viacom in a copyright dispute and this week won the right to anonymize them first. If those logs had been stored in an anonymized state they would not have posed the risk to millions of people that they did.

Posting copyrighted materials is illegal (expensively) and yet digging through everyone's records in order to find out who uploaded what is the wrong way to address it. Terrorism is terrible, but spying on everyone's phone calls in order to find the dirty dozen is not an acceptable solution either. Unfortunately the US Congress thinks this is fine and passed a law about that this month (FISA).)

My point here is that we all are being tracked by governments and media giants routinely, and that your favorite little forums can give you up by accident or through being forced to give up those logs they save. Your own equipment can leak information that's dangerous to you.

To get a bit more anonymity online, you need to use public computers or free wifi that you don't have to sign up for, but if you use your own computer or phone, it can still leave its own unique ID number behind (MAC address). Even your camera or camera phone can give up important info such as the exact location (GPS) and time and date you took the photo, camera type, etc., if you don't erase that info (EXIF) before you upload.

The best policy is not to incriminate yourself by posting your own illegal acts online, because technically, you may not be able to delete them, ever. Even then it's possible that someone else's posting of your illegal stuff will get you in trouble, so it's best to try to control what you've got out there and how it represents you, by restricting access to or usage of your photos. Same advice goes for those drunken orgy photos, of course.

Philly cops charged in attack on graffiti artist

Cops break this guy's jaw, knock out some teeth, then try to cover it up. PD vows to stop the violence.

Most larger police depts in the USA seem to have a few bone breakers and shoot-first guys working for them, and those guys get most of the excessive force complaints, statistically. It would be great if these thugs could all be forced to find other jobs before they kill people. It would be REALLY GREAT if the police departments would fire them before they become front page news. When the courts have to step in to clean up the PD, the thugs should all go to jail.

If the goal is to have citizens obey the law, it's essential for the police and elected officials to toe that line and to be punished when they don't. Terrorizing citizens is not something civilized society should allow its police to do. Document, publish, and complain when you see it go down, because you could be saving lives.

Thanks to David Vernitsky for fighting this good fight in Philly. We sure hope he's recovering well from his awful injuries.

Kudos to the Philly PD for getting rid of the violent offenders on the force.

We hope the wedding-party-killing NYPD thugs don't go unpunished either. The courts really let the people down on that one, but the department is taking some internal action allegedly.

--from the article:

-AP

"Philly cops charged in attack on graffiti artist

By BOB LENTZ ? 9 hours ago

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? Two Philadelphia police officers accused of beating a man they saw painting graffiti were charged Tuesday with assault and falsifying records.

[...]

Authorities say Officers Sheldon Fitzgerald and Howard Hill III broke the graffiti painter's jaw on one side and dislocated it on the other before throwing him head first into the back of a patrol car. The man was never charged with a crime.

'This is an unfortunate incident, but it is in no way a reflection on the entire department,' Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said at a news conference Tuesday. 'I do think that it is another statement that excessive force just will not be tolerated in our department.'

District Attorney Lynne Abraham said her office completed its investigation into the attack on David Vernitsky earlier this month after receiving a complaint of excessive force in November.

Vernitsky had attended a wedding and was spray-painting congratulations to the couple on the wall of a beauty supply house in the city's Feltonville section when police saw him, officials said.

Vernitsky fled, but the officers caught up and beat him, kicking him in the groin, bruising his face and ribs, and knocking out three teeth, Abraham said at the news conference.

The officers released Vernitsky after they checked for outstanding warrants and found none, officials said. The 36-year-old Philadelphia man was taken by friends to a hospital, where he stayed a few days, Abraham said.

The officers didn't document their contact with Vernitsky. Instead, officials said, the pair made a false entry in their log showing they were elsewhere at the time of the beating.

Fitzgerald and Hill were suspended without pay pending trial, Ramsey said. The pair was notified of the charges Tuesday and have 72 hours to turn themselves in.

[...]

The officers, who have been on the force five years each, face charges of aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, tampering with public records and conspiracy.

Earlier this month, a television news helicopter videotaped 18 city police officers and a transit officer kicking and beating three shooting suspects as they were dragged from their car. Ramsey said last week that four officers would be fired and four others disciplined for their roles in the beatings."

-AP