The credit reporting agency Equifax said hackers gained access to sensitive personal data — Social Security numbers, birth dates and home addresses — for up to 143 million people. The Washington Post calls it a major cybersecurity breach at a firm that serves as one of the three major clearinghouses for Americans’ credit histories. Equifax said the breach began in May and continued until it was discovered in late July. It said hackers exploited a “website application vulnerability” and obtained personal data about British and Canadian consumers as well as Americans. Social Security numbers and birth dates give those who possess them the ingredients for identity fraud and other crimes. Equifax also lost control of an unspecified number of driver’s licenses, along with the credit card numbers for 209,000 consumers and credit dispute documents for 182,000 others. The company said it did not detect intrusions into its “core consumer or commercial credit reporting databases.” “The type of information that has been exposed is really sensitive,” said Beth Givens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer advocacy group based in San Diego. “All in all, this has the potential to be a very harmful breach to those who are affected by it.” Equifax, based in Atlanta, is working with law enforcement on an investigation of the breach and has hired an independent cybersecurity research firm to assess the scope of the intrusion. As debate has begun over whether the rules governing sexual-assault adjudication have gone too far, one subject has received almost no attention, although it has become central to the way that many schools and many activists view sexual assault, reports The Atlantic. The federal government has required that all institutions of higher education train staff on the effects of “neurobiological change” in victims of sexual assault, so that officials are able to conduct “trauma-informed” investigations and adjudications. Some schools have come to rely on the work of a small band of self-styled experts in the neurobiology of trauma, who claim that sexual violations provoke a disabling, multifaceted physiological response. Being assaulted is traumatic, and no one should expect those who have been assaulted to have perfect recall or behave perfectly rationally. This argument, which the Atlantic called “junk science,” goes much further. It goes like this: People facing sexual assault become terrified, triggering a potent cascade of neurotransmitters and stress hormones.This chemical flood impairs the prefrontal cortex of the brain, impeding victims’ capacity for rational thought, and interferes with their memory. They may have significant trouble recalling their assault or describing it coherently or chronologically. The fear of imminent death may further elicit an extended catatonic state known as “tonic immobility,” rendering them powerless to speak or move—they feel “frozen.” As a result, those adjudicating sexual-assault allegations are told, the absence of verbal or physical resistance, the inability to recall crucial parts of an alleged assault, a changing story—none of these factors should raise questions or doubt about a claim. Indeed, all of these behaviors can be considered evidence that an assault occurred.
Rebecca Campbell, a professor of psychology at Michigan State University, has taught the science of trauma to law-enforcement officials and Title IX administrators. Campbell acknowledged that she is not a neuroscientist, but rather is translating others’ work. Richard Schmidt is the new Milwaukee County acting sheriff, a 61-year-old grandfather who worked his way through the ranks from the jail to the freeways to the command staff, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. He says he’s not interested in politics, and he remains fiercely loyal to his old boss, David Clarke. But Schmidt promises to be less combative than Clarke. “I’m not out to raise my platform,” Schmidt told the newspaper. “I’m not out to fight people. I am in a cooperative mode. I intend to work with every elected official in a positive cooperative manner. I intend to treat everyone with respect.” Schmidt outlined new policies and initiatives, including a budget freeze to deal with a projected $5 million deficit and stepped up traffic enforcement. He said that the Aug. 29 death of a 51-year-old jail inmate at the Milwaukee County Jail is being investigated by the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department. Schmidt said that under his watch, outside entities will investigate any death that occurs at the jail. Since April 2016, six people have died at the jail, including a newborn and mentally ill inmate who died of dehydration in solitary confinement. One of Schmidt’s first actions as acting sheriff was asking the National Institute of Corrections to conduct a review of all operations at the facility. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd in Orlando is threatening to jail wanted people seeking shelter due to Hurricane Irma, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The sheriff, who is known for his outspoken comments, made the threat in a series of posts to Twitter. “If you go to a shelter for #Irma and you have a warrant, we’ll gladly escort you to the safe and secure shelter called the Polk County Jail,” Judd tweeted to his nearly 66,000 followers. Judd said officers would be at every shelter checking IDs and that sex offenders and sex predators would not be allowed inside. Judd said in preparation for the hurricane, fugitives should turn themselves in to the jail because “it’s a secure location.” “We cannot and we will not have innocent children in a shelter with sexual offenders and predators. Period,” Judd posted to @PolkCoSheriff. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida said Judd should “focus on preparing for Irma, not burnishing your Joe Arpaio-style ‘tough cop’ credentials with irresponsible tweets,” a reference to the former Maricopa County, Az., sheriff. After a parolee from the gang called 211 Crew killed Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements in 2013, officials began banishing leaders of the white supremacist gang to prisons across the U.S. through an inmate-swapping system in which high-risk prisoners are traded from one state to the next, the Denver Post reports. That diaspora of shot callers — those who can order gang murders — is why Benjamin Davis was at the Wyoming State Penitentiary when he killed himself last month. Davis was a founder and leader of the 211 Crew and was suspected of ordering Clements’ assassination. Clements’ successor, Rick Raemisch, has moved 211 Crew “inner circle” members with a rank of general — all with a vote when it comes time to order hits and beatings — outside Colorado’s prison system to state or federal prisons in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Kentucky, Colorado and Ohio. “The Interstate Compact agreement is one of the most influential tools available to us in corrections. It allows the Colorado Department of Corrections and corrections departments across the United States to ensure the safety of their staff, safety of their offender population, and maintain safety and security in their facilities” Raemisch told the Post. Raemisch and other officials declined to discuss the whereabouts of the 211 Crew leaders. Experts on prison gang culture say inmate swapping through the Interstate Corrections Compact can be effective in disrupting communications between gang leaders and their soldiers and enforcers. It can also spread gang ideology, particularly for a gang such as 211 Crew, which has name recognition across the country. Charismatic gang leaders spread their racist dogma and internal gang leadership strategies to other prison systems. “When you move them, they are going to re-create themselves like seeds in another state,” said Damarcus Woods, of D. Woods Consultants, a gang expert. “What makes this gang so popular was the murder of Tom Clements.” Their leaders have instant name recognition and respect with convicts wherever they go, he said. Ten months after California voters approved allowing thousands of prison inmates to apply for early release, a debate continues over who ought to be freed, reports the Bay Area News Group. Proposition 57 left it to prison officials to identify which crimes deemed nonviolent would qualify and how an inmate’s criminal history would affect eligibility. The public could weigh in during a 45-day comment period this summer. More than 8,500 people did, both in writing and at a public hearing last week. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is sorting through email and stacks of letters from crime victims, inmates, prosecutors and reformers. Prison officials have notified prosecutors of more than 1,800 inmates who have applied for early parole. No figures are available on the number of inmates whose applications have been denied, approved or have actually been released. A snapshot of two urban counties in Northern California shows relatively few people are being granted early parole. In Santa Clara County, only six out of 40 inmates will be released early. In Sacramento County so far, it’s even fewer, only six out of 65. Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, a leading critic of Proposition 57, has opposed the release of all prisoners so far. Kent Scheidegger of the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Foundation, who opposed Proposition 57, said, “People got the idea a few years ago that prisons were full of harmless people. That is a widespread popular misconception.” Opioid use may be responsible for a fifth of the record number of prime working-age U.S. men who have chosen to fully drop out of the work force and no longer seek a job. In a paper delivered at the Brookings Institution, Princeton Prof. Alan Krueger described a strong correlation between high opioid use and low labor force participation among men 25 to 54 years old, reports Axios. The trend is the strongest in Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, and North Carolina. For decades, the U.S. labor force participation rate — the number of men aged 25 to 54 who are either working or trying to find work — stayed above 90 percent. Around 1970, the rate began falling. As of last month, it was at 88.4 percent. Krueger blames opioids. The fault is with doctors who are exceptionally free with prescriptions, not pain reported by patients. “Despite the massive rise in opioid prescriptions in the 2000s, there is no evidence that the incidence of pain has declined,” he said. Krueger said 47 percent of these men out of the work force take pain medication daily. About two-thirds said the medicine was prescription pain medication. “And these figures likely understate the actual proportion of men taking prescription pain medication given the stigma and legal risk associated with reporting taking narcotics,” he said. Some 40 percent of the men say pain prevents them from working full time on jobs for which they are qualified. The three men who challenged Colorado’s Sex Offender Registration Act were sentenced to probation. Two of them also served 90 days in jail. Later, they found that appearing in the state’s online registry of sex offenders made it impossible to lead a normal life. Last week, a federal judge recognized what anyone dealing with the burdens, obstacles, and dangers of life on the registry knows: Its punitive impact far outweighs any value it might have in protecting the public, reports Reason. U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch concluded that registration can violate the Eighth Amendment by imposing what amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. His judgment contradicts a 2003 Supreme Court decision describing Alaska’s Sex Offender Registration Act as a “civil regulatory scheme” that only incidentally resulted in humiliation and ostracism. Matsch argued that “the justices did not foresee the ubiquitous influence of social media,” the proliferation of commercial websites peddling information from sex offender registries, or the cheap scare stories that local news outlets would produce based on that information. Those developments have magnified the life-disrupting potential of registration, as illustrated by the experiences of the Colorado plaintiffs. By forcing sex offenders into this precarious situation, Matsch said, the state is punishing them. State or federal courts have reached the same conclusion in Alaska, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania. Now the question is when the Supreme Court will revisit the issue. Family members of those in the U.S., including grandparents and children-in-law, are exempt from President Trump’s travel ban executive order, ruled a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, reports Law.com. The court disagreed with the government’s argument that, under a June order from the U.S. Supreme Court, only parents and parents-in-law, spouses, children, siblings, engaged couples and step-relatives were exempt. The Ninth Circuit’s opinion said the government “unreasonably interpret[ed] the Supreme Court’s reference to ‘close familial relationship[s].’” “It is hard to see how a grandparent, grandchild, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, sibling-in-law, or cousin can be considered to have no bona fide relationship with their relative in the United States,” the decision said. Also at issue was whether “formal assurances” by some refugee resettlement agencies, in which they agree to work with certain refugees when they arrive in the U.S., counts as a bona fide relationship. The court again sided with Hawaii, allowing those refugees to be exempt from the ban. A Justice Department spokeswoman said the government will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. The first fatal New York Police Department shooting captured by body cameras raised questions about how the department will handle the recordings, reports the New York Daily News. Vague policies regarding the fledgling program, initiated in an effort to foster transparency, were released in April. The outline sidestepped the issue of whether or not the police department will make footage public, something many other law enforcement agencies do. Four camera-strapped cops were in the tight quarters of a Bronx studio apartment on Wednesday when Miguel Richards was killed with a knife in hand. Police say the 31-year-old aimed a toy gun at the officers before they fired 16 shots. Requests for the video were rebuffed, as the NYPD and the city have yet to define how they will address the thorny issue as they expand their program. “Our colleagues in government have to look at this, too, including the district attorney, before we can determine how to handle that footage,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. The inclination, police officials said, is to define when they would release images as narrowly as possible, so as not to interfere in post-shooting investigations. Advocates argue such a policy would fly in the face of the court order that led the department to adopt the technology in the first place. Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union believes body cam videos should automatically be made available to the public — with redactions to protect privacy interests. “In the case of police shootings, it is particularly important for the public to see video footage, as police officials all too often provide incomplete or distorted accounts,” he said. |
