Day: July 23, 2001

Just How Corrupt Is The Drug Enforcement Agency?

The Washington Post recently published a story about corruption within the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency that read like it was from some Third World country. Which is precisely what the American obsession with the drug war is doing to the American legal system.

The story involves a confidential information used by the DEA, IRS, FBI and other agencies. Andrew Chambers, originally applied to be a DEA agent in 1984, but was rejected because he was a high school dropout. The DEA did offer Chambers a deal to become a confidential informant with an amazing pay scale — Chambers would get a percentage of any seized assets.

And for 16 years, Chambers was amply rewarded, earning almost $2 million. Unfortunately Chambers had a habit of perjuring himself when testifying. An internal DEA report concluded that the agency knew that Chambers perjured himself in 16 of 25 sworn depositions and trials, and yet continued to use him as a paid informant anyway.

Los Angeles defense attorney John P. Martin told The Washington Post that the DEA was “addicted to” Chambers and that, “They were willing to overlook his perjury — if not assist him in continuing to perjure himself — because they were able to make cases.”

During his years of working for the DEA, Chambers was arrested 13 times and the DEA often stepped in to persuade prosecutors to drop all charges from their star witness (who turned around and lied under oath about his arrest record).

Now, the convictions Chambers helped to arrange are being undone, and the American justice system has demonstrated once more how the main corrupting force of the drug war is on legal institutions that are being warped and perverted by the win-at-all-costs mentality of the drug war.

Source

DEA Shielded Tainted Informant. Cheryl W. Thompson, Washington Post, July 19, 2001.

The Uproar over Dmitri Sklyarov’s Arrest

Last week, in an action instigated by Adobe, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Russian programmer Dmitri Skylarov. Skylarov is accused of violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Basically, Adobe has a copyprotection scheme which encrypts PDF files. The system has a number of weaknesses, however, and Sklarov wrote a program that can quickly remove such copy protection measures.

A lot of the debate over the arrest online focuses on the DMCA and the elimination of “fair use.” For example, there are a number of programs which read aloud the text of documents for blind people (or anyone else for that matter). The encryption system used by Adobe typically renders such programs useless, even though such use clearly falls within the fair use provision of traditional copyright law — proving the main point of DMCA critics, that the end result of the legislation will be to eliminate any sort of fair use.

What really concerns me, however, is an issue that I haven’t really seen discussed. This program was created in and is sold by a company based in Russia where the DMCA does not apply. American companies, U.S. citizens and many politicians have been concerned that countries with restrictive speech laws would go after Internet communications that originate in the United States where laws are generally more expansive.

But here the shoe is on the other foot — the United States is attempting to legally enforce its copyright laws on a product that is completely legal to produce and sell within the country it was created.

This is definitely not the road the United States should be going down. In fact, you have to wonder if prosecutors in France and Germany aren’t licking their chops. After all both countries have brought cases against American Internet-based companies such as Yahoo! and Amazon on the grounds that the companies weren’t doing an effective job of not selling illegal contraband (such as books) that are legal in the U.S. but illegal in Germany. Prosecuting Skylarov simply buttresses the legal arguments made by those governments that they can prosecute a business for engaging in activities that are completely legal within a company’s home country.

It will be interesting to see how the United States would react if, say, Jeff Bezos went on vacation to Saudi Arabia and was arrested for violating Saudi Arabian law. Or if some police agency in India set a similar trap for Yahoo!’s Terry Semel for real or imagined slights against Hindus on Yahoo!’s discussion boards.

Sklyarov’s arrest really sets a dangerous precedent in this area.

PETA: Eat The Whales

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals launched its latest campaign in London over the weekend, urging people to eat more whale meat.

PETA’s Bruce Friedrich showed up at the 23rd International Whaling Commission meeting, where the international ban on whaling was the topic of much heated discussion. Iceland, Japan and Norway want to abandon the ban and threatened to begin commercial whaling with or without international agreement.

Which would be fine with Friedrich who said he would prefer that people converted to vegetarianism, “but meat addicts who won’t try to kick their habit would cause a lot less misery by abandoning their cultural aversion to eating whales.”

According to Friedrich, “If you’re not vegetarian you are responsible for far more suffering and deaths than one Japanese or Norwegian whaler.” Friedrich also suggested that people should stop eating “chicken nuggets and haddock fillets in favor of whale whoppers.”

Anti-whaling groups weren’t amused, with The Times (London) quoting an unnamed whaling opponent as calling the PETA protest an “irresponsible publicity stunt” (which is the best three word summary of PETA I’ve seen yet).

No word on what whaling representatives from Iceland, Japan and Norway thought about PETA’s claims, but at least the Makah will now have PETA in its corner when animal rights activists try to disrupt their upcoming whale hunt.

Source:

Outrage at ‘eat whales’ campaign. Chris Bunting, The Times (London), July 23, 2001.

People urged to eat whale meat. Hugh Muir and Peter Gruner, This Is London, July 23, 2001.

Whaling ban under threat. CNN, July 23, 2001.

The Washington Post Finds NOW Television Analysis Mystifying (So Did I)

The National Organization for Women recently released its second annual look at major television networks which included some bizarre choices. NOW ranked programs based on their gender composition and diversity, level of violence, sexual exploitation, and social responsibility. But their recommendations don’t exactly sound like standard feminist fare. As Lisa de Moraes noted in an article for The Washington Post

The best of the bunch is “Gillmore GIrls,” that family-friendly WB drama series about a hot, young, intelligent, size 0 single mom and her hot, even younger, super-intelligent, size 0 daughter and what a totally more-like-girlfriends relationship they have.

…

On the other hand, NOW’s No. 3 most feminist-friendly show this year is WB’s “Felicity,” a program whose ratings rise or fall depending on the hair length of the lead character — a hot, young, intelligent, size 0 college coed who’s biggest dilemma in life seems to be choosing between cute Noel and cute Benjamin.

One thing we can be very glad about is that nobody writes programs to fit NOW’s guidelines. For example, they give a show like The Weakest Link high marks for treating men and women the same, but then severely mark it down for its hosts “nasty demeanor.” Similarly, one of my favorite shows, Star Trek: Voyager gets high marks for having a diverse range of actors and a woman in charge, but gets marked down for being part of the “typically male world of action and violence.”

Any list that recommends “Felicity” while ignoring “Star Trek: Voyager” has some serious problems in my book. I suspect a show that met all of NOW’s criteria would be so boring that it would quickly get cancelled by network executives.

Sources:

NOW’s bewildering picks and pans. Lisa de Moraes, The Washington Post, July 2, 2001.

Watchout, Listen Up! Feminist Primetime Report, Update 2000-2001. National Organization for Women, July 2001.