Law Enforcement

Fun Fact

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If you submit electronic files (e.g., digital photographs) on a CD to the US Copyright Office as part of a copyright application, the Copyright Office stores your CD but does not transfer the files on it to its computers or other durable media. There is also no way to resubmit or otherwise replace electronic files stored in the Copyright Office archives if the magnetic or optical media you submitted them on deteriorate.

This appears to mean that the registrations for many copyrighted photographs will become legally indefensible if/when the CDs on which the images were submitted deteriorate. The person with whom I spoke at the Copyright Office suggested submitting photographic prints or contact sheets rather than CDs. This suggestion would have been good advice until recently, but it’s impractical for people who copyright large numbers of digital photos.

I have no idea if the deteriorating-media issue will become a significant problem. Maybe not: the odds that any particular image file submitted in a copyright application will be needed to defend a copyright are low. Happily, the Copyright Office is testing a system that allows copyright registrants to upload image files over the Internet, and this new system should eliminate the CD issue for people who use it. But the many files that have been and will be submitted on CDs and DVDs are still vulnerable.

Kick in My Door, Get Shot.

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Recently, incidents in which police raids target the wrong house and result in the death of an occupant or an officer have begun to receive more attention. Paramilitary tactics developed to surprise, disorient and rapidly subdue heavily armed and violent drug suspects backfire horribly when employed against the law abiding.

These incidents hit home for me because I’ve actually come very close to experiencing such a raid.

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Military Justice and the War

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Interesting article. NPR tries to spin it against the Bush administration, but it seems to me that the controversy reflects more the politicization of and conflicting goals being pursued by today’s JAG corps. On the one hand the govt biases the Haditha trial in favor of the prosecution. On the other hand (the only side of the issue NPR notices) there are complaints about detainees in Guantanamo — men who could have been summarily executed without legal controversy when they were caught on the battlefield — who are being prosecuted based on confessions extracted by means that would be unacceptable under domestic law.

The controversy over Guantanamo confessions is really the smallest part of a much larger issue, which NPR ignores and whose resolution is not yet clear, about how we should treat hostile war detainees who don’t fit old legal categories such as POW or civilian internee. The anti-war Left pretends that the only question is whether Bush plays by the rules. But the more important question is how to modernize rules which don’t fit current reality and which make it harder for us to fight. The question of how to modernize these rules, if not resolved, will dog any coming Democratic administration as much as it does the current Republican one. Pretending that Bush is the problem only delays the inevitable reckoning.

It seems that the JAG community lags the rest of our military in addressing these issues.

Those Nutty Brits

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I always thought that the British were mad because of what they ate for breakfast. Kippers, bloaters and liver.

I know that not every person from England eats that stuff, but c’mon! “Bloaters”?

Back in the days when I worked for the police, we would have to fingerprint corpses to see if we could figure out who they were. Bloaters were what we called the ones who had been in the sun for awhile. You had to skin the finger tips and stretch the skin on wooden dowels to get a print.

No, I’m not saying that the English are cannibals that prefer food they don’t have to chew. I’m just not about to put anything in my mouth if the word “bloat” can be used as a descriptive.

But I have found a completely non-gastronomic reason to think the Brits are completely crazy. They are sending their juvenile delinquents to juvenile court. What I mean by that is not a court that specializes in hearing cases where the accused is a child, but a court where the judges are children themselves.

The idea behind this scheme, if the word “idea” is appropriate, seems to be that young punks don’t listen to adults anyway. If the judge is also a kid, then maybe a little peer pressure will get them to walk the straight and narrow.

I always wanted to visit England. You know, do some sightseeing, visit the points of interest, enjoy all that history. If this is any indication of where British society is headed, I better hurry up and get that done before the place starts to look like it does in 28 Days Later. Except that they won’t need any virus that turns people into mindless zombies to wreck the joint.

(Hat tip to Ace. This essay is cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

One Day We Will Video Everything in Our Public Lives

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Well, maybe. Here’s a situation where a video record came in handy:
 


 
Ouch. The caption accompanying the video explains: This video was captured by a woman riding on her motorcycle. She was wearing a helmet camera (visit www.helmetcamera.com) just in case anything happened to her. Unfortunately it did. The black car locked it’s brakes and swerved due to slowing traffic. The person driving the black car later tried to blame the accident on the cyclist. Fortunetly the woman had everything on video and was able to prove she was not at fault.
 
Seems like it was a good idea for the motorcyclist to install the video camera. Why not put them in automobiles etc? That would probably be a good idea, but I don’t know if people will want to do it if it’s required, say, by insurance companies or legislation — anything that looks like a black box where only Big Brother gets to access the data will be a tough sell. But such concerns evaporate if individuals control their own tapes. As video cameras become cheaper, more people are going to think, Why not have one in my car/front porch/living room? You never know when it will be useful.