Federal Hate Crimes Legislation

Earlier today, I mentioned that the FBI (and other federal agencies) doesn’t typically investigate “street crimes” like assault.  Nonetheless, there’s a new federal crime to be aware of today, and it’s one that proponents of the legislation have been wanting for a very long time.

According to the AP and to the Human Rights Campaign, the new legislation was tacked onto a defense spending bill.  What does it cover?  Hate crimes.

From what I gather, a new section of the U.S. Code will be created: 18 U.S.C. § 249, which will be part of Chapter 13, and which will make it a crime to willfully cause injury (or attempt to cause injury) to a person based on that person’s actual or perceived race, gender, national origin, or sexual orientation.  The punishment will be imprisonment for up to 10 years, or for any term of years up to life if death, kidnapping, or sexual abuse occurs (or attempts to do such are undertaken).  Congress also stated that nothing about the law should be construed as a limit on expression: “Nothing in this division shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual’s expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual’s membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs.”

Google Maps Navigation on Android 2.0

It was only a matter of time, really, before Google Maps became a turn-by-turn mobile application.  And now it has.  Gizmodo has a good write-up on its features and abilities, and of course it looks polished even in beta form.  (What isn’t beta in Google-land, besides GMail?  Oh.  Google Apps, actually, and a few other things.  Drat.  It was always fun to joke about how long things stayed in beta with Google.  Oh well, I guess I’ll have to fall back on making jokes about how no one knows you’re a dog on the internet.)  For right now, the application is available only to Android 2.0 users, but there are plans afoot to get it on the iPhone.

Anyway, what surprised me about the Gizmodo review of the application is this:

My fears on zero pricing, for the long term: If Google sells this in the App Store for zero dollars, those millions of bucks Apple makes off of GPS app sales will likely disappear. It’s not for us to worry about until there’s no more GPS competition except Google, and we’re dependent on their pace of progress, but no competition is a bad thing. And it’s a little strange that Google’s search money is going to pay for a free map app that is competitive with stuff that costs $100 a year from full-time GPS makers like TomTom. Unfair is the word that comes to mind. But I can’t say I don’t want this app.

I’ve written about my concerns regarding the freeconomy before, and this Engadget link essentially proves the point.  TomTom’s shares are down about 20% as of the time of this writing, and Garmin isn’t faring much better, down about 15%.  Free is nice and all, but it does have a cost.

(Sure, yeah, fine, in the long run all the buggy-whip manufacturers eventually ended up making something else, right?)

Murder as Terrorism? Hold up a moment…

It is somewhat axiomatic that the FBI doesn’t generally investigate so-called “street crimes” such as assault, rape, murder, and even low-level drug use.  This isn’t because there aren’t federal laws for these activities.  For example, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1111 et seq. proscribes homicide,  18 U.S.C. §§ 2241 et seq. proscribes sexual abuse, 18 U.S.C. §§ 111 et seq. proscribes assaults, and 21 U.S.C. § 844 proscribes “simple possession” of controlled substances.  Despite having laws that could be enforced by federal authorities, though, it is generally considered an inappropriate use of resources when the states can handle the cases just fine, thank you very much.

That changes, apparently, when murder gets called terrorism.

Medical Marijuana Update … Update

The United States Department of Justice has issued a press release on the changes to the prosecution of medical marijuana providers.  According to Attorney General Holder,

“This balanced policy formalizes a sensible approach that the Department has been following since January: effectively focus our resources on serious drug traffickers while taking into account state and local laws.”

The release also contains a link to the Guidelines memo, which can be found here.  An example of an inefficient use of federal resources is provided in the memo:

“As a general matter, pursuit of these priorities should not focus federal resources in your States on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana. For example, prosecution of individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or those caregivers in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law who provide such individuals with marijuana, is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources.”

However, if the individual is not in clear and unambiguous compliance, that individual could still face federal prosecution.

Extradition from Britain–Gary McKinnon? Maybe Not

Those of us who follow international extraditions are quite familiar with the tale of Gary McKinnon.  Mr. McKinnon, if you don’t know, is the British man charged in 2002 with hacking his way into government and military computers in the United States.  He claims he was searching for proof of UFOs, which, let’s be honest, who isn’t?

In any event, despite being determined to be extraditable, and losing a number of appeals along the way, he appears to have received yet one more slight reprieve.  According to PC World, the Home Secretary has received evidence that Mr. McKinnon has severe depression and Asperger’s syndrome, and as such, extradition would be harmful to his health.  This argument has been made previously throughout all the hearings, along with the argument that there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t just be shipped off to Guantanamo. So, while this isn’t an unexpected development, it will be interesting to see how the Home Secretary rules on this case.  If Mr. McKinnon is ordered to be extradited, he has 14 days to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Medical Marijuana Update

Back in March, I mentioned that the Obama Administration had signaled it would reevaluate the Bush-era policies regarding federal prosecutions of medical marijuana dispensaries.  According to the AP, new guidance is expected to be distributed today to US Attorneys Offices in the 14 states that have legalized medical marijuana.  The general thrust is that legitimate dispensaries are to be allowed to go about their business, while those which are posing as fronts, or are engaged in other criminal activity, are to be prosecuted.

I only have one real problem with this plan, and it’s a problem that I have with other aspects of Obama’s we-need-to-focus-on-the-future-and-put-the-past-behind-us attitude, is that it does nothing with the fact that there’s a Supreme Court case, Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005), which states that the federal government, through the Commerce Clause, is allowed to prosecute marijuana cultivators in states where such is legal.

What is left, then, is an environment where, for the next three-and-a-half years, at least, medical marijuana use in states where it is legal will likely not be prosecuted.  What happens when a new President gets elected, though?  Without getting rid of the Raich precedent, the federal government will still have the ability to change the guidance and start prosecuting medical marijuana cultivators and dispensaries.  Thus, while this is welcome news for those people who provide marijuana to those who receive beneficial treatment through it, it’s not necessarily an “all-clear” signal.

No Suit for You!

I mentioned a while ago that ASCAP was suing AT&T over ringtones, saying that royalties were owed every time someone’s phone rang.  Public performance and all that.  Well, in addition to suing AT&T, ASCAP sued Verizon for the same thing, and PC World (via Yahoo!) is reporting that District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York has tossed the suit against Verizon.

Judge Cote’s reasoning is refreshing:

“Despite the accusation that Verizon enjoys revenue from publicly played ringtones, Verizon makes no revenue from the playing of ringtones, in public or elsewhere,” Cote wrote. “It makes revenue from selling ringtones, and it already pays a mechanical licensing fee in connection with those sales.”

The Center for Democracy and Technology, which is hosting a copy of the Order, also notes that the Court relied partly on common sense in making its ruling.  It always seemed somewhat strained to argue that Verizon should be liable for a public performance (even to the extent that a ringtone could constitute a public performance) when it had no control over when or how that public performance would occur.

It’s a Start

According to the St. Louis Dispatch, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin will be introducing legislation to rectify the severe disparity in cocaine base and cocaine powder federal punishment.  Currently it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to achieve the same penalty for just 5 grams of cocaine base.  (Cocaine base is better known as “crack.”)  Apparently the legislation would make the ratio 1:1.  This is good, and I hope it’s just the first step toward reforming the federal criminal justice system.

Honest Services Fraud and the SCOTUS

The Supreme Court of the United States has granted Jeff Skillings petition for a writ of certiorari. (Source: Mark Sherman; AP)  Jeff Skillings, as you must be aware is the former CEO of Enron, and one of the charges for which he was convicted way back in the day was for “honest services fraud,” a term which is being addressed by the SCOTUS in another couple of cases: that of Lord (is he still a Lord, actually?) Conrad Black, and that of Bruce Weyhrauch, an Alaskan lawmaker.  (Source: Nathan Koppel; WSJ)

As the NY Times’ Adam Liptak notes, the statute itself is quite vague, and has been ripe for the SCOTUS to review it ever since Congress enacted it in the 1980s in direct response to an unfavorable SCOTUS decision.  It bears mentioning, despite the hopeful tone to some of the articles discussing the granting of the writs, that the Court has had the opportunity in the past to evaluate the honest services fraud statute, and hasn’t.  This suggests to me, that the Court will try to find some way to keep it alive while limiting some of its scope.

And the Cloud Goes Poof!

Not really, because there are an awful lot of people committed to making sure that you do your computing remotely, but halfway reading this PC Magazine article (via Yahoo! News), I started thinking, “hey, this sounds like Dvorak.”  No surprise, it was written by him.  He’s been very, and loudly, critical of the Cloud over the years, and the Mass Sidekick Annihilation of 2009 is the perfect opportunity for him to take another swipe at it.  As I am on the record as being pretty anti-Cloud, I of course like the article.  But this post isn’t about his article (which even takes EULAs to task), but about the damned Cloud.