Ars Technica

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general is investigating the government's use of cell phone location data obtained without search warrants.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a division of DHS, "has paid a government contractor named Venntel nearly half a million dollars for access to a commercial database containing location data mined from applications on millions of Americans' mobile phones," five Democratic US senators said in October.

"CBP is not above the law and it should not be able to buy its way around the Fourth Amendment," the senators told Inspector General Joseph Cuffari while requesting an investigation into "CBP's warrantless use of commercial databases containing Americans' information, including but not limited to Venntel's location database."

This seems improper. That said, I think I've seen reports of this sort of thing before. It wouldn't surprise me if it was common practice.

... and they did it because of red flag laws. They are also refusing to share their bodycam footage, because of course they are. After all, that footage would expose them as liars who shot and killed a man while he slept peacefully in bed next to his pregnant girlfriend, who they also shot.

The police are keeping the survivors under surveillance and threatening them with arrest if they attend protests.

Everyone involved here needs to go on trial for murder and violation of civil rights. But they won't. Because they are police.

A blogger recounts his long-ago encounter with William Barr, Trump's nominee for attorney general. He thinks it's a positive story, but it's not.

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He did not hide his identity. When I heard he was the former Attorney General, I couldn't resist asking him what he thought about Janet Reno's raid on the Waco Compound in Texas, which had been in the news.

Surprisingly, he didn't flinch, but answered calmly, analytically and at length. He said he himself had overseen a similar operation, where hostages had been rescued. He had paid very close attention, had insisted that bloodshed be avoided. And it was.

I remember Barr saying his operation succeeded because everyone had been very patient, waiting until the hostage-takers had fallen asleep in the middle of the night. Then, using "flash-bang" grenades at 3 am, SWAT teams overwhelmed the sleeping gang, freeing hostages while capturing perpetrators - without the loss of a single life.

Barr persuaded me that had the will been there in the Clinton Administration to do the same, Waco need not have ended in a massacre.

If Barr actually said that, he's incredibly stupid and incompetent. Why? That's how the BATFE caused the problem in the first place. Sure, they didn't go in at 3am. But they used smoke, flash-bangs, "dynamic entry", even snipers in helicopters. The whole thing was meant to put on an exciting and violent show for the media they invited, and to overpower the unsuspecting people within through their use of immediate deadly force and overwhelming numbers.

He may give the impression of being calm and considerate and competent in his manner. But his actual expressed ideas demonstrate a complete failure to understand the problem he was discussing and how it arose in the first place.

By some strange coincidence, the missing months of text message records are some of the most important months for understanding the Trump-Russia investigation.

So remember: those 10,000+ text messages between Strzok and Page that included the "insurance policy" against a Trump win and god only knows what else? Those are the ones they thought we should be allowed to have. The missing messages -- between Dec 14th 2016 and May 17th 2017 -- must be much, much worse.

Funny how government agencies have their records go missing whenever this sort of investigation pops up. I remember when Lois Lerner destroyed her hard drives, laptops, and cell phones. And of course there's Hillary, who wiped her server with a cloth soaked in Bleachbit.

UPDATE: Sessions announces DOJ will probe missing messages. Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that needs a special counsel to investigate independently? Remember, DOJ is just as corrupt as the FBI...