Anonymous, Texas, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends that could and perhaps should have made it into independent posts but wound up in this roundup instead at the end of a busy week:

'FBI scrutinizes Dallas DA'
The headline from the Wall Street Journal says it all. Their story for now is on the free portion of their site. And the Dallas News reported that District Judge Bob Brotherton will decide next week whether to dismiss the pending contempt ruling against Dallas DA Craig Watkins stemming from the same episode that drew the FBI's attention. Wrote reporter Jennifer Emily, "If Brotherton does not dismiss the contempt case, a date will be set for a hearing to determine whether the charge should be upheld." If John Creuzot wasn't all in for the 2014 Democratic primary already, there's certainly no excuse now for not jumping in with both feet. Run, Judge, run!

Snitching works both ways
The Texas Observer has the story of an Hidalgo County Sheriff's deputy wearing a wire to uncover a major South Texas corruption scandal. The mantra of the allegedly corrupt cop at the center of the scandal gives insight into the corrupting influence of asset forfeiture: “We don’t arrest them. We take their shit." Meanwhile, in Fort Worth a police officer allegedly tipped off crooks before police raids, demonstrating that the use of human intelligence can work in both directions.

Anonymous, Texas
Now that Texas' warrants-for-email bill has hit the national press, several folks who work on electronic privacy issues nationally have reached out to Grits and one of them asked my opinion of the Barrett Brown case. "Who is Barrett Brown?," I sheepishly replied. If that was your reaction, here's a sympathetic but detailed account. See more from Vice, the New York Times and The Guardian. Sounds like he's not really a central Anonymous hacker and is mostly being prosecuted for being a punk (chiefly the case stems from a You Tube threat against law enforcement). Given that that's the one thing of which Mr. Brown appears to be actually guilty, my guess is he'll get the max.

Accuracy of historical location data
During the legislative fight over HB 1608, law enforcement claimed that historical location data from a personal cell-phone was relatively inaccurate compared to real-time pinging and they shouldn't have to demonstrate probable cause to obtain it. That argument was mooted in large part by the example, shown in the House committee hearing, of Malte Spitz, a German politician who obtained his historic cell-location data for six months and teamed up with a newspaper to graphically map it. Then, the same week the bill was heard, new research was published showing that even a few location data points reveal a lot about an individual. The ABA Journal has an article detailing the flip side of that argument, calling prosecutors' use of historical location data as evidence "junk science." Cops can't have it both ways: Either historic location data is accurate enough to use as evidence or it's so inaccurate that it shouldn't require a warrant. Right now it seems law enforcement is making one argument at the Legislature and quite different ones in court.

Which two prison units will Texas close?
The Legislature left the decision to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, but the odds on favorite prison units most likely to be closed are still the ones Sen. Whitmire wanted: the Dawson State Jail and a unit in Mineral Wells, both run by Corrections Corporation of America. There could be other sensible choices, though. The Connally unit comes to mind (they can't even secure adequate water there, much less staff), or Dalhart, which has been perennially understaffed. Or if you wanted to base things on cost per prisoner, they might look at closing some of the units coming up on a century old or more, some of which have higher per-prisoner costs than units with modern designs. The easiest, though, would be Dawson and Mineral Wells. Both are on contracts that are about to expire so the close-out costs would be less than for any other option. There are many incentives for the TDCJ board to comply with the wishes of the Senate Criminal Justice Chairman. For example, the Lege reduced TDCJ's budget precisely by the amount it cost to run those two units! My money is on those two to remain the frontrunners, though we won't know for sure until TDCJ meets again to decide.

Hackers expose Texas police chief emails

This is pretty wild stuff. From the New York Daily News:

The hackers collective known as Anonymous claims it broke into the email of dozens of law enforcement agencies - and released racist and offensive correspondence between cops.

London's Daily Mail reported that in one email to a police official in Texas, an officer commented that someone who started a car chase got "what she deserved."

"I'll bet she was fat and black too," the email added.

The email then continued "Same with that pervert that got shot by the county. F*** that guy, see ya. That all sounds like good police work to me."

There is also an email chain in one police department regarding "Muslim inbreeding," gizmodo.com reported. Another requested police investigate an officer's rendezvous with a married woman.

The group also hacked the website of the Texas Police Chiefs [Association], and posted the email addresses that had been hacked.

In a statement on the website, the Daily Mail reported, the hackers wrote: "Having a slow day behind the desk, filing papers, staring at your colleague's fine posterior?"

"What have you been up to since our last visit? Don't answer that. We already know."

See the statement from Anonymous on the attack and all the files they accessed here. (Grits may have more to say on this topic after reviewing details of the Anonymous document dump.)

Back in the good old days before the Texas Supreme Court and the Legislature gutted access to law-enforcement information under the Public Information Act ('96-'97), one saw frank discussions like these in response to open records requests fairly frequently, up to and including expressions of racial prejudice, etc.. But the state has so diminished the public's access to law-enforcement records that now departments can usually screen such embarrassing tidbits by claiming they don't exist, pretending they're part of an ongoing investigation, or simply dropping charges in a particular case, since the public now only has access to information in cases resulting in a conviction. In that environment, a hacker group like Anonymous is probably the only way to expose such dirty little secrets. Twenty years ago virtually all this information would be public under what was then called the Texas Open Records Act.

So two cheers for Anonymous! Yes, they committed a crime (which disqualifies them for a third cheer). But I view this as a form of civil disobedience - little different, though perhaps more effective, than getting arrested at a demonstration - and I'm glad they put the information out there. The public has more to fear from law enforcement concealing racism and misconduct than it does from a bunch of libertarian computer nerds.

MORE/OFF TOPIC: Did you know there was a minor earthquake (2.6)  in North Texas on August 7? Saw it reading through one of the chiefs' emails: "The earthquake was located approximately 6 miles west-southwest of Dallas." I mention it because after the East Coast earthquakes last month, I recall reading at the Dalllas News a story by Mike Drago titled "Earthquake in Dallas? It could happen, but not likely" (Aug. 24) which mentioned only that, "The largest earthquake within 100 miles of Dallas, Texas was a 3.4 Magnitude in 1997."  At least one local reporter got the story, though. Searching on Bing (nothing showed up on Google News), I found a TV news reference from the night before Drago's story was published, Aug 23, that somehow detected the earthquake the Morning News missed. Reported Charles Bassett at KDAF-TV, "The last earthquake here was on August 7th, about 6 miles west southwest of Dallas with a magnitude of 2.6." Ouch. Checking the USGS site, there's little doubt which reporter was right. Here's a Google map showing the location of the epicenter, near the convergence of Grand Prairie and Irving.

Interestingly, there has been speculation that recent, so-far minor earthquake activity in the DFW area is related to saltwater fracking, a new process of extracting natural gas. I also hadn't heard reported before, though clearly it's been out there in some form or fashion, that Cleburne, TX, experienced more than one hundred small, measurable earthquakes over a two-year period. Correlation is not causation, but SMU researchers found there "is a correlation between seismicity, and the time and location of saltwater injection." These tremors are being closely studied, as it turns out, and if they're linked to gas extraction, the enviro-politics of fracking and earthquakes could be the next big enviro war in North Texas.

Anyway, that's another reason to make such documents open records: So the government doesn't keep an earthquake secret! ;)