The “truce” choice is likely to take it — though no one from the board of the car-hailing company has told him as yet!
Dara Khosrowshahi is the pick.
Drew Angerer / Getty
The board of Uber has voted and wants Expedia Dara
Khosrowshahi to be its next CEO. But here is a shocking twist for those
who have had to endure this awful, messy and convoluted process: He has
not been officially offered the job as of 15 minutes ago, said sources.
Still, most expect him to take it and he appears to be
the one person dueling factions of the board can agree on. Unknown until
now, Khosrowshahi was the third candidate — after Hewlett Packard
Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman and former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt.
Khosrowshahi is considered the “truce” choice for the
board, which has been riven by ugly infighting between ousted CEO Travis
Kalanick and one of its major investors, Benchmark. Benchmark had
backed Whitman, while Kalanick had backed Immelt.
Sources said that going into this morning, after Immelt
withdrew his name from contention when it was clear he would not win the
job, Whitman had the upper hand in the race for the job. But she also
wanted a number of things — including less involvement by ousted Uber
CEO Travis Kalanick and more board control — that became too problematic
for the directors, said sources.
As he left, sources close to Immelt’s thinking called the
search process totally “dysfunctional” (and worse). Cue sources close
to Whitman to say that very soon (and more). Both are quite accurate.
And, in keeping with the cup full of crazy modus
operandi, about 30 minutes ago, in a statement, an Uber board
spokesperson said: “The Board has voted and will announce the decision
to the employees first.”
Well, it’s Khosrowshahi, if he says yes, that is — so now we can all get back to the season finale of “Game of Thrones.”
Sources close to Meg Whitman said she has not been
informed of any choice nor had the board agreed to some of the things
she was asking for to take the job.
More to come, obvi!
Originally published on .https://www.recode.net/2017/8/27/16212552/uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi
In Los Angeles, you can fight City Hall — for a price.
Neighborhood
activists, tenant advocates and others alarmed by city decisions about
proposed developments can lodge appeals with the Planning Department for
an $89fee.
Now city leaders are weighing whether to increase that price: City planners initially suggested tripling the fee to $271.
Budget officials recommended hiking it to $13,538— an amount they say would completely recover city costs. Then city staffers offered up a range of options in between.
Financial analysts say higher fees would help the Planning
Department cover the true cost of processing those appeals, freeing up
money for other needed services. Beyond City Hall, some development
advocatesargue a hike is needed to discourage frivolous appeals.
But
the idea spurred an outcry from neighborhood activists, who argued a
higher fee would silence ordinary Angelenos fighting improper decisions.
The fee increase is“an
attempt to prevent residents who are low income, those who can’t afford
to spend $13,000, or $6,000 or even $600 on an appeal from being heard
by their democratically elected government,” said Damien Goodmon, an
activist who has battled the city over South L.A. projects that include a
30-story complex known as Cumulus.
The furor over the fees reflects a persistent tension for a massive city still under financial pressure: When should people have to pay their way for city services — and when should the city foot the bill?
L.A.
has been reexamining many fees: City lawmakers have urged the Planning
Department to charge enough to recoup its costs and avoid dipping deeper
into the city general fund, which covers police patrols and other city
services.
Real estate developers, business owners and others seeking permits or special approvals from the Planning Department can facefees totaling tens of thousands of dollars.
Last
year, an outside firm calculated that the Planning Department had
recovered nearly $22.2 million in revenue for almost $29.9 million in
services related to reviewing projects. That $7.7-million difference had
to be covered by the general fund, the report found.
City officials banked on recovering such costs when they crafted the budget this year and included more staffers to update community plans that spell out where new housing and businesses are allowed.
Planning
officials are now seeking to hike dozens of fees for requests from
developers and other applicants, as well as for filing an appeal. Many
other fees will be reduced because the department can now perform those
services more efficiently.
“We just want to make sure from a
budgetary perspective that we’re whole,” said Planning Department chief
management analyst Jason Killeen. If the department has to absorb such
costs, he said, it won’t be able to update community plans as quickly as
city lawmakers want.
Fees were last hiked eight years ago. City
officials say that since then, costs for city planners and clerks have
surged more than 70%.
Earlier this month, a City Council committee
backed many of the proposed hikes, but held off on deciding whether to
boost the appeal fee for someone other than the project applicant.
Charging
$271 would cover only 2% of the city costs tied to such challenges,
according to the city. In the last budget year, the city had $3.8
million in unrecovered costs for appeals that came out of the general
fund, Killeen said. And between 2013 and 2017, the number of appeals
nearly doubled, from 155 to 296.
Budget officials said that to recover all of
their costs, the city should charge more than $13,500. City
Administrative Officer Rich Llewellyn said that under city policies,
“when there's an opportunity to seek cost recovery, you’re supposed to
seek it.”
If the city does not do so, Llewellyn said, it has to
make up for the “subsidy.” L.A. has already been subsidizing some fees
tied to single-family homes or minor projects, as well as the appeal
fee.
Attorney Daniel Wright challenged the city estimate for
appeal costs as excessive and argued that trying to recover costs is
“unlawful” if it blocks people from exercising their rights. In a letter
to lawmakers, Wright pointed to an earlier case in which Kagel Canyon
residents balked at putting a trucking school atop a landfill site.
If
the fee had been more than $13,500, “it is doubtful that Kagel Canyon
community members could have fought off the dumb idea,” Wright wrote.
Los
Angeles already charges more than $13,000 to developers or their
representatives who file appeals to challenge city decisions on their
own proposed projects. Real estate developer Mott Smith argued that was
unfair to charge developers so much more than their opponents.
“We have basically handed a gun to anyone who wants to shoot a project,” Smith said.
Lodging an appeal has slowed, reshaped or stopped proposed developments across L.A.
In South Los Angeles, the council rejected a residential facility
for former inmates after a community organizer lodged an appeal arguing
it would worsen neighborhood blight. In Venice, residents have
successfully thwarted developers seeking coastal development permits for
projects they argue are out-of-scale or clash with neighborhood
character.
Earlier this month, a council committee backed an appeal
against a Boyle Heights homeless housing project that would force it to
get an environmental report, delaying the plan. And in June, the
council granted part of an appeal against building an additional
dwelling unit behind a Westwood apartment building, requiring it to
prepare an environmental report amid concerns about traffic hazards in
an alley.
Hiking the fee would discourage “frivolous or
extortionary appeals” and would “especially help smaller developers who
can't handle the risk of those new costs,” said Mark Vallianatos,
director of the LAplus think tank and an advocate for rules that make
development easier.
But
at a recent hearing, many community activists said the blame for the
growing number of appeals — and their cost — lies with the city for
routinely allowing developers to alter existing rules to permit projects
that are bigger or denser than would otherwise be allowed.
“If you want to really save money, don’t approve illegal projects,” George Abrahams, who fought the proposed Millennium Hollywood skyscrapers, told lawmakers.
Council
members are weighing a range of options for boosting the fee, including
charging half the total cost, providing discounted “hardship” fees, and
charging more to people living outside the immediate area — a
500-foot-radius — where a project is proposed.
Councilman Mitch
Englander said that he wants to protect communities, but has concerns
about “professional appeal filers” who don't live nearby.
“We
should make sure that local stakeholders have a voice that is protected —
but if there is abuse in the system, we should know,” Englander said.
Tenant
activist Sylvie Shain countered that many projects have effects beyond
the immediate area, such as reducing the availability of rent-controlled
apartments — a cause that spurred her to fight some planned
developments farther from her home. If Englander is worried about
outsiders abusing the system, Shain argued, “they’ll still do it for
$13,000.”
“What it would limit is regular people,” she said.
Originally published on .http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-fee-hike-20170829-story.html
Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is joined by Joe Arpaio at a campaign event in Marshalltown, Iowa on Jan. 26, 2016. (Mary Altaffer / Associated Press)
Jeffrey Crouch
In a classic Washington news dump, the White House announced Friday night that President Trump had pardoned controversial ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose crusade against illegal immigration in Maricopa County, Ariz., led to racial profiling and a criminal contempt conviction. Since then, some pundits and scholars have argued that, with this decision, Trump crossed the line and upended the Constitution. Some have even suggested that he should be impeached.
Sorry, but it’s not going to happen. While highly inappropriate, Arpaio’s pardon is not all that different from other recent controversial clemency decisions, and, like them, falls well short of making the president impeachable. Here’s why.
The framers of our Constitution vested the ability to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States” in the president as a check on the federal judiciary. They debated whether to force the president to share the clemency power with the Senate, whether the power should apply only “after conviction” of a crime, and whether there should be an exception made to exclude treason from eligibility for presidential mercy.
Ultimately, they decided that the president alone should be able to exercise a wide-ranging clemency power and then take responsibility for those decisions.
The Arpaio pardon upended a judicial ruling, but that’s precisely what clemency decisions do.
Clemency is a kingly power that allows the president to offer official forgiveness as an “act of grace.” The vast majority of pardons by recent presidents have gone to nonviolent offenders who have served their time. Presidents can also use clemency for the benefit of the “public welfare” — to defuse insurrections, as George Washington did in the Whiskey Rebellion, or to bring the country back together again after a trying time, as the Civil War amnesties did.
Not all pardons fit neatly into these categories, of course. Presidents have also granted clemency to murderers, terrorists and spies. They have pardoned for political gain, to get themselves out of trouble and to help out family members.
All of which is to say, presidents have a broad power to pardon. The only textual limits in the Constitution are that the crime must be a federal (not state-level) offense, and that the president may not act “in Cases of Impeachment.” For various reasons, that’s the way the framers wanted it. There is certainly nothing in the Constitution that excludes or makes distinctions based on whether the offender was a law enforcement officer or violated a court order, for example.
That Arpaio was in law enforcement is pretty much irrelevant, and is nothing new when it comes to clemency. For example, Ronald Reagan pardoned two FBI officials who allowed agents to conduct illegal searches in order to locate fugitives who belonged to the Weather Underground. Granted, the Arpaio pardon upended a judicial ruling, but that’s precisely what clemency decisions do.
Going forward, the White House would be well advised to consider how other politically charged clemency decisions have played out in the not-so-distant past. Gerald Ford made a controversial pardon early in his presidency when he granted one to his predecessor, Richard Nixon. The GOP suffered a bloodletting for Watergate in 1974, and Ford’s reputation took decades to recover.
More recently — and much less honorably than Ford — presidents of both parties have used pardons or commutations to assist their political allies (George H.W. Bush and Iran-Contra, George W. Bush and Scooter Libby) or their supporters (Clinton and Marc Rich). These acts are failures of judgment that stained the records of each of these presidents.
Jeffrey Crouch is an assistant professor of American politics at American University. He is the author of “The Presidential Pardon Power.” He is Editor-in-Chief of Congress & the Presidency.
Originally published on http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/blowback/la-oe-crouch-arpaio-pardon-20170828-story.html
On his 92nd birthday, March 8, 1933, retired Supreme Court
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was paid a surprise visit by the newly
inaugurated president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The two men chatted
for half an hour and, after Roosevelt departed, a young clerk asked
Holmes what he thought of the new man in the White House.
“A second-class intellect,” Holmes said. “But a first-class temperament.”
A
good temperament has generally proved to be more important than brains
in an American commander in chief. That is why Ronald Reagan, a man of
modest intellect but sunny disposition, proved to be a very successful
president, while the presidency of the brainy but brooding and paranoid
Richard Nixon ended in scandal and shame. A first-class temperament
guided John F. Kennedy through the Cuban missile crisis, while the
intellectual Woodrow Wilson wound up a broken man after the failure of
his grand plan to forge a peaceful, democratic international order
following the First World War.
If the great Holmes were alive to render judgment on the
current president of the United States, he would almost certainly sign
on to the opinion being reached by more and more people, including many Republicans and conservatives: Donald Trump has a third-class intellect paired with a temperament that borders on mental instability.
Last week, the wild swings in mood and rhetoric displayed by
Trump in a series of public appearances seems to have tilted public
assessment of the president even more substantially toward this highly
alarming view. Last Monday night, he read stiffly from a script as he
outlined a rather undramatic but reasonably coherent shift in American
engagement in Afghanistan, but, the next night, Trump ranted for well
over an hour at a campaign rally in Phoenix, attacking the free press
and members of his own political party, baying and barking like a
wounded hound as he defended his contradictory comments about neo-Nazi
violence in Charlottesville, Va.
After Trump’s Phoenix tirade,
former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper went on CNN to
question Trump’s fitness for office, calling the speech “downright
scary and disturbing” and saying, “I worry about the access to nuclear
codes.”
In a Sunday New York Times opinion piece, Peter
Wehner, a veteran of the Reagan and the two Bush administrations, urged
congressional Republicans to think of themselves as a “shadow
government” to compensate for Trump’s “moral ugliness and intellectual
incoherence.” He said Republican members of Congress acknowledge the
rolling disaster that is the Trump administration. Those Republicans,
Wehner said, are privately declaring the president a “child king” who is
incompetent and unfit for office.
A few of those Republicans have gone public with their disdain. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake have both offered tough critiques of Trump — and have been slammed by Trump in response.
"The
president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some
of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be
successful,” Corker said in a TV interview. “He has not demonstrated
that he understands what has made this nation great and what it is
today.”
Flake put his own thoughts in a book, “Conscience of a
Conservative,” that calls out Trump for his reckless tweets, his
disturbing attraction to bogus conspiracy theories and his wild bursts
of anger. He also decries Trump’s extreme anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim
rhetoric, as well as his betrayal of the Republican Party’s
long-standing commitment to vigorously oppose oppressive regimes around
the world.
Flake may well pay a price for his bold critique of
Trump’s instability when he runs for reelection next year. The president
has already given encouragement to three possible right-wing
challengers who want to go after Flake in the primary. But Flake says he
could not, in good conscience, keep quiet.
“The stakes, for the future of conservatism and for the future of our country, are simply too high,” Flake wrote in his book.
When
even members of the president’s own party begin to ask themselves if
the man they have put in the White House is borderline insane, it is
hard to imagine the stakes being any higher.
Originally published on http://www.latimes.com/hp-2/
Matt Pearce, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Jenny JarvieContact Reporters
Tropical Storm Harvey
continued to pummel southeast Texas on Monday, leaving at least nine
people dead and vast swaths of the nation’s fourth-largest city
unrecognizable as murky brown water submerged highways, houses, shopping
plazas and entire neighborhoods.
Federal officials said more than
30,000 people in Houston and across the Gulf Coast were likely to seek
temporary shelter as Harvey, which initially made landfall as a
hurricane, continued to drench parts of Texas and Louisiana with heavy
rain and surging floodwaters.
Parts of Harris County have seen 30
inches of rain — and an additional 15 to 25 inches are still on the way
as Harvey regains strength, the National Weather Service said.
“It has to be categorized as one of the largest disasters America has ever faced,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters.
But the precise toll of the brutal storm remained unknown.
Emergency officials had no way of knowing how many people might be dead
and not yet discovered, or how many others were trapped in their homes.
As
the rain kept pouring, as many as 13 million people from Houston to New
Orleans were under flood watches and warnings. Many residents climbed
to the upper stories of their homes. Some even pitched tents on roofs,
waiting it out until a boat or helicopter swooped in.
“Harvey has
in many ways turned southeast Texas into an inland lake … the size of
Lake Michigan,” said Brad Kieserman, vice president of disaster
operations and logistics for the American Red Cross.
By Monday
evening, the death toll had risen to nine. Officials in Harris County,
which includes Houston, reported at least six “potentially
storm-related” fatalities. A 60-year-old woman died Monday in Porter, a
small community north of Houston, when a large oak fell on her mobile
home. Another person died in the small coastal town of Rockport, near
where Harvey made landfall. A 52-year-old homeless man was found in La
Marque, a small city near Galveston.
Local officials were looking into reports that a
family of six — four children and their great-grandparents — drowned
Sunday near Greens Bayou in east Houston. Virginia Saldivar, 59, said
her brother-in-law, Sam, crossed a bridge over the bayou as he was
driving her grandchildren and her husband’s parents to higher ground
when the current swept up the van.
As the van nosedived into the
water, Sam climbed out of the front seat and urged the children to open
the back doors. But the current moved too swiftly. As he grabbed on to a
tree limb, he watched the van disappear into the water.
“I just
want my babies,” said Saldivar, who is at her son’s house in Humble,
Texas. “We don’t have the bodies. We don’t know where the van is, if
it’s down in the bayou.”
Across the region, a navy of amateurs in kayaks,
motorboats, airboats and circular pool floats searched for stranded
survivors, sometimes persuading hardheaded homeowners that they needed
to leave their flooded homes.
Men and women, with grief and relief
written on their faces, waded out from the water with whole families in
tow, holding what belongings they could carry — sometimes babies and
pets, which they held delicately over the water. Lives depended on it.
In
Washington, President Trump, who planned to visit southern Texas on
Tuesday, predicted that federal aid would be delivered quickly.
“You’re
going to see very rapid action from Congress, certainly from the
president…. We think you’re going to have what you need and it’s going
to go fast,” Trump said at a news conference with the Finnish president
in Washington.
But he cautioned that the extent of the disaster was still unknown.
“It’s
a long road. Still pouring. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. I’ve
heard the word epic. I’ve heard historic. That’s what it is,” he said.
At
a news conference in Corpus Christi on Monday, Gov. Abbott emphasized
that the region’s journey to recovery was just beginning.
“There
is much to do,” he said. “This is a place that Texas and FEMA will be
involved in for a long, long time… We need to recognize it’s going to be
a new normal — a new and different normal for this entire region.”
By
Monday morning, 911 operators had received 56,000 calls, but the
backlog that left residents hanging on the telephone, calls unanswered,
was almost resolved, city officials said. Houston Police Chief Art
Acevedo said officers had rescued 2,000 people from flooding in the city
and 185 critical requests for help remained pending.
“Our goal is to complete the rescues of all critical missions today,” Acevedo said.
“It’s
still a very dangerous situation out there,” Houston Fire Chief Samuel
Pena said, noting that there had been 290 water rescues since midnight
and his department also had pending calls. “We’re expecting more rain.
We’re expecting the demand for our services is going to increase.”
By Monday afternoon, nearly 7,000 people filled
the two main Houston-area shelters, and local officials were looking
for another major shelter to house the streams of displaced residents.
Houston
braced for yet more water as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened
two swollen flood-control reservoirs early Monday. The corps said it
needed to undertake a controlled release of water from the Addicks and
Barker reservoirs to limit the scope of the disaster.
Even with the controlled release, the
reservoirs were rising at a rate of 4 inches an hour, said Edmund Russo,
deputy district engineer for programs and project management for the
Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District.
“It could create
additional problems, additional flooding,” Houston Mayor Sylvester
Turner said at a news conference Monday. “People who were not in a
crisis state yesterday may find themselves in a crisis state today.”
Strong currents proved a challenge Monday
morning as half a dozen volunteers with a pontoon boot tried to save 20
people, including children and the elderly, trapped in a flooded
neighborhood in Spring, at the northern edge of Houston.
People
called out for help from the upper levels of two-story homes. But the
40-foot boat could save only a dozen at a time. After they launched to
attempt the rescue, a Harris County deputy constable ran up to the crew,
frantic. Authorities planned to release more water from Lake Conroe to
the north that would overwhelm the creek, he said.
The boat retreated without saving anyone.
“We
couldn't get them,” Mandi Davis, 36, of Spring said when she landed.
“The current was too strong and the water was too deep. They're going to
have to get airlifted out.”
Genesis Rivas, 20, and her family were
disappointed to see the volunteers return empty-handed. Seven of her
relatives were stranded, including her grandmother and two children,
ages 4 and 2. She estimated 200 people were trapped on her street.
“We're worried about the kids," she said as the group huddled under an umbrella near the would-be rescuers. "Hay mucha agua
— the water is too strong," she told a relative in a mix of Spanish and
English. Her sister watched astonished as an Austin special operations
rescue crew arrived, checked the water and departed.
“They're just
going to leave the people there?” said Odaly Ticas, 23. “It's more than
200 people. There was a cop with a boat just here. I don't know why
they left.”
With forecasters predicting that the Brazos River, which
runs southwest of Houston, would crest at 59 feet — topping its record
of 54.7 feet — local officials on Sunday urged residents in low-lying
areas to leave their homes to find safer ground.
“Evacuate immediately,” the city of Rosenberg urged residents on Twitter.
On Sunday night, Fort Bend County Judge Robert Hebert issued mandatory evacuation orders for more districts.
“Fifty-nine
feet represents at least an 800-year flood event, and there’s no levee
designed to prevent an 800-year flood,” he said at a news conference.
As
many as 100,000 residents in Fort Bend — about 20% of the county’s
population — were under voluntary and mandatory evacuations, he said.
In Houston, the police chief urged residents to
be patient, saying it was still extremely difficult to reach those who
were stranded in flooded homes.
“You know, the dams are about to
open and that’s not music to my ears, I can tell you that much,” Acevedo
said on a livestream video late Sunday as he cruised the city’s
southwest freeway in the dark amid torrential rain.
“It’s
amazing,” he said. “They said it was going to be a five-day event, and
I’m telling you, Harvey’s going to make us sweat every single day.”
By Monday evening, the National Hurricane Center
in Miami said Harvey’s center was 55 miles east of Port O’Connor and
slowly moving east-southeast at 3 mph. On Tuesday, it is expected to
gradually turn northeast toward the shore of the middle and upper Texas
coasts.
As Harvey moved closer to neighboring Louisiana, bringing
up to 25 inches of rain in the southwest part of the state, Trump
declared “emergency conditions” in the state.
Just a few inches of
rain could cause serious problems in New Orleans, which is still
recovering from flooding after thunderstorms this month overwhelmed the
city's drainage system.
Hundreds of people who were stranded at
Houston's Hobby Airport arrived in Dallas late Sunday on specially
approved "rescue flights."
David Best, 60, of Cedar Hill, outside
Dallas, got stuck after a weeklong vacation with friends in Belize. He
slept on the floor, ate rationed burritos from the only restaurant open —
Pappasito's — and hoped for relief.
“I felt sorry for the airport
employees who were there and got trapped,” he said after his Southwest
flight arrived at Dallas’ Love Field. “It doesn't look like it's going
to be over for some time. They're talking about that storm coming right
up through the center of Houston again.”
Several
years ago, little was known about the StingRay, a powerful surveillance
device that imitates the function of a cell tower and captures the
signals of nearby phones, allowing law enforcement officers to sweep
through hundreds of messages, conversations and call logs.
The
secrecy around the technology, which can ensnare the personal data of
criminals and bystanders alike, spurred lawsuits and demands for public
records to uncover who was using it and the extent of its capabilities.
In California, a 2015 law requires law enforcement agencies to seek
permission at public meetings to buy the devices, and post rules for
their use online.
But a Los Angeles Times review of records from
20 of the state’s largest police and sheriff’s departments, plus the
Alameda County district attorney’s office, found some agencies have been
slow to follow or have ignored the law. Several that partner with
federal agencies to work on cases are not subject to the law’s reporting
requirements. The result is that little information on StingRay use is
available to the public, making it hard to determine how wide a net the
surveillance tools cast and what kind of data they gather.
Who has stingrays
Out
of 21 law enforcement agencies surveyed, 12 were found to own or have
access to a StingRay or similar device. Nine of those agencies had
developed and released online public polices.
Department
Device
Policies
LAPD
OWN
YES
Long Beach Police
OWN
YES
L.A. County Sheriff
OWN
YES
San Diego Police
OWN
YES
San Jose Police
OWN
YES
Fresno Police
ACCESS**
NO
Sacramento Police
OWN
YES
Sacramento County Sheriff
OWN
YES
Oakland Police
ACCESS**
YES
Alameda district attorney's office
OWN
YES
Santa Ana Police
ACCESS**
NO
Anaheim Police
OWN
YES
**Officers don't operate the stingray but work with other agencies that may
Source: L.A. Times review of public records
The
Times reviewed more than 400 documents it received from public
information requests, including grant proposals, purchase orders and
memos on the use of StingRays and similar devices generically called
“stingrays” or “dirtboxes.”
The devices, which cost between
$242,000 and $500,000, are primarily marketed for preventing and
responding to terrorist threats, but the documents suggest they are used
most frequently in felony criminal cases, such as burglaries, murders
and kidnappings.
Out of 21 law enforcement entities The Times
surveyed, 12 either owned stingrays or used or had access to them
through partner agencies. Nine owned the surveillance devices, and each
of them posted public policies online as required by law. Three of the
nine went a step further to conduct annual reporting audits that showed
when and in what cases the devices were used.
But some stingray
policies posted by the law enforcement agencies revealed little about
the devices besides noting they were in use. Other agencies took months
to post their stingray guidelines online. The Los Angeles Police
Department, which owns a stingray, updated its public safety policies to
include its stingray guidelines only after questions from The Times.
Data
on stingray purchases and use have long been difficult to come by, a
problem the 2015 law requiring more public accountability was meant to
correct — and has yet to fix. California police would have to disclose the use of more surveillance devices under this proposed law>>
The
Times found that the nine agencies that own stingrays bought them
between 2006 and 2013, mostly with federal grant money or under programs
or agreements that prohibited any public disclosure, following a
national trend. Local tax dollars weren’t used on the purchases, and
city and county officials didn’t ask about them in a public forum.
Just
two of the 21 law enforcement agencies polled by The Times have ever
publicly discussed buying new devices before city or county officials:
Santa Clara (which did not buy a device) and Alameda counties.
And
only one agency, the Oakland Police Department, has gathered input from
the public to develop guidelines for stingray use, which isn’t required
under the 2015 law.
“Any tool can be used for good or bad,” said
Brian Hofer, chairman of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission, which
helped establish the surveillance policies. “This is the most
controversial piece of equipment that we know about, and they should not
be used in the dark.” The
StingRay II gives off the strongest wireless signal in an area,
tricking nearby phones, tablets and laptops to connect. (Associated
Press)
A device cloaked in secrecy
Stingrays
tend to be the size of small briefcases and mimic the function of cell
towers. They give off the strongest wireless signal in an area, tricking
nearby phones, tablets and laptops to connect.
Investigators can
target the location data of specific phones, allowing them to track
suspects and their associates. They can also sweep up communications
over a wide area. How much and what types of data they collect —
location information, audio or images — depends on how the devices are
designed and how law enforcement agencies use them. The
technology has been used for about 20 years by federal, state and local
law enforcement, often secretly, under manufacturer agreements that
typically prohibit agencies from disclosing the purchases.
The
public did not learn about the existence of the equipment until 2011,
after an inmate in federal prison, Daniel Rigmaiden, spent three years
scouring government records and meeting transcripts on a hunch that
investigators used some kind of secret device to catch him.
Rigmaiden,
a native of Seaside, Calif., who hadn’t had a stable living situation,
was arrested in Phoenix for filing fake tax returns. Police were able to
find him through tracking an old Verizon wireless card he seldom used
to connect online.
“It wasn’t just that [investigators] were able
to get historical call data from Verizon,” said Linda Lye, an attorney
for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed an amicus brief in
support of his case. “They were able to pinpoint him to a particular
apartment in a particular apartment building, which was far more
precise.” State bill requiring California police to disclose surveillance equipment clears its first hurdle>>
In
2015, California lawmakers passed the sweeping Electronic
Communications Privacy Act, which prohibited any investigative body in
the state from forcing businesses to turn over digital communications
without a warrant. That same year, state Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo)
introduced legislation to compel local law enforcement agencies to
disclose more information about the use of stingrays in California.
“Our
country has a rich history of democracy and civilian oversight,” Hill
told a Senate judiciary committee that May. “The stealthy use of these
devices undercuts the very nature of our government.”
The law,
which took effect in January 2016, requires cities and counties that
operate a stingray to create guidelines for how and when officers use
the equipment. Any agency that wants to buy a device must first receive
approval at a public hearing. Investigators can target the data of specific phones. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
Opening access to information
The
state law helped open up some public access to information about how
and where the devices are used. Privacy advocates and lawyers have kept
up the public pressure in some cities and counties, particularly in the
Bay Area, calling on officials to put ordinances and guidelines in place
to bar police from collecting data from those not under investigation.
Under
most of those policies, officers can use the technology only when it is
critical to a case and is approved by higher-ranking officers, or in
emergency situations such as natural disasters. Investigators are also
required to obtain search warrants. Any data not considered official
evidence can’t be sought, recorded or stored. Officers must delete or
destroy all information gathered by the equipment related to an
investigation at the end of the period in which they’re authorized to
use the technology.
Three agencies keep track of when officers use
a stingray — the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the San Jose
Police Department and the Alameda County district attorney’s office. But
their data offer few details about the cases.
In Los Angeles
County, a report from the sheriff’s office showed deputies followed
state law and obtained a search warrant in nearly all 138 investigations
that required a cell site simulator in 2015, and 38 investigations in
2016, the majority of which were murder cases.
In that time, the
device helped officers arrest 70 suspects and find one crime victim.
Sheriff’s Department officials declined to disclose further information
or records on those cases.
The
Alameda County district attorney’s office, which purchased a device to
be operated by the Sheriff’s Department and other area police agencies,
said the stingray had not been used as of January.
The San Jose
Police Department bought a $500,000 stingray in June 2013, and used it
about 20 times between early September 2016 and June 2017.
Law
enforcement officers in Oakland and San Jose, as well as several other
California cities, say the law requiring them to disclose use of the
devices has allowed them to ease community fears over what the
technology can and can’t do.
“You watch TV and you’d think that we
are sucking their phones dry of all the images, of all the texts, of
all the pictures and emails,” said San Jose Police Lt. Steve Lagorio,
who crafted guidelines for stingray use with the city attorney’s office.
“But we are not. We don’t have that capability.”
The cellphone
interceptor at his department is strictly used to target the phones of
individual suspects, and Lagorio said he doubted any local law
enforcement agencies used the equipment to do much more than that. A
traditional cellphone tower. Cell tower interceptors, often called
"stingrays" or "dirtboxes," tend to be the size of small briefcases and
mimic traditional cell towers. (Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)
Calls for oversight
Privacy
advocates and lawyers say a state agency is needed for oversight to
ensure law enforcement agencies are following the law and post their own
guidelines.
Most of the records on purchases and grant proposals
reviewed by The Times were highly redacted, providing little insight
into how their equipment is designed and what it can collect.
The
LAPD provided purchase orders and invoices that show the department
first obtained price quotes for stingray equipment in 2004, but it is
unclear when it acquired the technology. LAPD officials said only that
the stingray was not deployed due to technical malfunction issues, but
declined to elaborate.
Other records from the Police Department
show it obtained another stingray in June 2012, but the department
declined to release additional information on the purchase, including
its cost.
It was used more than 21 times in routine criminal
investigations over four months in 2012, according to LAPD records that
were first obtained by the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit that
works to advance free speech and open-records laws.
In response to
an information request regarding its purchases of stingray devices, the
San Francisco Police Department provided heavily redacted records,
including a 2012 grant proposal and shipping receipt showing the
purchase of “specialized surveillance equipment” in 2007.
The
department also gave The Times a document indicating a stingray was
bought with 2009 federal grant funds. But a spokesman said the
department did not have any public policies on the technology because
the equipment was not in use.
Seventeen of the 21 agencies polled
by The Times said they did not keep or declined to provide data on how
often and in what types of cases they used stingrays.
Privacy
advocates point to a loophole in the law that allows some law
enforcement agencies to avoid reporting their use of the devices. Police
departments that partner with another agency that owns and uses a
stingray in an investigation are not required to publish their own
guidelines for using the equipment.
The Santa Ana and Fresno
police departments, for example, said they did not have any records on
the use and policies of surveillance devices. But both departments
acknowledge they work with agencies that do have them, including the FBI
and the U.S. Marshals Service, and might have indirect access to the
data they produce.
“Our officers don’t use the equipment, but we
often look for fugitive hunters,” Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna
said. “Anaheim [police] may have one, the U.S. Marshals may have one.…
They do help us catch fugitives, but whether they have one — you’d have
to ask them.” A
new proposal by state Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), left, would
expand the state’s transparency laws on StingRays and extend it to all
surveillance devices. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
Increasing transparency
This
legislative session, a new proposal by Sen. Hill would expand the
state’s disclosure law on stingrays to all surveillance devices,
including facial recognition software, drones and social media monitors.
Senate
Bill 21 would require law enforcement agencies to disclose not only the
use of the surveillance equipment, but the use of any information
obtained from the devices.
Civil rights lawyers and advocates have
supported the measure, saying transparency is necessary at a time when
concerns over surveillance of immigrant and Muslim communities have
risen under the Trump administration.
The legislation was
narrowly approved by the state Senate, with heavy opposition from law
enforcement officials who argued it would give criminals a road map to
police agencies’ crime-fighting technology.
Its prospects of
passage in the Legislature are unclear. Hill says he understands the
technology has many benefits for law enforcement.
“[But] we need
people — we need agencies — to be accountable, and we need civilian
bodies to create that accountability standard,” he said.
Monday, August 28, 2017
By Amanda Ruggeri
Scan a map of the London Underground for the first time, and you’ll likely notice that it is more than the ground-breaking design that seems imaginative. The names of the stations, too, can seem curiously, even bizarrely, whimsical. Some seem suited better to a medieval fantasy (Knightsbridge, Queensway) or a children’s book (Piccadilly Circus, Elephant & Castle) – and others still make Londoners giggle (Shepherd’s Bush, Cockfosters).
But these names weren’t chosen simply to give city-dwellers an alternate world to imagine as they hurtle beneath the capital. Some of their origins, in fact, date back millennia.
We’ve chosen 10 of our favourites to find out where their names really come from.
At some point in its history, this name lost an ‘n’ (Credit: Alamy)
Covent Garden: The name for this Tube station (as well as the shopping arcade, opera hall and West End neighbourhood) would be almost self-explanatory – if it weren’t for the ‘n’ that went walkabout at some point since the Middle Ages. By the 13th Century, the site was a walled-off area of orchards and gardens which belonged to the monks of Westminster Abbey. They referred to it as “the garden of the Abbey and Convent” and then, of course, as “Convent Garden”. Seized (and given away) by King Henry VIII after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, it later was laid out as a residential quarter – one that had earned a reputation far different from its religious roots by the 17th Century, when it was a notorious red-light district (as enshrined in William Hogarth’s engraving of the area’s Rose Tavern brothel). Since cleaned up and now one of London’s best-known tourist attractions, Covent Garden is home to a Tube stop of the same name which serves the Piccadilly Line.
If the name weren’t enough, the frontage now at the shopping centre outside of the station adds extra whimsy (Credit: Alamy)
Elephant & Castle: One of the more whimsical (and perplexing) station names, this one in south London, oddly enough, most likely comes from the Worshipful Company of Cutlers – a medieval guild of craftsmen who made swords and knives. Granted in 1622, their crest included an elephant… carrying a castle. It’s usually believed that the elephant referred to the ivory that they used for their handles. And the castle? Possibly included to show the scale of an elephant, as few Europeans in the Middle Ages would have ever seen the creature before. Given that the cutlers likely supplied arms to King Henry V at the decisive Battle of Agincourt in 1415, though, there might be an argument that the elephant here, with the tower on its back, is a symbol of support for the state.
Either way, when an inn called the Elephant and Castle operated here by the 18th Century, it was likely in homage to cutlers in the area, writes Cyril M Harris in his book What's in a Name?: Origins of Station Names on the London Underground. The cutlers may be long-gone from the neighbourhood, and the pub may have been demolished in 1959, but their influence lives on at the nearby shopping centre – where the pub’s old frontage now hangs – as well as in the name of the station, which serves the Bakerloo and Northern Lines.
Even hardened Londoners see the humour in this name (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Cockfosters: The name may not sound particularly elegant, but its roots are surprisingly royal. The final stop heading north on the Piccadilly Line (as well as the name of the surrounding suburb), Cockfosters was once the location of Enfield Chase, a royal park home to nearly 8,000 acres and 3,000 deer – as well as to foresters, who protected the park from would-be poachers or woodcutters. The word for the chief forester? Cock forester. The word ‘cockfoster’ was first recorded in 1524, and in 1613, a house, likely the head forester’s lodge, was written down with the same name.
Oddly, this name has more to do with a Saxon chieftain than it does with the sound of tooting (Credit: Alamy)
Tooting Bec: There may be plenty of cars and buses honking in the south London neighbourhood of Tooting (home of the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan). But the area – along with its Underground stations on the Northern Line, Tooting Broadway and Tooting Bec – doesn’t get its name from modern noise: it goes back more than 1,300 years.
When the Anglo-Saxons conquered Britain in the 5th Century, they transformed not only its society, but its language – which we now know as Old English. Remnants of their rule remain inscribed in maps of not only London, but Britain; the Anglo-Saxon suffix ‘-ham’ (as in Birmingham) meant homestead, for example, while ‘-ton’ (like Brighton) referred to a farm. The ending ‘-ing’, on the other hand, meant belonging to or associated with someone, or their followers. So Paddington was the farmstead belonging to Padda or his clan, Kennington was that of Cēna’s people – and Tooting, first recorded in the 7th Century, belonged to Tota or his friends.
Tooting Bec owes the last word of its name to this abbey in Normandy, France (Credit: Alamy)
When the Normans invaded in 1066, though, they seized Saxon properties to hand out among their loyalists… and tacked on new names accordingly. One winner in the land-grab was the abbey of Bec-Hellouin, in Normandy, which was granted the land that once belonged to a Saxon chief named Tota. All of which comes bundled in that nonsensical-sounding name today: Tooting Bec.
Despite its elegance, Knightsbridge likely does not get its name from anything to do with knights (Credit: Alamy)
Knightsbridge: Today, this area of west London, with the Tube stop of the same name, is known for its pricey flats and upmarket stores (both Harrods and Harvey Nichols have their flagships here). But as appropriately noble as it sounds, the name Knightsbridge – first recorded in 1046 as Cnihtebricge, evolving into Knyghtsebrugg by 1364 – recalls a much rougher past.
The word ‘bridge’ comes from Old English ‘brycġ’, of the same meaning. Here, it refers to a crossing over the West Bourne River – one of the ‘lost rivers’ of London, which was re-routed through an underground sewer in the 19th Century. A ‘knight’, on the other hand, meant a boy or young man, particularly one in someone’s employment. The young men referred to here might have been employed to keep up – or even defend – the bridge. Or perhaps they just loitered: “one explanation for the name Knightsbridge is that it was a place where the local yoof hung out”, writes Caroline Taggart in The Book of London Place Names. Things didn’t go much better for Knightsbridge over the ensuing centuries, when it was seen as out of the way enough to house lepers, slaughter animals or – in the 18th Century – for highwaymen to hold up passersby.
Even in the early 19th Century (as shown in this 1820 print), Knightsbridge remained a quiet outpost of London (Credit: Alamy)
Maida Vale: If the name conjures up images of English milkmaids and lush valleys, you’re half-right. The dip in land did strike locals as a ‘vale’. But this west London Tube stop and neighbourhood has nothing to do with ‘maiden’. (That’s probably for the best since, given the English penchant for irony, it should be little surprise that streets like Southwark’s Maiden Lane obtained their names thanks to once-numerous nearby brothels). Instead, Maida was a town in Calabria, Italy that became famous when the English crushed Napoleon’s allies in an 1806 battle. (Waterloo Station and Trafalgar Square were named for similar victories). A pub called the Hero of Maida, named in honour of the battle, has vanished, but not before lending its name to the street and – in 1915 – to the station along the Paddington Line.
No maidens were involved in the naming of this station (Credit: Alamy)
Aldgate: Today, glass-covered high-rises and bustling streets spread throughout Aldgate, the area in the east of the City of London. But the name of both the City ward and of two of the nearby Tube stations – Aldgate, which serves the Metropolitan and Circle Lines, and Aldgate East, along the Hammersmith & City and District – has been passed down from a time when the area would have looked very, very different. Around 190, when London was Londinium, the Romans walled the city; they also built six gates, including one here. Versions of these gates (and of the wall) existed into the 1700s. This one was known as Aldgate.
Aldgate may look modern – but the name itself is anything but (Credit: Alamy)
There are two likely explanations. One is that the name comes from ‘all-gate’, as unlike the other gates, this one didn’t charge a toll (so was ‘open to all’). Another is that a pub here served up ale for recent arrivals to the city – and so came to be called ‘ale-gate’. The gates themselves were torn down in the 1760s in an attempt to help congestion. But with the Moorgate and Aldgate Tube stations (not to mention Bishopsgate ward, Newgate Street and Ludgate Hill), they live on in the everyday language of commuting Londoners.
Few of the hundreds of people who access the Piccadilly Circus station each day know its name comes from a centuries-old joke (Credit: Alamy)
Piccadilly Circus: Forget acrobats and dancing poodles. This Tube station (and London landmark) doesn’t get its name from a long-forgotten fair, but rather from the alternate meaning of ‘circus’ to refer to a round junction where several streets meet. (This also explains Oxford Circus, the Tube station just a half mile northwest). The other half of its name, meanwhile, is a centuries-old bit of snark.
A ‘piccadill’ is a large, ruffled collar that was the height of fashion in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries – think portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. Creating piccadills was how one London tailor, named Robert Baker, made his fortune… and funded the construction of his grand house here in 1611. Apparently it was seen as a little too grand for a ‘lowly’ tailor, since it came to be known as Pickadilly Hall. The witty put-down stuck: when the junction was built here in 1819, it was called Piccadilly Circus. So, of course, was the Underground station when it opened in 1906.
The name of both this station and the road are a nod to one queen’s childhood pastime (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Queensway: Not named for just any queen, this station on the Central Line was – like the road it is located on – named after Queen Victoria. As you might expect for the longest-reigning monarch of her time (a record she held until Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II surpassed her in 2015), she did rather well in terms of etymological homage. In terms of transport alone, she was also, of course, honoured with Victoria station, the Victoria Line and numerous roads. But Queensway has an especially sweet story: named in her honour soon after she ascended to the throne, the road was where she rode horses as a child growing up in nearby Kensington Palace.
Did this name come from a pruned hawthorn bush? (Credit: Alamy)
Shepherd’s Bush: This area of west London is home to two Tube stops, Shepherd’s Bush on the Central Line and Shepherd’s Bush Market on the Circle and Hammersmith & City Lines, as well as an overground station. Despite how busy and well-connected it is today, this was once a rural area far from the centre of London. This makes one possible explanation for the odd-seeming name remarkably sensible: a ‘shepherd’s bush’ referred to the shelter that a shepherd would make by pruning a hawthorn bush. Some argue, though, that it comes from a personal name (it was recorded as Sheppards Bush Green in 1635) – which begs the question, of course, of who Sheppard was… and what made his bush so noteworthy.
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Originally published on http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20170208-how-tube-stations-got-their-hilarious-names
