Nota Bene

The LA Times reports:

Attorneys for former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona filed a motion Wednesday asking a judge to dismiss most of the charges against him, alleging federal prosecutors had no jurisdiction in the case.

The motion contends that California’s Fair Political Practices Commission adequately regulates the acceptance of gifts by elected officials — the basis for most of the charges against Carona — so the U.S. attorney’s office should not be allowed to prosecute him.

The Sacramento Bee reports:

Former Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona was caught on a wiretap plotting with a former top assistant to lie to a grand jury investigating him for public corruption, according to transcripts filed Friday by federal prosecutors.

Portions of an Aug. 13, 2007 conversation between Carona and former assistant sheriff Don Haidl show the two men discussing cash and gifts Carona received from Haidl and what they would do if other witnesses testified against them.

At the time, Haidl had already pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in the probe and was secretly cooperating with the government.

Prosecutors said the transcript shows Carona “admitted to receiving cash and gifts from Haidl and made statements to further an ongoing plan to obstruct justice, specifically the then-pending grand jury investigations.”

Carona’s attorney, Dean Steward, did not immediately return phone calls and an e-mail seeking comment.

Carona, 52, is accused of pocketing nearly $700,000 in bribes and kickbacks during his nine years at the helm of the nation’s fifth-largest sheriff’s department. He has pleaded not guilty to one count of conspiracy, three counts of mail fraud and two counts of witness tampering.

PC World reports:

Two civil liberties groups have filed a lawsuit in a federal court in California in response to complaints from travelers of excessive screenings at border-entry points, including inspections of the data on laptops, cell phones and other electronic devices.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

In the legal filing, the two groups ask the court to order the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division to release records relating to its policies and procedures on the “questioning, search and inspection” of travelers entering or returning to the U.S. at various ports of entry.

The ALC and the EFF, which are both based in San Francisco, said in a joint statement that they filed the suit under the Freedom of Information Act after the DHS didn’t respond to a FOIA request the two groups submitted last October. They added that they had requested the information from the DHS in response to increasing allegations of “excessive or repeated” screenings by CBP agents.

For instance, the ALC received more than 20 complaints over the past year from individuals who said they had been “grilled about their families, religious practices, volunteer activities, political beliefs, or associations” when returning to the U.S. from trips overseas, according to the statement.

Some of the people also claimed that CBP staffers inspected and sometimes copied the contents of their laptop files and cell phone directories without providing any reason for doing so, the ALC and the EFF said. The groups are seeking the information about the screening policies so they can assess whether they should take any legal or legislative actions to try to force the CBP to change its procedures.

DHS officials referred an inquiry seeking comment about the lawsuit and the earlier FOIA request to the CBP’s press office, which didn’t immediately return a phone call placed late in the afternoon Eastern time.

The Washington Post reports:

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

BetaNews.com reports:

Bringing his claims to Capitol Hill for the first time, former AT&T network technician Mark Klein appeared yesterday at a press conference to reiterate his astonishing claim: AT&T operated a 24 x 48-foot room in one of its network operations centers in San Francisco, where Klein discovered his employer was cooperating with the National Security Agency in the monitoring of all Internet traffic over a major backbone line.

“I have first-hand knowledge of the clandestine collaboration between one giant telecommunications company, AT&T, and the National Security Agency to facilitate the most comprehensive illegal domestic spying program in history,” Klein remarked in his press conference yesterday.

Klein’s allegations have been part of an ongoing class-action suit against AT&T since January 2006, funded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. While he was not able to witness everyday goings-on in the “Secure Room,” as an engineer, Klein was privy to how the room was wired. In a June 8 sworn deposition entered into evidence in this case, he described what he saw.

AP News reports:

The US Supreme Court announced Tuesday it would consider the constitutionality of lethal injections, which is used in almost all executions in the United States.

The court agreed to consider the cases of two men condemned to death in the Southern state of Kentucky amid growing controvesy over exactly how lethal injections are administered.

Some argue the executions are often slow and painful and contradict the constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The Sacramento Bee reports:

Should a California man who poses little threat to his neighbors remain behind bars because of his alleged ties to a terrorist group that threatens lives halfway around the world?

Federal prosecutors say yes. They argue Rahmat Abdhir, accused of helping extremists associated with al-Qaida in the Philippines, represents a “danger to the community” - even though that community is 7,500 miles away. They’ve asked a judge to keep him in a San Jose jail pending trial.

Legal experts are watching the federal case, which could set precedent for other terrorism suspects being held without bail by greatly expanding the legal definition of community. U.S. courts have traditionally defined a community as people within close geographic proximity.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel said he would decide next week whether to release Abdhir on bail pending his trial. Abdhir, 43, is accused of sending more than $10,000 and military gear to his brother, thought to be a high-ranking member of al-Qaida affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah.

The Sacramento Bee reports:

John McTiernan, director of such hit movies as “Die Hard” and “The Thomas Crown Affair,” requested a withdrawal Monday of his guilty plea in a Hollywood wiretaps case.McTiernan pleaded guilty in April 2006 to making “knowingly false” statements to an FBI agent about Anthony Pellicano, the celebrity private eye he admitted hiring to wiretap a business associate.

But before his expected sentencing before a federal judge Monday, McTiernan’s attorneys filed a motion to withdraw the plea, saying the filmmaker pleaded guilty because he didn’t receive adequate legal representation at the time.

The NY Times reports:

A federal judge yesterday struck down the parts of the recently revised USA Patriot Act that authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to use informal secret demands called national security letters to compel companies to provide customer records.

The law allowed the F.B.I. not only to force communications companies, including telephone and Internet providers, to turn over the records without court authorization, but also to forbid the companies to tell the customers or anyone else what they had done. Under the law, enacted last year, the ability of the courts to review challenges to the ban on disclosures was quite limited.

You can read the entire text of the decision here.

The Sacramento Bee reports:

Authorities arrested a 7-Eleven clerk after a man accused of her pocketing his winning lottery ticket worth $555,000, then handing him a $4 “prize” instead.

Rajinder Kaur, 40, was arrested this week on suspicion of grand theft, and the Mega Millions ticket was recovered, officials said.

The man who picked the winning numbers went to the convenience store in the Sacramento suburb to redeem his prize Aug. 16. He knew he had won something, but did know not how much.

The clerk told him it was worth $4 and kept his ticket.