ANONYMOUS - OUR VOICE

Here’s how police can get your data — even if you aren’t suspected of a crime

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2hHZGXK5f_WLcfZ72Jj4PRGG2Ag=/0x40:1800x982/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22751494/police_data_board_2.jpg" /></div>
If you’ve ever read a privacy policy, you may have noticed a section that says something about how your data will be shared with law enforcement, which means if the police demand it and have the necessary paperwork, they’ll likely get it. But maybe, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-attitudes-and-experiences-with-privacy-policies-and-laws/">like most American adults</a>, you don’t read privacy policies very carefully if at all. In that case, you might be surprised to learn how much of your data is in the hands of third parties, how much access law enforcement has to it, how it might be used against you, or what your rights are — if any — to prevent it.
Many of the Capitol insurrectionists might be discovering this now, as cases against them are built with evidence taken from internet services like Facebook and Google. While they left a <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22221285/trump-online-capitol-riot-far-right-parler-twitter-facebook">trail</a> of <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22218963/capitol-photos-legal-charges-fbi-police-facebook-twitter">digital evidence</a> for investigators (and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/01/11/955513539/how-online-sleuths-identified-rioters-at-the-capitol">internet</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/politics/internet-sleuths-january-6-insurrectionists/index.html">detectives</a>) to follow, not all of that data was publicly available. If you read through <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases">cases</a> of people charged with crimes relating to the events in Washington on January 6, you’ll find the FBI also obtained internal records from various social media platforms and mobile phone carriers.
But you don’t have to be an alleged insurrectionist for law enforcement to get data about you from another company. In fact, you don’t have to be suspected of a crime at all. The police are increasingly using tactics like reverse search warrants to grab the data of many people in the hope of finding their suspect among them. You might get swept up in one just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time or looked up the wrong search term. And you might never know that you got caught in the dragnet.
“Investigators are going to these providers without a suspect and asking for a broad set of information that is not targeted in order to basically identify suspects that they didn’t already have in mind,” Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel for the ACLU’s speech, privacy, and technology project, told Recode. “These more mass surveillance techniques are increasingly common.”
Basically, if a company collects and stores your data, then the police can probably get their hands on it. And when it comes to your digital life, there’s a lot of your data held by third parties out there to obtain. Here’s how they get it.
The good news is there are some privacy laws that govern if and how the government can get your data: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), first enacted in 1986, established these rules.
But the law is several decades old. While it has been updated since 1986, many of its tenets don’t really reflect how we use the internet today, or how much of our data stays in the hands of the companies that provide those services to us.
That means there are gray areas and loopholes, and for some things, the government doesn’t have to go through any legal processes at all. Law enforcement can and does <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22038383/dhs-cbp-investigation-cellphone-data-brokers-venntel">purchase location data</a> from data brokers, for instance. And while location data companies claim that their data has been de-identified, experts say it’s often possible to re-identify individuals.
“The notion is that if it’s available for sale, then it’s okay,” said Kurt Opsahl, deputy executive director and general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “Of course, one of the problems is that a lot of these data brokers <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/8/21311533/sdks-tracking-data-location">are getting information</a> without going through the consent process that you might want.”
And it’s not just location data. Facial recognition company Clearview AI’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/11/21131991/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-database-law-enforcement">entire business model</a> is to sell law enforcement agencies access to its facial recognition database, much of which was culled from publicly available photos Clearview scraped from the internet. Unless you live in a city or state that has outlawed facial recognition, it’s currently legal for the police to pay for your face data, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recognition-arrest.html">regardless of how flawed</a> the technology behind it may be.
This could change if something like the <a href="https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-paul-and-bipartisan-members-of-congress-introduce-the-fourth-amendment-is-not-for-sale-act-">Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act</a>, which bans law enforcement from purchasing commercially available data, were to become law. But for now, the loophole is open.
“One of the challenges with any technology law is technology evolves faster than the law,” Opsahl said. “It is always a challenge to apply these laws to a modern setting, but [ECPA] still has, all these many decades later, provided a solid privacy protection. There definitely could be improvements, but it’s still doing good work today.”
If you’re suspected of a crime and police are looking for evidence in your digital life, then ECPA says they must have a subpoena, court order, or warrant before a company is allowed to provide the data they’re requesting. That is to say, the company can’t just hand it over voluntarily. There are a few exceptions — for instance, if there’s reason to believe there’s imminent danger or a crime is in progress. But in the case of criminal investigations, those exceptions don’t apply.
Broadly, the legal process that investigators have to use depends on what data they’re looking for:
<ul>
<li>Subpoena: This gives investigators what’s known as subscriber information, such as your name, address, length of service (how long you’ve had your Facebook profile, for example), log information (when you’ve made phone calls or logged into and out of your Facebook account), and credit card information.</li>
<li>Court order, or “D” order: The D refers to 18 US Code § 2703(d), which says a court may order internet service providers to give law enforcement any records about the subscriber other than the content of their communications. So that could include who emailed you and when, but not the contents of the actual email.</li>
<li>Search warrant: This gives law enforcement access to content itself, specifically stored content, which includes emails, photos, videos, posts, direct messages, and location information. While the ECPA says that emails stored for over 180 days can be obtained with just a subpoena, that rule dates back to before people routinely kept their emails on another company’s server (how far back does your Gmail inbox go?) or used it as a backup. At this point, several courts have ruled that a warrant is necessary for email content regardless of how old the emails are, and service providers generally demand a warrant before they’ll agree to hand them over.</li>
</ul>
If you want to get an idea of how often the government requests data from these companies, some of them do release transparency reports that give basic details about how many requests they get, what type, and how many of those requests they fulfill. They also show how much those requests have increased over the years. Here’s <a href="https://transparency.fb.com/data/government-data-requests">Facebook’s transparency report</a>, here’s <a href="https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?hl=en_US">Google’s</a>, and here’s <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Flegal%2Ftransparency%2Fus.html&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Frecode%2F22565926%2Fpolice-law-enforcement-data-warrant" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html\u0026referrer=vox.com\u0026sref=https://www.vox.com/recode/22565926/police-law-enforcement-data-warrant\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22329967__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html","referrer":"vox.com","sref":"https://www.vox.com/recode/22565926/police-law-enforcement-data-warrant","xcust":"___vx__p_22329967__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Apple’s</a>. The EFF also <a href="https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2017">put out a guide in 2017</a> showing how several tech companies respond to government requests.
So, let’s say you’ve decided that you will never commit a crime so law enforcement obtaining your data will never be an issue for you. You’re wrong.
As mentioned above, your data could be included in a purchase from a data broker. Or it may be scooped up in a digital dragnet, also known as a reverse search warrant, where police request data about a large group of people in the hope of finding their suspect within them.
“These are novel techniques to discover things that never could have been discovered in the past, and which have the capacity to rope in innocent people,” Granick, of the ACLU, said.
Two examples of this: where you went and what you searched for. In a <a href="https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/05/geofence-warrants-and-the-fourth-amendment/">geofence warrant</a>, law enforcement gets information about all the devices that were in a certain area at a certain time — say, where a crime occurred — then narrows them down and gets account information for the device(s) they think belong to their suspect(s). For <a href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/google-is-giving-data-to-police-based-on-search-keywords-court-docs-show/">keyword warrants</a>, police may ask a browser for all the IP addresses that searched for a certain term related to their case and then identify a possible suspect from that group.
These situations still represent a <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/08/new-federal-court-rulings-find-geofence-warrants-unconstitutional-0">legal gray area</a>. While some judges have called them a Fourth Amendment violation and refused the government’s requests for warrants, others have allowed them. And we’ve seen at least one instance where reverse search warrants have led to the <a href="https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/google-geofence-location-data-avondale-wrongful-arrest-molina-gaeta-11426374">arrest of an innocent person</a>.
Another troubling aspect to this is that, depending on what’s being requested and why, you may never know if police requested your data from a company or if that company gave it to them. If you’re charged with a crime and that data is used as evidence against you, then you’ll know. But if your data is obtained through purchase from a data broker or as part of a bulk request, you might not. If a company tells you that law enforcement wants your data and gives you advance notice, then you can try to fight their request yourself. But investigators can get gag orders that prevent companies from telling users anything, at which point you’re left to hope that the company fights for you.
According to their transparency reports, Google, Apple, and Facebook do appear to fight or push back sometimes — for example, if they think a request is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/06/google-relieved-of-duty-to-search-for-relevant-evidence-in-executing-search-warrant/">overly broad or burdensome</a> — so not every request is successful. But that’s them. It’s not necessarily true of everyone.
“Not every provider is a Google or a Facebook that has a deep-bench legal department with serious expertise in federal surveillance law,” Granick said “Some providers, we don’t know what they do. Maybe they don’t do anything. That’s a real issue.”
The majority of government requests even to the biggest companies in the world result in the disclosure of at least some user data, and we’ve seen cases where someone’s data was given to the government and that person didn’t know for years. For instance, the Department of Justice obtained Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff’s and Eric Swalwell’s subscriber records (and that of their family members) <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/6/11/22530070/trump-doj-apple-data-schiff">from Apple</a> through a grand jury subpoena. This occurred in 2017 and 2018, but the Congress members only found out about it in June 2021, when the gag order expired.
If your information is swept up in something like a reverse search warrant but you’re never identified as a suspect or charged, you may never know about it at all if the company that provided it doesn’t tell you. Opsahl, of the EFF, said that most of the major tech companies post transparency reports and it’s considered an industry best practice to do so. That doesn’t mean they all follow it, nor do they have to.
When it comes to your data held by third parties, you don’t have much control or say over if and what they’ll disclose. You’re relying on laws written before the modern internet existed, a judge’s interpretation of them (assuming it goes before a judge, which subpoenas may not), and the companies that have your data to fight them. If you’re notified about a pending order, you might be able to fight it yourself. That’s no guarantee you’ll win.
The best way to protect your data is to use services that don’t get it in the first place. Privacy concerns, including the ability to communicate free from government surveillance, have made encrypted messaging apps like <a href="https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/how-signal-became-most-popular-app-in-world-overnight-why-it-matters.html">Signal</a> and private browsers like <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/duckduckgo-quest-prove-online-privacy-possible/">DuckDuckGo</a> popular in recent years. They minimize the data they collect from users, which means they don’t have much to give if investigators try to collect it. You can also ask services to delete your data from their servers or not upload it to them in the first place (assuming those are options). The FBI can’t get much from Apple’s iCloud if you haven’t uploaded anything to it.
At that point, investigators will have to try to get the data they want from your device ... which is a <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/24/21133600/police-fbi-phone-search-protests-password-rights">whole other can of legal worms</a>.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22565926/police-law-enforcement-data-warrant">https://www.vox.com/recode/22565926/police-law-enforcement-data-warrant</a>

vox Here’s how police can get your data — even if you aren’t suspected of a crime

If you’ve ever read a privacy policy, you may have noticed a section that says something about how your data will be shared with law enforc...

Biden’s fight to de-Trumpify the courts, explained

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PtUK7X5YtXSDBbVkItngLE5AH-c=/0x0:4768x2496/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22731614/1232585950.jpg" /></div>
Joe Biden probably knows more about picking judges than any new president in American history.
A longtime member and former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden oversaw hundreds of judicial confirmations. He chaired the 1987 hearing that successfully convinced the Senate to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/08/us/washington-talk-the-bork-hearings-for-biden-epoch-of-belief-epoch-of-incredulity.html">reject Judge Robert Bork’s nomination</a> to the Supreme Court; then presided over a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/politics/joe-biden-anita-hill.html">far less successful hearing</a> that preceded Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation in 1991.
As president, he’s approached judicial selection with a seriousness of purpose that hasn’t been seen in a Democratic White House since at least <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/jimmy-carter-diversity-judges-donald-trump-court-nominees.html">the Carter administration</a>. With eight Biden judges currently sitting on the federal bench, including three court of appeals judges, Biden’s appointed more judges at this point in his presidency than any newly elected president since Richard Nixon.
Biden’s <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-vacancies">nominated 22 more</a>, and he has the potential to shape much of the federal bench very rapidly. Currently, there are 82 vacancies throughout the federal judiciary, nearly 10 percent of the bench, although most of these vacancies are on relatively low-ranking district courts.
When I speak with liberal advocates jaded by years of failed efforts to get Democrats — including the Obama White House — to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges">take judicial appointments as seriously as Republicans</a>, their attitudes toward Biden range from measured enthusiasm to something approaching ecstasy. Though Biden received some criticism from his left for <a href="https://prospect.org/justice/bidens-jekyll-and-hyde-judicial-nominations/">nominating two management-side employment lawyers</a> to vacant seats in New Jersey, nearly all of the advocates that I spoke with were thrilled with Biden’s overall record on judicial nominations.
Former Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, who now leads the liberal American Constitution Society, told me that Biden’s judicial confirmation efforts are off to a “tremendous start.” Daniel Goldberg of the Alliance for Justice, an organization that spent the Trump years producing research memos warning about the former president’s nominees, summarized his opinion of Biden’s approach to judges in a single word: “outstanding.”
And yet, while liberal veterans of the judicial wars now have the president many of them have hoped for their entire career, Biden may have arrived five years too late. The sad reality for the new president is that he’s likely to need every ounce of political skill and institutional knowledge that he gained after decades of confirming judges to pull the judiciary back from where his predecessor left it. And he may still fail to do so.
Biden had been president less than a week when the first Trump judge <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/2/25/22299197/trump-judge-drew-tipton-biden-deportation-immigration-texas-united-states-injunction-supreme-court">handed down a decision sabotaging one of his policies</a>. The judge was Drew Tipton, a federal judge in Texas with only a few months of experience on the bench, and the sabotaged policy was a 100-day pause on deportations that the administration announced on Biden’s first day in office.
Tipton’s opinion explaining why he blocked the deportation moratorium <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/2/25/22299197/trump-judge-drew-tipton-biden-deportation-immigration-texas-united-states-injunction-supreme-court">flouted decades of precedent</a>. And Tipton has hardly been the only judge to behave this way during Biden’s still-young presidency.
J. Campbell Barker, another Trump judge in Texas, handed down a decision in February that, if taken seriously, could <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/2/26/22302149/eviction-moratorium-trump-judge-campbell-barker-terkel-cdc-commerce-clause-constitution">strip the federal government</a> of its power to regulate the national housing market. In July, Judge Andrew Hanen, a judge whose nativist inclinations are so widely known that <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/a-federal-judge-just-ordered-a-dox-attack-against-100-000-innocent-people-ed16979b9c6/">anti-immigrant plaintiffs seek out his courtroom</a> to ensure they will receive a sympathetic hearing, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/7/17/22581276/federal-judge-andrew-hanen-daca-ruling">struck down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program</a> that allows hundreds of thousands of immigrants to remain in the country.
The Supreme Court spent the first days of summer <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/6/23/22547182/supreme-court-union-busting-cedar-point-hassid-john-roberts-takings-clause">busting unions</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/7/1/22559318/supreme-court-americans-for-prosperity-bonta-citizens-united-john-roberts-donor-disclosure">protecting conservative political donors</a>, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/7/1/22559046/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-brnovich-dnc-samuel-alito-elena-kagan-democracy">gutting the Voting Rights Act</a>. The Court also spent the last couple of years laying the groundwork to <a href="https://www.vox.com/22276279/supreme-court-war-joe-biden-agency-regulation-administrative-neil-gorsuch-epa-nondelegation">strip the Biden administration of much of its power</a> to regulate the workplace, expand access to health care, and protect the environment.
President Biden, in other words, began his presidency deep in a hole. He faces a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court, and dozens of Trump’s lower court judges eager to make a name for themselves (and potentially <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges">score a promotion in a future Republican administration</a>) by undercutting Democratic policies. He is the heir to an Obama administration that, at least early on, treated judicial confirmations as an annoying distraction from other business, and to a Trump administration that treated the judiciary as its most lasting legacy.
And that legacy could include disrupting Biden’s entire presidency.
President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees faced several structural obstacles that do not hinder Biden’s. When Obama took office, the filibuster enabled Republicans to block any nominee who didn’t have supermajority support in the Senate, and it enabled the GOP to slow the Senate’s business to an <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/courts/news/2010/09/28/8327/the-tyranny-of-the-timepiece/">excruciating crawl</a> even when Democrats did have the 60 votes necessary to break a filibuster.
The Senate changed these rules to allow judges to be confirmed by a simple majority, and to <a href="https://www.vox.com/22260164/filibuster-senate-fix-reform-joe-manchin-kyrsten-sinema-cloture-mitch-mcconnell">limit the minority party’s power to delay</a> most confirmation votes.
Then-Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) — like so many other Democrats who cling to their own <a href="https://www.vox.com/22454648/justice-stephen-breyer-supreme-court-retirement-book-harvard-court-packing-voting-democracy">idiosyncratic</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/22319564/filibuster-reform-manchin-democrats-nuclear-option">notions</a> of how institutions should function at the expense of governance — insisted on <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges">giving Republican senators veto power</a> over anyone nominated to a federal judicial vacancy in their state by taking an <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-imaginary-rule-that-keeps-obamas-judges-from-being-confirmed-2926a0c0452f/">unusually expansive view</a> of a Senate tradition known as the “blue slip.” The current chair, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), will <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/17/court-nominees-democrats-469500">not allow Republicans to veto</a> at least some of Biden’s nominees, especially his nominees to powerful appellate courts.
Obama also had to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in his first year, which made it difficult for the White House or the Senate to pay as much attention to lower court nominees.
But even if Obama was dealt a more difficult hand on judicial confirmations than Biden, he played that hand terribly.
At least in the first year of his presidency, Obama staffed his White House with senior officials who either treated the process of shepherding judges to confirmation as a chore, or who lacked experience with judicial politics.
Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first chief of staff, reportedly told a room full of activists that he didn’t “<a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-judiciary/214988-judges-are-not-neutral-umpires">give a fuck about judicial appointments</a>.” Greg Craig, Obama’s first White House counsel, was a former State Department official who showed more interest in <a href="https://prospect.org/justice/courts-obama-dropped-ball/">Obama’s worthy, but failed, effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay</a> than in choosing judges.
Obama, meanwhile, prevailed on Craig to hire Cassandra Butts, a personal friend and law school classmate of Obama’s with a distinguished career on Capitol Hill and in left-of-center politics. (Disclosure: In 2015, I interned on the Center for American Progress’s domestic policy team, which Butts led.) Craig made her his deputy overseeing judicial nominations.
Yet, while Butts was undoubtedly qualified to work in the White House, she had limited experience working in judicial politics. And her legislative background also fit in poorly in a White House counsel’s office that <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4nCiZ8mie8oC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=%22cassandra+butts%22+%26+%22greg+craig%22+%26+find+%26+job&source=bl&ots=qPnmKEKMAf&sig=ACfU3U0_w3LWEBAp_HeJ4JkeW8sou_zicg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiusbnPufTxAhWJKVkFHcJiAGIQ6AEwEHoECBEQAw#v=onepage&q=%22cassandra%20butts%22%20%26%20%22greg%20craig%22%20%26%20find%20%26%20job&f=false">placed credentials such as a Supreme Court clerkship</a> or practice at a white-shoe law firm on a pedestal. That appears to have diminished her influence.
The result of this mix of inexperience and indifference is that the early Obama White House was often slow to nominate judges. And it stumbled into traps that aides more familiar with judicial politics might have avoided.
Here’s an example: About two months into Obama’s presidency, the White House announced that it would nominate Indiana federal trial Judge David Hamilton to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Hamilton was Obama’s first judicial nominee, and the president intended to use Hamilton’s nomination to extend an olive branch to Republicans.
The New York Times described Hamilton as someone “who is said by lawyers to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/politics/17nominate.html">represent some of his state’s traditionally moderate strain</a>.” And Hamilton enjoyed the support of his home-state Republican Sen. Richard Lugar.
But, if the Obama White House had paid more attention to Hamilton’s record as a federal district judge, they would have known that he was not the sort of judge who could be sold to Republicans as a peace offering.
Among other things, Hamilton blocked an Indiana law that effectively <a href="https://casetext.com/case/a-womans-choice-east-side-womens-clinic-v-newman">required most abortion patients to make two trips to a clinic</a> before they could have an abortion. And he handed down a pair of religious freedom decisions that seemed designed to enrage Republican culture warriors. The first held that a state legislature <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4033800489367956741&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr">could not open its session with a prayer to “Jesus,”</a> because such a prayer preferences Christianity over other faiths. The second opinion explained that <a href="https://casetext.com/case/hinrichs-v-bosma-3">a prayer to “Allah” could be a permissible non-sectarian prayer</a>, because “Allah” is merely the Arabic word for “God.”
The point is not that Hamilton was wrong in any of these decisions, or that he should not have been confirmed to the Seventh Circuit. Hamilton is an excellent judge, and the rule of law depends on judges who are willing to hand down decisions that may make them unpopular. But a White House staffed with veterans of past judicial confirmation fights would have understood that a judge with Hamilton’s record on abortion and religion would trigger significant opposition from Republicans.
And trigger it he did. Republicans filibustered his nomination. When Hamilton was eventually confirmed, <a href="https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00350">every Republican senator except for Lugar opposed him</a>.
Though Obama’s judicial confirmations effort <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges">grew more sophisticated</a> later in his presidency, it never fully recovered from its early missteps. In eight years as president, Obama appointed only 55 federal appellate judges — just <a href="https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/search/advanced-search">one more than Trump appointed</a> in only four years in the White House.
The charitable interpretation of the Obama White House’s early missteps is that it had a lot on its plate. It was trying to dig the nation out of a catastrophic recession, and didn’t want to get bogged down in fights over judges. As Feingold told me, judicial nominations “got put on the back burner” during much of Obama’s presidency.
But President Biden faces at least as many challenges as Obama did during his first term in office. Biden also is trying to revive a stalled economy, and he’s doing so as the world seeks to curb what is hopefully a once-in-a-century pandemic. Plus, Biden faces an opposition party that increasingly views Democrats as illegitimate. Republicans worked hard to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/3/9/8177815/republicans-foreign-policy-sabotage">undermine Obama’s policy agenda</a>, but even the Obama-era Republican Party didn’t try to sabotage an investigation into a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pelosi-blocks-house-republicans-jordan-banks-serving-jan-6-panel-2021-07-21/">violent attempt to overthrow the United States government</a> and install Donald Trump as president.
And yet, with so many crises to confront at once, Biden has still confirmed more judges this early in his presidency than any other chief executive in the past half-century. He’s hired senior staff who understand judicial politics and take confirming judges very seriously. It is “clear that the White House counsel’s office and the Oval Office consider this a high priority,” said Feingold.
“Having [White House Chief of Staff] Ron Klain in the White House has been about the best thing we could have hoped for when it comes to judicial nominations,” according to Molly Coleman of the People’s Parity Project, a group that organizes law students and young lawyers to “<a href="https://www.peoplesparity.org/about/">unrig the legal system</a> and build a justice system that values people over profits.”
Klain oversaw President Bill Clinton’s judicial nominations efforts, including the confirmation of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Coleman told me that, when she took a course from Klain as a law student, it was clear that the future chief of staff “took pride” in the time he spent ushering Clinton’s nominees onto the bench.
He’s a far cry, in other words, from Rahm Emanuel. Klain has been one of the White House’s biggest cheerleaders for judicial confirmations.
<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
With the confirmation of Judge Griggsby, <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a> has now had more judges confirmed to the federal bench before July 1, then any President in the past 50 years! <a href="https://t.co/isXGhntLI4">https://t.co/isXGhntLI4</a>
— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) <a href="https://twitter.com/WHCOS/status/1405282861784080388?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 16, 2021</a></blockquote>
</div>
White House counsel Dana Remus reached out to Democratic senators a month before Biden was president to <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-courts-progressive-nominees_n_5fecc527c5b6e7974fd18321">enlist their local expertise in the often-arduous process of identifying judicial nominees</a> from individual states. And the Biden White House also <a href="https://demandjustice.org/demand-justice-praises-biden-selection-of-judicial-nominations-expert-paige-herwig/">hired Paige Herwig</a>, a former Senate Judiciary Committee staffer who also worked for the liberal judicial group Demand Justice, to oversee judicial nominations.
This is a team that knows what it is doing in picking and confirming judges.
When I spoke to liberal legal groups in 2020, I consistently heard that they had two requests from a Democratic White House regarding judges. They wanted nominees who were demographically diverse, but they also wanted nominees who had a <a href="https://www.vox.com/22233051/biden-courts-republican-trump-supreme-court-judicial-nominations-senate-dick-durbin">diversity of experience working to benefit the least fortunate</a>. A frequent complaint about President Obama was that he nominated too many partners at corporate law firms, and that he nominated too many prosecutors and not enough civil rights lawyers or public defenders.
Biden’s transition team signaled that he would meet these requests a month before he took office. In a <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-courts-progressive-nominees_n_5fecc527c5b6e7974fd18321">December 2020 letter</a> to Democratic senators, Remus told those lawmakers that “with respect to U.S. District Court positions, we are particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”
Thus far, the Biden White House has delivered on its goal of appointing judges from diverse backgrounds. One of Biden’s first judicial appointments was Judge Zahid Quraishi, the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/10/1005261268/zahid-quraishi-first-muslim-american-federal-judge-in-u-s">first Muslim American</a> to serve on the federal bench. In all of American history, only 11 Black women have served on a United States Court of Appeals. Three of them — Judges Ketanji Brown Jackson, Candace Jackson-Akiwumi, and Tiffany Cunningham — were appointed by Biden in the last six months.
Both Judges Jackson and Jackson-Akiwumi, moreover, are former public defenders, as is Eunice Lee, a Biden nominee to the Second Circuit. Myrna Pérez, another Biden nominee to that court, directs the voting rights project at the Brennan Center for Justice. Jennifer Sung, a Biden nominee to the Ninth Circuit, is a former union organizer and union-side litigator.
“People who in the past couldn’t even contemplate being judges” are now being nominated, Goldberg from the Alliance for Justice told me. In many cases (though <a href="https://www.peoplesparity.org/peoples-parity-project-statement-on-christine-ohearn-confirmation-hearing/">not in every case</a>), Biden is passing over the sort of high-dollar lawyers who are most likely to be politically connected in favor of more service-focused attorneys.
At least at the appellate level, moreover, the typical Biden nominee is someone who chose to spend much of their pre-judicial career in public service, despite having the sort of credentials that could have set them up for a much more lucrative career. Jackson, Jackson-Akiwumi, Lee, Pérez, and Sung all clerked for a federal appellate judge — an elite credential that is normally reserved for the most high-performing young lawyers — and Jackson also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
And yet, for all of his early successes, it remains to be seen whether Biden can keep up the pace.
One other thing that unites Biden’s nominees is that they largely hail from blue states with two Democratic senators. These are the easiest vacancies for a Democratic president to fill because allied lawmakers are more likely to cooperate with Biden in identifying potential nominees. But it’s also because of the legacy of an old patronage system that still gives senators outsized influence over nominees from their state.
Before the Jimmy Carter administration, the White House typically gave enormous deference to home-state senators when choosing federal judges — indeed, the Senate Judiciary Committee would often <a href="http://southernchanges.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/sc01-02_1204/sc01-02_002/">refuse to hold a hearing on a nominee</a> if the president tried to appoint someone other than the choice of the nominee’s home-state senator. President Carter weakened senators’ roles by setting up a <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/jimmy-carter-diversity-judges-donald-trump-court-nominees.html">now-defunct merit selection commission</a> to select court of appeals judges, but senators continue to play an outsized role in choosing trial judges even to this day.
The primary mechanism for maintaining this patronage system is the “<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges">blue slip</a>,” named after the blue pieces of paper home-state senators use to indicate whether they approve of a nominee. Under Sen. Leahy, home-state senators were allowed to veto any nominee to a federal judgeship in their state. But the committee’s current practice is to only allow senators to veto district judges, the lowest rank of federal judges who receive lifetime appointments.
But even a limited blue slip rule presents problems for Biden. It’s hard to imagine that senators like Josh Hawley (R-MO), who threw a fist up in <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/9/22222134/hawley-and-cruz-calls-to-resign-overturn-election">solidarity with the protesters</a> that later attacked the US Capitol in a failed effort to overturn Biden’s election, would consent to anyone nominated by Biden. And even many Republican senators who accept the results of the 2020 election are likely to prefer leaving an open judicial seat vacant to filling it with a Biden nominee.
Currently, there are vacant seats in <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-vacancies/current-judicial-vacancies">Texas, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Florida</a>, all of which have at least one Republican senator. Ultimately, it will be <a href="https://www.vox.com/22233051/biden-courts-republican-trump-supreme-court-judicial-nominations-senate-dick-durbin">up to Senate Judiciary Chair Durbin</a> to decide whether Republican senators should be allowed to veto nominees when they have no intention of letting Biden confirm anyone to a vacant seat.
A potentially even more difficult political problem for Biden is what he should do about Democratic senators who drag their feet when the White House seeks their input on potential nominees in their state. Or if they offer recommendations that do not comport with Biden’s values. Biden could simply go around such senators, but doing so carries its own risks. Especially in a Senate where Democrats enjoy the narrowest possible majority, there are obvious reasons why the White House may be reluctant to anger a Democratic senator.
There’s also a final, more pragmatic reason why the White House may prefer to work with home-state senators if they can. Senators are more likely to be familiar with the lawyers in their state than the president and his aides, and thus may be able to suggest outstanding candidates who would otherwise be overlooked.
There are potential workarounds if a senator refuses to provide such input — Zahra Mion with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund told me that “in Florida we’ve already seen some state legislative members set up commissions” to identify potential nominees, for example. But, because senators have historically advised presidents on judicial nominations, a senator is more likely to have already set up such a commission and established the relationships with their state bar that would allow them to provide good advice.
The elephant looming over Biden’s effort to shape the bench is that there’s always a degree of randomness to judicial selection. Biden — and <a href="https://www.vox.com/22575435/voting-rights-supreme-court-john-roberts-shelby-county-constitution-brnovich-elena-kagan">liberal democracy more broadly</a> — would stand on much stronger footing if Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg had lived just a few months longer, allowing Biden to choose her successor. And Justice Stephen Breyer’s decision to <a href="https://www.vox.com/22454648/justice-stephen-breyer-supreme-court-retirement-book-harvard-court-packing-voting-democracy">hold onto his seat</a>, during what could be a very brief window in which Democrats control the Senate, could easily end in disaster for both the Democratic Party and democracy itself.
“The conventional wisdom,” Coleman, with the People’s Parity Project, told me, “is that we don’t have the full four years to get nominees confirmed. We have until the midterms.” And even that might be optimistic. If Republicans regain control of the Senate — either through an election or through the death or departure of a Democratic senator — GOP Leader Mitch McConnell is likely to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/9/20962980/trump-supreme-court-federal-judges">impose the same near-total blockade</a> on Biden’s Supreme Court and appellate nominees that he imposed on Obama when McConnell had the power to do so.
McConnell has already suggested that <a href="https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/mitch-mcconnell/2021/06/14/mcconnell-would-block-joe-bidens-scotus-nom-2024-maybe-2023/7687731002/">no Biden Supreme Court nominee will be confirmed</a> if Republicans take control of the Senate.
The other potential catastrophe looming over the Biden White House is what happens if the Supreme Court goes rogue, invalidating Biden’s policies on the flimsiest legal arguments, or even <a href="https://www.vox.com/22575435/voting-rights-supreme-court-john-roberts-shelby-county-constitution-brnovich-elena-kagan">permitting Republican state lawmakers to rig elections outright</a>? Biden’s signaled that he’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/10/22375792/supreme-court-biden-commission-reform-court-packing-federalist-society">not willing to add seats to the Supreme Court</a> to ward off this problem, and it’s unlikely that Biden could get such a bill through Congress if he changes his mind. So his influence over the judiciary will ultimately be shaped by which judges leave the bench during his time in office.
Biden will need more than just a lifetime of experience confirming judges if he hopes to reverse Trump’s impact on the judiciary. He’s also going to need a lot of luck.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22587059/joe-biden-courts-judicial-nominations-donald-trump-supreme-court-barack-obama">https://www.vox.com/22587059/joe-biden-courts-judicial-nominations-donald-trump-supreme-court-barack-obama</a>

vox Biden’s fight to de-Trumpify the courts, explained

Joe Biden probably knows more about picking judges than any new president in American history. A longtime member and former chair of the S...

Boris Johnson, Wife Expecting Another Baby: British Media

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Boris Johnson, Wife Expecting Another Baby: British Media" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2020-05/uvcfftg_boris-johnsoncarrie-symonds650_625x300_02_May_20.jpg" title="Boris Johnson, Wife Expecting Another Baby: British Media" /></div>
Boris Johnson and Carrie married in May this year.
</div>
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie are expecting a second baby, British media reported on Saturday.
Their first child, Wilfred, was born in April last year.
Newspapers said Carrie told friends in a post on social media app Instagram that she felt "incredibly blessed" to be pregnant again.
She also said she suffered a miscarriage at the beginning of the year.
"Fertility issues can be really hard for many people, particularly when on platforms like Instagram it can look like everything is only ever going well," she was quoted as saying.
"I found it a real comfort to hear from people who had also experienced loss so I hope that in some very small way sharing this might help others too."
The couple married in May this year. The prime minister, who is 57, has been married twice before and declines to say how many children he has fathered. He had four children with his second wife, Marina Wheeler, a lawyer.
Carrie, 33, is due to give birth in December, media said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/uk-pm-boris-johnson-wife-carrie-symonds-expecting-another-baby-report-2499650">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/uk-pm-boris-johnson-wife-carrie-symonds-expecting-another-baby-report-2499650</a>

news world Boris Johnson, Wife Expecting Another Baby: British Media

Boris Johnson and Carrie married in May this year. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie are expecting a second baby,...

Doctors In Saudi Arabia Separate Yemeni Baby From Twin

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Doctors In Saudi Arabia Separate Yemeni Baby From Twin" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2020-03/o3j0cls8_hospital-generic_625x300_31_March_20.jpg" title="Doctors In Saudi Arabia Separate Yemeni Baby From Twin" /></div>
The procedure took seven hours and 45 minutes. (Representational)
</div>
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:
A team of doctors in Saudi Arabia has separated a Yemeni baby from her parasitic twin, authorities said, marking their 50th successful operation on conjoined twins.
Aisha Ahmed Saeed was born fully developed but with an extended pelvis area and an extra pair of lower extremities, the Saudi English-language Arab News daily reported.
The procedure to separate her took seven hours and 45 minutes and involved a team of 25 medical staff including doctors, technicians and nurses, said the state-run King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center.
"The surgery went very well... the coordination between the team was excellent," Dr. Abdullah al-Rabeeah, head of the team, told Arab News.
"We managed to get the baby awake and she is opening her eyes... she even interacted with her mother just at the exit of the operating room.
"We are happy, we are celebrating the 50th success and we will continue to help those who are in need."
A parasitic twin occurs when a twin embryo begins to develop in the mother, but ultimately does not separate. This results in a semi-formed twin adjoined to the body of the developed twin.
The official Saudi Press Agency said Aisha is from Al-Mahra province in war-torn Yemen, where a Saudi-led military coalition is backing the government against the Iran-backed Huthi rebels.
Yemen has been mired in a devastating war for over six years which has left it on the brink of famine and with a healthcare system in ruins.
The fighting has killed tens of thousands and left some 80 percent of Yemenis dependent on aid, in what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/doctors-in-saudi-arabia-separate-yemeni-baby-from-twin-2499516">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/doctors-in-saudi-arabia-separate-yemeni-baby-from-twin-2499516</a>

news world Doctors In Saudi Arabia Separate Yemeni Baby From Twin

The procedure took seven hours and 45 minutes. (Representational) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: A team of doctors in Saudi Arabia has separated...

Former Supreme Court Judge Suspect In President's Killing: Haiti Police

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Former Supreme Court Judge Suspect In President's Killing: Haiti Police" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-07/g3e32bf8_jovenel-moise-reuters_625x300_12_July_21.jpg" title="Former Supreme Court Judge Suspect In President's Killing: Haiti Police" /></div>
Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated at his home. (File)
</div>
Port-Au-Prince:
Haitian police on Friday outlined fresh accusations against a former Supreme Court judge over her links to the assassination of President Jovenel Moise earlier this month, saying she had met with some Colombian mercenaries accused of killing him.
The assassination of Moise has plunged the Western hemisphere's poorest nation deeper into chaos, and launched an international manhunt for mercenaries and the murder masterminds across the Americas.
Haitian police had earlier this week issued an arrest warrant for Wendelle Coq-Thelot, a former Supreme Court judge who was ousted with two other judges earlier in February when Moise alleged a coup was being planned against him.
Coq-Thelot's whereabouts are unknown and she could not be reached for comment.
Colombian mercenaries and Haitian-Americans arrested in the wake of Moise's murder said they had met Coq-Thelot, according to Inspector General Marie Michelle Verrier, the spokesperson for the National Police of Haiti.
"Several of them have indicated that they have been to Mrs. Coq's home twice," Verrier told reporters. "These people gave to (police) details of documents signed during the meetings at Mrs. Coq's home."
Police have raided Coq-Thelot's main home as well as other residences in the countryside, Verrier said. A wanted poster for Coq Wandelle has also been launched.
Many questions remain over who was behind the assassination this month and how the killers gained access to the president's home. Haitian officials blamed a squad of mostly Colombian mercenaries, three of whom were killed by police.
A top Moise security official was arrested on suspicion of involvement on Tuesday. 
Earlier in the day, Colombia called on Haiti to guarantee the legal and medical rights of 18 Colombians detained on the Caribbean island for alleged participation in Moise's assassination.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/haiti-police-say-former-supreme-court-judge-suspect-in-president-jovenel-moises-killing-2499465">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/haiti-police-say-former-supreme-court-judge-suspect-in-president-jovenel-moises-killing-2499465</a>

news world Former Supreme Court Judge Suspect In President's Killing: Haiti Police

Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated at his home. (File) Port-Au-Prince: Haitian police on Friday outlined fresh accusation...

Kitchen Robot In Riga Cooks Up New Future For Fast Food

<div class="ins_instory_dv">
<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Kitchen Robot In Riga Cooks Up New Future For Fast Food" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-07/4j1sa59o_kitchen-robot-riga-afp_625x300_31_July_21.jpg" title="Kitchen Robot In Riga Cooks Up New Future For Fast Food" /></div>
A Roboeatz app allows customers to order and pay for their dish before picking it up at the cafe.
</div>
Riga, Latvia:
A pasta order comes in and the robotic arm springs into action at the Roboeatz eatery in Riga. After five minutes of gyrations, a piping hot plate is ready.
The Riga cafe, located under a crumbling concrete bridge, is designed in such a way that customers can observe the robotic arm at work.
It also has a seating area, although most customers prefer take away since vaccination certificates are required to be able to eat indoors in Latvia.
A Roboeatz app allows customers to order and pay for their dish before picking it up at the cafe. 
"The food tasted better than I expected!" said customer Iveta Ratinika, a teacher and a member of the Latvian capital's education board.
Ratinika said she would encourage schoolchildren to come and observe the robotic arm in action and mused that there could be robots working at the school cafeteria within "a few years".
Kitchen design is 'real challenge'
Roboeatz was set up in January 2018 by Konstantins Korcjomkins and Janis Poruks, who have been running the Woki Toki fast food chain in Latvia since 2009.
Their aim? To revolutionise the fast food industry.
"This robot replaces four to six human employees, reducing labour costs significantly," said Poruks, who has a background in engineering. 
But he stressed that the introduction of such robots would not push up unemployment rates since "people are not lining up to flip burgers".
"The robot will not replace people who are willing to have a career in restaurants and catering, becoming chefs or other food celebrities. The robot will take those low-paid jobs which most people already do not want," he said.
Automated kitchen technology has been gaining interest in recent years, and that has been accelerated by the pandemic.
At a newly opened eatery in Paris, customers can watch robots build, bake and box up pizzas at a rate of up to 80 an hour.
In the US, a robot named "Sally" belonging to the startup Chowbotics can whip up salads sold through a vending machine.
And, for the ultimate household luxury, a UK-based company last year unveiled a fully robotic kitchen that will set customers back a minimum of &#163;248,000 (291,000 euros, $347,000).
The designers of Roboeatz say it is designed to take over some of the food prep tasks while improving food safety and eliminating the infection risks of crowded kitchens.
During a visit by AFP this week, the robotic arm was programmed to make three different pasta dishes.
Its creators say it can be programmed to make hundreds of recipes, taking into account the owner's favourites and food allergies.
"The robotic arm actually makes the least trouble of all, we just programme it to do what we need," said Korcjomkins.
"The real challenge is to design and invent an entire kitchen around the robot, which should contain all the food ingredients, spices, sauces, rotating pots for boiling and frying," he said.
'As popular as electric cars'
The co-founders said the robotic arm would pay for itself within two years at most.
"On average in the European Union, one employee in the kitchen costs the company around 16 euros ($19) an hour, which includes salary, taxes, insurance, training and everything else," said Poruks.
"The robot does not need health insurance, its kids cannot get sick, it does not go on vacation or maternity leave, it does not complain and it cannot bring Covid from home to work," he said.
The company has big expansion plans with sales offices in Canada and the United States and a technical team in Riga to programme the robots.
The technology was shown off earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in the US.
The co-founders said they were unconcerned about competition from similar robots, such as the pizza-making one in France.
"Our robot is designed to do more tasks and jobs than just make pizza. Our goal is to create a robot that can be useful for many kinds of foods, cuisines and dishes," said Korcjomkins.
"Hopefully a robot in kitchen will become as popular as electric cars!"
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/kitchen-robot-in-riga-cooks-up-new-future-for-fast-food-2499302">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/kitchen-robot-in-riga-cooks-up-new-future-for-fast-food-2499302</a>

news world Kitchen Robot In Riga Cooks Up New Future For Fast Food

A Roboeatz app allows customers to order and pay for their dish before picking it up at the cafe. Riga, Latvia: A pasta order comes in ...