Tag: MSP

You're looking forward to returning because you have plans to meet with family and friends, some you whom you haven't seen in a long time, when you get back early in the evening. You've made arrangements to meet everyone at a very popular local restaurant at several weeks ago and don't want to miss your reservation you put a lot of work into getting.

This trip you've made several times before and are familiar with the route. It is a clear and sunny day. You're not speeding, driving erratically, or doing anything that would, in any way, draw any attention whatsoever to your vehicle.

While you are still several hours away from your home, you see a sign on the side of the road:

Checkpoint ahead. All vehicles MUST stop.

You think to yourself; I must have just recently missed something very serious on the news for them to be stopping everyone.

After waiting for what seems like hours in a long line of vehicles leading up to the checkpoint, you finally approach an officer. You ask them what happened. They simply respond by saying, "License, registration and proof of insurance, please." You pull it out of your wallet, hand it to them. The officer asks how long you were driving, where you are coming from, where you are going. After this, they take your papers with them and walk away. While this is happening, you notice a number of other officers are walking around your vehicle, looking in your windows at the contents on the back seat, scrutinizing your license plate, VIN plate and examining other areas around your vehicle.

The officer returns and asks you to exit your vehicle.

Anxiety begins to set in when you get out and they direct you away from your vehicle.

When you are walking away, you notice the same officers around your vehicle begin to open the hood, doors and trunk and begin to do a more thorough search for something.

What it is, you do not know.

The officer you are with asks you several questions until they see the other officers around your vehicle motioning to come back to your vehicle. You are asked to remain where you are while they walk away. Not very far from where you are standing, you see them begin to converse among themselves, and flipping through clipboards while feverously writing things down.

The troubling revelation that Michigan State Police have the tools to so completely violate a person's 4th amendment rights, has both the ACLU and conservatives concerned, and rightly so.  The hand held machine available to officers can scan and retrieve a complete inventory of cell phones information, including pictures, text, email, and phone records.  From the manufacturer's site:

The Cellebrite UFED Physical Pro is a high-end, all-in-one solution for logical and physical extraction. The UFED Physical Pro expands your current device capabilities to extract deleted mobile device data, user passwords, file system dumps, and physical extraction from GPS devices.

With expanded coverage that now includes more than 3000 phones and a growing list of GPS devices, UFED Physical Pro provides the most complete mobile forensics solution available on the market.

Utilizing UFED's simple and field-proven user interface, a complete high-speed hex dump of the phone memory is delivered without the need of cumbersome PC drivers. Critical data such as user lock codes, and deleted information such as text messages, call history, pictures, and video are sorted and retrieved by Cellebrite's Physical Pro engine. The UFED Physical Pro also includes robust search tools for manual hex dump analysis, as well as an expert mode, which allows advanced capabilities for researchers.

UNPARALELLED ACCESS TO PHONE MEMORY
UFED Physical Pro provides access to data inaccessible by logical methods:

• Phone user lock code
  
• Deleted data including: deleted call history, text messages, images, phonebook entries and videos
  
• Access to internal application data
  
• Phone internal data including: IMSI history, past SIM cards used, past user lock code history

Further troubling, is the reticence of the MSP to provide a modicum of transparency sans a very high fee.  Likely violating the intent of law.  

Serious questions created by a serious bit of... pure, unadulterated lunacy... coming out of the Granholm-Cherry administration.  Yesterday 100 state police troopers lost their jobs on orders from the Governor and her 2010 Gubernatorial candidate.  Last week Lansing Democrats fought to keep alive the administration's dream for a new, inefficient, hundred million dollar state police headquarters that the state police don't want.  Meanwhile, this year alone, 3,500 dangerous convicted felons are being released EARLY from prison and set loose in Michigan neighborhoods.

So what's a state to do with fewer cops walking the beat, more law enforcement dollars swallowed up paying to provide pet projects (and big paydays) to Democratic donors / developers and a sudden spike in the number of dangerous career criminals prowling the streets?

Import more criminals.  From California.  

Import.  Criminals.  From California.

Who came up with this idea, Lex Luthor?  Norman Osborn?  The Joker?  No, no and, well...

According to Booth Newspapers, this one is the brainchild of the Granholm-Cherry team.  

California has too many prisoners and Michigan soon will have too many empty prison cells.

Therein lies the possibility of a "mutually beneficial partnership," Gov. Jennifer Granholm told Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a letter Monday...

In her letter, Granholm referenced earlier conversations with Schwarzenegger in which she said Michigan "could be of help."

Granholm said she was "certain that Michigan can provide a safe and secure environment for prisoners and help prepare them for a return to California and a crime-free lifestyle."

What's worse, this can't even be chocked up as an outside-the-box scheme to generate extra revenue for the state.  According to Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan, "we're not looking to make any money off this."  

Marlan said in regards to the California offer, Michigan would be seeking mainly to recover labor, food and health care costs.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised.  The administration has already crippled our economy, swelled the ranks of the unemployed to record levels, put a nearly unbearable strain on the state's social services and grown the size of the Lansing bureaucracy to astronomical proportions (the budget has grown by nearly $6 billion since Granholm and Cherry took their oaths of office in January 2003).  Suppose it was only a matter of time before they tried turning Michigan into a penal colony.

Plus, look at it this way... importing hardened criminals is ONE way of countering the dramatic outbound population flight we've seen the last six years.  Better yet, unlike hardworking Michigan families who've just plain had enough, Californian prisoners couldn't leave, even if they wanted to.

Bouchard becomes one of the most prominent voices in Michigan to advocate some pretty serious changes to the way things are being done in Lansing, from being open to "tweaking" Proposal A to openly advocating a part-time legislature.

Just a few of the highlights include-

RightMichigan: Thoughts on the new State Police Headquarters?

Sheriff Bouchard: "What good is a state of the art building if you can't inhabit that building with the men and women who are there to protect you?"  ... "They should have put (the project) on hold years ago, frankly."

RM: The Americans for Tax Reform "No New Taxes Pledge?"

Sheriff Bouchard: "Clearly one of the first things you have to do is learn to live within your means... in fact, I was the first gubernatorial candidate to sign the taxpayer protection pledge."

RM: First specific thing you'd do, day one as Governor?

Sheriff Bouchard: "Stop the bleeding.  I'll freeze all non-essential spending and begin to go through immediately where we can cut spending..."

RM: Should we tweak proposal A?

Sheriff Bouchard: "I think you have to constantly, in government or the private sector, look at what you're doing and make sure you're competitive." ... "In anything you have to constantly go back and reexamine it and make sure it's meeting your goals." ... "I'd be willing to look at a whole new tax and regulatory process."

RM: On the idea of a part-time legislature...

Sheriff Bouchard: "Based on what I'm seeing in Lansing and how broke Lansing is I'd be calling for a part-time legislature." ... "One of the fixes I'd suggest is that we go to a part-time legislature."

And much, much more...