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The House of Representatives voted 385 to 41 in favor of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade, which the Senate is expected to act on in the new year, according to the Washington Post.

U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was tapped by Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation, has requested emails and other documents to examine the role of former C.I.A. Director John Brennan in assessing Russias election interference in 2016, reports the New York Times.

The Post reports that multiple former officials believe President Trumps views on Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election might have been influenced by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On Friday, the Suffolk County district attorneys office in New York is expected to announce criminal charges against 96 individuals involved with the MS-13 street gang, according to the Times. The charges include seven murder conspiracies and widespread drug trafficking and weapons sales.

In the United Kingdom, members of parliament voted 358 to 234 in favor of Boris Johnsons bill to leave the European Union on Jan. 31, reports the BBC. The bill will be debated further in early January.

Lebanons president appointed Hassan Diab, a professor and former education minister, as the new prime minister in the midst of ongoing protests and a financial crisis in the country, reports the Times.

An unidentified gunman killed one officer and wounded five others outside of the Federal Security Service building in Moscow on Thursday, reports NBC News.

The Times reports that companies are tracking and storing the movements of tens of millions of smartphone users through apps that share locations.

ICYMI: Yesterday on Lawfare

Torey L. McMurdo discussed the significant gaps in legal protections for service members in academia.

Stewart Baker shared a special edition of the Cyberlaw Podcast in which Bob Litt, David Kris and Bobby Chesney discuss the recent Justice Department inspector generals report.

Jeff Kosseff explained why Congress passed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the first place since Congress is now considering changes.

Jen Patja Howell shared the latest episode in the Arbiters of Truth podcast series, in which Alina Polyakova and Quinta Jurecic spoke to Peter Pomerantsev, an author and research fellow at Johns Hopkins University, about the origins of Russian disinformation.

Gordon Ahl posted an appellate ruling on FISA Section 702 surveillance that considered the possibility of a fourth amendment claim for certain database queries.

Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job opening on our Job Board.

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Today's Headlines and Commentary - Lawfare

Surprise, anger, parenting and Lizzo: That's one way to sum up NPR's list of our most engaging stories in 2019, as those themes drew a huge amount of interest from our readers this year. Other big topics included consumerism and climate change and officials behaving badly.

People often linger for several minutes on these popular pages. Collectively, NPR's readers spent the equivalent of more than 35 years' worth of time reading our top five stories. The top draw was a story about how to help kids handle anger; altogether, readers spent nearly 16 years' worth of time reading that report.

1. How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger

At the top of the world, the Inuit culture has developed a sophisticated way to sculpt kids' behavior without yelling or scolding. Could discipline actually be playful?

2. American With No Medical Training Ran Center For Malnourished Ugandan Kids. 105 DiedWhen she was 19, Renee Bach founded a charity that went on to care for more than 900 severely malnourished babies and children. Now she is being sued by two of the mothers whose children died.

3. 'The Best Thing You Can Do Is Not Buy More Stuff,' Says 'Secondhand' Expert"Your average thrift store in the United States only sells about one-third of the stuff that ends up on its shelves," Adam Minter says. His book explores what happens to the things that don't sell.

4. U.S. Charges Dozens Of Parents, Coaches In Massive College Admissions ScandalActresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are among 33 parents who paid large sums of money to cheat admissions standards at prestigious schools, federal prosecutors say.

5. Trump Tweets Sensitive Surveillance Image Of IranThe tweet had experts picking up their jaws from the floor when they saw a photo of an Iranian space facility an image that was almost certainly taken by a classified satellite or drone.

6. The Mysterious Death Of The Hacker Who Turned In Chelsea Manning

Adrian Lamo was a hero in the hacker community for years. Everything changed when he began exchanging messages with U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

7. FACT CHECK: Trump's State Of The Union AddressNPR reporters provided context and analysis in real time as President Trump delivered the annual speech to Congress: "Remarkably, President Trump did not acknowledge the new power dynamic in Washington."

8. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Releases Green New Deal Outline"Even the solutions that we have considered big and bold are nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us," Ocasio-Cortez said.

9. 'Game Of Thrones' Season 8, Episode 5: 'Let It Be Fear'In the series' penultimate episode, the quality of mercy gets seriously strained. And stabbed. And set aflame. And razed. And several characters meet their final fates.

10. NPR's Book ConciergeThe end-of-year Book Concierge recommends more than 350 great reads across 30 genres hand-picked by NPR staff and trusted critics.

In terms of page views, a slightly different list emerges. While some of the top stories are the same, here are the top 10 most-viewed stories that didn't also appear in the above list. All of the pages drew more than 1 million views on NPR's website, not including traffic on other platforms, such as Apple News or Facebook.

1. Lizzo: Tiny Desk Concert

Backed by a band assembled just for this occasion, the breakthrough pop icon performs three joyfully showy songs from Cuz I Love You.

2. Patient With 'Tree Man' Syndrome Says He 'Can Finally Live A Normal Life'The man, who lives in Gaza, has undergone a pioneering treatment by Israeli surgeons for a severe case of this rare condition.

3. Speaker Pelosi Revokes Vice President Pence's House Office SpaceRepublicans had given Pence, a former House member, a first-floor bonus office in the House side of the U.S. Capitol shortly after President Trump was inaugurated.

4. Court Says Using Chalk On Tires For Parking Enforcement Violates ConstitutionA federal appeals court in Michigan cited the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures.

5. 'Not One Drop Of Blood': Cattle Mysteriously Mutilated In Oregon

Five young, purebred bulls mysteriously showed up dead on the ranch this past summer, drained of blood and with body parts precisely removed.

6. 3 Indiana Judges Suspended After White Castle Brawl That Left 2 Of Them WoundedA fight apparently started when one of the judges raised a middle finger at two men yelling from a passing SUV. The Indiana Supreme Court found that the three had "gravely undermined public trust."

7. Workers Are Falling Ill, Even Dying, After Making Kitchen CountertopsIrreversible lung disease has started to show up among young workers who cut, grind and polish countertops made of increasingly popular "engineered" stone. The material is more than 90% silica.

8. Taylor Swift: Tiny Desk ConcertAs she settled in for the set at NPR's offices, Taylor Swift looked out over the crowd. "I just decided to take this as an opportunity to show you guys how the songs sounded when I first wrote them."

9. Notre Dame Cathedral Fire Extinguished; Spire Collapsed, Towers Still StandingAs night fell on Paris and the fire continued to burn, people knelt and sang "Ave Maria" as they watched the blaze.

10. Florida Governor Declares State Of Emergency As Hurricane Dorian Gains ForceAs the storm neared, the National Hurricane Center said Dorian's winds could top 115 mph making it a Category 3 storm.

NPR senior manager for digital analytics Christina Macholan contributed to this report.

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The 20 Top Stories On NPR In 2019 - KRWG

You are here: Home / News / University of Phoenix to pay $191 million to settle false advertising claims

December 19, 2019 by Sharyl Attkisson 1 Comment

The University of Phoenix will pay $50 million to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and cancel $141 in student debt to settle false advertising charges, according to Reuters.

In ads targeting military and Hispanic students, the university allegedly falsely claimed to have relationships with several large corporations that could translate to jobs for graduates.

According to Reuters, university representatives denied wrongdoing but said they settled to avoid the distractions caused by lengthy and costly protracted litigation.

Read the Reuters article found in TaskandPurpose.com by clicking the link below:

https://taskandpurpose.com/university-of-phoenix-false-advertising

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkissons work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Filed Under: News, US Tagged With: false advertising, University of Phoenix

Emmy-Award Winning Investigative Journalist, New York Times Best Selling Author, Host of Sinclair's Full Measure

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University of Phoenix to pay $191 million to settle false advertising claims - Sharyl Attkisson

A Florida prosecutor slammed New England Patriots owner Robert Krafts arguments to suppress surveillance tapes made at a Florida spa allegedly recording sex acts, calling the case a significant Fourth Amendment ruling in filings submitted Tuesday.

Kraft, who pleaded not guilty to two prostitution charges in February for sex acts allegedly recorded in January at the Orchids of Asia Spa in Jupiter, Fla., earned a victory in May when a Palm Beach County judge suppressed police surveillance evidence, calling filming of non-criminal massages unacceptable.

Prosecutors appealed the May decision to suppress video, and Florida Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey Paul DeSousa refuted Krafts arguments to support the May decision in a 23-page reply brief filed last night.

(Kraft) urges that massages should not have been recorded at any time other than the end of a massage; but the first of his offenses came at the end of a massage, DeSousa wrote. And he insists that recording was improper when men left on their underwear at the start of a massage; but he removed his own underwear immediately.

DeSousa also argued Jupiter polices nonstop covert surveillance over a five-day period was necessary to gather all facts, and it would have been a difficult burden for police to determine when to film and not film activities for signs of prostitution.

The sides have argued case law surrounding video surveillance in briefs filed since October, and DeSousa wrote in a motion attached to his reply brief the appeals decision in Floridas Fourth District Court of Appeals will be the first state appellate court to resolve the Fourth Amendment questions at play here.

Krafts misdemeanor case has been on hold since the appeal filed in May, and another appeal by the women charged with running the Orchids of Asia Spa is locked in a similar appeal battle.

Also in the brief, DeSousa says third parties have filed at least one federal lawsuit for monetary damage alleging the Orchids of Asia tapes violated their own Fourth Amendment rights.

A civil lawsuit by Kraft in a Florida court alleging denial of investigative documents by prosecutors is also pending a ruling on a motion to dismiss by the state.

The rest is here:
Prosecutor slams Krafts appeal to block Orchids of Asia tapes - Boston Herald

The F.B.I.s investigation of the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, we can now say with assurance, was a train wreck. In his report, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz cataloged a damning list of egregious errors, omissions or misrepresentations in filings to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approved nearly a years worth of wiretaps on Mr. Page.

Many Republicans have taken this as proof that the investigation was hopelessly contaminated by anti-Trump political bias. That would be the optimistic scenario. Unfortunately, its probably much worse than that.

If the F.B.I. botched its applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Mr. Page because of political bias, after all, problems of the sort Mr. Horowitz identified are most likely unique to this case. The bureau obtains about 1,500 FISA warrants each year, and an overwhelming majority have no connection to domestic politics. The solution is also similarly simple: Toss out the bad apples who acted on political motives and add a few layers of safeguards for the tiny fraction of cases that are designated sensitive investigative matters because they do intersect with politics.

That might be a reasonable response if we were confident the Page investigation represented an outlier or aberration. The chilling reality, however, is that we have no idea whether thats the case.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, zeroed in on this point. When she asked Mr. Horowitz whether finding mistakes in a FISA application was a fairly unusual occurrence, he responded, I would hope so.

Americans deserve a stronger assurance than hope that their Fourth Amendment rights are being respected. The sheer quantity of serious defects in the FISA applications targeting Mr. Page which officials consistently told Mr. Horowitz received far more review than normal, because agents understood the applications would doubtless attract controversy and scrutiny raises an obvious and disturbing question: If theyre this sloppy with a target involved in a presidential campaign, how bad is it in ordinary cases, which the public will never learn about and which are unlikely to ever be the topic of congressional hearings?

We neednt worry so much about that, of course, if the defects of the Page warrants were products of political animus against the Trump campaign. But the report provides very little reason to think thats the case. The case for supposing bias is the culprit here leans heavily on the former F.B.I. agent Peter Strzok, now notorious for a voluminous history of text messages denigrating Mr. Trump and suggesting that he would not become president because we will stop it. But while Mr. Strzok played a supervisory role in the earliest stage of the Page investigation, its hard to tie him to the specific problems Mr. Horowitz identifies. As the report notes, Mr. Strzok was not the primary or sole decision maker on any investigative step and at one point opposed FISA monitoring of another Trump campaign staff member that case agents proposed. Moreover, the problems Mr. Horowitz documented in the initial FISA application filed under Mr. Strzoks watch were significantly less serious than the outrageous omissions and misrepresentations to the court that occurred in the subsequent applications to renew the wiretap, after Mr. Strzoks role in the investigation had ended.

With one significant exception an F.B.I. lawyer responsible for improperly altering an email related to the final renewal application Mr. Horowitz didnt find signs of Mr. Strzoks intense animus among others who worked on the FISA warrants. The report notes that among the huge quantity of internal communications reviewed, the inspector general identified a small number of text messages and instant messages in which members of the investigation team discussed political issues and candidates, but that these did not raise significant questions of potential bias or improper motivation.

If theres an explanation for the errors Mr. Horowitz documents suggested by his reports, its not political bias. Its confirmation bias.

The F.B.I.s interest in Mr. Page and its suspicions that he might be a Russian intelligence asset predated his involvement in presidential politics. He had reportedly been the target of a FISA warrant in 2014 and was the focus of yet another counterintelligence investigation opened in April 2016 by the F.B.I.s notoriously Trump-friendly New York field office, months before the bureau started an inquiry into potential links between the Trump campaign and Russias election interference operation. When investigators got wind of Christopher Steeles notorious dossier, which made Mr. Page a pivotal figure in a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between Mr. Trump and the Kremlin, it would have seemed like confirmation of what they already suspected.

Having adopted this theory, investigators began to exhibit classic signs of confirmation bias, readily absorbing new information that fit the model theyd built, while overlooking or explaining away facts that didnt fit. The worst misrepresentations to the court that Mr. Horowitz uncovered are sins of omission new information the bureau obtained as the investigation progressed that should have led it to question previous representations it had made to the court.

The many layers of review FISA applications go through laid out in a set of rules known as the Woods Procedures were ill equipped to detect this sort of problem, because the Woods Procedures focus on confirming that facts in the application match documents in the F.B.I.s case file. But you cant fact check a claim that doesnt exist which means the process is bad at detecting important information that has been left out. Officials who reviewed later applications also told Mr. Horowitz that they typically focused on the new information in each submission. That means assertions theyd made early on ended up effectively being taken for granted: Nobody was revisiting early assumptions to see whether they still held up in the face of new data.

If this explains why the Page investigation went increasingly off the rails, its an explanation that has little to do with partisan politics at its heart. But that would mean theres little reason to think the Page investigation is special in this respect. Theres an urgent need, then, for the inspector general to do more such deep dives and figure out just how pervasive the problem really is.

Fortunately, the inspector general is already taking a first step in this direction, having begun a review that will examine the F.B.I.s compliance with the Woods Procedures in FISA applications that target U.S. persons. But in itself, thats not enough: While Mr. Horowitz found violations of the Woods Procedures in the Page case, they werent the most serious distortions. Those occurred precisely because the Woods Procedures arent well calibrated to catch material facts that get left out. To do that, youd need to do the kind of intensive and comprehensive case-by-case review conducted in the Horowitz review, not just run Woods vetting a second time to see whether the results tally.

Doing this sort of deep dive for a representative sample of FISA applications will, of course, be both expensive and extremely time consuming. But its well worth it to find out just how badly our surveillance state is broken.

Link:
The Chilling Reality of Bias at the F.B.I. - The New York Times