RUTHFULLY YOURS

Remember the university professor who wanted the government to use the RICO law created to prosecute mobsters as a tool against global-warming dissenters? Well, taxpayers may be the ones calling for an investigation after examining the nonprofit venture that George Mason University Professor Jagadish Shukla has been running with generous government funding.

On Tuesday evening House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith wrote to the inspector general at the National Science Foundation. Chairman Smith reported that Mr. Shukla has recently been audited by the university in connection with his outside position running the Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES).

According to Chairman Smith’s letter, the audit “appears to reveal that Dr. Shukla engaged in what is referred to as ‘double dipping.’ In other words, he received his full salary at GMU, while working full time at IGES and receiving a full salary there.”

Mr. Smith cites a memo from the school’s internal auditor in claiming that Mr. Shukla appeared to violate the university’s policy on outside employment and paid consulting. The professor received $511,410 in combined compensation from the school and IGES in 2014, according to Mr. Smith, “without ever receiving the appropriate permission from GMU officials.” CONTINUE AT SITE

http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-is-right-on-encryption-1456877827

The Apple encryption conflict has turned nasty, as the Obama Administration, most Republicans and public opinion turn against the tech company. But, lo, Apple won its first court test on Monday, and its legal briefs against the court order to unlock an iPhone used by the San Bernardino jihadists show it has a better argument than the government.

The FBI is attempting to extract information on Syed Rizwan Farook’s device but has been frustrated by Apple’s encryption. So a California magistrate ordered the company to design a custom version of its operating software that will disable certain security features and permit the FBI to break the password. Apple has cooperated with the probe but argues that forcing it to write new code is illegal.

One confusion promoted by the FBI is that its order is merely a run-of-the-mill search warrant. This is false. The FBI is invoking the 1789 All Writs Act, an otherwise unremarkable law that grants judges the authority to enforce their orders as “necessary or appropriate.” The problem is that the All Writs Act is not a catch-all license for anything judges want to do. They can only exercise powers that Congress has granted them.

Congress knows how to require private companies to serve public needs. The law obligates telecoms, for example, to assist with surveillance collection. But Congress has never said the courts can commandeer companies to provide digital forensics or devise programs it would be theoretically useful for the FBI to have—even if they are “necessary” for a search.

Congress could instruct tech makers from now on to build “back doors” into their devices for law-enforcement use, for better or more likely worse. But this back-door debate has raged for two years. In the absence of congressional action, the courts can’t now appoint themselves as a super legislature to commandeer innocent third parties ex post facto. CONTINUE AT SITE

Actors are a peculiar breed. Ask them to play characters of intellectual depth and the more accomplished deliver convincing performances, no problems. As global-warming worrywart Leonardo DiCaprio demonstrated at this week’s Academy Awards, the trouble starts when they write their own lines

Red-carpet aficionados struggling to figure out how a ‘visceral cinematic experience’ – filmed almost entirely in the snowy landscapes of North America – could prompt a frothy take-home serve of climate alarmism from a leading actor should reflect on Mark Twain’s advice: “Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story, unless you can’t think of anything better”.

Today Twain surely would add: “nor in the way of anthropogenic atmospheric angst or a saving-the-planet pitch, no matter how silly”; especially if you have just won an Oscar for the best bear-ravaged frontiersman this side of Fortress Mountain and are doubling as a UN Messenger of Peace with a special focus on climate change.

On the celebrity frontier the mood this week seemed almost as tense – but not as chilly – as it was on location. Plenty of haute-couture and alarming epidermis on display – from Alicia’s ‘fun and flirty’ Louis Vuitton to Kate’s Ralph Lauren ‘garbage bag’. But fewer animal pelts and bear-hugs than last year.

Leonardo DiCaprio was in the front row, just a short walk from his first Oscar after five nominations. In a dignified acceptance speech, the star heaped praise on best director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and his USD165 million ‘transcendental’ film, The Revenant.

Mad Max: Fury Road’s sound editor turned up the contrast with an F-bomb. True, not the end of the world. But if Mark Mangini did not hear a pin drop, it was probably because it was drowned out by the voice of his spouse, mother or both. “It’s pretty intense up there,” confided co-winner, David White, in Mangini’s defence. “It’s typically Australians who do the swearing. So the fact that I didn’t swear, I deserve the Oscar just for that.”

But DiCaprio’s speech was scarier than any snarling thing roaring down Fury Road. One bear-hunting man’s ‘epic adventure of survival’ somehow morphed post-production into an eco-allegory about

“man’s relationship to the natural world. A world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this. For our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed. I thank you all for this amazing award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted..” (transcript , Kadeen Griffiths, 29 February 2016; author’s bolding).

In a ruling that could have ramifications for Apple’s battle with the FBI over the iPhone of the San Bernardino terrorist, a federal magistrate-judge in Brooklyn yesterday denied the government’s request in a similar case to compel Apple to assist the government in searching the iPhone of a suspected narcotics trafficker. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein rejected the Justice Department’s claim that the All Writs Act authorizes the court to coerce Apple’s cooperation.

An unsettling aspect of the cases on both coasts is the Justice Department’s urging of the All Writs Act on the courts as a capacious source of power to coerce assistance from third parties. Interestingly, while Apple has vigorously contested the AWA order in California, the tech giant itself suggested that the Justice Department seek one in Brooklyn. Apple was willing to help in the Brooklyn case (as it has done in approximately 70 other cases), but only if there was an order, which the company even helped the Justice Department draft. It was Magistrate Judge Orenstein who was troubled about whether he had the authority to issue the order. Only when the court hesitated and asked for more briefing on the AWA did Apple do an about-face and oppose the issuance.

The AWA, which is now codified at section 1651 of Title 28, U.S. Code, was originally enacted by the first Congress in 1789 — a time when federal courts played a much more modest role in American life. The idea was that, in the few areas where the courts were empowered to act by the Constitution or a statute, they had some residual authority to issue orders necessary to exercise these grants of jurisdiction. It was never the purpose of the AWA to grant courts a limitless reservoir of power to, in effect, legislate in areas where Congress had not enacted controlling law — or, worse, to assume powers Congress had considered giving to judges but decided not to.