11 Dems buck Biden as Senate passes rollback of crypto guidance
OEIS Financial Fraud Private Investigator: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer joined 10 other Democrats in defying Joe Biden and passed a measure that would undo SEC guidance on cryptocurrency accounting, sending the measure to the president’s desk on Thursday with stronger-than-expected bipartisan support.
The Senate voted 60-38 to back the effort… Read More
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OEIS Surveillance Private Investigator: Lawyers for the BBC have written to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal over allegations that the Police Service of Northern Ireland spied on investigative journalist Vincent Kearney
Lawyers acting for the BBC have written to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) over allegations that one of its journalists was subject to police surveillance.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is alleged to have spied on journalist Vincent Kearney during his work on a 2011 Spotlight documentary investigating the independence of the police watchdog in Northern Ireland.
Kearney, currently the northern editor at RTE, said journalists must be free to carry out their work without fear that the police may secretly attempt to identify their sources. He said he was determined to find out what happened.
The allegations emerged during a hearing by the IPT in February following a complaint from journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey that they had been subject to unlawful surveillance by the PSNI after making a documentary that exposed police failures to investigate the murder of six innocent people by a paramilitary group.
Durham Police, working with the PSNI, raided the journalists’ homes and the film production company, Fine Point Films, as part of a “covert strategy” to identify the source of a leaked document.
The chief constable of the PSNI apologised for the unlawful raids and agreed to pay damages of £875,000 after the journalists were exonerated in 2019 by the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
Following this, the journalists asked the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to investigate whether they had been unlawfully subjected to police surveillance.
OEIS Surveillance Private Investigator: Phone and email surveillance
During a hearing in February, the PSNI acknowledged that it unlawfully accessed McCaffrey’s phone data in 2013. McCaffrey’s phone was also subject to surveillance by the Metropolitan Police in 2011 and it emerged that Durham Police attempted to obtain access to Birney’s work emails in 2018.
L-R: Barry McCaffrey, Grahame Morris MP and Trevor Birney outside court in February 2024
Disclosures made during the case suggested that Kearney had also been subject to police surveillance while making a documentary for the BBC’s Spotlight series.
A spokesperson for the BBC said: “We have instructed lawyers to write to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal about the alleged PSNI surveillance of telephone data linked to the work of Vincent Kearney during his employment with the BBC, in connection with a BBC Northern Ireland Spotlight programme broadcast in 2011.”
“We think that serious issues of public interest are involved, including in relation to the adverse effects that surveillance may have on journalistic investigations and freedoms,” the spokesperson added.
The claims relate to Kearney’s 2011 Spotlight documentary, The whistleblower and the watchdog, which reported on the crisis in the Police Ombudsman’s Office and investigated how the work of the PSNI watchdog had become infected by internal difficulties.
Kearney said: “The programme investigated allegations that the independence of the Police Ombudsman had been compromised and that it was not investigating complaints about police activities with sufficient rigour.”
The programme resulted in calls for the resignation of the ombudsman at the time, Al Hutchinson, and he announced his intention to step down shortly after it was broadcast.
Kearney said: “I am concerned that the police may have attempted to identify sources of information within a programme that was actually about the independence of the office of the Police Ombudsman.”
“Journalists must be free to carry out their work without fear that the police may secretly try to identify sources, and I am determined to find out what happened,” he added.
The latest allegations come as the Northern Ireland Policing Board is conducting a probe into allegations that the PSNI has carried out surveillance on lawyers and journalists by accessing their phone data to identify their sources.
The PSNI’s chief constable, Jon Boutcher, handed a confidential report to the Policing Board in April at the request of board members.
We are extremely concerned that the revelations to date in this case point to a much wider pattern of covert police surveillance of journalists and other human rights defenders Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International
The report, which has been passed to the Policing Board’s human rights advisor, John Wadham, is understood to suggest that the PSNI may have been involved in up to 18 incidents of surveillance against journalists and lawyers.
The Law Society of Northern Ireland has also written to Boutcher asking for an explanation of disclosures in the report, including “the statutory or other authority under which any such surveillance operations were undertaken”.
Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland director, urged other journalists and media organisations to make complaints to the IPT if they were concerned about surveillance by the PSNI.
“We are extremely concerned that the revelations to date in this case point to a much wider pattern of covert police surveillance of journalists and other human rights defenders,” he said. “Freedom of the press, including the right to protect sources, is a cornerstone of any rights-respecting society.”
Daniel Holder, director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, said there was a need for full accountability. “This issue of the extent and lawfulness of PSNI surveillance on journalists, lawyers and potentially other members of civil society really needs to be nailed now,” he said.
Jon Boutcher told the Policing Board in April that he would provide a public version of the report.
The IPT is due to continue hearings into allegations of unlawful surveillance against Birney and McCaffrey later in the year.
Hart’s ancient buddy claims the actor failed to publicly exonerate him of “baseless” extortion allegations
The one who says Kevin Hart falsely implicated him in a intercourse tape extortion space after which didn’t “publicly exonerate” him as promised in a settlement agreement can now now not pursue his $12 million breach of contract lawsuit against Hart in originate court, at the least for now, a deem has dominated.
In a resolution signed Thursday, Los Angeles County With regards to a resolution Daniel S. Murphy dominated that plaintiff Jonathan “JT” Jackson forfeited his correct to sue Hart in a public forum when he added a clause to their settlement that agreed to personal arbitration.
Jackson had regarded in court Wednesday alongside with his felony decent, Daniel Reback, to argue that the ratification of your total settlement, including the arbitration clause, used to be contingent upon Hart publicly exonerating Jackson of any extortion connected to Hart’s highly publicized 2017 intercourse tape scandal. In step with Jackson, Hart promised to post a prolonged, “meticulously negotiated” stammer on social media as a precursor to their agreement to “unravel all concerns” without any “financial compensation.” Reback said the contingency used to be outlined in a clause that he underlined for emphasis within the final settlement signed in August 2021.
“Mr. Jackson insisted to me that the agreement like a [special] clause where if Mr. Hart did now now not fabricate verbatim the words that we negotiated, that each and every body guarantees by Mr. Jackson are rendered null and void, including this promise to arbitrate,” Reback argued in court Wednesday. The felony decent also claimed Jackson used to be fraudulently ended in into signing the contract. He repeated the allegation that Hart despatched a “fabricated electronic mail” to the Los Angeles County District Attorney to falsely implicate Jackson in an extortion crime. In a submitting on Oct. 10, Reback claimed the electronic mail submission “used to be likely calculated to rob the warmth off Hart for having a intercourse tape video of his extramarital affair.” He said “labeling JT an extortionist would distract the final public. But it absolutely also would extinguish JT’s lifestyles.” (Hart’s felony decent did now now not reply to an reveal for stammer on the deem’s resolution and the claim about the allegedly fabricated electronic mail.)
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“This used to be an agreement to arbitrate any disputes, and here’s a dispute, and it belongs in arbitration,” Hart’s felony decent, Donte Mills, suggested the deem in court Wednesday. “Clearly the plaintiff in this matter is determined on looking to embarrass my consumer and file the relaxation they’ll advance up with that’s derogatory.”
“None of plaintiff’s arguments invalidate the arbitration clause itself,” With regards to a resolution Murphy wrote in his ruling. “The case is stayed in its entirety pending the quit outcomes of arbitration.”
Jackson filed his underlying breach of contract lawsuit in July. He confirmed he joined Hart on the August 2017 plug to Vegas where a video of Hart in mattress with a model used to be recorded in Hart’s hotel room, nonetheless he used to be adamant he did now now not extort Hart. (Portions of the intercourse tape were published on the now-defunct web location Fameolous.com nonetheless later taken down.)
Jackson used to be arrested in April 2018 on suspicion he extorted Hart. The charges were within the extinguish dropped. In step with Jackson, Hart concocted the faux electronic mail that demanded 20 bitcoins to pause the begin of more of the recording. Jackson claims Hart “instigated” the hypothesis to prosecutors that Jackson used to be within the help of the extortion. He also claimed the comedian harmed him once more when he released a Netflix docuseries in 2019 that doubled down on the extortion claim even after the extortion charges were dropped. Jackson claimed Hart later reached out to lead sure of a threatened defamation lawsuit and agreed to remark the highly negotiated and scripted Instagram video stammer.
Jackson, an honest bowler and actor who had a minor role in Hart’s 2014 movie Mediate Like a Man Too, said Hart used to be required to mark that the prison charges against Jackson had been pushed apart and that the scandal had cost Hart “a if truth be told useful friendship.” Jackson alleges Hart explicitly agreed to claim, “I misplaced any person terminate to me that I loved and restful like very grand savor for, or high ranges of savor for, and I’m proud to claim that each and every body charges against J.T. Jackson had been dropped, and he is now now not guilty and had nothing to pause with it.” In step with Jackson, 47, Hart “blatantly broke” their agreement.
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In his Instagram video, Hart said their friendship “used to be misplaced,” nonetheless the stammer regarded impartial. “It’s over, and I’m tickled that it’s over,” he said about the saga. Hart did now now not embody the highway that Jackson “had nothing to pause with it.”
Earlier than he issued his ruling, With regards to a resolution Murphy said Wednesday that the defamation claim included in Jackson’s breach of contract lawsuit would maybe well presumably now now not be coated by the agreement’s arbitration clause. In that event, that claim would maybe well presumably return to his court after the arbitration job concludes, he said.
