{"id":1446,"date":"2014-10-17T04:39:49","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T04:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=1446"},"modified":"2016-09-13T21:48:13","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T21:48:13","slug":"the-deas-facebook-impersonator-and-more-in-muckreads-weekly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-deas-facebook-impersonator-and-more-in-muckreads-weekly\/","title":{"rendered":"The DEA&#8217;s Facebook Impersonator and More in MuckReads Weekly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Amanda Zamora ProPublica, Oct. 10, 2014, 1:28 p.m.<\/p>\n<p><b>The DEA impersonated a woman on Facebook without her knowledge, and the Justice Department is OK with that.<\/b> A federal agent created the fake profile, posting private photos seized from a suspect&#8217;s cell phone and posing as her to friends online.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/chrishamby\/government-says-federal-agents-can-impersonate-woman-online#150rdo6\"> A U.S. attorney defended the agent&#8217;s actions<\/a> as serving &#8220;a legitimate law enforcement purpose,&#8221; but one legal scholar said the incident &#8220;reeks of misrepresentation, fraud, and invasion of privacy.&#8221; Less than 24 hours after BuzzFeed&#8217;s story ran, the Justice Department said it was reviewing the matter.\u00a0 <em>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0BuzzFeed via @<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/follow?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.twitter.com%2Fresources%2Fbuttons&amp;region=follow_link&amp;screen_name=AzmatZahra&amp;tw_p=followbutton&amp;variant=2.0\">AzmatZahra<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><b>Public records to go?\u00a0<\/b><strong>That&#8217;ll be $132,348.<\/strong>\u00a0 That&#8217;s how much a court in Florida proposed charging the Center for Public Integrity for access to foreclosure-related documents. As the center reports, &#8220;charging high fees for access to public information can undermine public records laws and serve as a back-door way for government agencies to avoid releasing information they want kept private.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/2014\/10\/07\/15887\/sunshine-state-uses-fees-prevent-sun-shining-judicial-records\">They&#8217;re still waiting on a waiver.<\/a>\u00a0<em>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Center for Public Integrity via @<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/follow?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.twitter.com%2Fresources%2Fbuttons&amp;region=follow_link&amp;screen_name=alifitzg&amp;tw_p=followbutton&amp;variant=2.0\">alifitzg<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;I&#8217;m being taken away in handcuffs, and they don&#8217;t even know why.&#8221;<\/strong> Ferguson police have continued to use &#8220;arbitrary and inconsistently applied arrest policies&#8221; against protesters, despite state and federal intervention. In the two months since the police shooting of Michael Brown, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/ferguson-police-continued-crackdown-on-protesters-after-federal-state-interventions\/2014\/10\/09\/15df8a2a-4e40-11e4-aa5e-7153e466a02d_story.html\">hundreds of protesters have been arrested<\/a> for minor offenses or unwritten rules \u2014 many without being told of the charges they face. \u00a0 <em>\u2014\u00a0The Washington Post via @<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/follow?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.twitter.com%2Fresources%2Fbuttons&amp;region=follow_link&amp;screen_name=Bzdekv&amp;tw_p=followbutton&amp;variant=2.0\">Bzdekv<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>California water officials urge conservation (except their own). <\/strong>The Center for Investigative Reporting requested personal water bills for California officials who oversee water rates and policies, and found that <a href=\"https:\/\/beta.cironline.org\/reports\/california-water-officials-arent-following-own-call-for-conservation\/\">nearly half consumed more water than a typical household<\/a>. &#8220;Even as their agencies scolded ratepayers on conservation, 60 percent of these officials used more water in 2013 than they had in 2012,&#8221; CIR reports.\u00a0<em>\u2014\u00a0Center for Investigative Reporting via @<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/follow?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.twitter.com%2Fresources%2Fbuttons&amp;region=follow_link&amp;screen_name=katiasav&amp;tw_p=followbutton&amp;variant=2.0\">katiasav<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>World health leaders underestimated Ebola crisis for months before declaring an emergency.<\/strong> &#8220;This is relatively small still,&#8221; a spokesman for the World Health Organization said in March, even as Guinea health officials warned of a &#8220;rapidly evolving outbreak.&#8221; It took another five months for WHO to declare a global health crisis. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/sf\/national\/2014\/10\/04\/how-ebola-sped-out-of-control\/\">This is what happened in the meantime<\/a>.\u00a0<em>\u2014\u00a0The Washington Post via @<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/follow?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.twitter.com%2Fresources%2Fbuttons&amp;region=follow_link&amp;screen_name=dabeard&amp;tw_p=followbutton&amp;variant=2.0\">dabeard<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Inside Florida&#8217;s foreclosure rescue fraud.<\/strong> The Herald-Tribune combed through thousands of foreclosure records and court documents to uncover $550 million lost to foreclosure scammers in the last five years across the nation, including an estimated $32 million in Florida. But as foreclosure rescue scams have exploded, <a href=\"http:\/\/extra.heraldtribune.com\/2014\/10\/04\/selling-hope-homeowners-brink-foreclosure-fall-victim-false-promises\/\">law enforcement efforts haven&#8217;t kept up<\/a>.<em>\u00a0<\/em><em>\u2014 \u00a0 Herald-Tribune via @<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/follow?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.twitter.com%2Fresources%2Fbuttons&amp;region=follow_link&amp;screen_name=JoshSalman&amp;tw_p=followbutton&amp;variant=2.0\">JoshSalman<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propublica.org\/forms\/newsletter_daily_email\">newsletter<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Amanda Zamora ProPublica, Oct. 10, 2014, 1:28 p.m. The DEA impersonated a woman on Facebook without her knowledge, and the Justice Department is OK with that. A federal agent created the fake profile, posting private photos seized from a suspect&#8217;s cell phone and posing as her to friends online. A U.S. attorney defended the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":8048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1446"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8049,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446\/revisions\/8049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}