BANDERA, Texas -- The Bandera County Sheriff's Office issued a warning Thursday to citizens about an anti-government movement known for acts of domestic terrorism.
The law enforcement agency said followers of The Sovereign Citizens Movement have been known to carry out violent acts, including killing law enforcement officers and other public servants.
The sheriff's office told KSAT-12 News the warning was prompted by the recent shooting death of Bexar County Sheriff's Deputy Sgt. Kenneth Vann.
"We have domestic terrorism right at our doorstep," said Capt. Charlie Hicks of the Bandera County Sheriff's Office.
Hicks said while there's no evidence Vann's death had any links to the Sovereign Citizens, it's the same type of crime followers are known for.
For example, in last May, a father and his teenage son opened fire on two police officers with an assault rifle during a routine traffic stop in West Memphis, Ark. News reports said the incident was sparked by the suspects' refusal to present a valid driver's license. The officers were killed in the shootout and the father and son died in a second shootout with officers a short time later.
"That's our main concern. Citizen safety and police officer safety in this area," Hicks said.
According to Hicks, followers of the anti-government, anarchist movement, share the belief that the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution has tricked Americans into becoming citizens of the United States and has offered them privileges, such as driver's licenses and other government benefits, which act as so-called hidden contracts through which Americans effectively have given up their sovereignty.
Hicks said followers are often very vocal about their beliefs.
"They've very serious in their beliefs, and very serious when they do go to violence," Hicks said. "They'll kill you in a New York minute."
Hicks said while a training camp for similar anti-government groups was discovered in Kerr County in the past, there is no evidence any members are currently operating in Bandera County. But Hicks said residents should still be cautious.
"Don't be getting into heated arguments with these people, because the potential for violence is there," Hicks said.
The FBI considers the Sovereign Citizens Movement one of the nation's top domestic terror threats. Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols was a follower.
Hicks said citizens are urged to report any suspicious activity to the Bandera County Sheriff's Office or your nearest local law enforcement agency.
http://www.ksat.com/news/28189270/detail.html
Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos
Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. A few weeks back, we noted that Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons had proposed a new bill that was designed to make "streaming" infringing material a felony. At the time, the actual text of the bill wasn't available, but we assumed, naturally, that it would just extend "public performance" rights to section 506a of the Copyright Act.
Supporters of this bill claim that all it's really doing is harmonizing US copyright law's civil and criminal sections. After all, the rights afforded under copyright law in civil cases cover a list of rights: reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works or perform the work. The rules for criminal infringement only cover reproducing and distributing -- but not performing. So, supporters claim, all this does is "harmonize" copyright law and bring the criminal side into line with the civil side by adding "performance rights" to the list of things.
If only it were that simple. But, of course, it's not. First of all, despite claims to the contrary, there's a damn good reason why Congress did not include performance rights as a criminal/felony issue: because who would have thought that it would be a criminal act to perform a work without permission? It could be infringing, but that can be covered by a fine. When we suddenly criminalize a performance, that raises all sorts of questionable issues.
Furthermore, as we suspected, in the full text of the bill, "performance" is not clearly defined. This is the really troubling part. Everyone keeps insisting that this is targeted towards "streaming" websites, but is streaming a "performance"? If so, how does embedding play into this? Is the site that hosts the content guilty of performing? What about the site that merely linked to and/or embedded the video (linking and embedding are technically effectively the same thing). Without clear definitions, we run into problems pretty quickly.
And it gets worse. Because rather than just (pointlessly) adding "performance" to the list, the bill tries to also define what constitutes a potential felony crime in these circumstances:
the offense consists of 10 or more public performances by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copyrighted works
So yeah. If you embed a YouTube video that turns out to be infringing, and more than 10 people view it because of your link... you could be facing five years in jail. This is, of course, ridiculous, and suggests (yet again) politicians who are regulating a technology they simply do not understand. Should it really be a criminal act to embed a YouTube video, even if you don't know it was infringing...? This could create a massive chilling effect to the very useful service YouTube provides in letting people embed videos.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110601/01515014500/senators-want-to-put-people-jail-embedding-youtube-videos.shtml
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