[HN Gopher] Judge who signed Kansas newspaper search warrant had...
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Judge who signed Kansas newspaper search warrant had 2 DUI arrests,
reports say
Author : goplayoutside
Score : 102 points
Date : 2023-08-20 21:27 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The Record says it reached a deal with investigators to turn
| the gear over to a forensic investigator to confirm whether the
| equipment had been reviewed or examined before it is put back
| into service.
|
| Good luck proving that with anything but water-tight phones
| (where any tampering attempt would leave tool marks) and T2/M
| Apple hardware - everything else can be read out with no trace of
| that ever being recorded, unless specific attention is paid to
| tamper evidence and logging before such an event: hard disks and
| SSDs can all be read out without leaving traces, if there is no
| permanent and regularly updated off-site log detailing SMART data
| (that would show an increase in the powered-on-hours and bytes
| read metrics as well as the event log), USB sticks don't log
| anything and for raw flash memory readouts of phones (i.e. JTAG-
| based) there is no record either.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Shit, just Greykey the judge's iPhone and let her unlock it for
| you. Considering the incompetence we see on a national stage
| with the FCC, I doubt she would even know what was happening.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| How do these things work anyway? I get it that for older
| phones that used just passcodes, a bug in the retry time
| limit verification (or its bypass with glitching) is enough,
| but on modern phones the combination with a decent passphrase
| should be impossible to bypass.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's not entirely clear. Originally I believe it was only a
| couple features; a bruteforce for the PIN/auth and some
| kind of social engineering process that tricked the user
| into unlocking their phone. Only a few details have really
| leaked about it:
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/22/iphone-hacking-
| to...
|
| At the end of the day, it's really just a little grey
| computer with a serial cable attached. You could update it
| with any exploits you want, and I can only guess what
| they're using nowadays.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is not even the most interesting part of the saga.
|
| > We have now discovered that the probable cause affidavits were
| not filed with the District Court until three days after the
| illegal searches were executed. While the affidavits purport to
| be signed before Magistrate Viar on the day of the illegal
| searches, no explanation has been provided why they were not
| filed prior to the execution of the illegal searches.
|
| https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/investigations/breaking...
|
| Small town corruption got caught with their hand in the cookie
| jar on the national stage.
| noman-land wrote:
| Love it. Put these people on blast on the national stage. This
| kind of behavior needs to be stamped out.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'm curious how this is all going to play out.
|
| Will crimes be exposed? If so, will they be prosecuted? Will
| everything by waved away by qualified immunity?
| dmix wrote:
| Everyone goes through rough periods in life. Both of her
| incidents happened within a 2 month time span a decade ago so
| it's safe to assume it's just one serious low point in her life.
|
| I'm all for consequences of liberally handing out search warrants
| on thin grounds but I'm not sure what relevance the character
| attack has.
|
| I guess the suggestion is she is more likely to be sympathetic to
| the resturant owner's own old DUI being used in the paper's
| character attack during an unrelated incident reporting on a city
| council meeting in (alleged) retaliation for kicking out
| reporters (even though the paper claims to have ignored the
| anonymous tip during reporting for the original restaurant
| incident)?
|
| I guess that's some juicy details but it reminds me of the
| critiques by the restaurant owner that the paper in question
| often acts like a cheap tabloid, even if the search warrant was
| abusive.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| > the critiques by the restaurant owner that the paper in
| question often acts like a cheap tabloid
|
| Note, the newspaper never published the DUI of the restaurant
| owner because they decided it wasn't relevant to their
| reporting. All I'm seeing from your comment is a repetition of
| a baseless accusation from someone trying to justify their
| actions after the fact.
| dmix wrote:
| I read the paper _did_ still report on her DUI but for an
| unrelated reporting on a city council meeting though? The
| thing they didn 't do was use the _anonymously leaked DUI
| information_ they received for the original reporting on the
| restaurant incident (2 different articles). Which is why they
| defended themselves saying the DUI stuff they later published
| for the city council article was simply via public records.
|
| I could be wrong though and happy to be corrected.
|
| Otherwise if that's is indeed the case, then how did the
| police learn about the DUI leak without them actually
| reporting on it first?
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > how did the police learn about the DUI leak
|
| Since you read the article, you read the part that explains
| the owner of the paper, Eric Meyer, emailed the the police
| chief, Gideon Cody, about the tip along with a screenshot
| of the DOR record.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Otherwise if that's is indeed the case, then how did the
| police learn about the DUI leak without them actually
| reporting on it first?
|
| * The newspaper received the information and forwarded it
| to the police.
|
| * A city council member also received the information and
| acted upon it in a public meeting.
|
| * The restaurant owner accused the paper of forwarding the
| information to the city council member. *
| The paper reported on this allegation (and denied it).
| * Police also reacted to this allegation.
| metabagel wrote:
| All articles which I have read, including this one, have
| clearly stated that the newspaper didn't publish the DUI
| allegation.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Shame NPR didn't recognize the irrelevance of this story. It
| hurts me to think there was a time NPR even in it's shameless
| leftiness stuck to journalism. Now it's another cookie cutter
| BuzzFeed-y publisher of content.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > recognize the irrelevance of this story
|
| Irrelevant that a local police department and judge
| executed an illegal search and seizure on a newspaper? I
| cannot fathom why a fellow news and media organization
| could possibly be interested in that.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I guess all of that somehow culminated in an unlawful warrant.
| You don't just get to hand-wave unconstitutional conduct; a DUI
| is small fries, but accusations of impunitive power abuse is
| something else entirely. The backlash isn't for the DUI or even
| really the attempted cover-up. The problem (and reason why this
| made national news) is that they used this relatively minor
| contrivance as an excuse to abuse their extremely important
| position for personal power.
|
| If we don't prosecute this kind of behavior, there can be no
| faith in the rule of law. It is a sad situation that devolved
| to an inexcusable abuse of power, and _that_ needs to be
| scrutinized.
| anon7725 wrote:
| > Everyone goes through rough periods in life. Both of her
| incidents happened within a 2 month time span a decade ago so
| it's safe to assume it's just one serious low point in her
| life.
|
| FTA:
|
| > The judge was arrested twice in 2012 -- once on Jan. 25 in
| Coffey County and again on Aug. 6 in Morris County.
|
| > In the first arrest, Viar "was charged and entered a
| diversion agreement -- which was extended six months because
| she refused to get an alcohol and drug evaluation and stopped
| communicating with her lawyer," according to the Eagle.
|
| > TV station WIBW reported in 2012, adding that at the time,
| the prosecutor was on the Morris County Anti-Drug Task Force.
|
| > Despite those issues, Viar was reelected as county prosecutor
| several times.
|
| Seems a bit more involved than just a rough patch. I would
| personally consider it conduct unbecoming of someone wanting to
| be a prosecutor or a judge, but I'm not a Kansas voter.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I don't see how the DUIs are even relevant. Just seems like a
| smear campaign to discredit the judge.
| earleybird wrote:
| It speaks to the character of the offender, not the crime
| itself. Is that a smear campaign; I don't know. Perhaps when
| more facts are known it will become clearer.
| SilasX wrote:
| Agreed. This doesn't seem very relevant to the case, and
| there's plenty of other jaw-dropping details to report on (like
| the current top comment's mention of back dating the warrant
| application).
|
| Now, I wouldn't say this DUI history is entirely non-
| newsworthy. If someone wants to do a story about powerful
| people getting unusually light punishments for crimes, and this
| is one example of that, that would be a great data point to
| report on. But it's not relevant to the warrant corruption
| story.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I guess the suggestion is she is more likely to be
| sympathetic to the resturant owner's own old DUI being used in
| the paper's character attack
|
| The suggestion is that she has politically sensitive
| information that has been nondisclosed and possibly actively
| suppressed (it should not be unclear how charges were resolved,
| especially those that occurred _while she was an elected law
| enforcement official_ ), which is bad and possibly an
| indication of corruption in and of itself, but it also makes
| her vulnerable to blackmail, especially from orgabized groups
| that would have greater access to the information that hasn't
| been public: like, say, law enforcement.
|
| On top of the issues with the search itself, and the probable
| cause affidavits supporting the warrant application being filed
| _after_ the warrant was executed, it adds to the impression
| that this wasn 't sloppy adherence to the correct legal
| standards for the warrant by the judge and instead a
| deliberate, knowing, and corrupt official abuse of office, (and
| not just by the police, where that seemed to be the case
| whatever happened with the judge.)
| mlyle wrote:
| > I guess that's some juicy details but it reminds me of the
| critiques by the restaurant owner that the paper in question
| often acts like a cheap tabloid
|
| OK, um... if a _different newspaper_ (The Wichita Eagle)
| reports on the judge 's DUI, you can't use that information to
| reinforce your view that the original newspaper was a tabloid.
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(page generated 2023-08-20 23:02 UTC)