A ringing endorsement of privacy

June 26, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

Privacy is essential to individual freedom, a bulwark against an intrusive, oppressive state.

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The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a startup Internet company has to pay broadcasters when it takes television programs from the airwaves and allows subscribers to watch them on smartphones and other portable devices.

The justices said by a 6-3 vote that Aereo Inc. is violating the broadcasters' copyrights by taking the signals for free. The ruling preserves the ability of the television networks to collect huge fees from cable and satellite systems that transmit their programming.

Aereo is available in New York, Boston, Houston and Atlanta among 11 metropolitan areas and uses thousands of dime-size antennas to capture television signals and transmit them to subscribers who pay as little as $8 a month for the service.

Company executives have said their business model would not survive a loss at the Supreme Court.

Some justices worried during arguments in April that a ruling for the broadcasters could also harm the burgeoning world of cloud computing, which gives users access to a vast online computer network that stores and processes information.

But Justice Stephen Breyer in his majority opinion that the court did not intend to call cloud computing into question.

But Breyer also said Aereo should be treated no different from a cable system. "Aereo's system is, for all practical purposes, identical to a cable system," he said.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Scalia said he shares the majority's feeling that what Aereo is doing "ought not to be allowed." But he said the court has distorted federal copyright law to forbid it.

Congress should decide whether the law "needs an upgrade," Scalia said.

Broadcasters including ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS sued Aereo for copyright infringement, saying Aereo should pay for redistributing the programming the same way cable and satellite systems must or risk high-profile blackouts of channels that anger their subscribers.

Syrian warplanes bombed Sunni militants' positions inside Iraq, military officials confirmed Wednesday, deepening the concerns that the extremist insurgency that spans the two neighboring countries could morph into an even wider regional conflict. US Secretary of State John Kerry warned against the threat and said other nations should stay out.

Meanwhile, a new insurgent artillery offensive against Christian villages in the north of Iraq sent thousands of Christians fleeing from their homes, seeking sanctuary in Kurdish-controlled territory, Associated Press reporters who witnessed the scene said.

The United States government and a senior Iraqi military official confirmed that Syrian warplanes bombed militants' positions Tuesday in and near the border crossing in the town of Qaim. Iraq's other neighbors — Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — were all bolstering flights just inside their airspace to monitor the situation, said the Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

American officials said the target was the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS, also abbreviated as ISIL), the Sunni extremist group that has seized large swathes of Iraq and seeks to carve out a purist Islamic enclave across both sides of the Syria-Iraq border.

An explosion blamed on Islamic extremists rocked a shopping mall in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, on Wednesday and police said at least 21 people have been killed.

The blast came as Nigerians were preparing to watch their country's Super Eagles play Argentina at the World Cup in Brazil. Many shops at the mall have TV screens but it was unclear if the explosion was timed to coincide with the match, which started an hour later.

Witnesses said victims were found around the exit to Emab Plaza, in Abuja's upscale Wuse 2 suburb. Billows of black smoke could be seen from a mile away.

"I heard the explosion and (felt) the building shaking," said Shuaibu Baba, who had a narrow escape. He said he rushed downstairs to find that the driver who had dropped him a few minutes earlier was dead. "I asked the driver to come with me, and he said 'No,' he would wait for me in the car."

Police Superintendent Frank Mba said 17 people were wounded and 21 bodies were recovered.

He also said one suspect has been arrested and investigations have already started. The government urged calm and said it is doing everything possible to "to check the activities of insurgents."

It is the latest in a series of violent attacks blamed on Islamic extremists. Nigerian security forces appear incapable of curtailing the near-daily attacks concentrated in the northeast, where Boko Haram extremists have their stronghold.

A tornado-producing storm that hit central Indiana on Tuesday damaged several homes in Indianapolis and its outskirts, downed power lines and uprooted trees, authorities said.

It was one of several thunderstorms that sprang up in southwestern Indiana near Terre Haute and moved northeast toward Indianapolis, becoming more severe along the way. No injuries were reported. National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Ryan said the tornado struck in the afternoon in Hendricks County just southwest of Indianapolis and caused extensive damage to at least three homes.

The twister, an EF1 on the 0-to-5 enhanced Fujita scale with an estimated wind speed of 100 mph, tossed a camper onto the roof of a home and destroyed the camper and about half of the roof, according to a storm survey team's report. Strong winds from the storm also damaged more than 200 cars at an auto auction site, the weather service said.

The storm hit as 20 people were receiving chimney sweeping training in Plainfield, about 15 miles southwest of Indianapolis. Tom Spalding, a spokesman for the Chimney Safety Institute of America, said weather alerts were sent to the trainees' cellphones and what looked like a funnel cloud appeared in the distance.

The head of the once-mighty Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel was arrested at a home while watching the telecast of Mexico's soccer team playing in the World Cup, federal officials said Tuesday.

Federal police chief Monte Alejandro Rubido said Fernando Sanchez Arellano was detained in the border city of Tijuana on Monday and was expected to be brought to Mexico City.

Sanchez Arellano had $100,000 in cash when he was arrested, Rubido said, but gave no other details at a news briefing at which he didn't take questions.

Journalists were shown photographs of Sanchez Arellano in a green soccer jersey and with his cheeks painted with green, white and red, the colors of the Mexican flag.

But he couldn't celebrate Mexico's 3 -1 victory over Croatia because he was arrested by soldiers before the game ended, a federal official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to the media.

Sanchez Arellano inherited leadership of the Arellano Felix cartel from his uncle, Javier Arellano Felix, who was arrested by the US Coast Guard in international waters off Mexico's Baja California in 2006. The uncle later was sentenced in San Diego to 40 years in federal prison.

A 43-year-old former high school special education teacher was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days in county jail and five years of probation for an April 2011 shooting involving a crew of the reality TV show "Repo Games" in his North Las Vegas neighborhood.

Carlos Enrique Barron asked Tuesday for mercy and leniency and told Clark County District Court Judge James Bixler he didn't want to go to jail. He said that in the end, no one was wounded.

But prosecutor Alexander Chen noted that a jury that acquitted Barron of the most serious offenses — two counts of attempted murder and one felony discharging a firearm into a vehicle charge — found Barron guilty in January of felony assault with a deadly weapon, carrying a concealed weapon, burglary and misdemeanor discharging a firearm charges. He could have faced up to 22 years in state prison.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.