One of America’s Finest. ICE Assistant Chief Counsel Constantine Peter Kallas was arrested for allegedly accepting a $20,000.00 bribe to assist an immigrant with citizenship. The DOJ’s investigation shows an additional $900,000.00 deposited into his personal bank accounts. This doesn’t look good.
Here’s the DOJ Press Release from Courthousenews.
The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (DOJ-OIG) just released a partially redacted report on the FBI’s Security Check Procedures for Immigration Applications and Petitions. The Executive Summary states:
Through its National Name Check Program (NNCP) and Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provides federal agencies, state and local law enforcement agencies, and approved non-governmental institutions criminal history and identification services from its repositories of investigative records.
So who exactly are “approved non-governmental institutions”? Interestingly the FBI claims that the IAFIS maintains the largest biometric database in the world. While searching for more information on the IAFIS I found a power point presentation from some other government regarding the program.
Some great minds at Stanford have been teaching a course on Information Retrieval and have now made an exhaustive textbook available. The best part is that its free to view and/or download. Grab Information Retrieval by Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan and Hinrich Schütze. The Information Retrieval companion website gives you an easy way to navigate it. Be forewarned that the information is thick and deep. This isn’t for the novice searcher.
From beSpacific, “FBI agents in Guantanamo and other military zones were faced with interrogators from other agencies who used more aggressive interrogation techniques. The FBI ultimately decided that it would not participate in joint interrogations of detainees with other agencies in which techniques not allowed by the FBI were used. Our investigation found that the vast majority of the FBI agents deployed in Guantanamo and the other military zones continued to adhere to FBI policies and separated themselves from other agencies’ interrogators who were using non-FBI-approved techniques. In only a few instances did FBI agents use techniques that would not normally be permitted in the United States or participate in interrogations during which such techniques were used by others.”
Previously I mentioned how I was outraged to learn that the VA Tries To Misdiagnose Veterans by advising mental health employees “refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out. Consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder, R/O PTSD.” Well this was because Adjustment Disorder is “non-compensable” according to Gordon P. Erspamer of Morrison & Foerster’s San Francisco office.
Thanks again to PI Buzz for posting this tidbit, I felt it appropriate to post too, since after all this is the Public Records Guy blog.
In a May 20, 2008 Opinion Memorandum, the California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, Jr. via Deputy Attorney General Daniel G. Stone clarified a longstanding misconception by County Assessors. It pertains the online inquiries for property assessments, etc. They frequently post a disclaimer, erroneously citing a section of the law that actually does not apply to their very claim.
