ICE agents have reportedly claimed to be police officers to gain consent to enter a person’s home – a tactic that is viewed as unethical, but within the powers granted to the officers. Civil rights groups supported Kalra’s bill, looking to stymie the Trump administration’s promise to use any and all available tools to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Many groups fear Trump will expand deportations to include all undocumented immigrants, their families and relatives.   read more

If, in focusing on neighborhoods of color, police expected to be deterring crime, it didn’t seem to work. EFF found that police “did not use ALPR surveillance in the southeast part of Oakland nearly as much as in the north, west, and central parts of Oakland, even though there seems to be just as much crime.” Surveillance also did not correlate well with areas experiencing automobile-related crimes.   read more

Some observers wonder whether Harvard is making a play in California’s impressive wine market or its stressed water market. The purchases began close to when the three-year drought began. Harvard quickly bought the rights to drill 16 new water wells, twice the depth of normal residential wells, just before restrictions on new pumping took effect in August 2013.   read more

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said this past week that his ride-sharing company’s annual $500 million in gross revenue from operations in San Francisco is three times bigger than the city’s entire taxi industry. But if he is going to continue the meteoric rise of his 4-year-old startup in California, he is going to have to get past one small stumbling block.   read more

A study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a 50% drop in big trees, like pines, since the 1930s. The breadth of the disappearance suggests global warming is more than just a contributing factor. As a result, dense forests of pine trees are being replaced by scrubby oaks in semi-barren settings or as forest filler.   read more

“Virtually every state tax system is fundamentally unfair,” according to the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy. But “California has one of the least regressive tax systems due to its heavy reliance on a very progressive income tax.” The institute's measure of “fairness” is how evenly different income groups other than the elderly pay taxes as a percentage of their incomes.   read more

The U.S.Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported that seizures of meth at the Mexican border hit a record high in the fiscal year ending last September 30 and were up 33% around the San Diego area. But it wasn’t until this week that the drug trafficking passed a technological milestone. Mexican police said a drone carrying pounds of meth crashed in a Tijuana shopping mall parking lot Tuesday night, just steps from the border.   read more

Measles is surging in the state and nationwide. Overall, the U.S. had 644 confirmed cases in 2014, the most in 20 years and an annual spike of about 350%. There is a reason for that. An anti-vaccine movement among wealthy people has had significant impact on parents claiming a waiver from having their school-age children vaccinated.   read more

The Fountain Hopper newsletter posted a Five-Step Plan™ explaining how students can request copies of their admission records from the university using the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). After a 45-day wait, they can peruse essays written about them by admissions officers, numerical valuations of their personalities, letters of recommendation, descriptions of interviews and other information generally regarded as confidential.   read more

News-Press co-publisher Arthur von Wiesenberger defended the use of “illegals” at the rabid anti-immigrant website run by the Minuteman Project, where “illegal aliens” is still the go-to description. He invoked the name of revolutionary Che Guevara, who's been dead for 48 years, to highlight the threat to free speech posed by the protesters.   read more

There is some concern that insurance companies that joined early will be saddled with the sicker, less lucrative customers and UnitedHealth will game a market it has been able to observe from a distance. But there are any number of reasons why California may be slow to embrace the company. Among them is concern that if UnitedHealth is allowed in the exchange it will peddle its so-called “skinny plans” to big companies.   read more

The first offer would have paid 64,000 employees a pittance of the alleged $3 billion in lost wages they suffered between 2005 and 2009. The tech giants ponied up an extra $90 million and resubmitted their settlement offer. Ars Technica did the math and figured that even with the new money, each employee would net around $6,500 after the lawyers were paid.   read more

Like most underfunded, half-neglected public social service efforts, the department has struggled mightily to fulfill its mission. The Auditor reported that the department fails to bill and collect all the money it could be collecting through the “Parental Fee Program,” which considers ability to pay as a factor. The department collects only about 60% of assessed fees and it doesn’t do a very good job assessing those fees in the first place, the report said.   read more

The ruling does not compel California officials to abandon the state’s new law; it just seems like a good idea. The new rule would have required workers to be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, and overtime for more than 40 hours of work in a week. The state will save $354.4 million annually by denying them that.   read more

Holder announced that from now on, local and state authorities will not be “using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without evidence that a crime occurred.” They do a lot of that, in cooperation with federal authorities, through a program called “Equitable Sharing.” A Washington Post story last year calculated that local agencies picked up 81% of the $2.5 billion snared by civil forfeiture nationwide over seven years ending in fiscal year 2014.   read more

Los Angeles Times reporter David Willman has written in the past about a quick deployment of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System (GMD), without the usual testing regimen, after President George W. Bush ordered it up in 2002. So far, the missile is eight for 17 at shooting down its target, despite, according to the lawsuit, the Pentagon staging “carefully choreographed tests that are more predictable and less challenging than an actual attack would be.”   read more

The journalists wanted to write about the top vacation “hoarders” but the list of employees has vague job titles instead of names. Rick Chivaro, the controller’s top lawyer, told them the names were confidential personnel information. As it turned out, Chivaro took second place on the list, accumulating 498 vacation days as of last June. That's six times the limit for government employees.   read more