We unpack Donald Trump's first press conference as President-elect; what are the legalities of the FBI’s paid Best Buy technician informants?; plus a look at SCOTUS hearing on Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District - which may change how public schools provide education for disabled students.
Unpacking Trump’s first post-election news conference
A verbal tussle with a CNN reporter, the President-elect's denial of everything in a dossier purported to detail Trump's involvement with Russia, the claim that Congress will repeal and replace the ACA very soon, that's for starters.
Larry Mantle and guests analyze Donald Trump's first post-election news conference.
Guests:
Jesse Byrnes, associate editor for The Hill
Matthew Rosenberg, reporter for The New York Times covering intelligence and national security
Kate Brannen, deputy managing editor of Just Security - online forum for the rigorous analysis of U.S. national security law and policy; Just Security is based at the New York University School of Law
Craig Holman, Ph.D., government affairs lobbyist for the Congress Watch division of Public Citizen
Sean T. Walsh, Republican political strategist and partner at Wilson Walsh Consulting in San Francisco
The legality of the FBI’s paid Best Buy technician informants
In 2011, a California doctor sent his faulty computer’s hard drive to Best Buy’s Geek Squad City in Kentucky, where a technician repairing the drive found and reported child porn.
The doctor now faces federal charges, but the case, United States of America v. Mark A. Rettenmaier, has brought to light a small group of paid Geek Squad informants which the FBI has been cultivating over a four-year period – a relationship which will be explored by the defense attorneys in a motion hearing in Santa Ana, Orange County starting Wednesday.
The use of these eight technicians, who reported signs of child porn to the FBI in exchange for payment, has compromised the legality of search, bringing up questions about the FBI’s reach, consumer privacy and the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches.
If Best Buy was effectively operating as part of the government, it would require a warrant for searching drives. But in a statement released Monday, Best Buy said it has “no relationship with the FBI,” though when employees unintentionally come across child porn, they do report it to law enforcement – a policy they share with customers before repair.
Do Geek Squad’s customers consent to their computers being searched when they hand over their computers? Does the FBI’s use of paid informants compromise the legality of the search and render the findings unusable in court?
Guests:
Ron Hosko, president of The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund and former head of the FBI’s criminal investigative division
Lee Tien, Senior Staff Attorney and Adams Chair for Internet Rights at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Supreme Court case may change public school education for disabled students
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the Supreme Court is deciding a case today that may change the legal standard of how public schools provide education for disabled students.
Federal law currently states that children have a right to a “free appropriate public education.” But this leaves much ambiguity for students with disabilities. Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District is the case going forward today, and involves a boy with autism and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
His family said he wasn’t able to make progress in his public school, which led them to place him in a private school. The boy’s parents are calling for a higher standard for disabled students, but some are saying that resources for schools are already slim, and there are still questions as to what these new standards would entail.
Guests:
Bill Koski, director of the Youth and Education Law Project at Stanford University; he is also co-counsel for the student's family
Alex Rojas, superintendent of the Bassett Unified School District, which is located in the San Gabriel Valley; serves some unincorporated parts of L.A. County and portions of the City of Industry, La Puente, and Whittier