You should’ve served US better and died!’ Debt collector berates disabled veteran

A debt collector, angered that a disabled US Army veteran was living off of disability payments, told him he “should have died” in war instead of "taking advantage of" other Americans.

Minnesota-based debt collection agency Gurstel Chargo is now facing a lawsuit for verbally abusing the Army vet over a $6,000 defaulted student loan, Courthouse News reports.

“If you would have served our country better you would not be a disabled veteran living off Social Security while the rest of us honest Americans work our asses off,” one of the agency’s debt collectors allegedly told the vet. “Too bad, you should have died.”

Michael Collier was declared 100 per cent disabled after suffering permanent spine and head injuries while in the Army. As a result, both Collier and his wife receive disability payments from the federal Social Security Administration, which are exempt from seizure by debt collectors.

But in an attempt to collect on the defaulted student loan, the collector seized the money from Collier's wife’s savings account. The credit union then proceeded to freeze her account.

The Colliers filed an objection and requested a court hearing, at which the couple was told their frozen funds were exempt from such garnishment.

But the debt collection agency’s lawyer continued to harass the couple. Telling Collier “he would need to get a lawyer in order to get his money back,” an unidentified paralegal cursed at and threatened him over the phone.

“F--k you!” the paralegal allegedly said, “Pay us your money! You can’t afford an attorney. You owe us. I hope your wife divorces you.”

The couple is now seeking compensation for actual damages, statutory damages, and punitive damages for violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), privacy invasion, malicious infliction of emotional distress and conversion.

The FDCPA considers it abusive for a debt collector to make empty threats, misrepresent the legal status of a debt, or use obscene of profane language.

According to the Daily Beast, debt collectors sometimes use abusive techniques to pry money from the indebted because of the commission rates they receive. On average, debt collectors make 20 cents for every dollar recouped. At this rate, the Colliers’ debt would be worth $1,200 to Chargo.

Verbal harassment is a commonly-used technique to instigate debtors into making payments. In 2010, the Federal Trade Commission received 50,000 complaints about severe harassment from debt collectors, 18,000 of which included the use of obscene language.

And some say that number is low.

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg, as far as I’m concerned,” attorney Sergei Lemberg told the Daily Beast.

While Chargo's berating took it too far for the Colliers, there are of thousands of cases of abuse that never make it to court.

Bahraini court confirms jail terms for medics who aided protesters

Bahrain's top court confirmed the jail sentences of nine doctors for their role in last year’s pro-democracy protests, state news agency BNA reported. The medics will be imprisoned for up to five years.

­On Monday, Attorney General Abdul-Rahman al-Sayed said the country’s Court of Cassation rejected all of the defendants’ appeals and upheld the verdicts, BNA said.

The nine medics were among the twenty individuals tried by a Bahraini military tribunal in September 2011. The tribunal charged the doctors with felonies for their role in the February protests, which included treating antigovernment activists wounded by security forces and reporting those injuries to foreign media. Some of the medics also participated in the protests.

The Bahraini government accused them of crimes including occupying a hospital and inciting hatred towards the country’s ruling royal family.

“To make them innocent would be to go against the reputation of the regime. I think it’s a political decision. They are saying, ‘we are here, we determine the sentences, and no one can change our mind whether it’s the international human rights organizations or political activists,’” Bahraini political activist Saeed Shehabi told RT.

A June 2012 retrial by a civilian court resulted in the acquittal of nine of the health workers, and a reduction of sentences for nine others. Ali al-Ekri, whom the government labeled the ringleader of the doctors and nurses on trial, received a five-year sentence. The nine appealed the decision to Bahrain’s top court.

Two medics who had previously been sentenced to 15 years each did not appeal their cases, and are believed to be in hiding.

The case sparked international criticism of the Bahraini government. Several human rights groups and professional medical organizations called the sentence an unjust retaliation against people attempting to simply do their jobs amidst the crackdown on the opposition.

White House demands military prisons for Americans under NDAA

The White House has asked the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals to place an emergency stay on a ruling made last week by a federal judge so that the president’s power to indefinitely detain Americans without charge is reaffirmed immediately.

On Wednesday, September 12, US District Court Judge Katherine Forrest made permanent a temporary injunction she issued in May that bars the federal government from abiding by the indefinite detention provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA. Judge Forrest ruled that a clause that gives the government the power to arrest US citizens suspected of maintaining alliances with terrorists and hold them without due process violated the Constitution and that the White House would be stripped of that ability immediately.

Only hours after Judge Forrest issued last week’s ruling, the Obama administration threatened to appeal the decision, and on Monday morning they followed through.

At around 9 a.m. Monday, September 17, the White House filed an emergency stay in federal appeals court in an effort to have the Second Circuit strip away Judge Forrest’s ruling from the week earlier.

“Almost immediately after Judge Forrest ruled, the Obama administration challenged the decision,” writes Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist that is listed as the lead plaintiff in the case. According to Hedges, the government called Judge Forrest’s most recent ruling an “extraordinary injunction of worldwide scope,” and Executive Branch attorneys worked into the weekend to find a way to file their stay.

“The Justice Department sent a letter to Forrest and the Second Circuit late Friday night informing them that at 9 a.m. Monday the Obama administration would ask the Second Circuit for an emergency stay that would lift Forrest’s injunction,” Hedges writes. “This would allow Obama to continue to operate with indefinite detention authority until a formal appeal was heard. The government’s decision has triggered a constitutional showdown between the president and the judiciary.”

Attorney Carl Mayer, a counsel for Hedges and his co-plaintiffs, confirmed to RT early Monday that the stay was in fact filed with the Second Circuit.

“This may be the most significant constitutional standoff since the Pentagon Papers case,” Carl Mayer says in a separate statement posted on Mr. Hedge’s blog.

Bruce Afran, who serves as co-lead counsel along with Mayer, tells Hedges that the White House could be waging a war against the injunction to ensure that the Obama administration has ample time to turn the NDAA against any protesters participating in domestic demonstrations.

“A Department of Homeland Security bulletin was issued Friday claiming that the riots [in the Middle East] are likely to come to the US and saying that DHS is looking for the Islamic leaders of these likely riots,” Afran tells Hedges. “It is my view that this is why the government wants to reopen the NDAA — so it has a tool to round up would-be Islamic protesters before they can launch any protest, violent or otherwise. Right now there are no legal tools to arrest would-be protesters. The NDAA would give the government such power. Since the request to vacate the injunction only comes about on the day of the riots, and following the DHS bulletin, it seems to me that the two are connected. The government wants to reopen the NDAA injunction so that they can use it to block protests.”

Hedges, who has previously reported for papers including the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor, argued that his job as a journalist requires him to routinely interact and converse with persons that may be considered terrorists in the eyes of the US government.

Under the NDAA, Americans “who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners" can be held in prison cells “until the end of hostilities,” vague verbiage that essentially allows for those suspect of such associations to be decided under the discretion of US President Barack Obama or any federal agent underneath him.

“Because the language is so vague in this law,” Mr. Mayer explains to RT, “if any journalist or activist is seen as reporting or offering opinions about groups that could somehow be linked not just to al-Qaeda but to any opponent of the United States or even opponents of our allies”

“I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge,” Hedges wrote when he first filed his suit in January. “I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have ‘disappeared’ into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.”

Monday morning, Hedges once more responded to the White House’s relentless attempts to reauthorize powers granted under the NDAA, asking, “If the administration is this anxious to restore this section of the NDAA, is it because the Obama government has already used it? Or does it have plans to use the section in the immediate future?”

“The decision to vigorously fight Forrest’s ruling is a further example of the Obama White House’s steady and relentless assault against civil liberties, an assault that is more severe than that carried out by George W. Bush,” writes Hedges. “Obama has refused to restore habeas corpus. He supports the FISA Amendment Act, which retroactively makes legal what under our Constitution has traditionally been illegal — warrantless wire tapping, eavesdropping and monitoring directed against US citizens. He has used the Espionage Act six times against whistle-blowers who have exposed government crimes, including war crimes, to the public. He interprets the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act as giving him the authority to assassinate US citizens, as he did the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. And now he wants the right to use the armed forces to throw U.S. citizens into military prisons, where they will have no right to a trial and no defined length of detention.”

In his latest blog post, Hedges acknowledges, “The government has now lost four times in a litigation that has gone on almost nine months.”

European lawmakers ‘meddling in Russia’s internal affairs’ – Foreign Ministry

Moscow has responded harshly to a European parliament resolution entitled, ‘On Use of Justice for Political Purposes in Russia,’ saying the document is an example of meddling in the country’s affairs.

­The European Parliament's resolution has been derided by the Russian Foreign Ministry as the latest attempt by European lawmakers to make unfair conclusions on the internal situation in the country.

“We have read through the European Parliament’s latest resolution on Russia and unfortunately we have to say that the MEPs have once again failed to provide a balanced analysis of the situation in our country,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement released Friday. “The resolution seems to be based on unconfirmed and biased reports, which is further compounded by unfair ‘analysis.’”

The EU resolution mentions several high-profile cases in Russia, including the murders of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, who were gunned down together in January 2009 in Moscow. Following a thorough investigation, the killer – identified as a Russian nationalist with a grudge against Markelov due to his “anti-fascist work” – was sentenced to life in prison.

The investigation also determined that Baburova had the misfortune of being with Markelov at the time of the attack.

The EU report labels the solved case as slow progress.

As to the complaints concerning Russia’s legal system, Russia’s envoy to the EU Vladimir Chizhov reminded that every country “has its own laws, and legislation even differs inside of the European Union."

Chizhov questioned why the EU parliament never consulted Russia on the developments of the court cases it mentions in the report.

"I understand that this debate was dominated by a speech delivered by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton,” the Russian envoy said. "The wording of this resolution is regrettable and gives a biased picture of the events. Some of them raise questions even from a factual point of view."

If Ashton wanted to get Russia's viewpoint, she could have done so, Chizhov added.

The Foreign Ministry also mentioned human rights violations in the EU itself, including the issue of not providing citizenship to Russians living in Latvia and Estonia.

Earlier, President Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters the EU document was ‘unacceptable’.

Chinese-made laptops’ latest feature: Pre-installed viruses

By the time you switch on your fresh-out-of-the-box laptop for the first time, it may already be infected with dangerous malware that can either harm you or turn your computer into a pawn in a criminal cyberwar.

­This accidental discovery was made by Microsoft’s digital crimes unit during an investigation into Chinese computer manufacturers, many of whom are illegally installing its Windows operating system onto their hardware.

"The cybercriminals are really changing the ways they try to attack you," Richard Boscovich, a former federal prosecutor and a senior attorney in Microsoft's digital crimes unit wrote in the company’s blog.

After Microsoft engineers purchased and tested local laptops, they discovered that 20 percent of them had become infected with viruses or malware at some point between leaving the assembly line and the date of purchase.

"We found malware capable of remotely turning on an infected computer's microphone and video camera, potentially giving a cybercriminal eyes and ears into a victim's home or business," Boscovich said. "Additionally, we found malware that records a person's every keystroke, allowing cybercriminals to steal a victim's personal information.”

Microsoft security officers found that most of the infected computers contained a powerful and malicious software program called Nitol. The malware apparently originated from a notorious server called 3322.org, which in 2009 was reported to be responsible for nearly a fifth of the world’s illegal transactions.

The US software giant filed a lawsuit with a Virginia District Court to block the server. The judge ruled in Microsoft’s favor earlier this week.

Server owner Peng Yong, the defendant in the trial, claimed that he had no knowledge of Microsoft’s findings and denied any responsibility.

"Our policy unequivocally opposes the use of any of our domain names for malicious purposes," Peng told the AP news agency.

In the first few days after the legal rulings, Microsoft says that it has already blocked some 37 million malware connections to 3322.org.

But as one source of malware is snuffed out, another is likely to grow in its place.

Microsoft said that no computer can be guaranteed to be virus-free as long as “unsecure supply chains” continue to exist in China. The country teems with lightly regulated electronics manufacturers, offering plenty of opportunities for fraud. And for the ordinary customer, finding out whether a hacker laid hands on your laptop after leaving the factory can be a tricky task.

"So how can someone know if they're buying from an unsecure supply chain? One sign is a deal that appears too good to be true. However, sometimes people just can't tell, making the exploitation of a broken supply chain an especially dangerous vehicle for infecting people with malware,” Boscovich said.