Just spoke with Baltimore City Comptroller Pratt and she assured me that a thorough investigation was taking place and it should be completed “by early next week”.
My guess is that means after the election, but we shall see. I would imagine it should be fairly easy to walk around City Hall and locate the filming location, if it is indeed on premises…
Regarding investigations into:
All offices were contacted between Friday 4PM and Sunday evening.
Per TechDirt’s coverage here, it appears the Stingray device made by Harris Corp. has actually only received FCC approval for use in “emergency situations”. Despite this limited approval scope, Federal and local law enforcement agencies have been using it for routine investigations, without a warrant, and lying about it, while Harris Corp misleads the FCC.
Luckily, the ACLU is on the case, asking FCC chair Tom Wheeler to open an investigation into the usage of the Stingray device.
Again, we’ve arrested a software developer who merely created a product, yet we turn a blind eye to a corporation actively colluding with law enforcement to routinely violate the privacy of Americans in violation of regulation and the law.
Hopefully Tom Wheeler at the FCC will take this as seriously as he should, and perform a thorough investigation, though his background as a lobbyist for the corporate broadcasting industry hardly makes me hopefully that he will side with citizens and consumers.
As TechDirt notes, even if he does initiate an investigation, it will most likely be met with stonewalling from the agencies and corporations involved. We need to put an end to the lawlessness that has been becoming more pervasive at every level of government, especially collusion and cronyism with corporate interests.
Made with #Pixlr # – http://pixlr.com/mobile
So who will continue to claim they haven’t seen the videos now?
After discovering and immediately downloading backups of all of Frank M. Conaway, Jr’s videos for investigative purposes, I started probing YouTube’s API for video metadata via a Python script. My goal was two-fold:
Unfortunately, while I was working on it on the MARC train Wednesday morning, the videos were pulled off of YouTube, making the metadata no longer available.
Luckily, I had pulled metadata for one of the videos in order to figure out the best way to handle parsing the XML data returned by YouTube’s API. I was able to preserve the metadata of one video: video010 know this moses hand. I’ve included an attached copy of that metadata here: video010 know this moses hand Youtube Metadata.
This file includes a published tag which contains a ISO8601 format UTC datetime value. This was the information I was trying to retrieve for Goal 1 above, but was trying to automate it for all 54 videos at once. Goal 2 will unfortunately go unanswered for now as the copies of the videos I retrieved were transcoded to a different format in the process of being extracted from YouTube, destroying any associated metadata.
Here’s what I found:
<published>2014-08-29T14:13:59.000Z</published>
Since this is in UTC (Zulu) time zone, it must be converted back to Eastern Standard Time in order to be useful. Currently, EST EDT (edit: thanks to an anonymous comment pointing out my mistake here) timezone stands 4 hours behind UTC. Confirmed using this converter.
Out pops: 2014-08-29T10:13:59-04:00 — which is Friday, August 29th at 10:13AM. During typical business hours.
I’m unsure of Mr. Conaway’s vacation schedule or typical work hours (I imagine city government workers probably have as flexible schedules as do federal). But I think this is enough evidence, in conjunction with the questionable location of filming, to prompt an investigation by the City’s Comptrollers Office. To paraphrase Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s comment on the videos, it would certainly seem to be the first “appropriate action” the Comptroller should take, and Mr. Conaway’s fellow Delegates should probably take notice.
In the course of that hypothetical investigation, and I’m unsure if it is possible, if Mr. Conaway is required to provide either access to the original recordings or access to his YouTube account, I would be happy to volunteer my services to analyze any and all available data.
If any of you are wondering how to verify the metadata I’ve provided, it would require Mr. Conaway to unhide his videos (if he hasn’t wholesale deleted them — then we’re out of luck) in order for metadata to be probed once again on YouTube, though I’m unsure if making them public again will reset the “published” metadata to the date they were again made public.
I hope I’ve documented my process with sufficient detail for it to pass muster by anyone else who wishes to peer review this analysis. If I am mistaken anywhere, please let me know in the comments and I’d be happy to update this article, with attribution to whomever points to any flaws.
The video in question is embedded below:
The Baltimore Sun caught wind of his YouTube page and Mr. Conaway has taken down the videos.
I’m including them here because I am critical of his ability to effectively hold public office and the videos are my evidence of this concern. Under the Fair Use Doctrine, I’ve included mirrors of all of the videos for download. They speak volumes as a critique of his mental state. I consider it necessary to include all in their entirety to show the breadth and scale of…this: (embedded OneDrive share is slow, direct link is here)
Please note this post was originally entitled “Seriously Baltimore?”.
Frank M. Conaway, Jr. is a current lawmaker in the Maryland House of Delegates, automatically starting a new term since there is no challenger for the November election. Mr. Conaway is the son of former Delegate Frank Conaway, Sr. He made it through the Democratic primary earlier this year despite not doing any apparent campaigning. While only an anecdote, there were no campaign signs visible at any polling places I visited or drove past leading up the primary. Who needs contributions to spend on advertising when you have dynastic name recognition thanks to your dad?
I recently had the displeasure of coming across Frank M. Conaway, Jr.’s literary works which he has apparently been writing for the last 13 years and as recently as earlier this summer. Thanks to Adam Meister for the first introduction to them. They appear to include the following titles available on Amazon (source of the publishing dates) or through his new website:
Mr. Conaway’s House of Delegates biography page lists him as an “Author”, while claiming no authorship to any specific works, so presumably this is the same Frank M. Conaway, Jr. In the course of researching this post, I have confirmed this assumption thanks to his consistent misspellings, and also uncovered approximately 54 videos / rambling rants posted in the last month on YouTube under user account 314meta. They are clearly the Frank M. Conaway Jr. in question.
Have a look below of his work entitled “Baptist Gnostic Christian Eubonic Kundalinion Spiritual Ki Do Hermeneutic Metaphysics: The Word: Hermeneutics” (yes, that’s actually the title) :
Upon starting to attempt to read his work, it immediately becomes evident that no one except perhaps Mr. Conaway himself has ever read this book, much less an editor or publisher. It is littered with grammatical and spelling errors and contains a delightful pseudo-bibliography at the end (“THE KEYS”) which, also littered with misspellings. In an attempt to “unlock” Mr. Conaway’s writing with “THE KEYS” provided, I attempted to browse to the only website listed which appears to be an article discussing religion and the brain. Unless this is another one of Mr. Conaway’s typographical errors, the domain “msnbo.com” does not exist and a cursory search of The Wayback Machine Internet Archive provided by Archive.org indicates the domain has never hosted anything more than a placeholder page. I assume this was originally an MSNBC article which doesn’t seem to have been captured by The Wayback Machine.
I’m relatively new to Baltimore, having moved here in 2011 from Washington, D.C. so I had to do a bit more research to get a complete picture of Mr. Conaway in order to put his writings in context. The City Paper was a great help, detailing Mr. Conaway’s notable baggage in an article from 2006. The aforementioned article references Mr. Conaway’s 2003 separation from his wife in which she received a protective order against him and swore under oath that he was mentally ill, suffering from bi-polar disorder, and had stopped taking his medication. Mind you, this is prior to Mr. Conaway’s first term as delegate beginning in 2007.
I do not take mental illness lightly, nor do I claim that I am a psychologist. I want to make it clear that I do not mean to disparage Mr. Conaway for having a condition; however, when that condition may inhibit a public servant from performing one’s duties which inherently require clear thinking and the ability to discern logic from fallacious argument or complete nonsensical delusions, that is where I feel obligated to speak up.
Writing is the manifestation of consolidated thought — the ability to coherently put together and communicate ideas and arguments through written word. Wildly disorganized writing which appears to communicate sincere belief in profoundly bizarre concepts, as illustrated by the content of Mr. Conaway’s literary works I find truly and genuinely disturbing as the work product of an elected official.
Mr. Conaway’s books detail his ability to interpret biblical scripture, including deciphering hidden messages in various biblical verses and Egyptian art. His writings he passes off as “science” (in his “talking horse” titled video) as well, which is clearly a delusion. John Nash, the very real Princeton professor whom Russell Crowe portrayed in A Beautiful Mind, had similarly attempted (with perhaps less self-perceived success) to find messages in numbers and equations. Nash, a brilliant but afflicted mathematician, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but not before it had unfortunately destroyed his marriage. The parallels in Mr. Conaway’s life, based on the details provided by the City Paper article, closely mirror that of Nash. The article above also notes that schizophrenia typically presents earlier than bi-polar, with which Mr. Conaway is said to have been diagnosed. Given the creation or at least upload of 54 videos in the last month, I don’t think it is a stretch of the imagination that Mr. Conaway could be suffering from a manic episode, if his bi-polar diagnosis is correct.
While John Nash was integral in the development and advancement of game and number theory, Mr. Conaway’s weak resume and lack of accomplishments short of riding the coattails of his father’s name to election and now re-election, stand in obvious contrast. The ability for Mr. Conaway to draw the most votes of any candidate in the general election of 2006 is inexplicable other than name recognition. Unfortunately, more than a glancing look at this candidate show an inability to commit to jobs for particularly long, pursuit of foolhardy businesses (like his replica car business), and presumably difficulty following through an entire bachelors degree given the separation of his his years of study at three different universities. This would be consistent with bi-polar as described here, and I would like to especially put emphasis on NIMH’s study discussed in this article which indicates an average worker with bipolar disorder misses 65.5 workdays on average, which I find to be unacceptable for an elected representative serving in the Maryland House of Delegates which is only in session from January to May.
Baltimore City appears to be continuing to elect the politicians it deserves (of questionable skills, questionable character surrounding themselves by convicted drug dealers in a town where an estimated 10% of the population is addicted to heroin, and questionable mental faculties) but not the one it needs (someone with character and high ethical standards, clear thinking, and unwilling to dodge questions), as is evidenced by the continued decay of many parts of the City.
Perhaps I’m suffering from “The Hubris of the Defeated“, to borrow from A Beautiful Mind, but anyone who doesn’t think that the political game in Baltimore isn’t flawed isn’t paying attention. Mr. Conaway just happens to be a remarkable manifestation of how broken the local political scene is.
This past weekend I took a few days to hike part of the AT through Pennsylvania. I picked up where I left off a year or two ago after hiking 60 miles in 3 days from Harper’s Ferry, through all of Maryland, and about 17 miles into PA.
Day 1: PA Rt. 30 / Caledonia State Park
I caught a ride with a friend early on Saturday up to where I left off. The first day out was a bit foggy and on the cooler side. I decided to push a little under 17 miles from Rt. 30 to the Tom’s Run shelter. During the trek, I passed one of the nicest looking shelters on the trail! The Quarry Gap shelter is about 2.7 miles from the park, is right on the trail, and impeccably taken care of. It had a bear-proof metal food locker and even hanging plants with flowers in them! Pretty amazing. I was only passing through though, but made sure to sign the log book.
The next shelter I came across was the Birch Run shelter, where I ran into two older hikers who were out for the weekend and planning to stay there for the night. I stopped in, had lunch and chatted with them before heading on my way to Tom’s Run.
When I arrived at Tom’s Run it was still relatively early, so I started unpacking and getting my dinner ready. There was another person wandering around the camp sites metal detecting — not sure if he found anything. A few more folks showed up and I chatted with another older gentleman who was out for a long weekend — we shot the shit about gear, from hammocks (he had made his own) to the JetBoil, etc. Most of the hikers I encountered during the hike were either out for the long weekend or where southbound thru-hikers — very few people were doing significant section hikes northbound like me.
After eating, I promptly passed out before the sun even went down! It ended up being a pretty chilly night with temperatures dropping into the mid-30’s, so I was extremely happy to have bought a 20 degree sleeping bag prior to this hike!
Overall, it was a good first day — the rain held off and the hiking was relatively smooth-going.
Background
The corridor of 295 and 95 between Baltimore City and BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport is used by thousands of commuters on a daily basis. Anecdotally, it seems the average speed is at least 65MPH and frequently I’ve found myself doing 80-85MPH in order to keep up with traffic.
Except the speed limit is 55MPH. 55. On 95, which is, at minimum, 3 lanes in each direction. On 295, which is minimum 2 lanes in each direction.
To give a comparison, Rt. 64 in Virginia is two lanes in each direction and has a speed limit of 70MPH, reflecting the speed that normal, safe, drivers actually drive on the road. According to the National Motorists Association speed limits should be set to the 85th percentile of free-flowing traffic. That is, 85% of traffic is going slower than this speed.
Of course, objectively setting speed limits based on data requires 1) Collecting the data in the first place and 2) being willing to give up a source of revenue for the state.
My intention was to find out if the speed limit is artificially low in this area, and that it could lead to the State exploiting those it supposedly serves by dipping into their wallets with no rational basis.
FOIA Request
I’ve attached my original FOIA request to the state of Maryland for the raw data they’ve captured involving volume and speed data. Typically, this is done with the boxes you’ll see on the side of the road with two air-filled rubber strips crossing the road. When cars hit the strip, the puff of air triggers a volume count, and based on the timing of the two strips being hit, one can gauge speed.
The original rationale I gave was in relation to the casino being built, though that was not my true reason for the request, I just thought it was mundane enough and considered that rationale for FOIA requests typically doesn’t matter. Somehow I don’t trust the state government to provide me with data if I tell them I intend to use it in ways that have the potential to make them look bad. It’s understandable — everyone, government included, acts in their own self-interest.
First Denial
I’ve also attached the original denial to my request (MD295 FOIA Response), which references several exemptions indicating (surprise!) the state does not have to produce the data for me.
However, the rationale given, and presumably this was written by a lawyer, are incoherent at best, given my request and the actual text of the referenced statues.
Basically, they claimed that “some of the data” were compiled into intra- and inter-agency memos which are not available via FOIA if they are not available to private party litigation or within the interest of the public. Except you’ll note my original request did not ask for memos or associated materials, but simply the raw traffic (volume and speed) data. So off the bat, this was irrelevant. Further, the statement that “some of” the request was compiled into memoranda implies that there are some other records that are in fact, not compiled into memoranda, yet were still not produced. Presumably, they failed to release the “other” records because of the following:
The exemption referenced that producing this information for me would violate a US statute stating that highway safety data cannot be produced in discovery for “…any action arising from an occurrence…” on a highway, but more broadly related to highway safety and limiting government liability. Well, great, because generally FOIA isn’t a legal action arising from an occurrence and is specifically separate from discovery, though it can be used similarly. So again, this is irrelevant.
There was an associated Supreme Court case which had the incredible holding that suppressing data collection efforts actually serves the public interest! The idea is that officials don’t feel accountable to constituents which means they are able to adhere to better data collection standards. Quite frankly, I find this argument bordering on the absurd — we peer review scientific studies where the entire process is open, including data collection standards, so others can point out where deficiencies lie or where methodology is flaw. The fact that we don’t for government statistics is absolutely beyond me. The Supreme Court’s argument cannot even be validated or verified since the data collected in secrecy cannot be reviewed for accuracy or methodology flaws.
Furthermore, I don’t even have standing to initiate legal action on the stretch of road — I have no accidents there nor speeding tickets, hence there is no risk of me using the data for such purposes. Even if I did have standing though, releasing the data still wouldn’t violate the code, because it states that the data would be inadmissible as evidence during legal action anyway. So there is no harm in releasing the data. Period.
Next Steps
I’m currently sending in the attached response letter (FOIADenialChallenge). I intend to pursue judicial remedy if I am again denied, up to and including record custodian reprimand, damages, and fees, since this request was clearly improperly denied.
I also amended my request to include data collection methodologies including what devices and data scrubbing are performed on traffic volume and speed data. Don’t want to give me the data? Then I’ll do a meta-analysis on how it is collected to inspect any flaws that may exist there.
Do I expect the state of Maryland to respond with the data I requested? No. They have no incentive to do so — in fact, it makes more sense for them to waste as much of my time as possible. I have a day job. I can’t dedicated a ton of time to this pursuit, which unfairly tilts the playing field towards the government, yet again.
Ultimately, I expect to have to take this for judicial review, in front of a judge and make my arguments, something I’d prefer not to do as I am not a lawyer, and I abhor the protocol involved in court proceedings. However, it’s something I’m willing to do if it means I get to stick it to the state of Maryland and ratchet back the expanse of the State in general one tiny bit, simply by using logical analysis.
Once I receive the data, or in the absence of receiving it, I will be writing a Baltimore Sun editorial either about my findings within the data (if provided), or about the unfairness of the FOIA process. In either case, I intend to name and shame all officials involved in the process. People generally only respond to incentives, and embarrassment is a fairly powerful incentive. They may be immune to providing me data collected on the tax payers dime, but they are not immune from me publicizing the shady proceedings involved in extracting the fruits of my tax dollars from bureaucracy.
Time will tell whether there is any remnant of Maryland’s motto left in state government. Are we really still “The Free State”? Updates to come once a further response is received.
This is a throwback post, but I never documented my experience regarding hacking the Palm Pre. To the best of my knowledge, this is how things went down.
Background
Back when the Palm Pre was released, it wasn’t quite a finished product. Yes, WebOS was a pretty awesome OS at the time, and the hardware keyboard was a nice touch. Except critical functionality, besides a shortage of apps developed for WebOS, was missing from the phone.
One of the biggest complaints was the lack of video recording for the Pre’s built-in camera. I know many people were looking into a homebrew solution for this, so I thought I’d start doing some research and see if I could contribute.
Plan of Attack
The first step I took was to research the hardware involved. It turns out that the CCD camera chip used in the Pre was the same as the one used in the OLPC (XO laptop). Knowing that the OLPC offered video chat capabilities, I started researching how those were implemented.
I had already rooted my Pre and had command line access. The next step was seeing what software was already loaded onto the Pre.
In one example for the XO laptop, Gstreamer was used to pull video from the camera. I lucked out and realized that Gstreamer was already installed on the Pre, including a number of encoders /decoders muxers/demuxers and video and audio sinks. It was just a matter of hoping the encoders were actually implemented properly, and that I could actually pipe data through them, and ultimately to the file system.
Results!
After a great deal of dabbling at the command line, I was able to pipe raw H.264 video to the file system, a file which was then playable in VLC despite having no file container surrounding it properly:
(make sure FS is rw)
mount -o remount,rw /
gst-launch camsrc ! palmvideoencoder ! filesink location=/media/internal/downloads/foo.mp4
mount -o remount,ro /
A wiki post detailing my original hack is located at WebOS Internals. I’ve also attached the first successful video (foo) that I was able to record — it was like 4AM and me sitting at my desk in the dark, hoping that the hack session would pay off! Ultimately, it did.
I’m writing this article years after the fact, but in 2013 I actually ran into a guy and we were talking about the Pre, and I had mentioned I was the guy who performed the original video hack and he remembered it. Kind of cool to have a little geek street cred! The original Pre Central post on the topic is located here.