PsyOps and Socialbots; Subreddit "Making a Murderer" and COINTELPRO

PsyOps and Socialbots
September 3, 2013

Introduction

Social media are the principal aggregation “places” in cyberspace; billions of connected people are using it for a wide variety of purposes from gaming to socialization.

The high penetration level of social media makes these platforms privileged targets for cybercriminal activities and intelligence analysis. In many cases, both aspects come together and operate in a manner similar to the pursuit of the same objectives.

As described in my previous article “Social Media Use in the Military Sector,” social media are actively attended by state-sponsored actors and governments to support military operations such as:

• Psychological operations (PsyOps)
• OSInt
• Cyber espionage
• Offensive purposes

This post is focused on the use of social media platforms to conduct psychological operations or, rather, to manipulate the opponent’s perception.

Psychological Operations (PsyOps)

Military doctrine includes the possibility of exploiting the wide audiences of social media to conduct psychological operations (PsyOps) in a context of information warfare with the primary intent to influence the “sentiment” of large masses (e.g., emotions, motives, objective reasoning).

PsyOps is defined by the U.S. military as “planned operations to convey selected truthful information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately, the behavior of their governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.”

“Psychological operations” is not a new concept. In the past, on many occasions and in different periods, the military has used the diffusion of information to interfere with opponents divulging artifact information or propaganda messages. Governments have used secret agents infiltrated behind the enemy lines or launched leaflets with a plane over enemy territories; today, social networks have the advantage over these types of missions.

The terms “psychological operations” and “psychological warfare” are often used interchangeably; “psychological warfare” was first used in 1920 and “psychological operations” in 1945. Distinguished theorists like Sun Tzu have highlighted the importance of waging psychological warfare:

“One need not destroy one’s enemy. One only needs to destroy his willingness to engage…”

“For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.” – Sun Tzu

Governments consider PsyOps a crucial option for diplomatic, military, and economic activities, the use of new-generation media and large-diffusion platforms such as the mobile and social media gives governments a powerful instrument to reach critical masses instantly.

PsyOps consist in conveying messages to selected groups, known as target audiences, to promote particular themes that result in desired attitudes and behavior that affect the achievement of political and military objectives. NATO promoted a doctrine for psychological operations defining target audience as “an individual or group selected for influence or attack by means of psychological operations.”

In the document, “Allied Joint Doctrine for Psychological Operations AJP-3.10.1(A),” NATO has highlighted the possibility of supporting military operations with PsyOps following three basic objectives:

• Weaken the will of the adversary or potential adversary target audiences.
• Reinforce the commitment of friendly target audiences.
• Gain the support and cooperation of uncommitted or undecided audiences.

Obviously, psychological operations must be contextualized in our time. Today they can benefit from the advanced state of technology at our disposal: the Internet, virtual reality, blogs, video games, chat bots, and, of course, social network platforms could be used by military for various purposes.

The military sector is investing largely in PsyOps professionals; it is exploring these technologies to influence individuals to support their cause or the sentiment of an entire population.

To influence common sentiment on specific topics, intelligence agencies arrange political and geopolitical campaigns using impressive amounts of data to induce specifically crafted information, fake or not, on the masses. Intelligence agencies use social media networks as a vector of the information flow; dedicated content is created to raise the attention of topics of interest and various discussions are carried on to involve an increasing number of users. Just the dynamicity of discussions represents the primary element of innovation in modern PsyOps: These discussions are structured with ad hoc comments and posts and they are used to sensitize and influence the user’s perception of events.

The principal advantages of using social media for PsyOps operations are:

• Social media can reach a wide audience instantly and speed is an essential factor in PSYOPs.
• Social media can reach individuals difficult to reach in other ways, thanks to the high penetration level of the Internet technology.
• The information being presented can be easily modified and changed in the cyber domain to address the target audience.
• Flexible and persuasive technologies are interactive and make it possible for an attacker to tailor operations for highly dynamic situations.
• Cyber and persuasive technologies can grant anonymity.
• Automated PsyOps on social media are more persistent and efficient than humans.
• PsyOps is a cheap means of dissemination.

As specified in NATO doctrine, there are also various disadvantages in conducting PsyOps as a military option:

• Impossibility of limiting the availability of information published to selected audiences, unless it is sent directly to the target audience as e-mail. This causes a further effort to minimize the negative impact of operations on unintended target audiences.
• Target audience has to be able to access the Internet.
• The PsyOps messages have to appeal to the target audiences much more than in most other media; this requires a great effort by the attackers.

Automated PsyOps

One of the principal factors for the success of PsyOps operation is the possibility of automating the processes for information diffusion and management of the sources. To do it, entities that conduct psychological operations start from the assumption that the Internet, and in particular a social network, lacks proper management of users’ digital identities; this means that it is possible to adopt various techniques to pursue the above goals.

The U.S. military is considered one of the most active entities in developing automated software that can manipulate social media sites by using fake identities to influence internet conversations and discussions, and to spread pro-American propaganda. The Guardian reported that a Californian corporation, Ntrepid, has been awarded a contract ($2.76m contract) with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees U.S. armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to design an “online persona management service” that will allow one U.S. serviceman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

“0001- Online Persona Management Service. 50 User Licenses, 10 Personas per user.

“Software will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally, and geographically consistent. Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online personas from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user-friendly application environment to maximize the user’s situational awareness by displaying real-time local information. ”

The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history, and supporting details, and that up to 50 U.S.-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations “without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries.”

The intent of the U.S. military was to influence global sentiment to create a false consensus in online discussion. A Centcom spokesman, Commander Bill Speaks, clarified that the software will not address U.S. audiences; the system is able to produce activities in different languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and Pashto.

“The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the U.S.”

Office Centcom was not interested in U.S.-based web sites, in English, or any other language, and it declared that isn’t analyzing Facebook or Twitter, but recent revelations on PRISM and other surveillance programs raise numerous doubts of the official declarations.

“Once developed, the software could allow U.S. service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of coordinated messages, blog posts, chatroom posts, and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of U.S. Special Operations Command,” posted The Guardian.

The contract appears to be part of the program dubbed Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq by U.S. military with the purpose of conducting psychological warfare operations against al-Qaida on-line supporters. The program is reported to have expanded into a $200m program and, according to intelligence experts, it has been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.

Gen Mattis said: “OEV seeks to disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda.” He added that Centcom was working with “our coalition partners” to develop new techniques and tactics the U.S. could use “to counter the adversary in the cyber domain.”

On February 5, 2011, Anonymous compromised the HBGary website, disclosing tens of thousands of documents from both HBGary Federal and HBGary, Inc., including company emails. The hack revealed that Bank of America approached the Department of Justice over concerns about information that WikiLeaks had about it. According an article published by The New York Times, the Department of Justice in turn referred Bank of America to the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams, which connected the financial institution with a group of information security firms collectively known as Team Themis that includes HBGary, Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and Endgame Systems.

Their mission was to undermine the credibility of WikiLeaks and the journalist Glenn Greenwald; the hack also revealed that Team Themis was developing a “persona management” system for the United States Air Force that allowed one user to control multiple online identities (“sock puppets”) for commenting in social media spaces. It is the same system we have already introduced.

Socialbots and Persona Management Software

Socialbots are considered the most efficient way to control social media in an automated way, trying to influence the common sentiment about specific topics. Scientists believe that socialbots are already expanding their presence in social media. During 2012, the number of Twitter accounts topped 500 million, but according some researchers nearly 35 % of the average Twitter user’s followers are real people. The Internet traffic generated by nonhuman sources is more than 50%, mainly produced by bots or M2M systems.

On occasion of the Russian parliamentary election in 2011, thousands of Twitter bots operated for several months to create specifically crafted content. Every day the principal social networks were flooded by messages targeting the political opponents and the anti-Kremlin activists, aiming to drown them out. Researchers say similar tactics have been used more recently by the government in Syria. Same tactic has been followed by officials from Mexico’s governing Institutional Revolutionary Party that used bots to sabotage the party’s critics.

Botnets are a primary choice for the attackers, who could use these malicious architectures for the following purposes:

• By replacing the identity of targeted individuals, hackers could infect victims’ systems, using spear phishing attacks to acquire their complete control. State-sponsored hackers could use zero-day exploits to hide their campaign; once they have acquired control of victims, they could impersonate another user for various purposes, from intelligence to social engineering. These kinds of operation are considerably high risk and therefore are not common for ordinary PsyOps; it is, in fact, very easy to detect an attack on a specific legitimate account that is used to spread specific information.
• More feasible is the use of botnets for identity spoofing. Attackers could create a network of fake profiles which do not correspond to any existing individual to operate conditioning on a large scale. The botnet could be designed to simulate the dialogue between those individuals on specific topic within popular forums and social networks; in this way it is possible to raise the level of attention on various issues.

Social media websites attract the interest of ordinary people and also of malware creators, who design malicious code, dubbed socialbots, which also grew along with social networking platforms. Social botnets are malicious architectures composed of a considerable number of fake profiles (e.g., millions of fake profiles) totally managed by machines. The bot agents are capable of interacting among themselves and with real users in realistic mode; the result of their operation is the changing the “sentiment” on specific topic by conducting a “conversation ” on a large-scale as well as altering the overall social graph, and to preclude meaningful correlations on the data. Social botnets could be used also for other purposes, such as the social graph fuzzing, the intentional association with groups and people who do not have to deal with their own interests and relationships with the intent of introducing “noise” into their social graphs. Socialbots are very attractive also for cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers. They represent a privileged channel for spreading malware, stealing passwords, and spreading and posting malicious links through social media networks.

Security researchers are convinced that socialbots could be used to sway elections, to attack governments, or to influence the stock market, and probably many recent events have been already influenced by the use of such malicious architecture.

Recently computer scientists from the Federal University of Ouro Preto in Brazil announced that the popular journalist on Twitter, Carina Santos, was not a real person but a botnet that they had created. What is very surprising is that, based on the circulation of her tweets, a commonly used ranking site, Twitalyzer, ranked this account as having more online “influence” than Oprah Winfrey profile.

Early in 2013, Microsoft detected a malware called Trojan:AutoIt/Kilim.A., a Trojan specifically designed to target the Google Chrome browser.

“The Trojan may be installed when an unsuspecting user clicks on a shortened hyperlink that redirects to a malicious website. The website masquerades as a download site for legitimate software, and tricks the user into downloading and executing Kilim. Upon successful execution, Kilim disables user account controls (UAC) and adds an auto-start entry in the system registry to survive the reboot. It then proceeds to download two malicious Chrome browser extensions,” Microsoft revealed.

The installed extensions are able to gain access to the victim’s social networking sites and perform actions in place of legitimate users. It’s clear that a similar behavior could be exploited to build a network of agents that promote specific topics in an automated way, using existing and legitimate user accounts.

A Zeus Trojan variant has also recently been used to hit social media. Using this popular malware, attackers could increase the rate of specific posts and spread a series of links to which the bots add thousands of likes. These variants are able to automatically post content, such as photos and comments, and to increase the number of followers influencing the attacked social media on specific topics. Using the Zeus Trojan, hackers could conduct the essential operations for a psychological operation by creating various fake profiles having a specific role in the fake network. Some nodes, in fact, will post contents simulating a discussion and thousands of others will post an unlimited amount of likes and followers for the first group of profiles, fueling the interest in a particular discussion by using comments and images.

This use of malicious code is also increasing in popularity in the cyber ecosystem; the generation of these fake items on social media to increase visibility is becoming a profitable business. On average, 1000 Instagram followers can be bought for $15 while likes go for $30. Social media customers are willingly paying thousands of dollars on similar issues and it is normal to expect that, as the rise of social media continues, the demand will rise.

“The current version of Zeus is a modified one which attacks all infected computer running on a network and forces them to like or follow pages. Furthermore, it also calls the users to install spammy apps and plug-ins.”

Usually socialbots can be more or less complex: They are able to query an internal DB that is constantly updated and containing the latest news on current events and on facts of major importance for the topic that will be addressed. The botnet structure is the optimal solution, the last generation of P2P botnets and Tor-based botnets are practically impossible to track. The botmaster could control hundreds of thousands of infected machines that could concur to promote a series of discussions on various social media. Almost any social medium could be compromised by the psychological operations conducted through these architectures; to the untrained eye, it would appear that a plethora of users are confronted on issues of various kinds when, in fact, intelligence services are working to disseminate content that will influence global sentiment.

Paradoxically, the main problem for the conduct of these operations is not the control of thousands of bots around the planet to compromise as many systems as possible, but state-sponsored actors use to exploit zero-day vulnerabilities to do this dirty work.

Also, the cybercrime industry is interested in the capabilities of socialbots, mainly for the possibility of selling Twitter followers for a price or to involve victims in fraudulent activities, such as stealing passwords or spreading other malware for a price.

The “Infiltration”—a Socialbot Experiment

Researchers Aviad Elishar, Michael Fire, Dima Kagan, and Yuval Elovic published an interesting paper, titled “Homing Socialbots: Intrusion on a specific organization’s employee using Socialbots,” that presents a method for infiltrating specific users in targeted organizations by using organizational social network topologies and socialbots. To measure the efficiency of the method, the researchers decided to target technology-oriented organizations, for which employees should be more aware of the dangers of exposing private information on social media. The scope of the experiment is to induce social network users to accept a socialbot’s friend; the acceptance is also called infiltration.

The infiltration exposes users’ information, including their workplace data. The researchers used socialbots in two phases:

• Information-gathering phase, the reconnaissance of Facebook users who work in targeted organizations.
• Target identification, the random choice of 10 Facebook users from every targeted organization. The 10 users were chosen to be the specific users from targeted organizations that the attackers would like to infiltrate.

The socialbots were instructed to send friend requests to all specific users’ mutual friends who worked or work in the same targeted organization to collect as many mutual friends as possible to increase the probability that bot friend requests will be accepted by the targeted users.

The results were surprising: The method was successful in from 50% to 70% of the cases. The infiltration could be conducted simply to allow the attacker to gather access to personal and valuable information or to establish a first link to exploit for further psychological operation. The infiltration could be considered a strategic part of the conduction of PsyOps.

The Opinion of an Expert

To better understand the phenomenon of socialbots and the real diffusion of such malicious architecture, I decided to interview my colleague Andrei Komarov. He is a CERT-GIB CTO, the head of international projects for Group-IB, a leading company in fraud prevention, cybercrime and hi-tech crime investigations.

Mr. Komarov, based on your experience, is the use of botnets for psychological operation a common practice?

Definitely, it is one of the key parts of modern cyber warfare without any doubts. And it is important to say, that it is not related to public or military sector only. It has great impact on business and it is widely used by private companies and corporations in the competitive struggle, sometimes between brands, similar technologies, or exact personalities and top management. It terms of technologies, it is also important to mention that during 2010-2012, lots of tools of software products for social networks were appeared, most of it is targeted at mass-posting, tweeting, geotagging and etc. In terms of botnets, we found some botnets which use C&C on Twitter and Facebook, which confirms that it is really useful and sometimes it is quite difficult to find it and to take down without fast incident response from the social network.

Which are the most active countries in this field?

It is really hard to figure out the exact countries, as most of such operations are very non-transparent and, in order to detect who is behind the operation is not possible, sometimes due to the various levels of anonymization, and additional software adopted to spoof the identity of the end operators.

Has Group-IB form found evidence of working sailboat used for PsyOps?

From my side, I can mention some facts of PsyOps in social networks before important political events, such as elections of national leaders, periods of rallies and demonstrations, when it is important to increase the attention to the problem of the society and mass media. One of the brightest facts is the use of social media and PSYOPs before the important legislative changes in some countries, when social network users and specially prepared groups begin to agitate to send letters to high court or politicians and etc., which sometimes really works. Most of the accounts of fake users are ordering through online-services, such as https://buyaccs.com/, which makes this field really cost-effective. The end impact is dependent only on operators and its ideas for PR.

PsyOps Mitigation

Mitigation of automated psychological operation is a very complex mission. The technologies have provided an impressive boost for these types of operation; the instantaneity of messages, anonymity, and a wide audience are the primary keys to their success.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has started the social media in strategic communication (SMISC) program to develop a new science of social networks built on an emerging technology base.

The general goal of the SMISC program is to develop a new science of social networks built on an emerging technology base. DARPA is working for the development of a new generation of tools to support the efforts of human operators to counter misinformation or deception campaigns with truthful information. The program has been sustained to detect any action induced by external agents to shape global sentiment or opinion in information generated and spread through social media. For the scope, security and media researchers are joining their effort to recognize specific patterns that could reveal the operation of automated botnets.

“If successful, they should be able to model emergent communities and analyze narratives and their participants, as well as characterize generation of automated content, such as by bots, in social media and crowd sourcing.”

To detect ongoing PsyOps, it is necessary to analyze large amounts of data from social media networks. Security researchers could work on two distinct fronts, detecting the flow of information aimed at influencing the global sentiment on a specific set of topics and trying to discover evidence of automated software (e.g., bot agents) that work to poison conversations on principal social media. Both paths are very hard to follow. It requires a meaningful computational capability and the definition of adaptive models able to detect the various phases of a psychological operation such as the “infiltration.”

Probably one of the most precious contributions to the definition of defensive models is provided by the offensive approach to social media: The same cyber units responsible for the detection of PSYOPs operated by foreign actors are in charge to define a new generation of software able to elude actual automated systems for the detection of the operation.

Conclusions

Psychological operations have been always considered a crucial option for the military. The large diffusion of social media gives to governments the possibility of using a new powerful platform for the spread of the news and propaganda in a context of information warfare.

The aggressor may exploit social media to destabilize a company or any other aspect of modern society: Diffusing fake news of an attack on the White House, the hacktivist group Syrian Electronic Army caused a serious temporary problem with the New York Stock exchange. It’s clear that someone could benefit from this event.

The principal change introduced with automated PsyOps is that potentially every actor could control information diffusion on media: Cyber criminals, private intelligence contractors, terrorists, and hacktivists could influence global sentiment with artifacts documenting and disseminating information with convincing and persuasive data. This aspect is crucial and represents a serious menace to contemporary information society.

It is easy to forecast an increase of PsyOps based on social media in the next year, the information war was begun many years ago and governments must address this menace with a proper cyber strategy to avoid serious risks and crisis.

PsyOps need not be conducted by nation states; they can be undertaken by anyone with the capabilities and the incentive to conduct them and, in the case of private intelligence contractors, there are both incentives (billions of dollars in contracts) and capabilities.



In 1956 the FBI established a special counter intelligence program called COINTELPRO to "neutralize political dissindents." One of the purposes of the program was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize."



What the heck happened to this sub?? 
By mrsuncensored, MakingaMurderer
February 10, 2018

Is there something I don’t know? I took a long (over a year!) hiatus from reddit and only recently came back and a lot of the subs are different now...but I think I might have to unsub from r/makingamurderer because the only things I ever see posted are saying Steven Avery is guilty and anyone who says otherwise is wrong...the whole point of "Making a Murderer" (to me, and it used to be to others when this sub was new) wasn’t even about Steven Avery and Teresa Halbach at the core, it was all about how messed up our legal system is and how regardless whether Avery is guilty he did NOT have a fair trial and he should have been innocent until proven guilty.

You do realize that a lot of innocent people have been put in jail, right? I don’t know if Steven Avery is innocent or guilty, but I do believe he didn’t deserve to be treated the way he was in the public eye before his trial ever started.

[–]angieb15

Everyone moved over to another sub because about a year ago we got taken over by some of the worst mods on reddit, they didn't know anything about the MAM and used the sub as their personal power trip/ego booster. Most of the people left are the ones who take advantage of the absence of dissenting opinion. So that's your summary. We have better mods now, but the people haven't come back.

[–]TheAngryBird03

I don’t know the history of this sub and I can’t post for the history of the other sub. However I’ve been on this sub for about a year and it is exactly as described above.

If you have a dissenting opinion in this sub you are downvoted and basically bullied out the sub. This is why you have no dissenting opinion in this sub and so many lurkers because people don’t dare to raise a subject for discussion because at some point they will be aggressively taunted and rebuked. There are people in this sub who track usernames and immediately comment with vile responses because in the past they have said they weren’t sure of SA guilt.

This is an opinion piece but please everyone who reads have a 30 second think about what you’ve posted and if it helps discussion or turns people away.

This and other subs should be about 1. establishing the truth (for either side) and 2. hopefully having a tiny bit of influence on the future of the justice system.

[–]SilkyBeesKnees

You nailed it! You don't have to spend a lot of time reading past comments and OPs on this sub before it becomes clear that there is no interest in finding the truth here. You can see what happens when someone tries... bullying, insults and rudeness. They try to spin it as though they are not to blame, but spend a bit of time reading and it will become clear... even though they say both sides are guilty of this, the proof is here in black and white for anyone who cares to look.

[–]7-pairs-of-panties

So let me get this straight...you let a shrill take over MAM before the implosion removing and deleting all kinds of post and comments and people left in droves over to TTM to carry on the conversation. Your mad cause they didn’t let the guilters follow, but only the innocent comments were ones being preyed upon in the implosion. Now many many moths later your upset because the truthers haven’t “come back home?”

No one has forgiven or forgotten what happened. Newbies are lucky to find TTM if they even do because this is the first site they’ll find. You can’t have it both ways. TTM is never going to change its mind cause it’s working. U don’t need us and we don’t need u.

[–]southpaw72

Hos_gotta_eat_too [the founder of TickTockManitowoc] got banned for posting a public doc that he didn't redact some personal info out of, it was up for about 2 minutes before it was spotted and edited, unfortunately in those 2 minutes somebody spotted it and reported him, he was demoted from being a mod which he took exception to and refuses to reddit ever since.

Needless was occasionally dropping the odd hit an run post over at ttm but I am not sure if that's still the case as I don't spend much time there

[–]MaMStats

I have a script that computes total word counts and most common words for users in a subreddit. I'm not allowed to post the results due to all the extra rules in these subreddits. What I can say is that the top 5 posters by word count in the last 3 months are all people arguing that Avery is guilty. The very top poster (who you will quickly discover if spend more than a day on this subreddit) has a word count that is 4 times higher than the next most prolific poster. Some of this posters top 25 frequent words by volume include: absurd, nonsense, bogus, irrational, idiocy, wild.

Avery's current lawyer, Zellner, filed a 1000+ page (including exhibits) motion for post conviction relief that folks on this sub like to talk about. Just for comparison, the top poster on this sub has vastly surpassed the number of words in that motion in the last 3 months.

[–]MaMStats

Here's the script if you want to run it yourself. You can adjust things like the number of pages to process if you want to change how far back the stats go.

I'm glad to hear that you also find the top poster's extreme verbosity surpsing. Also happy to see you actually doing some checking on the numbers. Your estimates are a little high though. The word count for the first 221 pages of the brief, which is the actual motion (rather than exhibits) is more like 68,000 words. So that's an average of around 308 words per page. The exhibits are a little more sparse since they often contain partially blank pages. It's also worth noting that Zellner didn't write a lot of these. They are things like phone records, work dispatch records, terms of service, etc. Also, there is a ton of boilerplate. The motion itself has 16 pages of tables of contents and such that were automatically generated. Still, I did include all that. With all that noise, the overall words per page is just over 300 words. That puts the total in the 360,000 range.

The top poster on this site absolutely did write more words than that in the last 3 months. I posted the script in many places here. Please verify for yourself.

[–]maliciousgnome

Are they paid by the word or something?

[–]MaMStats

Here's the script so you can run it yourself.

https://pastebin.com/ffpCJxZX

[–]MaMStats

Motion is around 360K words. Top poster is around 500K words. Obviously changes depending on which day you run the script. Note also that I try to exclude boilerplate from the reddit posts, like places where one user quotes another. I didn't do that same thing for the motion, so it is definitely exaggerated.

[–]MaMStats

So... the OP's question was what happened in this sub recently. These stats tell the story of what's happening.

[–]MaMStats

This account is about stats. The top 5 posters are people arguing that Avery is guilty. The very top poster writes 4 times more than the next highest poster (which would be you). This top poster also has 4x the number of posts as the next highest poster (also you). This poster also leads 2nd place in raw number of comments by a wide margin (nearly 2x). The top 5 posters combined have written 15x more than the top posting person arguing for Avery's innocence.

There is a point at which writing a lot becomes spamming. This is especially problematic in this sub where the comment downvote button is hidden by CSS. The noise is nearly impossible to filter out.

You'll obviously disagree, so I'll just save some time for you - absurd, nonsense, bogus, irrational, idiocy, wild

[–]MaMStats

It's not just word count, it's also posts. The top poster leads the next highest poster in posts (4x) and comments (nearly 2x). It's more than a 15-to-1 flood of words, posts, and comments from one side.

For those that seem to be suffering from verbal diarrhea, let me suggest the advice of many historical figures. Take more time to think about what you're writing so that we don't all have to suffer through the noise.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

[–]MaMStats

This trend started almost exactly when this top poster started flooding the subreddit 6 months ago. The top poster has written the equivalent of a 1500 page book (just in this subreddit) in the last 3 months.

Your explanation might be feasible if the amount of content on one side had stayed constant. But that is not what happened. The posts on one side have vastly ramped up. This is quantifiable with stats.

[–]baking_bad

Look at the users who comment on here the most. They post here literally 100 times a day and only post in this sub. They not only act like SA is without a doubt guilty but that you're a moron if you don't 100% trust the state's story. I honestly believe it's organized astroturfing and I wish someone had the time and energy to look into where it's originating.

[–]ThatKiwiBloke

This sub isnt worth visiting unless you want to see drama. People from both sides just sling mud at each other and the "guilty" side of the sub simply attack anyone who disagrees with them in numbers to make people belive they outnumber the innocent side.

[–]SilkyBeesKnees

SAIG anyone can come and debate. Try it.

Sure they can but many of their comments are either deleted by the mods or they're shadow banned. All while saying that they don't. They do.

[–]idunno_why

Can't help the fact that most Truthers that go over there will post insults in the thread title and move on and those will most likely get removed.

Why aren't the posts that insult truthers in the title removed on this sub? It's the same mods here. It happens daily on this sub.

[–]hilandhall

Ha. I was thinking this morning. Why the hell am I still subscribed to that? Glad it’s not only me. Unsubscribing now.

[–]Jfdelman

Yeah, the guilters over run all the subs and then get buthurt that TTM is pro Avery.

[–]JJacks61

I haven't and will not read all of the comments. But simply said, a current MoD in this sub brought in an outside MoD friend of hers. That MoD began deleting Topics that were pro Avery and Dassey. (This is what I refer to as the Rogue MoD, with an agenda.)

Then Rogue MoD LIED about it. It got so bad, Admins were contacted. More lies were told. MoDs getting into open arguments when they were caught, then going back and deleting THEIR OWN COMMENTS.

Spez got involved, and the Rogue MoD that was brought in LIED to him, then went back and deleted those comments. But it was too late.

Of course, there is much more to this saga. But the damage was done. TTM was created so that people that believed that SA and BD got shafted by the State could have a place to discuss, speculate, debate without fear of their posts being deleted by some Rogue MoD that is biased. Or being verbally attacked with vile comments.

It is true that redditors that believe these guys are guilty are not welcome on TTM. This has been tried before and it simply will not work. Two groups with different outlooks can not work together. Look at what happened here. Happened on SMAM too.

It is interesting that considering the basis of the series, what is actually happened (and is continuing to happen) in this sub. But this is Reddit. Your rights mean nothing here.

BTW- At one time, there were almost 66k subscribed. 10k have left. That speaks volumes.

[–]JJacks61

     "Wait, the totally annoying mod with the maturity of a 12-year-old that basically killed the old MAM sub is/was a friend of cucumbers-in-brine? (Wow. If so, that explains so much.) Or did you mean someone else?"

No, not a friend of that MoD. At this point, the names are pretty much meaningless. Nothing can or will be done. Also to note, several of the original MoDs that were here hauled ass when all this went sideways. They damn well knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it.

The Rogue Mod left after being caught red-handed. Many of us learned a valuable Reddit lesson as well. Don't expect Admin to make things right in these subs. If they get involved, it's going to suck the life out of the room.

This trainwreck could have been stopped, but was allowed to derail. Many redditors just left after many of their posts were deleted without warning.

     "Nothing has happened, people have seen that SA is guilty and moved on. They were taken in by a TV drama and seen it for what it is."

You weren't even around when this sub was set on fire. Shows what little you really know about what really happened.

I'm at a loss as to why you are saying SA is guilty. His trial was over coming up on 11 years ago and he was found guilty. Is he guilty again?

MANY people believe he and Brendan aren't guilty, and MANY more know that neither one received fair trials. Due process were just words without meaning.

Also, with your reply, it is hard to fathom why YOU are here? Except to troll. These guys are in jail, their Lawyers are trying to right this wrong.. but still, they are in prison. These constant meaningless replies reek of desperation.

MaM was a catalyst, that's all. The editing is meaningless, and it had NO impact on any legal proceeding. Except that Kratz tried to steal their footage. In reality, the filmmakers were very kind towards the State players.

The legal docs tell us part of the story. We don't have everything yet.

Still, I reply to various topics here when I feel so inclined. The OP had been gone, so I filled in a few of the blanks about what has happened in this sub. And these events DID HAPPEN. He could see the drastic change in everything after being away.

I will continue to reply here on various issues or questions from time to time. Rarely doesn't mean ever in my world. I think you didn't like my comments and are slyly trying to get me to leave. I believe that's clear.

I'll answer a few of your questions, but first a comment.

I'm not living in the past. The OP asked what happened in this sub. I answered, filling in a few of the details. It's really that simple. Still, I believe it's important for current Redditors to know and understand that their posts may "disappear" without warning. To be fair, AFAIK this hasn't happened in a while. But given the history here, there is always that chance.

**

I'm glad you were a lurker here, you indicated nothing happened. I also lurked starting in 2008 before I registered. I've seen other subs go sideways. Seeing it firsthand and watching the time you've spent get deleted is frustrating. But this is Reddit, your rights mean nothing.

**

There are thousands of pages in the DCI reports that we cannot get. Hopefully at some point soon, those will become available, but who knows.

**

I cannot begin to relly know why the filmmakers included Kratz personal problems. But, understanding who he is, his character, his actions as Prosecutor in these cases should be included. After his marriage imploded in 2009 or 2010, even more outlandish behavior was uncovered. While I understand some people think this should be off limits, I and many others feel his character traits will tell us what he is willing to do as a person and as a Prosecutor.

In the years afterwards, Kratz has hitched his belt to Avery and Dassey for profit. I've had many discussions with people in this very sub that say, oh he's not like what you see and read about. But honestly, I haven't seen anything different than what I saw and read 10-12 years ago.

It's too bad really. He's clearly intelligent. But I believe he made some critical errors in these cases. I believe evidence has been buried or destroyed because to date, it hasn't been turned over. This is as serious as it gets. No matter how much it's debated, this evidence is missing, and it shouldn't be.

But I speculate, bottom line, they wanted his character and his actions to be included. They are integral to this saga, continuing to this day.

I have read that someone here has read the DCI reports, but I'm not convinced of that. Maybe I'm wrong. Skipp tried twice to get these records through FOIA requests. Denied, being not specific enough as I recall. Idk about you, but I believe if these reports further shown guilt, Kratz would have used them at trial. That's why I suspect they show something different.

My response to the OP wasn't totally meant to be a negative view of the sub, but I can understand it could be seen that way. Yes, I'm still pretty angry about how everything was handled, but with time it's not as bad. I believe this sub and the other related subs are difficult to MoD at times. I also know for a fact they cannot be modded the same way many other subs are. It really takes true fence sitters, that know the cases. Having your posts or comments deleted because a mod doesn't like them is maddening lol.

I believe the information about Kratz would have became viral no matter what. I don't know, they were probably not happy with him. Was it retaliatory on their part? It's possible, I just don't know. Andrea Canning (SP) did an in depth report on him when she worked for ABC in 2010 I believe, so it really was already out.

Still, given his actions that we know happened, shouldn't we understand his character as a Prosecutor? I guess it depends how one views his actions in the scandal - i.e. if he's willing to do this kind of thinking, what else would he do? I understand this is very subjective. Personally, I feel like he did things in these cases he wouldn't otherwise do.

I'll list a few critical things that we don't have, that we should. At least I don't understand why they are missing:

Timestamps removed from the dispatch logs.

Timestamps removed from the MTSO/CASO audio calls.

Edited flyover video footage from Nov 4th and 5th .

Missing Dassey PC Forensics CD.

I believe the system is only as good as the people running it. I don't know what he was doing during the trial time period, but I have a difficult time believing he went off the rails a couple years after these trials were over.

Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts and being very civil even though we don't agree about some things. I believe that's the underlying issue here in the sub now. We need more civility. Proof right here, that it's possible. I'm sure I'll be around :D

[–]heelspider

I posted a piece on the problems with forensic evidence in the US and even included a submission statement pointing out what it has to do with MaM specifically. The post was removed without explanation, even when I asked for it.

Meanwhile I had a guy from this sub decide his bullying wasn't working good enough and started following me to subs that had nothing to do with MaM and calling me an irrational lying idiot on everything I post everywhere and not just here. Mods told me they would do nothing about it at all.

I know modding is hard and often thankless...but I hope you can understand how it feels like posts that question the justice system get removed arbitrarily while Guilters are allowed to harass people without limits.

[–]BohemianSeekRhapsody

There is nothing wrong with a good passionate debate but no need for the smart-ass remarks, superior attitudes, and downright nastiness. Why so many hours are invested online doing this is bewildering when SA & BD are both in prison. Doesn't seem to be enough. Why is that? Let them continue to talk among themselves in their own toxic environment. I expect sub to die out completely soon. Reasonable people have no interest in engaging with jerks. And that's the truth!

The Gentleman's Guide To Forum Spies -- How to Spot a Spy (Cointelpro Agent)
By nomdeguerre

July 29, 2012

How to Spot a Spy (Cointelpro Agent)

Reddit Has Become the Proverbial ‘Gatekeeper’ Like Google, Facebook and Twitter; Reddit Asked to Hand Over Customer Data Under a Secretive Law Enforcement Authority

siouxsie_siouxv2, a moderator at the subreddit, Making a Murderer, wrote on May 24, 2016: "Truth is there was some stuff that happened behind the scenes that makes it hard for us to keep the sub going as it has. I can't get into the details but we had no choice really."

Reddit deletes surveillance 'warrant canary' in transparency report

By Dustin Volz , Reuters

March 31, 2016

Social networking forum Reddit on Thursday removed a section from its site used to tacitly inform users it had never received a certain type of U.S. government surveillance request, suggesting the platform is now being asked to hand over customer data under a secretive law enforcement authority.
 
Reddit deleted a paragraph found in its transparency report known as a “warrant canary” to signal to users that it had not been subject to so-called national security letters, which are used by the FBI to conduct electronic surveillance without the need for court approval.

The scrubbing of the "canary", which stated Reddit had never received a national security letter "or any other classified request for user information," comes as several tech companies are pushing the Obama administration to allow for fuller disclosures of the kind and amount of government requests for user information they receive.

National security letters are almost always accompanied by an open-ended gag order barring companies from disclosing the contents of the demand for customer data, making it difficult for firms to openly discuss how they handle the subpoenas. That has led many companies to rely on somewhat vague canary warnings.

"I've been advised not to say anything one way or the other,"  a Reddit administrator named "spez," who made the update, said in a thread discussing the change. “Even with the canaries, we're treading a fine line. The whole thing is icky, which is why we joined Twitter in pushing back.”

Reddit did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2014 Twitter sued the U.S. Justice Department on grounds that the restrictions placed on the social media platform’s ability to reveal information about government surveillance orders violates the First Amendment.

The suit came following an announcement from the Obama administration that it would allow Internet companies to disclose more about the numbers of national security letters they receive. But they can still only provide a range such as between zero and 999 requests, or between 1,000 and 1,999, which Twitter, joined by Reddit and others, has argued is too broad.

National security letters have been available as a law enforcement tool since the 1970s, but their frequency and breadth expanded dramatically under the USA Patriot Act, which was passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Several thousand NSLs are now issued by the FBI every year. At one point that number eclipsed 50,000 letters annually.

For your reading pleasure, our 2015 Transparency Report  
Submitted by Moderator spez at Reddit
April 2016

In 2014, we published our first Transparency Report, which can be found here. We made a commitment to you to publish an annual report, detailing government and law enforcement agency requests for private information about our users. In keeping with that promise, we’ve published our 2015 transparency report.

We hope that sharing this information will help you better understand our Privacy Policy and demonstrate our commitment for Reddit to remain a place that actively encourages authentic conversation.

Our goal is to provide information about the number and types of requests for user account information and removal of content that we receive, and how often we are legally required to respond. This isn’t easy as a small company as we don’t always have the tools we need to accurately track the large volume of requests we receive. We will continue, when legally possible, to inform users before sharing user account information in response to these requests.

In 2015, we did not produce records in response to 40% of government requests, and we did not remove content in response to 79% of government requests.

In 2016, we’ve taken further steps to protect the privacy of our users. We joined our industry peers in an amicus brief supporting Twitter, detailing our desire to be honest about the national security requests for removal of content and the disclosure of user account information.

In addition, we joined an amicus brief supporting Apple in their fight against the government's attempt to force a private company to work on behalf of them. While the government asked the court to vacate the court order compelling Apple to assist them, we felt it was important to stand with Apple and speak out against this unprecedented move by the government, which threatens the relationship of trust between a platforms and its users, in addition to jeopardizing your privacy.

We are also excited to announce the launch of our external law enforcement guidelines. Beyond clarifying how Reddit works as a platform and briefly outlining how both federal and state law enforcements can compel Reddit to turn over user information, we believe they make very clear that we adhere to strict standards.

We know the success of Reddit is made possible by your trust. We hope this transparency report strengthens that trust, and is a signal to you that we care deeply about your privacy.

(I'll do my best to answer questions, but as with all legal matters, I can't always be completely candid.)

Announcing new rules and a new subreddit for theories 
Submitted by Moderator NotANestleShill 
May 24, 2016

Hello /r/MakingAMurderer, we mods have been hard at work enforcing the rules and coming up with new ones to improve the sub. Our feedback thread was very helpful, and we got hundreds of comments and suggestions, so thank you!

One big issue we noticed in this subreddit was the staggering amount of theories and rampant speculation. Let's be clear: the people here at this subreddit have little chance of solving this mystery from a computer monitor, compared to professionals with actual access to the evidence and actual investigative skills.

To allow this to go on and to allow people to be called out and harassed because of these armchair detectives is horrible and will be stopped. We've made a new rule, where any posts that would normally be tagged as "Speculation", "theory", or "evidence" will now be removed. We're not going to encourage people to take matters in their own hands here, and that kind of stuff is filling up the subreddit.

You might ask, "Where can I share those kinds of posts then? I still think we can solve the case!". The answer is, you can post those to /r/TheoryOfMaM, where almost all restrictions are lifted and it's supposed to be a theory and investigative based subreddit. It'll be great, since it'll be easier to concentrate everything there and to really go into the details.

You might also wonder what kind of content we'll allow here. We'll allow any content that's about the show itself, as well as news and and posts about the core issues that MaM addresses, such as overzealous prosecutions or wrongful convictions.

Thank you for posting and for your feedback! Hope to see you over at /r/TheoryOfMaM!

Reversal of Fortune: A Prosecutor on Trial for Misconduct

"To all the skeptics, doubters & haters just be patient because we are really going to make you mad. #MakingAMurderer #Reversaloffortune" - Kathleen Zellner, Twitter, March 18, 2017

"Mr. Kratz is well-aware that other individuals lied about their contacts with Ms. Halbach on 10/31." - Kathleen Zellner, Letter to Dateline, February 2017

Kratz could very well have been the ringleader, the master planner who dreamed up the whole scheme, the evidence planter. He hid exculpatory evidence and directed witnesses to lie. His most inspired stroke was to let other people find the evidence.



On April 12, 1987, Michael Morton sat down to write a letter. 
“Your Honor,” he began, “I’m sure you remember me. I was convicted of murder, in your court, in February of this year.” He wrote each word carefully, sitting cross-legged on the top bunk in his cell at the Wynne prison unit, in Huntsville. “I have been told that you are to decide if I am ever to see my son, Eric, again. I haven’t seen him since the morning that I was convicted. I miss him terribly and I know that he has been asking about me.” Referring to the declarations of innocence he had made during his trial, he continued, “I must reiterate my innocence. I did NOT kill my wife. You cannot imagine what it is like to lose your wife the way I did, then to be falsely accused and convicted of this terrible crime. First, my wife and now possibly, my son! Sooner or later, the truth will come out. The killer will be caught and this nightmare will be over. I pray that the sheriff’s office keeps an open mind. It is no sin to admit a mistake. No one is perfect in the performance of their job. I don’t know what else to say except I swear to God that I did NOT kill my wife. Please don’t take my son from me too.”

Michael Morton had no criminal record, no history of violence, and no obvious motive, but the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office, failing to pursue other leads, had zeroed in on him from the start. Although no physical evidence tied him to the crime, he was charged with first-degree murder. Prosecutors argued that he had become so enraged with Christine for not wanting to have sex with him on the night of his birthday that he had bludgeoned her to death. When the guilty verdict was read, Michael’s legs buckled beneath him. District attorney Ken Anderson told reporters afterward, “Life in prison is a lot better than he deserves.” [Source]

Ken Anderson defends himself at a Court of Inquiry investigation in Georgetown, Texas, on Feb. 8, 2013. Anderson, a Texas prosecutor who abused his authority to help send an innocent man to prison for decades, now faces 10 years behind bars for his misconduct. (Ricardo Brazziell, Statesman.com/AP Photo)

By Raymond Bonner, ProPublica
April 29, 2013

For 30 years, Ken Anderson was the face of law enforcement in Williamson County, Texas, first as a bearded district attorney asking the court for tough sentences, and for the last 10 years handing those kinds of sentences out as a judge.

Earlier this month, his beard gone, his hair white, Anderson, noted for his talks to school children about the criminal justice system and the dangers of drugs, walked into the courthouse again, this time as a defendant. He had come to turn himself in, be fingerprinted, photographed and post $2,500 bail. A few hours earlier a judge had ordered his arrest.

Not for drunk driving or speeding, or any other of the pedestrian crimes that sometimes fell public officials. Instead, Anderson was the rarest of defendants, a prosecutor criminally charged for his role in having helped send an innocent man to prison.

In one of Anderson's most notorious murder cases — the conviction of Michael Morton for killing his wife — he withheld critical evidence that would have been essential to Morton's defense.

Morton spent 25 years in prison before gaining his release. Anderson, once named the Texas Prosecutor of the Year, now faces 10 years in prison for his part in Morton's wrongful conviction. 

Related:


Ken Anderson Sentenced to 10 Days in Jail

Ken Anderson was released after only five days in jail

The judge who oversaw a Court of Inquiry investigation of Anderson's conduct did not spare the former prosecutor.

"The court cannot think of a more intentionally harmful act than a prosecutor's choice to hide mitigating evidence so as to create an uneven playing field for a defendant facing a murder charge and a life sentence," said Judge Louis Sturns.

Anderson's lawyer has filed an appeal, arguing that the statute of limitations bars any action.

In Williamson County, the charges have shaken Anderson's friends and colleagues.

But Judge Sturns's action is even more remarkable when set against the long and often ugly history of prosecutorial misconduct. Even when prosecutors engage in strikingly unethical behavior, they are rarely sanctioned for it, much less criminally charged.

George Kendall, a veteran defense lawyer who has specialized in death penalty prosecutions, called the Anderson case "unprecedented."

Prosecutors and defense lawyers disagree on whether prosecutorial misconduct is widespread, or instead limited to isolated transgressions by inexperienced or overzealous prosecutors.

However, one thing is abundantly clear: While revelations of misconduct might result in people being freed from prison or granted new trials, action is almost never taken against the offending prosecutors.

An investigation by ProPublica found 30 cases in New York in recent years where convictions had been overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct. Yet in only one instance was a prosecutor punished in any meaningful way.

In fact, many of the New York prosecutors found to have withheld evidence and accepted false testimony were promoted, or received raises, even after courts overturned convictions because of their misconduct.

In one case, a Queens man was sent to prison for raping his 4-year-old daughter even though the prosecutor had evidence showing the child hadn't been sexually abused. After spending nearly two years in prison, the man's conviction was overturned. A judge later ruled that what the prosecutor had done was "tantamount to fraud." But after the conviction was overturned, the prosecutor received a raise and became head of a department where she oversaw and guided young assistant district attorneys.

In California, "prosecutors continue to engage in misconduct, sometimes multiple times, almost always without consequence," according to a study by the Northern California Innocence Project and Santa Clara University School of Law. In some 600 cases in which courts found there had been prosecutorial misconduct, the study found, only six times did the State Bar discipline the prosecutor.

In Virginia, four murder convictions have been overturned within the last year because of prosecutorial misconduct, according to The Open File, a website launched last year "to monitor prosecutorial misconduct and accountability." None of the prosecutors have been sanctioned.

Twenty-six years ago in Texas, Michael Morton was charged with bludgeoning his wife to death with a club while she lay on the couple's waterbed. During Morton's trial, Anderson put on an emotional case, shedding tears in court and graphically depicting Morton's alleged crimes. His theory of the case was that Morton had become enraged after his wife had denied him sex the previous night, which had been his birthday. For good measure, Anderson told the jury that Morton had masturbated on his dead wife before he headed off to work as a manager at the nearby supermarket.

The jury deliberated less than two hours before finding Morton guilty; he was sentenced to life in prison.
It is now charged that Anderson won his conviction corruptly, failing to comply with the law as laid down by the United States Supreme Court: Anderson had withheld from Morton's lawyers documents that indicated their client was innocent.

Anderson failed to turn over the transcript of an interview in which Morton's young son told his grandmother that a "monster" had killed his mother and that his father had not been at home, and a police report that a green van had been seen near the home and that a strange man had walked into the woods behind the house around the time of the murder.

Morton had been in jail 15 years when one of his trial lawyers contacted Barry Scheck, who had used his fame and money from the O.J. Simpson trial to expand the work and visibility of the Innocence Project. Scheck assigned the case to Nina Morrison, a bright, tenacious young lawyer then new to the office, but who has in the last decade secured the release of more than a dozen men from prison based on DNA testing.

The Innocence Project works with local lawyers, and Morton was fortunate that John Raley, a highly regarded civil litigator in Houston, agreed to represent him pro bono.

Morton's new lawyers quickly moved to request DNA testing on a bloody bandana that had been found at a construction site 100 yards from Morton's house. The state resisted, and a court denied the request; but Morrison persisted, and eventually a court ordered DNA testing.

The bandana was found to contain the blood of Morton's wife and the DNA of an unknown individual. That individual was later identified as Mark Alan Norwood, whose DNA was found in a national database; he was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison last month.

DNA testing was not as advanced at the time of Morton's trial, and there was no serious criticism of Anderson for not having considered the bandana more carefully. But that was not the end of the case.

Using the state's public records act, Morrison had sought documents from the district attorney's office. After years of litigation, what she obtained was explosive.

Foremost among the documents was an eight-page transcript of an interview of the victim's mother by a police officer, an account that suggested Morton could not have been the killer. There was also a sheriff's report about the strange man seen in the neighborhood around the time of the killing.

Anderson had kept all of this from the defense. 

With Morton out of prison, and fully exonerated, his lawyers might have stopped there. But they pushed on.

An obscure 1876 Texas law provides for a Court of Inquiry when there is probable cause to believe that "an offense has been committed against the laws of this State." Such courts have been used to investigate cases of wrongful convictions, but never allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

Morton's lawyers persuaded a judge that this was a proper case for a Court of Inquiry. Their legal arguments were buttressed no doubt by the extraordinary public attention paid to the Morton case: Pamela Colloff had authored a two-part series, "The Innocent Man," which appeared in The Texas Monthly; there had been an editorial in The New York Times; 60 Minutes and National Public Radio had also weighed in.

Appointed as the special prosecutor for the Court of Inquiry was Rusty Hardin, who had been a legendary Houston district attorney — "one of the most feared death penalty prosecutors in Texas," says George Kendall.

During the hearing before Judge Sturns in February, Anderson, 60, was grilled for several hours by Hardin. Anderson defiantly defended his actions, "discounted the importance of the inquiry itself, struck a sarcastic tone, and cast himself as the victim of a 'media frenzy,'" Colloff reported.

He also suffered memory lapses. He routinely turned over all evidence to the defense that he was required to, he testified. But he had "no independent memory" of having given the defense the interview in which Morton's young son told his grandmother that a monster had killed his mother.

How could Anderson not remember a statement by a child seeing his mother killed? Hardin demanded to know.

"I have no recollection of it," Anderson repeated. Besides, he said, he'd put no credence in what a little boy said.

It is hard to overstate the uniqueness of the inquiry into the prosecutor's actions in the Morton case, and the subsequent legal action against Anderson.

One way to appreciate its novelty is to recall the South Carolina case of Edward Lee Elmore. A semi-literate African-American, Elmore was convicted and sentenced to death for the sexual assault and murder of a 75-year-old white woman.

In Elmore's case, the prosecution didn't just withhold critical information from the defense. There is reason to believe that the police and investigators concocted evidence, and that they committed perjury.

For instance, at Elmore's trial, officers testified that more than 40 of Elmore's pubic hairs had been found on the bed where he was alleged to have sexually assaulted the victim.

But the claims, as well as others involving what was once presented as scientific evidence of Elmore's guilt, ultimately crumbled upon re-examination. And some potentially exculpatory evidence was withheld from Elmore's lawyer.

Elmore was approaching 30 years in prison — more than half his life — when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion. It is striking for its length — 194 pages — but even more so for the majority's scathing criticism of the state's handling of the case. There was "persuasive evidence," the court held, that investigators "were outright dishonest," and that they "lied about" some of their investigative findings at the time of Elmore's trial.

That judgment was rendered more than 18 months ago, and Elmore was released shortly afterward. But there is no indication of any investigation into the police or prosecutors involved in the case.

Raymond Bonner, a lawyer and former New York Times reporter, is the author of "Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong."

 

A poster of Cameron Todd Willingham distributed by anti-death-penalty activists. (Janet Jacobs/Corsicana Daily Sun)

By Radley Balko, The Washington Post 

May 3, 2017

John Jackson is the Texas prosecutor who convicted Cameron Todd Willingham of murdering his family by setting his own house on fire. Jackson then persuaded a jury to send Willingham to his death. We now know that Willingham was likely innocent, convicted on forensic evidence now known to be junk science and snitch testimony now known to be false.

We also now know that Jackson is accused of hiding exculpatory evidence from Willingham’s attorneys.

In a highly unusual move, the Texas bar is trying to bring sanctions against Jackson. More unusual still, the procedure is being done in public, in front of a lay jury. The Intercept’s Jordan Smith is at the trial.

Specifically, the state’s lawyers contend that Jackson made a deal with a jailhouse snitch who agreed to testify against Willingham and then hid that deal from Willingham’s defense attorneys — a clear violation of both law and ethics. They say that Jackson took extraordinary measures over the next two decades to conceal his deceitful actions.

“It is a duty of the prosecution — an ethical obligation — to turn over that evidence,” state bar lawyer Kristin Brady told jurors in her opening arguments last Wednesday afternoon. “For years he protected this snitch; for years. It wasn’t for [the snitch’s] protection, it was for his own protection.”

Jackson and the snitch, a man named Johnny Webb, corresponded for years after Willingham’s conviction, with Jackson working feverishly to get Webb’s sentence reduced, likely out of fear that Webb would go public. He finally did, leading to the bar’s move against Jackson. 

Smith also hunted Webb down before the trial:

It was late morning by the time I parked across the street from the house I would later find out belongs to Webb’s mom. The crumbing bungalow had seen better days. A broken windowpane was haphazardly covered from the inside. A sign on a screen door warned that because of the rise in the price of ammo, there would be no warning shot. Two cats slept on the porch next to a half-eaten bowl of kibble. No one answered the door. As I turned to walk back to the car, I spotted a man across the street smoking a cigarette and watching me. I recognized him. “Are you Johnny Webb?” I called out. “I don’t know,” he said. “Am I?”
Indeed, he was. I introduced myself as a reporter and he recoiled, looking at me suspiciously. “I can’t give any interviews,” he said. I understand, I replied. But then he began talking. I asked him if he was prepared to testify in court; yes, he said, but he planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Did that mean that what he’d said about being coerced was untrue, I asked him. He said that talking to the Innocence Project, “trying to fix things,” had cost him. He’s lost work — the contractor he worked with had to let him go, he said, once his boss’s well-connected clients found out Webb was on the crew — and wants nothing more than to get this behind him, get out of Corsicana, and start his life anew. “I thought I could change things,” he lamented about his involvement in the Willingham case. “I’ve learned that one man can’t.”

We’ve noted here at The Watch on several occasions just how rare it is for a state bar to sanction a prosecutor. It’s no different in Texas. Smith reports that of the 2,000 or so attorneys against whom the Texas bar has sought sanctions since 2011, just 10 of the efforts resulted in disciplinary action against a prosecutor.

Should Hard-line Prosecutors Be Nervous?

After voters oust two prosecutors for failing to hold police accountable, maybe. 

The Marshall Project
March 16, 2016

Voters delivered two big upsets in local Democratic primaries Tuesday night: in Cook County, Ill. they ousted state’s attorney Anita Alvarez. And in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, incumbent county prosecutor Timothy McGinty lost his re-election bid. Both prosecutors lost in part due to criticism that they failed to hold police accountable for high-profile shootings of young blacks.

The results were especially surprising given that incumbent prosecutors are often a shoo-in in such low-turnout, low-information races. According to a 2009 study of prosecutorial elections in 10 states from 1996 to 2006, prosecutors won re-election 95 percent of the time. In 85 percent of races, they ran unopposed.

The national debate on police accountability and criminal justice reform seems to have turned these once-quiet elections into a new battleground. Even big money liberal donors like George Soros have been throwing cash into local prosecutor races. As activists celebrate victories in Chicago and Cleveland, the question now is: will it continue, and where?

“Those [elections in Chicago and Cleveland] are two anecdotes, not data. But they might be signaling the start of a new era of prosecutor elections,” says Ronald Wright, a criminal law professor at Wake Forest University and the author of the 2009 study. “When two very high-visibility prosecutors are rejected by the voters, then that makes me wonder, is the story changing?”

It’s not just that these state’s attorneys lost their seat, but how, that is significant. Prosecutorial elections, like those for judges, have traditionally been fought over promises to be tougher on crime and, in many districts, to hand down harsher sentences. Candidates often trumpet endorsements by police. Wright’s survey found that prosecutors discuss their “relationship with law enforcement” and a promise of “more violent crime enforcement” far more often than they speak of fairness or equity.

In contrast, last night’s winners campaigned on changing the system and not letting officers off the hook. Kim Foxx, a veteran prosecutor who won in Cook County, faulted Alvarez for taking more than a year to bring charges against the officer who fired 16 shots at 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, and nearly two years to indict the off-duty cop who shot and killed Rekia Boyd. She touted her role in policy changes that sent fewer people to jail. The victor in Cuyahoga County, Michael O’Malley, ran on a more traditional platform, but still criticized McGinty’s handling of the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, and pledged to restore trust between his office and black communities.

It often takes a scandal to actually oust a sitting prosecutor. But, Wright notes, “normally it’s a murder prosecution where there was an acquittal, or a public corruption case where they decided not to charge...It’s normally not police shooting cases.”

In the era of Black Lives Matter, high-profile police shootings have not always had an impact on Election Day. St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch won his primary election days before the police shooting of Michael Brown stirred angry protests, then ran unopposed in the November election. The Staten Island prosecutor who failed to indict the officer who choked Eric Garner was elected to Congress not long after the controversial case. The heated race to replace him, in a conservative district, included little mention of Garner or police misconduct.

Even when a prosecutor stirs controversy, it is often hard to get voters to pay attention. In Cuyahoga County, roughly 20 percent of those who turned out for the primary election did not cast votes in the district attorney’s race. “These local down-ticket races can be very important, but they often don’t get the attention they need,” said professor John Pfaff of Fordham Law School, who studies prosecutors and sentencing.

The election results in Illinois and Ohio may change that, and bring more attention to upcoming races. Efforts are already underway to unseat Florida prosecutor Angela Corey, who is up for election this August. Corey has been criticized for prosecuting Marissa Alexander, a domestic violence victim who fired a shot near her abusive husband, and for sending a disproportionate number of black men to death row.

Meanwhile, L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey is facing pressure to prosecute police as she nears her re-election vote this June. Some local activists have called for her to step down already for not indicting a highway patrol officer videotaped beating up a mentally ill black woman. Others have clamored for her to charge officers in two different high-profile shootings.

Given the current climate, one L.A. lawyer told the Los Angeles Times, not indicting could be “political suicide.”

After 25 Years in Prison, Man is Finally Free After Being Framed by Detroit PD

The Daily Sheeple
May 29, 2017

After being locked up in prison for 25 years, the entire time claiming he was framed by the Detroit police department, a man finally gets to taste his freedom. New tests have absolved Desmond Ricks, now 51, of a 1992 murder he’s certain police framed him for.

Ricks has never changed his story but the same cannot be said for the police, who switched out the evidence. Since being accused of the murder of his friend, Gerry Bennett, Ricks has denied that he committed the crime and alleged that the cops framed him with false evidence.  And his claims have now been vindicated.  A judge on Friday threw out the murder conviction of Desmond Ricks who has been in prison for a quarter of a century after new tests on the bullets supported his remarkable claim that police framed him with bogus evidence.

The bullets removed from the victim’s body were in poor shape and didn’t resemble the pristine bullets that were presented as evidence by Detroit police in 1992. Police at that time said a gun belonging to Ricks’ mother was the murder weapon, but new tests now have ruled out any connection, Innocence Clinic director David Moran said. One of the bullets doesn’t match the gun, and the other bullet was too mutilated for a thorough analysis, he said. Rebecca Haan, a supervising attorney with the Innocence Clinic, says that calls into question the credibility of [all] evidence used in Ricks’ case.

The Detroit Police Department closed its crime lab in 2008, after investigations revealed numerous problems with the testing and handling of evidence. The lab was riddled with scandals and more often than not, mishandled evidence. The corruption in the DPD’s lab, of course, stemmed from the corruption in the police department itself.  Seeking only a conviction, not the truth, the Detroit police department falsified evidence, according to Ricks, from day one. This new lab testing backs Ricks’ story that the police framed him. The Innocence Clinic and Michigan law school have exonerated 10 people and freed four others since 2009 by exposing bad police work in Michigan, finding new witnesses, and tapping specialists.

Ricks had a key ally in his bid to reopen the case: an independent firearms expert who was involved in the ’92 trial. He found David Townshend’s name in a law journal in 2009 and wrote to him from prison. Townshend agreed to help. He recalled that the bullets originally presented to him by police appeared to be in excellent shape with no trace of blood, bone or hair that would suggest they were removed from the victim’s brain and spine. Townshend said they didn’t resemble the actual bullets that were locked away in police storage and produced just two years ago.

“Townshend’s a hero,” Moran said. “He was willing to put his reputation on the line.”

But it wasn’t only Townsend who helped save Ricks from his life sentence. Moran also attributed it to Ricks sticking to his story and following through.

“Ricks was a great advocate for his own cause,” Moran said.

“What he was saying seemed to be outlandish: The Detroit police crime lab would not only make mistakes but switch bullets. It wasn’t outlandish — it was true. This outlandish conduct cost Desmond Ricks 25 years.”

Luckily, Ricks is now a free man, but only after spending half of his life locked up.  No amount of money could ever make up for what has been done to this man, but the Innocence Clinic is at least making strides to right the wrongs committed by the corrupt Detroit police.

FAQs on American Judicial and Legal Corruption

I keep reading that no one should question a judge's opinion, or a cop's integrity, but these people work for us. In what other job do those who pay the salary have less rights than those they gainfully employ?

Ken Kratz in closing arguments at Steven Avery's 2007 trial for the murder of Teresa Halbach:

"But also the issue of official or police misconduct should be something that angers you, just as its angers me."

It's so blatantly obvious officials have always resented their integrity being questioned. [Source]

(F.A.Q., Frequently Asked Questions)

By Dr Les Sachs

Here is the complete internet FAQ, or Frequently Asked Questions with Answers, on American judicial and legal corruption - the most hidden and ugly secret about life inside the modern United States.

Information for the many victims of USA legal injustice, and for anyone seeking to understand America's terrifying legal system, and how America really works.

Why American lawyers and judges are destroying families, sending innocent people to prison, and why average working people cannot get justice in American courts.

This FAQ is especially important, because America's major news media are afraid to talk about wrongdoing by lawyers and judges. Here is the truth that the U.S. media knows, but hides from the public.

First a list of just the questions, and then each question in turn with its answer.

This FAQ may be re-published, even in full, without charge by anyone, anywhere, with acknowledgement of author and source.

Questions:

1. I've been a victim of wrongdoing by a judge or lawyer - where do I start in getting help?

2. I thought America was a "free country" with the "greatest legal system in the world" - so why is my situation such a difficult problem?

3. What about the grievance procedures for dishonest and criminal judges?

4. What about the local Bar or Bar association - Aren't they supposed to go after crooked lawyers and judges?

5. Why is it so hard to find a lawyer to fight legal or judicial corruption, why are all the lawyers afraid to help me?

6. Aren't there lawyers who specialize in "legal malpractice" or misconduct by lawyers?

7. I read about crazy lawsuits for trivial reasons where people win money - so why can't I find a lawyer to fight serious issues of legal corruption?

8. I had a lawyer in my original legal case, but he acted weak, timid and stupid in the courtroom, he didn't try to strongly defend me - Why was that?

9. What about prosecutors and police - won't the prosecutors or the FBI go after crooked lawyers and judges?

10. Is it true that once I become a victim of judicial and legal corruption, I basically become an "outlaw" to the whole legal system in America?

11. Is it just a question of money - could I fix things if I had some money?

12. Why doesn't someone fight this whole big crooked system - What is keeping all of this going?

13. But with the judges so out of control in America, aren't there rich people and political groups that have even more power than the judges?

14. How is the power of the big corporations in America, connected to the abuse of power by judges and lawyers?

15. What kind of a deal is in place between America's judges and lawyers, on the one hand, and the corporations and multi-millionaires?

16. I couldn't get help from my political representative, about my battle with a crooked judge or crooked lawyer - Why won't the politicians help me?

17. So the current state of legal corruption, is really supported by both political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans together?

18. Is the problem of judicial and legal corruption, the same as the problem of "political activist judges", or is that a different issue?

19. There are so many organizations out there - isn't there an organization that will help me fight wrongdoing by a judge or lawyers?

20. I've got great evidence, and an important story, of judicial or legal corruption. How do I get the news media to cover my case?

21. What about investigative reporters - won't they be interested in my story of legal or judicial corruption?

22. What about the alternative or radical or foreign news media - won't they be interested in my story of legal or judicial corruption?

23. What about the professors at the law schools - aren't they studying and writing about legal corruption?

24. There's all these rich business executives getting convicted now, like Martha Stewart - Doesn't that prove that the system is really working?

25. What about being my own lawyer in court, and filing lawsuits against legal corruption on my own?

26. What things should I keep in mind in dealing with lawyers?

27. What is the history of how judges and lawyers got so much power in America?

28. Is the problem of legal and judicial corruption really different or better in other countries, or is it just the same as in America?

29. So what can I do to fight my personal battle against judicial and legal corruption - or is it just hopeless?

30. What is the best thing happening to fight judicial and legal corruption in America?

For answers to the above questions, go to this link:

http://www.dr-les-sachs.be/faq.html