FOX NEWS: The suit against the YUM-brands chain also has a “beef” with the company’s advertising, charging its claims of using “seasoned ground beef” or “seasoned beef” in its food products is false. According to the suit filed by the Alabama law firm Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, the YUM-brands owned chain is using a meat mixture that contains binders and extenders, and does not meet the minimum requirements set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be labeled as “beef.” Attorney Dee Miles said the meat mixture contained just 35 percent beef, with the remaining 65 percent containing water, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodrextrin, anti-dusting agent and modified corn starch. The suit was filed on behalf of Taco Bell customer and California resident Amanda Obney, who is not seeking monetary damages, but instead wants a court to order Taco Bell to be honest in its advertising. “We are asking that they stop saying that they are selling beef,” Miles said. MORE

RELATED: Another fast-food group, Wendy’s/Arby’s Group Inc., is making plans to ditch one of its brands, in this case Arby’s, home of the great roast beef sandwich, and in some locations, the delectable potato cake. Wendy’s/Arby’s Group said it is “exploring strategic alternatives” for Arby’s, which usually means the chain is on the block. Earlier this week, our friends at Yum Brands said they were keeping Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC, but looking to sell Long John Silver’s and A&W, home of the best on-tap root beer ever. MORE

BOING BOING: According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines. MORE

ASSOCIATED PRESS: A suburban Philadelphia school district used the webcams in school-issued laptops to spy on students at home, potentially catching them and their families in compromising situations, a family claims in a federal lawsuit.Lower Merion School District officials would not comment on the accusation, but angry students have already responded by putting tape on their laptop cameras and microphones. Sophomore Tom Halperin described students as “pretty disgusted,” and noted that his class recently read “1984,” the George Orwell classic that coined the term “Big Brother.” “This is just bogus,” said Halperin, 15, of Wynnewood, as he left Harriton High School on Thursday with his taped-up computer. “I just think it’s really despicable that they have the ability to just watch me all the time.” The school district can activate the webcams without students’ knowledge or permission, the suit said. Plaintiffs Michael and Holly Robbins suspect the cameras captured students and family members as they undressed and in other embarrassing situations, according to the suit. Such actions would amount to potentially illegal electronic wiretapping, said Witold J. Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which is not involved in the case. MORE

INQUIRER: The district has issued school-owned laptops to 2,290 high school students, starting last school year at Harriton, in an effort to promote more “engaged and active learning and enhanced student achievement,” superintendent Christopher W. McGinley said in a message on the district website. McGinley and school board president David Ebby did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement on its website, the district said that “The laptops do contain a security feature intended to track lost, stolen and missing laptops. This feature has been deactivated effective today.” In a later statement, the district said: “Upon a report of a suspected lost, stolen or missing laptop, the feature was activated by the District’s security and technology departments. The tracking-security feature was limited to taking a still image of the operator and the operator’s screen. This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.” When the computers were distributed to students, the district did not disclose that it could activate the cameras at any time, the suit alleges. MORE

INQUIRER: Virginia DiMedio, who was the Lower Merion district’s technology director until she retired last summer, said that “if there was a report that a computer was stolen, the next time a person opened it up, it would take their picture and give us their IP [internet protocol] address – the location of where it was coming from.” She said that that feature had been used several times to trace stolen laptops, but there had been no discussion of using that capability to monitor students’ behavior. “I can’t imagine anyone in the district did anything other than track stolen computers,” she said. MORE

ASSOCIATED PRESS: A law-enforcement official with knowledge of the case says the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into a Pennsylvania school district accused of activating webcams inside students’ homes without their knowledge. The official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, says the FBI will explore whether Lower Merion School District officials broke any federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws. MORE

Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (PDF)

WASHINGTON CITY PAPER: An affidavit filed today in U.S. District Court raises questions as to whether former D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey may have committed perjury in his sworn testimony about the Pershing Park fiasco. Ramsey had repeatedly stated in depositions that he had not ordered the mass arrest of approximately 400 people during the Sept. 27, 2002, World Bank/IMF protests. Yet the affidavit, by Det. Paul Hustler, a 22-year D.C. Police veteran, maintains that Ramsey indeed ordered the arrests. Hustler’s affidavit, taken Nov. 16, [PDF] is just the latest shock in a pair of Pershing Park class-action civil suits in U.S. District Court. In recent months, the case has been dogged by allegations of massive discovery violations. Judge Emmet Sullivan has called for an outside investigation into how basic evidence in the cases had gone missing. On the day of the protests, Hustler’s squad had been dispatched to Pershing Park to assist with crowd control. At the time, the police had surrounded anyone in the park whether they were IMF protesters or innocent bystanders. Hustler states in his affidavit that officers were ordered to funnel people into the park. Hustler was standing near Ramsey and various police officials at the time. He then goes on to state:

“As I walked closer, about five or six feet away from them, I heard Chief Ramsey say, ‘We’re going to lock them up and teach them a lesson.'” MORE

RELATED: On January 13, 2006, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the arrests violated the Fourth Amendment and that Chief Ramsey could be held personally liable for the violations. On August 2, 2007, City officials in Washington agreed to pay $1 million to more than 120 of the protesters, on top of other settlements by the D.C. government, including one for $640,000. MORE

D.C. Police Prepare for Protests at Inauguration
by John Drake

Published on Wednesday, December 13, 2000 in the Washington Times

Anti-establishment activists and liberals are planning to flood the District with massive protests on Inauguration Day, prompting city police to brace for the deluge with an unprecedented level of security. “What we would hope is that any demonstrations that are planned are peaceful,” said Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey. “We’ll be as gentle or as forceful as we need to be, and play the situation out based on what they do.”

“We have to be prepared for anything that may occur. It will not be [the police department] that creates the problem, but we will resolve it,” he added. Chief Ramsey will mobilize the entire Metropolitan Police Department for the event, and he has invoked “mutual aid” agreements with police in surrounding counties to increase staffing.

As many as 950 officers from Fairfax, Montgomery, Arlington and Prince George’s counties and Alexandria will be federally deputized so they can enforce D.C. laws, officials said. Federal police agencies will be out in force, and other agencies — such as the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — will be on standby for major incidents. MORE

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Lawsuit Alleging Abuse During 2001 Inauguration Is Settled

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 22, 2006

The D.C. police department agreed yesterday to pay $685,000 and take steps to protect protesters from police abuse and ensure their rights to settle a lawsuit over the treatment of demonstrators at President Bush’s inauguration in 2001. The lawsuit uncovered evidence that the department had suspended rules limiting the use of force during the protests, had pressed undercover officers to infiltrate protest groups and had sought to provoke protesters and uninvolved bystanders by attacking them with batons and pepper spray.

The Partnership for Civil Justice, a civil liberties advocacy group, and a group of local residents brought the suit five years ago to try to force the police department under Chief Charles H. Ramsey to change what it considered an illegal pattern of treating protesters like suspected criminals. One of the suit’s lead attorneys, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, said yesterday that the group thinks that it achieved much of that goal through painstaking litigation and depositions that revealed the department’s behavior and led to the D.C. Council passing legislation last year to reform police handling of protests.

The settlement, which comes as Ramsey is preparing to leave his post, is the latest in a series of payments the city has made stemming from police conduct at demonstrations. In January 2005, the District government agreed to pay $425,000 to seven people caught up in a mass arrest at Pershing Park in September 2002. More than 400 people were rounded up at the downtown park during demonstrations against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Several investigations found that Assistant Chief Peter J. Newsham, after conferring with Ramsey, had ordered arrests without warning or evidence of a crime — including of people who had nothing to do with the protests. MORE

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D.C. Settles With Mass Arrest Victims
7 Rounded Up in 2002 IMF Protest to Get $425,000 and an Apology

By Carol D. Leonnig and Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 25, 2005

The District government agreed yesterday to pay a total of $425,000 to seven people caught up in a mass arrest at a downtown park in September 2002, acknowledging that they were wrongfully arrested and promising to adopt changes in police procedures.

The agreement settles a lawsuit in which the seven alleged that D.C. police violated their constitutional rights and department policy during the roundup of about 400 protesters and bystanders in Pershing Park. The settlement also requires D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey to send a personal letter of apology to each of the plaintiffs.

Ramsey said yesterday that city attorneys have instructed him not to comment on the settlement because of the ongoing litigation.

The arrests occurred Sept. 27, 2002, during demonstrations against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. With Ramsey’s approval, Assistant Police Chief Peter J. Newsham ordered officers to corral demonstrators and anyone else within the boundaries of the park, on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, and to charge them with failing to obey police. Those arrested were put in plastic handcuffs, taken away on buses and detained on floors for as long as 36 hours. MORE