In this week’s news story, we reviewed the final four contenders for Sonoma Clean Power. Direct Energy, especially, might raise the green-leaning eyebrow.

As we wrote in the news story: Between 2001 and 2004, Direct Energy was found by several regulators to have signed up unwitting clients in four U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. According to a newspaper report, the company brought attention to itself by accidentally signing up an Atlanta man who had been dead for over 20 years. It was charged with unethical business practices and fined $500,000 stateside and $150,000 in Canada.

There’s a series on this fiasco in the Calgary Herald, which is this writer’s new Canadian regional newspaper crush.

The Direct Sell: An Investigative Report

Maybe you’ve read the recent, controversial Time Magazine cover story about how the Millennial generation (hey, that’s me!) is made up of a bunch of lazy, unemployed narcissists who live with their parents. I haven’t. I’ve been too busy having government-subsidized babies and getting my mom to take care of them while I sit around taking photos of my own reflection in the mirror.

I did get around to reading The Atlantic‘s analysis of it, which points out how faulty writer Joel Stein’s data is. But I had to do it quickly, because I was in the middle of brunch/interviews with potential trainers for the new pet dolphin I was just able to buy. I’ve been living with my parents, see, and my college professors have actually been paying me in monthly increments of $400 just for eventually landing a job.

But anyway, these are funny, courtesy of Policymic.

The New Yorker just launched a pretty awesome tool called Strongbox intended to allow people to anonymously send tips to the newsroom. Though this isn’t in direct response to the recent Department of Justice subpoena of Associated Press phone lines—the New Yorker has been working on this for several years—it certainly could not have come at a better time.

Basically, the program allows anyone to upload information, photos, complaints, documents, etc., that they believe should be reported, and the people on the other end (in this case, the New Yorker) receive an encrypted version that requires a key to unlock the information, which is performed on another computer.

What’s especially beneficial about the program is that the New Yorker isn’t being all proprietary about it. The program itself, Dead Drop, was created by Aaron Swartz, is in fact open-source, and is available for any news agency to use.

Department of Justice, be damned!

Just how private is your private life?

A video of Cotati police kicking in a door and tasing a man filming them has spread like wildfire around the internet, raising questions about citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights and excessive use of force.

Last week, when a neighbor called to alert Cotati police about an alleged domestic disturbance incident between James and Jennifer Wood, officers arrived at the couple’s front window. Speaking through the window to the police, the couple denied any domestic violence had been taking place, and refused the officers entry to their apartment, with James stating, “We don’t live in a police state, sir.”

Since it made the front page of Reddit last night, what happened next in the May 10 incident has been seen around the world:

Speaking to the Press Democrat, Cotati police chief Michael Parish insisted that in the case of a domestic disturbance call, police don’t need a warrant to enter a residence. “The officers simply cannot walk away from a domestic disturbance call without ensuring that all parties are safe and secure,” he told reporter Julie Johnson.

Johnson spoke with James, and also with Jennifer, who said of the responding officers: “They could plainly see I was not in distress.” An administrative review of the officers’ actions will be taken, Parish said, but he defended the officers’ behavior and blamed the Woods’ “poor choice… not to cooperate with law enforcement.”

Read the Press Democrat report here.

It’s hard enough to get someone to pick up the phone when you’re a regular reporter. But what will happen now that the Associated Press has announced the Department of Justice has subpoenaed phone records from its reporters?

A lot of people are very concerned this will create a space where people are even less likely to talk to the press, effectively making whistleblowers scared to tip off reporters to important information.

In a letter to Eric Holder signed by 50 news organizations, from NPR to the Bay Area News Group to Politico, Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press wrote:

The scope of this action calls into question the very integrity of Department of Justice policies toward the press and its ability to balance, on its own, its police powers against the First Amendment rights of the news media and the public’s interest in reporting on all manner of government conduct, including matters touching on national security which lie at the heart of this case.

The letter goes on to say that by subpoenaing two months of records from 20 phone lines, the DoJ has gone against all guidelines set forth about phone records. It goes on to call for a shield law:

The Department’s actions demonstrate that a strong federal shield law is needed to protect reporters and their newsgathering materials in a court of law where the adversarial process ensures a fair weighing of the issues. While Congress should provide that remedial legislation, there is still much that this Department can do to mitigate the damage it has caused.

Right here in Sonoma County, in Rohnert Park, someone started a petition calling for legislation against this practice.