We are back live and we're taking up F-254 and we're at the point of committee discussion, although I will invite comments from those who are in the room. We try to keep everybody appraised of what's going on, who have testified on the bill and so I appreciate all the different sides that have, I'm going to say sides because you know usually say there's one side and another side and you know the two sides you've come to compromise with and this particular bill it seems like there's five or six different sides and we're hearing conflicting information from all of those sides and I want to make clear that the bill we're talking about is not designed to tear down police or anything of that nature. It is designed to have a discussion about qualified immunity and Ben has helped us bring nicely understand the history of qualified immunity. Ben Novigowski our legislative counsel has done a terrific job in working on this bill and the legislature has never actually had a voice in this. It's all been done through common law and rulings by Vermont Supreme Court as well as the United States Supreme Court and I want to make clear it's our job to look into these matters and primarily at the heart of the issue for me is the balance between civil rights and civil policing. This bill is about striking that balance with a uniform policy that applies alike to local county and state police and I've read a lot of criticism of the bill regarding frivolous lawsuits and I just want to make a few comments about that and then we can I'm happy to hear from others but you know that's something as chair of this committee and as a member of this committee I've heard often is frivolous lawsuits and don't worry about it. We're hearing that about the right to farm for example in s268 but there are barriers to friling frivolous lawsuits including attorney sanctions and judges ability to dismiss cases and in general Vermont is not that kind of litigous state with runaway lawsuits and one of the things that was in the bill is introduced was loser pay in other words if there is a lawsuit against a law enforcement officer that least the intent of the sponsors of the bill including myself was that to avoid those frivolous lawsuits the officer would be indemnified for any of the costs of defending him or herself in the lawsuit so I just you know I I'm kind of disappointed that that hasn't even come up in the discussion by many of the opponents of the bill. I saw my town manager forward me a blurb from VLCT and I didn't hear anything about that about that portion of the bill and I maybe it's just because it was overlooked but that was put in there to avoid to try to avoid frivolous lawsuits and if there are and they get to that point you know I've been sued I know what it's like I know what it feels like it doesn't feel good and because of the way it all turned out it cost me $22,000 to defend myself on a lawsuit that took the jury about well I think the amount of time it took them to walk to the jury room and back they couldn't have had more than a half a minute to discuss the bill to discuss this suit and came back and found us to not be at fault. By the way when we're talking about the jury bill that was a jury of eight people so I just needed to get that off my chest and I appreciate that but so Ben can you help us better understand the Zulu case and what it did what it didn't do and sure. Am I pronouncing it correctly is it Zulu? It's the Zulu v. State and yes and for the record Ben Novogrowski from the office of legislative council the Zulu case to really distill it down simply is that for state constitutional torrents as applied to state law enforcement they a standard was created a four-part standard that and and again I'm kind of I guess maybe broadening in a little bit more because it's Zulu is specifically about article 11 the search and seizure provision and the standard came out of this case that to obtain damages and it was really a damages limiting principle that's sort of acted as a form of qualified immunity that to obtain damages in any claim a plaintiff must show that there was a violation of article 11 that there was no meaningful alternative in the context of that particular case and that the law enforcement officer acting under authority of the state or then the scope of authority knew or should have known that the officer was violating clearly established law or that the officer acted in bad faith so that standard is really what came out of the Zulu case but it's unclear as far as its application to local law enforcement to other constitutional violations but there is sort of a conventional wisdom that that it would at least be instruct instructive as applied to other situations and one of the reasons why this why this standard exists I suppose is because Vermont's constitution often offers broader protections than the federal counterpart and so that's why this one of the reasons why this the standard was created and also as was said in previous testimony to try to balance the considerations where to to stave off a wave of lawsuits against law enforcement that could obstruct the performance of their duties so the court felt that this was a damages limiting principle to try and address all of those considerations and but there was a call they said absent legislative action this is what we're this is the standard that we would apply in at least this situation and perhaps similar situations of constitutional violations of the Vermont constitution so there was a call I think for legislative action to degree but until that happens that is the standard in that context of at least article 11 violations and potentially more constitutional violations what are the questions so far about that so you're senator white so if we did nothing this is the standard that would be used from now on in vermont around um article 11 violations for article 11 violations as applied to state police state yeah I could say pretty confidently that this would be the standard that that would be used um however it may not be used in other contexts right right but but in anything under that in article 11 violation this would be the standard used we were just talking about depth sheriffs in the in the um agenda item ahead of this one if a sheriff did it county sheriff would they be covered by zulu I can't say with certainty that they would um I think that zulu would probably be instructive in the case um but there is uncertainty over um different officers because local law enforcement and sheriffs are a little bit different since they're county based but local law enforcement has and this was a discussion that's gone on there's municipal immunity and whether or not that applies to local law enforcement is sort of an inconsistent question throughout the case law um there are many cases where local municipal employees so someone that works for the water department municipal immunity is a completely different test but it would apply to them however there's inconsistency in the case law as applied to law enforcement specifically um many the majority of the cases that come out of vermont are cases involving uh state troopers there are a handful though that involve local law enforcement however it's not clear the tests that they apply in that situation it could be municipal immunity but also there's there's qualified me there are two cases um that i'm aware of bat tv bruno and livingston v town of hardford that involve local law enforcement but it's not a clear application of this the clearly established law standard that we've talked about under 1983 lawsuits um there hasn't been a case really yet about with the zulo standard but there's also discussion about this municipal sort of discretionary proprietary function as well so it's a really long way of saying that it's unclear how it would apply to sheriffs um and the one thing that i think could be a policy decision for the for the committee to consider is that if there is a consistent standard that the committee wants to apply two situations across the board to give certainty uniformity across first aid police sheriffs and local law enforcement so that the the courts don't vary in their interpretations okay uh commissioner senator white and then commissioner serling so i just have one more question for ben on the zulo case i mean i might have more but right now i have one um it only applies to constitutional rights violation of constitutional rights on on art specifically article 11 constitutional specifically article 11 yes thank you uh commissioner thanks for being here thank you senator sorry i also a few minutes late i was on the house side for a bit um for the record mike charlin commissioner of public safety um i i don't want to sound uh or come across as argumentative with uh council but um i've and i've been texting a few folks uh while this has been going on um we're not aware of any instance where controlling case law on a decision involving a law enforcement officer in vermont in any way differs whether that officer is municipal sheriff or state police there's only one definition of a law enforcement officer in the state we train to the same when we train about legal obligations both civil and criminal process they're identical my experience with civil litigation now both in on the municipal side and on the state side is that um we when we're considering cases that are brought against law enforcement agencies that all of the uh decisions are controlling that in vermont so zulo in took by extension would be controlling two municipal agencies as well um important to note i am not an attorney but i would certainly urge you to get additional um legal opinions on this because i am quite confident that uh zulo applies across the board as do other decisions um related to both civil liability and criminal procedure senator white so i just want to ask ben one more question and i will always have one more question probably i am so sorry but well i thought your question was for commissioner shirling so i'm going to say sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry thank you commissioner um i i think that um so i'm curious as to why we're phrasing this in uh eliminating qualified immunity instead of putting it in the context and maybe i don't understand the way the law the laws are written but that in order to obtain damages which is what we're looking at we're looking at the rights of people to to have to get damages if they've been damaged by a law enforcement officer and that that i think is the what we're looking at here so why aren't we putting those four standards under some piece of legislation that says in order to um get damages from uh an action of a law enforcement officer you need to meet these stand for standards why are we i mean is it the same outcome or um why why have we phrased it um getting rid of qualified immunity as opposed to these are the standards you need to meet in order to file a lawsuit and get damages well senator white that's that's i think a policy consideration for for the committee and you know on the one hand what qualified immunity does is stop a lawsuit really at its outset so you a lot oftentimes you don't even get to the merits of the case and even the question of damages i think the route that you're suggesting uh could potentially change that that um that equation where it is possible that the committee could create a law that would permit the lawsuit to go forward and then when it comes to the remedy as opposed to just having access to the court system um the remedy is sort of what the the policy choice would be if it's damage access to damages or or something else i think that is a policy consideration but right now qualified immunity oftentimes acts as really an obstacle to really access the court system to a degree okay that's helpful thank you thank you yeah yeah that um i wonder if um jds wants to comment because j um it was actually one of the litigators in the zulo case on the issue that i'm really stumbling about commissioner shirling raised it is zulo specifically to the state police or could it encompass all all more enforcement in the state thank you senator for the record jds general counsel of aclu vermont uh yes i i was part of the team that litigated the case zulo v state and as ben said i think i would agree with ben uh that the case specifically applies to state police and state employees really and that's because it was a case against the state itself uh and so while article 11 and the rulings in zulo around article 11 specifically yes those apply across the board so those are like certain seizure that's certain seizure law the law around damages and um and and this limiting principle that ben talked about this qualified immunity like test that we've talked about that is specific to the state now it could in future cases be ruled to apply to municipal officers in some fashion or or sheriffs but that remains to be seen we haven't had a case on point in that regard so i think you know that that's what i think what ben was trying to get at and and that's uh what that's how i read the case and the case is limited to redress for significant violations that's constitutionally based violations is that correct correct yes and the court said absolute legislation providing a meaningful remedy for constitutional tort violations that well i should read the full statement that the legislature may provide and limit a statutory remedy for constitutionally based tort violations as long as the remedy provides meaningful redress for significant violations meaningful redress absent legislation providing a meaningful remedy for constitutional tort violations in determining the scope and limit for sovereign immunity we conclude that the judge made doctrine does not superside the right of the people to seek redress the mistake for violations of fundamental constitutional rights yes so there the court is saying that the state through its statutes can't waive immunity can't waive sovereign immunity or can't apply sovereign immunity i'm sorry and it has to give some form meaningful redress when constitutional rights are violated because there's no legislation providing any standard the court basically is setting the floor here thank you that that does help me a little bit i don't know if it helps others what the significant mean by the way i don't know that the word significant there has any what's the significant violation i think yeah i think i think that's where i think the court is maybe drawing a floor but is saying but it didn't elaborate on that fact i think if you look at what happened in zulo you see a young person a young black man who was you know just driving his car was pulled over without justification his car was pulled out of the car that his car towed and seized had searched all without justification those things those are the types of things i would consider significant violations of constitutional rights okay senator white thank you jay thanks jay but it only applies to significant violations of article 11 right so yes zulo is specific to and those limiting principles we talked about the limiting principle we talked about is specific to article 11 violation is not the same test for other violations of state constitutional rights thank you other questions for jay or for anyone who's in the room anyone in the room who wants to comment on this discussion happy to hear from you brad you're muted hear me yeah now we can okay uh i just want to go back to your uh concerns about frivolous lawsuits issues that have been raised around that um as i said last time could you identify yourself i'm sorry bradley mierson um i am retired but still licensed attorney pollock i've testified and and reinforced this in letters uh to the committee that um the concern about frivolous lawsuits is a non-issue based upon the statute having as you identified senator sears um a loser pays provision but also concerns about frivolous lawsuits ignore the fact that a remote simply does not have that type of litigation climate and sub b uh the plane of saturn and i can say this from my own long experience performs a screening function in terms of whether it is worth the risk on a contingent fee basis to handle such a claim and take it to trial uh knowing that among other things he or she will have to spend a lot of money out of their own pocket for experts and to prepare the case and also because um of facing the prospect of loser pays so i i don't think that the fear of a wave of frivolous lawsuits is a genuine concern it should not be an obstacle to passage of the bill yeah they usually i was watching channel 13 news this morning and saw somebody in new york was sued the guy who runs a store was sued for requiring the guy to have a mask on during the mask mandate in new york and he was sued for quarter of a million dollars by somebody who who didn't want to put a mask on and said he was practicing medicine without a degree that was the basis of a lawsuit so of course that grabs headlines and you know like i said most people are afraid of lawsuits they don't want them they don't want to have to you know i'm sure the guy that runs the grocery store doesn't want to defend himself against that type of lawsuit um anyhow that's what i get for watching tv anybody else who wants to comment welcome um can i give back to mr chair yes caron horn yeah yeah thank you um the one comment that i would have is that is in response sort of to to the um comment that um frivolous lawsuits don't happen in vermont but you are changing the landscape here and so what has been the case in the past may not actually be the case in the future i just want to um read that out to the committee on page two wine 16 and this is where i got into a kind of a district my internet's unstable so i hope i don't lose you but i've been emailing back and forth with stew heard the town manager bennington who forwarded a copy of your um article regarding the s 260 s 254 and his comments back and forth was if the sponsors only want litigation that's all you're getting out of this is more litigation and after reading you know what he forwarded me i i was merely pointing out that on line 16 it says a court may award reasonable attorneys fees and other litigation costs reasonably incurred in any action brought onto this section in which the plaintiffs substantially prevailed when a judgment is entered in favor of a defendant a court may award reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs reasonably incurred to the defendant for defending any claims the court finds frivolous so i i that language wasn't recognized in the article that you said that's all i was referencing and student pick up on that language so i was pointing out that the language is in the bill as introduced okay and then it we do know it's in there yeah well um and then it further says on line 10 of page three notwithstanding any provision of this section to the contrary to the extent that a law enforcement officer officer's portion of the judgment or settlement is uncollectible from a law enforcement officer law enforcement agents the law enforcement agencies insurance will satisfy any such uncollected amount of the judgment or settlement i'm just pointing out what's in the bill thank you we can agree to disagree about frivolous lawsuits i appreciate the perspective thank you you're welcome ben or anybody else in the room who would like to comment at this point right i don't know that we're making much progress but if you were to draft something that um was based on the zulu case to make clear that you know there seems to be a disagreement whether it covers municipal and other employees and we would have draft something that codifies zulu or constitutional violations people's rights and it included the language that i just read and in on page two regarding the frivolous lawsuits does that do i mean do you need more direction from us to try to do something like that well i think um i could draft something that would codify the zulu standard and then as far as the you know and that would be something that would be a burn that the plaintiff would have to prove and really would be one that would speak to whether damages what was what was appropriate in the case and it would really involve those three prongs outlined in the zulu case and i think you know for it to apply more informally if that's the choice of the committee to make it apply to all law enforcement officers in the state and then it would it would discuss or i think that the the standard would be that you know a lot it would be a violation of the rights privileges or immunities guaranteed by the constitution of the state of vermont rather than just limiting it limiting it to article 11 or or another similar article that there would be no other meaningful alternative in the context of the case and that the law enforcement officer either knew that the officer was violating clearly established law or that the officer acted in bad faith i think that can be drafted in such a way that it would be a standard applied uniformly and then as far as the the frivolous lawsuit concern i mean if there are suggestions as far as to i think further deter frivolous lawsuits that's something that can be worked in as well it just depends sort of what what the choices are on what's appropriate to incorporate there are other states do incorporate some language that's a little bit more aggressive isn't the right word but maybe more of a deterrent of frivolous lawsuits so for instance in Connecticut i believe that they used a language that if the lawsuit was involved willful conduct or reckless conduct and excuse me i'm not quoting it directly so there might be some deviation in what i'm saying right now um but that can be added to the provision that we already have um so it could read something along the lines of um that you know a court may award reasonable attorneys fees and other litigation costs reasonably occurred um under this chapter in which the plaintiff substantially prevailed or um if the defendant acted in bad faith um or if the court finds that uh there was bad faith when a judgment is entered in favor of defendant a court may award reasonable attorneys fees other litigation costs for any claims the court finds frivolous um and we could add additional language to that um to act as to give the court more discretion to make findings that the the court or that the case was brought in frivolous way maybe that the the the case was brought with mal intent or um or somehow was trying to deter police officers otherwise lawful conduct something along those lines but i think that really comes down to the committee's choices as to um what they want what it wants to do as far as um incorporating more deterrent language was was that part of kinetic it's qualified immunity law or is it part of just state law no it's part of their their recent qualified immunity law that was passed and i apologize for not having the exact that's fine that that's fine when i i'm this is more like committee discussion and getting somewhere to so i that's fine i just um i i think they're personally i i i i'm comfortable with having something of that nature in there either you know maybe you could draft something up based on kinetic it and then we have the choice of what's in the bill currently okay and actually i do have the language now with uh if you if you want to if you don't mind indulging me no no go ahead so they're the language in the kinetic it uh bill was that in any civil action brought um under this section if the court finds that a violation of the section was deliberate willful or committed with reckless indifference the plaintiff may be awarded costs in a reasonable attorneys fees but that was they don't have it on the flip side that the defendant may but my point is that there could be language of a similar nature that could be applied to either a plaintiff or defendant um to award them attorneys fees well i i think it's important to have something in there for the defendant under white so ben i'm not sure i completely understood that because currently there is something in there that if the case is one or lost that the defendant and the plaintiff will have to pay each other but you're saying that if it doesn't even get to that point but is considered a frivolous lawsuit to begin with and never gets to that point that the that there could be uh that reimbursement right i mean the court would have to make that fine yeah yeah so there would be litigation to a degree um it's it's not a total prevention um but what we could do is work in language to give the court more discretion to award the defendant fees other than just for frivolous cases um it could be one like i said brought with mal intent or maybe in retribution for otherwise lawful conduct something of that nature um but but again it doesn't prevent the lawsuit at the outset it would still require finding by the court after the lawsuit was commenced okay i got it thank you i if i just can comment here that ben is a saint putting up with my questions oh my god no well he's terrific but i don't know if we'd want to give him sainthood yet i appreciate that but i'm i'm fallible trust me um do you have an oh oh is there a way to incorporate some kind of report to better understand the number of cases the number of you know it seems to be a great deal of confusion at least from my perspective about you know the number of cases that come up in brahman this doesn't at all affect the federal cases correct i mean somebody we don't have any control over that right this would just be for violations of the state constitution um you know there would still be the avenues for a section 1983 claim in federal court which can also be brought in state court but only for violations of the federal uh federal constitutional rights but yes this would be exclusive to state constitutional violations and i think what you're suggesting senator sears is is another provision that's similar to what was in new mexico's statue um they do have a report that would be published um about the number of cases that have been filed and things like that so i think that's something that could be worked into to an amendment as well yeah that's what i had in mind something like in mexico um unfortunately senator baruth is not here so it's hard to get a feeling of the committee at today i i feel like this is more just trying to get us going somewhere and i redrafted the bill after listening to as i said all six sides of the issue or seven whatever it is um i mean are are there are the things people would like to see or not see in a bill or maybe some of you don't want to even have a bill in the uh senator my sure yeah i'm like on your last point um i will uh i will take that position and simply say um you know it is our experience that there are avenues plenty of avenues to uh to litigate law enforcement um also of importance i don't know if this point has even been made um when when law enforcement um does find itself in a position where someone's rights have been violated or someone has been wronged or injured in a way um where compensation is appropriate there is rarely uh if ever a hesitation uh to make that right um and my final point uh going back to the very beginning of my testimony uh we should be investing in better outcomes not working on more ways to create litigation uh i continue to fear the cascading impacts of um a variety of different things including our policy decisions on our ability to recruit and retain and ultimately deliver uh public safety services in vermont and passing anything of this nature which is going to create additional litigation is going to damage our ability to operate thank you so i'll just pick up from the commissioner's statement i met the commissioner when he came before our human rights commission and he was still chief of police um i have to concur with him that there are many avenues for people to get relief here i remain frustrated that this conversation um has arisen at a time when the the frustration being expressed is really concentrated on the national level and not the state level um i've pontificated on this subject last time i don't mean to belabor the point but senator sears you asked the question of whether you just don't want to bill at all and that is my position still okay senator white well i continue to to um look at this because i i do think that people need to have the um people who are damaged need to have the ability to recoup those damages i don't know if if what we currently have is sufficient i don't know that this is the right approach but i will say one thing people um in testimony one of the things that we hear constantly is that this would improve police accountability and i don't believe for a second but that is true i think that that we are working on many many avenues to improve police accountability we have um we've been working on it for years we changed the uh criminal justice council the criminal justice council is now operating in a and really different and very um professional manner the two chairs of it are um mark anderson and susana davis they are working really hard to um make police accountable there's a professional regulations uh subcommittee that's working really working and and it's taking them a little bit of time more time than we had hoped because of covet because they can't meet in person and so they're doing everything on zoom so it is taking longer but they are working really hard and we have other um other bills before us that would address police accountability and we have been working on that so whether this is the right way to give people access to damages that they incur i do not believe that it is the way to improve police accountability there are many many many other things the training we worked on establishing the three levels i mean we've been doing this for years so this is not something something new and um i i do take offense when people say that the um law enforcement in vermont has not been willing to work on changes and not been willing to to um engage in these conversations so i just i just needed to put that out there that no matter where i land i do not believe this improves accountability and i do not believe that law enforcement in vermont has been um uh negligent in coming or um uncooperative in trying to um improve what was already probably a better culture than in most other states so thank you well i do think there is strong support for law enforcement in vermont i don't think we are like some other states where we don't see it but we have pockets where um and groups that feel marginalized um and we heard from many of those folks early on in testimony um and so i if this bill doesn't pass it's not the end of the world and we have raised an issue that i think deserve to be discussed after 55 years of not having a legislative committee look at qualified immunity um which was um invented by the courts not by legislation um i was an interesting email from mark q's and unfortunately he can't be here with us this morning about the history of qualified immunity and what it originally was designed for i i don't know if you all got that email but Peggy if you want to send it out or post it it's i think it's fine um it's interesting the history of qualified immunity so it it was you know done by the courts and not by the legislature and i think that's one of the reasons that i um have moved forward with this bill um i my respects and admiration for 99 percent of the law enforcement officers if not 99.9 percent there's not changed at all i have the greatest respect for them and my respect for um and we in in our earlier discussion about sheriffs i you know have a great deal of respect for them um and trying to work with them on courthouse security it's not about me trying to tear down police but rather trying to make sure that we do the best we can um but where it ends um you shall see any other comments from anyone you senator benning yeah yeah i read mark used his email and it's one of the frustrating parts of all this he's addressing the national judiciary um and section 1983 specifically um and i have to say again this has no impact on the national level whatsoever including 1983 actions but i think that's the driving force of many of the folks who are interested in this legislation because there are problems on the national level and surely that needs to be addressed by the united states supreme court but in vermont we have one of the most progressive supreme courts in the nation and i have every reason to believe they would not stand in the way of providing someone with a remedy who deserves a remedy and i'm a little concerned that we've intermingled the conversation with the national frustration uh being used as a force to drive something to change in vermont which i have yet to be convinced needs to be changed okay but if i look at what i heard about zulu that was certainly a case that happened in vermont that the supreme court has found to be wrong and to write that they have made law case law and what what i've also heard is that may or may not apply to local police municipal police and other law enforcement officers in the state and where i'm headed right now is looking at how to make sure that that applies to everyone and if zulu is the standard in vermont then why wouldn't it be the standard for all law enforcement in vermont personally if i'm being asked to respond to that i think it is and wouldn't the supreme court would not hesitate to apply it but zulu one of the other issues with it is it's a fact specific case they had a state police question in front of them i think if a municipal question came up whether a the local law enforcement officer was the subject of the discussion they wouldn't hesitate to extend that to that law enforcement officer and i'm worried that in this time period that we're living in the other consequences that may result even if there aren't frivolous lawsuits and i by the way i don't believe there will be an avalanche of frivolous lawsuits but i agree completely with karen horn that we are changing the landscape and when you change the landscape the recruitment efforts of the state police and other law enforcement is impacted to what extent i don't know that we know but i have to believe if you are coming into that profession from the ground floor uh you have to think twice about what your legal responsibilities are and they have to train to that i should also shout out that when i was on government operations um there was a lot of effort in trying to redesign police training programs to make sure they were cognizant of the issues that we're now discussing as the foundation of this particular legislation and i don't know that they've had enough time to have those things work but i do know that they have been bending over backwards to participate in those conversations and when i was on government operations i was very impressed that they were willing to to sit down at the table and try to do what they could to make amends for whatever reasons amends were needed but i hesitate to try to use this legislation out of frustration of what's going on at the national level when in the reality we this legislation has nothing to do with what's going on at the national level. Could i just add a comment about the um application to other to other law enforcement officers i and i think what ben was saying was that he he really can't speak for the court he's our attorney and he can't speak for the court and say that it definitely would apply because this was a case a fact specific case it applied to the vermont state police it did not apply but he i don't think he was saying that it wouldn't apply that he was saying he couldn't speak for the courts but i think that mic the commissioner and joe are right that it would it would apply but i don't think that ben was saying it wouldn't apply sorry to speak for you ben well what ben speak for himself thank you senator sewers and yeah thank you senator white um and yeah and to clarify that point it senator why you pretty much captured it for me is that you know i'm not saying that it won't apply it's just that there isn't it hasn't been a case that definitively says that and i just feel that my role um is to try to capture that you know as objectively as possible and i think and given how litigators operate it's possible that you if there is another case there could be an argument that it doesn't apply given the circumstances but it also could the my my point is just that it is not definitive given the outcome of the zulo case given the specific facts of that case um so you know maybe i'm being overly cautious but i i feel like that's also um you know what what the aim is in my role well not being a lawyer throughout the zulo there's like five or six times when the court says things like absent implement implementing legislation when the legislature is not created an alternative civil remedy in the absence of any applicable legislation addressing constitutional torts we are cognizant of our need to be cautious when judic when judiciary recognizing potential damaged liability to both be imposed on another branch of government retaining limited immunity prevents judicial branch from intruding pun functions of the legislative and executive branches through adjudication of tort suits if the supreme court wasn't inviting the legislature to act i don't know how many more times they could say it um and so uh that's kind of where i'm at right now and if if we don't if we decide not to it's not going to be the end of the world we we killed about four bills here this year um much to this may have many of the supporters of the bills and you know if we do that here we do it i that's not going to be the end of the day for me um you know and we all know several of the i'm sure that people who wanted to see a no-knocks warrants bill are disappointed in our action not to pursue it but that's the decision we made as a committee and if we make the decision to not pursue this any further so be it we've spent a lot of time on it but that's where it is i would just like to respond senator sears quickly by saying you may not be a lawyer sir but you know a lot more about the law and how the laws dovetail with each other than a lot of lawyers that i do know well thank you senator wherever that's worth thank you senator nick so um as i had said previously um you know i feel we've done through the years that we've been on this that i've been on this committee um we've done a lot of work to improve policing um it was some of it was very difficult to get to where we did get but starting i think back in 2017 i mean i haven't made some notes here act 56 was enacted which established new provisions for the professional regulation of law enforcement officer and 2020 we passed act 147 defining prohibited restraints um act 165 established a use of force standard act 166 addressed the collection of roadside roadside stop data and use of body cameras um let's see so anyway just looking at some of those there was a there's been an expanded and restructuring of the criminal justice council that reports requires law enforcement agencies to report credible complaints of professional misconduct to the council that you know there's all these things that we have been writing on and in jeanette's committee now there's another um not sure what that is another bill with regard to or process whereby they're um going to more register i don't know if it's registration whatever it is jeanette can speak to it of police officers so that you know more you know more quality more training all kinds of things going on and i think that we're moving farther ahead and and in doing good job and getting vermont where we hope it should be and and is in many cases now i think i'm glad the um that jay was able to prevail in the zulo case i remember that case well it wasn't too far from me and you know i'm glad that happened so but i mean we're doing a lot of things to move police forward to kind of new era policing so i think i'm not sure i want to go in this direction at this point i appreciate that very much um so is there anything i mean obviously i've asked ben to do a redraft that we can look at either tomorrow or next or a week after town meeting that and uh do you need any more direction from us then or me actually i guess i'm the one requesting it may be a one to revote here um just a little clarification just so i'm i'm clear and so what i've heard for the the additions is the taking an attempt to codify the zulo standard as as applied to constitutional violations right everything else pain as it is today this is my intent um that all the other you know like stop signs that i mean you can't pat you can't go down this road you know somebody gets sued because of something happened that wouldn't be a constitutional violation i don't think right yeah it would just be the the rights uh immunities and privileges guaranteed under the the constitution of the state of ramon yeah so that's the only area well it's a major area but that's what would the bill would focus on yes this is violation of constitutional rights okay um and then the other thing is uh working on the frivolous lawsuit language to strengthen that a little bit um another another thing outside of just that provision that may also serve as a deterrent of frivolous lawsuits is something that new mexico also did is the filing a notice of claim ahead of a lawsuit um this is a concept where someone would have a certain amount of time in new mexico i believe it's within a year of the incident occurring the file notice of claim basically putting the agency on notice of who was the alleged victim the circumstances surrounding it the damages um and and serving that within that time period and it's a conditioned precedent to filing a suit so if it doesn't happen um the suit wouldn't couldn't be filed this is also something that many states including new york does uh for claims against uh you know municipal government and things like that so that could be another work in well i'd love to look at that there may be sections that more than um that the majority of the committee supports and sections that the majority doesn't support so let's see where what that looks like that would be helpful okay um and then working in a report of claims filed um an annual report to see really what's going on um and for fear of opening up more cams and worms my my running tally of issues that have been raised um are caps on liability um whether or not we want to the i'd take out section on page three section e okay take that out yep that's the the would not affect an individual officer in terms of personal liability i think we heard a lot of testimony about that particular section not being um that it would would would create um in terms of the test in terms of what senator benning and and commissioner shirling talked about okay so no personal liability for the law enforcement officer could um with that would could claims still be brought against the law enforcement officer or is well i guess they i guess they i guess they can because you know we've got those claims and i wasn't i didn't want to ask david slay about ongoing litigation but he's defending a police officer on five million dollar claim so because yeah a way that it could be worked in is you could bring the lawsuit against the agency the law enforcement officer or both but ultimately the the agency would be would fully indemnify law i don't want to change what that i mean if they can do it already so i'm just not adding that 25 thousand dollar or five percent whichever is less suggesting we don't add that to the bill so but evidently um currently individual officers are being sued right um and one thing though is that we we could make it explicit that the right of action can be brought against um it given this statutory construct let's let's it's already confusing enough and i'd rather leave that to the the way it is today okay um if some future judiciary committee wants to look at that issue then they're welcome to it well like i said i was afraid of opening another canon warren's on that well that's it that's that seems to be a can that we opened i'd like to close right now um in terms of of the bill that we would consider okay um and then i know that there was talk about prohibiting or concern rather uh of insurance carriers potentially bringing claims um in the vermont tort claims act there there's a similar there's a prohibition that's explicit about insurance care is not coming after law enforcement officers for reimbursement essentially that could be something that could be rolled in as well if if the committee desires i don't know what i'm i'm not clear i you can throw it in there and that's something that might get thrown out i'm not i i don't fully understand that okay okay can you explain that a little bit better so i i believe in in one of our early testimonies um it was a concern was raised that in the lawsuit if insurance carriers could um after let's say payout was made could then come after a law enforcement officer to reclaim any insurance payments if they had say a private insurance contract or a situation like that in the vermont tort claims act they have a prohibition of that it says that basically insurance carriers cannot come after law enforcement officers for reimbursement um under any private insurance contract that the the officer may have um or an individual you mean an individual officer not the department correct correct um you know and i guess with the answer before that if they're not going to be personally liable it may not be necessary to actually incorporate that provision yeah i i don't know if it is or not but my understanding is and i don't know for sure but there's been at least three settlements in recent history in bennington between the town and litigants um um and i'm assuming that that the vlct insurance pays that i think that we had testimony on that yes i believe that there was testimony on that and and again as i think through this and understand that we don't want the personal liability of the police officer i think the need for a provision uh prohibiting an insurance carrier from going after a law enforcement officer is probably not relevant at this point i don't think it is although going back to my $22,000 payment um for my defense um i wish they had that there okay um all right so that that uh rounds out sort of my checklist of just concerns to make sure of what's in and what's out of the the new draft so there'll be the codification of zulo for constitutional violations strengthening the frivolous lawsuit language uh a notice of claim and a um report of claims filed something like new mexico okay someday i'm going to get to new mexico it's one of the few states i've never visited all right any other comments or questions before we adjourn for the day just a comment on new mexico yeah we if you'd like yes when um we were setting up the uh the um medical marijuana dispensaries um are the legislature along the bill you mean right bill yeah yeah the the legislature along with the um department of public safety did such a good job that when new mexico was setting theirs up my understanding is that they came to us and asked how to do it oh well having said all that jenette senator baruth is landing in albuquerque right about as we speak well let him investigate new mexico yeah well you've got the right day to leave not tomorrow all right anything else


Hi, Vody Village. My name is Forrest Senty. I'm the Director of Business and Government Affairs at the National Cybersecurity Center. I'm Caleb Gardner. I'm a fellow at the National Cybersecurity Center in Scroogeville. And we're going to be presenting you our Hack of Facts presentation today. For a little background to start, National Cybersecurity Center is a 501c3 center in Colorado Springs. A lot of our focus has to do with cyber innovation awareness and a lot of our projects have to do with tackle global problems, whether it comes in smart cities, elections, space. Some of our colleagues in the Space ISAC are presenting today in the Earthspace Village. We want to give them good congratulations and a shout out over there. But the big reason why we're here today ultimately is that we want to talk about the gap, the security gap, and specifically it has to do with policy in addition to different agencies and groups. A lot of people ask, why NCC? Why us? Why do we care about some of these issues? And the reality is that between the different groups that exist in the United States that are multi-agency, multi-party, multi-policy, you know, depending on where you come from, whether it's the election security ISAC, groups like Verified Voting, MIT, even places like EIC, CISA, CIS, all serve a specific segment. But our focus is on identifying gaps in critical infrastructure. And the presentation you're going to be hearing from us today is going to be talking about that gap. One gap we've identified specifically has to do with the population affecting the overseas voter, or UACAVA. This is specific to the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Many of you here at the Voting Village are going to be no secret and surprise to you. You know what this means. You know how many people and, you know, kind of the different challenges these people face, whether they're voting from Afghanistan or Italy, or even from a remote jungle of the Amazon. So a lot of what we're focused on today is on this area. So one of the pieces I want to call out is specific to fax machines, like we mentioned earlier on. Under the current documentation of the move that was established in 2009, 31 states currently allow for ballot return via email and fax. This means that these 31 states have to provide a place for these people that are voting from overseas to provide a place from the sender ballot via fax or email. So knowing this information, and us seeing this different research that was coming out, we want to do a quick breakdown and see how many ballots were actually transmitted back in 2018. According to the EAC, roughly 29,000 ballots were sent. Now this is one of the category of others. So some of these in there could be mobile voting like from West Virginia or a web portal like in Colorado, Montana, Arizona or Michigan. But 29,000 ballots, although not statistically significant to the rest of the United States, still represents a population that is voting using this method. And this shows that election offices are still allowing for this method and pushing for it, even in some cases. Although it has been on the decline, it's important to know that security is still paramount for every single vote that comes out. So now I'll hand it over to Caleb and talk a little more about the research that we did specific to fax machines and election jurisdictions and kind of give you a little more of the issue. Thanks Forrest. So first off, we're going to reference you guys back to some presentations that probably made an impression on you when you first saw them. They were specifically focused on fax and printer faxes. So first off in DEF CON 26, we saw a lot of fax from checkpoint research. And that was a big sticking point for me. And we came back to that a lot as we went to do our own research in other counties and cities. So we'll move to the next slide. And what checkpoint research really showed us was that it was a possible to exploit printer fax, just with a publicly available fax number. No city or county that I looked for their fax number was not available every single time I can find it for the city quick or the county quick, and which is where you'd be submitting your vote for if you were one of the other voters. So using that phone number, checkpoint research was able to hack printer fax and actually they're also able to get to the network behind that print fax if there was on a flat network apology or no segmentation. So we'll talk about how they did that really fast. They discovered that in the T 30 protocol, we have access to both the data and headers and this enabled us to have full control of the JPEG file. So that's how we use JPEG over any other file type. And over the PST networks, the publicly switched telephone network, we are able to get to that printer fax, and use the priority JPEG parser base physically with that HP. But this is probably going to be the case for any of the big solutions if that's zero access that's HP if that's someone else, they're probably insubmitting their own JPEG parser and then using some sort of open source publicly known secure pressure. And since they did that themselves, they found a lot of CBEs in there they found a buffer overflow with parts and gauge teamers. And with that, they had a controllable stack based overflow they could do anything with it and they were able to get a great exploit, which they put on the network to the rest of the network. And so it was really great demonstration. What could you do with this a lot practically everything you have confidential attacks integrity attacks and availability tax you have a full CIA try add. You're seeing voter registration info, particularly if you're getting through to the network behind these print faxes, you're seeing ballots hopefully not but potentially, and you're able to maybe change those ballots. And that's something that we're going to look at in the future is if we can get into one of these print faxes, can we get to the ballots or can we get the incoming ballots and change them before they're stored. And also you have availability tax, you're potentially able to bring down entire city or counties infrastructure for receiving votes for that election, which would make a recount necessary which make a lot of bad things happen obviously we don't want to be saying. We did some research we did some confidential research with different cities and counties, and we have to keep that confidential we're under NDA, but we can generalize we can say what are rough takeaways we're seeing from two main different types of cities. First off, we have city a this is your medium to large size city, they probably have good infrastructure investment in it, they're probably able to actually hire talented professionals for security conscience, and they're able to enforce strict adherence to best practices for security. These are all great things that you're probably to see a pretty secure off that current facts implementation, we did when we were looking at these types of cities. City be, however, is the city that we talk about pretty much every time Defconn rolls around with voting billage that at once we're still running the DREs that we have shown vulnerabilities and every year, you know, it's obviously a urban system that they're still running, but they're not going to spend the money to fix it they're not going to spend any money to become security conscious to probably a really poor mismanaged IT department, and they probably don't have the patching policies or security posture. So looking at city a more in depth, the things that they have that makes them stand apart from other cities is that they have users segment networks. This keeps their print effects separate from their data servers that keeps them separate from their daily workstations. And it's even segmented on a very in depth level so every fire station and police station, there would be those three things the data servers at workstations and the print servers would all be different things in every single location. So it's an extremely segmented network that keeps you from getting to a lot of access through that one printer fax so basically city a knows that printer fax is a potential point of intrusion. They probably have good patching policies for the printers. Hopefully they have both a factor in general and also for the tax servers, and they're probably using fax or IP over PSTM fax t 38 over t 30 city be however doesn't have any of these things factory and flat nerve topology you exploit the print fax you exploit the network, and they have bad patching bad multi factor authentication implementation and bad security posture.  Well, what our high level attack overview is specifically geared towards is what checkpoint research day and showing that specifically is HP Office Jet Pro 6830 on prayer. It wasn't the printer that had the vulnerability it was HP implementation the JPEG parser you remember. So, HP releases security bulletin and July 2018 talking about this providing patches. However, maybe not all city be saw that maybe the play that patch maybe they didn't think to apply patch or they're not even keeping in track with their water recycle machine. Yeah, these there was a things are not important to lots of states, and they're not going to look at security patches when they're available for them. So, I would recommend if you're a city be looking to see if you have an issue where did you buy it after 2418 did you apply a patch if you bought before and then it and you're using Christian, you're probably susceptible to attack right now. Nice has some things to say about it as well. This says that there's no widely used standard facts encryption. This information set by fax is that risk for the possible intersectional modification jurisdictions should carefully lay the risks that transmission over other alternatives. This is a big deal. And I think this is one of the biggest vulnerabilities that we're seeing in fax and the thing that we'd like to see change most in the future is the unencryption of it and we would like to see a default encryption method used on fax in the future to your T 38 making encryption standard rather than optional would probably be a great step in that direction. They also stress secure location of fax machines, because often with T 30 voting records or registration of though might be actually still stored on the machine as it comes through, unknown to the user. So physical access would allow access to all those. Yeah, T 38 teeth 30 will go over that we quickly if we haven't gone enough over already. So PSN. That's going to be 30, it's going to be unencrypted and it's not real time to 38 is the future that we're currently living in but we also need to see the future as far as encryption implementations. So we saw baby cells company and they have an AS implementation that's very useful for companies that are regulated and that are mandated to use potential accounts here networks along the way towards the delivery to the user. However, this AS implementation by baby cell isn't ensuring that you will have encrypted transport all the way across. So more stuff like that is what we need to see on a default level and the industry, and we're not seeing right now which is why we're talking about it and getting that on the on the record. So fact security versus public perception. The big issue we kind of based and push back from different cities and counties was that they say they only maybe the last facts about they received just 2012 minutes eight years ago so they don't think about it at all. So they don't see on a daily basis best themselves why do we need to secure this doesn't seem like a security risk. But the point is, is that zero about me to be cashed for to be a security risk. The fact of the matter is that having your publicly available city or county clerk number online and knowing and most sectors knowing that that's the phone number they need to have access to if they need to own that printer or print facts. And if you are not patched if you're on a potentially vulnerable solution. That's it, you're done that printer fact is done you potentially put yourself up for integrity tax the very least, confidentiality and availability. If you have bad network solutions. So we face a lot of pushback but we definitely need to acknowledge that that's the issue is the root of matters having a public way available. So let's talk about the security gap analysis is moved towards the future state. Well, what do we want to see, like we talked about we want to see encryption, we want to maybe even see facts no longer being a needed method for transmission. But the reality is that many industries still rely on facts medical is 70% of all medical transmissions. But maybe elections doesn't have to be one of those industries where facts is reality. So what are we going to do in the future as we continue to work on this with secure the vote. Well, we want to reconstruct the fax plate but we also want to demonstrate with the T 38 expert call and facts of IP, because a lot of what we're seeing from cities and counties. Well, we do do facts sometimes but it's all electronically. And sometimes for the city be yours county be scenarios IP just mean security to them over the internet mean security, maybe they have some sort of bias against phone lines but not p when that's not the case. And so we need to demonstrate that exploits various election officials around the around the country and show actions and secure and it can be changed and we need to make sure that this is your place to secure our votes and secure democracy. So we're going to continue to raise awareness about facts and security. So why now. Well, for one thing, COVID-19 has made this a very interesting age and potentially could drop voter turnout as people are cannot come up to physical voting locations. And maybe jurisdictions will look to things traditionally offered to cover and often that's the general public so facts the web portals and mobile voting. And we need to be very conscious when we look at adding facts to the general public, because that is adding a huge attack surface. And that's adding many, you know, the millions more votes that could potentially be cast by facts even though they, we probably won't see how many votes cast by facts the potential is the point and that potential millions of votes that could be changed or maliciously attacked is very juicy target for nation states maybe that are looking to influence it. So we need to keep that in mind as we potentially add facts and for more people. So if it does get added, we need to look at a very security minded as an emergency ballot return method, not as something that everybody should think about doing over anything election offices should probably secure the form security audits on their backs machines to make sure you know potentially if you were exactly what we've been talking about disease be printers that you bought after 2018 and it has a security patchplot all that good stuff. Because if it's not, that's the first step of the grass is fixing the situation. So short term recommendations. If you're a position of power, you need to talk to your IT department about these things that we've been talking about. Specifically, you have security posture like multi factor, you have that already strong across our IT department and you have that for your printer backs or you have a statement not never to apologize that will help you defend from these confidentiality and availability attacks that we've been talking about. And even the integrity attacks that will keep the current facts from exploiting the rest of your election member. And do you have a passion policy, you are even secure conscious about the network machines that you have in your office. If you don't have these things or you don't know, I would definitely recommend talking to your IT department about this and try to secure your network by this fall. And in the further future, we need to talk about how the 38 facts of IP using encrypted solution should be the standard default and whatever one is using especially in this election context. The real time vaccine for everyone so we're not storing on especially I've been on to the users on both voter records on the effects machines and the 30 having an encryption profile would also be great because a lot of people are still going to be stuck on legacy systems for various reasons. And having a question for that would be great as well. So, the medical industry has actually had a little bit of a comments to or eliminated facts and simply would do that 2020 for one of the main providers for fact solutions for medical companies. It hasn't happened yet, you know, it's been crazy time, but they're definitely looking at your effects. So can we maybe eventually follow the medical industry. It's a great question somewhere in the future. What's the point of all this with all of 2020 is craziness leading down to the end of 2020. Everything that's happened, this election is going to be a tantamount importance, obviously. So we cannot let this opportunity to further secure America's democracy going spoken. That's all that we're about here the voting villages, showing exploits showing vulnerabilities and saying, we are not securing democracy properly if we really care. And that's just one of those things, even though it's a few ballots, it's a few ballots and those few belts matter. So, at the same time, can we leverage you guys. Can we say, if you guys have facts machine if you're interested if you want to keep following this up. How about you have your facts machine. First about a hashtag hack facts, and we'll be able to see that and we'll be able to continue looking at that and showing that the officials as we go about the country for the next few years with security with security though. So that's what we have. I have been killed gardener by force I do, and we were the National Security Center, and that's a pack of bags. So, thanks guys.


this is the place I will always love to spend my money because it belongs to my own brother and it feels like I'm back again in the East African community Hi Nyama Choma How are you? Nakhula East African real authentic food Nakhula No this is not cuckoo This is cuckoo Nakhula cuckoo but if I'm here I just have to let you know who is the one behind it I mean who is behind the queer two I mean if you say queer two in East Africa which means home a brother come on you're trying to hide away from me I'm not hiding again man How are you doing? I'm good bro very very good This is very... I'm so sorry now it's okay I can't even use my hand So my name is Kambarisadi and I'm from Rwanda Rwanda Exactly if you got it From Rwanda what brought you to Mozambique? I think that life brought me to Mozambique I can specifically say what brought me to Mozambique but I find myself here visiting my brother and I fell in love with this country and here I am four years after Four years after So like you've got this beautiful East African restaurant in here actually came to eat and we found out the owner he's from Rwanda Murakose Murakose Rwanda How long have you been operating this restaurant? So this restaurant is three years old now Three years old and it started from home to a little kiosk just around here in the neighborhood and then we came here looking for bigger space and trying to give more comfortable But as a young guy like you should have been in the bank or you should have been in your office let's take it that way Why a restaurant? A restaurant came out of the necessity of job because I couldn't find a job here as a night engineer it was very difficult for me language barrier and stuff like that I figured out that I could cook and people liked the food that I made so it all started from the chapat that I used to make from home and distributed them to shops like Rwanda's owner shops because I didn't know any other person who could take my food and then from that people started asking me for food if I could make food and from YouTube and my mom's on the telephone I learned to cook East African food and with the love and passion it became all of this that we have here because when I came here I realized that more experts come in here to eat how many people often come in here which people normally come in here majority of the people that come here are travelers or other experts who live in Mozambique and that is because we happen to be a reference of an African restaurant in Maputo and it has been a very very good journey through this and an experience and today is Saturday it's a Saturday special exactly where we people get to try all the food that we make here the East African food that we make here so we have pilau here for anybody who knows East Africa this is like a very common food for parties and big days chapati we have kachumbari but we try to make it we have here it's called shima but back home it's called we have matapa commonly called sombe at home we have bean stew we have okra I think you also love it in Ghana we have chicken we have fish which is very plenty in Mozambique but then we cook everything that you see and we cook it in the East African way so which means it has spice but not very spicy like Indian food how has the experience been like living in Mozambique how has the experience been like I would say that it's very challenging first of all the language barrier as I said and the food that we make here is very unusual apart from the people who live in the north of Mozambique try to connect to it but in the south of Mozambique this is very uncommon and that's why we have more expats clientele than Mozambicans here so the whole experience is that people are getting to know this through Kuwaitu through our cuisine apart from cooking like what else do you have in here or any program any special thing that oh as a traveler I come in here this specific day I can come and enjoy or anything like that in Kuwaitu so we have a monthly event called Kuwaitu Neighborhood Market where we the whole concept is about food music craft art fashion and just people meeting together bringing out good vibes and it always happens once a month at the first Saturday of the month so it's a very good event that has even changed like the face of entertainment in Maputo if I may say so so it has become I think that people look forward to like people are always waiting for it to happen as a young African if you should give your fellow brothers and sisters out there I mean an advice or choosing a career or choosing something for yourself I mean that's a big brother what advice are you going to give to the young Africans out there I think that people should get out of their comfort zone first of all people shouldn't think that life is about working in an office and looking for those jobs that sometimes are not even available because we are many educated with very very few jobs and I believe and I think that if everybody gets a chance of getting out of their comfort zone there is a lot of opportunities out there, out here like in the nature you just need to be creative everybody needs to be creative there's plenty of opportunity and we just need to get out and you know like you came all the way from Rwanda now you're based in Mozambique definitely people who cook in here are all of them from Rwanda or they are from here? one is Rwanda but the rest are Mozambicans because we need to give opportunity to everybody else to be able to show what they can do so we have two cooks one is Mozambican and another one is Randy's and I'm also a cook so which means you are also creating jobs in here what was your biggest challenge when you started this biggest challenge? my biggest challenge was for people to understand this food and start eating it but then I didn't give up I just kept on forcing it and now we have we have this and people enjoying it I just want to make sure I try this food before I do it's a place and please I love meats people who follows me know that I love meats I think you start from this side I know my camera guy is really staring at me because definitely he knows that when I see meats we are no longer friends you know yeah I don't like using spoons but there's coronavirus right now I need to protect myself are you just telling me? no just meat and tell them how it tastes like you know that I've been to so many East African countries and I would definitely tell you that it really tastes East African so whenever you come in here you can come to Maputo Maputo Rua Martyr de Mashaava number of the 33 I'm saying it in Portuguese but then you can just go through our social media pages our pages called Quito Maputo on Instagram and Facebook can I put your number so that people can see it our telephone number is plus 258 844155 558 I see for that I don't know if I can repeat it no that's okay I'm gonna put it there thank you very much brother and enjoy your meal I'm sorry Elvis and I'm sorry for each and everyone who is watching this video I'm really happy to be here to see a brother doing something like this you need to spend your money your money from your pocket goes to another black brother's pocket this is all I support I keep on dropping my spoons man you just need to use your hands thank you


Hello, Didier Stevens here, Senior Handler at the Internet Storm Center. I did create a sheet sheet for Sans for my Oli Dump tool. So if you go here over to the ultimate list of Sans sheet sheets, and you scroll down into Digital Forensics and Incident Response, you can find here my Oli Dump quick reference. And here is the PDF, two pages. Right here a bit of explanations, the different options and examples of output. Now my Oli Dump tool is a command line tool written in Python.  And to get help, use option H. As is explained here, help page. Now this gives you an overview of all the options with a short description. But I also have a month page into this tool. That is option M, the manual. And that is something different. So option M, and let me pipe this through more. First you get the help. And after the help you get the manual, where I've written different things that you can do with my Oli Dump tool, how it works and different examples. Now if I run Oli Dump on a spreadsheet with macros, I get output like this. This is here, explained in this sheet sheet, in this part here, the output. Now first of all, I want to encourage you to always use option I, lowercase I. You can see this here, additional info for item, lowercase I, and here the recommendation to use this for the first analysis. Why is that? If you do that, then an extra column with information will be added. We see here an extra column with only two entries for 7 and 8. And these are streams that contain macros. And this here gives you the size of the compiled macro and the size of the compressed VBI source code. So the presence of a line here in this column is a sur indication that you are dealing with the stream that contains macros. Another indicator here is M and M, as is explained here, the different indicators. So an uppercase M or lowercase M indicates that there are macros inside this stream and that you can extract and visualize those macros. So this is in stream 7 and stream 8. So I run Oli Dump and I select stream 7 for the example here. This will do by default an exadismal ASCII dump of the content of that stream. That is explained here with S you select and then you can use various options for dumping if like a hex dump, a binary dump, ASCII dump. If you don't provide any of those options, then by default it is an ASCII dump. Now for macros themselves, what you actually want to do is decompress the compressed source code. This is explained here, option V decompress VBA. And then you get to see the source code. So you see here an empty function subdemo and sub. This here is source code to attribute values, but this is source code that is hidden in the editor. So if you open this spreadsheet with VBA code in office and you start the IDE for VBA, you will only see subdemo and unsub. These attributes are not displayed as text. You will not see them. You can only see them by looking at some options like the name of the stream here. Now this also explains the difference between uppercase and lowercase m. So remember stream 8 that was a lowercase m. If we look at that, we only have attributes, no actual code. So that happens too that you can have streams without any code that a personal programmer entered, only the attributes. And that explains the difference between uppercase and lowercase m. Now if the document has been tampered with, for example stomping, it could be that those attributes are gone, that you don't have any of these attributes. And in that case, I will display an exclamation mark. Now about these indicators here, I also have a blog post that explains these indicators and a video. I will link to this video here. You can also choose to get all the macros, select all the streams and decompress like this and you see then that you have both streams. Now going back to the sheet sheet, here you have the different options and many I talked about. By the way, not all options are here in the sheet sheet. It's a condensed sheet sheet. If you want to see all the options, get the help page, look at the manual. And then here there are a couple of examples like I gave them here. And then also all the different plugins that I have. Now here this list of plugins is just an alphabetical list. So it is not in order of importance or frequency of use, it's just an alphabetical list.


At least five people have died in region wildfires in Algeria as firefighters battle more than 31 blazes. That's amid blistering temperatures and in the dry conditions. Photographs show huge walls of flame and billowing clouds of smoke over villages in the hills of the Kabili region. Algeria is the latest Mediterranean country to be hit by wildfires after blazes hit Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. Meteorologists said the temperature would heat 46 degrees Celsius on Tuesday. The country is also struggling with severe water shortages. Fires were reported in multiple locations in 14 districts, 10 of them around Tizi A'u, one of the most populous cities in Bebi Kabili. Two people died in Naitiani, one in Yacorene and another near Azazga. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Hey guys, it is me. I'm back. I was away all weekend. So that's why you didn't hear much from me I just posted a couple Blog posts and stuff so you might want to check that out at the electric Academy comm but I ran into an interesting issue that I ran into last week and I thought I would share it with you guys and Here's what happened. Let me just share my screen with you guys.  That's right. You don't need to see my email. Here's the situation I had a light and let's say that this blue wire here is actually white So that's my neutral my hot and then I've got our switch legs Sorry, and then I've got my ground down comes down here onto the switch down and off it goes Now here's what happened this guy here had the marette or the wire nut or wherever you want to call it come off the guy who is talking to you said that he was in the box so consider there's a box around this and He touched the ground somehow and this and got a nasty belt off it He claims it was quite it really really painful. So then what he did was he had a cheap meter He took the meter and measured from this point here to ground and read 120 volts So to him that seemed weird and I agreed it was weird because to me that tells me that there's an open neutral somewhere And that's very dangerous. That's why we don't switch our neutrals now. I'll show you why in a second I'll show you a little schematic I've come up with but if you're reading like this is your grounded conductor right not your grounding conductor But it's called a grounded conductor your neutral goes all the way back to the panel and is grounded at the panel So its potential from this point and this point should be zero volts It should not have the same potential at all so when you start reading a hundred and twenty volts off it From this point your neutral to your ground something's wrong and what ended up happening is we looked into it is the receptacle That was down here the neutral again had come off So this guy had no return path Which means that the voltage potential here here and here was all going to be the same now Let me show you what I mean by that Let me just call up my preview here and go to my window and We'll go open switch Now with this one you've got this side to be a neutral because it's grounded right then I've got my hot coming through here Let's say this switch is closed and I have my hot going through there Across this whether it's a resistor or a light bulb or whatever is doing some work and it goes to its ground So that's a good sense because if I open this up and I want to work on this There's no potential there because if I'm grounded I'm the same potential as that and I'm safe right So that's a good thing now what happened in the situation my buddy was in Let's go with the open neutrals at this one Nope, let's go with the open switch That's not it. Sorry and open neutral one This is the one is the situation that happened here is you he opened up the neutral So if you look here if he's grounded which he did because he touched the ground wire There's potential here and there's still going to be potential there's not doing anything because it doesn't have a closed loop But if he touches that he becomes part of the loop and the current wants to go through him So that's why it's dangerous and why we never ever ever switch the neutral side very important So again if you run into an issue Where they're telling you that they got a belt off the neutral and you read a voltage at the neutral here to ground And it's a hundred and twenty volts You know something's wrong and that's something downstream or upstream of this thing has got its neutral disconnected Open neutrals are a big hazard and you've got a watch for them. All right, so that's kind of what I wanted to talk about Let me just call this up What I wanted to talk about today and get that out of the way Just one second. I'll just call out my screen here. Sorry. There we go. So watch out for that open neutral I'm sure some of you guys have run into these things and they can give you nasty belts I got one off a washing machine once or no dryer. No, it was washing machine That wasn't good for the dryer. The dryer would be 240. That would really hurt But yeah, let me know if you guys run into this issue the crazy stuff that you see there's so many weird things that happen Again while I'm on the topic and I talked about this yesterday in this little preview to this Make sure you go and check out that video of the guy who's got the meter and he pulled the meter out But he sells a voltage on his ground that one was bizarre as well so worth well worth watching and That's that so you might notice that my background is a little different than normal.  I am back to work teaching got my first class today and As always are super quiet, but I hope to break them of the hat as we go. So That's where I'll be you'll probably be seeing me a lot from our my pod cat or podcast video streams They're gonna be after 2 o'clock because I'm teaching till 2 15 So just so you know for you guys in the east coast that probably about 5 36, which works out well for you Let me know if there's anything you guys want me to talk about again watch out for that open neutral reason why we don't switch the neutral reason why we switch the hot and Keep your eye open for different posts. I posted a couple blogs today I posted a blog on how to make your money last a little bit longer. Hey Tim So you wanted it's money-saving tips or apprentices, but honestly it could go a long ways for the journey people out there as well Especially stuff on credit cards and buying things with money You don't have that's just my thing and these guys are in my class now We're gonna hear a lot about that when we start talking about percentages and compounding interests this week So keep that in mind that might be something I'm talking about But if there's anything you guys want me to talk about let me know This is gonna be a quick one because I've just got to get some paperwork done here I let my class go and I got a bunch of photocopying and some paperwork. I got to enter so hey, no, thank you Scott appreciate it So yeah, I know I'm beating a dead horse here But let me know what you want me to talk about because I'm getting lots of good emails lots of good feedback from you guys All right, so again if you missed this make sure you go back and watch the replay I will post it keep it posted on Facebook. I'll probably post it on YouTube as well I think it's a really important topic. Do not switch that neutral watch over that open neutral causes weird things from happening like I said when I was in a hotel a few months ago also in all the lights went dim and Some of the circus didn't work Well, that was because we actually lost the main neutral And so it wasn't a very balanced hotel load and we ended up losing that we ended up getting I didn't have my meter on Me I wish it really had my meter on me at that point, but some weird things were happening So the neutral is important and it would be best for you guys not to get a belt All right, I will see you guys probably either tomorrow or the next day after that and We'll be talking. I'll give you a heads up as to what I'm talking about So you can decide if you're gonna chime in or not have a good day I hope you guys are doing well and we will talk to you tomorrow work safe talk to you tomorrow. Bye