African American Male Ex-Felons\u27 Perspectives Regarding Felon Disenfranchisement

The tradition of disenfranchising those convicted in the United States of felony crimes has profound historical racial roots that have persisted for decades in the United States. The persistent practice of felon disenfranchisement in the 21st century challenges the essence of democracy, with over six million people disenfranchised. The need for major reform efforts to restore voting rights to ex-felons has been exposed due to this issue. The literature revealed no studies have been undertaken regarding this phenomenon in terms of those directly affected by it. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to understand the effect of felon disenfranchisement from the perspectives of African American male ex-felons. The theoretical framework used for this study was the labeling theory. Interview data were obtained from 15 African American male ex-felons who had direct experiences with felon disenfranchisement. Participants were recruited using a nonpurposeful snowball sampling technique. Moustakas’ modified Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen’s data analysis led to the identification of key themes among participants. The themes were rejection, politics, obstacles, cultural values, lack of knowledge, participation, inclusion, lack of self-worth, alienism, suppression, and democracy. Results showed the destructive effects of felon disenfranchisement extending beyond political enslavement. Through adopting the Maine and Vermont model of never taking a person’s right to vote away, positive social change could result in terms of abolishing felon disenfranchisement practices and restoring ex-felons’ voting rights

Connecting Personal Data of Third Country Nationals: Interoperability of EU Databases in the Light of the CJEU's Case Law on Data Retention

On 12 December 2017, the EU Commission presented a proposal on the interoperability of EU large-scale Information Systems. The proposal seeks to enable all centralised EU databases for security, border and migration management to be interconnected by 2020. The underlying IT systems retain data of Third Country Nationals (TCNs), namely travellers, applicants for international protection, information relating to visa applications or data on missing persons and criminals. With the proposal, the Commission seeks to create new possibilities to exchange information, manage migration challenges and to enhance the Union’s internal security. The interconnectivity of databases would introduce fundamental changes to the current structure of EU IT-systems and requires careful consideration and assessment of compliance with EU data protection standards. This also means that access to information in an interoperable system must be strictly aligned to the access rights of the underlying databases and that requesting authorities only obtain the data that they are authorized to access. With interoperability, data once held in silos would be retained in three new centralized databases and would be more easily accessible, also for the prevention, investigation and prosecution of crime. Where criminal investigations previously required multiple searches in separate databases, this cascading safeguard shall progressively be abandoned to streamline access to personal data by law enforcement authorities. Despite simplified access conditions, this would require new types of processing operations for which the interoperability proposal does not provide a legal basis. During recent years, several judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) have highlighted the difficulty of striking a proper balance between the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection, enshrined in Article 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU Charter) with an increased demand for security and the surveillance of potential criminals. The Court repeatedly pointed out the need to strike a fair balance between these (allegedly) competing interests and emphasised that law enforcement authorities should not be granted access to personal data without prior authorization. Using the CJEU’s judgments as vehicle and considering the assumption that TCNs risk to become subject to data retention measures in a disproportionate manner, the following analysis seeks to assess both existing EU databases and their foreseen interoperability against the requirements established by the Court in order to evaluate their (in)-compatibility with the fundamental rights standards enshrined in the EU Charter

Dukungan Sosial Teman Kerja dan Stres Kerja pada Karyawan PT.X di Palu

Penelitian ini adalah penelitian korelasional yang bertujuan untuk mengetahui hubungan antara dukungan sosial teman kerja dengan stres kerja. Pada penelitian ini, peneliti menggunakan teknik non probability sampling dengan partisipan sebanyak 31 orang karyawan di PT.X di Palu. Instrumen penelitian ini menggunakan skala dukungan sosial teman kerja dan Parker’s Job-Stress Scale. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode analisis data uji korelasi pearson. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan adanya korelasi sebesar r = -0,590 dan nilai sig. = 0,000 (p<0,01). Hasil tersebut menunjukkan bahwa ada hubungan negatif signifikan antara dukungan sosial teman kerja dengan stres kerja pada karyawan PT.X di Palu, yang artinya semakin tinggi dukungan sosial teman kerja maka semakin rendah stres kerja. Sebaliknya semakin rendah dukungan sosial teman kerja maka semakin tinggi stres kerja

Transborder Access to e-Evidence by Law Enforcement Agencies: A first comparative view on the Commission's Proposal for a Regulation on a European Preservation/Production Order and accompanying Directive

As communication nowadays commonly takes place via electronic means, the use of electronic evidence (e-evidence) is becoming a crucial element in criminal investigations. Due to the borderless nature of the internet, many criminal investigations include a cross-border dimension and therefore, commonly require access to electronic data and evidence that are stored outside the territorial jurisdiction of the investigating authority. Since data are typically held by private companies that are often located in a different country than the investigator, law enforcement authorities (LEAs) are either dependent on the willingness of these service providers to cooperate on a voluntary basis, or to resort to existing legal procedures for obtaining the data for investigations. The relevant procedures under the current framework to access data stored outside the European Union is based on so-called Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs), whereas judicial cooperation within the EU is, inter alia, governed by the Directive on the European Investigation Order in the form of the national transposition acts of the Member States. Because e-evidence is, due to its volatile nature, prone to modification and deletion, the timely acquisition of stored data is vital for LEAs. Therefore, informal cooperation between LEAs and private companies is a common method to obtain e-evidence, thereby bypassing the lengthy and often ineffective Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) mechanisms. Such direct cooperation between law enforcement and private companies, which is commonly carried out on a unilateral basis, has led to a fragmented framework for the acquisition of data. Against this background, the European Commission, on 17 April 2018, proposed new rules on access to e-evidence, to secure and obtain preserved data faster and more effectively and to ensure that all providers that offer services in the EU are subject to the same obligations. Similar developments regarding the adoption of comparable legislative acts and instruments regarding direct law enforcement access to data stored by private companies take place elsewhere in Europe and beyond: The Council of Europe is currently preparing a 2nd Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention on enhanced international cooperation, whereas in the U.S., the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act on rules for cross-border law enforcement investigations was enacted in March 2018. This contribution will address concerns regarding the role of private companies as ‘extended arm’ of LEAs and the measures that seek to cope with the legal uncertainty and fragmentation that emerged with the informal public-private relationships around the acquisition of e-evidence. The article suggests that the initiatives on different levels might result in even more conflicts of laws than is currently the case, if lacking a coordinated and coherent approach in Europe and internationally. Moreover, the article discusses the impact of the abovementioned developments with regard to EU data protection standards. The compliance of the new rules on access to e-evidence with the EU data protection acquis, namely the GDPR and Directive (EU)2016/680, will be one of the relevant matters covered in this article

Follow the Money, If You Can - Possible Solutions for Enhanced FIU Cooperation Under Improved Data Protection Rules

Financial information can play a key role in tackling Money Laundering (ML), Terrorist Financing (TF) and combatting serious crime more generally. Preventing and fighting ML and the financing of terrorism were top priorities of the European Agenda on Security, which might explain the fast developments regarding the regulation of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Terrorism Financing (CTF). During the past years, the European Commission (Commission) proposed several legal texts to reform the current AML framework and to facilitate timely law enforcement (LE) access to financial data for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of serious crime. The line between administrative sanctions and criminal law measures seems to become increasingly blurred, as the latest proposals are no longer based on an internal market provision, but on police and judicial cooperation legal bases. Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) play a crucial role in analysing and exchanging information concerning suspicious transactions, serving as intermediaries between the private sector and Law Enforcement Authorities (LEAs). Because of the international nature of financial crime, cooperation between FIUs is of paramount importance. Yet, due to different organizational settings in the EU Member States, FIUs are not always able to exchange data effectively, which leads to information gaps. One of the reasons why the data exchange between FIUs is impeded are data protection rules that apply differently depending on the organizational structure of the FIUs in the 28 Member States. Whereas some FIUs must adhere to the stricter data protection rules under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), others may exchange data more flexibly within the scope of the data protection Directive for police and criminal justice authorities (LED). Therefore, the counter-argument to granting broader LE-access rights to financial data by LEAs could be to enable a more effective exchange of data between FIUs. This article argues that FIUs should be able to process personal data within the scope of the LED, in order to have more flexibility to receive, analyse and exchange data: On the one hand, the LED provides sufficiently high data protection standards and adequate safeguards for data subjects while allowing FIUs to carry out their tasks effectively under harmonized rules. On the other hand, this would be an argument to strengthening the role of FIUs as neutral intermediaries instead of granting additional access to personal data by LEAs