With the Democratic National Convention still one year away, details of the event have been predictably scant (minus the predicted ubiquitous presence of fiberglass donkeys, another enormous security fence and the more than $84 million needed to pull off the event.) Billy Penn has new details on a couple of aspects, however, thanks to a 60-page agreement among DNC officials, the host committee and the city that was obtained through a Right-to-Know request.

There’s something you should know about the “traffic box” around Center City for the Pope’s visit the weekend of September 26: Be very careful where you park. Billy Penn has learned that officials plan to immediately impound illegally-parked cars within portions of that 3-square-mile security perimeter, pictured below:

"The press does not simply publish information about trials but guards against the miscarriage of justice by subjecting the police, prosecutors, and judicial processes to extensive public scrutiny and criticism." - Chief Justice Warren E. Legal proceedings surrounding the politically-charged, precedent-setting prosecution of investigative journalist Barrett L.

The program is part of counterdrug operations within the Philadelphia-Camden High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (PC-HIDTA), which encompasses Philadelphia, Delaware & Chester Counties as well as Camden County, NJ. Hemisphere differs from – and far exceeds in scope – the National Security Agency’s phone record collection program, called Section 215, as the NSA maintains its own database and stores records for just five years.

Oral histories of political movements give us glimpses of the participants who helped shape the world we know today. They often provide raw, personal first-hand accounts of peoples’ struggles. These projects also help to maintain historical truths that are often tainted by government revisionism and lost to cultural amnesia.

The Philadelphia Police Department is using Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR), which enable patrol car mounted and stationary pole cameras to collect images of over 1,800 license plates per minute over a 24/7 period. This information is then stored on servers located inside Philadelphia’s Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) and Philadelphia’s fusion center, the Delaware Valley Intelligence Center (DVIC).