Leah Uncensored..

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USA - Your Phone Is Tapped

OFF THE WIRE

agingrebel.com
Privacy is dead in the new and improved America. The New York Times thinks this is news.
A reporter named Eric Lichtblau ran a feature in the premier national newspaper Sunday that led with the recently disclosed fact that American police made “a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year…seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.” You can read Lichtblau’s report here.
The statistics about cell phone surveillance in the Times piece were gathered by Representative Edward J. Markey, a traditional Democrat from Massachusetts who is one of the co-chairmen of the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus. Markey told the Times he was shocked by what he learned. “I never expected it (the extent of the surveillance) to be this massive,” he said.
Markey also told the Times that he was alarmed about the possibility that “digital dragnets” might compromise the privacy of Americans. “There’s a real danger we’ve already crossed the line,” Markey said.
Duh-uh.

Statistics
For cell phones only, AT&T gets 700 requests a day for phone data from American police. Two-hundred-thirty of those requests are “exigent” and do not require the snooping policeman to get either a court order or a subpoena. Sprint gets 1,500 police requests for data each day. Cricket, a wireless carrier most people have never heard of got “42,500 law enforcement requests last year.”
Markey asked for the cell phone data of nine American companies: AT&T, C Spire, Cricket Communications, MetroPCS, Sprint, T-Mobile, TracFone, U.S. Cellular and Verizon. The data requested included text messages and locations. The number of phones affected is probably much greater than 1.3 million for two reasons. First the police demands are so frequent and routine that cell phone companies can not adequately account for all the requests they get. Additionally, each request may intrude on many callers as when police request all the information relayed through a cell phone tower.
The Times reported: “As cell surveillance increased, warrants for wiretapping by federal and local officials – eavesdropping on conversations – declined 14 percent last year to 2,732, according to a recent report from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts…. The diverging numbers suggest that law enforcement officials are shifting away from wiretaps in favor of other forms of cell tracking that are generally less legally burdensome, less time consuming and less costly.”
Lichtblau also mentions what he describes as a “muddled” Supreme Court ruling last year that forbid police to attach GPS locators to cars and monitor them without a court order. However, in most cases police do not need a warrant to monitor the GPS locator in a cell phone. The only way to turn those monitors off is to turn the phone off.
The Times story closes with a warning that police departments may be “keeping those records indefinitely in internal databases.”
Again, duh-uh.

Not Just Cell Phones
This was the second report by Lichtblau for the Times on the issue of cell phone surveillance. The Markey request for cell carrier records was prompted by a Times report last year. You can read that report, titled “Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool” here.
The issue of police spying on citizens using social media, emails and even Predator spy drones has promulgated dozens of major stories so far this year. David Kravets of Wired Magazine has been following the issue of electronic surveillance for more than a year. Earlier this month Kravets reported on demands by prosecutors and police for data on twitter users.
Last February, before the Times joined the hunt, Kravets reported on a “covert internet and telephone surveillance method known as pen register and trap-and-trace capturing.” The two techniques are used to capture “non-content information of outbound telephone and internet communications, such as phone numbers dialed, and the sender and recipient” and often the subject line for private emails. By law the Department of Justice is required to inform Congress about the number and nature of these requests but has apparently not done so since 1999.
The reports to Congress are mandated by the 25-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Kravits describes that as a, “…law (that) had once protected Americans’ electronic communications from the government’s prying eyes, but it has become so woefully outdated that it now grants the authorities nearly carte blanche powers to obtain Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud, such as in Gmail or Hotmail – without a court warrant.” The February article states this surveillance is commonly carried out by the “Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.”
Most of this information is collected as part of the International War on Terror and is authorized by the Patriot Act. The act, extended by Congress in 2011, allows wiretaps without identifying a target or the method of communication to be tapped, allows any person to be monitored for any reason and allows secret warrants for business records of any kind.

Fusion Centers And War Rooms
The larger and more important issue that both Wired and the Times miss is why this information is collected, what happens to it after it has been archived and why.
Of those three issues the easiest to explain is the last – why. The information is collected and archived because any distinction that once existed between police forces and between the military and civilian police is already irrevocably blurred. Police already talk about themselves as if they were soldiers in a war. And, the war on terror continues because victory has been defined in ludicrous terms – such as bringing feminist values to Afghanistan and annihilating every, last terrorist. Since that job is impossible both federal and local police and prosecutors have participated in this great campaign by targeting “transnational terrorists” including street gangs, motorcycle clubs, right wing militias, fundamentalist Mormons, the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement.
Secondly all of this personal, private information collected by police departments, bureaus and agencies is permanently stored in both fusion centers and war rooms.
Fusion Centers are joint enterprises of the Department of Justice which includes the FBI, the DEA, the Marshalls and the ATF, and the largest federal police department, the Department of Homeland Security. The centers began to appear in 2003 and they have become omniscient. Nevada for example, the seventh largest but only the 35th most populous state, has three fusion centers.
War rooms are both intelligence repositories and traffic control centers for federally defined High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. There are now so many domestic spies that a key function of War Rooms is to keep track off all these informants, prevent them from conflicting (or shooting) each other, and feed their Reports of Investigation into the great Amazon of domestic intelligence. There is no longer a meaningful distinction between information collected by small town cops and the Department of Justice. It all ends up in the same, top-secret, computer network.
The point of these centers is to collect every credit card transaction, the time and location of every license plate on every major road, every legally and illegally tapped telephone conversation, text message and email, every public record, every secret police report, every social network comment, every blog post and much more into enormous databases that are constantly mined for hidden patterns. This data mining is a variation on the ancient Hebrew mystical art of Gematria – a kind of fortune telling.
These war rooms and fusion centers represent a radical departure from the values and ideas of men like Louis Brandeis who once wrote: “The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”
Data collection and mining, war rooms and fusion centers exist because the last two administrations and the last four Congresses have decided that the security of the United States can no longer depend on a free and informed citizenry. America’s very survival now depends on domestic spies and fortune tellers. And these fusion center data sets are now so huge that the fortune tellers, or analysts, who mine them usually find exactly what they want to find.

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USA - Police Using License Plate Reader Surveillance to All Track Drivers

OFF THE WIRE
 Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
You are being watched!!!
 Find out how police departments use surveillance endeavors on Americans by recording license plate numbers as drivers pass by to strengthen their information databases without foreknowledge by the public. Police Using License Plate Reader Surveillance to All Track Drivers
Share This Article: http://www.occupycorporatism.com/police-using-license-plate-reader-surveillance-to-all-track-drivers/
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has documented how police departments use surveillance endeavors on Americans by recording license plate numbers as drivers pass by to strengthen their information databases without foreknowledge by the public.
Over 26,000 pages were gathered through researching public records and the Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) to conclude that nearly 600 local and state police departments in 38 states across America, including the District of Columbia, are participating in this scheme.
Millions of digital records have been amassed using this system that gives enforcement agencies the ability to locate any car at any time. The scanners are able to “capture images of passing or parked vehicles and note their location, uploading that information into police databases. Departments keep the records for weeks or years, sometimes indefinitely.”
Using automatic license plate readers (ALPR) surveillance technology, there is a clear and “startling picture of a technology deployed with too few rules that is becoming a tool for mass routine location tracking and surveillance.”
The ACLU relayed in a statement that “the documents paint a startling picture of a technology deployed with too few rules that is becoming a tool for mass routine location tracking and surveillance.”
More disturbing is that “private companies are also using license plate readers and sharing the information they collect with police with little or no oversight or privacy protections. A lack of regulation means that policies governing how long our location data is kept vary widely.”
High-speed cameras are used in conjunction with software to analyze photographs wherein license plate numbers are retrieved. The data is compared to “hot lists” of plate numbers and produces an instant alert when a match, or “hit,” registers.
The ACLU explains: “License plate readers would pose few civil liberties risks if they only checked plates against hot lists and these hot lists were implemented soundly. But these systems are configured to store the photograph, the license plate number, and the date, time, and location where all vehicles are seen — not just the data of vehicles that generate hits.”
Effectively, hot list information is gathered from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC).
The ACLU admonished that this practice violates our 4th Amendment rights because “systems are configured to store the photograph, the license plate number, and the date, time, and location where all vehicles are seen — not just the data of vehicles that generate hits.”
This enables the enforcement industry to create “s police to create “a single, high-resolution image of our lives.”
Catherine Crump, chief author of the ACLU report said: “At first, we didn’t think it posed much of a privacy problem.”
Upon examination of the documents, the ACLU was able to reveal “a system that triggered a real-time alert to the presence of a stolen vehicle, or a car linked to a fugitive, and that seemed acceptable. But then the group realized police were storing the license plate scans — whether or not there had been a ‘hit’.”
The Portland City police department (PCPD) has joined with those agencies that are tracking drivers and recording license plates.
The PCPD has 16 cameras attached to their cars that are armed to work with the surveillance software and database network.
Sargent Pete Simpson of the Portland Police Bureau explained that the PCPD has “scanners on patrol cars for several years. He said police use the scanners to alert officers if a car is stolen or if the owner of the car has a warrant for their arrest.”
The PCPD retains “the data for a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of 40 years. The data is also only accessible by police.”
According to the ACLU report: “The documents show that many police departments are storing for long periods of time huge numbers of records on scanned plates that do not return ‘hits.’ For example, police in Jersey City, N.J., recorded 2.1 million plate reads last year. As of August 2012, Grapevine, Texas, had 2 million plate reads stored and Milpitas, Calif., had 4.7 million.”




VIDEO 
 ACLU challenges police on license plate scanners 
 http://youtu.be/HgNik2UaZ78

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Questions About Your Rights? DURING Traffic Stop

OFF THE WIRE

Keep in mind that while certain laws and police practices vary from state-to-state, our information applies to practices that apply in all 50 states.
General Questions

What are my rights at various “checkpoints”?

29 points on reddit

There are four general types of checkpoints you might encounter: DUI checkpoints, US border checkpoints, drug checkpoints, and TSA checkpoints. In a legal sense, they are not all created equal. So depending on which one you encounter, you’ll want to be … Continued

General Questions

When can police use drug dogs?

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In Illinois v. Caballes, the Supreme Court ruled that police do not need reasonable suspicion to use drug dogs to sniff a vehicle during a legitimate traffic stop. This decision stems from the case of Roy Caballes, who was pulled … Continued

General Questions

What if police say they smell marijuana?

2 points on reddit

If police say they smell marijuana, you’re in a tough situation. Courts have ruled that the odor of contraband gives officers probable cause to perform a search. For this reason, police are quick to claim that they smell something and sometimes they might even lie about it. … Continued

Traffic Stop

What are the rights of passengers during a traffic stop?

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Traffic stops typically occur as a result of suspected moving violations committed by the driver of the vehicle. Passengers cannot be held responsible for the driver’s conduct and are generally free to leave, unless police become suspicious of them during the course of the stop. … Continued

Traffic Stop

When can police search your car?

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Police may ask you a series of questions. They will probably include something like, “You don’t mind if I have a look in your car?” Beware of that question: It’s the legal loophole that the officer wants to snare you in. … Continued

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OFF THE WIRE

This document communicates how to effectively stand-up for your rights. Take from it what you find valuable to your situation. This is a working document and we welcome your input so that we can all learn from each other. It was created by Pete Eyre, Kelly Patterson and Clyde Voluntaryist (it does not speak for others involved at the decentralized CopBlock.org).

Know Your Rights: A Primer

Live and let live – it’s an adage that, if put into practice, would help eliminate the need for these precautions. But right now some folks are putting faith into a badge idea – arbitrary authority. Fortunately, ideas have consequences.

Interacting with police employees

Always document exchanges you have with police or those that you witness, preferably via video, if possible. Even better, stream the interaction in real-time to the Internet using a free smartphone application (see: http://copblock.org/apps). This prevents it from being erased or tampered with should your equipment be stolen by police. In addition, it can increase the speed with which word can get out should you need outside support.
Filming your interactions has several advantages. Most importantly, it will help to safeguard you at that moment, as it very-likely will deter potential aggression, and it will act as an indisputable, objective, transparent record of the incident. The deck is usually stacked against you in cases which come down to just your word against theirs.
Ask “Am I being detained?”
This question is important for several reasons. One is that certain rules regarding evidence that can be collected are dependent on whether you have been officially detained and whether the person stopping you has sufficient cause to detain you in the first place. Getting them on record regarding these issues can aid you greatly in the future if contesting such evidence becomes necessary.
Another reason to ask this is that it will serve as an indicator to the police employee you are interacting with that you are aware of your rights. While this doesn’t always make a difference, letting them know that you understand those rights and are willing to assert them will sometimes make them less likely to disregard them.


If you’re told “No”, then you can leave the scene. Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valor.
If you’re told “Yes”, stay calm, cool, and collected. You can choose to remain silent or you can choose to engage.
Police employees default to being on the offensive. Strive to be calm, cool and collected, while confident – knowing that you’ve not acted in the wrong and in fact it is they who acting with hostile. Ask yourself: what is reasonable.
Always strive to deescalate situations, and thus increase the likelihood you’ll leave under your own volition rather than under the control of a stranger. It will also allow those who may later view video of the interaction to easily and clearly see just who is the aggressor. A video recording means that facts can be shared immediately with a large number of people; you can move more-quickly to the next stage, thus making it more-likely they’ll support you if needed and be more-likely to speak out against injustice themselves.
Police employees can and do lie – something that courts have ruled is perfectly acceptable – in an attempt to solicit information from you or to get you to admit to engaging in an action they believe gives them the right to kidnap and cage you (even though said action may not cause a victim). Be aware of this and act accordingly.
In fact, police employees are actually trained in methods of deception designed to trick people into giving up their rights and/or cooperating against themselves and or their friends. They are taught to act friendly as if they want to help you in order to gather information, which eventually could be used against you or others. In addition, they are instructed to phrase questions in a way that they sound like statements (I’m going to _____, okay?) in order to trick you into giving consent.
If you do engage, answer questions with questions. Ask, “Where is the victim?”, “Why do you believe you have the right to prevent my freedom of movement?” etc. Treat the police employee no differently than you would someone not wearing the same costume who approached and questioned you.

If you get arrested

Police employees often make arrests they know to be without merit, simply as a way to harass those who question their authority. Several vague “go-to” charges are often used for such purposes including, but not limited to, disturbing the peace, trespassing, obstruction, interfering with an officer/investigation, failure to follow lawful orders, etc. In cases involving police brutality, charges of resisting arrest and/or assaulting an officer can often be used to justify the police employees own use of force (having the unbiased and unimpeachable witness that video represents is especially crucial in this instance).
They know there is usually very little chance they will be held accountable for such tactics. In most cases, the charges are later dismissed, but that doesn’t eliminate the time and indignities suffered by their victims during even a brief period within one of their cages. Pushing back against this culture of abuse is important both to protect your own rights and deter its future use against others.
Don’t panic. The world won’t end. Now is the time to engage in damage control and move-forward to mitigate any further harassment and to seek accountability for the real aggressors.
Write down a detailed summary of what unfolded. Create an objective overview that will bring someone totally unfamiliar with the incident up-to-speed.
You may have an inclination to put this off until later, but it’s actually very important to do so while the incident is fresh. Details that are now clear will become forgotten with the passage of time. Plus, you’ll see just how useful making time to tackle this really is when you realize that it’s actually a time-saver. Instead of repeating the same story multiple times to different people, you can just point them to your write-up.
Where did the interaction happen? What was going on immediately prior to the interaction? What was the date and time? Who were the parties involved? What were their badge numbers, employers, contact information? What was given as rationale for stopping you? What was said during the exchange?
Share your overview at http://copblock.org/submit

Document, Document, Document

Obtain as much related information as possible. The more comprehensive you are, the less-likely it is that frivolous charges will be levied against you and the more-likely it is that charges will be dropped.
Submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (note that this is known by different names depending on the area). Inquire of the police department if they have a form for this – they usually do not. Don’t fret. Just write and submit your own. Include a sentence or two overview of who you are, the information sought, and your contact information.
You can use the text below as a template:
“To Whom It May Concern:
“This document is to serve as a Freedom of Information Act request. Please provide to me any and all content, including but not limited to dashcam video and related audio, dispatcher logs, police reports, internal memos, related departmental policies, from the incident that occurred on DATE at LOCATION involving YOUR NAME & CASE NUMBER/CHARGES IF KNOWN. Also, please include any and all information related to the number, date, and outcome of complaints made against POLICE EMPLOYEE NAME/BADGE NUMBER.
“YOUR NAME PRINTED
YOUR PHONE NUMBER
YOUR MAILING ADDRESS”
Or utilize this much-more thorough FOIA request template shared by Virginia Cop Block
When submitting the FOIA request film the exchange. Or better yet, have a friend accompany you who can film. The more transparency the better.

Ask for a receipt, or a signed/stamped copy of your FOIA request.
Inquire to learn the legislated time-limit the police department has to respond to your request (often five-ten days). Due to the inefficiency of the bureaucratic, centralized police department, you may be contacted during that time-frame to inform you that an extension is needed.
Note that you can be charged for copying fees of documents, video and other content. Be sure to state when you submit the FOIA request that you want to have the ability to review everything before it’s taken/paid for. That way, if dozens of pages of unrelated material are included, you won’t be on the hook.
Add the information gotten from the FOIA request to your post about the incident as an update. If you have access to a scanner, scan the documentation and save it to http://scribd.com. You can create a free account there if you don’t already have one.
Win in the Court of Public Opinion
If you’ve done nothing wrong don’t be afraid. Instead, voice as loudly and clearly as you can, the rights-violations you suffered and continue to face due to the actions of the police employee and prosecutor.
Demand a jury trial, even for something as trivial as a speeding ticket. Currently about 95% of cases are plead out before that stage. That does nothing to disincentivize the same or a greater level of police statism. If we each stood-up for what we knew was right, it’d frankly be impossible for this level to continue, and in fact it would lessen until it reached the point where no one claimed extra rights based on their attire.

Related resources:

• NeverTakeaPlea.org
• Don’t Take the Plea Deal
• Jury Nullification: Why you should know what it is
• The Magic Words: A Know-Your-Rights Mixtape

Work to get your situation on the radar of others. Create an event for a Call Flood.
Share pertinent information so others can easily get on the same page. Cultivate media contacts and share them as well. Encourage others, who have a grasp on your situation thanks to your write-up, and inclusion of relevant pictures and/or video, to call on your behalf and demand justice.
It’s not uncommon for court dates to be pushed back or for the “prosecutor” to stack threats against you. While court employees might hope such tactics will wear you down, point to such tactics as examples of their inability to make right by dismissing the charges levied at you and calling-out the real aggressors.
Court is called “legal land” for a reason. It’s an environment void of logic and common sense. Where public officials who purport to be acting to obtain justice in reality act to safeguard themselves and their colleagues. Don’t be surprised at or let yourself get worn down by their actions. Stand on your conscience and know that, at the end of the day, you did no harm. Not only will this resonate with you but it will embolden others to speak out and do what they know is right, until one day, the harassment meted out by those with badges, and the double-standards others afford them, are no more.
———–
Connect with others who know that badges don’t grant extra rights http://copblock.org/groupsHaving support on the ground in these situations can be critical.

Check out all documents in the “Know Your Rights” Collection housed at http://scribd.com/copblock
Educate yourself: http://copblock.org/knowledge

At the end of the day, if you did nothing wrong then you should not be afraid to speak the truth. As we each stand-up we’ll empower others to do the same, and together, we’ll get there.

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Emilio Rivera

Has anything been particularly challenging for you this season?

Do real bikers ever come up to you and talk to you about the show?

by Christina Radish
On the FX drama Sons of Anarchy, Emilio Rivera stars as Marcus Alvarez, the Founder of the Mayan Motorcycle Club, and the President of its Oakland Charter. This season, the Mayans and the Sons are getting tighter than ever, running drugs for a Mexican Cartel and having to rely on each other to survive by battling common enemies.
During a recent interview to talk about Season 4 of the popular series, actor Emilio Rivera talked about his surprise with the direction his character is taking, that he hopes his character will get to stay alive for awhile longer, how things will get crazier and crazier throughout the rest of the season, that the show is one of the best things he’s ever done in his life, and that he recently did an episode of The Mentalist and has a number of films coming out. Check out what he had to say after the jump:

 
Question: Because Alvarez started as quite an adversary for the Sons, were you surprised at how much they’re working together now? Were you surprised at the direction the character is taking, and might take in the future?
EMILIO RIVERA: (Show creator) Kurt [Sutter] is a really smart man and he follows what’s going on in the outside world and incorporates it to the Sons of Anarchy world. He keeps it pretty tight. It wasn’t really a far-fetched thing. I was hoping it would happen that way, so I could probably stay alive longer. I hate it when I get in trouble with the Sons because I don’t know if they’re going to put a bullet in my head or what. But, right now, as long as we’re friends, I think I’ll be alive, so I’ll see what happens. I’m happy we’re friends, though. We’re sure stronger as a team, like that.
Will viewers continue to see the friendship between the Mayans and SAMCRO?
RIVERA: I hope so. I really don’t know how they’re going to go with it, but I hope so because, as long as we’re friends, I hope to stay alive longer, unless one of them takes me out. It’s cool because I know that when I’m working with them, as actors, I get to hang out with [Ron] Perlman and Charlie [Hunnam]. It’s really cool.

Are there going to be any more consequences for the Sons or your gang?
RIVERA: Yes, starting from last week and through the rest of the season, it just gets crazier and crazier and crazier for me. I think this is the best season of all and, from here on out, you don’t want to miss nothing. You can’t miss anything because it’s just going to be crazy. It’s a crazy ride.
Will you be getting revenge on who shot you?
RIVERA: I can’t say.

With your history with SAMCRO going back a long way, was Alvarez approached by Clay (Ron Perlman) to kill John Teller?

RIVERA: I can’t say. I can’t say nothing about none of that, when we talk about the show. I love my job too much. I’ll just plead the fifth on that one.
RIVERA: No. I appreciate the work. I eat it up. Give me whatever you want to give me because it just gives me more stuff to do. I get to go to different places in my memory bank, and I dig it. I love it. I’m glad Kurt gave me the opportunity to do some things this year, and we’ll see what happens. I don’t know how the season’s going to end and I’m just hoping I stay alive. I don’t know if I got picked up in the fifth season, so I’m hoping I’m around for the fifth season.
Having done a lot of different projects in your career, what’s it been like to stay with a character and one show for four years now?
RIVERA: I love it. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. It’s really great. The fans are great. I ride motorcycles, so I do a lot of events, and the fans give us a lot of love. I’m having a great time, I really am.

How did you prepare for this specific character?
RIVERA: It’s like I go into this little mode. I do it with anything I do, and once I’m in, I stay there until they say, “Cut.” I’m a sociable guy, but when it comes to work, when I’m on set, I just become him. I feel I’m him. He’s not really much of a joker, but I am. I like to kid around, and Alvarez is more like a serious business type guy. And then, when they say, “Cut,” it’s time to go home. I don’t have to say much, then I can have fun again, like I usually like to do. I’ve just played this guy for a long time. He’s easy to get to now because I’ve been doing it for so long, and I’m digging him. For that, I went back somewhere in my life. I don’t want to say where I went, but it was somewhere in my life, where I was this guy. You go to different things in your life. He’s hard, but he’s got a heart.
Is it true that you auditioned for another character before being cast as Alvarez?
RIVERA: No, in the original pilot, I was actually a character named Hawk. I was a Sons guy, but the role because Tig later on, which went to Kim Coates.

How has playing Alvarez changed your personal views?

 RIVERA: As far as the biker world, I really got into it more. I have a lot of respect for the bikers, which I’ve always had. I didn’t really pay attention to them because they’re just always around, but now I really see what they’re about, and they’re really no joke. They’re not going to be taken lightly. I like what they do for the people. Just don’t cross them. Just like anybody, they’re really out there just to have fun, to enjoy themselves, and to share a comradery. They do a lot for the people, but just don’t mess with them, or like in the show, you’ll face the consequences.
Did you learn to ride for the show, or did you already know how to ride?
RIVERA: I’ve been riding for 36 years. I started when I was 14-years-old. I was one of those crazy guys, riding wheelies up and down the streets, all the time. I love riding. It’s in my blood.
What kind of motorcycle do you ride?
RIVERA: I have a few. I have a Deluxe, all choppered out. It’s pretty gangster. Then, I have a Heritage soft tail, made 1940s style. And, I just had a new one built for the show, that’s a Road King. It’s a real pretty bike. I ride five days out of the week. In fact, I take my bike as much as I can, especially with L.A. traffic. You want to get in and out, all the time.
RIVERA: All the time, bro. Before the show started, I hung out with real bikers, anyway. I had a lot of biker friends, and even more so now. Everybody loves the character. They love the show. Everybody’s trying to put in their own ideas of what we should do and what we shouldn’t do, but pretty much everybody loves the show. It’s good, and it’s good that we have the real guys digging the show because then you’re doing something right.
What is the chemistry like between actors, on and off set?
RIVERA: It’s like a brotherhood. On screen, we have to pretend we hate each other, or dislike each other, or don’t want to talk or listen to each other, but off camera, it’s just one big happy family. We hang out off the show and we play cards together and go have dinner together. It’s really a good time. We can talk about some of our own problems that we have as friends, which is nice. We see each other as friends, but also as co-workers. They’ve got stuff to say, even from life experiences, so it’s a little bit of something from everybody. It’s really nice.
Are there any traits that you share with Alvarez, or is there a major difference between the two of you?
RIVERA: He is very serious, and I like to have fun. I joke around a lot. You can’t mess with Alvarez, as you can mess with Emilio. He loves his family. Every time things go down, he’s always saying, “Go take care of my family.” He watches his family, and that’s the way I am with my family. It’s family first, all the time.

Have you learned anything by playing this character, or is there any part of this experience that you’ll take with you, through the rest of your career?
RIVERA: He’s a tough guy, and I’ve played tough guys, pretty much all of my career. He’s a different guy, though. What I like about him is that he’s always in control. You have not seen Alvarez lose control once, if you think about it. Sometimes he wants to, but he holds it in. I love Alvarez. He’ll be with me, for the rest of my life. As long as I ride motorcycles, which God willing is another 50 years, I’ll always have Alvarez in my heart. I’m hoping for 10 seasons of Sons of Anarchy.
Did you always want to be an actor?

RIVERA: Yes, since I was a kid, but then I got side-tracked with gangs and drugs for a long time, so that really put a big hold on me. But, the stuff I learned from the streets, I carry on to what I do nowadays. What you see up there is really real stuff that I draw from, that couldn’t be taught in school, but I learned it in my upbringing, which I don’t approve of. I don’t say, “Go do this and that, to do what I do.” It’s stupid, but that was the way it worked out for me. I get to put it up on the screen now.
Even though you’ve been acting for years, do you still get nervous when you walk onto a new set?
RIVERA: I still get nervous Sons. I hope I never lose that. That’s the whole fun part of it. I did stage for many years before I did the TV and film thing, and to me, that’s my high. When they say that the camera is rolling and my stomach is going and I get into it, then I’m not nervous no more. But, before I go on, I’m always nervous, and I hope I never lose that. That’s my high. I really dig it.
What are some of the things that you had to change about yourself to make your dreams come true?
RIVERA: For me, I have 21 years, clean and sober. I know that, if I was still doing what I did before, I would never do what I’m doing now because I wouldn’t really listen to anybody. I thought nobody could tell me what to do. I was just a hard-headed guy. I got clean and sober, 21 years ago. That, for me, was a big plus, in doing what I do right now.
Do you have any other roles coming up?
RIVERA: I sure do. Actually, I just did an episode of The Mentalist on CBS. And then, I’ve got about seven movies coming out, and I’m working on three right now. It’s been crazy. The show has done so much for me. Some of this stuff was already booked, but it’s good stuff. I’ve got four movies that open next year. I’m not a serious regular on the show, so I’m able to book stuff in between Sons.
What do you think the key is to working so much?
RIVERA: I always try to go in prepared and am nice to everybody. You’ve got to hang out with these people 12-14 hours. And, a lot of times, work just brings you more work, especially in a small circle. I worked with Kurt [Sutter] before on The Shield. If I look back on my resume, a lot of work has been with people like Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh. It’s all been with the same people, over and over again, or people that they know, so it’s cool.

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