Beast System: Laying The Foundation Of The Beast

[oneofmany]

Row Over Us 'occupation' Of Haiti

ROW OVER US 'OCCUPATION' OF HAITI​

A French minister has called for a United Nations investigation into the dominant US role in Haiti, saying international aid efforts are about helping the quake-stricken country, not "occupying" it.

US forces turned back a French aid plane carrying a field hospital from the damaged, congested airport in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince last week, prompting a complaint from French co-operation minister Alain Joyandet. The plane landed safely the following day.

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner warned governments and aid groups not to squabble as they try to get their aid into Haiti.

"People always want it to be their plane that lands," Mr Kouchner said. "What's important is the fate of the Haitians."

But Mr Joyandet, in Brussels for an EU meeting on Haiti, persisted: "This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti."

In another weekend incident, 250 Americans were flown to New Jersey's McGuire Air Force Base on three military planes from Haiti.

US forces initially blocked French and Canadian nationals from boarding the planes, but the cordon was lifted after protests from officials from both countries.

The US military controls the Port-au-Prince airport, where only one runway is functioning, and has been effectively running aid operations.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that the US government had no intention of taking power from Haitian officials, adding: "We are working to back them up, but not to supplant them."

The United Nations is taking the lead in the critical task of co-ordinating aid and Mr Joyandet said he expects a UN decision on how governments should work together in Haiti and he hopes "things will be clarified concerning the role of the United States".

 

[oneofmany]

Aid piling up at UN's 'cold beer' compound as red tape keeps aid from desperate

Aid piling up at UN's 'cold beer' compound as red tape keeps aid from desperate Haitians - while UN staff have wi-fi and a bar​

It is a tale of two cities. One has ice-cold beers, internet access, thousands of men and billions of dollars’ worth of gleaming machinery, together with piles of food, blankets, generators and other aid relief from around the globe.

This is the heavily fortified US-controlled Port-au-Prince airport and neighbouring United Nations compound.

The other is the devastated city of Port-au-Prince, where the stench of death fills the air and starving people are in utter despair, still in need of the basic necessities of food, water, shelter and medical care.

Never, in more than 20 years of covering disasters, has the void between the might and power of the Westernised world and the penniless and pitiful people they have been mobilised to ‘save’ been so glaringly obvious to me.

This nearly two weeks after the earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital, leaving an estimated 100,000 dead in the rubble and another 1.4million homeless.

Despite a vast worldwide aid effort – spurred on by pleas from celebrities such as George Clooney in Friday night’s Haiti Telethon – the lack of help reaching those who need it is such that even aid agencies on the ground are now admitting they have fallen woefully short.

Alejandro Chicheri, Press officer for the UN-funded World Food Programme, said: ‘Of course we would like to be doing more to help the people on the streets but the logistics are a nightmare.

'These things take time and we are going as fast as we can.’

As I landed at Port-au-Prince airport on Friday on a charter flight funded by the charity World Vision from the neighbouring Dominican Republic, the tragedy was visible even before our jet touched down.

Vast swathes of the city are flattened and huge areas of makeshift ‘tent towns’ are visible from the air, along with long lines of people wandering aimlessly along the roads and gathering outside Western-controlled compounds like the UN’s in desperate hope of handouts.

The airport, now fully under the control of the US military, is like something out of a Hollywood action film. Choppers whirl overhead.

Huge vehicles rumble around filled with men in uniform. Large passenger and cargo jets, emblazoned with flags from around the globe, sit on the tarmac.

Some were being emptied of their crates of food, milk powder, rice and water. Others just sat idle.

Swarms of US military personnel and coastguards were busying themselves by working on their gleaming vehicles and aircraft.

Hundreds of blue-helmeted UN soldiers lined one edge of the runway but, during the hour I watched them, went nowhere as they visibly started wilting in the blazing 32C Caribbean heat.

Astonishingly, officials have set up a formal administrative procedure for those who choose to visit Haiti. You have to fill out two forms – one each for customs and immigration.

The form even queries whether your trip is ‘business or pleasure?’.

It took an hour after leaving the aircraft for photographer Nick Stern and me to travel the half-mile or so from the landing strip to a small building where a woman in uniform glanced at my passport and stamped it.

‘Welcome to Haiti,’ she said quietly.

The airport compound is, by any standards, an astonishing feat of organisation.

I spoke to Christian minister Brent Gambrell who was one of the first to arrive, just eight hours after the earthquake hit.

He has a long-established ministry in Haiti and is friends with US golfer Zach Johnson who loaned him his private jet to get there.

Mr Gambrell said: ‘I brought in aid supplies and when I landed there was a plane-load of Canadians here looking confused and asking me “Where do we go?”.

‘It was chaos for the first few days. The airport closed down because they couldn’t handle the flights wanting to come in. There was no organisation until the US military got involved.

‘But it has become more difficult to actually move the stuff out of here and get it to the people who need it. There is so much red tape and bureaucracy.’

He estimated the number of troops and aid workers now living and working inside the airport at around 8,000.

‘There were more,’ he said, ‘but most of the search-and-rescue teams are pulling out as there’s little chance of finding anyone else alive at this stage.’

Those leaving as the search for survivors was officially called off included 62 British rescue experts.

The UK teams pulled four people alive from the rubble, including a two-year-old girl trapped for three days.

Outside the airport, hundreds of Haitians are lined up, asking for help, water and work. Bonni Pierre Louis is one of the lucky ones.

He was hired as a translator by a search-and-rescue team. He told me: ‘It is heartbreaking to me. My sister lost her only daughter in the quake. I am making money and I have food and shelter. Outside it is bad, really bad. People I know were eating cat food but even that has run out now.

‘Most Haitians who can get out of the city are now going to the countryside. They are saving themselves. If you wait for aid, you wait a long time.’

There are some signs that the aid is starting to get to those who need it. Next to the airport, at the UN compound – from where I sat writing this, with internet access, near the light from a shower block and with an ice-cold beer from the on-base bar (complete with potted plants) – supplies are starting to go out.

Frenchman Alain Jaffre is the Program Controller for the World Food Programme. He told me the agency had started providing food to local orphanages and hopes to seriously start stepping up its efforts in the next few days.

On Wednesday, he and a team heard about the Coeur de la Nativitie orphanage, an hour’s drive north of the compound.

There, 56 children died but 78 survived.

His team set out in a low-key convoy with just one car full of food and supplies. He said: ‘I have been to many orphanages and usually the kids run up to you and they are smiling and playful. But not in this case. It was heartbreaking. It was like something
out of Romania.

‘There were children lying there with broken legs and arms, with no food. Their stomachs were swollen. We managed to get supplies in to them and we will be going back.

‘We were told about two five-year-old girls who survived under the rubble for four days. That is what keeps us going.’

David de Giles, a Parisian lawyer who is volunteering with the UN, said: ‘I was working in the old UN HQ at the St Christopher hotel when the earthquake struck. If I had not gone outside to make a phone call I would have been killed. I lost a lot of friends.

'We are starting to get aid out to the orphanages but it is still very chaotic on the streets. It is not advisable to go in a big convoy with guys with guns because then it’s obvious you have food and there is a chance the orphanage might get looted.

'There is no infrastructure so we are having to work through distribution problems before we head out.’

Late on Friday, the World Food Programme offered to take me to see one of the orphanages they are providing supplies to.

A gleaming white four-wheel-drive vehicle arrived in which we waited...and waited. I was told it was because we were expecting ‘a VIP guest’. In the end, the trip was cancelled. The VIP and her handlers had vetoed it.

I later learned the VIP was Princess Haya of Jordan. She flew in with supplies in her role as a UN Goodwill Ambassador, met her country’s troops then flew back to the Dominican Republic ‘for safety reasons’ – all in the comfort of a private 747.

Once you do get out into the earthquake area, it is the smell you notice first. Sick, sweet and acrid, it hangs in the air and permeates every pore.

They tell you to put Vicks in your nose and to cover your face with a scarf but nothing works. The smell of death is everywhere.

Yesterday I visited the remote Christ Roi area which was one of the poorest and most dangerous shanty towns even before the earthquake hit.

Flies and mosquitoes swarmed over every pile of rubble.

Even though it took me only 45 minutes by taxi from the UN HQ – where there are piles of food, water and medical supplies – when I reached the village of 600 people they said they had seen no aid workers at all.

One girl of eight called Addi had a gaping wound on her left leg that was already smelling and turning gangrenous. The leg was turning green.

I met a man called Cardel Arnold who lost his wife, son and daughter. He said he had recovered his wife’s body and burnt it but pointed to the pile of rubble that was once his pre-fabricated house and said: ‘The girls are still in there.'

Like the others in the village he now lives in a makeshift construction of bin liners and bits of discarded wood.

I was travelling with emergency medical services worker Ryan Flaherty, 22, from New Jersey.

He had stumbled across the area last week and had been ‘horrified’ that no aid had reached the village.

He said: ‘I have been begging for help but they just keep telling me it’s too dangerous to bring food and supplies in. But if it’s not too dangerous for you and it’s not too dangerous for me, why is it too dangerous for United Nations troops with guns? It’s disgusting that there is so much food and medical stuff so near and yet these people who are in desperate need are not getting it.’

We drove for an hour. On every street corner there were crudely-written hand-made signs saying ‘help us’ or ‘medicine and food needed here’.

One woman told me that she was too scared to be in any building now. ‘I just keep walking,’ she said. I passed hundreds of people just wandering aimlessly.

Some looters had set up improvised street stalls selling plundered tracksuits and
T-shirts at vastly inflated prices.

The biggest queues were outside stores with Western Union money wiring facilities.

Word had got out on Friday that Western Union was opening for business so that friends and family outside Haiti could wire in funds.

But all three stores I passed had armed guards outside the gates with the doors firmly locked. People were just waiting in hope.

Everywhere I went I saw mothers with babies washing clothes in filthy water. But they are the lucky ones. Many other children are now orphans.

When our taxi stopped they would come up and hold out their hands, and I wished I could give them all something but there were simply too many.

One boy of about six even hung on to the side of the taxi as we drove took off and we had to gently prise him off.

My gut instinct was to help him but everywhere I looked there were other children.

There were just so many.

How you can help

Donations to the Haiti Earthquake Appeal run by the Disasters Emergency Committee can be made by phone on 0370 6060900 or on its website, www.dec.org.uk.

Donations of £5 can also be made by texting ‘GIVE’ to 70077, or you can send
a cheque made payable to DEC Haiti Earthquake to DEC Haiti Earthquake,
PO Box 999, London EC3A 3AA.

 

[oneofmany]

Airline passengers have 'no right' to refuse naked body scanners

Airline passengers have 'no right' to refuse naked body scanners​

Ministers ignore human rights advice and rule out option of pat-down search when scanner goes on trial at Heathrow next week

Airline passengers will have no right to refuse to go through a full-body search scanner when the devices are introduced at Heathrow airport next week, ministers have confirmed.

The option of having a full-body pat-down search instead, offered to passengers at US airports, will not be available despite warnings from the government's Equality and Human Rights Commission that the scanners, which reveal naked bodies, breach privacy rules under the Human Rights Act.

The transport minister Paul Clark told MPs a random selection of passengers would go through the new scanners at UK airports. The machines' introduction would be followed later this year by extra "trace" scanners, which can detect liquid explosives. A draft code of practice covering privacy and health issues is being discussed in Whitehall.

Clark dealt with concerns raised by the Commons home affairs select committee about the ability of airports abroad to upgrade their security to similar levels by indicating that extra support and help was under discussion.

Lord West, the counter-terrorism minister, told the MPs the government had firmly ruled out the introduction of "religious or ethnic profiling" into transport security. Instead, he said, airport security staff were being trained in "behavioural profiling", which meant spotting passengers who had paid cash, were travelling with only a book for luggage on a long-haul flight or were behaving erratically at the airport.

He said the decision to raise the terror threat level to "severe" – meaning an attack was highly likely but not imminent – had been taken by security service officials at the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre last Friday.

The decision, thought to be based on an increase in intelligence traffic on threats from Yemen, was confirmed by the home secretary, Alan Johnson.

West refused to discuss the intelligence behind the decision, saying he was not going to jeopardise "getting the bastards".

The body scanner trials, which are due to start at Heathrow next week, will involve a machine that has spotted the type of concealed device used in the Detroit airline bombing attempt.

The airport's owner, BAA, is preparing to install a scanner in each of its five terminals. The trials will use two different technologies that see through passengers' clothing. One trial will involve "backscatter" technology, which exposes travellers to low-level x-rays. This is already in use at Manchester airport. Security staff at Manchester recently replicated the underwear bomb that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab smuggled on to Northwest Airlines flight 253. The machine singled out elements of the fake weapon.

"We could see that there was something on the person that would have required a further search," said a spokesman for Manchester airport, whose machine requires passengers to stand between two Tardis-like blue boxes.

Under the new security regime, due next month, the suspect passenger would then be led away for a secondary examination that would include using chemical swabs to test for explosives. Pat-down searches of passengers and hand luggage inspections will also increase.

The second type of machine uses a "millimetre wave" system, which bounces radio waves off the human body to form a 3D image of the passenger. Both types of technology have raised privacy concerns owing to the graphic nature of the passenger images, with civil liberties campaigners calling the process "virtual strip-searching".

The Department for Transport has drawn up a preliminary code of conduct for using the machines, and it will follow some guidelines used in the US. These state that the security officer guiding the passenger through the machine never sees the image, and that the employee viewing the scan must be based away from the passenger, in a secure room. The two officers communicate with wireless headsets; and, once viewed, the scan cannot be saved, printed or transmitted.

 

[oneofmany]

Polish priest checks fingerprints for mass attendance

Polish priest checks fingerprints for mass attendance​

WARSAW (Reuters) – A Polish priest has installed an electronic reader in his church for schoolchildren to leave their fingerprints in order to monitor their attendance at mass, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily said on Friday.

The pupils will mark their fingerprints every time they go to church over three years and if they attend 200 masses they will be freed from the obligation of having to pass an exam prior to their confirmation, the paper said.

The pupils in the southern town of Gryfow Slaski told the daily they liked the idea and also the priest, Grzegorz Sowa, who invented it.

"This is comfortable. We don't have to stand in a line to get the priest's signature (confirming our presence at the mass) in our confirmation notebooks," said one pupil, who gave her name as Karolina.

Poland is perhaps the most devoutly Roman Catholic country in Europe today and churches are regularly packed on Sundays.

 

[Cruise]

Re: Aid piling up at UN's 'cold beer' compound as red tape keeps aid from desperate

Aid piling up at UN's 'cold beer' compound as red tape keeps aid from desperate Haitians - while UN staff have wi-fi and a bar

Why does this happen in every disaster (but mostly non-white people)?

Aid arrives and sits in the warehouse, or the docks, or the trucks, or the boats...

and doesn't get delivered to the suffering.

 

[oneofmany]

Labour invents 33 new crimes every month

Labour invents 33 new crimes every month​

Thanks to Labour, it is now illegal to swim in the wreck of the Titanic or to sell game birds killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day – eventualities overlooked by previous governments.

Labour has made 4,289 activities illegal since the 1997 election, at a rate of about one a day – twice the speed with which the previous Conservative government created crimes.

Gordon Brown was the worst offender, with his government inventing 33 new crimes a month. Tony Blair's administration made 27 new offences each month.
Some of the more inventive crimes dreamt up by Labour include "disturbing a pack of eggs when directed not to by an authorised officer" and reporting the door of a merchant ship to be closed and locked when it isn't.
Labour also introduced laws against activities which would already have been covered by previous legislation – such as "causing a nuclear explosion."

Liberal Democrat home office spokesman Chris Huhne, who brought the figures to light, will criticise the government's administrative binge in a speech tonight.

He will say Labour has spent 12 years "suffering from the most acute and prolonged bout of legislative diarrhoea", calling the rate of 69 new Home Affairs Bills in 12 years "staggering".

 

[oneofmany]

Re: Aid piling up at UN's 'cold beer' compound as red tape keeps aid from desperate

Why does this happen in every disaster (but mostly non-white people)?

Aid arrives and sits in the warehouse, or the docks, or the trucks, or the boats...

and doesn't get delivered to the suffering.

I can't speak for other emergencies but in this case, there apparently was competition over who the "alpha dog" was in terms of leading the rescue operation. America was pushing other nations aside like "You can help but we're dictating things." So things aren't looking good. Supplies land but then there are arguments on how to hand stuff out. So stuff just gets stockpiled in the official camp, while the outsiders are impatiently (and rightfully so) waiting on it to come out. The disorganization and petty power struggles/politics always botch these humanitarian efforts.

 

[oneofmany]

The government has your baby's DNA

The government has your baby's DNA​

(CNN) -- When Annie Brown's daughter, Isabel, was a month old, her pediatrician asked Brown and her husband to sit down because he had some bad news to tell them: Isabel carried a gene that put her at risk for cystic fibrosis.

While grateful to have the information -- Isabel received further testing and she
doesn't have the disease -- the Mankato, Minnesota, couple wondered how the doctor knew about Isabel's genes in the first place. After all, they'd never consented to genetic testing.

It's simple, the pediatrician answered: Newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it's often done without the parents' consent, according to Brad Therrell, director of the National Newborn Screening & Genetics Resource Center.

In many states, such as Florida, where Isabel was born, babies' DNA is stored indefinitely, according to the resource center.

Many parents don't realize their baby's DNA is being stored in a government lab, but sometimes when they find out, as the Browns did, they take action. Parents in Texas, and Minnesota have filed lawsuits, and these parents' concerns are sparking a new debate about whether it's appropriate for a baby's genetic blueprint to be in the government's possession.

"We were appalled when we found out," says Brown, who's a registered nurse. "Why do they need to store my baby's DNA indefinitely? Something on there could affect her ability to get a job later on, or get health insurance."

According to the state of Minnesota's Web site, samples are kept so that tests can be repeated, if necessary, and in case the DNA is ever need to help parents identify a missing or deceased child. The samples are also used for medical research.

Art Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, says he understands why states don't first ask permission to screen babies for genetic diseases. "It's paternalistic, but the state has an overriding interest in protecting these babies," he says.

However, he added that storage of DNA for long periods of time is a different matter.

"I don't see any reason to do that kind of storage," Caplan says. "If it's anonymous, then I don't care. I don't have an issue with that. But if you keep names attached to those samples, that makes me nervous."

DNA given to outside researchers

Genetic testing for newborns started in the 1960s with testing for diseases and conditions that, if undetected, could kill a child or cause severe problems, such as mental retardation. Since then, the screening has helped save countless newborns.

Over the years, many other tests were added to the list. Now, states mandate that newborns be tested for anywhere between 28 and 54 different conditions, and the DNA samples are stored in state labs for anywhere from three months to indefinitely, depending on the state. (To find out how long your baby's DNA is stored, see this state-by-state list.)

Brad Therrell, who runs the federally funded genetic resource consortium, says parents don't need to worry about the privacy of their babies' DNA.

"The states have in place very rigid controls on those specimens," Therrell says. "If my children's DNA were in one of these state labs, I wouldn't be worried a bit."

The specimens don't always stay in the state labs. They're often given to outside researchers -- sometimes with the baby's name attached.

According to a study done by the state of Minnesota, more than 20 scientific papers have been published in the United States since 2000 using newborn blood samples.

The researchers do not have to have parental consent to obtain samples as long as the baby's name is not attached, according to Amy Gaviglio, one of the authors of the Minnesota report. However, she says it's her understanding that if a researcher wants a sample with a baby's name attached, consent first must be obtained from the parents.

More Empowered Patient news and advice

Scientists have heralded this enormous collection of DNA samples as a "gold mine" for doing research, according to Gaviglio.

"This sample population would be virtually impossible to get otherwise," says Gaviglio, a genetic counselor for the Minnesota Department of Health. "Researchers go through a very stringent process to obtain the samples. States certainly don't provide samples to just anyone."

Brown says that even with these assurances, she still worries whether someone could gain access to her baby's DNA sample with Isabel's name attached.

"I know the government says my baby's data will be kept private, but I'm not so sure. I feel like my trust has been taken," she says.

Parents don't give consent to screening

Brown says she first lost trust when she learned that Isabel had received genetic testing in the first place without consent from her or her husband.

"I don't have a problem with the testing, but I wish they'd asked us first," she says.

Since health insurance paid for Isabel's genetic screening, her positive test for a cystic fibrosis gene is now on the record with her insurance company, and the Browns are concerned this could hurt her in the future.

"It's really a black mark against her, and there's nothing we can do to get it off there," Brown says. "And let's say in the future they can test for a gene for schizophrenia or manic-depression and your baby tests positive -- that would be on there, too."

Brown says if the hospital had first asked her permission to test Isabel, now 10 months old, she might have chosen to pay for it out of pocket so the results wouldn't be known to the insurance company.

Caplan says taking DNA samples without asking permission and then storing them "veers from the norm."

"In the military, for instance, they take and store DNA samples, but they tell you they're doing it, and you can choose not to join if you don't like it," he says.

What can parents do

In some states, including Minnesota and Texas, the states are required to destroy a baby's DNA sample if a parent requests it. Parents who want their baby's DNA destroyed are asked to fill out this form in Minnesota and this form in Texas.

Parents in other states have less recourse, says Therrell, who runs the genetic testing group. "You'd probably have to write a letter to the state saying, 'Please destroy my sample,'" he says.

He adds, however, that it's not clear whether a state would necessarily obey your wishes. "I suspect it would be very difficult to get those states to destroy your baby's sample," he says.

 

[LennyNero1972]

Re: The government has your baby's DNA

They have been doing this publicly since 2001. Most folks don't even know about this practice.

 

[oneofmany]

NSA and Google are partnering up

NSA and Google are partnering up

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oMHyjRjyzRQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oMHyjRjyzRQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

 

[Lamarr]

Source


Google To Enlist NSA To Help It Ward Off Cyberattacks

The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack.

 

[TheDynasty]

You people asked for this with your ignorance and complacency..You all get what you deserve.

 

[oneofmany]

th grader in trouble for 2 Inch LEGO gun

4th grader in trouble for 2 Inch LEGO gun

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XDJ0VF5Va68&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XDJ0VF5Va68&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

 

[oneofmany]

US-China faceoff over Taiwan arms deal

US-China faceoff over Taiwan arms deal

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8BJ42OcVRNM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8BJ42OcVRNM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

 

[oneofmany]

Australia to introduce body scanners after failed US attack

Australia to introduce body scanners after failed US attack​

SYDNEY: Australia will introduce full body scans for airline passengers as it strengthens aviation security in response to a failed attempt to bring down a US-bound plane, the government said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said 200 million dollars (173 million US) would be spent over four years on increased airport policing and security technology after the attempted bombing of a jet flying from Amsterdam to Detroit on December 25.

"The Christmas Day attempt showed that no nation can afford to be complacent when it comes to security," he told reporters in Canberra. "The government's highest priority is the safety and security of Australians."

Rudd said the government would spend 28.5 million dollars helping the industry fund a range of new screening technologies, including body scanners, multi-view x-ray machines, and bottle scanners that detect liquid explosives.

"Body scanners will be introduced progressively as an additional screening measure at screening points servicing international departing passengers by early 2011," Rudd said.

Several European countries, including The Netherlands and Britain, began installing body scanners after the December bombing scare while the United States accelerated their installation in airports in the wake of the incident.

Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has been accused of trying to blow up a passenger jet using powerful explosives hidden in his underwear.

Rudd acknowledged that the new measures could create concerns about privacy and the amount of time passengers spent going through security procedures.

"We've got to make a judgment here. An incident has occurred in the United States. You learn practical things from it, you get the best advice, you respond," he said.

The plan, which follows a government review of aviation and the national security adviser's assessment of air security following the attempted attack, also includes toughened screening measures at regional hubs.

Rudd said authorities would also strengthen international cooperation to improve security on flights, as well as boosting security on cargo planes.

 

[oneofmany]

Feds push for tracking cell phones

Feds push for tracking cell phones​

Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.

FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12 heists, and that those phones belonged to men named Tony Hewitt and Corey Duffey. A jury eventually convicted the duo of multiple bank robbery and weapons charges.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department's request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans' privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.

"This is a critical question for privacy in the 21st century," says Kevin Bankston, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing on Friday. "If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the Fourth Amendment."

Not long ago, the concept of tracking cell phones would have been the stuff of spy movies. In 1998's "Enemy of the State," Gene Hackman warned that the National Security Agency has "been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the '40s--they've infected everything." After a decade of appearances in "24" and "Live Free or Die Hard," location-tracking has become such a trope that it was satirized in a scene with Seth Rogen from "Pineapple Express" (2008).

Once a Hollywood plot, now 'commonplace'

Whether state and federal police have been paying attention to Hollywood, or whether it was the other way around, cell phone tracking has become a regular feature in criminal investigations. It comes in two forms: police obtaining retrospective data kept by mobile providers for their own billing purposes that may not be very detailed, or prospective data that reveals the minute-by-minute location of a handset or mobile device.

Obtaining location details is now "commonplace," says Al Gidari, a partner in the Seattle offices of Perkins Coie who represents wireless carriers. "It's in every pen register order these days."

Gidari says that the Third Circuit case could have a significant impact on police investigations within the court's jurisdiction, namely Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; it could be persuasive beyond those states. But, he cautions, "if the privacy groups win, the case won't be over. It will certainly be appealed."

CNET was the first to report on prospective tracking in a 2005 news article. In a subsequent Arizona case, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration tracked a tractor trailer with a drug shipment through a GPS-equipped Nextel phone owned by the suspect. Texas DEA agents have used cell site information in real time to locate a Chrysler 300M driving from Rio Grande City to a ranch about 50 miles away. Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile logs showing the location of mobile phones at the time calls became evidence in a Los Angeles murder trial.

And a mobile phone's fleeting connection with a remote cell tower operated by Edge Wireless is what led searchers to the family of the late James Kim, a CNET employee who died in the Oregon wilderness in 2006 after leaving a snowbound car to seek help.

The way tracking works is simple: mobile phones are miniature radio transmitters and receivers. A cellular tower knows the general direction of a mobile phone (many cell sites have three antennas pointing in different directions), and if the phone is talking to multiple towers, triangulation yields a rough location fix. With this method, accuracy depends in part on the density of cell sites.

The Federal Communications Commission's "Enhanced 911" (E911) requirements allowed rough estimates to be transformed into precise coordinates. Wireless carriers using CDMA networks, such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, tend to use embedded GPS technology to fulfill E911 requirements. AT&T and T-Mobile comply with E911 regulations using network-based technology that computes a phone's location using signal analysis and triangulation between towers.

T-Mobile, for instance, uses a GSM technology called Uplink Time Difference of Arrival, or U-TDOA, which calculates a position based on precisely how long it takes signals to reach towers. A company called TruePosition, which provides U-TDOA services to T-Mobile, boasts of "accuracy to under 50 meters" that's available "for start-of-call, midcall, or when idle."

A 2008 court order to T-Mobile in a criminal investigation of a marriage fraud scheme, which was originally sealed and later made public, says: "T-Mobile shall disclose at such intervals and times as directed by (the Department of Homeland Security), latitude and longitude data that establishes the approximate positions of the Subject Wireless Telephone, by unobtrusively initiating a signal on its network that will enable it to determine the locations of the Subject Wireless Telephone."

'No reasonable expectation of privacy'

In the case that's before the Third Circuit on Friday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, said it needed historical (meaning stored, not future) phone location information because a set of suspects "use their wireless telephones to arrange meetings and transactions in furtherance of their drug trafficking activities."

U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Lenihan in Pennsylvania denied the Justice Department's attempt to obtain stored location data without a search warrant; prosecutors had invoked a different legal procedure. Lenihan's ruling, in effect, would require police to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause--a more privacy-protective standard.

Lenihan's opinion (PDF)--which, in an unusual show of solidarity, was signed by four other magistrate judges--noted that location information can reveal sensitive information such as health treatments, financial difficulties, marital counseling, and extra-marital affairs.

In its appeal to the Third Circuit, the Justice Department claims that Lenihan's opinion "contains, and relies upon, numerous errors" and should be overruled. In addition to a search warrant not being necessary, prosecutors said, because location "records provide only a very general indication of a user's whereabouts at certain times in the past, the requested cell-site records do not implicate a Fourth Amendment privacy interest."

The Obama administration is not alone in making this argument. U.S. District Judge William Pauley, a Clinton appointee in New York, wrote in a 2009 opinion that a defendant in a drug trafficking case, Jose Navas, "did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the cell phone" location. That's because Navas only used the cell phone "on public thoroughfares en route from California to New York" and "if Navas intended to keep the cell phone's location private, he simply could have turned it off."

(Most cases have involved the ground rules for tracking cell phone users prospectively, and judges have disagreed over what legal rules apply. Only a minority has sided with the Justice Department, however.)

Cellular providers tend not to retain moment-by-moment logs of when each mobile device contacts the tower, in part because there's no business reason to store the data, and in part because the storage costs would be prohibitive. They do, however, keep records of what tower is in use when a call is initiated or answered--and those records are generally stored for six months to a year, depending on the company.

Verizon Wireless keeps "phone records including cell site location for 12 months," Drew Arena, Verizon's vice president and associate general counsel for law enforcement compliance, said at a federal task force meeting in Washington, D.C. last week. Arena said the company keeps "phone bills without cell site location for seven years," and stores SMS text messages for only a very brief time.

Gidari, the Seattle attorney, said that wireless carriers have recently extended how long they store this information. "Prior to a year or two ago when location-based services became more common, if it were 30 days it would be surprising," he said.

The ACLU, EFF, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and University of San Francisco law professor Susan Freiwald argue that the wording of the federal privacy law in question allows judges to require the level of proof required for a search warrant "before authorizing the disclosure of particularly novel or invasive types of information." In addition, they say, Americans do not "knowingly expose their location information and thereby surrender Fourth Amendment protection whenever they turn on or use their cell phones."

"The biggest issue at stake is whether or not courts are going to accept the government's minimal view of what is protected by the Fourth Amendment," says EFF's Bankston. "The government is arguing that based on precedents from the 1970s, any record held by a third party about us, no matter how invasively collected, is not protected by the Fourth Amendment."

Update 10:37 a.m. PT: A source inside the U.S. Attorney's Office for the northern district of Texas, which prosecuted the Scarecrow Bandits mentioned in the above article, tells me that this was the first and the only time that the FBI has used the location-data-mining technique to nab bank robbers. It's also worth noting that the leader of this gang, Corey Duffey, was sentenced last month to 354 years (not months, but years) in prison. Another member is facing 140 years in prison.

 

[Cruise]

I knew he had to be a black man to get a sentence like that.

Whites only treat slaves that way.

 

[oneofmany]

1,000 Kids a Year Forced Into Sex Slavery—in Ohio

1,000 Kids a Year Forced Into Sex Slavery—in Ohio​

(NEWSER) – Each year in Ohio some 1,000 US-born children are forced into the sex trade and about 800 immigrants are sexually exploited or pushed into sweatshop labor. Weak trafficking laws, poorly informed law enforcement, and the state's proximity to the Canadian border combine to make Ohio a hub of human trafficking, according to a new report by a state commission.

"Ohio is not only a destination place for foreign-born trafficking victims, but it's also a recruitment place," the head of the study tells the AP. Ohio's rapidly growing immigrant population adds to trafficking networks; thanks to the nearby Toronto airport, a major international trafficking destination, Toledo ranks fourth among US cities for reported trafficking incidents. Compounding the problem, Ohio tends to treat child prostitutes as delinquents and imprison them rather than investigating the adults involved.

 

[LennyNero1972]

Re: 1,000 Kids a Year Forced Into Sex Slavery—in Ohio

1,000 Kids a Year Forced Into Sex Slavery—in Ohio​

This has been happening all over the US since forever. People never pay attention to those milk carton or missing persons reports on billboards.

 

[oneofmany]

This is a reality

This has been happening all over the US since forever. People never pay attention to those milk carton or missing persons reports on billboards.

You are right. Many missing children are not dead - they are turned into prostitutes. There was an old documentary called "The Conspiracy Of Silence" and it was supposed to air on A&E or some other network. Before it was to be aired, extreme pressure was put on the people behind the documentary and it never aired. In fact, all copies of the work was supposed to be destroyed. Yet one copy survived, it's viewable on Google Video and other sites let you download it. In a nutshell, kids in Nebraska were going missing and some were turning up on the streets of the nation's capital, Washington DC, turning tricks for high ranking Republican officials (and other parties). One part in the video spoke of how those investigating the rampant pedophilia and prostitution were getting phone calls and were being harassed to end their investigation. One guy was talking to an anonymous person who was threatening him to stop and the investigator asked, "How far up does the corruption go?" The other guy responded pretty much to the tune of, "It goes straight up to the top of the party." Amazing.

 

[oneofmany]

Control freaks want web licences to end bloggers' anonymity – be very afraid

Control freaks want web licences to end bloggers' anonymity – be very afraid​

The American blogosphere is going increasingly “viral” about a proposal advanced at the recent meeting of the Davos Economic Forum by Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, that an equivalent of a “driver’s licence” should be introduced for access to the web. This totalitarian call has been backed by articles and blogs in Time magazine and the New York Times.

As bloggers have not been slow to point out, the system being proposed is very similar to one that the government of Red China reluctantly abandoned as too repressive. It was inevitable that, sooner or later, the usual unholy alliance of government totalitarians and big business would attempt to end the democratic free-for-all that is the blogosphere. The United Nations is showing similar interest in moving to eliminate free speech.

The recent uprising in the blogosphere that resulted in the overturning of the Global Warming consensus can only have focused our rulers’ attention more acutely on this infuriating challenge to their totalitarian control. “What will go next?” they must be asking themselves. Unrestricted immigration? Punitive taxation? Even the European Union? With the helots exploiting a loophole in the PC Curtain that has otherwise been so remorselessly drawn down over freedom of expression, the internet represents a dangerously subversive force, fulfilling the role in the West that was formerly performed by samizdat publications inside the Soviet Union.

American protesters are most vociferous in defence of their rights because that is their culture. Some of them claim that British people are being dangerously indifferent to the long-term potential for censorship of the so-called Digital Economy Bill being slithered through Parliament by Lord Mandelson. The inference they draw is that, just as Britons supinely submitted to firearms legislation that has led to a situation where “only the bad guys have guns”, we may be sleepwalking into internet slavery.

The technique is familiar. The powers-that-be allow a scandalous situation to develop whereby no serious attempt is made to police paedophile, pornographic and criminal activity on the web. Then the authorities use the excuse of public concern to overreact and impose Draconian controls that police ordinary citizens but are usually circumvented by criminals. It is a familiar scenario, offline as well as in cyberspace.

A “driver’s licence” for the web would be Christmas every day of the year for the control freaks. One can all too easily imagine the criteria applied to licence applications. (“Name? Delingpole…? You wot! ’Ere, I’ve got your number, mate – you’re that bloke wot feeds polar-bear steaks to kids innit. Internet licence? I should coco! On yer bike, mate, it’s more than my job’s worth to be seen talking to you…”)

Without the internet, the completely fictitious global warming “consensus” would still be unchallenged, state power massively enlarged, $54 trillion of Western taxpayers’ money flooding into the coffers of carbon companies and people’s lives made miserable by totalitarian restrictions imposed to counter a non-existent threat. I forecast that the right to anonymity on the internet will become one of the most fiercely contested issues over the coming decade. Be very afraid…

 

[oneofmany]

There has been no global warming since 1995

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995​

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.

That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realised that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.

But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.

Professor Jones criticised those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, sceptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.

He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled.

 

[Panameno718]

Re: There has been no global warming since 1995

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995​

 

[oneofmany]

Blackwater accused of defrauding US government

Blackwater accused of defrauding US government​

The troubled American private security company Blackwater faced fresh controversy today when two former employees accused it of defrauding the US government for years, including billing for a Filipina prostitute on its payroll in Afghanistan.

According to Melan Davis, a former employee, Blackwater listed the woman for payment under the "morale welfare recreation" category.

The company, which allegedly employed her in Kabul, billed the *government for her plane tickets and monthly salary, Davis said.

Blackwater, renamed Xe last year apparently because of the bad publicity attached to its original name, is among the biggest private security firms employed by the state department and Pentagon in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The most notorious incident involving Blackwater was the shooting of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007. Charges against Blackwater employees in the US over the incident were dropped last year, prompting the Iraqi government to order hundreds of its security staff out of the country within the next few days.

The latest accusations are contained in court records that have been recently unsealed and reveal details of a lawsuit by Davis and her husband, Brad, who both worked for Blackwater. According to Associated Press, the records say they had personal knowledge of the company falsifying invoices, double-billing federal agencies and charging the government for personal and inappropriate items whose real purpose was hidden.

They said they witnessed "systematic" fraud on the company's security contracts with the state department in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with the department of homeland security and federal emergency management agency in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

There was no immediate response today from the company headquarters in North Carolina.

Melan Davis, who was fired from the company, is challenging the legality of her dismissal, claiming it was because she questioned the billing. Her husband voluntarily resigned from the company.

According to the lawsuit, Melan Davis raised concerns about the company's bookkeeping with her bosses in March 2006. The lawsuit claims she was told to "back off," and that she "would never win a medal for saving the government money".

The Davis couple launched the lawsuit in December 2008, one of a number against Blackwater.Brad Davis, a former Marine, served as a team leader and security guard, including in Iraq. He resigned from the company.

The Washington Post said the couple had made their allegations that Blackwater defrauded the government as part of a false claims lawsuit, which allows whistleblowers to win a portion of any public money that the government recovers as a result of the information.

The justice department has chosen not to join them in pursuing their civil suit, a decision that led to the court papers being unsealed this week.

The Post said that Melan Davis travelled to Amman, Jordan, where she and two co-workers spent hours generating reams of false invoices for plane travel at inflated rates.

 

[oneofmany]

French troops used as 'nuclear guinea pigs' in the 1960s

French troops used as 'nuclear guinea pigs' in the 1960s​

France used its servicemen as human guinea pigs to test the effects of radiation exposure, it was claimed yesterday.

Le Parisien said that in April 1961, about 300 soldiers were sent into areas of Algeria where atomic devices had been set off.

Quoting from a government report, it said the aim was to study 'the physical and psychological effect of atomic weapons on humans'.

Defence Minister Herve Morin told the newspaper he had no knowledge of the report.

He said: 'The (radioactive) dosages received during the tests were very low.'

Some veterans who worked on the experiments in Algeria, and subsequent tests on French Polynesian atolls, have said they were ordered to lie down and cover their eyes during the explosions, wearing nothing but shorts and t-shirts.

The newspaper reported that around 300 soldiers participated in the 1961 test and that patrols were ordered to enter the affected area right after the explosion and head for the point where the device was set off.

'A patrol of cross-country vehicles was ordered to carry out a raid on point zero to study the possibility of attack in a contaminated zone,' it said.

France ran nuclear tests in French Polynesia between 1966 and 1996. Several veterans have said they were told to sail into affected areas immediately after the blast to examine the impact.

 

[oneofmany]

France leapfrogs past Australia in Big Brother stakes

France leapfrogs past Australia in Big Brother stakes​

France yesterday put in its bid for an unlikely prize, becoming the first western country to make even Australia look liberal when it comes to state powers of internet censorship.

In the teeth of fierce opposition both inside and outside parliament, the National Assembly approved, by 312 votes to 214 against, a first reading of a bill on Internal Security - the quaintly titled "LOPPSI 2".

LOPPSI - otherwise known as Loi d'Orientation et de Programmation pour la SÈcuritÈ IntÈrieure (pdf)- is a ragbag of measures designed to make France a safer place. Like similar UK legislation - most notably the various Criminal Justice acts brought in over the last decade - LOPPSI brings together a number of apparently unrelated proposals which would severely restrict individual rights in all walks of life.

Last week, for instance, the Assembly agreed to include within the new law a measure that would allow Prefects to sign off on a curfew for children aged under 13, out unaccompanied between the hours of 11 pm and 6 am.

The bill also includes measures that would increase police spend on "security", create additional penalties for counterfeiting and ID theft, increase CCTV surveillance, and widen access to the Police DNA database.

However, it is in the online area that some of the most radical proposals are to be found, with the criminalisation of online ID theft, provision for the police to tap online connections in the course of investigations, and most controversially of all, allowing the state to order ISPs to block (filter) specific internet URLs according to ministerial diktat.

It has also been suggested that the state should have the right to plant covert trojans to monitor individual PC usage.

Whilst the latter measures are put forward on the grounds of child protection, critics have been quick to point out that, in the absence of any judicial oversight mechanism, this is a power just waiting to be abused.

A broad coalition of groups and individuals outside the French parliamentary system have been scathing in their condemnation. LOPPSI, a site dedicated to this law, writes: "The French Government has got it worked out. To place limits on the free space that is the internet, they have to control it: but how can they destroy such a space without fierce resistance?"

The dishonest answer, according to this site, is to use the paedophile as a pretext. Because, they say "the whole world is instantly terrified". Despite this, the measures proposed will do little to safeguard children - and nothing to prevent anyone who can afford to spend €5 a month from accessing the same material via VPN.

Similar arguments have been put forward in the Assembly by a number of Deputies. Patrick Braouzec and Michel VaxËs proposed the deletion of this power, arguing that it does not really solve the child pornography issue. They argued that this approach could be a mistake as filtering will allow hiding the evolution of the phenomenon, whilst Paedophiles who use the internet are very capable of getting around any filtering techniques by using crypting and anonymisation methods, thus being "paradoxically, better protected". Amendments along the same lines were also put forward by Deputies Lionel Tardy and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan.

Meanwhile, the French Data Protection Authority, CNIL, has made plain its concerns with several of the proposed measures. CNIL expressed fears related to several provisions of the draft, especially in relation to the collection and retention of data, installation of Trojan horses on computers and the surveillance of public access to the Internet.

The legislation still has some way to go. However, the sentiment contained within the draft that passed yesterday is populist and, on the voting evidence so far, many Deputies are clearly well aware of that.

 

[LennyNero1972]

Re: This is a reality

You are right. Many missing children are not dead - they are turned into prostitutes. There was an old documentary called "The Conspiracy Of Silence" and it was supposed to air on A&E or some other network. Before it was to be aired, extreme pressure was put on the people behind the documentary and it never aired. In fact, all copies of the work was supposed to be destroyed. Yet one copy survived, it's viewable on Google Video and other sites let you download it. In a nutshell, kids in Nebraska were going missing and some were turning up on the streets of the nation's capital, Washington DC, turning tricks for high ranking Republican officials (and other parties). One part in the video spoke of how those investigating the rampant pedophilia and prostitution were getting phone calls and were being harassed to end their investigation. One guy was talking to an anonymous person who was threatening him to stop and the investigator asked, "How far up does the corruption go?" The other guy responded pretty much to the tune of, "It goes straight up to the top of the party." Amazing.

They ship those kids overseas as well, usually to the middle east. There is an excellent film about this called "Spartan" with Val Kilmer, see it no matter what if you haven't already.

 

[oneofmany]

Girl's arrest for doodling raises concerns about zero tolerance

Girl's arrest for doodling raises concerns about zero tolerance​

(CNN) -- There was no profanity, no hate. Just the words, "I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 " scrawled on the classroom desk with a green marker.

Alexa Gonzalez, an outgoing 12-year-old who likes to dance and draw, expected a lecture or maybe detention for her doodles earlier this month. Instead, the principal of the Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York, called police, and the seventh-grader was taken across the street to the police precinct.

Alexa's hands were cuffed behind her back, and tears gushed as she was escorted from school in front of teachers and -- the worst audience of all for a preadolescent girl -- her classmates.

"They put the handcuffs on me, and I couldn't believe it," Alexa recalled. "I didn't want them to see me being handcuffed, thinking I'm a bad person."

Alexa is no longer facing suspension, according a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education. Still, the case of the doodling preteen is raising concerns about the use of zero tolerance policies in schools.

Critics say schools and police have gone too far, overreacting and using well-intended rules for incidents involving nonviolent offenses such as drawing on desks, writing on other school property or talking back to teachers.

"We are arresting them at younger and younger ages [in cases] that used to be covered with a trip to the principal's office, not sending children to jail," said Emma Jordan-Simpson, executive director of the Children's Defense Fund, a national children's advocacy group.

There aren't any national studies documenting how often minors become involved with police for nonviolent crimes in schools. Tracking the incidents depends on how individual schools keep records. Much of the information remains private, since it involves juveniles.

But one thing is sure: Alexa's case isn't the first in the New York area. One of the first cases to gain national notoriety was that of Chelsea Fraser. In 2007, the 13-year-old wrote "Okay" on her desk, and police handcuffed and arrested her. She was one of several students arrested in the class that day; the others were accused of plastering the walls with stickers.

At schools across the country, police are being asked to step in. In November, a food fight at a middle school in Chicago, Illinois, resulted in the arrests of 25 children, some as young as 11, according to the Chicago Police Department.

The Strategy Center, a California-based civil rights group that tracks zero tolerance policies, found that at least 12,000 tickets were issued to tardy or truant students by Los Angeles Police Department and school security officers in 2008. The tickets tarnished students' records and brought them into the juvenile court system, with fines of up to $250 for repeat offenders.

The Strategy Center opposes the system. "The theory is that if we fine them, then they won't be late again," said Manuel Criollo, lead organizer of the "No to Pre-Prison" campaign at The Strategy Center. "But they just end up not going to school at all."

His group is trying to stop the LAPD and the school district from issuing the tickets. The Los Angeles School District says the policy is designed to reduce absenteeism.

And another California school -- Highland High School in Palmdale -- found that issuing tardiness tickets drastically cut the number of pupils being late for class and helped tone down disruptive behavior. The fifth ticket issued landed a student in juvenile traffic court.

In 1998, New York City took its zero tolerance policies to the next level, placing school security officers under the New York City Police Department. Today, there are nearly 5,000 employees in the NYPD School Safety Division. Most are not police officers, but that number exceeds the total police force in Washington, D.C.

In contrast, there are only about 3,000 counselors in New York City's public school system. Critics of zero tolerance policies say more attention should be paid to social work, counseling and therapy.

"Instead of a graduated discipline approach, we see ... expulsions at the drop of a hat," said Donna Lieberman, an attorney with the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"If they have been suspended once, their likelihood of being pushed out of the school increases," she said. "They may end up in jail at some point in their life."
One of Lieberman's clients was in sixth grade when police arrested her in 2007 for doodling with her friend in class. The child, called M.M. in court filings to protect her identity, tried to get tissues to remove the marks, a complaint states.

Lieberman says police subjected M.M. to unlawful search and seizure. A class-action lawsuit, filed in January on behalf of five juveniles, is pending. It maintains that inadequately trained and poorly supervised police personnel are aggressive toward students when no criminal activity is taking place.

Several studies have confirmed that the time an expelled child spends away from school increases the chance that child will drop out and wind up in the criminal justice system, according to a January 2010 study from the Advancement Project, a legal action group.

Alexa Gonzalez missed three days of school because of her arrest. She spent those days throwing up, and it was a challenge to catch up on her homework when she returned to school, she said. Her mother says she had never been in trouble before the doodling incident.

New York attorney Joe Rosenthal, who is representing Alexa, plans to file a lawsuit accusing police and school officials of violating Alexa's constitutional rights. New York City Department of Education officials declined to comment specifically on any possible legal matters.

"Our mission is to make sure that public schools are a safe and supportive environment for all students," said Margie Feinberg, an education department spokeswoman.

Several media outlets have reported that school officials admitted the arrest was a "mistake," but when asked by CNN, Feinberg declined to comment specifically on the incident. She referred CNN to the NYPD.

The NYPD did not return CNN's repeated phone calls and e-mails. It is unknown whether charges will be pressed against Alexa.

Kenneth Trump, a security expert who founded the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm, said focusing on security is essential to the safety of other students. He said zero tolerance policies can work if "common sense is applied."

Michael Soguero recalls being arrested himself in 2005 when, as principal at Bronx Guild School, he tried to stop an officer from handcuffing one of his students. A charge of assault against him was later dropped. He says police working in schools need specific training on how to work with children.

In Clayton County, Georgia, juvenile court judge Steven Teske is working to reshape zero tolerance policies in schools. He wants the courts to be a last resort. In 2003, he created a program in Clayton County's schools that distinguishes felonies from misdemeanors.

The result? The number of students detained by the school fell by 83 percent, his report found. The number of weapons detected on campus declined by 73 percent.

Last week, after hearing about 12-year-old Alexa's arrest in New York, he wasn't shocked.

"There is zero intelligence when you start applying zero tolerance across the board," he said. "Stupid and ridiculous things start happening."

 

[oneofmany]

Woman, 61, arrested for asking ‘why'

Woman, 61, arrested for asking ‘why'​

Four women, two of them well into middle age, were discussing funeral plans for a friend when an Atlanta police officer told them to move.

Three did but one asked “why.” In answer to her question, Minnie Carey, then 61, was handcuffed, put into a police wagon and taken to jail, where she was held for nine hours.

The Citizen Review Board found that Atlanta Police officer Brandy Dolson had violated APD policies and had falsely arrested Carey.

“I was blown away,” Carey told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I had heard about people in the community being harassed by the police … It really didn’t shock me as much as it probably would have if I had not heard of people going to jail for no reason. I figured I was just another one.

“But I had the right to ask ‘why' I had to move,” she said.

The Citizen Review Board – resurrected after the 2006 fatal police shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in her home – voted in a recent meeting to sustain Carey’s false arrest claim and the allegation that the officer had violated the department’s arrest policies.

“This case will illustrate to the public how OPS [Office of Professional Standards] responds [to allegations of police misconduct] … There have been some concerns that OPS has not sustained complaints,” said Seth Kirschenbaum, an attorney who is vice-chairman of the board.

“We know, historically, OPS investigations drag on,” said another board member, Sharese Shields.

Still, the board held back on its punishment recommendation to APD until the board’s investigator could gather more information about Dolson’s history with the department, how many public complaints had been filed against him, what kind of complaints have been brought and the outcome of those cases.

Kirschenbaum said in a hearing last week at least 18 complaints had been filed against Dolson since 2001, but only three – all those traffic issues – had been sustained while three other complaints are pending.

Dolson appeared when the Citizen Review Board called him for an interview last year, but he refused to answer questions. The police union has told all APD officers that the department’s policy only requires that they show up when the Citizen Review Board calls, but they don’t have to answer questions because they may not be protected from criminal charges.

Dolson, reached at his home Wednesday, declined to comment. APD spokesman Lt. Curtis Davenport said Dolson is "suspended without pay for an unrelated incident."

Davenport also said the OPS case had been returned to Zone 5 with questions so the internal affairs case remains pending. APD’s Office of Professional Standards has not contacted Carey since her initial interview last summer, five months after the incident, she said.

“What we have here is an abuse of power. He abused his power of having a badge and a gun,” said Kirschenbaum. “That [now] 62-year-old woman got handcuffed, put in a paddy wagon and held in jail for nine hours."

Carey’s only offense, Kirschenbaum said, was that she “was more boisterous than they would have liked when she asked ‘why’… It was just the police wanted these people to move. That [talking on the sidewalk] appears to be the only thing these ladies were doing. There’s no basis to arrest someone for talking loudly.”

Carey and one of the women who was with her that afternoon said Carey was not loud.

The accounts provided by Carey, Dolson, Dolson’s partner and witnesses are essentially the same, according to records.

Carey met three friends on the sidewalk outside the Boulevard Lotto convenience store mid-afternoon last March 26, and for a few moments they talked about upcoming services for a friend who had died after she was hit by a car in front of the store where they were standing.

Dolson and his partner pulled up and told the four women to “move it.”

All agreed that the women were not blocking the sidewalk and that the women were the only people on the sidewalk.

Three women started walking away but Carey didn’t, asking “why” instead.

An account given by Dolson's partner, Jamie Nelson, was that Carey “yelled ‘why’ with a loud manner and refused to leave after we instructed her several times to do so.”

Carey and one of the women with her, 56-year-old Diane Ward, told the AJC there was no shouting.

All the same, Dolson’s answer to Carey’s question was “because I said so,” according to the file.

“I’m a citizen and I’m a taxpayer and I have a right to be here. I’m merely trying to find out about a sister’s funeral,” Carey responded, according to records.

That's when Carey was handcuffed, her hands behind her back, and put into the back of the patrol car – the only time she has been arrested in the 15 years she has lived in Atlanta.

Forty-five minutes later she was moved to a police van with the doors closed despite the heat, where she waited another 45 minutes with others accused of violating city ordinances.

“I was very upset and very angry. Here I am being treated as if I’m not a human, not a citizen of this country,” Carey said in an interview. “I was in this little hot box. There was no air. I was perspiring so much my glasses were sliding off my face.”

On her signature, Carey was released from the city jail around 12:30 a.m. the next day. She took a taxi home to her apartment on Boulevard.

Carey, a diabetic, had gone without food until she got home hours later. She said the handcuffs caused her hands to swell.

Carey had three court dates – the first time her case was not heard because there was no prosecutor and the second and third times it was not heard because Dolson was not in court.

The disorderly conduct charge was dismissed at the third court hearing, she said.

"I had heard about people in the community being harassed by the police,” Carey said. “A neighbor of mine went to jail for sitting on her sister’s car. It was racial profiling because of the community.”

Davenport, the APD spokesman, said it is against departmental policy “to do any sort of racial profiling and any employee doing so will be disciplined to the fullest.” Dolson, the officer who arrested Carey, is black.

Carey said, however, that patrol officers -- regardless of their race -- seem to focus on her neighborhood, and others have had experiences similar to hers.

“It was horrible. It was absolutely horrible,” Carey said. “I couldn’t believe you could just pick people up off the street. It’s a constant problem with the police over here.”

 

[oneofmany]

H1N1 shot blamed for Calgary woman's rare disorder

H1N1 shot blamed for Calgary woman's rare disorder​

A Calgary woman regrets getting the H1N1 shot after her doctor told her it likely caused a rare and painful disorder.

Norma Goldring said she felt compelled to get an H1N1 vaccine because she is diabetic and has had a heart attack, two factors that Alberta Health noted as putting people at higher risk for serious complications from swine flu.

But soon after getting the shot last winter, Goldring felt ill.

"My body was aching and I was throwing up. Then I developed a spot on my leg," she said.

The rash spread quickly and Goldring ended up in hospital on Christmas Day. "By the time I got to emergency, it spread pretty bad and turned to blisters."

Her kidneys were shutting down. Doctors eventually diagnosed it as vasculitis, an inflammation that destroys blood vessels.

Her doctor, who asked not to be named, concluded it was probably connected to the H1N1 shot. Goldring, according to her doctor, is one of only 31 people since 1974 to have had this type of reaction to a flu shot.

Won't get shot again, says Goldring

Now, even using a walker to get from her living room to her kitchen causes her excruciating pain. She is on pain killers and steroids.

"It was like I was put through a fire. It was like someone lit me on fire," she said.

Goldring said she won't get a flu shot again. Desmond Fordyce, her partner, said he is worried the vaccine wasn't tested properly before widespread public vaccinations began.

"I think they're killing you more than giving you something for making you better," he said.

Dr. Glen Armstrong, head of the microbiology and infectious diseases department at the University of Calgary, said the H1N1 vaccine is safe. "It's very clear that the benefits of having people get vaccinated, far, far outweigh the risks of the very small number of adverse reactions to the vaccine."

So far, 25 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed across Canada. Nearly 6,000 H1N1 shots resulted in an adverse reaction, of which more than 200 were considered serious. Health officials are investigating 13 post-shot deaths.

Alberta health officials told CBC News they have talked to Goldring's doctor and will continue to investigate what happened in her case.

The province has seen 1,276 people hospitalized with H1N1 since April 2009 and 71 deaths have been connected to the virus.

 

[oneofmany]

Racist birth control? Claims Israel culling Ethiopian Jews

Racist birth control? Claims Israel culling Ethiopian Jews

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oljrngl5Iwc&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oljrngl5Iwc&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

 

[oneofmany]

Senate votes to renew Patriot Act

Senate votes to renew Patriot Act​

The Senate Wednesday evening passed a one-year extension to the Patriot Act, a Bush-era homeland security law that has been much maligned by Democrats but described by Republicans as key to the war on terror.

Several key components of the law are set to expire Sunday, including wire-tapping, surveillance and seizure provisions. If passed by the House, they will expire on Feb. 28, 2011.

The law was passed by voice vote, which does not require debate on the Senate floor.

Democrats have been extremely critical of the law, which has been described as overreaching and reactionary. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), in a statement Wednesday, said he "would have preferred to add oversight and judicial review improvements" to the act's renewal.

 

[oneofmany]

Criticising GM crops may land you in jail

Criticising GM crops may land you in jail​

BANGALORE: Criticising Genetically Modified (GM) products could land you in jail — if the draconian draft Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill (BRAB) of 2009, which will be tabled in the current session of the parliament by the UPA government, is passed.

In an unprecedented muzzle on the right to freedom of speech of the citizen, Chapter 13 section 63 of the draft bill says, “Whoever, without any evidence or scientific record misleads the public about the safety of the organisms and products…shall be punished with imprisonment for a term that shall not be less than six months but which may extend to one year and with fine which may extend to two lakh rupees or with both.” The BRAI Bill drafted by the department of bio-technology under the Ministry of Science and Technology comes on the heels of a moratorium on Bt Brinjal announced by the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh.

“What they are doing is much worse than what Hitler or Mussolini did. Through this bill, they want to take absolute authority. They are behaving like a vendor instead of a regulator,” Pushpa M Bhargava, a member of the Supreme Court appointed Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) said.

There are also other provisions in this bill which are disconcerting.

Article 27 (1) of the bill seeks to keep the information related to the research, approval and science of the GM Products out of the purview of the Right to Information ( RTI) Act.

In other words, farmers, NGO’s and Environmental groups that have been on the forefront of the campaign against BT Brinjal and other genetically modified crops, can longer obtain information about it.

Not only that, the three member experts of the Department of Biotechnology will override any existing legislation about GM technology in the states.

The draft bill also states that the BRAI will set up its own appellate tribunal which will have the jurisdiction to hear arguments on the issues concerning biotechnology. In case of any disputes, petitioners can only approach the Supreme Court of India.

“The BRAI bill is more draconian than what the nation faced during the Emergency ‘’ says Devinder Sharma, writer and Food Policy Analyst. “If the Bill was already in force, I would have been in jail.

Jairam Ramesh too would have been in jail for challenging the health and environmental claims of the company developing Bt Brinjal,” he said. The bill demonstrates the extraordinary hold the multinational companies have over the UPA government, he added. Kavitha Kurugunti of Kheti Virasat Mission said that this bill is just a way to silence the voices who are opposed to GM technology.

 

[oneofmany]

Head of 'Climategate' research unit admits he hid data - because it was 'standard

Head of 'Climategate' research unit admits he hid data - because it was 'standard practice'​

The scientist at the heart of the 'Climategate' row over global warming hid data 'because it was standard practice', it emerged today.

Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's prestigious climatic research unit, today admitted to MPs that the centre withheld raw station data about global temperatures from around the world.

The world-renowned research unit has been under fire since private emails, which sceptics claimed showed evidence of scientists manipulating climate data, were hacked from the university's server and posted online.

Now, an independent probe is examining allegations stemming from the emails that scientists hid, manipulated or deleted data to exaggerate the case for man-made global warming.

Prof Jones today said it was not 'standard practice' in climate science to release data and methodology for scientific findings so that other scientists could check and challenge the research.

He also said the scientific journals which had published his papers had never asked to see it.

Appearing before the committee's hearing into the disclosure of data from the CRU alongside Prof Jones, the university's vice chancellor Prof Edward Acton said he had not seen any evidence of flaws in the overall science of climate change - but said he was planning this week to announce the chair of a second independent inquiry, which will look into the science produced at CRU.

Challenged about one email in which he tells a sceptic he does not want to give him data because it will be misused, Prof Jones admitted: 'I have obviously written some pretty awful emails'.

But Prof Jones insisted the scientific findings on climate change were robust and verifiable.

And he said 80 per cent of the raw data used to create a series of average global temperatures showing that the world was getting warmer, along with methodology from the Met Office - but not CRU - on how the average temperatures were calculated, had been released.

According to the University of East Anglia (UEA) much of the data could not have been released without the permission of the countries which generated the information - and that while the majority had now allowed the figures to be released, a handful had refused to let CRU publish it.

Prof Jones said a 'deluge' of Freedom of Information requests last July had prompted the unit - which has only three full time staff - to try and get more of the data released.

The circumstances surrounding the emails are also the subject of an inquiry commissioned by the university, and separately by Norfolk police.

 

[oneofmany]

One in four Germans wants microchip under skin: poll

One in four Germans wants microchip under skin: poll​

HANOVER, Germany (AFP) - It sounds like something from a sci-fi film, but one in four Germans would be happy to have a microchip implanted in their body if they derived concrete benefits from it, a poll Monday showed.

The survey, by German IT industry lobby group BITKOM, was intended to show how the division between real life and the virtual world is increasingly coming down, one of the main themes of the CeBIT trade fair that kicks off Tuesday.

In all, 23 percent of around 1,000 respondents in the survey said they would be prepared to have a chip inserted under their skin "for certain benefits".

Around one in six (16 percent) said they would wear an implant to allow emergency services to rescue them more quickly in the event of a fire or accident.

And five percent of people said they would be prepared to have an implant to make their shopping go more smoothly.

But 72 percent said they would not "under any circumstances" allow electronics in their body.

The results appeared to surprise even the high-tech sector.

"This is of course an extreme example of how far people can imagine networks going," said BITKOM chief August-Wilhelm Scheer.

The CeBIT, the world's biggest high-tech fair, throws its doors open to the public on Tuesday, with Spain, the current EU president, this year's guest of honour.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero were due to speak later Monday in an official opening ceremony before touring the exhibition early Tuesday.

A total of 4,157 firms from 68 countries are to unveil their latest gadgets, a decline of three percent on last year as many high-tech firms stay away amid strong competition from other events.