Aftermath News

Witnesses heard Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs talk about how easy it would be to “toss a grenade” at innocent people.

Gibbs formed what one called a “kill team” to randomly execute Afghan civilians while on patrol.

Salon.com | Aug 25, 2010

Five soldiers accused of killing civilians in Afghanistan are now facing additional charges of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder — a plot that allegedly began when one soldier discussed how easy it would be to “toss a grenade” at Afghan civilians, The Seattle Times reported Wednesday.

The five soldiers were charged with murder in June for the deaths of three Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province this year. According to charging summaries newly released by the Army, additional allegations of conspiracy have since been filed against those soldiers, and seven others have been charged in connection with the conspiracy or with attempting to cover it up.

The new charges arose from the investigations into the killings and into a brutal assault on an enlisted man who had informed on soldiers smoking hashish, The Times reported. The informant reported hearing soldiers talk about killing civilians.

The Army told The Associated Press Wednesday that it is redacting charging documents that detail the new allegations and expects to release them next week.

As part of the widening probe, investigators have interviewed platoon mates and defendants, The Times reported, citing documents that defense attorneys filed with an Army magistrate judge, as well as interviews with defense attorneys. Two of the defense lawyers did not immediately respond to e-mails from the AP on Wednesday.

Some platoon members told investigators that Army Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs began joking with other soldiers last December about how easy it would be to “toss a grenade” at Afghan civilians and kill them, the newspaper said. One soldier responded that it was a stupid idea, and another believed Gibbs was “feeling out the platoon.”

But eventually, Gibbs formed what one called a “kill team” to randomly execute Afghan civilians while on patrol, the documents said. No motive was discussed.

Gibbs has denied any involvement in the killings.

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The school principal said Hitler was a ‘fairly famous person’

An Australian school has apologised after a child dressed as Adolf Hitler won a costume parade.

Telegraph | Aug 27, 2010

The boy was judged best dressed among his class of nine and 10-years-olds by the principal and other teachers in a book week contest, with the costume which featured the swastika.

The unnamed Perth Catholic school sent a letter of apology to parents after a number of complaints that commending an outfit of the Nazi dictator was inappropriate.

“It’s a one-off thing that in retrospect we’d do differently,” the principal, who was not named, told The West Australian newspaper, defending himself by saying Hitler “was a fairly famous person”.

The letter to parents said future dress-up days would be restricted to characters “appropriate for primary school-aged students” and said care would be taken to ensure students understood the “sensitivities” around certain people.

Meanwhile a US High School principal has apologised after a quote from Hitler ended up in the school yearbook.

Easton Area High School Principal Michael Koch, said the quote, which reads “And in the last analysis, success is what matters”, was a mistake and oversight by the administration.

The Tiny Bugs Have Developed Resistance to Most Pesticides

CBS | Aug 25, 2010

By Cynthia Bowers

COLUMBUS, Ohio -  Decades after bedbugs were eradicated they’re making a big comeback. Terminix – a nationwide exterminator – said Wednesday that New York and Philadelphia have the biggest infestations and four cities in Ohio are in the top 15.

There is something that can stop bedbugs but we can’t use it. Fighting the tiny bedbugs has become big business for Columbus, Ohio, exterminator Lonnie Alonso, who has no idea why his state is under siege.

“Eighty to 90 percent of the phone calls we get every single day are related to bedbugs,” says Alonso.

Nationally since 2006 the money spent eradicating bedbugs has more than doubled, topping $250 million dollars, reports CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers. New York City leads the misery index, where even couples like the Krause’s living in upscale apartments are finding themselves infested.

“I woke up and found that I had a couple of bites on me,” says Amber Krause. “That’s when I was pretty sure it was leading to bedbugs.”

America is suddenly crawling with these critters because they’ve developed a resistance to most pesticides. Experts say there is an effective weapon – a chemical called Propoxur – that keeps killing for up to five weeks. The EPA says the chemical could be dangerous to children. The government recently said no more could be manufactured for use inside.

“As of a week and a half ago, I ordered the last 170 cases that my supplier was able to find,” says Alonso.

No state is tackling this plague as aggressively as Ohio. It’s even petitioned the EPA for permission to continue using the pesticide Propoxur indoors as its last best option. Even as they await approval, time and stores of the toxin are running out.

“The other options of newer technologies, newer chemicals that will come down the pike, those things will take a long time. We need short term solutions,” says Alonso.

Bedbugs can live up to a year. Each female can give birth to as many as 500. Alonso says unlike roaches or ants, these insects feast on you, which is why they settle on beds, couches, and recliners.

Columbus grandmother Delores Stewart has been fighting the pests for nearly a year. “I don’t want to go to bed. I don’t want them crawling all over me,” she says.

The EPA is standing firm on the ban of Propoxur indoors but offers these suggestions: seal cracks and crevices along baseboards; remove clutter; use a special mattress cover; dry clothing and sheets at high temperatures.

“Don’t let them get out of control because once you let them get out control you can’t handle them,” says Stewart.

Scientists say the perfect parasite never kills its host but as millions of Americans have found out, it can drive them crazy.

Raw Story | Aug 28, 2010

By Daniel Tencer

A federal cybersecurity bill that critics say creates a presidential “kill switch” for the Internet could be added on to a defense spending bill and passed without much debate, technology news sources report.

Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE), one of the sponsors of the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, told GovInfoSecurity.com that the Senate is considering attaching the bill as a rider to a defense authorization bill likely to pass through Congress before the mid-term elections.

“It’s hard to get a measure like cybersecurity legislation passed on its own,” Carper said.

Carper, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), introduced the bill in June in an effort to combat cyber-crime and the threat of online warfare and terrorism. Critics say the bill would allow the president to disconnect Internet networks and force private websites to comply with broad cybersecurity measures. Future US presidents would have those powers renewed indefinitely.

The bill  states that Internet service providers, search engines and other Internet-related businesses “shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by the Department of Homeland Security.

But many observers point out that that doesn’t necessarily amount to a “kill switch” — and, in fact, the president already has the power to shut off the Internet. As Time magazine points out, the Communications Act of 1934 grants the president the power to shut down wire communications during a time of war, and the Internet is now recognized as a wire communication medium.

Yet the proposed law authorizes the president to declare “cyber emergencies” — potentially expanding the president’s power to shut down the Internet to times when the US is not technically at war.

And even some backers of the proposed legislation argue the bill is too broad and vague, and the powers granted to the executive branch could be unpredictable as a result.

Full story

Raw Story | Aug 27, 2010

Veterans group: CIA blocking lawsuit over experiments on troops

By Daniel Tencer

An advocacy group working on behalf of Vietnam veterans has asked a federal judge in California to sanction the CIA, saying the spy agency has been blocking efforts to uncover its role in alleged experiments on US soldiers from the 1950s to 1970s.

The Vietnam Veterans of America filed a lawsuit on behalf of six Vietnam War veterans in January, 2009, claiming that the CIA had used an estimated 7,800 US service members as “guinea pigs” in experiments involving “at least 250, but as many as 400 chemical and biological agents,” according to Courthouse News.

Among the chemicals the lawsuit alleges were used on the soldiers were LSD, sarin and phosgene nerve gases, cyanide, PCP and even THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

The lawsuit described it as a “vast program of human experimentation” that was “shrouded in secrecy” and carried out without the informed consent of the experiment subjects.

“In 1970, [the CIA] provided Congress with an alphabetical list showing that they had tested 145 drugs during Projects Bluebird, Artichoke, MKULTRA and MKDELTA,” the lawsuit stated, as quoted at Courthouse News.

As the defendant in the suit, the CIA is obliged, by judge’s orders, to hand over data relevant to the lawsuit. But the VVA has asked a judge to sanction the CIA, saying the agency has ignored or blocked its requests for information, and has released only a small portion of the relevant documents.

The VVA’s first attempts to obtain CIA data on the experiments “have been pending for over a year, during which time [the CIA] have attempted to sidestep their discovery obligations at every turn, withholding (or even refusing to search for) large volumes of relevant, responsive documents [and] refusing to provide … witnesses to testify about their document searches and certain substantive topics,” the motion (PDF), filed in a California federal court this week, states.

The VVA says the CIA had refused to use “a routine protective order” that would restrict any sensitive CIA data to within the courtroom, and instead blacked out large parts of relevant documents. The plaintiffs say the CIA refused to provide the names of the test subjects involved, allowing only the names of the six defendants who filed the lawsuit.

“Even more unbelievably, it appears that defendants have yet to search even the most obvious location for documents — Edgewood Arsenal itself,” the motion states, referring to the location northeast of Baltimore where the experiments are said to have been carried out.

The motion states the CIA “served no responses or objections whatsoever” to the VVA’s second and third requests for information.

The motion asks that the judge, in addition to sanctioning the CIA, also order the CIA to pay the VVA’s costs associated with its attempts to obtain CIA information.

Judge James Larson of the US District Court in northern California will begin hearing arguments in the case on Sept. 29.

The VVA describes itself as “the only national Vietnam veterans organization congressionally chartered and exclusively dedicated to Vietnam-era veterans and their families.”

A 2003 report (PDF) from the Department of Veterans Affairs states that “between 1950 and 1975, about 6,720 soldiers took part in experiments involving exposures to 254 different chemicals, conducted at US Army Laboratories at Edgewood Arsenal, MD. Congressional hearings into these experiments in 1974 and 1975 resulted in disclosures, notification of subjects as to the nature of their chemical exposures, and ultimately to compensation for a few families of subjects who had died during the experiments.”

Getty Images

Time | Aug 25, 2010

By Adam Cohen

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant. (See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA’s actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno’s privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the “curtilage,” a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government’s intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno’s driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month’s decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people’s. The court’s ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. “There’s been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there’s one kind of diversity that doesn’t exist,” he wrote. “No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter.” The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of “cultural elitism.” (Read about one man’s efforts to escape the surveillance state.)

The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state — with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit’s — including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s pro-privacy ruling was unanimous — decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. (Comment on this story.)

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. “1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last,” he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: “Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.”

Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.

Pandemrix is produced by British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline for vaccination against H1N1 influenza
(AFP)

AFP | Aug 28, 2010

LONDON — The European Medicines Agency said Friday it was probing whether there is a link between the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine and the sleeping disorder narcolepsy amid concerns in Finland and Sweden.

“The European Medicines Agency has launched a review of Pandemrix on the request of the European Commission to investigate whether there is a link between cases of narcolepsy and vaccination with Pandemrix,” the EMA said.

“A limited number of cases was reported, all collected through spontaneous reporting systems, mainly in Sweden and Finland,” the London-based agency added in a statement.

Finland’s National Institute for Health and Welfare on Tuesday recommended halting the use of Pandemrix until a probe into a possible link to narcolepsy among children is concluded.

Last week, neighbouring Sweden’s Medical Products Agency also opened an inquiry into the Pandemrix vaccine following reports of young people having developed symptoms consistent with narcolepsy after getting their shot.

Narcolepsy is a condition in which sufferers suddenly fall into a deep sleep.

“Its precise cause is unknown, but it is generally considered to be triggered by a combination of genetic and environmental factors, including infections,” the EMA said.

It added that Pandemrix — produced by British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline — has been used since September 2009 for vaccination against H1N1 influenza for at least 30.8 million Europeans.

dvice.com | Aug 25, 2010

By Michael Trei

Remember that skeletal body scanner in Total Recall? A group of researchers from Wright State Research Institute wants to turn that little piece of science fiction into real life, with a scanner that can ID terrorists by analyzing their skeletal structure from up to 150 feet away.

Sure we already have facial recognition software, retinal scanners, and those full body airport scanners, but the developers say that this system will be much harder to fool.

The system can scan people as they walk in a moving crowd, and compare each person’s skeletal features against a database of known terrorists. Then using information on bone shape, density, and prior broken bones they can identify any suspect individuals. Beyond airports, they envisage the system being used at sporting events, political demonstrations, and other places likely to draw unfriendly people.

Just how their system gets the images without using massive doses of X-rays isn’t clear, but perhaps we need to start considering a complete suit to go along with that tin foil hat.

Daily Mail | Aug 28, 2010

Former Cuban president Fidel Castro has claimed that Al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden is a CIA agent during an interview with a state newspaper. However he did not elaborate further on the claims

Cuban leader Fidel Castro has claimed Al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden is a bought-and-paid-for CIA agent.

The country’s former president has said that the world’s most wanted terrorist always popped up when former US President George W Bush needed to scare the world, and argued that recently published documents on the internet prove it.

Castro told state media: ‘Any time Bush would stir up fear and make a big speech, bin Laden would appear threatening people with a story about what he was going to do.

‘Bush never lacked for bin Laden’s support. He was a subordinate.’

Castro said documents posted on the controversial WikiLeaks website ‘effectively proved he (Bin Laden) was a CIA agent.’ He did not elaborate further on the claims.

The comments were published today in the Communist party’s daily newspaper, Granma.

They were the latest in a series of bold and provocative statements by Castro, who has emerged from exile to warn the planet is on the brink of a nuclear war.

Bizarrely, Castro even predicted that global conflict would mean cancellation of the final rounds of the World Cup in South Africa. He later apologised.

And last week, the 84-year-old began highlighting the work of Lithuanian investigative journalist Daniel Estulin, who he was meeting with when the Bin Laden comments came to light.

During the meeting, Estulin told Castro that the real voice of bin Laden was last heard in late 2001, not long after the September 11 attacks.

He said the person heard making warnings about terror attacks after that was a ‘bad actor.’

Mr Estulin, is a well-known conspiracy theorist and wrote a trilogy of books highlighting the Bilderberg Club, whose prominent members meet once a year behind closed doors.

The secretive nature of the meetings and prominence of some members – including former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and  senior U.S. and European officials have led some to speculate that it operates as a kind of global government, controlling not only international politics and economics, but even culture.

In this photo released by the state media Cubadebate web site, Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro delivers a speech to members of a Cuban medical brigade who arrived recently from Bolivia, in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2010. (AP Photo/Cubadebate, Roberto Chile)

AP | Aug 18, 2010

By WILL WEISSERT

HAVANA — Fidel Castro is showcasing a theory long popular both among the far left and far right: that the shadowy Bilderberg Group has become a kind of global government, controlling not only international politics and economics, but even culture.

The 84-year-old former Cuban president published an article Wednesday that used three of the only eight pages in the Communist Party newspaper Granma to quote — largely verbatim — from a 2006 book by Lithuanian-born writer Daniel Estulin.

Estulin’s work, “The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club,” argues that the international group largely runs the world. It has held a secretive annual forum of prominent politicians, thinkers and businessmen since it was founded in 1954 at the Bilderberg Hotel in Holland.

Castro offered no comment on the excerpts other than to describe Estulin as honest and well-informed and to call his book a “fantastic story.”

Estulin’s book, as quoted by Castro, described “sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists” manipulating the public “to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self.”

The Bilderberg group’s website says its members have “nearly three days of informal and off-the-record discussion about topics of current concern” once a year, but the group does nothing else.

It said the meetings were meant to encourage people to work together on major policy issues.

The prominence of the group is what alarms critics. It often includes members of the Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, senior U.S. and European officials and major international business and media executives.

The excerpt published by Castro suggested that the esoteric Frankfurt School of socialist academics worked with members of the Rockefeller family in the 1950s to pave the way for rock music to “control the masses” by diverting attention from civil rights and social injustice.

“The man charged with ensuring that the Americans liked the Beatles was Walter Lippmann himself,” the excerpt asserted, referring to a political philosopher and by-then-staid newspaper columnist who died in 1974.

“In the United States and Europe, great open-air rock concerts were used to halt the growing discontent of the population,” the excerpt said.

Castro — who had an inside seat to the Cold War — has long expressed suspicions of back-room plots. He has raised questions about whether the Sept. 11 attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government to stoke military budgets and, more recently suggested that Washington was behind the March sinking of a South Korean ship blamed on North Korea.

Estulin’s own website suggests that the 9/11 attacks were likely caused by small nuclear devices, and that the CIA and drug traffickers were behind the 1988 downing of a jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, that was blamed on Libya.

The Bilderberg conspiracy theory has been popular on both extremes of the ideological spectrum, even if they disagree on just what the group wants to do. Leftists accuse the group of promoting capitalist domination, while some right-wing websites argue that the Bilderberg club has imposed Barack Obama on the United States to advance socialism.

Some of Estulin’s work builds on reports by Big Jim Tucker, a researcher on the Bilderberg Group who publishes on right-wing websites.

“It’s great Hollywood material … 15 people sitting in a room sitting in a room determining the fate of mankind,” said Herbert London, president of the Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan policy think tank in New York.

“As someone who doesn’t come out of the Oliver Stone school of conspiracy, I have a hard time believing it,” London added.

A call to a Virginia number for the American Friends of Bilderberg rang unanswered Wednesday and the group’s website lists no contact numbers.

Castro, who underwent emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006 and stepped down as president in February 2008, has suddenly begun popping up everywhere recently, addressing Cuba’s parliament on the threat of a nuclear war, meeting with island ambassadors at the Foreign Ministry, writing a book and even attending the dolphin show at the Havana aquarium.

blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg | Aug 24, 2010

By ANDY GREENBERG

As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.

Here’s a video of the vans in action.

The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back. Absorbed rays indicate dense material such as steel. Scattered rays indicate less-dense objects that can include explosives, drugs, or human bodies. That capability makes them powerful tools for security, law enforcement, and border control.

It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)

Full Story

allgov.com | Aug 27, 2010

by Noel Brinkerhoff

(photo: American Science and Engineering)

If you thought the use of full-body scanners at airports was a violation of personal privacy, just wait. The same technology is now rolling down the streets of American cities in unmarked vans.

American Science & Engineering (AS&E), a Massachusetts-based company, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners (ZBVs) mounted in vans that allow law enforcement to peer inside nearby vehicles. To date, the biggest buyer in the federal government is the Department of Defense, which has purchased the specially-equipped vehicles for use in Afghanistan and Iraq. But a company executive told Forbes that law enforcement agencies are also using the vans to search for car bombs in the U.S. AS&E, which bills its product as “a non-intrusive inspection technology,” also promotes the vans for use against the smuggling of drugs and humans. In the words of AS&E, “In Stationary Scan Mode, ZBV operators may elect to scan the occupants of the subject vehicle. For this application, AS&E offers a Personnel Scanning option that may better enable the customer to meet any applicable country-specific regulatory requirements.” The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is suing the Department of Homeland Security to stop its use of backscatter scanners at airport checkpoints, arguing the equipment’s use is a violation of the fourth amendment. “Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC, told Forbes. “If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.” Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans (by Andy Greenberg, Forbes) Z Backscatter Van™ Mobile Screening System (American Science and Engineering)

Raw Story | August 25, 2010

By Daniel Tencer

US law enforcement agencies are among the customers of a Massachusetts-based company that is selling full-body scanners to be mounted inside vans and used on streets, says a report from Forbes.

American Science & Engineering, based in Billerica, Mass., told Forbes blogger Andy Greenberg that it has sold more than 500 “Z Backscatter Vans,” mobile x-ray scanning units that can be used to detect bombs, contraband and smuggled people inside nearby cars.

The company says its largest customer by far is the US military, which has purchased the machines to search for car bombs and other threats in war zones. But AS&E’s vice president of marketing, Joe Reiss, said US law enforcement agencies have also bought the machines “to search for vehicle-based bombs in the US,” Greenberg reports.

AS&E has not revealed the names of its US law enforcement customers, or how many of the machines they bought. But Reiss describes the van-mounted scanning system as “the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever.”

News of the mobile scanners has alarmed civil libertarians who worry the technology could be used to violate people’s privacy without legal justification.
Story continues below…

“If they are in fact being used on public streets, that would be a major violation of the Constitution,” writes Jay Stanley of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty program. “In fact, it’s hard to believe that any counsel at any government agency would sign off on allowing these vans to be used in that way.”

“The use of this technology constitutes a search, and under the Fourth Amendment, a search can only be carried out with a warrant. There are exceptions to that, but none of them would apply if this technology is being used on public streets,” Stanley writes.

He notes that the courts have created exemptions to the Fourth Amendment protection from undue search and seizure, and law enforcement officers are generally allowed to search cars. But Stanley notes that they have that ability only when probable cause is present — something that would not be the case if body scanners were examining numerous people on public streets.

Stanley speculates that some of the machines bought for domestic use are headed for Customs and Border Protection, where they could be legally used to scan cars crossing into the United States.

AS&E’s Reiss says his company’s machines are not as intrusive as the body scanners being used in airports. He told Forbes’ Greenberg that the machines can’t reproduce images of people’s faces and bodies as clearly as airport machines.

“From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he said.

The body scanners currently being expanded to most major US airports have caused some controversy among privacy advocates. While the Department of Homeland Security initially claimed the machines would not have the ability to store nude images of passengers, the Electronic Privacy Information Center discovered earlier this year that the machines being installed at airports have a setting that allows them to store and transmit the images.

There have been several high-profile cases of screening technology being abused. In one heavily-publicized incident, a TSA worker in Miami who was scanned as part of a training session allegedly assaulted a co-worker who had mocked the size of his genitals.

Recently, the parents of a 12-year-old girl were outraged when she was taken aside for a full-body scan at a Florida airport without her guardian’s consent.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a lawsuit against the DHS asking for the program to be suspended “pending an independent review.”

While AS&E has not disclosed which US agencies have bought the van-mounted machines for domestic use, the ACLU’s Jay Stanley warns law enforcement agencies not to get carried away with their new technology.

“Unless they have probable cause to search a specific vehicle, government agencies had better not be roaming US streets conducting backscatter X-ray scans of vehicles and their occupants (much less pedestrians, cyclists, etc.) without their knowledge or consent,” he writes. “The Constitution may have taken a battering in recent years, but on this point it remains clear.”

sj.farmonline.com.au | Aug 26, 2010

A 20-degree day is finally in sight for Adelaide, whose residents are enduring their coldest winter in 13 years, according to weatherzone.com.au .

Adelaide has not reached 20 degrees since May 24th, three months ago. If it doesn’t get that warm by next Wednesday this will be the first winter in seven years without reaching 20 degrees.

This winter must seem never-ending, particularly because August has only produced two days warmer than average so far. The average maximum has been 14.7 degrees, almost two degrees colder than the long-term August average maximum of 16.6.

Overall this winter’s maximum temperatures have averaged 15.3 and overnight minimums only 7.3, both more than half a degree below the long-term norm.

Nights and days have combined to make this winter Adelaide’s coldest since 1997.

“The long-lasting cold can be blamed on colder than normal water off the South Australian coast and warmer than normal water off northwestern Australia,” Weatherzone meteorologist Brett Dutschke said.

“Colder waters south of the state have meant that any westerly or southerly wind has been colder than normal. Warmer waters off northwestern Australia have led to many northwest cloud bands which have brought rain and kept temperatures down.

“Adelaide hasn’t had a very wet winter, 207 millimetres of rain so far compared to the long-term norm of 220mm. But there have been five more rain days this winter compared to average and there’s a few more to come.

“Showers each day through to the weekend will bring another 10mm or more, taking the city close to its winter average of 220mm.

“Adelaide will get a hint of spring warmth early next week.”

AP | Aug 27, 2010

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE

Forget the Dow and the GDP. Here’s the latest economic indicator: The U.S. birth rate has fallen to its lowest level in at least a century as many people apparently decided they couldn’t afford more mouths to feed.

The birth rate dropped for the second year in a row since the recession began in 2007. Births fell 2.6 percent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics show.

“It’s a good-sized decline for one year. Every month is showing a decline from the year before,” said Stephanie Ventura, the demographer who oversaw the report.

The birth rate, which takes into account changes in the population, fell to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people last year. That’s down from 14.3 in 2007 and way down from 30 in 1909, when it was common for people to have big families.

The situation is a striking turnabout from 2007, when more babies were born in the United States than any other year in the nation’s history. The recession began that fall, dragging down stocks, jobs and births.

“When the economy is bad and people are uncomfortable about their financial future, they tend to postpone having children. We saw that in the Great Depression the 1930s and we’re seeing that in the Great Recession today,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University.

“It could take a few years to turn this around,” he added.

The birth rate dipped below 20 per 1,000 people in 1932 and did not rise above that level until the early 1940s. Recent recessions, in 1981-82, 1990-91 and 2001, all were followed by small dips in the birth rate, according to CDC figures.

The Great Recession “is definitely a deterrent” to people having more children, said Dr. Michael Cabbad, chief of maternal health at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, where births declined from about 2,800 in 2008 to about 2,500 last year.

Even Cabbad’s son said he’d like to have more children “if his business plan works out.”

Nearly half of low- and middle-income women surveyed a year ago by the Guttmacher Institute said they wanted to delay pregnancy or limit the number of children they have because of money concerns. Half of those women also said the recession made them more focused on contraceptive use. Guttmacher researches reproductive health issues.

Besides finances, experts said a decline in immigration to the United States also may be pushing births down.

The downward trend invites worrisome comparisons to Japan and its “lost decade” of economic stagnation in the 1990s, which was accompanied by very low birth rates. Births in Japan fell 2 percent in 2009 after a slight rise in 2008.

Not so in Britain, where the population took its biggest jump in almost half a century last year and the fertility rate is at its highest level since 1973. France’s birth rate also has been rising; Germany’s birth rate is lower but rising as well.

Cherlin said the U.S. birth rate “is still higher than the birth rate in many wealthy countries and we also have many immigrants entering the country. So we do not need to be worried yet about a birth dearth” that would crimp the nation’s ability to take care of its growing elderly population.

The new U.S. report is a rough count of births from states. It estimates there were 4,136,000 births in 2009, down from a year ago’s estimate of 4,247,000 in 2008 and more than 4.3 million in 2007.

The report does not give details on trends in different age groups. That will come next spring and will give a clearer picture who is and is not having children, Ventura said.

Last spring’s report, on births in 2008, showed an overall drop but a surprising rise in births to women over 40, who may have felt they were running out of time to have children and didn’t want to delay despite the bad economy.

Women who postpone having children because of careers also may find they have trouble conceiving, said Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based demographic research group.

“For some of those women, they’re going to find themselves in their mid-40s where it’s going to be hard to have the number of children they want,” he said.

Heather Atherton is nearing that mark. The Sacramento, Calif., mom, who turns 36 next month, started a home-based public relations business after her daughter was born in 2003. She and her husband upgraded to a larger home in 2005 and planned on having a second child not long afterward. Then the recession hit, drying up her husband’s sales commissions and leaving them owing more on their home than it is worth. A second child seemed too risky financially.

“However, we just recently decided that it’s time to stop waiting and just go for it early next year and let the chips fall where they may,” she said. “We can’t allow the recession to dictate the size of our family. We just need to move forward with our lives.”

The 4-feet-tall weapon, which looks like a cross between a robot and a satellite radar, will be mounted on the ceiling and can swivel. The Los Angeles County sheriff’s plans to put the new type of weapon in one of its jails is taking heat. Opponents say use of the device, which transmits a high-intensity beam of intense heat to unruly inmates, is ripe for abuse and could cause serious injuries. (AP / Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department)

 Associated Press  | Aug 27, 2010

 LA authorities plan to use heat-beam ray in jail

 By THOMAS WATKINS

LOS ANGELES — A device designed to control unruly inmates by blasting them with a beam of intense energy that causes a burning sensation is drawing heat from civil rights groups who fear it could cause serious injury and is “tantamount to torture.”

 The mechanism, known as an “Assault Intervention Device,” is a stripped-down version of a military gadget that sends highly focused beams of energy at people and makes them feel as though they are burning. The Los Angeles County sheriff’s department plans to install the device by Labor Day, making it the first time in the world the technology has been deployed in such a capacity.

 The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California criticized Sheriff Lee Baca’s decision in a letter sent Thursday, saying that the technology amounts to a ray gun at a county jail. The 4-feet-tall weapon, which looks like a cross between a robot and a satellite radar, will be mounted on the ceiling and can swivel.

It is remotely controlled by an operator in a separate room who lines up targets with a joystick.

The ACLU said the weapon was “tantamount to torture,” noting that early military versions resulted in five airmen suffering lasting burns. It requested a meeting with Baca, who declined the invitation.

The sheriff unveiled the device last week and said it would be installed in the dorm of a jail in north Los Angeles County. It is far less powerful than the military version and has various safeguards in place, including a three-second limit to each beam of heat.

The natural response when blasted — to leap out the way — would be helpful in bringing difficult inmates under control and quelling riots, the sheriff said.

But the sheriff was creating a dangerous environment with “a weapon that can cause serious injury that is being put into a place where there is a long history of abuse of prisoners,” ACLU attorney Peter Eliasberg said. “That is a toxic combination.”

Cmdr. Bob Osborne, who oversees technology for the sheriff’s department, said the concerns were unfounded. He said he stood in front of the beam more than 50 times and that it never caused any sort of lasting damage.

“The neat thing with this device is you experience pain but you are not injured by it,” Osborne said. “It doesn’t injure your skin, the beam doesn’t have the power to do that.”

He said the device would be a more humane way of dealing with jail disturbances. Unlike hitting inmates with batons or deploying tear gas, a shot from the beam has no aftereffects, he said.

The device was made specifically for the sheriff’s department by Raytheon Missile Systems. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said its $750,000 cost was paid for by a Department of Justice technology grant.

After a six-month trial, the sheriff will determine if the device is effective and if it should be deployed in other jails.

“When this pilot program is done, the realistic hope is it will accomplish not only what the sheriff’s department wants but what the ACLU wants, which is to save lives harmlessly,” Whitmore said.

A Raytheon spokesman on Thursday referred questions to the sheriff’s department, but provided a fact sheet describing how the device only penetrates skin to a depth 1/64 of an inch. The military’s version of the device can shoot a beam more than 800 feet but the sheriff’s department model has a maximum range of 85 feet.

Angelica Arias, an attorney with the county’s Office of Independent Review, which monitors the sheriff’s department, said only deputies with special training would be able to use the device and a video would be automatically recorded each time it is operated.

“Based on the level of scrutiny the department has put on itself and its training, it doesn’t appear there would be too much wiggle room for misuse,” Arias said.

Adolf Hitler may have had Jewish and African roots, DNA tests have shown

Adolf Hitler is likely to have had Jewish and African roots, DNA tests have shown.

Telegraph | Aug 24, 2010

By Heidi Blake

Saliva samples taken from 39 relatives of the Nazi leader show he may have had biological links to the “subhuman” races that he tried to exterminate during the Holocaust.

Jean-Paul Mulders, a Belgian journalist, and Marc Vermeeren, a historian, tracked down the Fuhrer’s relatives, including an Austrian farmer who was his cousin, earlier this year.

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A chromosome called Haplogroup E1b1b1 which showed up in their samples is rare in Western Europe and is most commonly found in the Berbers of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, as well as among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews.

“One can from this postulate that Hitler was related to people whom he despised,” Mr Mulders wrote in the Belgian magazine, Knack.

Haplogroup E1b1b1, which accounts for approximately 18 to 20 per cent of Ashkenazi and 8.6 per cent to 30 per cent of Sephardic Y-chromosomes, appears to be one of the major founding lineages of the Jewish population.

Knack, which published the findings, says the DNA was tested under stringent laboratory conditions.

“This is a surprising result,” said Ronny Decorte, a genetic specialist at the Catholic University of Leuven.

“The affair is fascinating if one compares it with the conception of the world of the Nazis, in which race and blood was central.

“Hitler’s concern over his descent was not unjustified. He was apparently not “pure” or ‘Ayran’.”

It is not the first time that historians have suggested Hitler had Jewish ancestry.

His father, Alois, is thought to have been the illegitimate offspring of a maid called Maria Schickelgruber and a 19-year-old Jewish man called Frankenberger.

WSU tries for CIA contract with skeletal identification

Technology could help identify terrorists

Fingerprints and facial recognition software can be tricked, say researchers

daytondailynews.com | Aug 11, 2010

By Christopher Magan

FAIRBORN — Wright State University Research Institute is one of a dozen groups chosen from a field of 500 applicants to submit plans to the Central Intelligence Agency for cutting-edge technology to identify potential terrorists and other suspects.

University researchers working to develop what they believe is the nation’s first bone-scanning identification system should know next year whether the CIA will opt to use their biometric identifier.

Each skeletal structure is unique and can be identified with X-rays by measuring bones, the distance between them and bone density. Existing identification systems like fingerprints and facial recognition software can be tricked, say researchers tasked with developing the new technology.

“We think this is spoof-proof,” said Julie Skipper, an associate professor and biomedical engineer, who expects a prototype to be ready by this time next year.

Skipper is working with fellow researcher Phani Kidambi to develop the idea of S. Narayanan, the dean of the engineering and computer science college, who envisions the technology being used at points of entry into the country.

The research is the latest example of a push by Wright State and other universities to solve real-world problems, said Ryan D. Fendley, director of the research institute.

“The face can be disguised or disfigured, but the skeleton is always there,” said Kidambi. “Even twins have different bone structures.”

Based on data from the Danish Meteorological Institute, the summer of 2010 is likely going to be the coldest on record for areas north of 80 degrees latitude in the Northern Hemisphere. This would be the area immediately surrounding the North Pole.

inforum.com | Aug 22, 2010

By Daryl Ritchison

The DMI has been collecting and estimating temperatures in that area since 1958. Temperatures are estimated using actual buoy data collected from the Arctic Ocean in combination with computer model analysis of that region.

Although the areas around the North Pole never experience much warmth, with midsummer temperatures averaging only in the mid- to upper 30s, this summer has estimated temperatures hovering only around the freezing point or lower in recent weeks.

Not only has the high Arctic experienced cooler-than-normal temperatures lately, but so have areas near the South Pole. Antarctica is currently experiencing a cold winter with Antarctic sea ice extent currently at record high levels for this time of year.

Caught on camera: One of Global Rainmakers’ iris scanners

Mexican city introduces real time iris scanners to track citizens

Proponents of the system believe that everyone on the planet will be connected to an iris tracking system within the next 10 years.

metro.co.uk | Aug 19, 2010

by Joe Crowther

The Mexican city of Leon is set to install a series of iris scanners – capable of tracking up to 50 people per minute – to track up to 1 million citizens.

The scanners, from biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers, don’t require people to stop and be scanned, instead capturing images while citizens walk around the city.

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Mexican City Tracks Public With Iris Scanners

The largest scanners can capture up to 50 people per minute, while smaller devices range from 15 to 30 people. The devices are currently being installed in a number of public places such as train and bus stations and are connected to a central database designed to track people as they move about the city.

City officials are hoping that retinal scans will help reduce crime and fraud. Jeff Carter of Global Rainmakers stated: ‘If you’ve been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter. If you’re a known shoplifter, for example, you won’t be able to go into a store without being flagged. Certainly for others, boarding a plane will be impossible.’

The one million citizens in Leon have all been offered the opportunity to voluntarily scan their eyes, while convicted criminals have automatically been added to the system. Proponents of the system believe that everyone on the planet will be connected to an iris tracking system within the next 10 years.