OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DECLARES PETA A TERRORIST THREAT

Tree Hugger - PETA is one of the most controversial activist groups operating today. The group's contentious media campaigns, undercover operations, infamous advertising, and high profile demonstrations have made them perhaps the most infamous--and most polarizing--nonprofit organization there is. But are they terrorists? According to the US Department of Agriculture, they are now. . .

The USDA has just released a new security profile form, which it distributes to animal experimentation facilities. The form reveals that PETA has been classified as a terrorist threat by the US government--potentially opening up its members to prosecution as terrorists. According to Green is the New Red, an eco-activist rights website, the document was given to all facilities that conduct experiments on animals. They were asked to disclose whether they were the target of attacks or harassment from a list of terrorist groups--one of which, evidently, is PETA.

Here's an excerpt from the form:

B. Terrorist Threat. What terrorist activities have occurred in or around your building/facility in the past 5 years (documented cases)? Please check all that apply.

[ ] Attack from international terrorists

[ ] Attack from domestic special interest terrorists

[ ] Earth Liberation Front (ELF)

[ ] Animal Liberation Front (ALF)

[ ] People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)

[ ] Animal Defense League (ADL)

[ ] Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC)

[ ] Formal hate group(s) (please specify):

[ ] Other (please specify):

[ ] Cyber Attack from a known or unknown source.

STUDENTS MAY BE DENIED GRADUATION BECAUSE OF WEIGHT

Inside High Ed - More than two dozen seniors at Lincoln University, in Oxford, Pa., are in danger of not being able to graduate this spring -- not because they're under disciplinary probation or haven't fulfilled the requirements of their majors, but because they were obese as freshmen.

All had body mass index scores above 30 -- the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' threshold for obesity -- when they arrived on campus in the fall of 2006, but none have taken college-sanctioned steps to show they've lost weight or at least tried. They're in the historically black university's first graduating class required to either have a BMI below 30 or to take "Fitness for Life," a one semester class that mixes exercise, nutritional instruction and discussion of the risks of obesity. . . .

Students interviewed for the story seemed upset by the requirement and, perhaps, a bit blindsided by it. "It's not up to Lincoln to tell me how much my BMI should be. I came here to get a degree and that's what the administration should be concerned with," said Lousie Kaddie, a sophomore. . .

James C. Turner, president of the American College Health Association and director of student health at the University of Virginia, said he had "never heard of something like this before." He added that he was unaware of any studies showing a semester-long class "to be effective to help someone lose weight in the long term."

Yale Rudd Center Report - Obese individuals are highly stigmatized and face multiple forms of prejudice and discrimination because of their weight. The prevalence of weight discrimination in the United States has increased by 66% over the past decade, and is comparable to rates of racial discrimination, especially among women. Weight bias translates into inequities in employment settings, health-care facilities, and educational institutions, often due to widespread negative stereotypes that overweight and obese persons are lazy, unmotivated, lacking in self-discipline, less competent, noncompliant, and sloppy. These stereotypes are prevalent and are rarely challenged in Western society, leaving overweight and obese persons vulnerable to social injustice, unfair treatment, and impaired quality of life as a result of substantial disadvantages and stigma.

NEWSPAPER SAYS CARTOONS AREN'T MEANT TO OFFEND

Progressive Review - Newsday, which has taken to hiding its online news copy behind a pay wall, isn't having as much luck with its cartoons. A Mallard Fillmore comic strip that referred lightly to hate crimes has come under fire by Latino groups and others, the critics citing a beating death last year of an immigrant.

Reporter Keith Herbert described the cartoon this way:

"The cartoon, penned by Bruce Tinsley, was titled 'Liberals: The Early Years.' It depicted a larger dinosaur chasing a small one. The bigger one says, 'I'm not chasing you because you're a pachycephalosaurus. . . . I'm chasing you because you're delicious.' The smaller dinosaur responds, 'Oh, thank goodness. I was worried that this might be a hate crime.'"

Not all that funny, but a pretty mild poke at liberals who have made such a big thing - without observable positive effect - of institutionalizing "hate crimes."

What was startling, however, was the reaction of the paper to the criticism, as expressed by Newsday spokeswoman Deidra Parrish Williams:

"We expect the cartoons we publish, many of which are nationally syndicated, to amuse, stir and entertain, but never to offend. Hate crime is a serious issue. This nationally syndicated cartoon should never have run and we have expressed our concern to the syndicator."

Political cartoons not meant to offend? What the hell are they there for? It's not that you need to agree with Bruce Tinsley, but if it is against journalistic ethics to make fun of the liberal obsession with hate crimes, what precisely is now permissible?

As we have noted before, hate is a crummy emotion and expression that is protected by the Constitution. Any offenses resulting from that emotion and expression are handled by traditional criminal law.

Hate crime bills are one more step in the restriction of free speech that would encourage still more, which is precisely what happened at Newsday. Tinsley's offense was not hate or a hate crime, but making light of legislation designed to control them. If that's an offense we're in deep trouble.

Further, there is no evidence that hate crime legislation is effective other than for the bragging rights of those who promote it. According to the FBI, between 1995 and 2007, hate crimes declined exactly 4%, some of that presumably due to cultural progress, social change, education and media and not just to the law. In fact, in 2005 - two years before the latest stats- hate crimes were 5% above where they were in 1995.

Further, such laws are inherently discriminatory because, regardless of what it may say in print, the enforcement will be based on a hierarchy of the hated. At present, for example, the homeless, the overweight, skinny little kids and Muslims shouldn't expect too much assistance from hate crime legislation.

In the end, hate crime legislation protects the conscience of its supporters far more than the lives of the victims it is meant to protect.

Wikipedia - The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found that hate crime statutes which criminalize bias-motivated speech or symbolic speech conflict with free speech rights because they isolated certain words based on their content or viewpoint. Many critics further assert that it conflicts with an even more fundamental right: free thought. The claim is that hate-crime legislation effectively makes certain ideas or beliefs, including religious ones, illegal, in other words, thought crimes.

In their book Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics, James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter criticize hate crime legislation for exacerbating conflicts between groups. They assert that by defining crimes as being committed by one group against another, rather than as being committed by individuals against their society, the labeling of crimes as "hate crimes" causes groups to feel persecuted by one another, and that this impression of persecution can incite a backlash and thus lead to an actual increase in crime. Some have argued hate crime laws bring the law into disrepute and further divide society, as groups apply to have their critics silenced. Some have argued that if it is true that all violent crimes are the result of the perpetrator's contempt for the victim, then all crimes are hate crimes. Thus, if there is no alternate rationale for prosecuting some people more harshly for the same crime based on who the victim is, then different defendants are treated unequally under the law, which violates the United States Constitution.

Black and Pink - If a particular crime is deemed a hate crime by the state, the supposed perpetrator is automatically subject to a higher mandatory minimum sentence. For example, a crime that would carry a sentence of five years can be "enhanced" to eight years. . .

Trans people, people of color, and other marginalized groups are disproportionately incarcerated to an overwhelming degree. Trans and gender non-conforming people, particularly trans women of color, are regularly profiled and falsely arrested for doing nothing more than walking down the street. If we are incarcerating those who commit violence against marginalized individuals/communities we then place them behind walls where they can continue to target these same people. It is not in the best interest of marginalized communities to depend on a system that already commits such great violence to then protect them. . .

Hate crime laws are an easy way for the government to act like it is on our communities' side while continuing to discriminate against us. Liberal politicians and institutions can claim "anti-oppression" legitimacy and win points with communities affected by prejudice, while simultaneously using "sentencing enhancement" to justify building more prisons to lock us up in. Hate crimes legislation is a liberal way of being "tough on crime" while building the power of the police, prosecutors, and prison guards. Rather than address systems of violence like health care disparities, economic exploitation, housing crisis, or police brutality, these politicians use hate-crimes legislation as their stamp of approval on "social issues". . .

Hate crimes don't occur because there aren't enough laws against them, and hate crimes won't stop when those laws are in place. Hate crimes occur because, time and time again, our society demonstrates that certain people are worth less than others; that certain people are wrong, are perverse, are immoral in their very being. Creating more laws will not help our communities. Organizing for the passage of these kind of laws simply takes the time and energy out of communities that could instead spend the time creating alternative systems and building communities capable of starting transformative justice processes. Hate crimes bills are a distraction from the vital work necessary for community safety.

COPS STEALING FROM THE INNOCENT

Detroit News - Local law enforcement agencies are raising millions of dollars by seizing private property suspected in crimes, but often without charges being filed -- and sometimes even when authorities admit no offense was committed.

The money raised by confiscating goods in Metro Detroit soared more than 50 percent to at least $20.62 million from 2003 to 2007, according to a Detroit News analysis of records from 58 law enforcement agencies. In some communities, amounts raised went from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands -- and, in one case, into the millions.

While courts have maintained the government's right to take property involved in crimes, police seizures -- also known as forfeitures -- are a growing source of friction in Michigan, especially as law enforcement agencies struggle to balance budgets.

"Police departments right now are looking for ways to generate revenue, and forfeiture is a way to offset the costs of doing business," said Sgt. Dave Schreiner, who runs Canton Township's forfeiture unit, which raised $343,699 in 2008. "You'll find that departments are doing more forfeitures than they used to because they've got to -- they're running out of money and they've got to find it somewhere."

OBAMA SUPPORTS RIGHT OF PROSECUTORS TO FRAME THE INNOCENT

Christian Science Monitor - The US Supreme Court on Wednesday is set to consider an unusual question: Do Americans who have been framed by unscrupulous prosecutors for crimes they did not commit have a right to sue the prosecutors when the fraud is finally exposed? According to the Obama administration, the answer is no.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan argues in a friend of the court brief that local, state, and federal prosecutors must enjoy absolute immunity from citizen lawsuits – even when they sent innocent men to prison for life by fabricating incriminating evidence and hiding exculpatory evidence.

Those are the allegations in a case from Iowa set for oral argument on Wednesday morning. According to legal briefs filed in the case, prosecutors in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, solicited false testimony implicating two innocent African-American teens in the murder of a recently retired police officer in 1977. At trial, the false testimony led to their convictions. They were sent to prison for life.

When the false testimony and other exculpatory evidence was discovered, the two innocent men, Curtis McGhee and Terry Harrington, were released after 25 years in prison. They filed a lawsuit against the prosecutors.

FEDERAL APPEALS COURT SAYS IT'S OKAY FOR GOVERNMENT TO ILLEGALLY ARREST, TORTURE AND SUBMIT TO RENDITION AN INNOCENT PERSON

Glenn Greenwald, Salon - It's not often that an appellate court decision reflects so vividly what a country has become, but such is the case with yesterday's ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Arar v. Ashcroft. Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent. A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal's McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he's 17 years old. In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was "rendered" -- despite his pleas that he would be tortured -- to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured. He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured. Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing. . .

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation. That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada." By stark and very revealing contrast, the U.S. Government has never admitted any wrongdoing or even spoken publicly about what it did; to the contrary, it repeatedly insisted that courts were barred from examining the conduct of government officials because what we did to Arar involves "state secrets" and because courts should not interfere in the actions of the Executive where national security is involved. What does that behavioral disparity between the two nations say about how "democratic," "accountable," and "open" the United States is?

The Second Circuit -- by a vote of 7-4 -- agreed with the government and dismissed Arar's case in its entirety. It held that even if the government violated Arar's constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him. Why? Because "providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns" In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.

LOCAL POLICE CREATING AN AMERICAN STASI

Phil Leggiere, Don't Tase Me Bro - When the infamous Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information Prevention System) program, which would have "empowered" US workers with access to private citizen's homes with de facto spy powers to report on suspicious activities, was floated by the Bush White House in 2002, the program was thwarted, thanks to a broad (at the time nearly unprecedented) civil libertarian coalition uniting left and right.

Operation TIPS itself was killed by the US Congress, which prohibited the program explicitly in the Homeland Security Act, passed in November 2002.

Its spirit, however, is alive and well, reincarnated in programs like iWATCH, an initiative developed by Los Angeles Police chief William Bratton, designed to enlist citizens to actively look for signs of potentially suspicious behavior and report it to police.

While Bratton and the 63 police departments in the US and Canada which have endorsed the program present it as a 21st century version of Neighborhood Watch, critics claim that, in addition to creeping out America with positively Orwellian promotional videos, iWATCH will encourage a Stasi like network of anonymous snitching.

In the words of the Los Angeles ACLU, iWATCH "actively encourages people to report a variety of ordinary activities--such as people who are wearing clothes that are too big, or who are drawing buildings, or who are doing something else that could be innocuous. That leads toward racial and religious profiling."

LAist reports that, according to the ACLU, "People will report ordinary behavior of people who fit a preconceived notion of what suspicious people look like. And what does that mean for the so-called suspicious person? "[They] could be visited by police and have personal data sent to government databases, where it could be used indefinitely to subject them to extensive searches at airports, deny them government

DALLAS POLICE ISSUES TICKETS FOR NOT SPEAKING ENGLISH

Dallas News - Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle said that his officers have written at least 39 citations to people over the past three years for not speaking English.

Apologizing publicly to the city's Spanish-speaking community, the chief said all officers and supervisors involved will be investigated for dereliction of duty. All pending citations will be dismissed, and people who paid fines will be reimbursed.

"I was stunned that this would happen," Kunkle said at a news conference.

The police chief added: "In my world, you would never tell someone not to speak Spanish."

OBAMA BACKS MAJOR RESTRICTIONS ON FREE SPEECH

Jonathan Turley, USA Today - Around the world, free speech is being sacrificed on the altar of religion. Whether defined as hate speech, discrimination or simple blasphemy, governments are declaring unlimited free speech as the enemy of freedom of religion. This growing movement has reached the United Nations, where religiously conservative countries received a boost in their campaign to pass an international blasphemy law. It came from the most unlikely of places: the United States.

While attracting surprisingly little attention, the Obama administration supported the effort of largely Muslim nations in the U.N. Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to free speech for any "negative racial and religious stereotyping." The exception was made as part of a resolution supporting free speech that passed this month, but it is the exception, not the rule that worries civil libertarians. . . .

In the resolution, the administration aligned itself with Egypt, which has long been criticized for prosecuting artists, activists and journalists for insulting Islam. For example, Egypt recently banned a journal that published respected poet Helmi Salem merely because one of his poems compared God to a villager who feeds ducks and milks cows. The Egyptian ambassador to the U.N., Hisham Badr, wasted no time in heralding the new consensus with the U.S. that "freedom of expression has been sometimes misused" and showing that the "true nature of this right" must yield government limitations. . .

Thinly disguised blasphemy laws are often defended as necessary to protect the ideals of tolerance and pluralism. They ignore the fact that the laws achieve tolerance through the ultimate act of intolerance: criminalizing the ability of some individuals to denounce sacred or sensitive values. We do not need free speech to protect popular thoughts or popular people. It is designed to protect those who challenge the majority and its institutions. Criticism of religion is the very measure of the guarantee of free speech — the literal sacred institution of society.

LOCAL HEROES

Adrienne, Henrico County, Virginia Public Library - Every year we participate in National Banned Book Week, a week that celebrates the written word and the free exchange of ideas, as outlined in the First Amendment to our Constitution. . . This is our way of celebrating that our community has the right to read freely. The Banned Book Reading Room will be open for three weeks longer than the National Banned Book Week, because last year's Room was so popular. Ever since the written word has existed there have been those who would prevent others from reading material considered "objectionable" -- everything from the Harry Potter series to the American Heritage Dictionary.

HATE CRIME BILL'S SUBTLE ATTACK ON FIRST AMENDMENT

Jacob Sullum, Reason - A conference committee that resolved differences between the House and Senate versions [of the hate crime bill] dropped an amendment written by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) that said the bill should not be applied in a way that imposes a substantial burden on First Amendment freedoms "if such exercise of religion, speech, expression, or association was not intended to plan or prepare for an act of physical violence or incite an imminent act of physical violence against another."

The bill now says that it's OK to impinge on people's First Amendment freedoms even if they are not conspiring to commit a violent crime or deliberately inciting one, as long as the burden "is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest." In light of this more permissive language, Bader argues, the new law could be combined with the federal "aiding and abetting" statute to justify prosecuting people whose speech allegedly influenced others to commit hate crimes, even when that result was unintended. For example, a minister who inveighs against homosexuality could be prosecuted if a member of his congregation assaults gay people.

I still think the courts would reject such cases on First Amendment grounds. But it's hard to see the purpose of the change . . . unless it was meant to allow prosecutions that go beyond violent criminals to the people who allegedly shape their thinking.

FEDERAL JUDGE TACKLES ANTIGAY MARRIAGE LAWYER

MSNBC - A federal judge challenged the backers of California's voter-enacted ban on same-sex marriage to explain how allowing gay couples to wed threatens conventional unions, a demand that prompted their lawyer to acknowledge he did not know.

The unusual exchange between U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker and Charles Cooper, a lawyer for the group that sponsored Proposition 8, came during a hearing on a lawsuit challenging the measure as discriminatory under the U.S. Constitution.

Cooper had asked Walker to throw out the suit or make it more difficult for those civil rights claims to prevail.

The judge not only refused but signaled that when the case goes to trial in January, he expects Cooper and his legal team to present evidence showing that male-female marriages would be undermined if same-sex marriages were legal.

The question is relevant to the assertion that Proposition 8 is constitutionally valid because it furthers the states goal of fostering "naturally procreative relationships," Walker explained.

"What is the harm to the procreation purpose you outlined of allowing same-sex couples to get married?" Walker asked.

"My answer is, I don't know. I don't know," Cooper answered.

Moment later, after assuring the judge his response did not mean Proposition 8 was doomed to be struck down, Cooper tried to clarify his position. The relevant question was not whether there is proof that same-sex unions jeopardize marriages between men and women, but whether "the state is entitled, when dealing with radical proposals to make changes to bedrock institutions such as this . . . to take a wait and see attitude," he said.

"There are things we can't know, that's my point," Cooper said. "The people of California are entitled to step back and let the experiment unfold in Massachusetts and other places, to see whether our concerns about the health of marital unions have either been confirmed or perhaps they have been completely assuaged."

Walker pressed on, asking again for specific "adverse consequences" that could follow expanding marriage to include same-sex couples. Cooper cited a study from the Netherlands, where gay marriage is legal, showing that straight couples were increasingly opting to become domestic partners instead of getting married.

"Has that been harmful to children in the Netherlands? What is the adverse effect?" Walker asked.

'Proof of no harm?' Cooper said he did not have the facts at hand.

"But it is not self-evident that there is no chance of any harm, and the people of California are entitled not to take the risk," he said.

"Since when do Constitutional rights rest on the proof of no harm?" Walker parried, adding the First Amendment right to free speech protects activities that many find offensive, "but we tolerate those in a free society."

Walker made clear that he wants to examine other issues that are part of the political rhetoric surrounding same-sex marriage but rarely surface in courtrooms. Among the questions he plans to entertain at the trial are whether sexual orientation is a fixed or immutable characteristic, whether gays are a politically powerful group, and if same-sex marriage bans such as Proposition 8 were motivated by anti-gay bias. . .

Attorney General Jerry Brown, who was named as a defendant, has taken the rare step of agreeing with the plaintiffs instead of arguing to uphold the voter-approved law.

In allowing the case to move forward, Walker said significant questions remain about whether the California measure, which was approved by 52 percent of voters in November, unlawfully violates the rights of gays and lesbians to equality and due process guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The measure overturned a state Supreme Court ruling earlier in the year that legalized same-sex marriages.

TEXAS JUDGE SAYS BAN ON GAY MARRIAGE VIOLATES CONSTITUTION

Dallas Morning News - In a first for Texas, a judge ruled Thursday that two men married in another state can divorce here and that the state's ban on gay marriage violates the U.S. Constitution. Both a voter-approved state constitutional amendment and the Texas Family Code prohibit same-sex marriages or civil unions.

Although the case is far from settled, and the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage is a long way from being thrown out, Dallas state District Judge Tena Callahan's ruling says the state prohibition of same-sex marriage violates the federal constitutional right to equal protection.

"This is huge news. We're ecstatic," said Dallas attorney Peter Schulte, who represents the man who filed the divorce. The man, identified in court documents as J.B., asked that he and his former partner not be identified.

HOMELAND POLICE PAYING FOR LOCAL TORTURE WEAPONS

Washington Times - With the help of Homeland Security grants, police departments nationwide looking to subdue unruly crowds and political protesters are purchasing a high-tech device originally used by the military to repel battlefield insurgents and Somali pirates with piercing noise capable of damaging hearing.

Police acknowledge that they deployed the so-called Long Range Acoustic Devices as a safeguard at recent political conventions, protest-plagued international summit meetings and this summer's volatile town hall meetings on health care.

Officers were captured last week on video using the devices against protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, causing many to cover their ears or disperse to escape the shrieking sound.

San Diego-based American Technology Corp. insists the devices it manufactures and sells are not intended to be used as sonic weapons but rather to "influence the behavior and gain compliance" from people.

But the company stated in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in September 2008 that the device is "capable of sufficient acoustic output to cause damage to human hearing or human health," expressing concern that its misuse could lead to lawsuits. . .

The dish-shaped device generate tones that are higher than the normal human threshold for pain, according to the device's own data sheet. They can be aimed in a narrow beam at specific targets with what the company has described as "extreme accuracy."

MICHIGAN WOMAN THREATENED WITH JAIL FOR BABYSITTING FOR FRIENDS

WZZM - A West Michigan woman says the state is threatening her with fines and possibly jail time for babysitting her neighbors' children. Lisa Snyder of Middleville says her neighborhood school bus stop is right in front of her home. It arrives after her neighbors need to be at work, so she watches three of their children for 15-40 minutes until the bus comes. The Department of Human Services received a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home. DHS contacted Snyder and told her to get licensed, stop watching her neighbors' kids, or face the consequences. "It's ridiculous." says Snyder. "We are friends helping friends!" She added that she accepts no money for babysitting.

BUSH USED PATRIOT ACT WARRENTLESS SEARCH PROVISION FOR DRUG CASES - NOT TERRORISM

Huffington Post - In the debate over the PATRIOT Act, the Bush White House insisted it needed the authority to search people's homes without their permission or knowledge so that terrorists wouldn't be tipped off that they're under investigation. Now that the authority is law, how has the Department of Justice used the new power? To go after drug dealers.

Only three of the 763 "sneak-and-peek" requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases, according to a July 2009 report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Sixty-five percent were drug cases.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) quizzed Assistant Attorney General David Kris about the discrepancy at a hearing on the PATRIOT Act Wednesday. One might expect Kris to argue that there is a connection between drug trafficking and terrorism or that the administration is otherwise justified to use the authority by virtue of some other connection to terrorism.

He didn't even try. "This authority here on the sneak-and-peek side, on the criminal side, is not meant for intelligence. It's for criminal cases. So I guess it's not surprising to me that it applies in drug cases," Kris said.

"As I recall it was in something called the USA PATRIOT Act," Feingold quipped, "which was passed in a rush after an attack on 9/11 that had to do with terrorism it didn't have to do with regular, run-of-the-mill criminal cases. Let me tell you why I'm concerned about these numbers: That's not how this was sold to the American people. It was sold as stated on DoJ's website in 2005 as being necessary - quote - to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists.". . .

Kris responded by saying that some courts had already granted the Justice Feingold, the lone vote against the PATRIOT Act when it was first passed, is introducing an amendment to curb its reach. "I'm going to say it's quite extraordinary to grant government agents the statutory authority to secretly break into Americans homes," he said.

TODAY'S TASER TORTURE TALE

McClatchy Newspapers - The Merced [CA] Police Department's Internal Affairs Division is investigating whether an officer twice used a Taser on an unarmed, wheelchair-bound man with no legs. The man who was Tasered, Gregory Williams, 40, a double-leg amputee, spent six days in jail on suspicion of domestic violence and resisting arrest, but the Merced County District Attorney's office hasn't filed any charges. Williams is black, and the two main arresting officers are white, but it's unknown whether race played any role in the incident. Williams, who was released from jail on Friday, said he was manhandled and Tasered by police, even though he said he was never physically aggressive toward the officers and didn't resist arrest. Williams said he was humiliated after his pants fell down during the incident. The officers allegedly left him outdoors in broad daylight, handcuffed on the pavement, nude below the waist. Williams said the Sept. 11 arrest also left him with an injured shoulder, limiting his mobility in his wheelchair.

SEX OFFENDER LAWS ARE HURTING OUR CHILDREN

CLS, Classically Liberal - In our new bizarre world of sexual offender legislation each child is a victim and a perpetrator. As the victim, they get no help, of course. The victim status is the excuse needed so that the sledgehammer may be used on the other child. So each becomes a perpetrator. They will be arrested; they will be forced into court. They are likely to be convicted and sentenced. They may be placed into the various prisons for children that have been established-places where they will learn what unwilling, sexual attacks are really like. They will be tortured by therapists and eventually released-maybe. Even that is no longer guaranteed under our sex panic. Today, someone who has served their sentence can then be held in preventative detention for the rest of their natural life because the mob demands it. And the politicians give the mob what it wants.

If our children happen to be released then the real torture begins. They are branded by the cruel laws that opportunistic politicians imposed to satisfy fearful voters. First, the child will be photographed. His or her photo will be published for the world to see. The government hit lists, called sex offender registries, will tell any would-be vigilante where to find this child. The address will be given, if the child is lucky enough to be able to live at home, and not institutionalized.

The sex offender laws will kick in and are guaranteed to destroy any ambition your child may have for success. Any attempts to better themselves, or become productive members of your community, will be throttled by these laws. Every road they try to pursue will become a dead end. It may be impossible for them to finish school. Any job they seek will require them to reveal their "sex offender" status to their employer. Any curious neighbor can find out the "crime" that was committed, though not the circumstances. Years down the road, this child, now an adult, will be listed as someone who committed lewd acts on a child. People will imagine an adult raping a child, not two children playing doctor.

Each time the child moves the police will help him feel welcomed by handing out fliers to the neighbors warning them that a "sex offender" is now living nearby. Rocks thrown through windows can be mild compared to some welcomes that are given. One young man in Maine opened his door to be executed on the spot by a stranger. His crime was that he, as a teen, had sex with his girlfriend. In puritanical America that is enough to make him a sex offender. For that he was murdered with his mother only a few feet away. In jurisdiction after jurisdiction this "offender" will find that most of the community is zoned off limits to him. He can't live too close to a school, too close to a park, too close to a bus stop, too close to. . . the list is almost endless and growing all the time.

Every so often he will be required to visit the police and report to them. They may show up at his home anytime they want and demand to inspect it. He could be banned from social networking websites, or from the Internet completely.

If you child grows up to have a family, a normal relationship will be forbidden. He may well be banned from all activities at his children's school. They may be in a play; he won't be allowed to watch it. If the kids play on a sport's team, their father won't be allowed to attend. Ditto for Little League. Forget having friends over for a birthday party. Dad is a pariah until he dies and his children, and his wife, will be forced to endure the torture with him.

The lucky ones barely manage to hold on. Those who are not so lucky simply end their lives. Others have the option of suicide robbed from them by vigilantes. They quickly learn to give up ambitions and dreams. To excel in life is not possible. To merely survive is hard enough. And some, robbed of all normality, robbed of all hope, mentally and emotionally raped by the state, decide they may as well become the monsters that they are imagined to be.

It takes so little for this happen to a child. A girl in school has oral sex with a boy in school. She becomes a sex offender for the rest of her life. Streaking a school event, as a practical joke, becomes a sex crime in the new America. Two kids "moon" a passerby and are incarcerated in jail as sex offenders, where they may well learn a lesson or two about rape. A teenager, who takes a sexy of photo of him, or herself, is paraded around the community as a "child pornographer" for the rest of his or her life. Two kids in the back seat of a car have fumbling sex. The law says one is an offender because the other is a "victim." One week later, a birthday passes, and it is no longer a crime. One week's difference and a life is ruined. In other cases an act that is legal on Monday is illegal on Tuesday because the older of the two turned one year older. That becomes enough to qualify him, or her, as an offender.

These laws are not so much protecting children from predators as they are turning them into predators. . . When you look at the ages of the offenders you see that 14-year-olds are apparently the most sexually dangerous group in America. The rate declines from there, but throughout adolescence the law is far more likely to deem kids as offenders. You may imagine the dirty old man down the street. But with age people are less likely to "offend". One reason is that they are more mature. But another reason is clear. Once you reach a certain age, having sex with people your own age is normally not considered a crime. The explosion of "youthful sex offenders" is not the result of our kids becoming perverts. It is the result of the law criminalizing what is a normal part of growing up.

Christopher Ryan, Psychology Today - A little over a hundred years ago, John Harvey Kellogg, a physician, claimed the moral authority to instruct parents on the proper sexual education of their children. If you're unfamiliar with the writing of Kellogg and others of his day, their gloating disdain for basic human eroticism is chilling and unmistakable. In his best-selling Plain Facts for Old and Young (written on his sexless honeymoon in 1888), Kellogg offers parents guidance for dealing with their sons' natural erotic self-exploration in a section entitled Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects. "A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys," he writes, "is circumcision." He stipulates that, "The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment."

If circumcising your struggling, terrified son without anesthesia wasn't quite what a parent had in mind, Kellogg recommended "the application of one or more silver sutures in such a way as to prevent erection. The prepuce, or foreskin, is drawn forward over the glans, and the needle to which the wire is attached is passed through from one side to the other. After drawing the wire through, the ends are twisted together, and cut off close. It is now impossible for an erection to occur. . . " Parents were assured that sewing their son's penis into its foreskin, "acts as a most powerful means of overcoming the disposition to resort to the practice [of masturbation]."

Lest you think Kellogg was interested only in the severe, sadistic torture of boys, in the same book he soberly advises the application of carbolic acid to the clitoris of little girls to teach them not to touch themselves. Kellogg and his like-minded contemporaries demonstrate that sexual repression is a "malady that considers itself the remedy," to paraphrase Karl Kraus' dismissal of psychoanalysis. . .

While American moralists aren't sewing boys' foreskins closed or pouring acid into the vaginas of little girls who dare to touch themselves, they continue to destroy the lives of children caught in the most innocent acts of sexual exploration. By labeling these kids "sexual offenders," the long-standing tradition of sacrificing innocents in the name of erotic hypocrisy continues. . .

Adolescents all over the country are getting into serious legal trouble for sexting one another: snapping a risque photo of themselves with their cell-phone and sending it to a friend. Turns out, in many states, these kids can be sent to prison (where sexual abuse is rampant) for photographing their own bodies (manufacturing child pornography) and sharing the photos (distributing child pornography). They're being forced to register as sex offenders despite the fact that they themselves are the victims.

Being freaked-out about sex isn't just sad and ridiculous. It leads directly to horrible abuse of people who aren't responsible for the twisted sexuality of adults.

EUROPE FUNDS ORWELLIAN SPY PROGRAM THAT WOULD MONITOR 'ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR' ON WEB

Telegraph, UK - A five-year research program, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programs which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers. Its main objectives include the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behavior or violence".

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a "sinister step" for any country, adding that it was "positively chilling" on a European scale.

Stephen Booth, an Open Europe analyst who has helped compile a dossier on the European justice agenda, said . . . projects such as Indect sounded "Orwellian" and raised serious questions about individual liberty.

"This is all pretty scary stuff in my book. These projects would involve a huge invasion of privacy and citizens need to ask themselves whether the EU should be spending their taxes on them," he said.

"The EU lacks sufficient checks and balances and there is no evidence that anyone has ever asked 'is this actually in the best interests of our citizens?'"

Miss Chakrabarti said: "Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society.

"It's dangerous enough at national level, but on a Europe-wide scale the idea becomes positively chilling."

According to the official website for Project Indect, which began this year, its main objectives include "to develop a platform for the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence".

It talks of the "construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, usenet groups, file servers, p2p [peer-to-peer] networks as well as individual computer systems, building an internet-based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive".

York University's computer science department website details how its task is to develop "computational linguistic techniques for information gathering and learning from the web".

"Our focus is on novel techniques for word sense induction, entity resolution, relationship mining, social network analysis [and] sentiment analysis," it says.

A separate EU-funded research project, called Adabts - the Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behaviour and Threats in crowded Spaces - has received nearly L3 million. . .

It is seeking to develop models of "suspicious behavior" so these can be automatically detected using CCTV and other surveillance methods. The system would analyze the pitch of people's voices, the way their bodies move and track individuals within crowds. . .

Open Europe believes intelligence gathered by Indect and other such systems could be used by a little-known body, the EU Joint Situation Centre, which it claims is "effectively the beginning of an EU secret service". Critics have said it could develop into "Europe's CIA".

SOTOMAYOR CHALLENGES MYTH THAT CORPORATIONS ARE PERSONS

Wall Street Journal - In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law. During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled. But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.". . .

"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible," Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in an 1819 case. "It possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.". . .

In an 1886 tax dispute between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the state of California, the court reporter quoted Chief Justice Morrison Waite telling attorneys to skip arguments over whether the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause applied to corporations, because "we are all of opinion that it does.". . .

Subsequent opinions expanded corporate rights. In 1928, the court struck down a Pennsylvania tax on transportation corporations because individual taxicab drivers were exempt. Corporations get "the same protection of equal laws that natural persons" have, Justice Pierce Butler wrote.

From the mid-20th century, though, the court has vacillated on how far corporate rights extend. In a 1973 case before a more liberal court, Justice William O. Douglas rejected the Butler opinion as "a relic" that overstepped "the narrow confines of judicial review" by second-guessing the legislature's decision to tax corporations differently than individuals.

Today, it's "just complete confusion" over which rights corporations can claim, says Prof. William Simon of Columbia Law School.

Even conservatives sometimes have been skeptical of corporate rights. Then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist dissented in 1979 from a decision voiding Massachusetts's restriction of corporate political spending on referendums. Since corporations receive special legal and tax benefits, "it might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere," he wrote. . .

Justice Sotomayor may have found a like mind in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "A corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights," Justice Ginsburg said, evoking the Declaration of Independence.

MORE THAN 12 MILLION AMERICANS HAVE BEEN ARRESTED FOR POT POSSESSION

San Francisco Weekly - According to the just-released Uniform Crime Reports, U.S. law enforcement made 847,863 arrests on marijuana charges, 89 percent of which were for simple possession, not sale or manufacture. More Americans were arrested for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined. During 2008, one American was arrested for marijuana every 37 seconds.Marijuana arrests reached an all-time high at more than 872,000 in 2007. More than 12 million American citizens have been arrested on marijuana charges since 1965.

WATCHLIST: MEDINA, WASHINGTON MONITORS EVERY VEHICLE THAT ENTERS TOWN

Seattle Times - Cameras installed at Medina intersections monitor every vehicle coming into the city. The cameras capture all license-plate numbers, in a crime-prevention measure that one council member says "outweighs concern over privacy.". . . City signs have a unique way of greeting people. In Issaquah, for instance, motorists are told they're entering "a special place where people care." For years, Bothell invited people to stay "for a day or a lifetime." In Medina, a new sign bears this warning: "You Are Entering a 24 Hour Video Surveillance Area.". . . Under the "automatic license plate recognition" project, once a car enters Medina, a camera captures its license-plate number. Within seconds, the number is run through a database. . . Medina - a city of 3,100 with an average household income of $222,000 - had discussed the idea for years as a way to discourage crime, city officials said. Last year, there were 11 burglaries. . . Medina City Councilmember Lucius Biglow said crime prevention "outweighs concern over privacy. Privacy is considerably less nowadays than it was, say, 50 years ago."

OBAMA BACKS RENEWAL OF UNCONSTITUTIONAL PATRIOT ACT PROVISIONS

Wired - The Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year's end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States. . .

These are the three provisions due to expire:

- A secret court, known as the FISA court, may grant "roving wiretaps" without the government identifying the target. Generally, the authorities must assert that the target is an agent of a foreign power and/or a suspected terrorist. The government said Tuesday that 22 such warrants - which allow the monitoring of any communication device - have been granted annually.

- The FISA court may grant warrants for "business records," from banking to library to medical records. Generally, the government must assert that the records are relevant to foreign intelligence gathering and/or a terrorism investigation. The government said Tuesday that 220 of these warrants had been granted between 2004 and 2007. It said 2004 was the first year those powers were used.

- A so-called "lone wolf" provision, enacted in 2004, allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of an individual even without showing that the person is an agent of a foreign power or a suspected terrorist. The government said it has never invoked that provision, but said it wants to keep the authority to do so.

PROZAC PRESS IGNORES FLU QUARANTINE LAWS IN WAITING

Once again, the prozac press is attempting to squash an issue by concentrating on an aspect easy to dismiss while ignoring underlying problems. In this case, while indeed no quarantine orders have been issued, a number of states have quarantine orders prepared and ready to go. These have been formulated without legislative or media discussion and could prove extremely controversial if ever put into effect. For example, Here's how one Iowa broadcast station handled the story:

KIMT - Health leaders in Iowa are reassuring people that there are no H1N1 related quarantines being ordered. Rumors started swirling after a quarantine form was found by someone on the internet. Polly Carver-Kimm from the state health department says that it's simply a template that was made months ago. She says folks shouldn't expect to see it used anytime soon."

The story ended with the soothing advice to wash your hands. Now here is a more informative story:

Lynda Waddington, Iowa Independent - A quarantine template created by the Iowa Department of Public Health and accessible through the Centers for Disease Control Web site should not be of great concern, according to a press release from health department officials. . . Many public health departments prepare such templates "in preparation for public health emergencies," the agency said, but "isolation and quarantine orders are only very rarely used in very specific situations.". . . The template, which, as expected, contains several fill-in-the-blank information areas, is dated May 1, 2009 and reads as follows. . .

[][][] The Iowa Department of Public Health has determined that you have had contact with a person with Novel Influenza A H1N1. Novel Influenza A H1N1 is a disease which is spread from person to person and is associated with fever (greater than 100.0 F), cough, sore throat, rhinorrhea (runny nose), nasal congestion, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Novel Influenza A H1N1 presents a risk of serious harm to public health and if it spreads in the community severe public health consequences may result.

The Department has determined that it is necessary to quarantine your movement to a specific facility to prevent further spread of this disease. The Department has determined that quarantine in your home and other less restrictive alternatives are not acceptable because [insert the reason home quarantine is not acceptable, the person violated a previously issued home quarantine order, the person does not have an appropriate home setting conducive to home quarantine, etc.] The Department is therefore ordering you to comply with the following provisions during the entire period of quarantine:

1. Terms of confinement. You are ordered to remain at the quarantine facility, [insert name and address of facility], from [insert dates of quarantine].

2. Requirements during confinement. During the period of quarantine:

a. You must not leave the quarantine facility at any time unless you have received prior written authorization from the Department to do so. b. You must not come into contact with anyone except the following persons: (i) other persons who are also under similar quarantine order at the quarantine facility; (ii) authorized healthcare providers and other staff at the quarantine facility; (iii) authorized Department staff or other persons acting on behalf of the Department; and (iv) such other persons as are authorized by the Department. c. Your daily needs, including food, shelter, and medical care, will be provided for you during the period of quarantine at the quarantine facility. You should bring clothing, toiletries, and other personal items with you to the quarantine facility. You will have limited access to a telephone at the quarantine facility. You may bring your cell phone with you should you desire to have greater access to a means of communication. d. You should inform your employer that you are under quarantine order and are not authorized to physically come to the work place, although you may work from the facility via electronic or other means if appropriate. You should be aware that Iowa law prohibits an employer from firing, demoting, or otherwise discriminating against an employee due to the compliance of an employee with a quarantine order issued by the Department. . .

Violations of order. If you fail to comply with this Quarantine Order you may be ordered to be quarantined in a more restrictive facility. In addition, failure to comply with this order is a simple misdemeanor for which you may be arrested, fined, and imprisoned. [][][]

Other states have similar laws in waiting. Some are written in a way that essentially gives the state martial law status. In North Carolina, , failure to comply with an isolation order can result in a jail sentence. In Massachusetts, officials can enter homes without a warrant, and gives the state power over "routes of transportation and over materials and facilities including but not limited to communication devices, carriers, public utilities, fuels, food, clothing, and shelter."

There are a number of problems with all this such as who determines whether the swine flue situation deserves quarantines? The record of past flu analysis is not reassuring. The predictions, after all, are being made by politicians and bureaucrats who want to make sure they are not caught underestimating the problem. While there is little harm in this at the advisory level, it becomes a whole other matter when it results in martial law. Further, neither the media nor the legislatures involved have had anything close to adequate public discussion of the issue.

OBAMA DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW IF YOU'RE ON THE TERRORIST WATCH LIST

Washington Post - The Obama administration wants to maintain the secrecy of terrorist watch-list information it routinely shares with federal, state and local agencies, a move that rights groups say would make it difficult for people who have been improperly included on such lists to challenge the government. Intelligence officials in the administration are pressing for legislation that would exempt "terrorist identity information" from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. Such information -- which includes names, aliases, fingerprints and other biometric identifiers -- is widely shared with law enforcement agencies and intelligence "fusion centers," which combine state and federal counterterrorism resources.

Advocates for civil liberties and open government argue that the administration has not proved the secrecy is necessary and that the proposed changes could make the government less accountable for errors on watch lists. . . "Instead of enhancing accountability, this would remove accountability one or two steps further away," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy.

BRITISH MUSICIANS RISE TO DEFENSE OF DOWNLOADERS

Torrent Freak - Musicians have spoken out strongly against UK government plans to disconnect the Internet connections of repeated copyright infringers. They argue that the plans, much applauded by the big music labels, will further alienate fans from artists.

While the music industry paints a picture where file-sharers are criminals who refuse to pay for music, the reality is quite the opposite. The people who share music are dedicated music fans who actually buy more music than their non-pirating friends. . .

The music industry fails to realize this though and has declared war against their main source of revenue, which resulted in UK plans to disconnect alleged file-sharers. Instead of finding ways to please the changing demands of music fans in the digital era, they have chosen to defend their old models and punish the fans instead.

This trend is worrying artists, the people who actually produce the music but who are never heard when new legislative measures are drafted. Unlike the big labels they don't want their fans to be punished for a 'problem' that was created by a lack of innovation from the labels.

The Featured Artists Coalition, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (and the Music Producers Guild have joined forces to prevent a three-strikes disconnection regime being implemented.

In a statement the broad alliance of musicians, producers and songwriters criticizes the new UK anti-piracy plans, which they labels as illogical and "extraordinarily negative". . . .

COURT OF APPEALS: ASHCROFT VIOLATED RIGHTS OF CITIZENS AFTER 9/11

LA Times - Former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft violated the rights of U.S. citizens in the fevered wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by ordering arrests on material witness warrants when the government lacked probable cause, a federal appeals court said in a scathing opinion. In a ruling that said Ashcroft could be sued for prosecutorial abuses, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the former attorney general immunity from liability for his misuse of the material witness warrants in national security investigations. Members of the panel, all appointees of Republican presidents, said that they found the detention policy that Ashcroft authorized "repugnant to the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.". . .

MASS WRONGFUL ARRESTS AT GOP CONVENTION

Sheila Regan, Twin Cities Daily Planet - Walking around St. Paul this summer, it's hard to imagine that almost a year ago the city was filled with tear-gas smoke, miles of security fences, cops dressed in riot gear, and tens of thousands of protesters during the Republican National Convention. While most of the charges against protesters, journalists, and observers have been dropped, some of those arrested on RNC-related charges find their cases still in process. We decided to do a roundup of the numbers of arrests, charges, and convictions for RNC-related cases on the local, state, and federal level. Here's what we came up with.

The City of St. Paul handled 676 RNC-related adult misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, far more than any other jurisdiction. Of these 39 were "declined" because of the city's September 19 decision to decline all cases against journalists. . . • 70 of the 676 protesters charged by the St. Paul attorney with misdemeanors or gross misdemeanors pleaded guilty or paid a fine. . . 508 of the 676 cases were declined or dismissed by the prosecution. . . Three cases went to trial.

Ramsey County dealt with 75 felony cases. Of these, 53 were declined without charges and 22 defendants were charged. . . Six defendants have pleaded guilty, two have been found guilty by juries, three cases have been dismissed by prosecutors, and 11 are still pending.

In Minneapolis, 102 people were arrested at the Rage Against the Machine concert. Of these, 94 people were charged with misdemeanors and one with a gross misdemeanor. Since then, 71 defendants entered into an agreement to suspend prosecution for one year and to pay court costs and do community service, before having their cases dismissed, Two defendants pleaded guilty to the charges, 13 cases were dismissed, two cases are open with pending court dates, and seven cases are on bench warrant status because the defendants did not appear for their court dates.

There were three federal cases related to the RNC. Bradley Crowder and David Guy McKay, the "Texas Two," were arrested on charges that they constructed Molotov cocktails to throw at police during the convention. Bradley Crowder pleaded guilty to one count of unregistered possession of a firearm (which is how federal law classifies a Molotov cocktail) and was sentenced to 24 months in prison. David Guy McKay's first trial was ruled a mistrial, and in the second trial he pleaded guilty to three counts, including one count of possession of an unregistered firearm, one count of illegal manufacture of a firearm and one count of possession of a firearm with no serial number. The third federal case involved Matthew Bradley DePalma, from Michigan, who pleaded guilty to the count of possession of destructive devices and was sentenced to 42 months in prison.

OBAMA TO CONTINUE ILLEGAL BORDER COMPUTER SEARCHES

Washington Post - The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.. . . Representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one. "It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. . . "Under the policy begun by Bush and now continued by Obama, the government can open your laptop and read your medical records, financial records, e-mails, work product and personal correspondence -- all without any suspicion of illegal activity," said Elizabeth Goitein, who leads the liberty and national security project at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice.

BRITAIN: IT TAKES A THOUSAND SPYCAMS TO SOLVE ONE CRIME

BBC - Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals. In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers. David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: "It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent. CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.". . .

OBAMA ADMIN URGES DISMISSAL OF SUIT AGAINST UNCONSTITUTIONAL WIRETAPPING

David Kravets, Wired - The Obama administration is urging a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit weighing whether a sitting U.S. president may lawfully create a spying program to eavesdrop on Americans' electronic communications without warrants or congressional authorization. The nearly 5-year-old case, having a tortured procedural history, is the furthest along in challenging the Bush administration's warrantless, Terror Surveillance Program adopted in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks. . . It was the fourth time the government moved to dismiss the case. . . In July 2008, Bush signed legislation authorizing the type of surveillance at issue in this case – allowing the warrantless monitoring of Americans' electronic communications if they are communicating overseas with somebody the government believes is linked to terrorism. Then-Sen. Barrack Obama, now president, voted for that legislation, which also immunized the nation's telecommunication companies from lawsuits charging them with being complicit with the Bush administration's warrantless, wiretapping program.

LAWYER TIES FBI TO HATE BLOGGER

Wired - A notorious New Jersey hate blogger charged in June with threatening to kill judges and lawmakers was secretly an FBI "agent provocateur" paid to disseminate right-wing rhetoric, his attorney said. Hal Turner, the blogger and radio personality, remains jailed pending charges over his recent online rants, which prosecutors claim amounted to an invitation for someone to kill Connecticut lawmakers and Chicago federal appeals court judges. But behind the scenes the reformed white supremacist was holding clandestine meetings with FBI agents who taught him how to spew hate "without crossing the line," according to his lawyer, Michael Orozco. "Almost everything was at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Orozco said in a 45-minute telephone interview from New Jersey. "Their job was to pick up information on the responses of what he was saying and see where that led them. It was an interesting dynamic on what he was being asked to do." "He's a devoted American," added the lawyer, who claims Turner was paid "tens of thousands of dollars" for his service. Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman, said in a telephone interview the bureau's policy is "to neither confirm nor deny whether an individual has an association with the FBI."

HEALTH CARE BILL WOULD ALLOW GOVERNMENT SNOOPING INTO CHECKING AND CREDIT CARD INFO

iana Furchtgott-Roth, National Review - Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats' health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or credit-card information of every American. Under section 163, which is entitled "Administrative Simplification," the bill sets new "standards" for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers. According to section 163, the standards will "enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual's financial responsibility at the point of service . . . "

What is envisioned is a "machine-readable health plan beneficiary card" that, in addition to information about a person's medical history, will contain checking-account or credit-card information, so as to allow electronic payments and, if a person is lucky, occasional remittances. Since under the proposed legislation everyone would be required to have health insurance, all Americans would have to provide this information.

The required collection of such data is unprecedented. At no other time has the government sought to collect this type of financial information from everyone in America. . .

The idea of wholesale collection of checking-account information by Uncle Sam raises many questions. Who would see it? How would people be protected from theft of their account numbers? Fundamentally, who would control this sensitive information?

MAN SPENDS THREE MONTHS IN JAIL FOR SUCKING ON MINTS

WFTV, FL -A man is suing the Kissimmee Police Department for an arrest over mints. When officers pulled Donald May over for an expired tag, they thought the mints he was chewing were crack and arrested him. May told Eyewitness News they wouldn't let him out of jail for three months until tests proved the so-called drugs were candy. May said he was just minding his business, driving home from work, when a Kissimmee police officer pulled him over near 192.

May was pulled over for an expired tag on his car. When the officer walked up to him, he noticed something white in May's mouth. May said it was breath mints, but the officer thought it was crack cocaine. "He took them out of my mouth and put them in a baggy and locked me up [for] possession of cocaine and tampering with evidence," May explained.

The officer claimed he field-tested the evidence and it tested positive for drugs. The officer said he saw May buying drugs while he was stopped at an intersection. He also stated in his report May waived his Miranda rights and voluntarily admitted to buying drugs. May said that never happened.

May was thrown in jail and was unable to bond out for three months. He didn't get out until he received a letter from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the State Attorney's Office that test results showed no drugs were found.

"While I was sitting in jail I lost my apartment. I lost everything," he said.

While May was behind bars, the Kissimmee Police Department towed his car and auctioned it off. He lost his job and was evicted. Now May is suing the city for false arrest and false imprisonment. He wants to be compensated for the loss of his car and job.

May's attorney and the city of Kissimmee discussed a possible settlement last year, but failed to reach an agreement.

DNA EVIDENCE CAN BE FABRICATED SAY SCIENTIST

"Any biology undergraduate could perform this."

NY Times - Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases. The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person. "You can just engineer a crime scene," said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. "Any biology undergraduate could perform this."

SCALIA DOESN'T THINK INNOCENCE IS GROUNDS TO OVERTURN CONVICTION

Think Progress - Almost two decades ago, Troy Anthony Davis was convicted of murder and sentenced to die. Since then, seven of the witnesses against him have recanted their testimony, and some have even implicated Sylvester "Redd" Coles, a witness who testified that Davis was the shooter. In light of the very real evidence that Davis could be innocent of the crime that placed him on death row, the Supreme Court invoked a rarely used procedure giving Davis an opportunity to challenge his conviction. Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized his colleagues for thinking that mere innocence is grounds to overturn a conviction: "This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is "actually" innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged "actual innocence" is constitutionally cognizable." So in Justice Scalia's world, the law has no problem with sending an innocent man to die.

FILE SHARERS SHOULD BE TREATED AS LEAST AS WELL AS EXXON

Progressive Review - Charles Carreon, an attorney in Tucson, writes us concerning news that the Obama administration is backing the recording corporados claims to extraordinary fines against down loaders and file shares:

"If punitive damages, such as those that the Supreme Court set aside in the Exxon Valdez case, are unconstitutional because they do not bear a reasonable relation to the amount of actual damages, then it would seem that statutory penalties under the Copyright Act should be equally unconstitutional because disproportionate to the actual harm."

Wikipedia, 2008 - After nearly 20 years, Exxon Mobil Corp. will have to pay punitive damages for the massive Valdez oil spill in Alaska. But in its ruling, the Supreme Court slashed those damages to about $500 million. The plaintiffs - fishermen, landowners and native Alaskans - had hoped for much more.

A lower court had ordered the company to pay $2.5 billion in punitive damages, but in its opinion, the Supreme Court found that amount excessive. The high court said that under federal maritime law, punitive damages shouldn't be any larger than the compensatory damages the company had already been ordered to pay. In other words, the company shouldn't have to pay more in punishment than the actual damage it caused.

OBAMA PROPOSING TO END BAN ON CYBERSPYING ON VISITORS TO GOVERNMENT WEB SITES

Washington Post - The Obama administration is proposing to scale back a long-standing ban on tracking how people use government Internet sites with "cookies" and other technologies, raising alarms among privacy groups.

A two-week public comment period ended Monday on a proposal by the White House Office of Management and Budget to end a ban on federal Internet sites using such technologies and replace it with other privacy safeguards. The current prohibition, in place since 2000, can be waived if an agency head cites a "compelling need.". . .

Some privacy groups say the proposal amounts to a "massive" and unexplained shift in government policy. American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Michael Macleod-Ball said the move could "allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government website."

Even groups that support updating the policy question whether the administration is seeking changes at the request of private companies, such as online search giant Google, as the industry's economic clout and influence in Washington have grown rapidly.

Two prominent technology policy advocacy groups, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Electronic Frontier Foundation, cited the terms of a Feb. 19 contract with Google, in which a unnamed federal agency explicitly carved out an exemption from the ban so that the agency could use Google's YouTube video player. . .

Cindy Cohn, legal director for Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the contract "troubling."

"It appears that these companies are forcing the government to lower the privacy protections that the government had promised the American people," Cohn said. "The government should be requiring companies to raise the level of privacy protection if they want government contracts."

INSURANCE COMPANY DENIES LIFE SAVING AID BECAUSE PATIENT HAD USE POT

Hawaii Tribune - Waimea resident Kimberly Reyes, who was diagnosed with hepatitis - in March 2008, had been told in July that she had less than 30 days to live. Her family claimed she had followed doctor's orders, but her insurance carrier, Hawaii Medical Service Association, denied the liver transplant she needed to survive because three toxicology tests showed trace amounts of cannabis in her system. . .

Reyes' husband, Robin, and her mother, Noni Kuhns, said HMSA's decision was based upon a failure to comply with the insurer's policy strictly forbidding drug use. However, both maintain that neither HMSA nor her doctors told them of HMSA's policy on drug use.

Following at least five phone calls from Stephens Media over a one-week period, HMSA Public Information Officer Chuck Marshall replied through an e-mail that HMSA would not comment. HMSA also declined to provide the insurance carrier's policies on drug use or transplant approval.

A NEW APPROACH TO PRISONS

Physorg - U.S. prisons are too punitive and often fail to rehabilitate, but targeting prisoners' behavior, reducing prison populations and offering job skills could reduce prisoner aggression and prevent recidivism, a researcher told the American Psychological Association.

"The current design of prison systems don't work," said criminal justice expert Joel Dvoskin, PhD, of the University of Arizona. "Overly punitive approaches used on violent, angry criminals only provide a breeding ground for more anger and more violence." . . .
Applying behavior modification and social learning principles can work in corrections, he said. "For example, systematic reinforcement of pro-social behaviors is a powerful and effective way to change behavior, but it has never been used as a cornerstone of corrections," he said.

Also, punishment can be effective in changing behavior, but it only works in the short term and immediately after the unwanted behavior happens, he said. While there is a place for punishment, it should be used in psychologically informed and effective ways. However, punishment should not be one-size-fits-all, Dvoskin said.

"We need to know what may be behind the criminal behavior to know what the best treatment is," he said. "A person who commits crimes when drunk but not when sober is likely suffering from an alcohol problem. Treating the alcohol problem may diminish the criminal behavior.". . .

Finally, bringing work back into prisons can benefit prisoners by teaching them job skills and filling unmet job needs. With the increase in the criminal population and lack of increase in prison staff, "there is not enough supervision to allow prisoners to work and build skills," Dvoskin said. "This makes it very hard to re-enter into the civilian world and increases the likelihood of going back to prison."

TASER TALE OF THE DAY

Casper Star Tribune - State agents are investigating a Saturday incident in which a 76-year-old man driving a tractor in Glenrock was tasered by police after allegedly failing to obey their orders. The Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation will look into whether anyone connected to the incident committed a crime, said Special Agent Tim Hill.

The incident happened at Glenrock's annual Deer Creek Days event. Glenrock police said the man, who was operating an antique tractor, failed to obey directions in a parade, Hill said. At some point afterward, police subdued and tasered the man. During the incident, the man's tractor apparently ran into a police car, Hill said.

NEW ORLEANS DA WANT SMALL POT CHARGES HANDLED LIKE TRAFFIC TICKETS

WWL - New Orleans' District Attorney says people caught with small amounts of marijuana should not be arrested.

"It would allow for sort of a releases, relieving the crowded conditions in the parish jail, because many of these people could be given essentially a traffic ticket and a summons to show up in court to handle their particular marijuana charge," Leon Cannizzaro said.

Leon Cannizzaro today also called on the City Council to make it so that such pot possession cases don't have to be prosecuted in the state court system.

"Consider a city ordinance which would allow for the prosecution of the simple possession of marijuana cases in the municipal court," Cannizzaro requested of the city council.

Cannizzaro says some 700 simple marijuana possession cases are currently pending in criminal court in New Orleans. He says making it a municipal offense would open make the courts more efficient.

The D.A. wanted to make it clear that he doesn't want this to be misinterpreted. "I am not here advocating the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana in any way whatsoever," he told the council.

Cannizzaro pointed out that the maximum penalty for simple marijuana possession would remain six months in jail and/or a $500 fine.

WHY THE NEW MEDICAL RECORDS LAW IS A MAJOR PRIVACY THREAT

The Progressive Review has been a lonely voice reporting on the threat to privacy and other civil liberties posed by the massive new medical records program launched by the Obama administration. Maine has now become the largest state to have such a system and the stories about it include one sentence that implicitly admits the existence of a huge problem. For example, the Kennebec Journal reported, "Information about mental-health diagnoses, substance abuse and HIV status are not disclosed through HealthInfoNet." And why would not such essential medical information be available in the network? The most obvious answer is that the system is not as secure as its promoters claim. As we have pointed out, such systems can be entered improperly by law enforcement, employers or insurance companies.

Joanne Waldron, Natural News - The Washington Post reports that health and life insurance companies use a type of consumer health "credit report" that is derived from databases containing the prescription medication records on over 200 million Americans. In fact, some insurers are already testing information systems that contain information about the laboratory test results on patients. Previously, in order to determine insurability, insurance companies had to rely on records obtained directly from physician's offices. Insurers these days, however, rely on records that are obtained electronically at a very low cost (currently about 15 bucks), and these records are often used to deny people health insurance. . .

Some of the information stored about each consumer includes a history of five years worth of prescription medications and dosages, dates they were filled/refilled, the therapeutic classes of the drugs, and the name and address of the doctor who prescribed each medication. From this information, each consumer is assigned an expected risk score (kind of like a credit rating, except instead of measuring one's credit worthiness, it measures one's expected health risk).

It is doubtful that most doctors bother to warn their patients that taking optional or unnecessary medications could make it impossible or very expensive to get health insurance. In fact, most patients mistakenly believe that it is illegal for companies to sell private consumer health information. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For instance, according to the aforementioned Washington Post article, one doctor reported that she prescribed a drug called Amitriptyline for migraine headaches, and the patient was then denied life insurance due to the fact the medication was also an antidepressant. The article also asserts that insurers also leap to conclusions about patients' probable health outcomes if they notice that patients are taking the highest possible dosage of, say, a cholesterol medication.

Progressive Review, January 2009 - Of all the things that need fixing in our country this would belong near the bottom of the list. There are numerous problems: cost, governmental interference in medical decisions (doctors will inevitably be told what data they need to keep and how to keep it), the difficulty in reading doctor's handwritten notes, training doctors and nurses in the system, patient privacy and the high likelihood of error in transcribing the records. This project reeks of a medical version of No Child Left Behind - a dubious program that will make certain campaign contributors an awful lot of money, with no verifiable proof that it will improve life that much.

CNN - Only about 8% of the nation's 5,000 hospitals and 17% of its 800,000 physicians currently use the kind of common computerized record-keeping systems that Obama envisions for the whole nation. And some experts say that serious concerns about patient privacy must be addressed first. Finally, the country suffers a dearth of skilled workers necessary to build and implement the necessary technology. . .

It also won't come cheap. Independent studies from Harvard, RAND and the Commonwealth Fund have shown that such a plan could cost at least $75 billion to $100 billion over the ten years they think the hospitals would need to implement program.

That's a huge amount of money -- since the total cost of the stimulus plan is estimated to cost about $800 billion, the health care initiative would be one of the priciest parts to the plan.

The biggest cost will be paying and training the labor force needed to create the network. Luis Castillo, senior vice president of Siemens Healthcare, a company that designs health care technology, said the laborers will have the extremely difficult task of designing a a system that "thinks like a physician.". . .

But highly skilled health information technology professionals are as rare as they come, and many IT workers will need to be trained as health technology experts.

Early government estimates showed about 212,000 jobs could be created from this program, but [one expert] said there simply aren't that many Americans who are qualified.

Robert Pear, NY Times - Congressional leaders plan to provide $20 billion for such technology in an economic stimulus bill whose cost could top $825 billion. . .

So far, the only jobs created have been for a small army of lobbyists trying to secure money for health information technology. They say doctors, hospitals, drugstores and insurance companies would be much more efficient if they could exchange data instantaneously through electronic health information networks. Consumer groups and some members of Congress insist that the new spending must be accompanied by stronger privacy protections in an era when digital data can be sent around the world or posted on the Web with the click of a mouse.

Lawmakers leading the campaign for such safeguards include Representatives Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Pete Stark of California, both Democrats; Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont; and Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine.

Without strong safeguards, Mr. Markey said, the dream of electronic health information networks could turn into "a nightmare for consumers."

In the last few years, personal health information on hundreds of thousands of people has been compromised because of security lapses at hospitals, insurance companies and government agencies. These breaches occurred despite federal privacy rules issued under a 1996 law. Congress is trying to strengthen those privacy protections and make sure they apply to computer records. Lobbyists for insurers, drug benefit managers and others in the health industry are mobilizing a campaign to persuade Congress that overly stringent privacy protections would frustrate the potential benefits of digital records.

Wired - An academic says he found thousands of sensitive medical records leaked over peer-to-peer networks from computers at hospitals, clinics and elsewhere. . .

M. Eric Johnson, director of the Center for Digital Strategies at Dartmouth College, says he used simple search terms on several file sharing networks and uncovered files listing patient names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, insurance carrier names and insurance diagnosis codes that revealed which patients were being treated for specific diseases. He conducted some of the searches last month and presented his findings at a conference last week.

Among about 160 files that Johnson claims contained sensitive data were two spreadsheets containing information on 20,000 patients, which identified four patients being treated for HIV-AIDS, 326 patients being treated for cancer, 201 being treated for mental illnesses and thousands afflicted with various other diseases. The spreadsheets came from a collection agency that a hospital employed to track down delinquent payments.

In addition to these records, Johnson found patient psychiatric evaluations from mental health centers in several states; patient billing information from a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center; and a spreadsheet from an AIDS clinic that listed the address, Social Security number and date of birth of 232 clinic visitors. A 1,718-page document (see document above) from a medical testing laboratory included the Social Security numbers, date of birth, insurance information and treatment codes for approximately 9,000 patients. . .

The study was partially funded by a grant from the Department of Homeland Security and comes on the heels of the $780 billion economic stimulus bill that President Obama signed into law last month, which allocates $19 billion to help build a nationwide health-information network that would convert all patient medical records to a digital format by 2014. . .

While the British bill described below is different than Obama's, it raises similar concerns. The America media has not touched this issue.

British Medical Journal - The health consequences of the government's new data-sharing proposals could be "staggering" warns an expert in an editorial.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, Director of Professional Activities at the British Medical Association expresses concerns about the Coroners and Justice Bill which, in its current form, appears to grant the government unprecedented powers to access people's confidential medical records, and share them with third parties.

Simply it means that laws that currently limit health data sharing could be set aside, says Dr Nathanson. Even the Venereal Diseases Regulations and the provisions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act would not be immune to the potential for removal.

Health data is not privileged in the manner of legal information, but for many years it has been recognized as special, and as sensitive, she writes. Research shows that patients expect the health professional with whom they share information will hold it in confidence, and share it sparingly and on a need to know basis, usually those also involved in offering them care.

Yet Dr Nathanson believes that data in the current draft of the bill suggests blindness to the special sensitivity of health data.

If the current draft legislation goes through with minimal changes, the effect could be to to undermine doctor and patient confidence in the future control of data that neither is willing to record the most sensitive information, she warns.

Health Care Renewal, 2006 - The Wall Street Journal published a story on a patient, Patricia Galvin, who was screwed by insurers after medical information she thought was confidential (about her psychotherapy) was divulged to an insurance company:

||||

Theo Francis, Wall Street Journal - After her fiancé died suddenly, Patricia Galvin left New York for San Francisco in 1996 and took a job as a tax lawyer for a large law firm. A few years later, she began confiding to a psychologist at Stanford Hospital & Clinics about her relationships with family, friends and co-workers.

Then, in 2001, she was rear-ended at a red light. When she later sought disability benefits for chronic back pain, her insurer turned her down, citing information contained in her psychologist's notes. The notes, her insurer maintained, showed she wasn't too injured to work.

Ms. Galvin, 51 years old, was appalled. It wasn't just that she believed her insurer misinterpreted the notes. Her therapist, she says, had assured her the records from her sessions would remain confidential.

As the health-care industry embraces electronic record-keeping, millions of pages of old documents are being scanned into computers across the country. The goal is to make patient records more complete and readily available for diagnosis, treatment and claims-payment purposes. But the move has kindled patient concern about who might gain access to sensitive medical files -- data that now can be transmitted with the click of a computer mouse. . .

The article points out that complaints to HHS about breaches of medical privacy have exceeded 23,000 and that HHS presently receives about 700 new complaints monthy, while enforcement of "guarantees" such as in the HIPAA act are basically non-existent. I'd bet a large proportion of these breaches were facilitated by electronic legerdemain.

Junk Food Science 2006 - Ms. Galvin's fears that her most private thoughts and secrets are "mere data of a transaction, like a grocery receipt" are well-founded and truly give life to an observation I made several years ago while leading electronic medical records implementation at a large hospital. . . Unfortunately, as Ms. Galvin discovered to her horror, good things do not come from treating twenty-first century medical "transactions" as nineteenth century accounting data.

We're not alone in the United States. In the UK, the ambitious Connecting for Health national EMR project and plans for a central clinical database have been met with stiff resistance from patient advocacy groups. Plans to upload medical records onto the central clinical database will put patient confidentiality at risk, the UK program has been told by its own consultants. . .

A similar advocacy movement is needed in the U.S., for there has been an idealistic and almost reckless push in the US to put any and all healthcare information into EMR's and other electronic databases, even when the financial and clinical benefits are unproven. . .

In a decade when conflict of interest and mismanagement in healthcare is common, break-ins to supposedly secure databases appear in the news almost weekly, and dominant computer operating systems are barely able to keep ahead of hackers' attempts to circumvent security, the dream of patient confidentiality is increasingly utopian. . .

In reality, if you want to keep information secure, don't put it on a computer; and if you have to put it on a computer, and the computer is to be put on a network, then the information by definition is no longer secure. . .

Healthcare professionals quickly come to know that patients' records are not really confidential, but when they become electronic, the numbers of people and interests with potential access explodes. The public would be astounded to learn that HIPAA gives virtually anyone remotely connected to their healthcare, third-party reimbursement or regulatory surveillance, access to their most private information. . .

In a related story, the Chicago Sun Times just reported on an online Personal Health Records database being created by one of the country's largest health management companies, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, which has partnered with America's Health Insurance Plans, the main lobbying organization for 1,300 health insurance companies. The newspaper reports:

"The two groups have developed and pilot tested standards on what should be included in the records and that make them portable, enabling consumers to transfer the records when they change insurers or doctors.
The groups, whose members cover more than 200 million people, said the goal is to have insurers include in every personal health record core data such as records of visits to doctors' offices and hospitals; medical conditions and illnesses; treatment plans, including medications; immunizations; allergies; health risks, and health insurance information. . . "

Patient Privacy Rights, a national consumer watchdog organization based in Austin, Texas, denounced this plan. "This is a wolf in sheep's clothing," said Deborah Peel, MD, founder and chair of Patient Privacy Rights. "Insurer-provided electronic personal health records held in a data bank that the insurers control will be used primarily to benefit insurers, not patients. . .

Xerobank, UK, 2009 - Doctors have condemned a 'Big Brother' scheme to give the public sector and private companies much wider access to personal medical records. Eight organizations, including the British Medical Association and the medical royal colleges, have protested against it.

They have written a letter to oppose a proposed law that would make it easier for the Government to share data. . .

They also warn that increasing availability of patient records on the national computer database elevates the risk of information falling into the wrong hands.

They say that anonymous sperm donors or those with venereal diseases could find themselves being publicly identified under the new law.

The BMA argues much of the at-risk data could be used by medical researchers, potentially in the pay of drugs companies. . .

BMA chairman Dr Hamish Meldrum said: 'If patients cannot be 100 per cent sure their records are confidential they will inevitably be reluctant to share vital information with their doctor.'

ACLU, 2003 - Recent media reports have revealed that a little-known Defense Department office is developing a computer system called "Total Information Awareness" that threatens to turn us all into "suspects" without proof of criminal wrongdoing.

The system, which includes an advanced form of ""data-mining,"" would effectively provide government officials with immediate access to our personal information such as all of our communications (phone calls, emails and web searches), financial records, purchases, prescriptions, school records, medical records and travel history. Under this program, our entire lives would be catalogued and available to government officials.

Although Congress defunded this project, elements of it remain scattered throughout the government.

Fierce Healthcare, 2008 - Despite vows that it was getting things in order, UCLA Medical Center still seems to have a problem with protecting the privacy of its medical records. According to a new report from the California Department of Public Health, the privacy of a high-profile patient was breached by two nurses and an emergency department tech in mid-April. What's more, the Department found that almost twice as many medical center employees as had previously been reported had improperly accessed records between January 2004 and June 2006. That brings the full total of workers implicated in records snooping to 127.

Previous investigations had found that UCLA employees had inappropriately viewed the records of several celebrities and high-profile patients, including actress Farrah Fawcett and singer Britney Spears. In one particularly egregious case, a former administrative specialist faces federal criminal charges for violating Fawcett's privacy, as well as 938 other patients, from April 2003 to May 2007.

UCLA's attempts to discipline the employees have varied. Of 59 employees newly linked to breaches by the Department of Public Health, 24 worked at UCLA when they were identified. The hospital is proposing to fire seven, suspend six for two to three weeks each and issue verbal or written warnings to eight others, with three remaining under investigation.

JUDGE LAMBASTS DC POLICE OVER 2002 ANTI-GLOBALIZATION PROTEST

DC Examiner - A federal judge has called for an investigation into the D.C. police department after officials there destroyed key evidence related to a controversial mass arrest of anti-globalization protesters in 2002.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said he wanted to get to the bottom of the disappearance of police records of the orders and movements of police officers in a massive crackdown of protesters rallying against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Hundreds of innocent bystanders in Pershing Park were swept up by the police dragnet. Some 400 people have filed a class-action civil rights lawsuit. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, then a deputy, ordered those arrested to be "hog tied" -- bound hand to foot.

In federal court Wednesday, Sullivan ordered D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles to file an affidavit on the disappearance of the records within the next two weeks. He also suggested that he might appoint an independent investigator to look into the matter.

"When, if ever, can anyone trust their government?" Sullivan asked.

Plaintiffs' lawyer Mara Verheyden-Hilliard said the District has shown "reckless disregard" for legal ethics.

"This case has now developed from a case solely about a massive constitutional rights violation to being about a massive cover-up," she said.

Nickles denied there was anything untoward in the destruction of the evidence and blamed the D.C. Council for not funding a better document-management system.

Police union Chairman Kris Baumann, who has often litigated against the department, said the incident wasn't isolated.

"The destruction of e-mails, the destruction of documents -- anything to cover up government misconduct is the norm," Baumann said.

Washington Post - Some evidence, including a key report and portions of radio transmissions, has vanished. In recent days, the D.C. government has also turned over thousands of pages of records and videotapes to protesters' lawyers, some of which should have been produced years ago.

Sullivan ordered D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles to submit a sworn declaration detailing his office's shoddy work and the steps he was taking to fix the problems.

Sullivan said he would impose "severe" monetary sanctions on the D.C. government and urged Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to "settle this case soon."

"This kind of conduct is not acceptable," Sullivan said, calling the actions of D.C. government lawyers "abysmal" and urging the D.C. Council to investigate the attorney general's office.

After the judge's harangue, the District's attorney, Thomas Koger, had tears in his eyes. He declined to comment.

Sullivan's criticism came during a hearing in two lawsuits that accuse D.C. police of violating the rights of demonstrators and bystanders when officers arrested 386 people in Pershing Park without a warning on Sept. 27, 2002. Former D.C. police chief Charles H. Ramsey eventually issued a public apology for the arrests. Protesting at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the demonstrators were charged with parading without a permit.

Jonathan Turley, an attorney for the protesters, called for an independent investigation of the attorney general's office. Another lawyer for the protesters, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, said she had never seen such "a breathtaking destruction of evidence before."

WHITE LAWYER GETS THE GATES TREATMENT

As we noted a few days ago, much police misbehavior stems from a bullying attitude which makes minorities especially vulnerable but far from alone.

Huffington Post - A lawyer who moments earlier had been complaining to friends about police overreaction in the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., got a taste of the Gates treatment himself after loudly chanting "I hate the police" near a traffic stop in Northwest Washington, D.C.

Pepin Tuma, 33, was walking with two friends along Washington's hip U Street corridor around midnight Saturday, complaining about how Gates had been rousted from his home for not showing a proper amount of deference to a cop. "We'd been talking about it all day," said Tuma. "It seems like police have a tendency to act overly aggressively when they're being pushed around," Tuma recalled saying.

Then the group noticed five or six police cruisers surrounding two cars in an apparent traffic stop on the other side of the street. It seemed to Tuma that was more cops than necessary.

"That's why I hate the police," Tuma said. He told the Huffington Post that in a loud sing-song voice, he then chanted, "I hate the police, I hate the police."

One officer reacted strongly to Tuma's song. "Hey! Hey! Who do you think you're talking to?" Tuma recalled the officer shouting as he strode across an intersection to where Tuma was standing. "Who do you think you are to think you can talk to a police officer like that?" the police officer said, according to Luke Platzer, 30, one of Tuma's companions.

Tuma said he responded, "It is not illegal to say I hate the police. It's not illegal to express my opinion walking down the street."

According to Tuma and Platzer, the officer pushed Tuma against an electric utility box, continuing to ask who he thought he was and to say he couldn't talk to police like that.

"I didn't curse," Tuma said. "I asked, am I being arrested? Why am I a being arrested?"

Within minutes, the officer had cuffed Tuma. The charge: disorderly conduct -- just like Gates, who was arrested after police responded to a report of a possible break-in at his home and Gates protested their ensuing behavior.

D.C.'s disorderly conduct statute bars citizens from breaching the peace by doing anything "in such a manner as to annoy, disturb, interfere with, obstruct, or be offensive to others" or by shouting or making noise "either outside or inside a building during the nighttime to the annoyance or disturbance of any considerable number of persons."

The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has said that the city's disorderly conduct law is "confusing, overbroad, frequently used by police to harass disfavored individuals" and that it "violates constitutional rights of free speech, assembly and petition.". . .

Tuma doesn't have a court date -- but the arrest will pop up if an employer does a background check.

Tuma filed a complaint with the D.C. Office of Police Complaints, alleging a lack of probable cause, a false arrest, and that the officer used harassing and demeaning language -- Tuma alleges the officer called him a "faggot."

GATES GOT OFF EASY

A new report by The Sentencing Project finds a record 140,610 individuals are now serving life sentences in state and federal prisons, 6,807 of whom were juveniles at the time of the crime. In addition, 29% of persons serving a life sentence (41,095) have no possibility of parole, and 1,755 were juveniles at the time of the crime.

The report's findings reveal overwhelming racial and ethnic disparities in the allocation of life sentences: 66% of all persons sentenced to life are non-white, and 77% of juveniles serving life sentences are non-white.
The dramatic growth in life sentences is not primarily a result of higher crime rates, but of policy changes that have imposed harsher punishments and restricted parole consideration.

For Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which three-fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.

FLOTSAM & JETSAM: WHERE BAD COPS COME FROM

Sam Smith

Whenever anything like the Gates incident arises, we spend an inordinate amount of time assessing blame and hardly any discussing remedies.

Calling someone a racist doesn't cure anything. In fact, racism is normal. That isn't to say that it's nice, pretty, or desirable. Only that suspicion, distrust, and distaste for outsiders is a deeply human trait. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote that "all primitive tribes agree in recognizing [a] category of the outsiders, those who are not only outside the provisions of the moral code which holds within the limits of one's own people, but who are summarily denied a place anywhere in the human scheme. A great number of the tribal names in common use . . . are only their native terms for 'the human beings,' that is, themselves. Outside of the closed group there are no human beings."

Many attempts to eradicate racism from our society have been based on the opposite notion -- that those who harbor prejudice towards others are abnormal and social deviants. Further, we often describe these "deviants" only in terms of their overt antipathies -- they are "anti-Semitic" or guilty of "hate." In fact, once you have determined yourself to be human and others less so, you need not hate them any more than you need despise the fish you eat for dinner. This is why those who participate in genocide can do so with such calm -- they have defined their targets as outside of humanity.

What if, instead, we were to start with the unhappy truth that humans have always had a hard time dealing with other peoples, and that much ethnic and sexual antagonism stems not from hate so much as from cultural ignorance and narcissism? Then our repertoire of solutions might tilt more towards education and mediation and away from being self-righteous multi-cultural missionaries converting yahoos in the wilds of the soul. We could turn towards something more akin to what Andrew Young once described as a sense of "no fault justice." We might begin to consider seriously Martin Luther King's admonition to his colleagues that among their dreams should include that someday their enemies would be their friends.

Even if racism played a major role in the Gates incident, it probably wasn't the only factor. For example, one reader asks if there wasn't the smell of a class divide in the confrontation between a Cambridge cop and Harvard professor, with the white guy on the lower end of the economic ladder.

The most common form of police misbehavior is bullying. The target need only be someone who is perceived as vulnerable, with blacks, gays and young teens all in the pool. Blacks are extremely common victims but they are far from the only ones.

As our policing has increasingly moved to a military model and with cops often being from the lower economic and social strata, the bullying approach has tremendous appeal. One's size and blanket of weaponry reorganize one's place in society and are tempting to use in full force.

Unfortunately, neither scolding nor paper regulations have much effect. If the officer in the Gates case were to be punished, it would probably just increase the hostility of other officers towards those perceived as weak and who have no access to the national media.

Having been briefly a federal law enforcement officer while in the Coast Guard and having covered the ethnically divided town of DC for many decades, this is a matter that has long fascinated me. If you strip away the cliches and watch actual behavior, you start to see things easy to pas unnoticed.

For example, the DC police department changed from having only one top level black officer and with white cops refusing to share their cars with black officers to a department run by a series of black chiefs. On average these chiefs did a better job than the white ones (including the current white woman) in part because they had an instinctive feel for creating better ethnic relations and the officers under their command soon learned the sort of behavior that was expected. I suspect, however, that it made another difference: it increased the respect black officers had for themselves and with which white officers treated black citizens.

Sometimes things slipped back, as when a bunch of white West Virginia officers were hired to overcome a shortage on the force. It wasn't that the West Virginia officers couldn't have been better; it was just that at the time no one really cared that much.

It is part of the liberal canon that wrong thinking people stay that way. In fact, people tend to behave the way they are trained to behave and the way those leading them tell them to behave.

Obviously, there will be exceptions but in a normal community these people become social rogues rather than the norm.

So the first way to get a good police officer is to have good lieutenants, captains and chiefs.

The second necessity, and one that is massively ignored, is good and continuous training and the self respect that it encourages.

It shouldn't stop at the police academy. If it does you end up with a cable TV version of law enforcement in which the cop drifts easily into the role of a bully.

I have argued for decades that every police precinct house and headquarters should have a lawyer - given the rank of captain or above - to be on hand to train the force, mediate conflicts and help officers do their job better.

I watch this in action at a Coast Guard district headquarters where I was stationed. A Lieutenant Commander was the legal officer, but he was much more. Enlisted personnel such as boarding officers would casually drop by his office to discuss problems they had encountered. He was right on top of every little legal issue that arose and he had the autonomy to act based on legal wisdom and not the district commander's say so.

Only a tiny number of police officers in this country have any access - let alone easy access - to good legal advice. Yet they are supposed to be first government officials enforcing the law. It is bizarre, dangerous and it doesn't work.

There would be a further advantage to such an approach. As police officers see themselves as well educated agents of our system of law, they would start to have more respect for themselves and, as a result, treat others better.

But as long we treat cops as society's hired bullies, we shouldn't be surprised by some of the results.

WHY DISORDERLY CONDUCT LAWS ARE OUT OF ORDER

Jacob Sullum, Reason - Indiana lawyer Joshua Claybourn notes that the Henry Louis Gates affair highlights the threat to civil liberties posed by laws prohibiting "disorderly conduct," the offense for which Gates was arrested. In Massachusetts, a person is deemed "disorderly," and therefore subject to a jail term of up to six months, if he

1) "engages in fighting or threatening, violent or tumultuous behavior," or

2) "creates a hazard or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose"

3) "with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm," or

4) "recklessly creates a risk thereof."

Claybourn (who, for what it's worth, is skeptical of Gates' charges of racism) says:

"This sort of definition is...similar to that found in most states, and in almost [every]instance it is fraught with vagaries, giving far too much discretion to police officers. In short, "disorderly conduct" can easily become a euphemism for whatever a particular police officer doesn't like. That kind of environment runs counter to fundamental ideals of the American system."

The danger of such discretion is clear from the report on Gates' arrest. Sgt. James Crowley, the Cambridge police officer who arrested Gates at his home after responding to an erroneous burglary report, claims the Harvard professor's complaints and charges of racism amounted to "tumultuous behavior" that recklessly created a risk of "public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm." How so? Crowley reports that Gates followed him from the house onto the front porch, where he continued haranguing the sergeant:

"As I descended the stairs to the sidewalk, Gates continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him. Due to the tumultuous manner Gates had exhibited in his residence as well as his continued tumultuous behavior outside the residence, in view of the public, I warned Gates that he was becoming disorderly. Gates ignored my warning and continued to yell, which drew the attention of both the police officers and citizens, who appeared surprised and alarmed by Gates's outburst."

Notably, Crowley invited Gates to follow him, thereby setting him up for a disorderly conduct charge. "I told Gates that I was leaving his residence and that if he had any other questions regarding the matter I would speak with him outside the residence," Crowley writes. He claims "my reason for wanting to leave the residence was that Gates was yelling very loud and the acoustics of the kitchen and foyer were making it difficult for me to transmit pertinent information to ECC or other responding units." But instead of simply leaving, Crowley lured Gates outside, the better to create a public spectacle and "alarm" passers-by. The subtext of Crowley's report is that he was angered and embarrassed by Gates' "outburst" and therefore sought to create a pretext for arresting him.

The charge against Gates was dropped. But what are the odds that it would have been if Gates had not been a nationally famous scholar with many friends in high places, including the president of the United States? Instead of showing what happens to "a black man in America," the case illustrates what can happen to anyone who makes the mistake of annoying a cop.

THE GATES CASE: WHAT THE MEDIA DIDN'T NOTICE

Dave Lindorff, Counterpunch - Professor Gates, who was understandably outraged at the whole situation, properly told the sergeant that he wanted his name and his badge number, because he intended to file a complaint. Whether or not the officer had done anything wrong by that point is not the issue. It was Gates' right as a citizen to file a complaint. The officer's alleged refusal to provide his name and badge number was improper and, if Gates' claim is correct, was a violation of the rules that are in force in every police department in the country.

But whatever the real story is regarding the showing of identification information by Gates and the officer, police misconduct in this incident went further. Gates reportedly got understandably angry and frustrated at the officer for refusing to provide him with this identifying information and/or for refusing to accept his own identification documents, and at that point the officer abused his power by arresting Gates and charging him with disorderly conduct.

There's nothing unusual about this, sadly. It is common practice for police in America to abuse their authority and to arrest people on a charge of "disorderly conduct" when those people simply exercise their free speech rights and object strenuously to how they are being treated by an officer. Try it out sometime. If you are given a ticket for going five miles an hour over the posted speed limit, tell the traffic officer he or she is a stupid moron, and see if you are left alone. My bet is that you will find yourself either ticketed on another more serious charge, or even arrested for "disorderly conduct." If you happen to be black or some other race than white, I'll even put money on that bet. . .

There is no suggestion by police that Gates physically threatened the arresting officer. His "crime" at the time was simply speaking out. . .

Very little of the mainstream reporting I've seen on this event makes the crucial point that it is not illegal to tell a police officer that he is a jerk, or that he has done something wrong, or that you are going to file charges against him. And yet too many commentators, journalists and ordinary people seem to accept that if a citizen "mouths off" to a cop, or criticizes a cop, or threatens legal action against a cop, it's okay for that cop to cuff the person and charge him with "disorderly conduct." Worse yet, if a cop makes such a bogus arrest, and the person gets upset, he's liable to get an added charge of "resisting arrest" or worse.

We have, as a nation, sunk to the level of a police state, when we grant our police the unfettered power to arrest honest, law-abiding citizens for simply stating their minds. And it's no consolation that someone like Gates can count on having such charges tossed out. It's the arrest, the cuffing, and the humiliating ride in the back of a cop squad car to be booked and held until bailed out that is the outrage.

I'm sure police take a lot of verbal abuse on the job, but given their inherent power-armed and with a license to arrest, to handcuff, and even to shoot and kill-they must be told by their superiors that they have no right to arrest people for simply expressing their views, even about those officers.

Insulting an officer of the law is not a crime. Telling an officer he or she is breaking the law is not a crime. Demanding that an officer identify him or herself is not a crime. And saying you are going to file a complaint against the officer is not a crime. . .

In a free country, we should not allow the police, who after all are supposed to be public servants, not centurions, to behave in this manner. When we do, we do not have a free society. We have a police state.

The following appeared in the front of the Coast Guard manual when your editor was an officer in the 1960s. It is from Alexander Hamilton's instructions to the first officers of the Revenue Marine, forerunner of the Coast Guard, and is one of the best descriptions of how law enforcement officers should deal with citizens. Not surprisingly, it has since disappeared from the Coast Guard manual.

Alexander Hamilton - While I recommend in the strongest terms to the respective officers, activity, vigilance and firmness, I feel no less solicitude that their deportment may be marked with prudence, moderation and good temper. . .

They will bear in mind that their countrymen are freemen, and as such are impatient of everything that bears the least mark of domineering spirit. They will, therefore refrain, with the most guarded circumspection, from whatever has the semblance of haughtiness, rudeness or insult. If obstacles occur, they will remember that they are under the particular protection of the laws and they can meet with nothing disagreeable in the execution of their duty which these will not severely reprehend. . .

This reflection, and regard to the good of the service, will prevent at all times a spirit of irritation or resentment. They will endeavor to overcome difficulties, if any are experienced, by a cool and temperate perseverance in their duty -- by address and moderation rather than by vehemence and violence.

CALIFORNIA TOWN WANTS TO SPY ON EVERY CAR ENTERING ITS BORDERS

KCBS - Tiburon's police chief is proposing using cameras to record the license plate number of every car that enters that city.

Tiburon is only accessible by two roads which means police could point the cameras, which are known as license plate readers, at every lane that leads into the city.

Police Chief Michael Cronin says the devises can compare plates to databases of cars that have been stolen or linked to crimes and immediately notify police of matches.

If the Town Council gives final approval to the idea, officials hope to install the readers by late fall.

Civil liberties groups are not happy about the proposal. Representatives of the ACLU of Northern California call the cameras a needle in a haystack approach that may waste money, invade privacy, and invite unfair profiling.

California ACLU - California cities are moving quickly to install video surveillance cameras on public streets and plazas without regulations, with little or no public debate, and without an evaluation of their effectiveness.

Even though 37 cities have some type of video surveillance program, and 10 cities are considering expansive programs, no jurisdiction in California has conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the surveillance cameras’ effectiveness. The ACLU sent Public Records Act requests to a total of 131 jurisdictions statewide and received responses from 119 cities.

Nicole Ozer, Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director and report co-author, raises another serious concern. “The threat of widespread government surveillance only multiplies when cameras are combined with other new technologies such as radio frequency identification tags, face and eye scans, and automated identification software. In this light, video surveillance cameras provide a critical pillar for an emerging government surveillance infrastructure.”