Unlocked With Proper Eye ID

As the week-long Democratic National Convention comes to a close in Boston, many attendees will undoubtedly walk away with memorable moments. But for some high-profile delegates, party members and celebrities the real eye-opening experiences weren't just at the Fleet Center meeting hall.
To improve security against possible terrorist attacks, the upscale Nine Zero hotel had upgraded its security with an iris-scanning system developed by South Korean giant, LG Electronics.
The so-called biometric system used cameras and computers to capture the unique patterns of an individual iris, the colored portion of human eye, when they check in at the hotel's front desk. Once digitized, the images were stored in a database along with other information about the guest ? name and which room or suite they're staying in, for example.
Cameras at the main entrance and outside every guest room controlled the locks on the doors. Guests, employees, and other pre-screened individuals ? security personnel, for example ? merely peered into the cameras and a computer looks for a matching profile. Once the computer verifies the person's identity and he or she has permission to be in the hotel or that particular suite, the doors unlock.
"[The] LG iris identification technology helps to create a much more secure environment for our guests," says hotel manager Jim Horseman. "It is easier to use than a key, ? a key that you can't go down to a locksmith and duplicate, you can't lose it [and] can't be stolen."
The biometric identification system would also offer the premium hotel other advantages, such as even faster check-in and check-out for regular visitors.
How well the iris system worked during the convention is still under review. But the group that owns the Nine Zero says the technology could appear in its 27 other luxury hotels, resorts and golf clubs throughout the United States.

< As usual, they're trading off privacy for security. While it's a nice concept to protect your things, in this case your room, there's a much bigger issue at stake here. When biometrics are accepted, it makes them easier to accept other places. The security of a hotel room has never been much of a problem. Most thefts occur from the employees who would be able to get in anyway. On the other side of things, Imagine being tracked everywhere you go in everything you do. Do you think the government will not soon require these hotels to keep check-ins updated in a national database? And guess where they'll start.. "you already have the infrastructure in place, all you have to do is let us know" It's time to put as big a brake on biometrics as possible. You can't put Pandora back in her box, but what you Can do is not rush headlong into something with far more negative than positive consequences. As with computers where they add more and more (usually useless) features instead of making the ones they've got work properly, here they need to be insuring that biometrics remain private in every single type of use. Only then will they be a technology that does not decrease our worth as human beings. &gt

Eating candy a U.S. capital offence

WASHINGTON?A government scientist finishing a candy bar on her way into a subway station where eating is banned was arrested, handcuffed and detained for three hours by transit police.
Stephanie Willett said she was eating a PayDay bar on an escalator descending into a station July 16 when an officer warned her to finish it before entering the station. Both Willett and police agree she put the last bit into her mouth before throwing the wrapper into a garbage can. Willett, 45, said the officer then followed her into the station.
"Don't you have some other crimes you have to take care of?" she said she told the officer.
Washington has been under heightened security because of the threat of terrorism. And last week, police declared a emergency over rising juvenile crime.
The transit officer asked for Willett's identification, but she kept walking. She said she was then frisked and handcuffed.
"If she had stopped eating, it would have been the end of it and if she had just stopped for the issuance of a citation, she never would have been locked up," Transit Police Chief Polly Hanson said yesterday.
Metrorail has been criticized in the past for heavy handed enforcement of the eating ban. In 2000, an officer handcuffed a 12-year-old girl for eating a french fry on a subway platform.
In 2002, an officer ticketed a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy for cursing when he was unable to find a working elevator to leave a station.

New S.Korean Cell Phone Lets Parents Track Kids

SEOUL (Reuters) - Parents in South Korea (news - web sites) will now be able to track their children by using a device in a new mobile phone that has been designed for kids. SK Telecom Co. began selling Wednesday colorful cell phones with antennas that look like human ears and a built in tracker using the global positioning satellite (GPS) network.

We rank the best customer support in the PC biz. Plus, tips on fixing problems and keeping your machine running smoothly.

The firm, the top mobile operator in a country where three-quarters of the people carry at least one mobile phone, put a price of around $86 on the handset.

The phone has four buttons to save phone numbers of key contacts, such as Mom and Dad.

The GPS technology works even when the phone is turned off.

To keep the price down, the phones do not have text messaging or Internet capabilities.

Trial examines role of dashboard electronics

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- When a pickup truck crossed the double yellow line along Seward Highway and killed two occupants of a Jeep Grand Cherokee, police initially thought the accident was another tragic mistake by a momentarily distracted driver.
Then they spotted the dashboard DVD player.
In what may be the first trial of its kind in the nation, prosecutors have accused the pickup truck's driver of second-degree murder for watching a movie instead of the road when he crashed head-on into the Jeep.
The pickup's driver, Erwin J. Petterson Jr., denies using the DVD player as he drove north on October 12, 2002 and contends he was only listening to music from a compact disc, said his attorney, Chuck Robinson.
"It's an excessive charge for what happened here," he said. "This was not a murder. Even the state medical examiner said during cross-examination that the manner of death for the people in the other car was accidental."
Petterson, 29, is accused of killing Robert Weiser, 60, and his wife Donna Weiser, 56, of Anchorage, while on a three-hour drive between Kenai and Anchorage. In his truck was the equivalent of a home entertainment system -- a DVD player, speakers and a Sony PlayStation 2.
While no Alaska law prohibits operating a DVD player in view of a driver, prosecutor June Stein said the facts warranted charging Petterson under one of two theories: that he knew his conduct was substantially certain to cause death, or that he knowingly engaged in conduct showing extreme indifference to human life.
Initial Alaska State Trooper reports said Petterson was at fault when he took his eyes off the road to reach for a soda. Stein, though, will try to prove that the DVD player was on, apparently playing the movie "Road Trip."
"We know it was," she said. "It was wired so that the screen was in the open position when the ignition key was turned out."
The murder trial, which got under way last week in Kenai Superior Court, may be the first of its kind in the nation, said Matthew Swantson, director of communications for the Consumer Electronics Association, a trade association.
Installed as recommended, DVD players and TV screens are either visible only from the back seats or will not work unless the vehicle is in park. But owners can defeat the safety measures by installing the devices themselves, as Petterson did, according to prosecutors.
Robinson said he expects prosecutors to have trouble winning a second-degree murder conviction. "I think the prosecution is going to have a tough time proving the mental state of Mr. Petterson," he said. "It's a tragic accident that happens all the time on our highways."
Liz Neblett, spokeswoman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said more than 25 percent of police-reported crashes are distraction related, which covers everything from cell phone use to changing channels on a radio, screaming at kids, eating, applying makeup or reading a newspaper.
Vehicles can be equipped with fax machines, cell phones and two-way radios. But none should be used if they interrupt the concentration of drivers, she said. "It's a no-brainer. If it's distracting, don't do it," Neblett said.
After the crash, Petterson and his passenger, roommate Jonathan Douglas, were transported to an Anchorage hospital. Within hours, Douglas called his ex-wife and told her he was not sure how the collision occurred because he was "spacing out on a movie they were watching," according to prosecutors. The woman is scheduled to testify.
David Weiser, 34, the son of the slain couple, said only two people know what happened in the cab of the truck. But equipping a truck with entertainment options that can be used while driving goes beyond a momentary distraction of putting on makeup or using a cell phone, he said.
"This takes forethought, this takes methodical steps," David Weiser said. "You have to go to the store, plop over money, install it, and install it so it can be used without a brake employed.
"I view it as no different than walking into a bar, having five beers within an hour and getting behind the wheel," said Weiser, who quit an eight-year career as a loan originator in Boston to attend the trial.
Driving laws have not kept up with technological changes, Weiser said. He plans to work toward changing that after Petterson's trial is over.
"I would like for the jury to sit and hear the evidence, and if the evidence shows what I believe to be true, that his conviction reflect that," he said.

Judge: RIAA can unmask file swappers

A federal judge has handed a preliminary victory to the recording industry by granting its request to unmask anonymous file swappers accused of copyright infringement.
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin ruled Monday that Cablevision, which provides broadband Internet access in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, can be required to divulge the identities of its subscribers sued over copyright violations.
This ruling is the latest decision to clarify what legal methods copyright holders may use when hunting down people who are trading files on peer-to-peer networks. Courts have spent the last few years grappling with how to reconcile Americans' right to be anonymous with the entertainment industry's own right to sue people who violate copyright law.
Chin, in Manhattan, said that the implicit guarantee of anonymity in the Bill of Rights is an insufficient shield in this case: "Such a person's identity is not protected from disclosure by the First Amendment."
Lawyers following the case said it is significant because Chin's ruling is the most detailed so far in any of the many "John Doe" lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America. Chin said that while file swapping "qualifies as speech" to some degree, the RIAA's member companies had overcome the hurdle posed by the First Amendment and could compel "disclosure of the Doe defendants' identities."
Paul Levy, an attorney at the nonprofit group Public Citizen, said that "the nice thing about the ruling is that (the judge) recognizes the First Amendment interests at stake here and he applies a balancing test." Levy, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the RIAA, said that Chin's analysis ensures that companies filing a copyright infringement lawsuit must prove they have a real case and aren't merely on a fishing expedition for someone's name.
Stanley Pierre-Louis, a senior vice president for legal affairs at the RIAA, said in an e-mail statement: "Judge Chin's ruling makes it abundantly clear that those who engage in copyright infringement over the Internet, whether on peer-to-peer networks or otherwise, should not expect to remain anonymous."
Investigators working with the RIAA had traced the Internet addresses of 40 suspected peer-to-peer pirates to Cablevision's network. RIAA lawyers sent a subpoena to Cablevision, which turned over the names of the "John Doe" defendants in February.
Chin said he was willing to consider the First Amendment aspects anyway--even after the names were divulged--because the RIAA could have been "ordered to return the information and prohibited from using it" if the outcome of Monday's ruling had been different.
Aden Fine, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "It's not a victory or a defeat. The important part of the opinion is that it emphasizes that accusations saying an individual is engaged in illegal speech don't mean the First Amendment provides no protections." The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation had also filed amicus briefs against the RIAA.
The RIAA turned to "John Doe" lawsuits after a federal appeals court ruled late last year that the association could no longer rely on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's turbocharged subpoenas to unmask suspected pirates.
The DMCA contains provisions for unmasking file swappers without a judge's approval, but a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., barred those methods from being used. While that decision is not technically binding on other areas of the country, it is influential. RIAA litigators appear to have decided that filing "John Doe" lawsuits with unnamed defendants is a less risky legal strategy.

< Yet another government sanctioned way that someone only accused of a crime can be dragged through the mud without any evidence of guilt. I think I'll read my  poetry to an MP3 and trade them under slightly wrong names just so I can get sued. &gt

Under-the-skin ID chips move toward U.S. hospitals

VeriChip, the company that makes radio frequency identification--RFID--tags for humans, has moved one step closer to getting its technology into hospitals.
The Federal Drug Administration issued a ruling Tuesday that essentially begins a final review process that will determine whether hospitals can use RFID systems from the Palm Beach, Fla.-based company to identify patients and/or permit relevant hospital staff to access medical records, said Angela Fulcher, vice president of marketing and sales at VeriChip.
VeriChip sells 11-millimeter RFID tags that get implanted in the fatty tissue below the right tricep. When near one of Verichip's scanners, the chip wakes up and radios an ID number to the scanner. If the number matches an ID number in a database, a person with the chip under his or her skin can enter a secured room or complete a financial transaction.
"It is used instead of other biometric applications," such as fingerprints, Fulcher said.
The approval process does not center on health risks or implications, Fulcher said. VeriChip can already sell implantable RFID chips in the United States for standard security applications and the financial market. The company's basic technology has also been used in animals for years.
Instead, the FDA may mostly examine privacy issues, Fulcher indicated. In other words, the agency will look at whether the technology will lead to situations where confidential information can get improperly disclosed.
Technically, the FDA on Tuesday issued a letter stating that there were no equivalent products on the market. This allowed VeriChip to then seek a de novo, or additional, review. The application process started in October 2003.
The Italian Ministry of Health kicked off a six-month trial of the chips for hospitals in April.
VeriChip, a division of Applied Digital Solutions, generated headlines worldwide recently with the announcement that the Attorney General of Mexico implanted one of the small company's RFID tags in his arm.
Fulcher said the basic technology has been around for a while. For 15 years, Digital Angel, a sister company under the Applied corporate umbrella, has sold thousands of tags for identifying animals. The U.S. Department of Energy employs Digital Angel's technology to monitor salmon migration. Several implants have been placed in household pets and livestock.
"We believe the tags can last 20 years," Fulcher said.
The idea for employing the tags to identify humans came after the horror of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Fulcher said. Richard Seelig, vice president of medical applications at Applied, saw on TV how firemen were writing their badge numbers on their arm with pen so they could be identified in the event of a disaster.
He inserted Digital Angel tags in his body and told the CEO that they worked. VeriChip was born. In June, the company hired Next Level and Motorola alum Kevin Wiley as CEO.
About 7,000 VeriChip tags have been sold, and approximately 1,000 have been inserted in humans. The chips only work with VeriChip's scanners. Along with scanners, VeriChip also sells complementary security systems for opening or shutting doors after the identification process.
So far, most of the sales have been outside the United States. Along with its attorney general's implant, Mexico has evaluated the chips as a way to better identify children in the event of a kidnapping. The Baja Beach Club in Spain has used them as electronic wallets to buy drinks. Sales have also taken place in Russia, Switzerland, Venezuela and Colombia.
"The applications that have taken hold at this point have been international so far," Fulcher said.
But FN Manufacturing, a South Carolina gun maker, is evaluating the technology for "smart guns," which contain sensor-activated grips so that only their owners can fire them.
The chips themselves are inserted into humans and animals with a syringe. When emerging from the syringe, the chips get coated with a substance called BioBond, which insulates the chip from the body and allows it to adhere to local tissue. If removed, it becomes inactive.
Privacy has been an issue for the company, but the complaints have actually begun to die down. "The pushback is less and less," Fulcher said.
The chip is an ID tag, Fulcher emphasized. When a person with an embedded chip passes near a scanner, the dormant chip simply wakes up and issues an ID number. The administrator of the security systems and databases determines how the information is used. A person has to stand within a few feet of a scanner for the tag to wake up. Thus, the tags can be used to follow someone's steps only when they are near scanners. The company's hand scanners can ping chips about 12 inches away, although the devices for counting salmon are 10 to 12 feet away from the fish.
Also, VeriChip is working on an implant that will contain a Global Positioning System. Such a device would allow an individual with a scanner to pinpoint someone's position on the globe.
The lab device, however, is relatively large right now, about the size of a pacemaker.

The cost of piracy...

In piracy there is a key point which is often ignored. Would the people who pirate have otherwise bought the thing? According to the Software Piracy Association, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, and every other industry sponsored group, every case of piracy is worth, against them, what the item costs.

I personally have many pirated items. Most tems that I do not use, and that I would never buy. I also have other items, items which, as soon as possible, I will buy, or that I have bought before and have lost due to Real theft or other reasons. Among the items I will buy are many I would not have otherwise known about. Many are the people I have told about many movies discovered this way, encouraged them to watch, and then buy these things which were unknown to me before.

In my particular case, more people have bought things on my recommendations, than the cost of what I have in actual use, by far.

If we as a society are ever to get to the root of this matter we must disallow companies and the groups which represent them to misrepresent the actual damage done. We must insure that every aspect of the issue is taken into account. Piracy can never be put back in the box. Deal with it as it really is.

Music industry drills dentists for royalties

VANCOUVER - The tranquil music that wafts through many dental offices to soothe patients and mask the sounds of the drill may soon be silenced. The music industry is putting the bite on dentists ? demanding that they pay for the right to play it.
RELATED: Dentists confused about music fees

Vancouver dentist Kerstin Conn
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, which collects royalties for musicians, has targeted dental offices in its latest campaign. The group is asking them to cough up a yearly fee if they use copyrighted music to entertain patients.
The fee, a minimum charge of $100, has enraged some dentists.
"I just feel it's a money grab," said Vancouver dentist Kerstin Conn, who recently received a letter from SOCAN at her office. "We paid for our CD and we're using it to listen to, and half the time my patients ... don't even hear the music."
Bruce Wilde, licensing manager for SOCAN, said people can listen to CDs for personal enjoyment but infringe copyright if they play them for other purposes.
"The distinction is that the music is not their property," he said. "And if it's being used in a public fashion or any kind of commercial fashion, then [musicians] deserve to be compensated for its use."
SOCAN has battled for years to get commercial and retail outlets to pay for the use of copyrighted music. Under legislation, the music played in coffee shops, clothing stores, lounges, elevators ? even radio tunes that people hear on the telephone while on hold ? is fair game.
The copyright laws do offer some wiggle room, one legal expert said. "The gray area, I think, is where it's overheard inadvertently," said Robert Howell, a professor at the University of Victoria Law School, "when it is really intended to be private but it is overheard inadvertently by a customer."
SOCAN said it has successfully collected the fees so far, but if someone refuses to pay, it could sue for copyright infringement. Things rarely go that far, the group said.
Conn said she intends to keep playing CDs in her Vancouver office ? at least for now. "Well, no, I'm not going to turn off the music. It's wrong."

Teen driver, meet Big Brother

Back in the 1960s, teenagers could keep their parents in the dark about where they were driving by temporarily disconnecting the odometer cable on the family car. All they had to do was reach up under the dashboard and unscrew a nut that held the cable to the speedometer housing.By doing that, the teenagers could drive all the way down to Tijuana and their parents would think they just went to the local drive-in.More advanced odometers stopped that practice. And even newer technology has given parents powerful weapons to keep tabs on their children ? black boxes and global positioning systems. Now worried parents can just about track their young driver's every move ? including speeding and other dangerous driving habits ? when the teen heads off in the car. You could call it the era of Big Parent. It may be your teenager's worst nightmare.Omnitrack, one of the latest products designed as an anti-theft and vehicle tracking system, allows parents to access data on their computers showing where their teens are driving, how fast they are going and the exact location of their vehicles ? right down to a street address. The system also has an "electronic fence" that acts as a sort of leash. You determine the parameters and if the driver exceeds them, the folks at Omnitrack will notify you by phone, pager, email or fax. The system can also be programmed with a predetermined speed limit. If the limit is exceeded, the company will alert you. The price isn't cheap. The devices, by GPS Technologies, begin at $995. A demonstration can be viewed online at http://www.omnitrack.net . There are other choices. On a recent family road trip to Baja California, we tested the Drive Right CarChip by Davis Instruments. The device, which is about the size of two 9-volt batteries, monitors your vehicle's performance under the hood and behind the wheel. We connected the device into the car's on-board diagnostics connector under the dashboard and it started logging data, including speed, distances and hard accelerations and braking ? even coolant temperature. At the end of the trip, we used the system's software to download the information to our PC. The data showed we traveled 147 miles. I was surprised that our top speed during the trip was 81 mph. It must have been when my husband was driving. I guess he's the one in the family who needs to be monitored. CarChip sells for $179. (Diagnostic connectors are available on 1996 and newer cars.)There is also the RS-1000 On-Board Computer, marketed by Road Safety International. It's a 7- 1/2-inch-by-7-inch black box that can be attached to the on-board diagnostic connector. You could hide it under the front seat, but you've still got a connecting wire that would show. The RS-1000 monitors speed, use of seat belts and excessive G-force maneuvers caused by hard cornering, hard braking, erratic driving and "pedal-to-the-metal" throttle use.Similar to a "black box" flight data recorder used in aircraft, the RS-1000, which sells for $280, monitors driving behaviors, second by second. A memory card records driving performance and can be viewed by parents on their home computers. If your teen driver exceeds the preset speed limits or drives aggressively, he or she will hear a brief audio tone. If the driver ignores it, the alarm continues and becomes increasingly annoying until the driver responds. As the company points out, the embarrassment of having the alarm go off when you're driving around with your teenage pals can be a strong deterrent.My 16-year-old son echoed that assessment. While testing the RS-1000 and other similar devices, he thought the idea of having his driving monitored was "unfair, unnecessary and most of all embarrassing. What if you are driving with your girlfriend and that ? black box goes off?" Not all parents are enamored with the idea of monitoring their children's driving. Pete Moraga, spokesman for the Insurance Information Network of California, says that his office has not seen any studies that prove monitoring devices actually reduce accidents and save lives.As a parent, I would like to rely on the fact that my kids follow my advice, not because it is something I insist they do but because they are doing it for their own safety. I understand the predicament parents have when their teens don't always do what they are told. But how far do you go? Others, including privacy advocates, worry that collecting data on driving behavior can violate privacy. David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., is concerned about who could have access to the information and under what circumstances.For example, the technology to track vehicles and determine their locations raises certain privacy issues. "I can foresee this becoming commonplace in divorce cases where one spouse wants to know where the other has been ? or used by law enforcement," Sobel says. As for my son, I know he's a safe and skillful driver. But when it comes down to it, if you're not in the car with them, you really never know how your teenagers are driving once they turn the corner and are out of sight.So the idea of having technology to know his whereabouts and whether he is safe is very tempting.

Congress OKs Delay on Biometric Passports

The legislation, passed by voice vote late Thursday before Congress left for its summer recess, also gives U.S. ports of entry a year longer to install equipment and software capable of processing machine-readable entry and exit documents that contain biometric identifiers.
Congress voted in 2002, after the Sept. 11 attacks, to require the biometric passports that will enable officials to match a person's unique physical characteristics with a digital image in his or her passport or travel documents. The measure applied to visitors from 27 countries, mostly in Europe, that participate in a visa waiver program with the United States.
But last March Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge recommended at two-year extension beyond the Oct. 26, 2004, deadline for issuing the new biometric passports.
They said countries need time to solve technical problems such as chip durability and to resolve privacy questions. They said without the extension millions of visas would have to be issued in countries whose citizens now can visit the United States without visas, overwhelming U.S. consular offices.
House Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., sponsor of the legislation, said many countries are making progress toward developing the new passports, and he agreed to a one-year extension.
He said more than 10 million visitors enter the United States every year from countries participating in the visa waiver program established with nations whose citizens were thought to pose little security threat or risk of overstaying the 90-day limit. The House passed the bill in June.
Twenty-two of the visa waiver countries are in Europe. The others are Australia, Brunei, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore.

< We'd just like to point out that we're supposed to be moving closer to a world where you can freely move about anywhere. The world is getting smaller, we need to drop passports completely, otherwise we're in danger of instututing inter-state passports and one more chunk of privacy goes out the door. &gt

Techies Blast Induce Act

The Senate heard strong opposition from the technology industry on Thursday about a bill that would hold tech companies responsible for creating devices that could be used to pirate digital content. But Sens. Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy, the sponsors of the bill, are determined to move forward with the legislation.
The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony about the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act -- otherwise known as the Induce Act (S. 2560). In its current form, the bill proposes to slap technology companies for making any device that could "induce" or encourage buyers to make illegal copies of songs, movies or computer programs. The bill, introduced by Hatch (R-Utah) and Leahy (D-Vermont), has garnered strong support from Hollywood and the music industry. But technology companies say the bill would kill innovation and potentially outlaw some of the most popular devices, including Apple's iPod.

"Under this bill, who would want to produce a new device that handled copyrighted material without first checking with Hollywood or the record companies, given their history of fighting new business models?" said Will Rodger, director of public policy for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which submitted written testimony into the record. "Innovation just wouldn't happen."
While all panelists expressed interest in working with the committee to halt piracy, four of the five panelists rejected the bill in its current form. The lone supporter was Mitch Bainwol, head of the Recording Industry Association of America. Observers said it was rare that on a panel of five invited witnesses, four would oppose the bill proposed by the committee chairman.
Hatch did, however, get a hearty endorsement from Marybeth Peters, the register of copyrights, who also testified before the committee. She said courts have struggled with applying the landmark Betamax case -- which ruled home recorders are legal as long as they are used primarily for legal purposes, or "non-infringing" uses of modern technology -- to peer-to-peer networks. She pointed to the case in April 2003 involving the Grokster file-sharing program, in which the judge ruled that peer-to-peer services were not liable for their users' illegal behavior. The case was appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California and is awaiting a decision from a three-judge panel.
"I think the Grokster decision is wrong as a matter of copyright law," Peters said.
In contrast, Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Electronics Association, said the group would support codifying the Betamax doctrine into law. He said Betamax is the "magna carta" for inventors and venture capitalists who have built a thriving technology industry. He said the Induce Act would slow down innovation as new products are targeted for litigation.
"I take it you don't like this bill very much," Hatch quipped.
The Business Software Alliance surprised some observers, as the group initially supported the bill but is now asking for clarifications to the bill to protect innovation.
Representatives of engineering group IEEE and NetCoalition, which represents Internet companies and Internet service providers, also expressed opposition to the bill.
The RIAA's Bainwol professed his fondness for the iPod (he owns one himself) and said the legislation would not target companies like Apple.
He said that 97 percent of transactions over P2P networks are illegal and a law is needed to punish those companies that are profiting by ripping off the music industry. According to Bainwol, thousands of people in the music industry have lost their jobs because of piracy.
P2P companies "provide a mechanism for high-tech theft," he said. "They laugh all the way to the bank."
Jason Schultz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Hatch and the RIAA failed to make their case for the proposed law. He said they never addressed whether the bill will stop P2P or how the proposed law would affect offshore P2P companies. Schultz also said that although Bainwol said record companies would not sue Apple, other copyright owners certainly could under this law.
Leahy and Hatch said they want to work with the witnesses over the next month to address some of their concerns.
"We're going to do this, we're going to get this done," Hatch said. Piracy has been "a doggone catastrophe to these artists."
Between 1999 and 2004, Hatch has received $159,860 in campaign donations from the TV, movie and music industries, according to opensecrets.org, which monitors campaign donations. In the same period, Leahy received $220,450. They each received less money from the Internet, computer and telecommunications industries.
"I do want to solve this problem for the recording industry and the movie industry and the book industry," Hatch said. "We have to give a damn about copyright."

Personalized Plate Angers Moms

SNOHOMISH COUNTY - Michael Syravong has a very fast car and he wanted his Toyota Supra to have a suped up name.
So, on his license plate application he wrote GOT MILF. And he got it.
"Yeah I just thought it sounded funny," said Syravong. "Like 'Got Milk' and the term MILF was getting popular so - GOTMILF, I really didn't think about it."
To be honest, he had thought about it and it had nothing to do with Got Milk.
It had everything to do with lingo from the movie American Pie. It is, in the most delicate of descriptions, a newly coined noun: a lustful term of endearment, he admits, for someone's mom.
"MILF is an attractive mother," he said.
But in the nearly two years he had the plate on his car at least two mothers didn't find it attractive.
Emails of disgust rolled into the Department of Licensing. The women wrote that they found it offensive and not humorous at all. After months of review the plate was officially canceled.
"Yeah, I was a bit surprised, shocked, that someone would stoop that low to ruin my fun," he said.
As for the fun others didn't find so funny, Syravong claimed on the original application that maybe it meant "Manual Inline Lift Fluctuator." He admits he just made that up.
Documents uncovered by the Web site thesmokinggun.com show the Department of Licensing suggested that might make him guilty of making a false or misleading statement to a public servant: a gross misdemeanor.
In his attempt to keep the plate he offered several possible variations including "Got My Invitation Last Friday." He even said it might mean "Got Married Into Lisa's Family."
He got the plate the same week as his and Lisa's wedding. And how did that go?
"Not very well," he told us. "My wife almost called off the wedding."
Now that his attempt at humor as been called off he's replaced the personalized plate with another one.
Now it says "Punisher." He says that means he wins a lot on the race track. But as for stating on the record what MILF really means, that he wouldn't do.
"I'm probably showing this (interview) to my wife's mom so I probably don't want to say that."
Maybe his best MILF decision so far.

< No harm done... until people started fucking with something that was none of their fucking business! &gt

Listen to the flip side

Record year: during the past nine months, CD sales in America have increased by 7%, despite continued growth in file sharing. Photo: Frank Baron As far as the music industry is concerned, the message is clear: file sharing is killing it. "Research clearly illustrates that the illegal use of music on the internet is damaging the entire UK music industry," said Peter Jamieson, the chairman of the BPI (British Phonographic Industry). Even Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, agrees. "iTunes really competes with piracy, not the other services," he said at the iTunes Music Store Europe launch last month. "Piracy is the big enemy - the market has shrunk in France and Germany and seen zero growth in the UK."
Yet despite the industry's belief that file sharing is anathema to record sales, a recent study has shown that it may not be so clear cut. "Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero," the controversial report claims, even going so far as to suggest that for popular albums, "the impact of file sharing on sales is likely to be positive".
The study, by Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Associate Professor in the strategy unit at Harvard Business School, and Koleman Strumpf, Associate Professor in the economics department at the University of North Carolina, analyses sales and download data, and its conclusions contradict the established music industry line.
During the last quarter of 2002, the pair gathered data from two peer-to-peer file sharing servers on the OpenNap network and matched individual downloads to the weekly sales figures of 680 chart albums.
"Our hypothesis was that if downloads are killing music, then albums that are downloaded more intensively should sell less," says Strumpf. But, after adjusting for the effects of popularity, they discovered that file sharing has "no statistically significant effect" on sales.
An economist with a love of music, Strumpf has been interested in file sharing since the Napster trial in 2000, but was not impressed by the evidence presented in court.
"I read through the studies that were used during the trial, and they were really horrible," he says. Many of the surveys concluded, incorrectly according to Strumpf, that people who download more buy less.
"The fact that there's a correlation does not imply that downloading is the root cause of these people buying less. File sharing is done primarily by teenagers and college kids because they have a lot of time on their hands but they don't have a lot of money. If we got rid of file sharing tomorrow, it doesn't necessarily mean these kids would be buying any more music."
Another problem is that asking someone about their illegal activities, particularly in the US where they risk prosecution, is unlikely to result in honest or accurate answers.
But Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf are not without critics. "We consider it a very flawed study," says Matt Phillips, a BPI spokesperson. Both the BPI and the International Federation for the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) have criticised the study for including the Christmas period when people are buying CDs as gifts.
"It's very straightforward to address these kinds of criticisms," says Strumpf. "We got rid of the Christmas season and just looked at the first half of our data. We still find the same effect."
So, if downloading hasn't caused the slump in sales, what has? There are several factors that could be involved, but the easiest explanation is the popularity of DVDs.
"Over the period 1999 to 2003, DVD prices fell by 25% and the price of players fell in the US from over $1,000 to almost nothing," says Strumpf. "At the same time, CD prices went up by 10%. Combined DVD and VHS tape sales went up by 500m, while CD sales fell by 200m, so a possible explanation is that people were spending on DVDs instead of CDs."
It is clear that more work needs to be done before the market effect of downloading is fully understood, but Strumpf was unsure whether they would be able to conduct further work.
"The problem is getting hold of sales figures. Getting data on file sharing is hard, but it's possible. However, I imagine it's going to be difficult for us to get sales data in the future because of the views of the record industry towards us."
Prior to Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf's report, there were no empirical studies based on actual file sharing behaviour, and the music industries in the US and the UK have based their policies on, at best, incomplete research. At worst, the surveys and analyses they quote are misleading and inaccurate.
Yet still the RIAA has sued its customers - an action Strumpf calls "one of the stupidest things in the world to do". The BPI has stated it is "prepared to go that route if forced".
Some even question whether the fall in sales the RIAA quotes is real, or a product of a creative redefinition of the word "sale". Even if it is real, there is one final fly in the ointment that can't easily be explained away: during the past nine months, CD sales in America have increased by 7%, despite continued growth in file sharing.
As Strumpf says: "If file sharing is killing record sales, why are records starting to sell better?"

RFID Goes To The Dogs In Portugal

Digital Angel Corp. said Friday it has won a $600,000 contract from the Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture to launch a mandatory dog-identification program using implantable radio-frequency identification microchips. Shipments have begun, with completion scheduled for the third quarter this year.
The Portuguese dog-identification program is being conducted simultaneously with the country's annual rabies vaccination drive. The deadline for Portuguese residents to tag the approximate 2 million dogs is 2007.
Portugal isn't alone in its quest to tag domestic animals. The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union passed an initiative to mandate identification for dogs, cats, and ferrets traveling into and between EU member countries. According to Digital Angel, after an eight-year transitional period only an electronic ID system will be acceptable under these regulations. It's part of a new passport directive for domestic pets. As of Oct. 1, pets will require a passport bearing the animal's microchip or tattoo number as well as records of vaccinations, tick treatments, clinical examinations, and other data.
Digital Angel has managed to find its niche in implantable microchip even though earnings slid in the first quarter ended March 31. The company reported on May 3 that first-quarter earnings were $11.1 million, down slightly from $11.4 million in the year-ago quarter. Profits slid as well, to $4.5 million for the first quarter of 2004, from 5.3 million, respectively
Portugal's animal-tracking project is being implemented with assistance from Merial, a Merck and Aventis animal-health care company. Digital Angel, a majority-owned Applied Digital Solutions company, is focused on animal-tracking systems for domestic pets and livestock such as cattle and sheep.

Man Sues McDonald's Over Lack of Warning Against Forceful Burger Eye Insertion

Hamburgler, Fry Kids Rounded Up for Questioning
ROCKVILLE, MD-- Local man Greg Hughes, 27, announced Tuesday that he will be suing the McDonald's Restaurant Corporation after receiving second-degree burns and severely damaging his cornea as a result of attempting to forcefully insert a McDonald's hamburger into his right eye.

"The restaurant failed to provide adequate warning," said Hughes. "I thoroughly read all of the warning information for my hamburger, and nowhere did it warn me that a forceful burger eye insertion might be a bad idea."
Hughes' lawsuit is yet another in a disturbing trend of food-warning-related lawsuits against McDonald's. The news that burgers are bad for your eyes leaves customers wondering if perhaps there are other unforeseen dangers lurking in fast food.
"I used to feel safe when I ate at McDonald's," said Crumpet resident Kathleen Turner, "But these days I find myself wondering, 'Is it really safe to fill my inner ear with sweet and sour sauce?' and 'Is jabbing these coffee stirrers into my kidneys not promoting good dietary health?' and 'What would be a good third comedic question for me to ask now?' These are the sort of things that I just can't know if I'm not explicitly warned."
"These allegations are completely ridiculous," said Ralph Alvarez, McDonald's CEO, "Our burgers are one hundred percent eye-friendly. This lawsuit is no reason for anyone to stop forcefully inserting any of our fine products into their eyes. Also, prior to our addition of a warning, our hot coffee was not in fact hot and hence burning oneself with it was an impossibility."
"Goddammit," continued Alvarez, "I'm so tired of this shit. At this rate, it'll be two weeks before we have someone suing us because we didn't warn them not to run red lights while shooting heroin from a dirty needle they found in the playscape."
When asked for further comment, Hughes only replied, "Arrrrrr, matey," and pointed at his eye patch to indicate how funny it was.

Stupid Laws

A 15-year-old Latrobe girl has been arrested for allegedly taking sexually explicit photos of herself and posting them on the Internet. State police at Greensburg said the girl took photos of herself in various states of undress and performed a variety of sexual acts. She then sent them to people she met in chat rooms on the Internet.The computer was seized by police, who conducted a forensic investigation and found dozens of photographs of the juvenile stored on the hard drive. The investigation is continuing as state police try to identify all the people who received photos from the girl.Police said the girl was charged with possession and dissemination of child pornography. A hearing date has not been set.

TiVo Battles Hollywood Over Copyrights

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A plan by TiVo (news - web sites) Inc. to let its users transfer recorded TV shows to other devices is running into opposition from Hollywood studios and the National Football League, which fear their copyrighted content could get loose on the Internet. 
The studios and the NFL filed papers with the Federal Communications Commission last week seeking to block the agency's approval of TiVo's proposed new service.
TiVo, based in Alviso, Calif., is the leading provider of digital video recorders, which let users easily record TV shows onto hard disks, skip commercials and pause live broadcasts. The company's plans to introduce TiVo To Go, which will allow users to shuttle recorded programs to other TiVo-compatible devices, including laptops and personal computers, have been long awaited.
TiVo officials declined to comment on the copyright objections Thursday but issued a statement: "We are hopeful (the FCC) rules in favor of technology innovation that respects the rights of both consumers and artists."
TiVo has said it wants to give users more flexibility in how and where they view their recorded shows ? on an airplane or a road trip, for example ? and to let them share the content with a few friends. The company says it plans to incorporate copy-restriction technologies to limit the number of devices to which the shows can be transferred, preventing unfettered Internet distribution.
The content companies don't think TiVo's proposed safeguards are adequate enough to block users from sending their recorded shows to strangers' devices across the globe, said Fritz Attaway, executive vice president and legal counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America, the Hollywood lobbying arm that filed the opposition papers.
"We don't have a problem if you want to move the content to your summer home, or your boat, but the TiVo application does not require any kind of relationship with the sender," Attaway said Thursday. "It could be to a nightclub in Singapore."
Many consumer electronics companies say such networked devices are bound to become standard in the ever-more-digital world, but they acknowledge that they must first appease Hollywood and other content providers' concerns over copyrights.
Content companies have been fighting hard on Capitol Hill for rules that would restrict what they consider illegal distribution of copyrighted works. The industry's successful lobbying led to the FCC rule forcing electronics companies to certify that their recording gadgets have technologies to prevent mass distribution.
That's why TiVo is now seeking the FCC's approval.
A dozen other companies, including Sony Corp., RealNetworks Inc. and Microsoft Corp., have similar product applications pending. Attaway said Hollywood so far does not object to those proposals because they appear to mostly limit the movement of copyrighted works to a user's own home network.

Cheesy, nude Monn arrested

MARYVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Michael P. Monn's birthday celebration went a little awry when he was arrested while drunk, nude and covered with nacho cheese.
Monn was detained early Sunday as he ran toward a Jeep in the parking lot outside a swimming pool snack bar.
According to police, he was stark naked and was carrying a box of Frito Lay snacks and a container of nacho cheese.
"The male had nacho cheese in his hair, on his face and on his shoulders," Maryville Police Department officer Scott Spicer said.
"The nude male had a strong odor of alcohol and was semi-incoherent."
Investigators suspect Monn climbed an 8-foot fence, broke into the pool snack bar through a window, threw nacho cheese on a wall and scattered chips on the ground.
About $40 in chips and $7 in nacho cheese were stolen.
Monn was charged with burglary, theft of less than $500, vandalism less than $500 and public intoxication and was cited for indecent exposure.
He was held at the Blount County Jail in lieu of a $9,300 bond.
It was Monn's 23rd birthday.

< A $9300 bond for a $50 crime, hmm, I wonder how much sense his sentence will make... &gt

Amber alerts to extend to e-mail, cell phones

NEW YORK (AP) -- A new technology debuting in 12 states will significantly extend Amber alerts, reaching cell phones, e-mail and handheld computers, and could also be used to transmit weather and terrorism alerts.
"It might not be the all-alert system, but the backbone is going to be there," said Chris Warner, president of E2C in Scottsdale, Arizona, which led the system's development. "Homeland Security could take it right over."
Police officers in Arizona and Washington, starting Monday, were able to send Amber alerts -- notifications of a child abduction -- from a highly encrypted system in their cars then update them with photos and more detailed descriptions, Warner said. Ten other states are expected to launch the expanded alerts this summer.
"The goal of this is to make it so pervasive, no one will be stupid enough to take a child," said Warner.
The system will use a simple broadcast technology that takes the information into a Web portal and reconfigures it for different types of broadcast. A state department of transportation, for instance, might receive one format for its road signs and another for its information number.
Using the new system, people with cell phones can sign up for Amber alerts with county or state authorities. The text of an alert can be shot immediately to local TV news programs' Web sites, with automatic updates.
"What we've done is create a fairly simple publishing and broadcasting tool," said Stuart McKee, who worked on the system when he was chief information officer for Washington state and is now the U.S. national technology officer for Microsoft Corp.
The system also represents a next generation of public warning.
Many state emergency managers have clamored for a system that would instantly dispatch disaster information, including evacuation maps, on cell phones, the Internet and hand-held devices.
Gov. Brad Henry of Oklahoma has said he hopes the technology could eventually be used to warn residents about severe weather, said Phil Bacharach, a state spokesman.
The idea came about after McKee saw Warner give a presentation on another information-sharing network he had developed, Earth911, an Internet clearinghouse with local information about recycling different types of trash.
State agencies and companies including Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp. and Symantec Corp. worked together for 18 months to develop the system. Symantec said in May it is providing the external security monitoring of the host site and backup locations. The companies donated a total of $4 million in development time, Warner said.
The system will help police in part because they can spend much of the 24 hours after an Amber alert is issued answering phone calls from people looking for more information, McKee said.
The 10 other states set to join the initiative: Connecticut, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Oregon. Also Monday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said his state also would soon join the mobile alert program.
Amber alerts were created after the 1997 kidnapping and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was abducted while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas

Schoolboys create mobile seeker

The device started off as a school projectA mobile phone detector developed by a team of six New Zealand schoolboys has attracted international interest.
The boys, pupils at St Thomas of Canterbury College in Christchurch, developed the cheap device as part of a business competition for school pupils.
They have also had interest, and orders, from schools and universities in New Zealand.
A mobile detector lets you know when phones are being used surreptitiously and can cost hundreds of pounds.
The gadget was deemed to be the best product in the local sector of the Young Enterprise competition.
"It's grown outside the Young Enterprise thing," said Adam Manley, one of the 17-year-old managing directors of StopCom, the name the students have given to their company for the competition.
The pupils have sold all 20 of the first models of the detector that they are building, and are developing their next generation product.

'Robust product'
The detector, which they have called CellTrac-r, works by picking up the bursts of radio frequency activity that emit from a mobile each time it sends or receives a call or a text message.

The product is not a toy. It's relatively simple. Because of that the cost is reasonably low

Frik de Beer, Tait Electronics The device can detect these bursts of electro-magnetic energy up to a radius of 30 metres. It can also measure the amount of the energy to determine the distance of the mobile.
The detector then lights up light-emitting diodes - when four LEDs are lit, a mobile is in use close by. Just one lit LED means that the phone is being used at a distance of 25 to 30 metres.
Local company Tait Electronics has helped guide the students through the process of building a business.
The boys have also been able to call on a technical advisor from the electronics firm, helping ensure both a robust business model and a robust product.
"At the technical level, it's [CellTrac-r] got good integrity," said the boys' mentor, Tait's intellectual property manager Frik de Beer.
"It's designed for mass manufacture if they have to get to that point.
"The product is not a toy. It's relatively simple. Because of that the cost is reasonably low."
Cheap as chips
The first version of the product has sold for just NZ$39.95 (£15), but if the boys develop an upgraded version, perhaps adding in a buzzer, and increasing the detection range, it would sell for around $100.00 (£35).

The gadget is cheaper than rival mobile detectorsThe low price is probably part of the lure for would-be buyers as mobile phone detectors can sell for much more.
"We wonder why they sell it for so much," said Mr Manley.
"We've worked it out how much you should sell it for and these ones are selling for nearly $1,000 (£350). It's crazy."
Linda Roberts, who helps organise examinations at the University of Canterbury, plans to trial three of the detectors at this year's end of term exams.
"Some of these phones are very smart and very small. People could be texting away in an exam of 400 people and it would be hard to detect," she said.
"We've had an increasing number and [longer] duration of toilet visits in exams and with the technology these days, we have no way of knowing what's going on."
The local prison service is also planning to test one of the school boys' products.
"We are certainly having a look at it to assess its value for us," said Tony Coyle, national crime prevention coordinator for the public prison service.
"Prisons are difficult places because they are quite large and cellphones are very small."
Future plans
This year, these would-be entrepreneurs will not be reaping any riches as a portion of any profits from the boys' efforts will go to the charity that the school supports in Tanzania.
But the enterprising students may set up a private company once the school year and the competition ends.
"It is something we have thought about but we are not finalising it all yet," said Manley. First, there is the school to finish and exams to pass and a competition to win.
The results of Young Enterprise competition are due to be announced at the end of October.

Summer Surveillance Campaign

 

As Police Use of Tasers Rises, Questions Over Safety Increase

LAZARETH, Pa. ? As the sun set on June 24, something snapped in Kris J. Lieberman, an unemployed landscaper who lived a few miles from this quiet town. For 45 minutes, he crawled deliriously around a pasture here, moaning and pounding his head against the weedy ground.

Eventually the police arrived, carrying a Taser M26, an electric gun increasingly popular with law enforcement officers nationwide. The gun fires electrified barbs up to 21 feet, hitting suspects with a disabling charge.
 
The officers told Mr. Lieberman, 32, to calm down. He lunged at them instead. They fired their Taser twice. He fought briefly, collapsed and died.

Mr. Lieberman joined a growing number of people, now at least 50, including 6 in June alone, who have died since 2001 after being shocked. Taser International, which makes several versions of the guns, says its weapons are not lethal, even for people with heart conditions or pacemakers. The deaths resulted from drug overdoses or other factors and would have occurred anyway, the company says.

But Taser has scant evidence for that claim. The company's primary safety studies on the M26, which is far more powerful than other stun guns, consist of tests on a single pig in 1996 and on five dogs in 1999. Company-paid researchers, not independent scientists, conducted the studies, which were never published in a peer-reviewed journal. Taser has no full-time medical director and has never created computer models to simulate the effect of its shocks, which are difficult to test in human clinical trials for ethical reasons.

What is more, aside from a continuing Defense Department study, the results of which have not been released, no federal or state agencies have studied the safety, or effectiveness, of Tasers, which fall between two federal agencies and are essentially unregulated. Nor has any federal agency studied the deaths to determine what caused them. In at least two cases, local medical examiners have said Tasers were partly responsible. In many cases, autopsies are continuing or reports are unavailable.

The few independent studies that have examined the Taser have found that the weapon's safety is unproven at best. The most comprehensive report, by the British government in 2002, concluded "the high-power Tasers cannot be classed, in the vernacular, as `safe.' " Britain has not approved Tasers for general police use.

A 1989 Canadian study found that stun guns induced heart attacks in pigs with pacemakers. A 1999 study by the Department of Justice on an electrical weapon much weaker than the Taser found that it might cause cardiac arrest in people with heart conditions. In reviewing other electrical devices, the Food and Drug Administration has found that a charge half as large as that of the M26 can be dangerous to the heart.

While Taser says that the M26 is not dangerous, it now devotes most of its marketing efforts to the X26, a less powerful weapon it introduced last year. Both weapons are selling briskly. About 100,000 officers nationally now have Tasers, 20 times the number in 2000, and most carry the M26. Taser, whose guns are legal for civilian use in most states, hopes to expand its potential market with a new consumer version of the X26 later this summer.

For Taser, which owns the weapon's trademark and is the only company now making the guns, the growth has been a bonanza. Its stock has soared. Its executives and directors, including a former New York police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik, have taken advantage, selling $60 million in shares since November.

Patrick Smith, Taser's chief executive, said the guns are safe. "We tell people that this has never caused a death, and in my heart and soul I believe that's true," Mr. Smith said.

Taser did not need to disclose the British results to American police departments, he said. "The Brits are extremely conservative," he said. "To me, this is sort of boilerplate, the fine print." In addition to Taser's animal trials, thousands of police volunteers have received shocks without harm, Mr. Smith said.
 
But the hits that police officers receive from the M26 in their Taser training have little in common with the shocks given to suspects. In training, volunteers usually receive a single shock of a half-second or less. In the field, Tasers automatically fire for five seconds. If an officer holds down the trigger, a Taser will discharge longer. And suspects are often hit repeatedly.

Over all, Taser has significantly overstated the weapon's safety, say biomedical engineers who separately examined the company's research at the request of The New York Times. None of the engineers have any financial stake in the company or any connection with Taser; The Times did not pay them.

Relatively small electric shocks can kill people whose hearts are weakened by disease or cocaine use, said John Wikswo, a Vanderbilt University biomedical engineer. But no one knows whether the Taser's current crosses the threshold for those people, Dr. Wikswo said.

"Their testing scheme has not included the possibility that there is a subset of the population that is exquisitely sensitive," Dr. Wikswo said. "That alone means they have not done adequate testing."

Mr. Smith said Taser would eventually run more tests. "In a perfect world, I'd love to have studies on all this stuff, but animal studies are controversial, expensive," he said. "You've got to do the reasonable amount of testing." Comparing Taser's tests with the studies conducted by makers of medical devices like pacemakers is unfair, he said.

Dr. Andrew Podgorski, a Canadian electrical engineer who conducted the 1989 study, said he was certain that Tasers were dangerous for people with pacemakers. More research is needed to determine if other people are vulnerable, he said.

"I would urge the U.S. government to conduct those studies," Dr. Podgorski said. "Shocking a couple of pigs and dogs doesn't prove anything."

In More Officers' Hands

Many police officers defend the Taser, saying the weapon helps them avoid using deadly force and lowers the risk of injury to officers. Tasers let police officers subdue suspects without wrestling with or hitting them, said David Klinger, a former police officer and a criminology professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. And Tasers are surely safer than firearms.
"I think it is appropriate for deployment in the field," Mr. Klinger said. "You trust this guy or gal with a gun, you should be able to trust them with a less lethal device."

But human rights groups say the police may be overusing the Taser. Because the gun leaves only light marks, and because Taser markets it as nonlethal, officers often use it on unruly suspects, not just as an alternative to deadly force, said Dr. William F. Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International USA. In recent incidents, officers have shocked a 9-year-old girl in Arizona and a 66-year-old woman in Kansas City.

"We think there should be controlled, systematic independent medical studies," Dr. Schulz said. "We would like to see these weapons suspended until these questions are answered."

A study by the Orange County, Fla., sheriff's office showed that officers used pepper spray and batons much less after getting the guns. But the use of Tasers more than made up for that drop, and the department's overall use of force increased 58 percent from 2000 to 2003. Last week, several police departments in Orange County agreed to restrict the use of Tasers to situations where suspects are actively resisting officers. The sheriff's office is not part of the agreement and says it is still studying the matter.

State and federal agencies do not keep tabs on Taser use, so no one knows how many times officers have fired the weapon. Officers have reported close to 5,000 uses of the M26 to Taser, but the company says the actual number is much higher.

Little evidence supports the theory that Tasers reduce police shootings or work better than other alternatives to guns, like pepper spray. Because of their limited range, Tasers are best in situations where an officer using a Taser is covered by another with a firearm, officers say.
A 2002 company study found that nearly 85 percent of people shocked with Tasers were unarmed. Fewer than 5 percent were carrying guns.
 
In Phoenix, which has equipped all its officers with Tasers, police shootings fell by half last year. Taser trumpets that statistic on its Web site. But last year's drop appears to be an anomaly. This year, shootings are running at a record pace, according to the Phoenix police department.
A 2002 study in Greene County, Mo., found that Tasers were only marginally more effective than pepper spray at restraining suspects. Pepper spray worked in 91 percent of cases, while the Taser had a 94 percent success rate.
 
The largest police departments have been slow to embrace the Taser. The New York Police Department owns only a handful of Tasers, which are used by specialized units and supervisors, a spokesman said.

'Gold in Those Hills'

The M26 was introduced only five years ago, but the technology is much older. John Cover, an Arizona inventor, created the Taser in 1969. Its name stands for "Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle," an allusion to the Tom Swift series of science fiction novels.

Engineers have known for generations that relatively small electric currents cause painful and uncontrollable muscle contractions. Tasers operate on that principle, firing barbs that are connected by wire to the gun and flood the body with current. The gun can deliver its shock even if the barbs do not break the skin because its current can jump through two inches of clothing.

Weak currents are not inherently dangerous if they stop in a few minutes. But stronger shocks can disrupt the electrical circuitry of the heart. That condition, ventricular fibrillation, causes cardiac arrest in seconds and death in minutes, unless the heart is defibrillated with an even larger shock.

The exact current needed to cause fibrillation depends on technical factors like the current's shape and frequency, as well as the heart's condition, said James Eason, a biomedical engineering professor at Washington and Lee University. But because fibrillation is so dangerous, scientists can conduct only limited human trials. They must estimate the threshold of fibrillation from animal trials and computer models.

Still, the broad parameters for fibrillation are known, and the first Taser from Mr. Cover had a large safety margin. In 1975 the Consumer Product Safety Commission concluded that weapon, which was 11 percent as powerful as the M26, probably would not harm healthy humans.

Then, in March 1976, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms claimed it had jurisdiction over the weapons because gunpowder propelled their barbs. The firearms bureau essentially outlawed them for civilian use; no federal safety standard was ever created.

But the original Tasers were bulky and often ineffective. For almost two decades, they remained a niche product used by a few police departments.

That began to change after 1993, when Mr. Smith and his brother Thomas created a company to market electric weapons to civilians. Patrick Smith, who had just graduated from the University of Chicago business school, saw enormous potential for an alternative to firearms.

"I just figured I'm going to go to out to Arizona, and I'm going to scratch and sniff and dig, and figure there's going to be gold in those hills," Mr. Smith said in an interview.

In January 1995, the Smiths introduced their first electric gun, which was powered by compressed nitrogen. As a result, the weapon was not regulated by the firearms bureau and could be sold to civilians.

For the next several years, the company struggled, as concerns over the gun's power kept sales slow. By 1999, the company, now known as Taser International, was near bankruptcy, with only $50,000 in the bank and $2.7 million in debt.

"It was pretty humiliating," he said. "We had completely wiped out my parents financially."

Hoping to stay afloat, the company introduced the Advanced Taser M26 in December 1999. The weapon closely resembled a handgun, a feature many police officers liked, and was very powerful.

According to Taser, the gun produced 26 watts of power, four times the power of the earlier model. A field test in 2001 by the Canadian police showed that the M26 was even stronger, with an output of 39 watts.
 
(Stun gun power is usually gauged in watts, a measure of electrical energy, even though the biological effects of electricity are more closely related to current strength, measured in amperes. Electrical engineers often compare the flow of electricity to a river: amperes are like the river's speed, while watts are the amount of water flowing by each second. As watts increase, amperes rise, but more slowly.)
 
Taser's sales rose as officers learned about the new gun. At meetings with police officers, company representatives encouraged them to receive a half-second shock to feel the weapon's power for themselves. "These guys would leave just absolutely evangelical about the product because we would just drop them all," Mr. Smith said.

In its marketing, the company touted the safety of the M26, saying it had been extensively tested.

But Taser had performed only two animal studies before introducing the M26.

In 1996, Taser hired Robert Stratbucker, a Nebraska doctor and farmer, to test the weapon. Dr. Stratbucker, who is now Taser's part-time medical director, shocked a pig 48 times with shocks as large as those from the M26. The pig suffered no heart damage.

Three years later, the company hired Dr. Stratbucker and Dr. Wayne McDaniel, an electrical engineer, for an animal test at the University of Missouri. The scientists shocked five anesthetized dogs about 200 times with the M26. The dogs did not suffer cardiac arrest, although one animal had changes in its heartbeat, according to a report.

Taser has repeatedly said the studies proved that the M26 was safe. But the biomedical engineers who reviewed the gun's safety for The Times said Taser should have conducted far more research.

"I don't think there has been a definitive study saying that yes it can contribute to death or no it cannot," said Dr. Raymond Ideker, an electrophysiologist and a professor in the cardiology division at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Taser must test more animals and vary the shocks they receive to find the gun's safety margin, Dr. Ideker said.

In addition, while Taser claims that its Missouri study proves that the gun is safe for people who have used cocaine, it never tested animals dosed with cocaine. Because cocaine substantially increases heart attack risk, and Tasers are used on people who have taken cocaine, that omission is a serious flaw, said Dr. Wikswo of Vanderbilt.

The company should also examine risks other than fibrillation, some scientists say.

Dr. Terrence Allen, a former medical examiner in Los Angeles who examined cases in the late 1980's when people died after being shocked with earlier-model Tasers, said he was sure the weapons could be lethal. Taser is misrepresenting the medical evidence, said Dr. Allen, who has consulted for people who have sued the company.

Dr. Mark W. Kroll, a Taser director and the chief technology officer of St. Jude Medical, one of the largest pacemaker manufacturers, said Taser had adequately tested its weapons and they were safe. External pacemakers deliver much larger charges and do not cause fibrillation, he said.

Dr. Ideker countered that pacemakers and Tasers could not be easily compared, because the Taser's shock is very short and powerful, while a pacemaker delivers its charge over a much longer period.

Although Taser has performed only rudimentary studies of the M26, it has more closely studied the X26, the gun it introduced last year. In a 2003 study at the University of Missouri, Taser found that a shock roughly 20 times that of the X26 caused a healthy, anesthetized 85-pound pig to fibrillate.

Mr. Smith cites the 2003 Missouri study as proof that all Tasers have a safety margin of 20-to-1 or more. But the new gun puts out a charge only one-fourth as large as the older model, a fact Taser does not generally advertise.

The study said nothing about the M26, or about hearts stressed by disease, drugs or physical activity. "I think another test is warranted," Dr. Ideker said.

Taser did not test the older gun, which is associated with nearly all the deaths, because "we believed that the M26's safety record and prior testing speaks for itself," Mr. Smith said. "Could it be done? Absolutely. There's time and expense involved."
 
The X26 has become Taser's biggest seller, based mainly on the company's claims that it is even stronger than the M26 despite its small size and lower power. The company says the new gun enables electrical current to enter the body more efficiently.

No independent agency has tested the guns side by side, and in Taser's patent on the M26, Mr. Smith himself argued that weaker guns were often ineffective because they do not deliver enough current to incapacitate suspects. But neither deaths nor concerns about effectiveness have dampened police support and investor enthusiasm for Taser International. Stock analysts predict Taser will have $15 million in profits on sales of $60 million in 2004. Investors have bid up the company's shares 60-fold since last February, giving Taser a value of $1.2 billion.

The Smith brothers and their father, Phillips, have sold $46 million in Taser shares since November, according to federal filings. They still own $130 million worth of shares. Other Taser executives and directors have sold $14 million in stock. Mr. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner and a director, has sold $900,000 in stock. Mr. Kroll of St. Jude Medical has sold $1.7 million.

"It's been great," Patrick Smith said of the company's recent success. But making money is not his main goal, he said. "If we could get a Taser on every officer's belt,'' he said, " it would save hundreds of lives or thousands of lives a year."

Deaths and Questions

Meanwhile, the number of Taser-associated deaths is rising. In June alone, at least six people died, the most ever in one month: Eric B. Christmas, James A. Cobb, Jacob J. Lair, Anthony C. Oliver, Jerry W. Pickens and Mr. Lieberman.

The circumstances of the deaths vary widely. Among the six, Mr. Pickens was the only one hit with the X26.

Mr. Cobb fought for several minutes after being shocked, which suggests that fibrillation could not have caused his death. Some of the other men collapsed immediately, according to news reports and witnesses. Some of the men were fighting with the police when officers shot them. Others simply refused to obey orders.

Mr. Pickens was one. On June 4, in Bridge City, La., the police were summoned to help calm him after an argument with his 18-year-old son, Taylor Pickens. Jerry Pickens confronted the police in the family's front yard.

"My dad, he had been drinking, and he was kind of hostile toward the police,'' Taylor said. "He kept trying to go back inside the house, and they said, 'If you're going to go back into the house we're going to Taser you.' " Mr. Pickens who was unarmed, began to walk inside, Taylor said.
 
"They counted down three, and then they shot him in the back," Taylor said. "My dad stiffened up, and fell back." Mr. Pickens hit his head on a cement walkway and began foaming at the mouth, Taylor said.

Sharon Landis, Taylor's mother and Mr. Pickens's wife, said officers did not need to shock her husband. "They could have pepper-sprayed him, they could have grabbed him," she said. "He's 55 years old, and these are big burly cops."

Mr. Pickens was pronounced brain-dead that day and removed from life support three days later, Ms. Landis said.

Toxicologic tests on Mr. Pickens are being conducted, said Gayle Day of the Jefferson Parish coroner's office. A spokesman for the sheriff's office said he could not comment on a continuing investigation. Mr. Smith said he could not comment on Mr. Pickens's death.

Three weeks later, Kris Lieberman died in Pennsylvania. The officers who shocked him were the only witnesses to his death, which the Pennsylvania State Police are investigating. But Mr. Lieberman's parents said the state police told them that their son was shocked twice and collapsed afterward. [Stan Coopersmith, chief of the Bushkill Township Police, whose officers responded to the call, said he could not comment on the incident until the state police finish their investigation.] But Taser said that the police chief had told the company that Mr. Lieberman fought briefly after the shocks and that an automatic defibrillator used by the officers indicated Mr. Lieberman was not fibrillating when he collapsed.

"I would suspect the autopsy will find a cause of death that does not include the Taser," Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Lieberman's parents say that he was troubled but that he did not use drugs. Police officers searched Mr. Lieberman's home after the shooting and did not find drugs, his parents say. Toxicologic tests are pending, the Northampton County Coroner said.

Mr. Lieberman's father, Richard, a plain-spoken farmer, said he had not decided whether to hire a lawyer. He simply wants to know if the gun caused his son's death. "If he was the problem, we have to accept it," Mr. Lieberman said. "If they were the problem, they have to accept it."

Questioning of Photo Student Challenged

SEATTLE - Ian Spiers had just hours to finish an assignment for his photography class. He was taking shots of a railroad bridge near the Ballard Locks when an officer with a German shepherd approached him, asked him what he was doing and requested some ID.

Later, he was questioned and photographed by a Homeland Security agent.

It was the second time in less than two months that Spiers had been questioned about taking pictures of a landmark that attracts hundreds of tourists a day, many of whom snap photos of the ships passing between Lake Union and Elliott Bay.

A growing number of photographers around the country have been similarly rousted in recent years as they've tried to take pictures of federal buildings and other major public works, said Donald Winslow, editor of the National Press Photographers Association's magazine.

"We've seen the constant erosion of our civil liberties amid this cry for homeland security by doing things that have an appearance of making us safe, but in reality it's a sham," Winslow said. "No one showed up at the World Trade Center and took photographs from nine different angles before they flew planes into it."

The morning of May 26, Spiers explained he was a photography student at a community college, showed a copy of his assignment, then asked the officer if he was legally obligated to show his ID.
The officer said no and walked away. But soon after, several armed officers approached him, including three from the Seattle Police Department and three from the federal Homeland Security Department.

"I was trying to be calm, but the truth was I was scared out of my mind," Spiers said.

This time, Spiers said, a Seattle police officer told him he had no choice but to show his ID. A Homeland Security agent who flashed his badge told him he had broken a law by taking pictures of a federal facility.

"We've never seen such a law," said Doug Honig, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union in Seattle.

Spiers said he complied, spent half an hour answering questions and let a Homeland Security agent photograph him ? after being told he had no choice.

The ACLU has written the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns and runs the locks, asking for the agency's assurance that Spiers will not be arrested if he returns there.

Corps spokeswoman Patricia Graesser said her agency had no involvement in the incident and questioned an order Spiers said a homeland security agent gave him ? that he could not return to the locks with his camera without getting permission in advance.

"Everyone ? all members of the public ? are welcome on the locks property, and photographs are allowed, and there's no need to get prior permission," she said.

Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb said the department has a duty to respond to reports of suspicious activity.

Calls to the Homeland Security Department were not immediately returned.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Spiers kept his distance from the spot where he was questioned, and wore a button on his camera bag that said: "Annoying but harmless photography student. Do not bend." He made it in early April, after two police officers showed up at his door, saying they were responding to a report about a suspicious man taking pictures at the locks.
 
Spiers said he'd like to hear one of the officers who questioned him say if they hassled him because his mocha-colored skin and short black hair made him look like a terrorist.

"I'm trying to figure out how not to attract attention," said Spiers, 36. "So far the only thing I can think of is that I can never ever pick up a camera."

In early June, about 100 photographers crowded onto New York City subway trains and snapped pictures of each other in protest of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's proposed ban on photography in subways and other public transit.

And Brian Fitzgerald, the chief photographer at the Yakima Herald-Republic, said a uniformed security officer tried to prevent him from taking a picture of an immigration office, citing a "law," then calling it a "directive" that gave the officer the right to confiscate any film with pictures of a federal facility.

An officer in charge eventually let him take his photos, and he's since been told there's no reason he can't take them.

"It's frustrating mostly," Fitzgerald said. "I'm not outraged because I didn't get to the point where I didn't get my photos. It just reminds me again how much disinformation there is, even in these agencies that are supposed to know."

Legion fights ACLU

In a clash of patriotic titans, the American Legion has launched a frontal assault on the American Civil Liberties Union, seeking to cut the ACLU off at the pocketbook by changing the Civil Rights Act.

The Legion campaign is led by a former ACLU lawyer, who now calls his former group "the Taliban of liberal secularism in America.'

Rees Lloyd, former commander of the San Gorgonio Pass American Legion Post 428 in Banning, was outraged when the ACLU won a lawsuit to remove a cross honoring the veterans of World War I at the Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial and was awarded attorneys' fees.

Citing the Legion motto, for God and Country, a resolution calling on Congress to amend the Civil Rights Act was adopted unanimously by the Legion's California department at its statewide convention last month in Redding.

The resolution urges that judges be barred from awarding attorneys' fees to the ACLU in cases brought to remove or destroy crosses or other religious symbols.

Whether the resolution will have the support of the 2.7 million-member American Legion nationwide will have to wait until later this summer at the Legion's national convention in Nashville, Tenn.

Defiant ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said, "I think this is an anti-Constitution resolution, and it won't prevent us from doing our jobs, which is supporting and defending the Bill of Rights.'
Wizner said that other religious symbols were not welcome at the Mojave site. He said an application to erect a Buddhist monument there was rejected by the National Park Service.
"The Constitution does not prohibit any religious imagery on government property, but the government has to be neutral,' Wizner said.

Lloyd said the law was meant to protect poor and minority civil-rights victims who don't have the resources to defend themselves.

"Our belief is this rather noble intent has been corrupted by the ACLU, which has turned it into a vehicle for profit making it an effort to destroy Christian crosses,' Lloyd said.

If delegates at the Legion's Nashville convention adopt the resolution, it will become part of its national policy for next year and one of the issues the group pursues on Capitol Hill, said Joe March, a Legion spokesman at its headquarters in Indianapolis.

The resolution comes after decisions to remove crosses from the seals of Redlands and Los Angeles County, and the cross in Mojave, all brought about by the ACLU.

Though Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, pushed to save the Mojave cross, he has not taken an official stance on the Legion's resolution, said Jim Specht, his spokesman.

"(Lewis) certainly is very grateful that the Legion has provided support on the issue of the Mojave cross,' Specht said.

In the case of the Mojave cross, attorney fees could have been reduced or avoided completely, Wizner said.

"Every single time we obtain a favorable ruling in that case, the government changed tactics,' Wizner said. "There would have been no fees at all had they agreed to remove the cross without fighting its removal in court.'

Lloyd said the ACLU received $50,000 in the case of the Mojave cross.

Though the cross was erected in 1934 by the Death Valley Veterans of Foreign Wars as a tribute to World War I veterans, it has only been a controversial subject in recent years.

In response to a complaint from a resident, the ACLU sent a letter in January 2000 requesting the National Park Service remove the 6-foot cross.

When the cross was not removed, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in 2002 and a U.S. District Court judge in Riverside ruled in favor of the ACLU, saying the cross is a government endorsement of religion.

"Our position in the resolution is that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights clearly provides for the display of ... everybody's religious symbols,' said Bill Mayer, the state adjutant for the California American Legion.

Wizner said the criticism of the ACLU is wrong.

"I think the American Legion is trying to paint the ACLU's position as extreme,' he said. "In constitutional law it's mainstream, and the proof of that is the judges who agree with us.'

Civil rights eroding, Muslims say

DANIA BEACH· Before more than 200 people gathered to discuss civil rights Saturday, Kussay Al-Sabunchi told his harrowing tale. He was half naked when federal agents pulled him from his Orlando home last April, pinned him to the ground and arrested him, he said. He had failed to disclose on his 2001 immigration application that he was found guilty in 1997 of violating his ex-wife's restraining order by sending her flowers.
 
The oversight landed Al-Sabunchi, 40, in court facing deportation to his native Iraq. A judge found him not guilty of purposely lying on his immigration documents and three months ago charges were dropped. Al-Sabunchi, a computer engineer, advised the Muslims in the audience to be careful."It was very, very difficult. They really freaked me out. We still have post-stress syndrome," he said after the program, referring to himself and his wife.Members of the Council on American Islamic Relations-Florida said Al-Sabunchi is one of countless others who have been victims of overzealous authorities. Providing security while preserving the rights of foreign-born U.S. residents is one of the biggest challenges for democracy in the United States in the post-9-11 climate, speakers at the symposium said. They included Randall Marshall, legal affairs director at that American Civil Liberties Union of Florida; David Cole, a lawyer and law professor at Georgetown University; and Amy Goodman, host of the radio show Democracy Now.Many Muslims who attended Saturday's event said they still think they are under scrutiny since the 9-11 attacks."Muslims in America have been made the scapegoats in the witch hunt that ensued after 9-11," said Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the board for the council in Florida. "Our freedoms have been compromised by invoking fear and paranoia."Speakers criticized the Patriot Act, which has been used to expand law enforcement's surveillance powers. The provision allowing FBI agents to search public library records and conduct secret searches without a warrant were called most troubling.Cole said what is taking place in the country now is "the most massive campaign of ethnic profiling since World War II," and that the United States is setting double standards by allowing one set of rules to apply to foreign-born residents who are not American citizens.Cole questioned why about 5,000 people were detained after 9-11 as part of the government's preventive campaign. "Could you imagine if 5,000 American citizens were picked up and held without any charges?" he asked.The questions hit home with many who came to the three-hour event at the Wyndham Hotel in Dania Beach. Samar Jarrah, of Port Charlotte came to hear Goodman and learn more about Brandon Mayfield, the Oregon lawyer who had been falsely linked to a rail bombing in Madrid. Authorities said they had mistakenly matched his fingerprint to one found near the deadly scene. Mayfield's wife, Mona, was among the panelists "It could happen to me. It could happen to you," Jarrah said. "This shouldn't be happening in the United States."

Parents Must Be Present at Nudist Camp for Youths

RICHMOND, Va., July 15 - A weeklong nudist camp for young people scheduled to start next week got some bad news from a federal judge here on Thursday.

True, the judge, Richard L. Williams, allowed the full array of naked camp activities to proceed, including, according to court papers, swimming, volleyball, tennis, table tennis, body painting, pudding fights, "shaving cream follies" and, alarmingly, darts.
 
But Judge Williams upheld a new Virginia law requiring that campers be accompanied by a parent or grandparent. An eyeful of naked Mom or Dad, he suggested, is a fair price for admission to nudist camp.

"The presence of a family member would in no way interfere with the child's participation in events," he said, ruling from the bench.

"A nudist camp is a bit racier than, say, a Boy Scout camp," he continued. "People who love their children or grandchildren will make a modest adjustment to their schedules so that their children and grandchildren can have this unique experience."

Rebecca K. Glenberg, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, which filed a suit challenging the law last month on behalf of the camp and three families, said the ruling would force 24 young people to drop out of the program because their parents, though committed nudists, would not be able to attend. Eleven others had planned to bring their parents all along.

"It's going to be a big loss to a lot of these kids, who were really looking forward to it," Ms. Glenberg said in an interview

The law, enacted this spring, says that nudist camps for juveniles may be licensed only if a parent, grandparent or guardian is "present with the juvenile at the same camp."

Ms. Glenberg argued that the law imposed a constitutionally intolerable infringement on the parents' rights to raise their children as they saw fit, as well as on the plaintiffs' rights to privacy and free expression.

"The natural state of human beings is unclothed," the civil liberties group said in its court papers.

Judge Williams took no position on that, and his ruling on Thursday was a preliminary one. The case will now proceed to trial. Lawyers for the A.C.L.U. said they had not decided whether to try an immediate appeal of the ruling.

The camp at the center of the suit is affiliated with similar ones in Florida and Arizona and has elaborate rules. Campers, who are ages 11 to 17, may wear clothes if it is chilly or if they become sunburned. Otherwise, nudity is strictly enforced.

"Sunburned shoulders may require a reasonable length T-shirt, perhaps to the waist, but certainly not extending to knees or ankles," the rules say. "Going about the property wearing a towel, except perhaps for the first few moments out of the water, is always inappropriate."

The camp says it does not tolerate lewd behavior.

"Intimate contact, suggestive behavior, overt sexuality or sexually provocative behavior" are prohibited, the rules say.

The camp is in Ivor, about an hour's drive southeast of here, and it is but one program of many at a 20-year-old nudist resort there known as White Tail Park, which calls itself "the Southeast's premier clothes-free resort." The resort sponsors an array of naked activities, including ice cream socials, karaoke nights, wagon rides and what its Web site described as a "black light party." Last month, the resort played host to a Christian nudist convocation.

The members of the families involved in the suit, from Norfolk and Hampton, Va., were identified in court papers only by their initials, and they did not respond to requests for interviews made through the A.C.L.U. The youngest plaintiffs include two girls, who are 10 and 12, and three boys, who are 11, 15 and 17.

The court hearing took place in what nudists like to call a textile environment. The lawyers and parties were clothed.

Gov. Mark R. Warner has had a little fun with the law. In a news release in April, he noted that it had been "the butt of many jokes." But he said he supported "the bottom line intent of the bill" with "naked admiration."

In a footnote in its legal papers, the A.C.L.U. objected to the governor's "giggling tone."
Tucker Martin, a spokesman for the state attorney general, Jerry W. Kilgore, said the law operated on the same theory as R-rated movies, which require a parent or guardian to accompany those under 17.

"Children can't even see nudity without a parent," Mr. Martin said. "We're just saying children cannot attend a nudist camp without a parent or guardian present. It's just common sense."

The camp in Ivor says it has had no untoward incidents. It subjects its counselors to criminal background checks; the property is surrounded by a security fence; and staff members patrol the perimeter.

Mr. Martin said that was not enough.

"Pedophiles are very attracted to nudist camps of the garden variety," he said. "Imagine how attracted they would be to nudist camps without parental supervision."