Greece in hot water over computer game ban

Brussels - The European Commission took Greece to the European Union's highest court on Thursday over a law that bans computer games, even in people's homes.

The European Union executive said the ban on the use and installation of electronic and computer games violates the bloc's rules on the free movement of goods and services between its 25 member states.

"The way the law is drafted means that it is theoretically illegal to play with your GameBoy at home or even to play snakes on your cellphone," spokesperson Jonathan Todd told reporters.

Greece's blanket ban on everything from slot machines to GameBoys came about when Athens passed legislation in 2002 to prevent illegal gambling. But it also put games found on cellphones and home computers on its blacklist.

'It is theoretically illegal to play with your GameBoy at home'
The Commission argues the law is disproportionate because it not only applies to things like slot machines, which may give rise to social concern, but also to games that threaten neither public order nor consumers.

Greece promised to amend the legislation after the Commission warned in April that the country may face a suit at the European Court of Justice, but has so far failed to do so.

"We are referring Greece to the court because we believe the effect of this law is to hinder the free movement of goods and at the same time to hinder the free provision of services in the form of repairs to these types of devices and games," Todd said.

New service to give remote access to digital media anywhere

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - In a move sure to raise the eyebrows of Hollywood and its partners, a California startup unveiled a new service Monday that allows subscribers to remotely access their digital media files -- even watch live television -- from any gadget with an Internet connection.

Want to watch your HBO while waiting at the doctor's office, or use your cell phone instead of a portable music player to listen to songs from your home's digital jukebox?

The technology from Orb Networks Inc., based in Union City, grabs a user's music, video, or photo files stored on their home PCs and streams them to Web-enabled devices such as cell phones, laptops, or personal digital assistants. A user's cable or satellite TV can also be accessed as long as the video output is somehow hooked up to a home computer network.

``We think of this as a personal media portal,'' said Orb's chief executive, Jim Behrens. ``Your media is always with you.''

Orb contends any files on a user's PC -- including copy-protected ones, such as songs downloaded from Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store, or films from online movie service MovieLink -- will be playable on-the-go through their service.

Orb's streaming technology essentially keeps the same copy protections, including the usual restrictions against making digital copies and sharing them freely over the Internet, but lets users access their media however they choose, Behrens said.

``We want content creators to get paid for their content, but once users have paid for it, they should be able to play it on whatever device they want and wherever they want,'' he said.

It's a notion Hollywood has challenged in the past, battling the pioneers of VCRs, such as Sony Corp., to the makers of digital video recorders, such as TiVo Inc.

So far, TiVo, which will soon let its subscribers access their recorded TV shows on other devices outside the home, has prevailed over Hollywood's piracy and broadcast rights concerns. But that won't stop the powerful studios, analysts say.

``Media companies are terrified about their content going on the Internet, and they'll fight until they're sure that the content is being sent to you and only you,'' said Josh Bernoff, a digital media analyst at Forrester Research. ``It's not even a question of whether it's legal, it's whether or not they'll get sued, and there's a significant possibility of that here.''

A startup faces tremendous hurdles in fighting deep-pocketed opponents. Just consider how former small companies with controversial video-related technologies, such as SonicBlue Inc. and 321 Studios Inc., went bankrupt, crushed by the costs of fighting Hollywood.

Neither will companies like Apple or Sony, which have designed the tunes downloaded from their music stores to be transferrable only to their respectively branded portable players, necessarily appreciate how the Orb service eludes their restrictions.

Orb executives expect opposition but said they have worked closely with lawyers and are confident Orb would prevail if confronted in court.

The Orb service will be available in mid-November starting at $9.99 a month or $79.99 per year. Additional users off the same home-based account would have to pay $3.99 per month or $29.99 per year.

Users must download Orb software onto their home computers and set up a password-protected Orb account. To access their home media files over the Internet, users need to be able to launch a Web browser and have a media player -- either Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, RealNetworks Inc.'s RealPlayer, or one provided by Orb -- on their portable devices.

The service is targeted at households with high-speed broadband connections, though during the streaming process, the quality of the videos or photos would be limited to the connection speeds and screen resolutions of the devices.

Orb claims it can access any digital media file off of a user's PC, but its reach into a set-top-box connected to a home computer network, such as a TiVo or a cable DVR set-top-box, is blocked until Orb gets permission from those companies to place its software in those boxes -- a business strategy Orb is pursuing.

``If Orb could get its technology working properly, it's a promising idea,'' Bernoff said. ``But anything with a subscription fee is also going to have to be incredibly useful to get people to pay.''

Senate Wants Database Dragnet

The Senate could pass a bill as early as Wednesday evening that would let government counter-terrorist investigators instantly query a massive system of interconnected commercial and government databases that hold billions of records on Americans.

The proposed network is based on the Markle Foundation Task Force's December 2003 report, which envisioned a system that would allow FBI and CIA agents, as well as police officers and some companies, to quickly search intelligence, criminal and commercial databases. The proposal is so radical, the bill allocates $50 million just to fund the system's specifications and privacy policies.

The Senate will likely have its final vote on the bill, sponsored by Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Wednesday night. The draft of the bill was based on recommendations of the so-called 9/11 Commission, which investigated the United States' lapse in intelligence and security procedures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

To prevent abuses of the system, the Markle task force recommended anonymized technology, graduated levels of permission-based access and automated auditing software constantly hunting for abuses.

An appendix to the report went so far as to suggest that the system should "identify known associates of the terrorist suspect, within 30 seconds, using shared addressees, records of phone calls to and from the suspect's phone, e-mails to and from the suspect's accounts, financial transactions, travel history and reservations, and common memberships in organizations, including (with appropriate safeguards) religious and expressive organizations."

But task force member James X. Dempsey, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, says the commercial records involved are more limited public records, such as home ownership data, not information about what mosque someone belongs to.

He said he believes it's "absurd" to prohibit the FBI from using a commercial database like ChoicePoint to find a suspected terrorist's home address (though the FBI currently can and does do this). On the other hand, he asked, "Should they be able to go to ChoicePoint and ask for all the subscribers to Gun Owners Monthly? No, I don't think so."

The proposed network would not look for patterns in data warehouses to attempt to detect terrorist activities, Dempsey said. Instead, an investigator would start with a name and the system would try to see what information is known about that person.

But critics say the Senate is moving too fast and the network could infringe on civil liberties. Lawmakers are taking a "boil the ocean" approach, according to Robert Griffin, president of Knowledge Computing. His company runs Coplink, a widely used system for linking law enforcement databases. Despite being a supporter of increased information sharing, Griffin criticized the proposal for trying too much too soon and relying too heavily on commercial data.

"The next Mohammed Atta is not going to be found in commercial databases," Griffin said, referring to the tactical leader of the 9/11 attacks. "We are going to stop him running a red light somewhere, and we are going to run relationships associations with this guy and we are going to say, gee, you have things in common with guys on watch lists. That's how you are going to find the guy -- not because he has bad credit."

Civil liberties lawyer Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation accused Congress of "institutional laziness" for not holding hearings on the proposal to hear the perspectives of advocates for consumers or battered women. Tien also argued that a widespread lack of privacy and due process protections would make data sharing dangerous.

"If someone transfers your credit report or medical history, you have no way of knowing," Tien said. "The natural feedback we expect in the physical world just doesn't work in the area of information. You have to be careful."

Tien is not alone in his concern. On Monday, more than 40 organizations, ranging from the American Association of Law Libraries to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, signed on to an open letter (.pdf) to Congress asking members to include adequate civil liberties safeguards in the pending legislation.

However, technology professor Dave Farber said that his work on the task force convinced him the task force's model was a "critical" tool in the fight against terrorists.

"A lot of (task force members) were very uncomfortable about data sharing," Farber said. "But all of us at the end felt confident that if the recommendations were followed, it was as good as it was going to get relative to privacy protections."

< This type of database query is exactly the right tool for government to be effective in what it needs to do. Also, the checks and balances system they're talking about implimenting is the proper way to control it's use. However, if you don't have a government you can trust in the first place, giving them any extra power whatsoever is the worst possible thing that can happen. >

Entertainment Industry Asks Justices to Rule on File Sharing

In the latest volley of the file-sharing wars, the movie and music industries have filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to overturn a federal appeals court decision that favored Grokster and StreamCast Networks, the makers of software that allow users to trade copyrighted files.

That decision, issued in August by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, upheld the notion that makers of a technology with legal uses cannot be held liable simply because some - or even most - of its users deploy it to violate a copyright.

The court relied heavily on the principles of a 1984 Supreme Court decision known as the Sony-Betamax case, which gave makers of electronic devices crucial legal protection against claims of copyright infringement.

The new petition, filed Friday by the recording and film industries, argues that the appellate court misapplied the Sony-Betamax decision.

"The Ninth Circuit's decision threatens the very foundations of our copyright system in the digital era," the petition claims, arguing that software companies like StreamCast and Grokster "brazenly encourage and profit from infringement" of copyright.

File-sharing, or peer-to-peer, software allows computer users with the same networking program to connect and have direct access to files from one another's hard drives. The vast majority of activity on such networks involves the exchange of illegally copied materials - most of it music files.

The petition also argues that the decision in the Ninth Circuit conflicts with an earlier decision by the appeals court in the Seventh Circuit on peer-to-peer technology. That case, decided in 2003, upheld an injunction against Aimster, another file-sharing service, on the grounds that it facilitated copyright infringement.

A clear conflict between two circuit court decisions could increase the likelihood that the Supreme Court would visit the entertainment industries' appeal - although critics of the lawsuit say even the Aimster decision upheld the basic tenets of the Sony-Betamax case.

"They want to argue that there's some sort of national emergency here," said Susan Crawford, a professor of Internet law at the Cardozo School of Law in New York. "But Betamax is the law of the land and it's not undermined by either of these two opinions."

The petition to the Supreme Court comes as a bill called the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004, which would amend federal copyright law to hold makers of a technology liable for the illegal behavior of its users, stalls in the Senate.

It is unclear whether the Supreme Court will consider the current petition. Fred von Lohmann, the senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who successfully argued the case before the Ninth Circuit court on behalf of StreamCast Networks, said the movie and music industries were unlikely to get relief from the courts.

"They seem to think what they can't get from the Senate, they can get from the courts," Mr. von Lohmann said. He said that judges can only apply the law, not make it, and so far, "every court has said copyright is a creature of statute."

Orgies are the way to ease social tensions, claims US judge

He is the conservative bastion of the US supreme court, a favourite of President Bush, and a hunting partner of the vice-president. He has argued vociferously against abortion rights, and in favour of anti-sodomy laws.
But it turns out that there is another side to Justice Antonin Scalia: he thinks Americans ought to be having more orgies.

Challenged about his views on sexual morality, Justice Scalia surprised his audience at Harvard University, telling them: "I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."

It seems unlikely that this is what President Bush meant when he promised to appoint more judges like Scalia to the court, should the opportunity arise. Crucially, Justice Scalia is one of the judges in favour of overturning Roe v Wade, the landmark judgment protecting abortion as a constitutional right.

One audience member also asked the judge "whether you have any gay friends, and, if not, whether you'd like to be my friend," the Harvard Crimson newspaper reported.

"I probably do have some gay friends, but I have never pressed the point," Justice Scalia responded. He offered no clue to the logic behind his claim that orgies eliminate social tensions.

Nobody asked him whether he was familiar with Rick Moody's novel The Ice Storm, turned into a movie by Ang Lee, which appeared to suggest the exact opposite.

Puppet oral sex goes against grain for US censors

Team America: World Police

The latest feature film from the creators of South Park is facing the box office kiss of death NC-17 rating because of a scene showing simulated oral sex between marionettes.

The makers of Team America: World Police have reportedly gone to great lengths, modifying the offending scene nine times for submission to the Motion Picture Association of America, the US film classification authority. They are keen to secure an R rating, which would allow under-18s to see the film when accompanied by an adult.

The makers, directors Matt Stone and Trey Parker and producer Scott Rudin, are contesting the MPAA classification, saying that the film doesn't show anything that's not been seen before in other R-rated movies. And besides, Rudin told the Hollywood Reporter, "our characters are made of wood and have no genitalia. If the puppets did to each other what we show them doing, all they'd get is splinters."

A resolution to this dispute is particularly urgent because the film-makers are contractually obliged to deliver an R-rated film for release by October 15, but the film is scheduled for sneak previews this coming weekend.

Stone and Parker are no strangers to ratings wrangles - their 1999 film South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was also the subject of a very long and public battle with the MPAA, but ultimately got an R rating.

Parker pointed to the differences between the MPAAs treatment of simulated violence and simulated sex. Team America features violent scenes in which a Tim Robbins puppet is set on fire and a Susan Sarandon puppet is dropped off a 20-story building - all acts that passed MPAA muster.

"We blow Janeane Garofalo's head clean off, [but for the MPAA] it's all about the positions of the dolls having sex," Parker said. "It's not funny - it's tragic."

< We have here a subject matter which is as natural as breathing and eating, which should not be banned even in the most explicit realness, but gets banned even in puppet-form. >

Manhunt or witchhunt?

COMMENTARY: Manhunt was released on the 28 November 2003 to critical acclaim but barely a whisper about the violent nature of its content.

It is a game that sparked debate among gamers and the industry but it didn't gain mass media notoriety until recently when media reported that it had been linked to the violent murder of a teenager in the UK.

It was initially reported that the alleged assailant was obsessed with the game, but after a few days passed police involved in the investigation revealed a copy had been found, but at the victim's house.

This instant notoriety meant the game was pulled from major retailers in London and soon enough the controversy reared its head here in Australia.

Western Australian Minister for Justice, Michelle Roberts, put forward a request to the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) for reclassification of the MA15+ rated game and on 29 September the decision was made to reclassify Manhunt to Refused Classification, which means a complete ban on the sales, hire, distribution and promotion of Manhunt in Australia.

We contacted the game's publisher, Take 2 Interactive, but they declined to comment on the ban.

While many column inches will probably be devoted to the fact that this has happened, I wonder whether the wider implications of the decision will really be given the attention they need.

While the OFLC decision highlights the fact that Manhunt is indeed an excessively violent game for children, there was not even an option available for the OFLC to classify the game for adults.

Over recent years the fact that there is no R classification for games has become more of an issue as gamers grow up and the number of mature titles being developed increases.

Developers of Manhunt, Rockstar North, are no strangers to run-ins over mature titles. In 2001 it released the landmark game Grand Theft Auto 3, which took the gaming world by storm, sold through the roof and was refused classification in Australia. After Rockstar North tweaked the game to remove the offending content, which included a small section of an in-game movie and a side effect of the game design by which the protagonist could kill prostitutes after paying for their services, the game was reclassified as MA15+.

In 2002 Rockstar North released Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which was widely acknowledged as one of the greatest games of all time. It passed through classification with an MA15+ (the developers knew what they needed to remove to get it passed this time around).

Then a year later Rockstar North released Manhunt, that cleared the OFLC with nary a query. Manhunt did not receive either the success or relentless promotion of the Grand Theft Auto titles. It seems that the developers used the game as both an experiment in tense psychological gaming and a testbench for technology being flowed into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is due for release on PlayStation 2 next month.

Manhunt is all about being part of a snuff film. You play as James Earl Cash, a death row inmate who awakens after he was supposed to be executed, only to find he had become an unwitting participant in a series of increasingly violent set pieces, played out for a mysterious director of ultra-realistic filmic violence. It is brutal and disturbing in nature but no more so than any number of R rated movies out there.

This is what the banning of Manhunt really highlights -- the fact that there is no way in Australia to legally restrict the sale of the game to adults. People are still stuck in the mindset that games are the domain of children, but this is something that has changed dramatically in recent years.

Surveys by the US based Entertainment Software Association (www.theesa.com) have highlighted the fact that the average age for gamers is now 29 years old, yet still we have no 'adult' games classification here.

It is also an industry that has revenues exceeding the annual box office take for the film industry, yet while we can spend our Saturday nights hiring phenomenally gory DVDs like The Passion of the Christ and Saving Private Ryan from the video store, there is no way for adults to obtain games made for adults.

It goes both ways too. There are numerous games that are given MA15+ ratings that do not necessitate such a rating, simply because the only option is MA15+ or refusal of classification.

If an R rating were to be introduced it would mean that these games are appropriately restricted as well. Unfortunately bad timing meant that the last major review of classification happened in 2002, with the initial public submission phase ending mere days after the banning of GTA 3 was announced.

This meant that by the time attention was called to the issue it was too late. There are no announced plans for another review, but this is certainly an issue that will only become increasingly important as the games industry continues to adapt and adopt the kinds of content that game playing adults want.

MP3 Creator Warns Tech Impasse Dooming Downloads

BERLIN (Reuters) - Rival technologies that baffle consumers will run more companies out of business in the nascent music download market than will head-to-head competition, one of the lead creators of MP3 playback technology warned on Wednesday.

"It has slowed the download business for sure, and it's doing the same for the gadget makers," said Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg, director of electronic media technologies at the Fraunhofer Institut in Ilemenau, Germany.

Consumers nowadays can store thousands of songs in a pocket-sized device, play music and videos on their mobile phones and buy albums at the click of a button.

But to their chagrin, a bewildering number of competing playback compression technologies and anti-piracy software options determine which songs play on which devices.

Apple Computers, Real Networks and Sony Corp. each have developed proprietary playback and DRM anti-piracy technologies. Songs bought on Apple's iTunes music store can play only on Apple iPods. Ditto for Sony.

The alphabet soup of technologies is meant to prevent fans from rampantly duplicating and transferring songs to others.

Brandenburg said he twice warned manufacturers and music labels that they risk alienating fans and driving them to unsanctioned file-sharing networks, where the songs are free and encoded in the unprotected MP3 format.

"They didn't listen. Maybe they thought it made commercial sense not to have a standard. It's very strange," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the Popkomm music conference.

Brandenburg should be the last man on the planet to complain about the impasse. Granted a lucrative patent in 1986 for developing the MP3, he and the Fraunhofer Institut collect royalties on the sale of MP3 players, including Apple's iPod.

"Blank MP3s is the only standard. It is supported by all," he said. "This has been good news for Fraunhofer. And, I consider myself a wealthy man as well."

Some accused of music downloading turn to bankruptcy

Eddie Nicholson, a school bus driver, has made ends meet in recent years by serving as a disc jockey at parties. He calls the business Fast Eddie's Karaoke & DJ Show.

He got some ominous financial news in June, when a sheriff's deputy delivered a summons to Nicholson's trailer home in Marion, Ill. BMG, a music industry giant, was suing him in federal court for downloading music over the Internet. Representing BMG was Bryan Cave LLP, a large law firm based in St. Louis.

Nicholson turned to attorney Bradley Olson, a solo practitioner in Carterville, Ill. Olson filed a bankruptcy case on Nicholson's behalf two weeks later, a move that automatically blocked BMG's suit.

Then Olson asked a bankruptcy judge to bar BMG from collecting the $5,435 claim. BMG filed no response, and on Sept. 8, Judge Kenneth Meyers dismissed the case in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in East St. Louis.

This is the latest, and perhaps grittiest, phase of the music industry's campaign to stamp out what it says is an epidemic of illegal copying of recorded music over the Internet. The Recording Industry Association of America has announced waves of lawsuits against alleged copyright violators. But once the cases hit the courts, music industry attorneys sometimes run into tough battles.

Still, the recording industry group suggests it is winning the war. Since September last year, music companies have sued 4,679 alleged music downloaders, according to the Washington-based association. So far, 1,024 people have settled their cases, it said.

In St. Louis, BMG, Sony and other music giants have sued 603 alleged downloaders.

The broad effect of the campaign has been to dissuade consumers from downloading music illegally, the industry association says. Instead, recorded CD sales are rising after a four-year decline, and legitimate online music sites are thriving, it says.

Nicholson said he considers the industry's tactics unfair. He said he had nothing to do with downloading music, as a neighborhood child had downloaded the music for Nicholson's daughter.

BMG's suit showed that the big company had concluded Nicholson was guilty without even talking to him, he said. BMG sent him a letter threatening to make him pay as much as $350,000, he said.

The experience has left him bitter and angry, he said. "This is not the land of the free any more. It's the land of - how much can you pay?"

He said he bought all of the CDs for his business legally, but now he's been forced to hire a lawyer, file for bankruptcy and make payments to work out his bankruptcy plan.

Consumers aren't the only ones who have resisted the lawsuits. The industry also has clashed repeatedly with someone its own size - Charter Communications Inc., a cable television and Internet service provider based in Town and Country.

Last year, the recording industry group issued subpoenas seeking identifying information on about 200 Charter customers. The association knew them only by the Internet Protocol numbers that identified their computers on the Internet. The subpoenas were used to put names and addresses with those numbers.

The association issued the subpoenas to Charter under the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Charter resisted, saying the subpoenas violated its customers' privacy. The dispute is pending in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

After another federal appeals court ruled in December that such subpoenas were illegal, the industry changed its strategy. Individual companies began filing suits against "John Doe" defendants identified only by the Internet Protocol number. Under federal court Rule 45, the filing of the suits first legitimized the use of subpoenas.

Charter has had little choice but to comply. Its senior vice president and associate general counsel, Tom Hearity, said, "Where we have grounds to oppose a Rule 45 subpoena, we will do so, but that generally isn't the case." Hearity said Charter tells targeted customers first.

With identifying information now flowing, the music companies have filed suits against 334 named defendants nationwide since May, according to the industry association. Those include just six in the court's eastern Missouri district, and one in Southern Illinois.

Nicholson, the defendant in court at East St. Louis, is not the only one to file for bankruptcy. Victoria Summers, a car dealership employee who lives in Cape Girardeau, Mo., was sued July 20 by Sony Music Entertainment Inc. and other music companies. They claim she downloaded music, or made it available for downloading by others, in violation of the copyrights.

On Aug. 12, Summers filed for bankruptcy. She reported earning $1,887 per month, noting she is divorced and has two children. The filing led to an automatic stay of the lawsuit.

Summers could not be reached for comment. Her attorney, Benjamin Lewis, declined comment.

Not all defendants turn to bankruptcy. Mark Kelly, of Chesterfield, has not responded to a lawsuit BMG and other companies filed against him July 20. In a telephone interview, Kelly said, "It's a situation where I didn't even know this was going on, and my children were involved in it, and I can't figure how the kids were doing what they did."

He said his children were 15 and 17 years old at the time of the suspected activity. He referred other questions to a lawyer, who could not be reached.

On Sept. 20, attorneys for BMG and the other music companies filed a motion seeking a default judgment for damages, noting that Kelly had failed to respond. They are seeking $7,500.

A judge has yet to rule on the request for damages.

B.C. group scraps draft-dodger statue

NELSON, B.C. - Faced with widespread opposition, a British Columbia group has backed off its plan for a monument to honour Vietnam draft dodgers.

Instead, the Our Way Home committee is now planning a different statue in honour of "peace and refuge."

The proposed monument.
Spokesperson Isaac Romano says the original idea was very divisive, garnering an angry response from many Americans, including veterans groups.

He's optimistic the new proposal will receive more support.
"Even that early monument was just a rough, rough draft. So what we eventually come out with is maybe very, very different. It may be totally different.

"And as I mentioned, we're looking at broadening it to include it being a peace and refuge monument for all groups that have come to Canada and sought assistance," he says.

Last week, Nelson city council rejected the draft-dodger proposal because it didn't have widespread support.

Romano says communities outside Nelson, which he declines to identify, have expressed interest in providing a location for the peace monument.

His group is also planning a reunion weekend for war resisters in July 2006.

Meanwhile, a veterans group is planning its own event in Nelson for the same weekend in July 2006, in competition with the draft-dodgers reunion.

The group, Vietnam Veterans in Canada, says it is a "warrior society" and is opposed to the event honouring draft dodgers.

Part of Patriot Act Struck Down

Part of the Patriot Act, a central plank of the Bush administration's war on terror, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the power the FBI has to demand confidential records from companies, like internet service providers, as part of terrorism investigations.

The move strikes down section 505 of the Patriot Act, which gives the FBI power to demand information from companies without a court order and bars recipients of the letters from ever revealing that they received the FBI demand for records. Marrero held that this permanent ban was a violation of free-speech rights.

In his ruling, Marreo prohibited the Department of Justice and the FBI from issuing special administrative subpoenas, also known as national security letters. But he delayed enforcement of his judgment pending an appeal that's expected to be filed by the government. The Department of Justice said it was reviewing the ruling.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero called the ruling a "stunning victory" and said the timing was especially important since Congress was deliberating on passing additional surveillance and law enforcement powers this week.

Jameel Jaffer, who argued the case in court for the ACLU, said they based their challenge on Fourth Amendment rights, arguing that, under the provision, individuals who received national security letters weren't provided any opportunity to challenge the letters before a judge.

Jaffer emphasized that the case wasn't about the kinds of records the FBI could obtain but about what the FBI had to do in order to get the records, such as go before a federal judge to justify its demand for records. The government argued that it was possible to imply in the legislation that recipients of the letters do have an opportunity to challenge them, but the judge rejected that argument.

The FBI first received power to get customer records in 1986 legislation, but its power to obtain confidential data was greatly expanded by the Patriot Act -- a controversial law the Bush administration pushed through Congress after the 9/11 attacks to help it battle terrorism.

The ACLU has been arguing since then that section 505 of the legislation was too broad because it could allow the FBI to obtain records from any organization that allowed individuals to communicate over the Internet, not just internet service providers. Jaffer said the FBI could use the provision to obtain a political organization's membership list, like the ACLU or NAACP, or to obtain the names of a person who communicated anonymously or who communicated with a journalist over the Internet.

Under the provision, the FBI did not have to show a judge a compelling need for the records and it did not have to specify any process that would allow a recipient to fight the demand for confidential information.

The ACLU sued the Department of Justice, arguing that the provision violated the Constitution because it authorizes the FBI to force disclosure of sensitive information without adequate safeguards.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit in part on behalf of a client who received a national security letter from the FBI. But the organization had to file the suit under seal to avoid penalties for violating the gag provision. They were prohibited from talking to anyone about the suit.

"Until today we were forbidden from even disclosing the mere fact that a national security letter was served on our client," said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson. "The government argued that it would jeopardize national security for us to say that we represented a client who had received a national security letter."

They were able to reveal the existence of their client and the national security letter after the ruling only because the judge mentioned the client in his ruling.

The ruling was the latest blow to the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects being held in places like Guantanamo Bay can use the U.S. judicial system to challenge their confinement. That ruling was a defeat for the president's assertion of sweeping powers to hold "enemy combatants" indefinitely after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Theme park takes visitors to RFID-land

A Florida theme park is helping parents keep track of their kids--by giving them wristbands embedded with high-tech radio signal technology.

Wannado City issues the radio frequency identification (RFID) wristbands to all visitors as part of general admission to the park, according to a release from Texas Instruments, the maker of the wristbands. The theme park opened last month in the Fort Lauderdale area.

The wristbands contain special microchips, or RFID tags, that wirelessly signal their whereabouts to reading devices throughout the 140,000-square-foot facility. Visitors can locate other members of their group by using touch-screen kiosks throughout the park that are linked to the system, called SafeTzone's Real-Time Locating System.

People have used RFID technology for years to track and identify livestock and lost pets. More recently, it has been put to use to monitor humans, and hospitals and prisons have begun to use RFID wristbands to keep tabs on patients and inmates.

One company, called Applied Digital Solutions, is even experimenting with injecting RFID chips into people's arms. Mexico's attorney general grabbed the headlines last month when the Mexican government announced he'd been injected with the company's chip to give him access to high-security facilities. The country is also studying the technology as a tool for combating kidnappings.

Businesses are finding new uses for RFID technology too. Wal-Mart Stores, Albertsons and dozens of other major retail chains and consumer goods manufactuers are slapping RFID tags onto merchandise with the hope that the technology will help them juggle inventory efficiently. Pharmaceutial makers are examining RFID systems as an antidote to the counterfeit drug trade.

Texas Instruments said it and its partner RF Code have installed the SafeTzone's Real-Time Locating System tracking technology at Paramount's Great America in Santa Clara, Calif., Wild Rivers Water Park in Irvine, Calif., Dollywood's Splash Country in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., and Wet 'n Wild in Las Vegas.

Steamboat Springs Ski Resort in Colorado also plans to install the system. A LegoLand in Denmark is using similar technology to reunite kids separated from parents at its amusement park.

The Possibility of Cosmetic Surgery for the Soul

What would Cyrano de Bergerac say? That was the question that came to mind after reading an article on "Cosmetic Neurology" published last week in Neurology.

I suspect he would read the title of the article, take note of the subtitle, "The controversy over enhancing movement, mentation and mood," raise his eyebrows, put his hand on the hilt of his rapier and exclaim, "What?" or, if you want to be picky, "Quoi?" Cyrano himself is not around, of course, so I had to contact the author of the article myself to ask about the title.

The substance of the article is clear. Dr. Anjan Chatterjee, of the department of neurology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, discussed the many ways that exist and are emerging to tinker with emotions, intellect, memory and other aspects of ourselves by choice. Beyond therapy for mental or physical illness, he said, neurologists in particular will be in the middle of societal demands for drugs to improve attention and mood simply because people want them.

Genetic engineering and the use of stem cells may also become techniques for elective enhancements of some sort. Neurologists will be involved, he said, in anything involving the brain and nervous system, he said, so they had better be ready.

Fair enough. But why "cosmetic"? Dr. Chatterjee said he coined the term to have an easy, memorable label for the issues he was addressing, and to spark some thought about what is cosmetic and what isn't.

He said that the Greek roots of the word had to do with order and arrangement and went back to the cosmos itself, which solved a long-term puzzle for me - the connection between cosmetology and cosmology. Both involve "skilled arrangements," as Dr. Chatterjee put it.

I myself am not a neurologist. In fact, I'm not a doctor of any sort, as my friends and family often point out in order to make me pipe down. And neither was Cyrano, although he did indulge in the odd spur-of-the-moment dissection.

So I really latched on to the word "cosmetic." Despite Dr. Chatterjee's venture into etymology, the common definition of cosmetic has to do with appearances. And the changes he talks about go deeper than appearance. How can you compare a nose job to a change in intellect?

Cyrano, of course, is the swashbuckling poet and soldier who is afflicted with a nose that he describes as a "vile protuberance," which nobody else is allowed to mention. There was a real Cyrano, but the one we all know is the character in a play by Edmond Rostand.

He is ugly on the outside but beautiful on the inside. Because of his appearance he cannot bring himself to declare his love for his cousin Roxanne, a great beauty and a fellow lover of wit and poetry. But he does find a way to convey his feelings to her. Roxanne falls for a young, handsome soldier, Christian, who, although she doesn't know it, does not have inner beauty to match his exterior. Cyrano, through some plot twists, ends up as his speechwriter, composing letters and declamations for him that are irresistibly passionate and witty.

Roxanne swoons under the influence of the words. She needs to be wooed with rhyme, meter and metaphor, with lyric extravagance. On his own, all Christian can say to improve on "I love you," is "I love you very much." So he relies on Cyrano. As Roxanne falls deeper and deeper in love, the question that drives the drama is whether her love is for external or internal beauty - Christian or Cyrano.

Now imagine Cyrano reincarnated in the Age of Rhinoplasty, watching "The Swan" and reading Neurology. He would be shocked at cosmetic surgery, but I think he would have been first in line for a nip and tuck. He was desperate. His nose afflicted him.

A greater shock would be cosmetic neurology, the possibility of altering passion, intelligence, memory, verbal panache - qualities that Cyrano and Roxanne held to be part of a person's soul. Fine, get the nose fixed. But what if Christian were able to take a poet pill? Alas, poor Cyrano, poor Roxanne, poor Rostand, for there would be no play at all.

These are, of course, some of the very issues that Dr. Chatterjee takes on in his article. He wishes to provoke thought. But he might have provoked more in Cyrano, who was a master of the sword as well as the pen, and quick to respond to any challenge. I can see him brandishing his epee.

"Mais non!" he would shout as he ran his sword through the latest issue of Neurology. "Elective neurology, perhaps. Voluntary neurosurgery, maybe. Even out-of-network, nonessential personality change. But cosmetic? Never!"

Touché.

'Computer game' killer jailed

A teenager whose apparent obsession with a violent video game was blamed by some for leading him to kill a younger friend was detained for life today.

Warren Leblanc lured 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah to a Leicester park armed with a knife and claw hammer before carrying out the horrific attack in February.

The 17-year-old, who was ordered to serve a minimum of 13 years behind bars by a judge at Leicester Crown Court, claimed he planned to rob the younger boy to repay a £75 debt.

But his victim's parents blamed the violent computer game Manhunt, in which players earn points for stealth killings, for the vicious and prolonged attack on their son.

he court heard that despite publicity surrounding the case which linked the murder to Leblanc's obsession with computer games, this had not formed any part of the case.

Roderick Price QC, defending, said the teenager had been motivated by fear of a gang to whom he owed a small amount of money.

He said: "The reason he killed Stefan is rooted not in video games but in fear - in desperation born of fear.

"Both Stefan and the defendant are victims of a gang culture which creates fear in the minds of young men and in the case of this defendant, a young man who was not a gang member and who was out of the loop.

"He considers that he was in imminent danger of serious bodily harm and it is against this background that he committed the offence that he did.

he court heard that despite publicity surrounding the case which linked the murder to Leblanc's obsession with computer games, this had not formed any part of the case.

Roderick Price QC, defending, said the teenager had been motivated by fear of a gang to whom he owed a small amount of money.

He said: "The reason he killed Stefan is rooted not in video games but in fear - in desperation born of fear.

"Both Stefan and the defendant are victims of a gang culture which creates fear in the minds of young men and in the case of this defendant, a young man who was not a gang member and who was out of the loop.

"He considers that he was in imminent danger of serious bodily harm and it is against this background that he committed the offence that he did.

Stefan's mother, Giselle, said she was also disgusted by the length of the sentence.

With tears in her eyes she said: "He is the epitome of evil, cruel, calculating, a master of disguise who pretended to be my son's friend."

She added: "I think that as a society we need to eliminate any bad influences on our young people because of what society is like today - so many young people are committing crimes."

Detective Superintendent Bob Small, of Leicestershire Police, reiterated his belief that robbery was the motive behind the attack and not the video game blamed by the victim's parents.

"It would appear to be a robbery that has gone wrong and not an attack based on a video game," he said. "We can find no direct evidence to link the game to the death.

"However we cannot dispute the fact that there is this graphic violence depicted in that video game which we are told Warren played and who is to say what effect that did or didn't have on him.

"Whatever sentence he got would never have been enough for the family and I think the family are disappointed, but the judge has sentenced on the facts that were put before him."

Can Prayers Heal? Critics Say Studies Go Past Science's Reach

In 2001, two researchers and a Columbia University fertility expert published a startling finding in a respected medical journal: women undergoing fertility treatment who had been prayed for by Christian groups were twice as likely to have a successful pregnancy as those who had not.

Three years later, after one of the researchers pleaded guilty to conspiracy in an unrelated business fraud, Columbia is investigating the study and the journal reportedly pulled the paper from its Web site.

No evidence of manipulation has yet surfaced, and the study's authors stand behind their data.

But the doubts about the study have added to the debate over a deeply controversial area of research: whether prayer can heal illness.

Critics express outrage that the federal government, which has contributed $2.3 million in financing over the last four years for prayer research, would spend taxpayer money to study something they say has nothing to do with science.

"Intercessory prayer presupposes some supernatural intervention that is by definition beyond the reach of science," said Dr. Richard J. McNally, a psychologist at Harvard. "It is just a nonstarter, in my opinion, a total waste of time and money."

Prayer researchers, many themselves believers in prayer's healing powers, say scientists do not need to know how a treatment or intervention works before testing it.

Dr. Richard Nahin, a senior adviser at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, said in an e-mail message that the studies were meant to answer practical questions, not religious ones.

"We only recently understood how aspirin worked, and the mechanisms of action of various antidepressants and general anesthetics remain under investigation," Dr. Nahin wrote.

He said a recent government study found that 45 percent of adults prayed specifically for health reasons, and suggested that many of them were poor people with limited access to care.

"It is a public health imperative to understand if this prayer offers them any benefit," Dr. Nahin wrote.

Some researchers also point out that praying for the relief of other people's suffering is a deeply human response to disease.

The 'Placebo Effect'

Since 2000, at least 10 studies of intercessory prayer have been carried out by researchers at institutions including the Mind/Body Medical Institute, a nonprofit clinic near Boston run by a Harvard-trained cardiologist, as well as Duke University and the University of Washington. Government financing of intercessory prayer research began in the mid-1990's and has continued under the Bush administration.

In one continuing study, financed by the National Institutes of Health and called "Placebo Effect in Distant Healing of Wounds," doctors at California Pacific Medical Center, a major hospital in San Francisco, inflict a tiny stab wound on the abdomens of women receiving breast reconstruction surgery, with their consent, and then determine whether the "focused intention" of a variety of healers speeds the wound's healing.

Two large trials of the effects of prayer on coronary health are currently under review at prominent medical journals.

Even those who defend prayer research concede that such studies are difficult. For one thing, no one knows what constitutes a "dose": some studies have tested a few prayers a day by individual healers, while others have had entire congregations pray together. Some have involved evangelical Christians; others have engaged rabbis, Buddhist and New Age healers, or some combination.

Another problem concerns the mechanism by which prayer might be supposed to work. Some researchers contend that prayer's effects - if they exist - have little to do with religion or the existence of God. Instead of divine intervention, they propose things like "subtle energies," "mind-to-mind communication" or "extra dimensions of space-time" - concepts that many scientists dismiss as nonsense. Others suggest that prayer may have a soothing effect that works like a placebo for believers who know they are being prayed for.

Either way, even many churchgoers are skeptical that prayer can be subjected to scientific scrutiny. For one thing, prayers vary in their purpose and content: some give praise, others petition for strength, many ask only that God's will be done. For another, not everyone sees God as one who does favors on request.

"There's no way to put God to the test, and that's exactly what you're doing when you design a study to see if God answers your prayers," said the Rev. Raymond J. Lawrence Jr., director of pastoral care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. "This whole exercise cheapens religion, and promotes an infantile theology that God is out there ready to miraculously defy the laws of nature in answer to a prayer."

Prayer and Heart Disease

Proponents of prayer research often cite two large heart disease trials to justify further study of prayer's healing potential.

In one study, Dr. Randolph Byrd, a San Francisco cardiologist, had groups of born-again Christians pray for 192 of 393 patients being treated at the coronary care unit of San Francisco General Hospital. In 1988, Dr. Byrd reported in The Southern Medical Journal, a peer-reviewed publication of the Southern Medical Association, that the patients who were prayed for did better on several measures of health, including the need for drugs and breathing assistance.

At the end of the paper, Dr. Byrd wrote, "I thank God for responding to the many prayers made on behalf of the patients."

In the other study, of 990 heart disease patients, Dr. William S. Harris of St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., and his colleagues reported in The Archives of Internal Medicine in 1999 that the patients who were prayed for by religious strangers did significantly better than the others on a measure of coronary health that included more than 30 factors. Dr. Harris, who was one of the authors of a paper arguing that Darwin's theory of evolution is speculative, concluded that his study supported Dr. Byrd's.

In the experiments, the researchers did not know until the study was completed which patients were being prayed for. But experts say the two studies suffer from a similar weakness: the authors measured so many variables that some were likely to come up positive by chance. In effect, statisticians say, this method is like asking the same question over and over until you get the answer you want.

"It's a weak measure," said Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia who has been critical of prayer research. "You're collecting 30 or 40 variables but can't even specify up front which ones" will be affected.

Dr. Harris corrected for this problem, experts say, but he then found significant differences between prayer and no-prayer groups only by using a formula that he and his colleagues had devised, and that no one else had ever validated. A swarm of letters to the journal challenged Dr. Harris's methods. One correspondent, a Dutch doctor, jokingly claimed that he could account for the results because he was clairvoyant. "I have subsequently used my telepathic powers to influence the course of the experimental group," he wrote.

Still, some religious leaders and practitioners of alternative medicine argue that because prayer is so common a response to illness, researchers have a responsibility to investigate it.

"We need to look at this with what I call open-minded skepticism," said Dr. Marilyn Schlitz, the lead investigator of the federally financed wound healing study and the director of research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, an alternative medicine research center near San Francisco.

Questions About Data

It was a former associate of Dr. Schlitz's, Dr. Elisabeth Targ, who first helped draw federal money into research on so-called distant healing. The daughter of Russell Targ, a physicist who studied extrasensory perception for government intelligence agencies in the 1970's, Dr. Targ made headlines with a 1998 study suggesting that prayers from assorted religious healers and shamans could protect AIDS patients from some complications related to the disease.

The findings, and Dr. Targ's reputation, helped win her two grants from the complementary and alternative medicine center at the National Institutes of Health - one for a larger study of distant healing among AIDS patients, another to test the effect of prayers by outside healers on the longevity of people with deadly brain tumors.

Both trials are continuing at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, which has a complementary medicine wing, but Dr. Targ is no longer running them. She herself died of brain cancer in 2002.

Shortly after Dr. Targ's death, her methods came under attack. An article in Wired magazine charged that she and her co-authors had massaged their data on AIDS to make the effects of prayer look better than they were.

Officials at California Pacific conducted an investigation of the study and concluded that the data had not been manipulated. Dr. John Astin, who is running the second AIDS study, said the biggest weakness of Dr. Targ's first trial was that it was too small to be conclusive.

But in a letter defending the study, the hospital's director of research also acknowledged that he could not tell for sure from the original medical records which patients had been prayed for and which had not been.

"Each subject's name, age and date of birth were blinded with what appears to be a black crayon," he wrote.

The quality of original data is also at the center of the controversy over the 2001 Columbia fertility study, which was reported by many newspapers including The New York Times. Dr. Kwang Cha, a Korean fertility specialist visiting the university, was the study's lead author. Daniel Wirth, a lawyer from California who had conducted research on alternative healing, was his principal research associate. In the spring of 1999, the two met at a Starbucks on the Upper West Side to exchange data, according to Dr. Cha, who provided details of the meeting through a colleague.

Dr. Cha had the pregnancy results with him, and Mr. Wirth had a roster of the women he said had been prayed for. The two had never shared the information before, and Dr. Cha was surprised enough by the results that he took them to a former mentor, Dr. Rogerio Lobo of Columbia, to make sure the study was done correctly.

In a recent interview, Dr. Lobo said that the study had come to him as a "fait accompli" and that he had interrogated Dr. Cha to make sure his study methods were sound. He decided they were and helped write the study.

"We had these results, we didn't believe them, we couldn't explain them, but we decided to put them out there," Dr. Lobo said.

In May, Mr. Wirth pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with a $2 million business fraud in Pennsylvania. He is awaiting sentencing.

Dr. Lobo said he had met Mr. Wirth but knew little about him or about his contributions to the study. He acknowledged that the data could have been manipulated, but said he did not know how.

"I didn't actually conduct the study, so I can't know for sure," Dr. Lobo said.

Mr. Wirth's lawyer, William Arbuckle, said his client was not available for comment.

'This Is No Routine Paper'

One study that many people believe could either bolster prayer research or dampen interest in the topic has been completed, but has not yet been published. Dr. Herbert Benson, the cardiologist who founded the Mind/Body Medical Institute, began the trial in the late 1990's with $2.4 million from the John Templeton Foundation, which supports research into spirituality. The Mind/Body Institute, according to its Web site, is a "scientific and educational organization dedicated to the study of mind/body interactions."

The study included some 1,800 volunteers, heart bypass patients at six hospitals. They were monitored according to strict medical guidelines and randomly assigned to be prayed for or not. One doctor who has seen a final version of the study said it was the most rigorous trial on the subject to date.

Other experts say they wonder whether the study will be published at all, and what is holding it up.

"He's got nothing, or we would have seen it by now," Dr. Sloan of Columbia said, referring to Dr. Benson.

In an interview at his office, Dr. Benson acknowledged that at least two medical journals had turned down the study after asking for revisions. He said that the study was currently under review at another journal and that talking about the results could jeopardize publication.

"This is no routine paper," he said. "What you're looking at obviously is not a typical intervention, not at all. We are at the interface of science and religion here, and there are boundary issues that you would not have for almost any other paper."

Dr. Benson, who has studied the links between spirituality and medicine for many years, declined to answer when asked if he himself believed in the effects of intercessory prayer, saying only that he believed in God.

"We know that praying for oneself can influence health, so that's what led us to this topic," he said.

If researchers are struggling to prove that intercessory prayer has benefits for health, at least one study hints that it could be harmful.

In a 1997 experiment involving 40 alcoholics in rehab, psychologists at the University of New Mexico found that although intercessory prayers did not have any effect on drinking patterns, the men and women in the study who knew they were being prayed for actually did worse.

"It's not clear what that means," said Dr. William Miller, one of the study's authors.

Copyright bill dies in US Senate as others advance

WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - A bill that would make it easier to sue online file-trading networks like Kazaa appeared on Friday to have died a quiet death, but other copyright bills sought by the entertainment industry continued to advance.

The Senate Judiciary Committee declined late on Thursday to take up a bill that would hold liable anyone who "induces" others to reproduce copyrighted material, a move observers said all but assures it would not become law this year.

The bill, known as the Induce Act, is designed to target online file-trading networks, which courts have so far shielded from entertainment industry lawsuits on the grounds they do not commit copyright infringement but merely make it possible.

The bill drew opposition from public-interest groups and consumer-electronics makers who said makers of digital-media players like Apple Computer Inc.'s (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) iPod could be targeted as well.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch postponed work on the bill last week and directed both sides to the negotiating table, but talks had stalled by Wednesday.

"We have come a long way, but have not yet reached a successful resolution," said Mitch Bainwol, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Though the committee declined to take action against file-trading networks, it did approve a measure that would direct the U.S. government to devote more effort to chasing down individual file traders.

Peer-to-peer users who share more than 1,000 songs or other copyrighted works would face up to three years in prison under the bill. U.S. copyright investigators would be able to file civil suits, which require a lower standard of proof than criminal cases, echoing tactics already used by the recording industry.

Those who secretly videotape movies when they are shown in theaters or distribute movies before their release date would face up to 10 years in prison.

< Basically your entire life ruined for that one simple act. >

The bill also designates the oak as the national tree.

Many of these provisions have already passed both the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, but a staffer said they must be approved again to iron out differences.

Congress is scheduled to adjourn in the next few days but must come back after the November elections to finish up work on spending bills needed to keep the government running.

Vibrator shuts down Australian airport

BRISBANE, Australia, (AFP) - Hundreds of airline passengers suffered disruption to their travel plans when a major regional airport was shut down for an hour after a humming and vibrating adult sex toy was mistaken for a bomb.


The vibrator was discovered at 9:15 am (2315 GMT Sunday) by a security officer who checked out a suspicious package inside a rubbish bin at the terminal cafeteria of Mackay Airport in the northeastern state of Queensland, a police spokeswoman said.


The terminal was evacuated immediately while passengers who had just arrived from a flight, check-in staff, cafeteria employees and hire car personnel were all forced to leave.


Cafeteria manager Lynne Bryant said her staff had been cleaning tables when they noticed a strange humming noise coming from the rubbish bin.


"It was rather disconcerting when the rubbish bin started humming furiously," she said.


"We called security and next minute everybody was being evacuated while they checked it out."


The police spokeswoman said another two flights were expected to land at that stage and alternate arrangements were made for the passengers to collect their luggage away from the terminal.


She said the emergency situation was revoked just before 10:00 am when the package was identified as "an adult novelty device".


Bryant said at the time of the upheaval the airport had been quite busy with two main flights due in and out of the airport - wreaking havoc with people's schedules.


She said in retrospect the humming sounded exactly like a vibrator - but it was better to be safe then sorry.


"You can't afford to take chances," she added.

< You can continue to waste people's time and money, not to mention emotional well-being, on increasinly rediculous events with decreasing relevance though. >

ID Rule Exists, But Can't Be Seen

Government lawyers defending the identification requirement at the nation's airports from a lawsuit by privacy activist John Gilmore admitted in a new filing Wednesday that the requirement exists, but argued it cannot be challenged or seen in full because it is a law enforcement technique, not a law.

The lawsuit revolves around whether a rule exists that says passengers must show their ID to airline agents before boarding a plane. Gilmore is also trying to get the government to state exactly what the rule, if it exists, says. The government has refused to confirm that the requirement exists or show the exact wording. Justice Department lawyers offered in an earlier filing to show the rule to an appeals court judge in secret without Gilmore's lawyers present.

The appeals court denied that motion on Sept. 20.

Internet entrepreneur Gilmore first challenged the constitutionality of requiring airlines to ask passengers to show identification in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in July 2002, but the government refused to tell that court whether the rule existed.

Gilmore argued that the rule is vague, since no one knows what kind of identification is adequate and the penalties are unknown. He said he opposes Americans being subjected to a secret law. The rule impinges upon the right to travel and leaves people open to unreasonable searches, he added.

In Wednesday's filing, the government continued to stonewall about the existence of the identification-or-search requirement. The Transportation Security Administration published notice of the identification portion of the requirement in a little-noticed May 2004 Federal Register filing about maritime security. That notice, which expanded the reach of secrecy rules for information classified as "sensitive security information," carved out an exception to secrecy for cases when the government needs to publicize a rule to ensure "compliance."

"For instance, as part of its security rules, TSA requires airlines to ask passengers for identification at check-in," the filing read. "Although this requirement is part of a security procedure that is sensitive security information, TSA has released this information to the public in order to facilitate the secure and efficient processing of passengers when they arrive at an airport."

William Simpich, one of Gilmore's lawyers, questioned the timing and manner of the TSA's filing, calling it embarrassing.

"They are trying to hide what they are doing from the American people," Simpich said.

The government filed the notice just after Gilmore's original case was dismissed, and Simpich claimed the government hid the notice to avoid future legal challenges since such orders generally have to be challenged within 60 days.

Justice Department lawyers also argued that Gilmore cannot challenge the requirement because it is not a law, it is a law enforcement technique.

"The identification-or-search requirement is simply a technique used to detect possible violations of the law, such as the prohibition on carrying a weapon or explosive onto the plane," they wrote. "While passengers have a right to know the law (that they cannot bring weapons on board), they have no due process entitlement to advance notice of how the Government might attempt to discover whether the law is being broken."

Simpich dismissed that argument as absurd doublespeak.

"Drugs are against the law," Simpich said. "So blowing through your house to look for drugs is a law enforcement technique that you can't challenge, either."

Gilmore's lawyers have two weeks to file their reply to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which will then set a hearing date.

Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller declined to comment on the government's brief, calling it "carefully crafted".

< First they saddle you with "ignorance of the law is no excuse". Now you get the full treatment. it's not even Possible for you to know the law but you're still expected to follow it. Can there be any doubt that this country is completely fucked up? >

Disabilities Act doesn't cover Web, court says

Legal Internet
Web publishers are not required to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Acting largely on procedural grounds, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a lower court's decision from October 2002, which concluded that Web sites cannot be required to comply with the 1991 disabilities law. An advocacy group for the blind had sued Southwest Airlines, seeking a redesign of its Web site.

Still, the three-judge panel noted that a future case could provide a vehicle for exploring the question in greater depth. "In declining to evaluate the merits of this case, we are in no way unmindful that the legal questions raised are significant," wrote Judge Stanley Marcus.

If the case had turned out differently, the outcome could have had far-reaching effects by imposing broad new requirements on companies hoping to do business online in states in the 11th Circuit, which includes Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

The ADA says that any "place of public accommodation" must be accessible to people with disabilities, and the law lists 12 categories, including hotels, restaurants, shopping centers, universities and bowling alleys. It does not name the Internet.

This lawsuit was filed by advocacy group Access Now and a blind man named Robert Gumson. They admitted that it was possible for the blind to buy tickets on Southwest's site but argued that it was "extremely difficult." Gumson, who said he had a screen reader with a voice synthesizer on his computer, asked the judge to order Southwest to provide text that could serve as an alternative to the graphics on its site and to redesign the site's navigation bar to make it easier for him to understand.

Federated Identity Management: The Next Frontier of Identity & Access Management
RSA Security Since the time the lawsuit was filed, Southwest appears to have redesigned its Web site to be easier to navigate for the blind. CNET News.com was able to make reservations using the Lynx text-only browser without encountering any compatibility or navigation problems.

Courts have reached different conclusions about whether the ADA might apply to the Web. The 7th Circuit suggested in 1999 that the ADA may apply to a Web site or other facilities that exist only electronically. But the Access Now v. Southwest case was the first to address the question directly.

At a February 2000 hearing, a board member of the National Federation of the Blind asked Congress to expand the ADA. "I urge this subcommittee to affirm the importance of access to this new world we're entering and to differentiate between the real-world needs of blind people and the hypothetical and yet-unproved burden placed on small businesses being required to ensure access," board member Gary Wunder said.

Last month, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group released an updated working draft of its extensive guidelines for online publishers. They suggest, for instance, text tags on graphical elements and captions accompanying a video clip in an online news story.

Schwarzenegger bans smoking in prisons

SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who set up a tent outside his smoke-free state office to accommodate his taste for a good cigar, signed a bill Monday barring tobacco from state prisons.

The measure amends the state's penal code to bar tobacco products from prisons and youth correctional facilities. Violators are subject to a fine.

Supporters say the changes will help save the state money on health care and improve the health of 160,000 state inmates. Some parts of California's criminal justice system such as county jails have already banned smoking.

The state generated about $1 million in tobacco taxes and $370,000 in sales taxes by selling tobacco products to inmates last year.

Bill sponsor Tim Leslie, a Republican assemblyman, estimates that about half of California prisoners smoke, costing $280 million in related health care costs.

< Another decision made without reference to the consequences. Aside from needlessly taking away an extra freedom, there is money made by the sale of cigarettes, both for prisoners and prisons, cigarettes act as a form of currency inside which can potentially help civilize things, the rich end up with an advantage inside where they shouldn't, and people who are addicted will have an additional difficulty. This issue doesn't speak well or badly for the government but it does speak very badly of them that they failed to consider these and other implications to the decision. >

Controversial stamps get licked

Putting your stamp on the mail may be too much freedom for some Americans.

Just one month after launching its custom postage service, Stamps.com scaled back the program on Monday in an attempt to deter controversial images from being affixed to the nation's mail.

The Los Angeles-based company said it will continue to offer the PhotoStamps service, whereby consumers can pay to have images of their choice printed as valid U.S. postage. However, the firm says it will focus on its two best-selling categories, babies/children and pets/animals. Stamps.com has banned any submissions bearing the likeness of adults or teenagers, but said it will continue to accept images including landscapes, nature, wildlife, business logos and charity logos.

Stamps.com executives said the company was forced to narrow consumers' options for the service based on "the abusive actions" of individuals who "went to great lengths to use the product in inappropriate ways."

Stamps.com did not immediately return calls seeking comment on its decision.

Almost immediately after the company launched PhotoStamps, Internet pranksters began detailing their attempts to have postage with controversial or humorous subjects printed. One site, The Smoking Gun, successfully ordered stamps featuring images of controversial figures including Ted Kaczynski, Jimmy Hoffa and Slobodan Milosevic, as well as postage graced by similarly notorious inanimate objects, such as Monica Lewinsky's famed blue dress.

From the start, Stamps.com, which received permission from the U.S. Postal Service to offer the PhotoStamps service on a trial basis, reserved the right to refuse printing stamps it deemed inappropriate. The Smoking Gun admitted that some of its submissions were rejected, including pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald and mob informer Sammy "the Bull" Gravano.

The company said response to the PhotoStamps launch has been encouraging, with more than 1 million orders already received for custom postage. The market test of PhotoStamps is expected to continue through the end of this month.