Phoenix's Sky Harbor airport puts omniscient X-ray to use

We don't envision very many people enjoying the idea of having TSA employees seeing every curve their body has to offer, but unfortunately for those who fail the primary metal detector test at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, you could be in for such a treat. While airport shoe scanners have already garnered sufficient criticism for holding up the show rather than helping things out, the "backscatter" X-ray machine is officially being trialed in Arizona as a means of snuffing out hidden "explosives and other weapons" that can't be detected by other means. While the technology allows the viewer to see just about every follicle on your body (and any stray .500 Magnums adorning your person), there is still currently a workaround if you're not entirely comfortable with going full-frontal before boarding your flight. A TSA spokesperson proclaimed that the process is completely voluntary, as folks who get dinged by the metal detector can opt for a standard pat-down in order to clear things up. Interestingly, the officials operating the machine have reportedly "adjusted the equipment to make the image look something like a line drawing" rather than detailing all your 2,000 parts, but critics suggest that altering the image also hampers the chance of discovering contraband in the first place. Still, unless this causes some serious uproar in the near future, it looks like it's there to stay, and folks traveling through LAX and New York's Kennedy Airport will likely face a similar beast (if they so choose) before the year's end.

<Just how long will it be before it's mandatory everywhere and they up the resolution (don't worry, they can be trusted)?>

DHS Biometric Program in Trouble

A House Appropriations subcommittee and congressional investigators are renewing criticism of the US-VISIT program, a Department of Homeland Security initiative to collect and share biometric-fingerprint and facial data from all foreign visitors to the United States.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, released a report (.pdf) this month revealing that, even as development costs settle, US-VISIT's overall price tag is spiraling up "without any accompanying explanation of the reasons," the report said.

In an interview with Wired News, Randy Hite, the author of the GAO report, described US-VISIT as a plane flying aimlessly. "We're asking for a pilot to program in a destination," Hite said. "Instead, we have it on autopilot with no destination."

US-VISIT collects a digital photo and two digital fingerprints from incoming visitors to the United States, and checks each traveler against scores of government watchlists stored in a hodgepodge of backend databases. The program was launched in January 2004 in an effort to secure the border from terrorists.

The system is at hundreds of airports, seaports and land border crossing across the country, but it is largely a one-way process: missing from the program is a way to verify that a visitor has left the United States, except for a limited pilot program at 12 airports and two seaports where visitors are required to scan their fingerprints on their way out of the country.

In a hearing at the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security earlier this month, chairman Rep. David Price (D-North Carolina) expressed concern that the DHS still has no "meaningful exit capacity" for the US-VISIT program.

"The total resources provided to this program would exceed $2 billion over the five years since 9/11," Price said, counting $462 million in funding requested for 2008. "But we still have no way to know if people visiting the U.S. have left, even though we know that millions of undocumented aliens in this country are so-called 'overstays.' This ignorance is both a security gap and a key problem for immigration reform."

The DHS' Robery Mocny, acting director of US-VISIT, agreed that the inability to track exits is a major weakness of the system, but talked up plans to further improve entrance security. In 2008, the DHS plans to use $228 million to deploy "ten fingerprint capture" equipment at ports of entry, upgrade to automated biometric identification systems and increase compatibility with the Department of Justice's fingerprint system.

The GAO report focused on the growing costs of the program and its lack of oversight, and at the recent hearing lawmakers slammed DHS for not providing Congress with a clear strategy going forward.

Congress has been waiting since 2005 for the DHS to provide a strategic plan that defines US-VISIT's mission. Simpler spending plans have also been late: a 2006 expenditure plan was delivered almost 11 months after Congress appropriated $336.6 million for the program, and a FY2007 expenditure plan is four months overdue.

Congress has withheld $200 million of the $362.5 million appropriated for the program this year, pending receipt of the spending plan -- not the first time it has withheld funding for the program while waiting for the DHS to get its act together.

"I've had it," rumbled Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Kentucky), the ranking minority member on the subcommittee, at the hearing. "We've withheld funds and released them, dribbled them out long enough. Face up to it. Give us the plan. If you can't do the plan, scrap US-VISIT.... How can we do our job if you won't tell us where you're going?"

Rogers set a March 16 deadline for US-VISIT to supply the strategic plan and the spending plan for 2007.

Despite the congressional pummeling, Anna Hinken, a spokeswoman for US-VISIT, said Friday the program is proceeding apace, and dismissed the GAO report as outdated information from six months ago. "Everything is on track," Hinken said.

"We have biometric data for over 80 million foreign visitors," Hinken said. "We've already denied entry to almost 2,000 people based on the biometrics alone."

Columbia bike rider gets hit with SUV, ticket

(Columbia) February 22, 2007 - A Columbia bicycle rider got hit by an SUV - then he got slammed with a ticket.

Tannie Dandridge is limping, in pain, still not sure how he ended up getting dragged up Harden Street under an SUV, "I just, I thought I was dead. Everything turned red and black underneath the vehicle."

The morning of January fifth, Dandridge was riding his bicycle to work in Five Points. He says he was in the crosswalk on Slighs Avenue, when a Ford Explorer making a turn on a red light pulled out and ran over him. "I'm not sure if I was snagged at some point, but I was definitely rolled and I could feel things breaking and popping and moving in the wrong direction."

"It's just painful to think about."

Bleeding and still stunned by what had happened, Dandridge says he managed to get up, walk over to the driver and ask for a ride to the hospital. Columbia police showed up a short time later, and it was then Dandridge says they added insult to his injuries.

It came in the form of a ticket and a fine. He was fined $232.50 for failing to yield right of way, with the charge misspelled by the officer. "They said we're giving you a ticket, failure to yield right of way, $232. And I laughed. I went, 'You're kidding right?'"

A police report says the bike hit the SUV at 15 miles an hour, though damage to the vehicle was estimated at only $50.

Dandridge on the other hand, suffered far more. "My left arm was broken. They had to do surgery on it to put it back together. My left ear was nearly ripped off - scar here across my eye. My right shoulder is dislocated, the ACL joint."

Dandridge says he's run up huge medical bills and has no insurance. He hasn't worked since the accident and says he, his wife and daughters are close to getting evicted. And Dandridge says police charged him based solely on the SUV driver's version of events, "If they had asked me, I would have told them what happened."

A Columbia police spokeswoman says an officer did speak with Dandridge before he went in for X-rays. His attorney said if the light was indeed red, anyone in the crosswalk would have the right of way, whether riding a bike or on foot.

Dandridge was scheduled to appear in court Friday morning and could have paid his fine. Instead, he has asked for a jury trial.

<Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the cop did in fact get the full story and the man was at fault in not yielding the right-of-way to the SUV, all of which is debatable not only on grounds of simple truth but the moral applicability of such rules. But, let us assume this is the case. Has the man not paid enough for his crime? Will that never even be a legal consideration?>

Confiscated airline carry-on items become big sellers on eBay

HARRISBURG, United States (AFP) - What happens to those scissors, lighters and the occasional machete confiscated at US airports? Some land in an Ali Baba-style cave here, to be auctioned on eBay.

"We collect items from 12 different airports, including JFK and LaGuardia in New York, but also at Boston, Philadelphia and Syracuse," said Ed Myslewicz, spokesman for the State Agency for Surplus Property (SASP) at the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania airport.

Each month, two tonnes of merchandise is sorted, photographed and put up for sale on eBay.

"The program started in June 2004, and the idea was to generate new revenues for the state," he said.

And it works: Up to 98 percent of the stuff is sold, according to Myslewicz.

To one side of the warehouse, merchandise -- including baseball bats, golf clubs and even a catapult -- arrives in 200-liter (55-gallon) drums or other containers.

"Don't ask me why people want to take these kinds of items with them on a plane," said Mary Beth Enggren, marketing director for the SASP, standing amid boxes of pocket knives and scissors.

Items seemingly innocuous before September 11, 2001 but caught in the tightened security net following the attacks also clog the warehouse: large flashlights, snow globes filled with liquid, handcuffs, toy guns and pointy belt buckles.

Red bricks, a bottle of perfume shaped like a grenade, food processors, electric drills, horseshoes and a snow shovel are also among the banned booty.

"And we also have our hall of fame," Enggren said. On the wall hang a bow and a quiver of arrows, a wooden saber, an old wooden pistol, a realistic-looking plastic grenade, a 30-centimeter (12-inch) metal pipe wrench and a good-sized machete.

Mike Hooks, one of the employees who sorts the merchandise for sale, has his favorite: "What surprised me the most up till today was a semi-automatic pistol, 40 caliber."

"That we cannot sell on eBay," Enggren said.

Still, the operation has netted 360,000 dollars (274,000 euros) after eBay's commission, money that funds social programs in the northeastern US state of Pennsylvania.

Other states also take part in the program, according to Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the US Transportation Security Administration, which sets the rules on what may be brought aboard airplanes.

Kudwa said 13.7 million items were collected at US airports in 2006, including 11.6 million lighters.

The figures do not include liquids, gels and creams that have been confiscated since August, which go directly to the trash dump.

"Protect" the Children From Porn

By all means, let's Protect The Children. Because that's what it's all about, right? It doesn't matter whose life gets mowed down in the process, as long as we are clear that it's all in the name of keeping kids innocent.

Except we seem to be confusing innocence with ignorance.

Next Friday, substitute teacher Julie Amero of Norwich, Connecticut, will receive her sentence -- up to 40 years in prison, the press repeats with a mixture of horror and glee -- for exposing children to pornography in the classroom.

It could be worse. Had some charges not been dropped, she could have faced 10 felony charges instead of four.

The prosecution claims she deliberately visited porn sites from the class computer and allowed the 12- and 13-year-olds to view the content. She claims -- and evidence proves -- the school computer got hit with a pop-up frenzy she didn't know how to stop.

Tech-savvy lawyers are pointing out glaring technological and legal errors made by both sides of the case. Computer forensics researchers have been re-creating the incident, using a disk image of the classroom machine, to show how insidious pop-up porn can be. SecurityFocus columnist Mark Rasch published a 6,200-word analysis exposing the basic tech ignorance of just about everyone involved: the police detective who performed the forensic analysis, the state's attorney, the defense attorney, the jury, the school administrators, the school IT department and Julie herself.

Julie is taking the fall, but many other people failed before a porn storm burst into that classroom.

The IT department failed to keep content filters and anti-malware software up-to-date. The school failed to enforce a security policy, allowing substitute teachers to use regular teachers' network credentials to access the internet. The administration failed to ensure that all teachers, including substitutes, had the necessary skills and training to handle internet surprises -- and the savvy to respond quickly in a crisis.

<...the entire system failed to set reasonable standards for what's not important (censorship) and what is (free inquiry)>

And the community fails to Protect The Children in the example it's setting. What should have been a wake-up call for the district employment office -- and for IT -- has spiraled embarrassingly out of control.

Some students mentioned the incident to their parents, and some parents mentioned it to the administration, and the district told the parents that Julie wouldn't be teaching there anymore.

It should have ended there. Instead, a subset of parents threw a tantrum and demanded, in one detective's words, "aggressive police response."

As a result, Julie was arrested for the crime of deliberately exposing children to porn, even though nobody bothered to check the computer for malware first. Apparently, her mistakes in handling the situation could only have meant she deliberately brought porn into the classroom.

What message does this witch hunt send to students? That if you scream and huff and puff, you can get your way -- and a spot on national television -- even when you haven't made the most basic attempts to verify the assumptions on which you base your accusations?

That teachers are at the mercy of parents, even in small numbers? So if you don't like a teacher, you can use a volatile issue like internet porn to set off your parents and get that teacher fired, maybe even jailed?

No reasonable person wants to see pornography in a junior-high classroom. But no reasonable person believes that if a porn storm takes over the school browser, it has to be because the teacher deliberately called it there. At least give the teacher the benefit of the doubt and look for other, non-felonious explanations first.

Accidental porn is actually a very common occurrence, even among savvy web users -- I ran into some myself just the other day. According to the Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 34 percent of youths age 10 to 17 who use the internet have unintentionally encountered pictures of naked people or people having sex. See "Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later" (.pdf). In most cases the encounter is not distressing to the kids; they click away and move on.

Seventh grade is not too early to learn how to handle the internet responsibly.

<and they probably know more about sex than their teacher at that point anyway>

Had Julie been a more confident teacher, she could have turned this incident into an opportunity to talk about smart internet usage. Switch off or cover the monitor, sit on the desk and get the class talking about what just happened. Ask the students how they've handled such surprises in the past.

It's a language arts class -- learning how to have a civil, open discourse about current affairs is certainly on-topic. And then segue back to the lesson plan, without blowing the situation out of proportion.

Although given the ridiculously lynch-mob nature of the case, a class discussion might still have cost Julie her job.

We fail to Protect The Children when we react with fear and hate to the challenges inherent to interactive media, rather than accepting them and figuring out common-sense ways to deal.

We do students a disservice when we provide them with teachers who aren't equipped with the skills to incorporate computers and the internet into education. A teacher who doesn't know how to close a browser gone wild probably should not have internet access in the classroom.

We also seem to react with fear to almost everything that combines new technology and sex or sexual content. But I've been wondering if that's because fear truly is the majority response, or if it's because the most fearful are the ones making the most noise and thus making the headlines.

That IT and security experts all over the world are outraged at the case, and moved enough to work for free to prove the charges are unfounded, reassures me that we haven't all lost our minds just because there's porn on the internet.

Not long ago, we could pretend that teenagers had no access to adult material, and ignore any giggling coming from the boys' bathroom.

Now, the ritual of stealing dad's girlie magazines to share with friends has been replaced by an online barrage of every sexualizable act humans can fit on camera and then some. Where once a magazine -- a static collection of still photographs, generally related to a particular theme -- was passed around in secret like prized bounty, youths can now immerse in a jumbled, chaotic morass of sexual imagery without context or organization.

We can forbid them from looking all we want, but what will they do when confronted with adult material by accident if the adults can't even model a sane reaction?

A K-12 classroom is not an appropriate place for porn. And yet is it an excellent venue for developing critical-thinking skills and learning how to discuss a topic without getting caught up in a mob mentality.

Last year, another teacher lost a job because a handful of blue movies she had made at 22 surfaced on the internet and a student recognized her. Despite protests from parents who supported her and said she was a good example of how people can change their lives, she was suspended and her contract was not renewed because her past made her "too distracting" for the boys.

Never mind that at 16, everything is distracting for boys, and that she probably had the most focused attention of any of the science teachers.

If we truly want to Protect The Children, we will set aside the knee-jerk "OMG it's porn!" crusade and model a more rational approach for young people. We will teach them to think critically about everything they encounter online, not just porn.

And we will applaud on March 2 when Julie's sentence is a slap on the wrist, when her case is dismissed as a mistrial or overturned on appeal.

<All of which begs the question "Is seeing porn harmful to anyone?" to which the answer is "No">

Why Cops Do Dumb Things

Since 9/11, we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars defending ourselves from terrorist attacks. Stories about the ineffectiveness of many of these security measures are common, but less so are discussions of why they are so ineffective. In short: Much of our country's counterterrorism security spending is not designed to protect us from the terrorists, but instead to protect our public officials from criticism when another attack occurs.

Boston, Jan. 31: As part of a guerilla marketing campaign, a series of amateur-looking blinking signs depicting characters in Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a show on the Cartoon Network, were placed on bridges, near a medical center, underneath an interstate highway and in other crowded public places.

Police mistook these signs for bombs and shut down parts of the city, eventually spending more than $1 million sorting it out. Authorities blasted the stunt as a terrorist hoax, while others ridiculed the Boston authorities for overreacting. Almost no one looked beyond the finger pointing and jeering to discuss exactly why the Boston authorities overreacted so badly. They overreacted because the signs were weird.

If someone left a backpack full of explosives in a crowded movie theater, or detonated a truck bomb in the middle of a tunnel, no one would demand to know why the police hadn't noticed it beforehand. But if a weird device with blinking lights and wires turned out to be a bomb -- what every movie bomb looks like -- there would be inquiries and demands for resignations. It took the police two weeks to notice the Mooninite blinkies, but once they did, they overreacted because their jobs were at stake.

This is Cover Your Ass security, and unfortunately it's very common.

Airplane security seems to forever be looking backward. Pre-9/11, it was bombs, guns and knives. Then it was small blades and box cutters. Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane, and suddenly we all have to take off our shoes. And after last summer's liquid plot, we're stuck with a series of nonsensical bans on liquids and gels.

Once you think about this in terms of CYA, it starts to make sense. The Transportation Security Administration wants to be sure that if there's another airplane terrorist attack, it's not held responsible for letting it slip through. One year ago, no one could blame the TSA for not detecting liquids. But since everything seems obvious in hindsight, it's basic job preservation to defend against what the terrorists tried last time.

We saw this kind of CYA security when Boston and New York randomly checked bags on the subways after the London bombing, and when buildings started sprouting concrete barriers after the Oklahoma City bombing. We also see it in ineffective attempts to detect nuclear bombs; authorities employ CYA security against the media-driven threat so they can say "we tried."

At the same time, we're ignoring threat possibilities that don't make the news as much -- against chemical plants, for example. But if there were ever an attack, that would change quickly.

CYA also explains the TSA's inability to take anyone off the no-fly list, no matter how innocent. No one is willing to risk his career on removing someone from the no-fly list who might -- no matter how remote the possibility -- turn out to be the next terrorist mastermind.

Another form of CYA security is the overly specific countermeasures we see during big events like the Olympics and the Oscars, or in protecting small towns. In all those cases, those in charge of the specific security don't dare return the money with a message "use this for more effective general countermeasures." If they were wrong and something happened, they'd lose their jobs.

And finally, we're seeing CYA security on the national level, from our politicians. We might be better off as a nation funding intelligence gathering and Arabic translators, but it's a better re-election strategy to fund something visible but ineffective, like a national ID card or a wall between the United States and Mexico.

Securing our nation from threats that are weird, threats that either happened before or captured the media's imagination, and overly specific threats are all examples of CYA security. It happens not because the authorities involved -- the Boston police, the TSA and so on -- are not competent, or not doing their jobs. It happens because there isn't sufficient national oversight, planning and coordination.

People and organizations respond to incentives. We can't expect the Boston police, the TSA, the guy who runs security for the Oscars or local public officials to balance their own security needs against the security of the nation. They're all going to respond to the particular incentives imposed from above. What we need is a coherent antiterrorism policy at the national level: one based on real threat assessments instead of fearmongering, re-election strategies or pork-barrel politics.

Sadly, though, there might not be a solution. All the money is in fearmongering, re-election strategies and pork-barrel politics. And, like so many things, security follows the money.

Boy, 11, released from jail

After spending nearly 72 hours in an Ocala juvenile jail, the 11-year-old Lake County boy detained for his 'deadly' makeshift slingshot returned home to his parents Tuesday night.

Kevin Cottle said he didn't deliberately try to hit another student at Tavares Middle School with his home-made slingshot.

'I wasn't trying to hit him. It was an accident to shoot him,' he said soon after he was released from the Marion Regional Juvenile Detention Center Tuesday night. 'I just want to say I'm sorry.'

The sixth-grader at Tavares Middle was arrested Friday when he was accused of using a toy balloon slingshot to hit another student in the chest. He faces second-degree felony charges of shooting or throwing a deadly missile.

A Lake County judge ordered Kevin released from the juvenile detention center on Tuesday afternoon and placed him in home confinement in Tavares until his case is resolved. Kevin isn't allowed around the student he is accused of harming.

That boy suffered a welt when a plastic pellet from Kevin's slingshot struck him, according to a Lake County Sheriff's Office report. Kevin fashioned the slingshot from a stretchy balloon, a plastic milk jug top and rubber bands, officials said.

But Kevin's mother, Pam Cottle, said authorities overreacted, charging her son with a felony and locking him up in an Ocala facility with violent children.

'We just want the correct punishment,' she said. 'We'll accept community service, go to teen court, whatever the case may be -- but we do want the charges changed.'

Kevin Cottle said he shot the pellet at a locker and the projectile ricocheted and hit the other student.

Samuel Oliver, the Tavares attorney representing Kevin, said Tuesday he expected authorities to downgrade allegations lodged against the boy.

Prosecutors are 'apparently skeptical of whether or not this merited the charge that was levied by the Sheriff's Office,' he said.

Assistant State Attorney Walter Forgie said he couldn't comment on the case.

Oliver also criticized deputies for consulting with the State Attorney's Office when arresting the boy.

Lake sheriff's spokeswoman Sgt. Christie Mysinger said the school resources deputy 'didn't make this decision alone.'

The deputy spoke with her supervisor who also consulted prosecutors to discuss the charging, Mysinger said.

Forgie added, 'Prosecutors are made available to law enforcement not to advise on when an arrest should be made, which is at the discretion of law enforcement, but to answer legal questions they might have.'

Mysinger said too much focus has been placed on the wording of the charge. The statute Kevin Cottle was charged under covers severe injury or great bodily harm.

'I didn't think anybody thought he was going to kill the kid with it,' she said.

She also said it's common for deputies to consult with prosecutors in certain circumstances.

'When you have a case that borders on several different statutes and you're trying to decide which one is the best fit -- it's not uncommon,' she said.

Kevin Cottle's problems go beyond the criminal charge.

Tavares Middle School Principal Mike Herring said school administrators have started the 'expulsion process.' But he wouldn't comment on the disciplinary action they'll take. Lake schools have a zero-tolerance policy for weapons, Herring said.

School officials kept students in class Friday morning after several students told administrators they had seen Kevin with the slingshot.

When asked about his release from jail, Kevin said he was hungry.

Despite the seriousness of the allegations, Pam Cottle said she'll worry about disciplining Kevin after he's back home. First, she'll feed him. 'It's not like I'm gong to reward him,' she said. 'But the kid is starving to death in there. . . . He is in trouble with his father and me. But that will wait until the day after he gets home.'

AZ legislator's "obscene mudflap" ban defeated

A recent amendment to legislation changing the height requirement for rear splash guards on trucks in Arizona that would have resulted in the ban of mudflap images deemed obscene or hateful has been defeated in the state legislature. Introduced by Tempe Democrat Ed Ableser, the amendment's restrictions would have encompassed the cheeky chrome naked-lady-silhouette mudflaps we've all seen countless times before. One of the amendment's other supporters, Theresa Ulmer (D - Yuma), said that the ban would help promote family values and would also dovetail with efforts to curb pornography and sexual predators.

It's one thing to work the well-intentioned family values angle. You lose us, however, when you mention chrome girlie mudflaps in the same breath as porn and sexual predators. They are kitschy, not criminal. What's next? A ban on Yosemite Sam "BACK OFF" mudflaps because the guns he's holding condone violence? This is the problem you run into when going down this road -- the scope of what's deemed harmful or obscene creeps wider and wider.

Crime fighting system converts lip motions into spoken word

If you think text-to-speech or video-texting is hot stuff, researchers at the University of East Anglia have something that just might cool your excitement. Kicking off a three-year project, the team is setting out to "collect data for lip-reading and use it to create machines that automatically convert videos of lip-motions into text." By building a vast database of lip movements that can be read and spat out in verbally, the gurus hope to fight crime by being able to pick out potentially threatening phrases that security cameras pick up. The university is teaming up with the Centre for Vision, Speech, and Signal Processing at Surrey University in order to get the technology wrapped into cameras just about everywhere, from mobile phones to vehicle dash boards. Admittedly, we're not exactly keen on yet another Big Brother agenda gaining traction, but if this stuff stays in the right hands, you loud-mouthed criminals better start crafting your own unique language over the next few years.

Dutch prisoners could get remote knee locks

The Dutch Ministry of Justice recently announced that special knee locks to prevent prisoner escapes could be tested later this year if parliament gives its approval. In the Netherlands, a "furlough" system is used to gradually reintroduce prisoners that have committed serious offenses back to society: instead of letting prisoners out when their term ends, they are accompanied by a guard to visit relatives, and gradually given more freedom until it is deemed that they are ready for unsupervised parole. Unfortunately, there have been several cases where prisoners on leave committed serious offenses like rape and murder by slipping away from their guards. The purpose of this test is to see whether a knee locking system -- which prevents a prisoner from moving if they move a certain distance away from their guard -- can prevent these kind of unfortunate cases. As draconian as this system may sound, it's probably the most humane of all the solutions that were looked at: prisoners could potentially have had to wear gadgets that gave them electric shocks or injected drugs to prevent them from escaping. The best part about this whole case is what justice ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen compared the system to: illegally parked cars. Probably not the best analogy he could have used -- badly parked car = potentially inconvenient. Escaped prisoner = potentially capable of murder -- but we'll give Wim the benefit of the doubt this time, and mark it up as lost in translation.

Cyberbullying and schools: where does a principal's authority end?

The state of Washington is considering a cyberbullying bill aimed at taking some of the sting out of this electronic scourge. They aren't the first state to consider such legislation—we mentioned several other states looking into similar measures a few days back—but they are one of the most recent, and the Washington bill highlights the difficulties that legislators face as they try to restrict certain kinds of speech.

Cyberbullying has picked up steam in recent years, owing to the rise of sites like MySpace that make it simple to construct anonymous web pages that can be used to harrass others. But the definition of cyberbullying is actually broad enough to encompass all forms of electronic harassment, including text messaging, instant messaging, and e-mail.

According to national law enforcement organization Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, one out of every three teenagers are victims of cyberbullying. Fight Crime's cyberbullying initiative is spearheaded by the Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, and he introduced a 15-year old student at last year's press conference to explain that this is about more than hearing a few unkind words. Kylie Kenney explained how some kids at her school had created a web site that called for her death, then harassed her for several years with phone calls and e-mails, even after she transferred schools.

This is obviously an extreme example of what can happen, but it's a reminder of why legislation is even possible. Although most speech is protected by the First Amendment, knee-jerk "You can't regulate free speech!" reactions aren't helpful in this case, as free speech protections are a complex field of law. Threats, for instance, aren't protected. The First Amendment Center, which looked into the issue, says that "true threats are not protected by the First Amendment. Students should be aware that threatening comments in general—on the Internet or not—could subject them not only to school discipline but also to criminal punishment."

On the other hand, most student speech is protected, even if insulting or hurtful. Courts have gradually increased the protection for student speech over the last 100 years, moving far away from the 1908 decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that allowed a school to suspend two students who made fun of their principal in a poem.

The issue is further complicated by questions about whether cyberullying takes place on school property or not. School officials do not generally have control over what students do outside of school, but, as the First Amendment Center reports, even this issue is complicated. Students who threaten or harass other students using school equipment or during school time can most likely be sanctioned, but even students who do such things from home face the possibility of school discipline under the "substantial disruption of the educational environment" ruling from the Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District case from 1969.

The bottom line is that this is a tough issue to handle, because legal guidance is scarce. The Supreme Court has not yet considered a case of student Internet speech, even though Internet speech has created numerous questions about anonymity, liability, and slander that need to be answered.

The Washington bill

So how is Washington handling the issue? State senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles has introduced SB.5288, a bill that would require school districts to create cyberbullying prevention policies. Her legislation does not lay down many rules, instead directing each school district to amend its current anti-bullying policy (all Washington school districts have had such a policy in place since 2002). Cyberbullying would not become a crime, but simply another issue for local school districts to handle.

During debate on the bill before the Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee, some speakers expressed unease about how school districts might attempt to regulate "off-campus" speech, and the bill was clarified to say that it would only apply to activities that occur on school grounds during the school day.

Such a bill, if passed and implemented, seems likely to spark a backlash at some point in the future when it is applied by an overzealous principal. Disappointment, rejection, and even cruelty are a part of life, and school administrators will need to tread carefully when deciding what speech to allow and what to censure. As one 16-year old student said to a Washington TV station, "They text message mean things saying I hate you, don't talk to me. Really brutal things." Cyberbullying, or just an unfortunate part of life?

Judge sentences girl to abort baby

An Italian judge ordered a 13 year old girl from Torino to abort her unborn child because her parents were opposed to the baby.

Italian legislation states that a minor is not allowed to decide whether to abort or not and the 'decision' falls entirely on the guardians or parents.

The shocking story was brought into light by Italian newspaper La Stampa in which the paper reports that the girl didn't want to abort the baby but had to after the ruling. She then had to receive treatment after telling her parents she was going to attempt a suicide.

The girl got pregnant by her 15 year old boyfriend but despite this she still wanted to keep the baby.

However her parents were very angry and demanded an abortion. After the abortion the girl went into a frenzy and threatened she was going to kill herself.

"The unborn baby is still a life and I defend life whatever the situation." Severino Poletto, Archbishop of Torino told the paper.

"Society must take of this child. I certainly oppose abortions but this case allows us to reflect on the situation. We have to take a step back and ask ourselves how this could have happened to a 13 year old girl." he added.

Is America too damn religious?

With One Word, Children’s Book Sets Off Uproar

Susan Patron, the author of the book and a librarian, said the controversial word was just part of the character’s learning about body parts.

Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.

On electronic mailing lists like Librarian.net, dozens of literary blogs and pages on the social-networking site LiveJournal, teachers, authors and school librarians took sides over the book. Librarians from all over the country, including Missoula, Mont.; upstate New York; Central Pennsylvania; and Portland, Ore., weighed in, questioning the role of the librarian when selecting — or censoring, some argued — literature for children.

“This book included what I call a Howard Stern-type shock treatment just to see how far they could push the envelope, but they didn’t have the children in mind,” Dana Nilsson, a teacher and librarian in Durango, Colo., wrote on LM_Net, a mailing list that reaches more than 16,000 school librarians. “How very sad.”

The book has already been banned from school libraries in a handful of states in the South, the West and the Northeast, and librarians in other schools have indicated in the online debate that they may well follow suit. Indeed, the topic has dominated the discussion among librarians since the book was shipped to schools.

Pat Scales, a former chairwoman of the Newbery Award committee, said that declining to stock the book in libraries was nothing short of censorship.

“The people who are reacting to that word are not reading the book as a whole,” she said. “That’s what censors do — they pick out words and don’t look at the total merit of the book.”

If it were any other novel, it probably would have gone unnoticed, unordered and unread. But in the world of children’s books, winning a Newbery is the rough equivalent of being selected as an Oprah’s Book Club title. Libraries and bookstores routinely order two or more copies of each year’s winners, with the books read aloud to children and taught in classrooms.

“The Higher Power of Lucky” was first published in November by Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, accompanied by a modest print run of 10,000. After the announcement of the Newbery on Jan. 22, the publisher quickly ordered another 100,000 copies, which arrived in bookstores, schools and libraries around Feb. 5.

Reached at her home in Los Angeles, Ms. Patron said she was stunned by the objections. The story of the rattlesnake bite, she said, was based on a true incident involving a friend’s dog.

And one of the themes of the book is that Lucky is preparing herself to be a grown-up, Ms. Patron said. Learning about language and body parts, then, is very important to her.

“The word is just so delicious,” Ms. Patron said. “The sound of the word to Lucky is so evocative. It’s one of those words that’s so interesting because of the sound of the word.”

Ms. Patron, who is a public librarian in Los Angeles, said the book was written for children 9 to 12 years old. But some librarians countered that since the heroine of “The Higher Power of Lucky” is 10, children older than that would not be interested in reading it.

“I think it’s a good case of an author not realizing her audience,” said Frederick Muller, a librarian at Halsted Middle School in Newton, N.J. “If I were a third- or fourth-grade teacher, I wouldn’t want to have to explain that.”

Authors of children’s books sometimes sneak in a single touchy word or paragraph, leaving librarians to choose whether to ban an entire book over one offending phrase.

In the case of “Lucky,” some of them take no chances. Wendy Stoll, a librarian at Smyrna Elementary in Louisville, Ky., wrote on the LM_Net mailing list that she would not stock the book. Andrea Koch, the librarian at French Road Elementary School in Brighton, N.Y., said she anticipated angry calls from parents if she ordered it. “I don’t think our teachers, or myself, want to do that vocabulary lesson,” she said in an interview. One librarian who responded to Ms. Nilsson’s posting on LM_Net said only: “Sad to say, I didn’t order it for either of my schools, based on ‘the word.’ ”

Booksellers, too, are watchful for racy content in books they endorse to customers. Carol Chittenden, the owner of Eight Cousins, a bookstore in Falmouth, Mass., said she once horrified a customer with “The Adventures of Blue Avenger” by Norma Howe, a novel aimed at junior high school students. “I remember one time showing the book to a grandmother and enthusing about it,” she said. “There’s a chapter in there that’s very funny and the word ‘condom’ comes up. And of course, she opens the book right to the page that said ‘condom.’ ”

It is not the first time school librarians have squirmed at a book’s content, of course. Some school officials have tried to ban Harry Potter books from schools, saying that they implicitly endorse witchcraft and Satanism. Young adult books by Judy Blume, though decades old, are routinely kept out of school libraries.

Ms. Nilsson, reached at Sunnyside Elementary School in Durango, Colo., said she had heard from dozens of librarians who agreed with her stance. “I don’t want to start an issue about censorship,” she said. “But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature.”

“At least not for children,” she added.

Driver’s License Emerges as Crime-Fighting Tool, but Privacy Advocates Worry

BOSTON, Feb. 12 — On the second floor of a state office building here, upstairs from a food court, three facial-recognition specialists are revolutionizing American law enforcement. They work for the Massachusetts motor vehicles department.

Last year they tried an experiment, for sport. Using computerized biometric technology, they ran a mug shot from the Web site of “America’s Most Wanted,” the Fox Network television show, against the state’s database of nine million digital driver’s license photographs.

The computer found a match. A man who looked very much like Robert Howell, the fugitive in the mug shot, had a Massachusetts driver’s license under another name. Mr. Howell was wanted in Massachusetts on rape charges.

The analysts passed that tip along to the police, who tracked him down to New York City, where he was receiving welfare benefits under the alias on the driver’s license. Mr. Howell was arrested in October.

At least six other states have or are working on similar enormous databases of driver’s license photographs. Coupled with increasingly accurate facial-recognition technology, the databases may become a radical innovation in law enforcement.

Other biometric databases are more useful for now. But DNA and fingerprint information, for instance, are not routinely collected from the general public. Most adults, on the other hand, have a driver’s license with a picture on it, meaning that the relevant databases for facial-recognition analysis already exist. And while the current technology requires good-quality photographs, the day may not be far off when images from ordinary surveillance cameras will routinely help solve crimes.

Critics say the databases may therefore also represent a profound threat to privacy.

“What is the D.M.V.?” asked Lee Tien, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a privacy advocate. “Does it license motor vehicles and drivers? Or is it really an identification arm of law enforcement?”

Anne L. Collins, the Massachusetts registrar of motor vehicles, said that people seeking a driver’s license at least implicitly consent to allowing their images to be used for other purposes.

“One of the things a driver’s license has become,” Ms. Collins said, “is evidence that you are who you say you are.”

The databases are primarily intended to prevent people from obtaining multiple licenses under different names. That can help prevent identity theft and stop people who try to get a second license after their first has been suspended.

“The states are finding hundreds of cases of fraud each year in each state,” said J. Scott Carr, executive vice president of the Digimarc Corporation, which says it has sold biometric technology to motor vehicle departments in seven states and has a role in the production of more than two-thirds of all driver’s licenses in the United States.

But the databases can also be used for law enforcement purposes beyond detecting fraud.

A page concerning Mr. Howell, printed out from the “America’s Most Wanted” Web site, is taped to the wall of the investigators’ office here. It is a kind of trophy.

“It’s always exciting when you get a hit and you’re getting someone really bad off the streets,” said Maria Conlon, a facial-recognition specialist at the Registry of Motor Vehicles. “That’s when everyone’s morale goes up.”

Most of the work is less glamorous. The analysts’ main job is to check roughly 5,000 new driver’s license photographs every day against the database. A computer algorithm that takes into account about 8,000 facial data points does a rough cut, and analysts examine potential matches, rejecting the vast majority.

That computers alone cannot do the job does not surprise Richard M. Smith, an expert in digital security. “It’s probably one of the more inaccurate biometrics,” Mr. Smith said, referring to facial-recognition technologies.

After computers narrow the field of potential matches, Ms. Conlon and her colleagues get to work.

“We don’t look at hair,” Ms. Conlon said. “We do look at lips, noses, ears.”

Scars and tattoos can be useful, but what seem to be birthmarks are often passing blemishes. Some people make it easy by wearing the same clothes, though they are seeking licenses under different names. They have, Ms. Conlon said, “a registry outfit.”

The program, in place since April, has yielded more than 1,000 apparent fraud cases referred to the state police. Other potential matches identified by the computers and confirmed by analysts have turned out to be clerical errors where, for instance, the wrong information was attached to a person’s photograph. In the six months ending in January, analysts found 157 twins among the images flagged as potential matches.

The database’s second function, as a resource for law enforcement agencies, is growing in popularity. Police chiefs from around the state e-mail digital photographs for comparison with the database, sometimes several times a day.

And other uses are not hard to imagine. Coroners have on three occasions sent over photographs of dead people they could not identify. The analysts struck out, perhaps because of the quality of the images.

“To make it work at all,” Mr. Smith said, “you have to have good control of camera angle and lighting.” Passport and driver’s license photographs, along with mug shots, are ideal.

Other sorts of images are not useful — yet. “A video surveillance camera is probably not going to give it to you,” Mr. Smith said.

In time, though, the combination of facial recognition and other information — from financial records, mobile phones, automobile positioning devices and other sources — may do away with the ability to move anonymously through the world, Mr. Tien, the privacy advocate, said.

“The real question with biometrics,” he said, “is that they are part of a cluster of technologies that will allow for location tracking in both public and private places.”

The case against Mr. Howell fizzled last week. He had been charged with invading a home at gunpoint in Dorchester in August 2002 and holding three people captive for hours, repeatedly raping one of them. He fled after being released on bail, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, leading to his inclusion on the television show’s most-wanted list.

But after Mr. Howell was caught through his license photo, the prosecutors re-examined their case. In the intervening years, the victims disappeared, and prosecutors think they may have left the country. Without their testimony, prosecutors concluded, there was no way to take the case to trial. Prosecutors formally abandoned the case on Friday, and they let Mr. Howell go.

“He is in the wind right now,” Mr. Wark said.

Anti-Christ: A Satirical End of Days.

Anti-Christ: A Satirical End of Days.

Imagine God is a vegetable in a wheelchair, Jesus is the fascist CEO of a corporate Church, and a Cold War is ongoing between Heaven and Hell while America is led by a complete and utter moron whose every decision takes the world closer and closer to the brink of World War III. This is the setting for one of the most controversial novels of modern times.

For the past two millennia, there has been a Cold War between Heaven and Hell. In that time, Earth has served as the neutral zone between the two powers with humanity the pawns in a conflict whose origins remain shrouded in legend. Tonight, that all changes, as one mortal disturbs that fragile balance.

Matthew Ford is a common man, struggling through college while attempting to discover his destiny. Antisocial, passive aggressive, and immature beyond belief, this flawed person sets into motion that final prophecy that leads to the End of Days.

He travels to Heaven, is tempted by Hell, gets into a feud with Jesus, meets the moronic leader of the free world, creates a self-help movement that tears the world apart, and leads the final zombie charge on Mount Megiddo in that last conflict of all time, Armageddon.

Documents show new secretive US prison program isolating Muslim, Middle Eastern prisoners

Program in apparent violation of federal law

The US Department of Justice has implemented a secretive new prison program segregating "high-security-risk" Muslim and Middle Eastern prisoners and tightly restricting their communications with the outside world in apparent violation of federal law, according to documents obtained by RAW STORY.

Quietly implemented in December, the special "Communications Management Unit" (CMU) at a federal penitentiary in Indiana targeting Muslim and Middle-Eastern inmates was not implemented through the process required by federal law, which stipulates the public be notified of any new changes to prison programs and be given the opportunity to voice objections. Instead, the program appears to have been ordered and implemented by a senior official at the Department of Justice.

In April of last year, the US Federal Bureau of Prisons -- part of the Department of Justice -- proposed a set of strict new regulations and, as required, there was a period of public comment. Human rights and civil liberties groups voiced strong concerns about the constitutionality of the proposed program.

The program originally proposed was said to be applicable only to terrorists and terrorist-related criminals. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), however, along with a coalition of other civil liberties groups, objected to the language of the regulation as too broad, and potentially applicable to non-terrorists and even to those not convicted of a crime but merely being held as "witnesses, detainees, or otherwise."

After pushback from civil rights groups, the program appeared to have been dropped by the Prisons Bureau, with coalition groups believing that they had made their case regarding Constitutional rights. Yet documents obtained by RAW STORY show that a similar program, the CMU, was surreptitiously implemented in December 2006.

Executive Director Howard Kieffer of Federal Defense Associates, a legal group based in California that assists inmates and lawyers of inmates on post-conviction defense matters, says the order for the program must have been issued by one of the offices which oversee the US Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Only three government offices have the authority to issue such changes in federal prison operations, and they all fall within the senior management of the Justice Department: the office of Harley Lappin, the Director of Prisons Bureau, the Office of Legal Counsel, or directly from the office of the US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales.

The Public Affairs offices of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General referred all requests for comment to the Prisons Bureau. As of press time, Felice Ponce, an officer in the Prisons Bureau Office of Information, was unable to answer requests to confirm the existence of the program, provide details about it, or comment on it at all.

Those who had such information at the Bureau were all "out of pocket," Ponce said.

Documents obtained by RAW STORY show that the CMU program, instituted Dec. 11, 2006 -- shortly after the mid-term elections in which Democrats won both chambers of Congress -- is being implemented at Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana.

Under the CMU program, telephone communications must be conducted using monitored phone lines, be live-monitored by staff, are subject to recording, and must be in English only. All letters must be reviewed by staff prior to delivery or sending. Visits must be non-contact only, live-monitored, and subject to recording in English.

Keiffer asserts that the program, which purports to house high-risk inmates for the purpose of better monitoring their communications, "is not related to inmate security" at all.

The program "doesn't affect the highest security inmates who are still being kept in other high security prisons, where some may be allowed greater freedom in communications than the CMU inmates," he says. "It affects a class of inmates who would not garner as much sympathy as others and who have diminished support in the US."

"It is just like the detentions after 9/11," he adds. "It's profiling."

Calls placed to the FBI were not returned.

The CMU is in apparent violation of the Federal Administrative Procedures Act, which explicitly requires that all prison regulations be promulgated under that law. Courts have overturned programs that have violated this law "half a dozen times over the past ten years," Keiffer says.

One of the documents obtained by RAW STORY, titled "Institution Supplement," was issued by the Terre Haute facility and given to prisoners transferred into this new program. The document states that "all contact" between the inmates and "persons in the community" may only occur "according to national policy, with necessary adjustments indicated herein," indicating that the new program's contact rules are the same as normal prison rules except where "adjusted" in the Supplement.

Attorney Peter Goldberger, a Philadelphia-area specialist in criminal appeals and former law professor who has 30 years experience dealing with federal prisons and inmates, told RAW STORY that the Terre Haute Institution Supplement is officially a supplement to the Prison Bureau's national Program Statement on Inmate Discipline and Special Housing Units, published in the Code of Federal Regulations and last amended in 2003.

Keiffer explains that an Institution Supplement cannot exist by itself without specific authorization. The CMU Institution Supplement states that it is "according to national policy." But Keiffer notes that the national Program Statement does not in fact authorize the CMU program. In order for the program to be properly authorized, it would have to address the particular program parameters, locations, specify the inmates to whom it applied, and would have to take into account the specific and unique features of that program. The already existing national Program Statement does not address the CMU program and thus does not authorize it.

Goldberger notes that "what's different" about the program, "is limitation of contact with friends, family and outsiders -- instead of 300 minutes of telephone time per month, it's one 15 minute call per week, which can be reduced in the Warden's discretion to a mere three minutes once a month."

"Instead of all-day visiting every week or every other week, it's only two hours at a time, twice a month, with no physical contact, presumably sitting on opposite sides of a plexiglas window," Goldberger continued.

"And all letters, except to lawyers, courts, and Congress, will be read and copied, with weeks of delay, instead of cursorily inspected and sent right on," he adds. "It's a totally new and different program."

Director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, D.C. Kate Martin told RAW STORY that restrictions of inmate communications must be narrowly tailored to serve a specific identifiable need of the government. Martin said that there was a clear rationale for restricting communications of those who had previously handled classified information -- for example a former CIA agent who had passed secrets to a foreign government. But with individuals who never possessed classified information, she said, that rationale doesn't exist.

The government must show that the inmates had been plotting terrorist crimes from their cells or some similar scenario, Martin said. Without that, the restriction of communication of a group of prisoners raises a suspicion that it is actually an effort by the government to deny information to the press and public about what it is doing.

Who's in the program?

The federal penitentiary where the most dangerous criminals are held, including the Unabomber and the Millennium Bomber, is the maximum security prison known as ADMax at Florence, Colorado. The CMU is not being implemented there, however; instead it is being implemented in Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana.

The CMU is said to be targeting terrorists or suspected terrorists, but many being held are not considered high risk or even convicted of violent crimes.

According to a letter obtained by RAW STORY, sent by CMU inmate Dr. Rafil Dhafir to one of his supporters, the current unit has at present only 16 prisoners, but is expected to have 60-70 more added soon. Dhafir writes that the CMU "is still not fully understood. The staff here is struggling to make sense of the whole situation," and says that the prisoners are "so far treated with great respect and good accommodation" but "with the new system we will have absolutely no privacy." The letter has been posted on a support site for Dhafir.

Dr. Dhafir was convicted for violating US sanctions against Iraq, because he had sent humanitarian aid to the country during the restricted period. Dhafir was not charged with any terrorism related activities or a violent offense.

Also in CMU detention are also five of the "Lackawanna Six," a group of six American citizens who traveled to Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001 and were indicted for giving material support to Al Qaeda. Yahya Goba, one of the group's members -- who turns up as a government witness in numerous cases -- is not in the system, although he was sentenced to ten years along with the other Lackawanna defendants.

Unconstitutional?

Howard Keiffer believes that the program not only violates federal law but the Constitution as well, saying it abridges the prisoners' right to freedom of expression and association. These inmates are "not able to communicate like other inmates," he said.

James Landrith, Jr., who heads "The Multiracial Activist," an on-line journal that covers social and civil liberties issues relating to multi-racialism, says the new program sets a "very, very bad precedent."

Landrith says it's "interesting that this administration is trying to push these things through covertly" -- things he views as unconstitutional restrictions -- "while you have a sitting Vice President who could be charged in the short-term future with having been involved in outing a CIA agent."

He added that the program "makes it very very hard for someone to mount a real defense or appeal when they can't talk to anyone on the outside."

Some say the program smacks of racial or religious profiling.

Paul Wright, the editor of Prison Legal News, told RAW STORY that "segregating prisoners based on their race, national origin or language directly contradicts the recent US supreme court ruling in Johnson v. California which held that the racial segregation of prisoners was illegal."

Johnson v. California, a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision, involved the segregation of African-American inmates. While the Court noted in its decision that it did not decide whether the segregation violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution, it nonetheless "explicitly reaffirm[ed] that the 'necessities of prison security and discipline,' are a compelling government interest justifying only those uses of race that are narrowly tailored to address those necessities."

Race, national or ethnic origin, one's status as an alien, or any innate or immutable characteristic that a person has no power to change must be scrutinized by courts under the same standard: only a compelling government interest and a narrowly tailored program is held to be constitutional.

Religious discrimination is prohibited by Prison Bureau regulations. The regulation states that Bureau "staff shall not discriminate against inmates on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or political belief. This includes the making of administrative decisions and providing access to work, housing and programs."

Director of the Human and Civil Rights Division of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation Ibrahim Ramey says his group is "deeply concerned about the violation of civil rights of incarcerated Muslims" who are targeted by the program.

"The removal and concentration of Muslims" Ramey says, is a "violation of the concept of innocent until proven guilty."

Though the inmates have been convicted, Ramey believes the CMU appears to be "a precursor to a program of segregation of people by religion in federal detention facilities."

"You don't segregate all Jews or all Christians," he adds.

Most of RAW STORY's calls and emails to inmates' attorneys or former attorneys were not returned. Several refused to comment. One attorney who represented one of the inmates at trial commented that "the new facility creates hardships for the family because of the distance and restrictions on visitation and phone use, but overall the staff are treating the inmates very well; they are very professional in their handling of the inmates."

Should S.F. Use Anti-War Text Book?

Ronald Reagan hugging Osama Bin Laden, corporate America celebrating the spoils of war, a cartoon view of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal isn't off limits in this comic book -- "Addicted to War -- Why the U.S. Can't Kick Militarism."

It's an undisputedly leftist view of the United States involvement in wars, and it may soon come to classrooms in San Francisco public schools.

Pete Hammer, San Francisco Unified School District: "The topic is one that a lot of teachers would have an interest in bringing into the classroom."

Pete Hammer reviews new materials for the school district. He gave "Addicted to War" a thumbs up for use in the classroom.

Pete Hammer: "It hasn't been adopted as material that every teacher has to use, teachers will have their choice about whether they want to use it or not."

Frank Dorrel, Publisher, "Addicted to War": "We're really glad that the San Francisco School District, which is apparently against the war in Iraq, well not apparently, obviously is, has chosen to do this."

Frank Dorrel is now helping to supply the San Francisco Unified School District with 4,000 copies of the book for use in high school social studies and history classes. The books are being donated by a local anti-war activist.

Frank Dorrel: "It's important to show once again - the alternative history of U.S. foreign policy -- of U.S. wars, of U.S. militarism."

Leo Lacayo: "You need to focus in on both sides of the issue in order for students to create their own opinion."

Leo Lacayo is with the San Francisco Republican Party -- he opposes the book's approval. Lacayo accuses the district of being anti-military.

Leo Lacayo: "If you just look at this -- it's a comic book with bad illustrations. It's obviously made to poke fun at a very serious situation."

Lacayo isn't alone.

Col. Robert Powell, S.F. Junior ROTC: "We wouldn't have this United States if it wasn't for this revolutionary army to fight against England to be the United States. And like I said we'd probably have slavery if we didn't have the civil war."

Colonel Powell has run the San Francisco Junior ROTC program since 1983.

The San Francisco School Board voted to phase out the program last November, the board, taking a political position, says public schools are no place for the military. Colonel Powell says "Addicted to War" could be a valuable classroom tool, but he's concerned purely political ideology may cloud how teachers present the book.

Robert Powell: "You can put this out to stimulate discussion, and in fact use it to get discussion going in a good civics class, you know what I mean, but you go to have two opposing points of view."

There is however, no prescribed book for the opposing perspective -- that will be up to teachers. The district says it is looking for books that will adequately present an opposing points of view.

Pete Hammer: "We recommend that if teachers use it in the classroom -- that teachers use it along with other materials along the same topic that have different perspectives."

Leo Lacayo: "We're not teaching them -- we're basically washing their brains with liberal mish-mash."

Frank Dorrel you can't make someone believe something -- you can offer them the information and that's what we are doing here."

There is no word when the book will make it into classrooms. The anti-war activist who pushed for the district to use the book, is still pulling together the cash for the purchase.

Once the books have been given to the district, they will be made available to teachers. Because the are a gift, there is no further action required by the San Francisco School Board.

New York State Bill Would Ban Spinners

New York State is taking fresh legal steps to ban spinning hubcaps and wheels. Bill Number 1640 is presently being considered by the Senate Transportation Committee, and it would make such wheels illegal statewide. The bill was introduced previously, but it is now gaining traction after being reintroduced by State Senator John Sabini. The measure would fine vehicle owners up to $750 for a third (or subsequent) violation.

The folks at the SEMA (who mobilize and lobby on the behalf of automotive enthusiasts when it comes to such legal matters) are urging opposition to the measure, on the grounds that the wheels are not prohibited under Federal law, nor are there any conclusive studies that indicate that spinners pose a safety risk.

Cops: Gang rape of 11-year-old girl taped on cell phone

<Warning: There is an extreme lack of neutral language, terminology, or viewpoints in this post. >

MOUNT CLEMENS -- If five Macomb County teens who took turns having sex with a neighborhood girl didn't know she was 11 then, they knew when they were done, police say.

"They asked" before they left the house, Eastpointe Detective Lt. Leo Borowsky said Wednesday. Police say they recorded the act on a cell phone.

Now, the teens could face up to life in prison if convicted of raping the girl in the basement of an Eastpointe home. The 10-second cell phone video clip, which no longer exists, was passed around the girl's neighborhood until her mother heard about it and reported it to police.

The five suspects, ages 15-19, are charged as adults. They are scheduled to appear for a March 8 pretrial hearing.

Police say the girl was not threatened in the assault they say happened in June. But she felt coerced and intimidated into complying, police say. The legal age for consensual sex in Michigan is 16.

"The sad thing is she was raped by these five men repeatedly. They took turns and coerced her and forced her into this," Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith said of the nearly hour-long assault. "It is a horrific case. It sickens me to see this."

After seeing the footage on her cell phone -- which showed the 11-year-old naked from the waist down on top of one of the suspects -- neighbor Caprice Greene said she was confused.

Greene's cell phone was used to record the incident that police say happened in Greene's home on Collinson Avenue, in the basement bedroom of her 15-year-old brother, Reginald Pope Jr. He is among the five suspects.

"I really don't understand it myself," said Greene, 17, who is listed as a witness in the case.

She told police someone swiped her camera phone off its charger and that she stumbled across the clip afterward and recognized the 11-year-old as the "little girl from down the street," according to the police report.

The victim told police that Greene filmed it, police reports say.

Greene told police she deleted the clip to keep from getting in trouble, according to the police report.

Besides Pope, the others charged are Reginald Robinson Brown, 19, of Clinton Township, Careese Adams-Johnson, 16, of Warren, 15-year-old Derrick McGuire of Roseville and 16-year-old Jonathon Powell of Eastpointe.

All five suspects have requested court-appointed attorneys. Police officials said Brown has confessed to the crime and implicated the other members of the group.

Brown has been in trouble with the law before. According to circuit court records, he pleaded guilty last year to two counts of carrying a concealed weapon and is serving one year in the Macomb County Jail.

Brown could not be reached for comment. An attorney for one of the 16-year-old suspects did not return a phone call seeking comment.

All of the younger teens are being held on $50,000 cash bonds, Borowsky said.

News of the rape surfaced while police were investigating the concealed weapon charge, Borowsky said.

Police say it all started June 15 when the girl was chasing her dog near the Collinson house in Eastpointe. Someone invited her inside the house.

"They weren't strangers, and they all knew each other from the neighborhood," Borowsky said. "We're not sure what the group said to her to entice her to joining them in the house. All she would say was they invited her in."

Members of the group then took turns having sex with the young girl, according to police.

"Each of the individuals took turns separately and weren't together in the room when the assault happened," Borowsky said.

At some point, someone used Greene's cell phone camera and recorded part of the assault, Borowsky said. Greene was in and out of the house at the time of the assault, he said.

By early August, news of the incident spread throughout the neighborhood, where the 11-year-old and her mother live.

Neighbor Cornelia Druzinski never saw the footage, but the 83-year-old heard whispers of something happening across the street.

"I didn't know if it was truth or just talk," she said Wednesday.

Druzinski knows one thing for fact: She hasn't seen the 11-year-old walking in the neighborhood since last summer.

News eventually reached the 11-year-old's family. An in-law, first. Then the girl's mother.

She confronted her daughter, who said she had sex with "five boys," according to police reports.

By the time police contacted Greene, who owned the cell phone, the 10-second clip had been deleted and police have been unable to recover the footage.

"We know it existed, though," Borowsky said.

Over the next four months, Eastpointe police investigated the case, and a warrant was issued for Brown and the other members of the group.

The victim's life wasn't threatened and she wasn't beaten, Borowsky said.

"But because of her young age, she felt coerced and intimidated into (having sex)," he said. "There wasn't a threat of harm nor were there any weapons involved."

Though the 10-second phone clip is gone, prosecutors are undaunted. Smith said unlike computers where items can sometimes be recovered after they are deleted, deleted items on cell phones do not last as long.

"When you see five young men take advantage of an 11-year-old girl," Smith said, "it is our job to make sure they pay for it."

Lafayette judge steps down: Frieling won't enforce new marijuana law

An associate municipal court judge in Lafayette resigned Monday in protest of stiffer penalties for marijuana possession in the city.

Leonard Frieling, a Boulder criminal-defense lawyer, said he is resigning out of principle after more than eight years as a backup to Lafayette Municipal Judge Roger Buchholz.

"I cannot in good conscience sit on the bench while being unwilling to enforce the municipal ordinances," Frieling said in a resignation letter to city officials. "Specifically, since you have seen fit to increase the penalty for cannabis possession from a $100 fine (which matches the state penalty) to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail, I find that I am morally and ethically unable to sit as a judge for the city."

The Lafayette City Council last week passed a first reading of an ordinance increasing the possible penalty for possession of cannabis or drug paraphernalia, which now carries a maximum $100 fine. The change is pending final approval next week.

Frieling said he was willing to enforce the old ordinance despite a personal belief that the war on marijuana is "ridiculous." He said it makes no sense for cannabis to be illegal for adults who are allowed to drink alcohol, and the proposed penalty in Lafayette would set a bad precedent.

"The state of Colorado has somewhat decriminalized small amounts for personal possession by making it a petty offense with maximum $100 fine," he said. "I think that it is inappropriate for a municipality that a crime is so much more serious within their city limits than it is statewide."

Lafayette Mayor Chris Berry said Monday night that he had not seen Frieling's letter and could not comment on its contents.

Berry said the new pot penalties were among several changes supported by the city's law enforcement. The idea was to increase the maximum penalty to give judges more discretion when sentencing marijuana offenders under different circumstances, he said.

"My interpretation was that it would be up to the judge," Berry said. "A sitting judge could still make (the fine) $100."

Mayor Pro Tem David Strungis — who cast the sole vote against the ordinance — said the police chief and sitting judge showed "no evidence that we have a pandemic of marijuana-possession arrests in Lafayette."

"My feeling was that punishments have to be within reason, and the punishment has to fit the crime," Strungis said. "To put someone in jail for a year for less than an ounce of marijuana — I couldn't justify that."

Magistrate judge to decide if couple will be prosecuted for 'stalking' officer

A Bartow County couple will go before a magistrate judge today to see if they will be arrested for allegedly stalking a Kennesaw police officer by installing cameras to track neighborhood speeders.

Lee and Teresa Sipple spent $1,200 mounting three video cameras and a radar speed unit outside their home, which is at the bottom of a hill. They have said they did so in hopes of convincing neighbors to slow down to create a safe environment for their son.

The Sipples allegedly caught Kennesaw police officer Richard Perrone speeding up to 17 mph over the speed limit. Perrone alerted Bartow authorities, who in turn visited the Sipples' home to tell them Perrone intended to press charges against them for stalking.

WWII Sex Slaves Testify Against Japan

Jan Ruff O'Herne refused to submit to the Japanese soldiers who raped her more than 60 years ago.

She shaved her head to make herself unattractive. She hid — once in a tree. She huddled and prayed with other captive "comfort women" — a euphemism for the up to 200,000 women who historians say were forced to have sex with millions of Japanese soldiers during the war. She punched and kicked and screamed, even though it invariably meant she received a worse beating.

"Never did any Japanese rape me without a fight. I fought each one of them," she said Thursday at a hearing of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. Three former comfort women pleaded with lawmakers to adopt a resolution urging Japan to formally apologize.

The memories of being raped and beaten day and night, even by the doctor who examined her for venereal disease, "have tortured my mind all my life," O'Herne said. "I have forgiven the Japanese for what they did to me, but I can never forget," said the former Dutch colonist born in Java who now lives in Australia.

O'Herne and two South Korean victims appeared in support of a nonbinding resolution that urges Japan to "formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner" for the women's ordeal.

The resolution does not recommend that Japan pay reparations. It does urge Japan to reject those who say the sexual enslavement never happened and to educate children about the comfort women's experience. It was unclear when the subcommittee would meet again to consider the resolution.

Supporters want an apology similar to the one the U.S. government gave to Japanese-Americans who were forced into internment camps during World War II. That apology was approved by the Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1988.

Japan objects to the resolution, which has led to unease in an otherwise strong U.S.-Japanese relationship. Its leaders repeatedly have apologized. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, for instance, said in 2001 he felt sincere remorse for the comfort women's "immeasurable and painful experiences."

In a letter to the subcommittee, Japan's ambassador to the United States said his country has recognized its responsibility and acknowledged its actions. "While not forgetting the past, we wish to move forward," Ryozo Kato wrote.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said Japan has done what the resolution demands. "The issue of an apology has been fully and satisfactorily addressed," he said, adding that Japanese citizens should not be punished for the actions of earlier generations.

The State Department expressed sympathy for the victims, but said in a statement that Japan had taken steps to address the issue.

A sponsor of the resolution, Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., said many believe the measure focuses on the past to the detriment of the crucial U.S. alliance with Japan. Such worries, he said, are unfounded.

"Reconciliation on this issue will have a positive effect upon relationships in the region as historical anxieties are put to rest," said Honda, a Japanese-American who was interned in a U.S. camp as a child.

Japan acknowledged in the 1990s that its military set up and ran brothels for its troops. But it has rejected most compensation claims, saying they were settled by postwar treaties.

The Asian Women's Fund, created in 1995 by the Japanese government but independently run and funded by private donations, has provided a way for Japan to compensate former sex slaves without offering official government compensation. Many comfort women have rejected the fund.

Often through tears, the three women at the hearing spoke of their anger, shame and defiance, and of the physical and mental scars that remain.

"I am so embarrassed. I am so ashamed," said Lee Yong-soo, speaking through an interpreter of her rape and torture. "But this is something I cannot just keep to myself."

"I will not leave the Japanese government alone until they get down on their knees in front of me and give me a sincere apology," she said.

With Cars Snowed In, Drivers Lament Tickets

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended the city’s decision not to suspend its alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules even after some residents complained that their cars were ticketed for illegal parking when snow plows left them buried in mounds of snow and unable to be moved.

New Yorkers complained that their cars were ticketed for illegal parking today when they were buried in snow.

The mayor said that the city’s biggest priority was to clear the streets.

“We want to get the snow and the ice off the roads as quickly as possible so that emergency vehicles can get through, so that you can get to work, so that the kids can get to school,” the mayor said today. “We’ll all do it together, rather than griping. We’ll be better off.”

But asking New Yorkers not to gripe about anything was like asking for mayonnaise on a pastrami sandwich. Highly unlikely.

Angry residents called the city’s complaint line, 311, to gripe about the tickets. They called their local television stations. They wailed on blogs.

“Give us a break Mike,” a reader named Chris wrote to The New York Times’s Empire Zone blog, saying he thought the mayor was less interested in plowing the streets than he was in not interrupting the revenue flow from the pricey parking tickets.

The National Weather Service said the season’s first real snow storm dumped about two inches of snow in Central Park, and it turned to hard ice by morning. Overnight, the Sanitation Department began dispatching 1,500 plows and trucks to spread salt and clear streets, and their work left thousands of cars buried like shrimp in a deep bowl of ice.

Then, as if adding insult to injury, the traffic enforcement people came by and left red parking violation tickets on the windshields. NY1 News videotaped the scene in the Village this morning.

One angry Brooklyn resident told the Empire Zone that the snow plows came through her neighborhood last night and cleared the streets.

“The result is a row of cars trapped on the sidelines by snow drifts,” said the blogger, who signed her name as Angela. “I don’t own a shovel and I was unable to move my car today. Sure enough, my car and several others were issued parking violations. What is truly absurd is that there is still so much snow on the sides of the streets that the cleaning truck would be useless even if we were able to get our cars out of the way. It’s just another example of choosing revenue over common sense.”

But the mayor, who was visiting sanitation workers today in Woodside, Queens, to thank them for their work, said he did not believe the city’s traffic enforcement police issued that many tickets to cars that ended up on the wrong side today after the storm. He said the good news was that all of the city’s streets had been plowed at least once so far.

Residents pointed out that alternate street parking, a practice that is quintessentially New York, but similar to parking rules in other big cities, has been suspended in the past after other snow storms.

The parking rules mean that cars cannot be left parked on one side of the street indefinitely, but must be moved to the other side every other day or so, to allow street cleaning trucks or other city vehicles to access one side or the other.

The custom, which has been lampooned in such places as the television show “Seinfeld,” means residents who park their cars on the street must rise before a certain hour every day to move their cars to the opposite side before the ticket-dispensing officers swoop in, as they inevitably do.

Another reader told the Empire Zone:

“My friend from Jamaica, Queens, was unable to move her car to the right side because it was stuck in an ice drift,” said Andrea Goldberg, explaining that the friend sat in her car for an hour and a half waiting.

“Neither a street cleaning vehicle, nor a snow plow passed by,” she said. “There were no spots available on the right side of the street, since nobody had moved out yesterday; all those care were also iced in. What a waste of gas and energy.”

But another reader from Boston seemed fed up with the complaining New Yorkers:

“We all own shovels, and we all dig our cars out of massive snowdrifts every time it snows often multiple times,” wrote Bob. “And sometimes we have to shovel out new spaces when we need to park. Getting plowed in and shoveling are facts of life when it snows.”

US teenage drinkers face alcohol test

BIG Brother has arrived at a high school in New Jersey. Determined to stop their students consuming alcohol at weekends, staff at Pequannock Township High School in Morris county are to start using a controversial test that can detect if students have been drinking up to a week earlier.

The test measures urine concentrations of an ethanol breakdown product called ethyl glucuronide (EtG). "We plan to use this new test as part of our comprehensive testing programme to keep our kids safe from the dangers of drugs and alcohol," says Larrie Reynolds, superintendent of Pequannock High School. "About four to eight kids will be tested every day." In New Jersey drinking alcohol is illegal under the age of 21.

Drinking is a growing problem in US schools. "As many as half of our kids are doing this," says Reynolds. An estimated 1700 US high-school students died from alcohol poisoning or related accidents in 2005 alone.

However, the EtG test poses a problem. It is so sensitive that even total abstainers can sometimes test positive. Alcohol absorbed from soaps, mouthwashes or contaminated vinegars or by drinking a sip of communion wine can be enough.

Despite this, the test's popularity is growing, and around a dozen commercial versions are now available. Estimates by the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) suggest that as many as 20,000 tests are being performed each month, mainly among medical staff – including 9000 physicians – pledged to abstinence following the discovery that they have a drink problem. Law firms and the military have started using it on their staff too. Greg Skipper, medical director of the Alabama Physician Health Program, says the test has been invaluable for monitoring doctors in recovery from alcoholism. "It enables them to comply, stay sober and keep their jobs," he says.

Skipper is, however, critical of health boards and agencies in some states that he says have been automatically sacking people who fail the EtG test without using other tests to confirm its findings. In the three to four years that the test has been commercially available in the US, more than 100 nurses in recovery from alcoholism have complained of losing their jobs after testing positive despite, they say, not drinking. Blood tests for a second metabolite such as phosphatidyl ethanol would be far less likely to give a false positive, as this substance appears only after large amounts of alcohol have been consumed, but these tests are more expensive.

In 2006, Skipper helped compile an advisory document for the DHHS which stated that "legal or disciplinary action based solely on a positive EtG test is inappropriate". Since the advisory was published, Skipper says there has been a fall in the number of complaints of unfair dismissal posted on a website he set up (www.ethylglucuronide.com).

Using the EtG test alone, the risk of false positives remains, particularly in hospital wards, where nurses and doctors routinely use soaps containing ethanol. "In intensive care units, nurses and doctors apply it every 5 minutes," Skipper says. He has shown that the test could give a positive result in ward staff who have simply breathed vapour in. Even bystanders can test positive. Both Skipper and the test's creator, Friedrich Wurst of the psychiatric clinic at the University of Basel, Switzerland, say that there is not yet an agreed threshold concentration that can be used to separate people who have been drinking from those exposed to alcohol from other sources. Below 1000 nanograms of EtG per millilitre of urine is probably "innocent", and above 5000 booze is almost certainly to blame. In between there is a "question zone", Skipper says.

Skipper backs use of the tests by schools if they accept its limitations. "Schools must have a system for dealing with positives, managed by a medical review officer, and not automatically expel the child," he says.

Batman Sighting Puts Schools on Lockdown

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- To an Arizona middle school, Batman! Three schools in the north Phoenix suburb of Cave Creek were on lockdown for about 45 minutes Wednesday morning after a student at Desert Arroyo Middle School reported seeing a person dressed as Batman run across campus, jump a fence and disappear into the desert, Scottsdale police Sgt. Mark Clark said.

The student described the person as 6 feet 3 inches tall and possibly male.

"We're assuming it was male, although they did have a mask on," Clark said.

Officers combed the desert around the middle school. A nearby elementary school and high school also were on lockdown as officers sought the caped crusader.

The result - no Batman.

"It's just one of those interesting little stories that we looked into but we couldn't find anyone," Clark said.

Nedda Shafir, a spokeswoman for the Cave Creek Unified School District, said putting all the schools on lockdown was a precautionary measure.

"We didn't want to take any chances," Shafir said. "We just don't want to put anyone at risk."

Death Certificates on Abortions Proposed

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Legislation introduced in Tennessee would require death certificates for aborted fetuses, which likely would create public records identifying women who have abortions.

Rep. Stacey Campfield, a Republican, said his bill would provide a way to track how many abortions are performed. He predicted it would pass in the Republican-controlled Senate but would have a hard time making it through the Democratic House.

"All these people who say they are pro-life _ at least we would see how many lives are being ended out there by abortions," said Campfield.

The number of abortions reported to the state Office of Vital Records is already publicly available. The office collects records _ but not death certificates _ on abortions and the deaths of fetuses after 22 weeks gestation or weighing about 1 pound.

The identities of the women who have abortions are not included in those records, but death certificates include identifying information such as Social Security numbers.

Campfield's bill, introduced Monday, would give abortion providers 10 days following an "induced termination of a pregnancy" to file a death certificate.

House Judiciary Chairman Rob Briley, a Democrat, called Campfield's proposal "the most preposterous bill I've seen" in an eight-year legislative career.

"It is totally inconsistent with everything the law contemplates as it relates to anything close to that subject," he said.

The anti-abortion group Tennessee Right to Life has not yet taken a position on the death certificate bill, said spokeswoman Myra Simons. But she said the organization applauds the sponsors' efforts to "draw attention to the way abortion is handled in Tennessee."

Keri Adams, vice president of Planned Parenthood in Tennessee, on Wednesday called the proposal an attempt to terrorize frightened and vulnerable women who are seeking abortion.

"We certainly hope the Tennessee Legislature doesn't invest too much energy in this bill," she said. "We think it's clearly a violation of privacy, and potentially illegal concerning HIPAA regulations."