Feds want prison time in unprecedented lie detector prosecution

By Marisa Taylor

WASHINGTON — Prosecutors are asking a federal judge to send a “strong message” by sentencing an Indiana Little League coach to prison for trying to teach as many as 100 people across the country how to beat lie detector tests.

In a test case aimed at deterring other such polygraph instructors, prosecutors have urged the judge to sentence Chad Dixon to one year and nine months in prison, citing a “career of criminal deceit” that included teaching the techniques to child molesters, intelligence employees and law enforcement applicants.

Authorities assert Dixon crossed the line between free speech protected under the First Amendment and criminal conduct when he told some of his clients to conceal what he taught them while undergoing government polygraphs.

“Properly understood, his crimes encompass inviting total strangers into a scheme to defraud and obstruct, and joining in their criminal enterprises,” prosecutors wrote. “Dixon adopted a mercenary-like attitude towards the nation’s border security and the security of the nation’s secrets. He also acted with callous disregard for the most vulnerable in society – our children. . . . Dixon’s misconduct was purposeful, dangerous and it requires punishment.”

The prosecutors’ push for prison emerged in court filings as a federal judge prepares to sentence Dixon next month. Dixon, 34, pleaded guilty late last year to charges of obstruction and wire fraud after federal agents targeted him in an undercover sting that was first reported by McClatchy.

The decision to prosecute Dixon and the attempt to imprison him has been cited as an example of the Obama administration’s overzealousness in detecting and deterring potential “insider threats,” a catchall phrase meant to describe employees who might become spies, leak to the news media, commit crimes or become corrupted in some way.

The case also has sparked a larger debate over whether the federal government should be pursuing such instructors given questions about the reliability of lie detectors, which are not accepted by most courts as evidence against criminal defendants.

Polygraphers interpret measurements of blood pressure, sweat activity, respiration and movement to identify people who lie or try to beat the test. If polygraphers notice unusual responses that they believe indicate lies or manipulation of the test, they attempt to elicit a confession to confirm their suspicions.

The instructors, meanwhile, claim to teach methods that help the test-takers avoid such scrutiny. The techniques, known as countermeasures, include controlled breathing, muscle tensing, tongue biting and mental arithmetic.

“It does not require much looking to find a respected scientist who has convincingly argued that polygraphs do not operate above chance levels and are therefore detrimental to national security,” Dixon’s defense attorney, Nina Ginsberg, wrote in her response to prosecutors. “. . . Mr. Dixon has done nothing that warrants the government’s attempts to make him the poster child for its newly undertaken campaign to wipe out polygraph countermeasures training.”

Signaling the prosecution’s aggressive posture in Dixon’s case, a Justice Department lawyer from the elite division that pursues public corruption is involved. Dixon, meanwhile, pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Va., a forum often chosen by prosecutors for terrorism and spy cases.

Ginsberg, who has asked the judge to sentence Dixon to probation, accused the prosecutors of a “shameless attempt” to convince a judge to send her client to prison based on “hyperbole.” While she acknowledged that her client earned about $1,000 a session for teaching as many as 70 people over a year and a half, she said he was mostly teaching people how to pass polygraph tests demanded by spouses who suspected infidelity.

“Far from embarking on a ‘career of criminal deceit,’ Mr. Dixon was a struggling owner of a small family-owned electrical contracting company, with a third child on the way, who saw a way to stave off foreclosure and protect his family from ballooning financial debt,” Ginsberg wrote. “The government’s exaggerated attempts to lay the fate of society’s most vulnerable and the protection of our national borders at Mr. Dixon’s feet should be seen for what it is.”

Prosecutors and federal agents have refused to respond to questions about the case.

However, an official from U.S. Customs and Border Protection acknowledged in a speech attended by a McClatchy reporter that mere discussion of such techniques is protected under the First Amendment. Customs is leading the crackdown, although other federal and local law enforcement agencies have been involved in the case.

Federal authorities have targeted at least one other instructor in the investigation. McClatchy reported that federal agents launched an undercover sting aimed at Doug Williams, whose book is said to have inspired Dixon. Williams, a former Oklahoma City police polygrapher, turned over his business records, but federal authorities refuse to say whether they have gathered evidence of any crime.

Williams, who has openly taught the techniques for thirty years, has said he has done nothing wrong.

Prosecutors, however, describe Dixon’s actions as helping job applicants to conceal or lie about information sought by government polygraphers, which constitutes what is known as an “obstruction of an agency proceeding” charge, court filings show. They sought a wire fraud charge against Dixon for a “scheme” that helped applicants get jobs by making “false and fraudulent statements.” Dixon could have faced up to five years in prison for the obstruction charge and up to 20 years for the wire fraud charge.

According to prosecutors, Dixon taught seven federal law enforcement applicants and two government contractors, including one who had a security clearance with an unnamed intelligence agency.

However, the most incriminating evidence appears to have come from Dixon’s interactions with two undercover agents. Dixon, for instance, advised one undercover agent posing as the brother of a violent Mexican drug trafficker to withhold details during a polygraph for a Customs and Border Protection job, prosecutors said.

“I would probably reference him as a distant relative,” Dixon told the undercover agent. “If they ask questions about him, if it does come up, just say, ‘Look, I don’t really know what he’s into.’”

Prosecutors also listed nine unnamed sex offenders Dixon trained across the country as actions the judge “must consider.”

“In approximately 18 months from Illinois to Texas, North Carolina to California . . . Dixon’s conduct has threatened the safety and security of 69 to 100 communities with total disregard for the consequences,” prosecutors wrote.

However, prosecutors didn’t offer evidence that Dixon encouraged any of the sex offenders he trained to hide new or undisclosed crimes.

Ginsberg said only one sex offender told Dixon about an undisclosed crime during court-ordered polygraph monitoring. In that instance, Dixon alerted probation officials about the 39-year-old from Carrollton, Texas, who confessed to sexual molesting a minor while on probation.

Ginsberg acknowledged her client was “less cautious” with job applicants. As a result, she said, he had convinced himself that the undercover agent posing as a drug cartel member “had no chance” of getting through federal screening.

“Because of his utter disdain for the use of polygraph testing, he failed to appreciate the degree to which federal agencies might rely on polygraph test results,” Ginsberg wrote.

Federal judge rules grants partial victory to individuals on no-fly list

Peter Snyder

[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the District of Oregon [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Wednesday that those placed on the US government's no-fly list have "a constitutionally-protected liberty interest in traveling internationally by air, which is affected by being placed on the No Fly List." The plaintiffs in the case are 13 US citizens who were denied boarding on flights over US air space after January 2009. The plaintiffs have asserted that the current process available to the them through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [official website] does not provide a hearing at which an individual can present evidence to contest his or her inclusion on the no-fly list, and is therefore, unconstitutional. The government has contended that the DHS system in place is sufficient in light of the government's interest in national security. Judge Anna Brown has not concluded whether the government's use of the no-fly list violated the plaintiffs' constitutional rights to due process, stating in her opinion that, "the court is not yet able to resolve on the current record whether the judicial-review process is a sufficient, post-deprivation process under the United States Constitution." Brown has given both parties till September 9 to file a joint status report setting out their recommendation as to the most effective process to ensure that the court may come to a conclusion on the remaining issues.

The no-fly list was created by the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), a branch of the FBI [official websites], in 2003. The TSC was established by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6 [text] which, "directed that a center be established to consolidate the government's approach to terrorism screening and to provide for the appropriate and lawful use of terrorist information in screening processes." In 2012 the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] reinstated [JURIST report] a challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] over the no-fly list maintained by the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) [official website]. The Ninth Circuit ruled in 2008 that those placed on the government's no-fly list can challenge their inclusion on the list [JURIST report] in federal district courts. The court held that the TSC, which actually maintains the list, is a subsection of the FBI and is therefore subject to review by the district courts.

Guy Who Wrote Legal Memos Defending US Torture Defends NSA Because It Takes Too Long To Obey The Constitution

John Yoo, of course, is somewhat infamous for being the author of the so-called "Torture Memos," while he was Deputy US Attorney General for President George W. Bush, giving the Bush administration a horrific legal "justification" for torture. It's no surprise, of course, that he's been spewing ignorant and ridiculous claims concerning other issues as well. We recently wrote about his claims that new media properties like Wikileaks have no First Amendment protections because they're "not the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal." Because in Yoo's demented world, only old school newspapers count. He also made factually incorrect claims, stating that Bradley Manning and Julian Assange "communicated regularly" when the record showed that was simply not true.

Not surprisingly, he's now strongly defending the NSA's activities spying on Americans because there appears to be no part of the Constitution that John Yoo won't spit on and pretend he's merely polishing it up. He argues that while the Justice Department should obey the 4th Amendment, it should not apply to military and intelligence agencies like the NSA:

Once we impose those standards [basic 4th Amendment respect for privacy] on the military and intelligence agencies, however, we are either guaranteeing failure or we must accept a certain level of error. If the military and intelligence agencies had to follow law-enforcement standards, their mission would fail because they would not give us any improvement over what the FBI could achieve anyway. If the intelligence community is to detect future terrorist attacks through analyzing electronic communications, we are asking them to search through a vast sea of e-mails and phone-call patterns to find those few which, on the surface, look innocent but are actually covert terrorist messages.

Except, that's not how it works. We have the 4th Amendment specifically to protect against government intrusion. We don't say "oh, it's okay because they need to do it." That's not how it works. There's no "exception" to the 4th Amendment for military and intelligence agencies.

Then he tries to argue that the "mistakes" are no big deal, because, hey, all of law enforcement makes mistakes.

Domestic law enforcement makes these errors too. Police seek warrants for the wrong guy, execute a search in the wrong house, arrest the wrong suspect, and even shoot unarmed suspects. We accept these mistakes because we understand that no law-enforcement system can successfully protect our communities from crime with perfection.

Actually, I'm not sure in what world Yoo lives in, but for the most part we don't accept those mistakes. We find them abhorrent and we work to stop them. And, this isn't "seeking the warrant for the wrong guy," or searching "the wrong house." This is collecting all information on everyone. There's a difference.

Then, there's the bogus "if we don't do this the terrorists will win" argument:

To end the NSA’s efforts to intercept terrorist communications would be to willfully blind ourselves to the most valuable intelligence sources on al-Qaeda (now that the president won’t allow the capture and interrogation of al-Qaeda leaders).

In Yoo's scary world, the ends justify the means. Of course, that way tyranny and dictatorship lie. You can justify anything under Yoo's rationale. If we want "the most valuable intelligence" to stop attacks, why not place cameras and microphones in everyone's house and cars and record it all with voice recognition software. After all, that would provide much more "valuable intelligence sources." There's a reason there are limits on government surveillance, and it appears that Yoo was absent that day at Yale law school when they taught that part. The rationale he gives has no limits, which is why it's not surprising that he's still pushing for torturing people, despite the fact that it's abhorrent and has never been shown to actually be effective.

And then... he explains why it's okay to ignore the Constitution on this one:

Increasing judicial oversight might reduce errors — though I am dubious — but in a way that would seriously slow down the speed of the program, which is all-important if the mission is to stop terrorists.

  In other words, obeying the Constitution just takes too much time. What Yoo is missing is that's the whole point. We live in a world where there are risks, but we are supposed to live in a free country, where we don't invade everyone's privacy for the myth of some smidgen of greater protection. Law enforcement's job is supposed to be hard, because if it's not, there is much more abuse for almost no benefit. It's why we live in a country where, we're told, you're innocent until proven guilty. It's because we believe in protecting our rights, even if it means that sometimes someone gets away with a crime. However, in Yoo's world, it would be a hell of a lot more efficient if everyone was guilty until proven innocent, because that's a lot faster. And, as he notes, sure there are some mistakes, but the ratio would probably be reasonable, so what's the big deal?

Police taser man to get him off a roof, choke & drag him face-down across a staircase, killing him

Witnesses say they could audibly hear the lifeless man's skull thumping across the staircase


Michael Angel Ruiz acting strangely on his rooftop.(Source: ABC 15)

PHOENIX, AZ — A 44-year-old man climbed onto the roof of his apartment and began acting strangely. Police arrived to help him down, but instead ended up killing him with a series of offensive maneuvers including tasing him while in a choke-hold, and finally dragging his lifeless body down a staircase, with his skull banging against every step.

Michael Angel Ruiz is the son of a retired LAPD detective and had a history of drug addiction. On July 28, for reasons unknown, he climbed onto the roof of his apartment. Witnesses called the police to protect his safety. This turned out to have been a fatal decision.


Michael Angel Ruiz being put in a chokehold and tased at the same time. (Source: ABC 15)

Ruiz, while he may not have been sober, was not acting aggressively towards anyone. Police attempted to get him to come down without success. They resorted to tasing him on the roof, a violation of Phoenix Police Department’s own department policy against using a stun gun on someone who is in danger of falling, reported Sara Goldenberg of ABC 15 Arizona. Witnesses say that police tased him several times on the rooftop.

After sustaining electric shocks from police, Ruiz complied with requests to come off the roof. Video taken by witnesses shows him hopping down to a balcony. An unidentified Phoenix police officer immediately greeted him with a choke-hold. Police used overwhelming force on the man, who had still shown no signs of aggression. Witness Gary Carthen told ABC 15 that Ruiz was “getting choked out and tased at the same time.” He remained in a choke-hold for at least three minutes, reported KPHO.


Ruiz being dragged down the stairs, with his head banging against every step. (Source: ABC 15)

The most disturbing moments were to come. Michael Ruiz, now fully restrained, was dragged down the concrete stairs on his face. As deputies held his arms behind his back, they allowed his head to dangle and thump against every stair. At this point Ruiz may have already lost consciousness, and was making no attempt to lift his head. Video shows him lifelessly suffering head trauma on the descent down the stair case.

“I just felt sick to my stomach,” said Richard Erickson, the man’s father, to ABC 15. “I’d never seen anything like this before, even when I was with the police department.”

Ruiz had to be resuscitated at the scene, but was determined to be brain-dead at the hospital, according to KPHO. His family took him off of life-support on August 2.


Michael Angel Ruiz (Source: ABC 15)

Witness Verna Young said she could audibly hear the thumps of his face against the stairs. “I started crying ’cause that’s not right, to hurt nobody like that,” she said. “He didn’t deserve that. He was a nice person, very nice.”

“I miss him a lot. He was a good man,” said Michael’s father. Ruiz left behind 2 children and a wife.

Phoenix Police are remaining tight-lipped about their treatment of Michael Ruiz and an “administrative investigation” will commence.

Video coverage of the incident can be viewed here.

Female Privilege Checklist

1. From an early age the opposite sex will be instructed never to hit me but I may not be given the same instructions. However, should I strike males I can expect not to be hit back and any social penalties that occur from my actions will actually fall on the male.

2. If I’m not smart, but pretty, I can marry and achieve the social and financial level of my husband without ever working.

3. I can produce offspring. A status which grants me an “essential” status in our species that men can never have and which can never be taken away from me even in old age.

4. Regardless of my mate value society has organized fertility clinics and social welfare programs that will allow me to have children and provide for them should I choose to reproduce without a mate or marriage.

5. I not only have the more valuable and sought after sexual identity, but I also have complete control over my reproductive choice and in many ways over the reproductive choice of the opposite sex.

6. At any time I can abandon my parental responsibilities with little or no social stigma and hand the child over to the state or abort the pregnancy. A male could never relieve himself of this burden unless I allow him to.

7. I am granted all the rights of a democracy without any of the burdens of military service.

8. At age 18 I lose the protective status of the child but retain the protective status of the female. Boys at age 18 lose the protected status of the child and become targets if they fail to gain status after that point.

9. When I marry a man with status I can take his name and become whoever he has spent years becoming. I need not do anything special to be worthy of receiving the reputation he has built. However, if I wish to keep my own name I can do so. Should my husband feel the sting of this insult I can simply call him a sexist for it.

10. People will help me more when I’m in need and I will receive no social penalty or stigma for it.

11. When I’m on a date things will be paid for me.

12. When I search for employment I can choose jobs which I think are fulfilling without concern of whether they provide a “family” wage.

13. I can discriminate against the opposite sex ruthlessly without social penalty.

14. If I marry and quit my job and enjoy a leisurely life with light housework and then later divorce I will be given half of the marital assets.

15. If I commit a crime and am convicted I will get a sentencing “discount” because of my gender. If I am very pretty it will increase my discount.

16. If I am a partner in crime with a man I will likely be charged with lesser crimes even though I committed the same crimes even if I was the ringleader.

17. I have the option to be outraged if my husband asks me if my behavior is due to PMS and later on use PMS as a successful legal defense for murdering that same husband.

18. At age 18 I will not be forced to register for Selective Service and will not be penalized for failing to do so.

19. At a time of war I will never be drafted and ripped from my employment, home, and family and forced to become a military slave.

20. My feelings are more important than men’s lives. Every precaution will be made to protect me from harassment at work. However, males will make up nearly %100 of workplace fatalities.

21. My gender controls 80% of domestic spending. We get to spend our money if we have any and we get to spend men’s money.

22. The majority of luxury apparel is designed, marketed to, and consumed by women.

23. Seven times as much jewelry will be purchased by or for me than by or for men.

24. I have a department of women’s health whereas men have no such department.

25. My gender enjoys more government spending on health than males do.

26. My gender consumes the lioness’ share of entitlement programs while men contribute the lion’s share of taxes.

27. If I rape or molest a child I can expect lighter treatment in court and afterwards receive less social stigma. What’s more, should I become pregnant, I can sue my victim for child support when he finally turns 18.

28. When I divorce my husband I will be guaranteed custody of my children unless I am deemed to be unfit. Even if my husband is “Parent of the Year” 10 years running it is unlikely he will get custody over me even if I am a mediocre parent.

29. When I divorce I can use false accusations of domestic violence, sexual molestation of the children or abuse of the children to gain advantage during court proceedings. If I am found out to be a liar I can expect to get away with it.

30. If a man calls me a slut it will probably hurt his reputation more than it hurts mine, but at any rate the damage will be small and localized. However, if I call him a child molester or claim that he raped me I can destroy him completely and the damage may be nationwide.

31. If I fail at my career I can blame the male dominated society.

32. I may have the luxury of staying home and being a housewife but if my sister’s husband does the same thing I’m likely to call him a deadbeat loser and tell her to leave him.

33. If I “choose” to join the military; the best military occupations providing the most lucrative civilian training will be reserved for me. I will be kept away from the fighting as much as possible to the point that I will be thirty times less likely to be killed in a war zone than my male counterparts. I will be given equal pay for less risk. I will never have to consider the fact that by joining the military and getting a plumb assignment I automatically forced a male out of that position and into a combat role that may cost him his life.

34. If a male soldier injures himself before a deployment he can be arrested and court marshaled for it. If I deliberately get pregnant before a deployment or even during a deployment I will be reassigned and or taken out of a war zone and I will receive no penalty for it.

35. My gender watches more television in every hour of every day than any other group. This along with the fact that women control %80 of domestic spending means that most television shows and advertisement are designed to appeal to me.

36. I can wear masculine clothing if it pleases me however men cannot wear feminine clothing without social penalty.

37. Not only is there a wealth of clothing choices designed for me but it is likely that I will be able to afford or have them provided for me.

38. I can claim that a wage gap exists and that it is the fault of sexism while simultaneously seeking employment without considering income as a priority. I will probably choose my job based on satisfaction, flexibility of hours, and working conditions and then expect to make as much as the males working nights, out in the rain and cold or working overtime.

39. I can be bigoted or sexist against males without social penalty.

40. If I make a false claim of rape against a male in an act of revenge or in order to cover up my own scandalous behavior I may well succeed at both and he may spend years in prison. If I am found out it is unlikely I will be charged, convicted, or serve any time at all.

41. If I abuse my husband and physically assault him and the police arrive it is almost guaranteed he will go to jail.

42. If I am in an abusive relationship there are a multitude of social organizations to help me get away from him. There are few for men in the same position even though women initiate the majority of DV and even though men are hospitalized %30 of the time.

43. In the event of a natural disaster or other emergency that requires evacuation I can expect to be evacuated before males. This includes male doctors, humanitarians, politicians, captains of industry, billionaires, and religious leaders. I will receive no social penalty if all of those people died because I was evacuated first. However, should they manage to get evacuated before women and those women died they will all suffer a social penalty.

44. If someone is attacking a person on the street I have no obligation to assist them and I will receive no social penalty if I do nothing.

45. If someone is harming my children and I run away and ask someone else to help I will receive no social penalty for my cowardice.

46. I’m immune to cognitive dissonance.

47. I may denounce the concept of a dowry, however, I still expect a man to give me an engagement ring when he asks me to marry him.

48. I expect a man to ask me to marry me and suffer the potential risk of rejection.

49. If I lie it’s because I’m a victim of a male dominated society forced into difficult circumstances and not because I’m a bad person.

50. If my boyfriend sabotages a condom he can pay me child support for the next 20 years. If I secretly don’t take my birth control my boyfriend can pay me child support for the next 20 years.

51. If I’m uncomfortable exercising around men I can demand a female only gym be made for women. If any male only gyms exist I can demand membership under threat of lawsuit.

52. If my female only gym at the university decides to close early for safety reasons I can scream sexism and force them to keep it open as long as the main gym.

53. If I succeed at keeping the female gym open and I leave late at night and I don’t feel safe I can demand that the university spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for more lighting and police presence.

54. If after getting new lighting and police protection I decide I don’t want to go to the gym anymore well that’s just my prerogative.

55. I’m likely to believe that if a woman is intoxicated she is not capable of giving consent and if sex occurs it is rape. However, if her male partner is also intoxicated he is capable of consenting.

56. If a man is promoted over me at work I have a right to suspect sexism even though I also believe that under adverse circumstances men are more capable than women of making good decisions. (see #55)

57. I can cry and get my husband to do something for me that he might not have done otherwise.

58. I expect people (especially men) to be sensitive to my feelings.

59. I can deny a man’s feelings or disregard them or ridicule him for having them without social penalty.

60. If I lose my job it’s because of sexism or the economy. If a man loses his job it’s because he’s a loser.

61. If I go to a club or bar with my girlfriends and I look my sexy best I have a right to be perturbed when men approach me and hit on me in this public place.

62. Even though men die more from prostate cancer than women die from breast cancer I can expect that twice as much funding is given for breast cancer. The same will apply to any female specific disease or malady.

63. If for some reason I do not get custody of my children I will be expected to pay less child support than another man in my exact same position.

64. If I kidnap my children and I am eventually caught I can successfully defend myself by claiming I was protecting them from my husband–even if my children were given to him to protect them from me.

65. My gender makes up %53 of the voting population yet when I see more men in political office I will call that sexism.

66. If I am married with children and I want to stay home with the kids I’m likely to blame my husband for not making enough to allow me to do that.

67. I think it is my right to work and I am unconcerned if the influx of women into the workforce has reduced overall wages to the point that it’s hard to support a family on just one income, or affirmative action has kept men from being promoted even though they deserved it.

68. I can get student financial aid without signing up for Selective Service (the Draft).

69. I can get employment with a federal agency without signing up for Selective Service.

70. Restrooms for my gender will be cleaner and are more likely to have flowers or other decorations.

71. If I’m caring for a child restrooms for my gender will more likely have a changing table for my convenience.

72. People I’ve never met before are more likely to open doors for me.

73. People I’ve never met before are more likely to talk to me in public.

74. If I go to a bar I can expect that members of the opposite sex will purchase drinks for me.

75. Anytime I find an organization just for men I can denounce it as sexism.

76. I believe that women should have organizations just for women.

77. If I meet a man that I like and I give him my phone number and he doesn’t call I have a right to think of him as an asshole.

78. If I meet a man that I like and I give him my phone number and he calls me I have a right to blow him off or act like I don’t know him.

79. I believe I have a right to live in an orderly and safe society but I feel no obligation to risk my safety to secure or maintain that society.

80. I like it when bars and clubs have drinks specials just for women.

81. I think that organizations that offer any discounts or privileges just for men is a clear sign of sexism.

82. If I’m white I will live 6 years longer than white males and 14 years longer than black males.

83. If I’m encouraged to get medical care it’s because I owe it to myself.

84. When my husband is encouraged to get medical help it’s because he owes to to me and the kids.

85. If something bad happens to me or just one woman I believe it is an offense against all women.

86. I believe that if something bad happens to a man it’s because he’s a loser.

87. I think that alimony is fair when paid to a woman but not fair when paid by a woman.

88. I’m more likely to believe that women who commit crimes are sick and need treatment or understanding whereas men who commit crimes are evil and should be locked up forever.

89. I can criticize the opposite sex without social penalty, but woe be to the man who attempts to criticize me or other women.

90. I can throw a fit and act like a two year old to get what I want without damaging my mate value.

91. I have the luxury of not being the filter for natural selection.

92. I can sleep with my boss if I want and afterwards I can sue him for sexual harassment.

93. I can wear seductive clothing and perfume to attract a man at work but no one will accuse me of sexual harassment.

94. If I hear a story about Darfur and how men who leave the refugee camps to gather wood are hacked to death to prevent their wives from being raped I am likely to think that is proper but not likely to send money.

95. If I hear a story about Darfur and how women are leaving the refugee camps to gather wood are being raped I’m likely to be outraged. I’m also likely to wonder why these women’s husbands aren’t protecting them.

96. If I ever heard these stories about Darfur it is my privilege not to care or even consider that the reason the second story exists is because all the men in the first have already been killed.

97. It is my right to maintain the belief that men oppress women despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

Glenn Greenwald's partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours

David Miranda, partner of Guardian interviewer of whistleblower Edward Snowden, questioned under Terrorism Act


Glenn Greenwald (right) and his partner David Miranda, who was held by UK authorities at Heathrow aiport. Photograph: Glenn Greenwald

The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.

David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.30am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.

The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last under an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.

Miranda was released without charge, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.

Since 5 June, Greenwald has written a series of stories revealing the NSA's electronic surveillance programmes, detailed in thousands of files passed to him by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Guardian has also published a number of stories about blanket electronic surveillance by Britain's GCHQ, also based on documents from Snowden.

While in Berlin, Miranda had visited Laura Poitras, the US film-maker who has also been working on the Snowden files with Greenwald and the Guardian.

"This is a profound attack on press freedoms and the news gathering process," Greenwald said. "To detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ. The actions of the UK pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere.

"But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: it will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively."

A spokesperson for the Guardian said: "We were dismayed that the partner of a Guardian journalist who has been writing about the security services was detained for nearly nine hours while passing through Heathrow airport. We are urgently seeking clarification from the British authorities."

A spokesperson for Scotland Yard said: "At 08:05 on Sunday, 18 August a 28-year-old man was detained at Heathrow airport under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. He was not arrested. He was subsequently released at 17:00."

Scotland Yard refused to be drawn on why Miranda was stopped using powers which enable police officers to stop and question travellers at UK ports and airports.

There was no comment from the Home Office in relation to the detention. However, there was surprise last night in political circles and elsewhere. Labour MP Tom Watson said that he was shocked at the news and called for it to be made clear if any ministers were involved in authorising the detention.

He said: "It's almost impossible, even without full knowledge of the case, to conclude that Glenn Greenwald's partner was a terrorist suspect.

"I think that we need to know if any ministers knew about this decision, and exactly who authorised it."

"The clause in this act is not meant to be used as a catch-all that can be used in this way."

Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act has been widely criticised for giving police broad powers under the guise of anti-terror legislation to stop and search individuals without prior authorisation or reasonable suspicion – setting it apart from other police powers.

Those stopped have no automatic right to legal advice and it is a criminal offence to refuse to co-operate with questioning under schedule 7, which critics say is a curtailment of the right to silence.

Last month the UK government said it would reduce the maximum period of detention to six hours and promised a review of the operation on schedule 7 amid concerns it unfairly targets minority groups and gives individuals fewer legal protections than they would have if detained at a police station.

Seeing threats, feds target instructors of polygraph-beating methods

By Marisa Taylor and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. | McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Federal agents have launched a criminal investigation of instructors who claim they can teach job applicants how to pass lie detector tests as part of the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on security violators and leakers.

The criminal inquiry, which hasn’t been acknowledged publicly, is aimed at discouraging criminals and spies from infiltrating the U.S. government by using the polygraph-beating techniques, which are said to include controlled breathing, muscle tensing, tongue biting and mental arithmetic.

So far, authorities have targeted at least two instructors, one of whom has pleaded guilty to federal charges, several people familiar with the investigation told McClatchy. Investigators confiscated business records from the two men, which included the names of as many as 5,000 people who’d sought polygraph-beating advice. U.S. agencies have determined that at least 20 of them applied for government and federal contracting jobs, and at least half of that group was hired, including by the National Security Agency.

By attempting to prosecute the instructors, federal officials are adopting a controversial legal stance that sharing such information should be treated as a crime and isn’t protected under the First Amendment in some circumstances.

“Nothing like this has been done before,” John Schwartz, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, said of the legal approach in a June speech to a professional polygraphers’ conference in Charlotte, N.C., that a McClatchy reporter attended. “Most certainly our nation’s security will be enhanced.”

“There are a lot of bad people out there. . . . This will help us remove some of those pests from society,” he added.

The undercover stings are being cited as the latest examples of the Obama administration’s emphasis on rooting out “insider threats,” a catchall phrase meant to describe employees who might become spies, leak to the news media, commit crimes or become corrupted in some way.

The federal government previously treated such instructors only as nuisances, partly because the polygraph-beating techniques are unproven. Instructors have openly advertised and discussed their techniques online, in books and on national television. As many as 30 people or businesses across the country claim in Web advertisements that they can teach someone how to beat a polygraph test, according to U.S. government estimates.

In the last year, authorities have launched stings targeting Doug Williams, a former Oklahoma City police polygrapher, and Chad Dixon, an Indiana man who’s said to have been inspired by Williams’ book on the techniques, people who are familiar with the investigation told McClatchy. Dixon has pleaded guilty to federal charges of obstructing an agency proceeding and wire fraud. Prosecutors have indicated that they plan to ask a federal judge to sentence Dixon to two years in prison. Williams declined to comment other than to say he’s done nothing wrong.

While legal experts agree that authorities could pursue the prosecution, some accused the government of overreaching in the name of national security.

The federal government polygraphs about 70,000 people a year for security clearances and jobs, but most courts won’t allow polygraph results to be submitted as evidence, citing the machines’ unreliability. Scientists question whether polygraphers can identify liars by interpreting measurements of blood pressure, sweat activity and respiration. Researchers say the polygraph-beating techniques can’t be detected with certainty, either.

Citing the scientific skepticism, one attorney compared the prosecution of polygraph instructors to indicting someone for practicing voodoo.

“If someone stabs a voodoo doll in the heart with a pin and the victim they intended to kill drops dead of a heart attack, are they guilty of murder?” asked Gene Iredale, a California attorney who often represents federal defendants. “What if the person who dropped dead believed in voodoo?

“These are the types of questions that are generally debated in law school, not inside a courtroom. The real question should be: Does the federal government want to use its resources to pursue this kind of case? I would argue it does not.”

In his speech in June, Customs official Schwartz acknowledged that teaching the techniques _ known in polygraph circles as “countermeasures” _ isn’t always illegal and might be protected under the First Amendment in some situations.

“I’m teaching about countermeasures right now. The polygraph schools are supposed to be teaching about countermeasures,” he said. “So teaching about countermeasures in and of itself certainly is not only not illegal, it’s protected. You have a right to free speech in this country.”

But instructors may be prosecuted if they know that the people they’re teaching plan to lie about crimes during federal polygraphs, he said.

In that scenario, prosecutors may pursue charges of false statements, wire fraud, obstructing an agency proceeding and “misprision of felony,” which is defined as having knowledge of serious criminal conduct and attempting to conceal it.

“When that conspiracy occurs, both parties are guilty,” said Schwartz, a veteran federal polygrapher who heads Customs’ polygraph program. “And it makes more sense to me to try to investigate the party that’s doing the training because when you do that, you eliminate dozens or hundreds or thousands of people . . . from getting that training.”

Schwartz, who was involved in the federal investigation, cited the risk of drug traffickers infiltrating his agency as justification for prosecutors going after instructors. However, he told the crowd of law enforcement officials from across the country that he wasn’t discussing a specific case but a “blueprint” of how state and local officials might pursue a prosecution.

Urging them to join forces with his agency, he declared in a more than two-hour speech that “evil will always seek ways to hide the truth.”

“When you identify insider threats and you eliminate insider threats, then that agency is more efficient and more effective,” Schwartz said.

The Obama administration’s Insider Threat Program is intended to deter what the government condemns as betrayals by “trusted insiders” such as Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the agency’s secret communications data-collection programs. The administration launched the Insider Threat Program in 2011 after Army Pfc. Bradley Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents from a classified computer network and sent them to WikiLeaks, the anti-government secrecy group.

As part of the program, employees are being urged to report their co-workers for a wide range of “risky” behaviors, personality traits and attitudes, McClatchy reported in June. Broad definitions of insider threats also give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of conduct other than leaking classified information, McClatchy found.

Customs, which polygraphs about 10,000 applicants a year, has documented more than 200 polygraph confessions of wrongdoing since Congress mandated that the agency’s applicants undergo testing more than two years ago. Many of the applicants who confessed said they either were directly involved in drug or immigrant smuggling or were closely associated with traffickers.

Ten Customs applicants were accused of trying to use countermeasures to pass their polygraphs. All were denied jobs as part of Customs’ crackdown on the methods, dubbed “Operation Lie Busters.”

“Others involved in the conspiracy were successful infiltrators in other agencies,” Customs said in a memo about the investigation.

Documents in Dixon’s case are filed under seal in federal court, and prosecutors didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Several people familiar with the investigation said Dixon and Williams had agreed to meet with undercover agents and teach them how to pass polygraph tests for a fee. The agents then posed as people connected to a drug trafficker and as a correctional officer who’d smuggled drugs into a jail and had received a sexual favor from an underage girl.

Dixon wouldn’t say how much he was paid, but people familiar with countermeasures training said others generally charged $1,000 for a one-on-one session.

Dixon, 34, also declined to provide specifics on his guilty plea but he said he’d become an instructor because he couldn’t find work as an electrical contractor. During the investigation, his house went into foreclosure.

“My wife and I are terrified,” he said. “I stumbled into this. I’m a Little League coach in Indiana. I don’t have any law enforcement background.”

Prosecutors plan to ask for prison time even though Dixon has agreed to cooperate, has no criminal record and has four young children. The maximum sentence for the two charges is 25 years in prison.

“The emotional and financial burden has been staggering,” Dixon said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I somehow imagine I was committing a crime.”

Williams, 67, has openly advertised his teachings for three decades, even discussing them in detail on “60 Minutes” and other national news programs. A self-professed “crusader” who’s railed against the use of polygraph testing, he testified in congressional hearings that led to the 1988 banning of polygraph testing by most private employers.

Some opponents of polygraph testing, including a Wisconsin police chief, said they were concerned that the federal government also might be secretly investigating them, not for helping criminals to lie but for being critical of the government’s polygraph programs. In his speech to the American Association of Police Polygraphists, Schwartz said he thought that those who “protest the loudest and the longest” against polygraph testing “are the ones that I believe we need to focus our attention on.”

McClatchy contacted Schwartz about his speech, but he refused to comment.

Some federal officials questioned whether people who taught countermeasures should be prosecuted.

Although polygraphers, who are known as examiners, are trained to identify people who are using the techniques with special equipment, “there’s absolutely nothing that’s codified about countermeasures,” said one federal security official with polygraph expertise, who asked not to be named for fear of being retaliated against. “It’s the most ambiguous thing that people can debate. If you have a guy who’s nervous about his test, the easiest way out of it for the examiner is to say it’s countermeasures, when it’s not.”

The security official described Williams as a “gadfly” who’s known for teaching ineffective methods. Polygraphers assert that one of Williams’ signature techniques produces erratic respiration patterns on a polygraph test. Demonstrating their disdain for his methods, many polygraphers call the pattern the “Bart Simpson.”

“Prosecutors are trying to make an example of him,” the official said. “It serves to elevate polygraph to something it hasn’t been before, that teaching countermeasures is akin to teaching bomb making, and that there’s something inherently disloyal about disseminating this type of information.”

Federal authorities, meanwhile, have concluded that some of the applicants who sought advice on countermeasures and were hired didn’t use the training after all. The list of people who sought out Dixon and Williams mostly comprises people who bought books or videos but didn’t hire the men for one-on-one training.

Charles Honts, a psychology professor at Boise State University, said laboratory studies he’d conducted showed that countermeasures could be taught in one-on-one sessions to about 25 percent of the people who were tested. Polygraphers have no reliable way to detect someone who’s using the techniques, he said. In fact, he concluded that a significant number of people are wrongfully accused.

Honts, a former government polygraph researcher, attributed the criminal investigation to “a growing institutional paranoia in the federal government because they can’t control all their secrets.”

Russell Ehlers, a police chief in Wisconsin, said he wouldn’t be surprised if federal authorities had scrutinized him. Schwartz cited an unnamed police chief in the Midwest who was “advertising on the Internet that he would like to teach people to pass the polygraph” as an example of someone who should be investigated. In the last several months, Ehlers said, he’s noticed what appears to be Internet visitors from the Justice Department checking out his website that advises applicants on how to get a job at a police department.

In his off-duty hours, Ehlers sold a video that discussed countermeasures, but he said he’d recently stopped selling it as a precaution after hearing about the criminal investigation. He said he’d intended it to help “good” police officer candidates pass the test because he thought that innocent people were routinely accused of lying during polygraph tests.

“Imagine you’re a 25-year-old who has dreamed of serving in the field of law enforcement,” he said. “You finally make it, only to find yourself booted out of the hiring process, the result of a false-positive exam result. In my opinion, that’s a real problem, not the sharing of information on countermeasures.”

George Maschke, a former Army Reserve intelligence officer who’s a translator and runs a website that’s critical of polygraph testing, said he also suspected he’d been targeted although he’d done nothing illegal.

In May, the translator received an unsolicited email in Persian from someone purporting to be “a member of an Islamic group that seeks to restore freedom to Iraq.”

“Because the federal police are suspicious of me, they want to do a lie detector test on me,” the email read.

The emailer asked for a copy of Maschke’s book, which describes countermeasures, and for Maschke to help “in any other way.”

Maschke said he suspected the email was a ruse by federal agents. He advised the person “to comply with applicable laws,” according to an email he showed McClatchy.

Although federal authorities haven’t contacted him, Maschke said he worried that visitors to his site, AntiPolygraph.org, would be targeted simply for looking for information about polygraph testing.

"The criminalization of the imparting of information sets a pernicious precedent,” he said. “It is fundamentally wrong, and bad public policy, for the government to resort to entrapment to silence speech that it does not approve of."

What Does It Really Matter If Companies Are Tracking Us Online?

A scholar argues that the core issue is protecting consumers from corporations that are developing ever more sophisticated techniques for getting people to part with their money.
 

Rebecca J. Rosen

Say you, like me, went to bed a little early last night. And when you woke up this morning, you decided to catch the episode of the Daily Show that you missed. So you pointed your browser over to thedailyshow.com, and there, as you expected, is John Oliver. But there's something else there too, at least if you're me: flashing deals for hotels in Annapolis, which just so happens to be where I've been planning a weekend away.

We all are familiar at this point with the targeted ads that follow us around the web, linked to our browsing history. In this case, Google (who served me this ad) only got it half right: I had already booked a place.

And yet, I am planning a trip to Annapolis, and Google "knows" this, and is using this information to try to sell me stuff, a practice commonly criticized as "creepy." But as philosopher Evan Selinger asserted in Slate last year, the word "creepy" isn't particularly illuminating. What, really, is wrong with ad tracking? Why does it bother us? What is the problem?

A new paper by professor Ryan Calo at the University of Washington goes the furthest I have seen in elucidating the potential harms of digital-ad targeting. And his argument basically boils down to this: This isn't about the sanctity of the individual or even, strictly speaking, about privacy. This is about protecting consumers from profit-seeking corporations, who are gaining an insurmountable edge in their efforts to get people to part with their money.

But those are my words. Here are Calo's:

The digitization of commerce dramatically alters the capacity of firms to influence consumers at a personal level. A specific set of emerging technologies and techniques will empower corporations to discover and exploit the limits of each, individual consumer's ability to pursue his or her own self-interest. Firms will increasingly be able to trigger irrationality or vulnerability in consumers -- leading to actual and perceived harms that challenge the limits of consumer protection law, but which regulators can scarcely ignore.

Calo is taking the long view here. Digital marketing techniques haven't quite gotten sophisticated enough to take advantage of a consumer's idiosyncratic irrationalities. Right now, he writes, digital advertising's main strategy is relevance: putting the relevant ad in front of the right person. But Calo foresees a much more personalized approach down the road -- not just the right good, but a customized pitch, delivered late at night, when the company knows you, particularly, have a tendency to make impulse purchases.

This, of course, is not all bad. Calo describes many potential upsides to a marketplace in which companies have much, much more information about their customers. "Firms," he writes, "have incentives to look for ways to exploit consumers, but they also have powerful incentives to look for ways to help and delight them." So perhaps website will appear in color palettes that are highly appealing to you, or a hotel you book at will know about your allergies and prepares your room with a hypoallergenic pillow, or, most obviously, Google will serve you an ad for just the right hotel, at just the right price, before you've already booked elsewhere. And consumers too are getting more information about the products they are considering buying: There's Amazon reviews, apps that scan bar codes for price comparisons, and sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp that will help you avoid rip-offs of all kinds. There may be nothing particularly embarrassing or personal about my vulnerabilities as a consumer, but I do not especially want to share them with companies so that I can be manipulated for their financial gain.

But that said, Calo still sees an imbalance in how this will play out, and that's because consumers are not perfectly rational, as the field of behavioral economics has demonstrated over and over. This leaves them vulnerable to persuasion to make decisions that are counter to their own self-interest. Oftentimes, this has negative but ultimately small consequences: "Maybe a consumer pays a little extra for a product, for instance, or purchases an item on impulse," Calo writes.

But the possibilities for exploiting those vulnerabilities are amplified dramatically when bolstered by the kinds of data Google and other firms have access to. Marketing has always been about getting consumers to spend money, but Calo argues that data tracking enables a level of sophistication that is different in kind, not just degree. "Digital market manipulation combines, for the first time, a certain kind of personalization with the intense systemization made possible by mediated consumption," he explains.

This is not a problem when the interests of firms and consumers align, as in the above examples, but, as Calo writes, "it would be highly surprising were every use to which a company placed intimate knowledge of its consumer in fact a win-win." It's where interests diverge, and actual harms are incurred, that the trouble lies.

So where does that trouble lie? What are those actual harms? Calo outlines three distinct types of damages. The first are economic: market failures, not unlike others that the government has decided merit corrective regulatory measures in the past, such as the regulation of cigarette ads. But in the case of digital marketing, Calo says, the inefficiencies aren't going to be such clear cases. Rather, the failures will come in the form of consumers being systematically charged more than they would have been had less information about that particular consumer.

Sometimes, that will mean exploiting people who are not of a particular class, say upcharging men for flowers if a computer recognizes that that he's looking for flowers the day after his anniversary. But other times there could be troubling equity concerns. For example, Calo points to the work of NYU professor Oren Bar-Gill who has shown how companies can use complexity in credit-card contracts, mortgages, and cell-phone contracts to "hinder or distort competition and impose outsized burden on the least sophisticated consumers." Calo says such price-discrimination tactics, applied en masse online, could "lead to regressive distribution effects," also known as preying on the vulnerable.

But perhaps you think those inefficiencies will be balanced out at the level of the aggregate market. Calo says there is still reason to be concerned at the level of the individual. He writes, "Even if we do not believe the economic harm story at the level of the market, the mechanism of harm at the level of the consumer is rather clear: The consumer is shedding information that, without her knowledge or against her wishes, will be used to charge her as much as possible, to sell her a product or service she does not need or needs less of, or to convince her in a way that she would find objectionable were she aware of the practice." There may be nothing particularly embarrassing or personal about my vulnerabilities as a consumer, but I do not especially want to share them with companies so that I can be manipulated for their financial gain. For Calo, that discomfort, the feeling I experience knowing that my vulnerabilities are being tracked in order to be used, is a violation of my privacy, the second area of harm Calo sees.

This is closely related to Calo's third area of concern: autonomy, which in the context of the consumer means, he says, "the absence of vulnerability, i.e., the capacity to act upon the market in our self-interest." When corporations purposely seek out a consumer's vulnerabilities and use them to direct her dollars back to them, that is a violation of that person's autonomy.

(It should be clear that Calo here is only looking at corporate data tracking techniques for the purpose of selling goods and services. This, while troubling for the reasons detailed above, is "not tantamount to massive surveillance by the government. Firms do not have a monopoly on coercion and their motive -- profit -- is discernible, stable, and relatively acceptable when compared with the dangers that attend tyranny.")

The practices Calo describes may be unprecedented, but the harms are familiar, and consumer protection is something courts and legislatures have had to deal with before. They've had to "decide what makes a contract term 'unconscionable,' what kinds of enrichments are 'unjust,' when influence is 'undue,' what constitutes 'fair' dealing, where strategic behavior becomes 'bad faith,' when interest rates becomes 'usury' or higher prices 'gauging,' and on and on," Calo writes. "Such line drawing is endemic to consumer protection and other areas of the law concerned with basic notions of fair play."

That line drawing will undoubtedly be complicated and uneven. How can we know what someone's autonomous consumption desires are? When does consumption slip from autonomously directed to manipulated? (I for one am not even convinced people have ex-ante consumption desires that are identifiable beyond what marketers somewhere have shaped, though Calo's point is specifically about certain big-data-enabled strategies, not kludgy, old-fashioned marketing.) But despite the complexities, regulation is one route, and, if done well, will not suppress the online ad industry in general -- only the predatory practices at its margins.

But Calo also offers another option: "Imagine," he writes, "if major platforms such as Facebook and Google were obligated, as a matter of law or best practice, to offer a paid version of their service." Web companies do need revenue, after all. Fees may be the best way to both protect consumers and fund the tools we all use online. There may be other hazards with such an approach (e.g. will this systematically relegate poorer people to lesser version of these services?), but Calo says that there would be ways to address them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. There will be time and processes for sorting out how to protect consumers in such a landscape. The value of Calo's paper is not in laying out where we should go from here but in disentangling the mess of problems related to identity and privacy online, and extracting from that mess a set of issues that are recognizable: consumer protection. In doing so, he gives, finally, a shape and a texture to that creepiness we know so well, but have understand so poorly.

Firefighter waved at police and was handcuffed and threatened

By Mark Wilson


This cellphone picture, taken from the social networking website Facebook, shows George Madison Jr., left, handcuffed and on the ground next to an Evansville Police Department officer. Citing an internal affairs investigation, the police department has declined to identify the officer.

EVANSVILLE — Evansville firefighter George Madison Jr. has filed a formal complaint about an Evansville Police Department officer who he said stopped him during a bicycle ride Tuesday afternoon, threatened him with a stun gun and handcuffed him.

Madison 38, who also is youth pastor at Memorial Baptist Church, said the incident occurred about 3:30 p.m. on South Weinbach Avenue after he waved at officers in a patrol car as he was riding his bike.

The father of four said he feared for his safety during the stop by two officers on South Weinbach Avenue.

Madison declined to identify the police officers, saying that he wanted to respect the police department’s internal investigative procedures.

However, a report generated by Evansville/Vanderburgh Central Dispatch about the traffic stop, known informally as a "run card," identifies the officers as Officer Clifton and Officer Clegg. The two city police officers with those last names are Darin Clifton and Jason Clegg.

“I remember looking down the barrel of a Taser, because (the officer) was gritting his teeth and saying, ‘Don’t make me pull this trigger,’” Madison said Wednesday afternoon.

Evansville Police Chief Bolin on Wednesday said Madison called him on Tuesday and related what had happened. Bolin said he told Madison the department would “look into it.”

The chief said Madison had met with the police department’s internal affairs division to file a formal complaint. Officers would investigate the complaint and make a recommendation to him, Bolin said.

Bolin said Wednesday he had not spoken with the officers involved and because of the internal investigation declined to provide the officers' identities.

“I need to stay impartial until I hear both sides,” Bolin said.

A statement released by the police department earlier Wednesday said the “investigation began this morning. In order to preserve the integrity of the investigation and to ensure fairness for all of the involved parties, the EPD will not comment on the incident at this time.”

During the incident a passer-by took a cellphone picture which was shared on Madison’s Facebook page. Madison said the stop also was witnessed by a second officer who was in the car and by a member of his church who stopped when she saw him in handcuffs.

He said it happened as he was riding north on Weinbach approaching the four-way stop at Riverside Drive and the police officers were southbound.

Madison admitted that he was not going to stop at the intersection but said the officer startled him by making a sudden left turn in front of him.

“He did it real fast,” he said. “I thought it was one of the guys (police) I knew.”

At that point, Madison said he raised his hands to wave.

Madison said he has met many police officers through his job and his participation boxing in the annual Guns-N-Hoses charity fundraiser. But he said he did not know the officers who stopped him.

“The officer jumped out and says, ‘What are you doing throwing your hands up at us?’” Madison said. “He is talking to me as he is coming toward me. I tried to explain, but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.”

He said the officer’s angry attitude made him feel angry and alone.

“It was like everything had disappeared, and I was there alone and I got scared,” he said.

Madison said he knew Bolin from their community involvements and began to call him on his cellphone hoping to diffuse the situation.

However, the officer told him to put the phone down. Madison said that when he hesitated, the officer grabbed his arm holding the phone, causing Madison to flinch.

Before he knew it, Madison said, the officer had his stun device out.

“It was literally maybe inches from my face,” he said. “I immediately threw my hands in the air. What he asked me to do I was more than willing to do. I said ‘Please don’t hurt me.’ The next thing I know I’m laying down the ground and they cuffed me.”

Madison said the officer asked him his name, date of birth and place of employment.

“Once they found out I was a fireman their attitude changed,” he said.

At that point the officers allowed him to come to his knees. He said the officer began trying to engage him in conversation, but Madison said he became wary of the conversation’s turn.

“At first I was talking to them. Then I said ‘I don’t have anything else to say to you,”’ he said. “Finally, they asked me if I had calmed down, and I kept telling them I was never out of sorts.”

Madison said the officer explained to him that for all he knew Madison could have been trying to call others to the scene. Madison said he tried to explain his perspective as a young, black male.

“It is experiences like these that people hold onto,” Madison said. “I refuse to allow a bad experience that I have with one person or officer to change my perception. I just refuse to allow this experience to make me feel any different.”

But Madison said he also believes he can’t ignore what happened, and that the officers should be held accountable.

“I don’t want this man to lose his job or weeks of pay, but I have to look at it from the standpoint of I have a family to think about. I shouldn’t feel bad for standing up for my own rights,” he said. “The fact that I am a firefighter or preacher doesn’t make a difference. All anybody wants is to be treated like a human being.”

Can You Trust Your Computer?

by Richard Stallman

Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call “trusted computing”, large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. (Microsoft's version of this scheme is called Palladium.) Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal.

Proprietary software means, fundamentally, that you don't control what it does; you can't study the source code, or change it. It's not surprising that clever businessmen find ways to use their control to put you at a disadvantage. Microsoft has done this several times: one version of Windows was designed to report to Microsoft all the software on your hard disk; a recent “security” upgrade in Windows Media Player required users to agree to new restrictions. But Microsoft is not alone: the KaZaa music-sharing software is designed so that KaZaa's business partner can rent out the use of your computer to its clients. These malicious features are often secret, but even once you know about them it is hard to remove them, since you don't have the source code.

In the past, these were isolated incidents. “Trusted computing” would make the practice pervasive. “Treacherous computing” is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you. In fact, it is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer. Every operation may require explicit permission.

The technical idea underlying treacherous computing is that the computer includes a digital encryption and signature device, and the keys are kept secret from you. Proprietary programs will use this device to control which other programs you can run, which documents or data you can access, and what programs you can pass them to. These programs will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If you don't allow your computer to obtain the new rules periodically from the Internet, some capabilities will automatically cease to function.

Of course, Hollywood and the record companies plan to use treacherous computing for Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), so that downloaded videos and music can be played only on one specified computer. Sharing will be entirely impossible, at least using the authorized files that you would get from those companies. You, the public, ought to have both the freedom and the ability to share these things. (I expect that someone will find a way to produce unencrypted versions, and to upload and share them, so DRM will not entirely succeed, but that is no excuse for the system.)

Making sharing impossible is bad enough, but it gets worse. There are plans to use the same facility for email and documents—resulting in email that disappears in two weeks, or documents that can only be read on the computers in one company.

Imagine if you get an email from your boss telling you to do something that you think is risky; a month later, when it backfires, you can't use the email to show that the decision was not yours. “Getting it in writing” doesn't protect you when the order is written in disappearing ink.

Imagine if you get an email from your boss stating a policy that is illegal or morally outrageous, such as to shred your company's audit documents, or to allow a dangerous threat to your country to move forward unchecked. Today you can send this to a reporter and expose the activity. With treacherous computing, the reporter won't be able to read the document; her computer will refuse to obey her. Treacherous computing becomes a paradise for corruption.

Word processors such as Microsoft Word could use treacherous computing when they save your documents, to make sure no competing word processors can read them. Today we must figure out the secrets of Word format by laborious experiments in order to make free word processors read Word documents. If Word encrypts documents using treacherous computing when saving them, the free software community won't have a chance of developing software to read them—and if we could, such programs might even be forbidden by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Programs that use treacherous computing will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If Microsoft, or the US government, does not like what you said in a document you wrote, they could post new instructions telling all computers to refuse to let anyone read that document. Each computer would obey when it downloads the new instructions. Your writing would be subject to 1984-style retroactive erasure. You might be unable to read it yourself.

You might think you can find out what nasty things a treacherous-computing application does, study how painful they are, and decide whether to accept them. Even if you can find this out, it would be foolish to accept the deal, but you can't even expect the deal to stand still. Once you come to depend on using the program, you are hooked and they know it; then they can change the deal. Some applications will automatically download upgrades that will do something different—and they won't give you a choice about whether to upgrade.

Today you can avoid being restricted by proprietary software by not using it. If you run GNU/Linux or another free operating system, and if you avoid installing proprietary applications on it, then you are in charge of what your computer does. If a free program has a malicious feature, other developers in the community will take it out, and you can use the corrected version. You can also run free application programs and tools on nonfree operating systems; this falls short of fully giving you freedom, but many users do it.

Treacherous computing puts the existence of free operating systems and free applications at risk, because you may not be able to run them at all. Some versions of treacherous computing would require the operating system to be specifically authorized by a particular company. Free operating systems could not be installed. Some versions of treacherous computing would require every program to be specifically authorized by the operating system developer. You could not run free applications on such a system. If you did figure out how, and told someone, that could be a crime.

There are proposals already for US laws that would require all computers to support treacherous computing, and to prohibit connecting old computers to the Internet. The CBDTPA (we call it the Consume But Don't Try Programming Act) is one of them. But even if they don't legally force you to switch to treacherous computing, the pressure to accept it may be enormous. Today people often use Word format for communication, although this causes several sorts of problems (see “We Can Put an End to Word Attachments”). If only a treacherous-computing machine can read the latest Word documents, many people will switch to it, if they view the situation only in terms of individual action (take it or leave it). To oppose treacherous computing, we must join together and confront the situation as a collective choice.

For further information about treacherous computing, see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html.

To block treacherous computing will require large numbers of citizens to organize. We need your help! Please support Defective by Design, the FSF's campaign against Digital Restrictions Management.

Postscripts

1. The computer security field uses the term “trusted computing” in a different way—beware of confusion between the two meanings.

2. The GNU Project distributes the GNU Privacy Guard, a program that implements public-key encryption and digital signatures, which you can use to send secure and private email. It is useful to explore how GPG differs from treacherous computing, and see what makes one helpful and the other so dangerous.

When someone uses GPG to send you an encrypted document, and you use GPG to decode it, the result is an unencrypted document that you can read, forward, copy, and even reencrypt to send it securely to someone else. A treacherous-computing application would let you read the words on the screen, but would not let you produce an unencrypted document that you could use in other ways. GPG, a free software package, makes security features available to the users; they use it. Treacherous computing is designed to impose restrictions on the users; it uses them.

3. The supporters of treacherous computing focus their discourse on its beneficial uses. What they say is often correct, just not important.

Like most hardware, treacherous-computing hardware can be used for purposes which are not harmful. But these features can be implemented in other ways, without treacherous-computing hardware. The principal difference that treacherous computing makes for users is the nasty consequence: rigging your computer to work against you.

What they say is true, and what I say is true. Put them together and what do you get? Treacherous computing is a plan to take away our freedom, while offering minor benefits to distract us from what we would lose.

4. Microsoft presents Palladium as a security measure, and claims that it will protect against viruses, but this claim is evidently false. A presentation by Microsoft Research in October 2002 stated that one of the specifications of Palladium is that existing operating systems and applications will continue to run; therefore, viruses will continue to be able to do all the things that they can do today.

When Microsoft employees speak of “security” in connection with Palladium, they do not mean what we normally mean by that word: protecting your machine from things you do not want. They mean protecting your copies of data on your machine from access by you in ways others do not want. A slide in the presentation listed several types of secrets Palladium could be used to keep, including “third party secrets” and “user secrets”—but it put “user secrets” in quotation marks, recognizing that this is somewhat of an absurdity in the context of Palladium.

The presentation made frequent use of other terms that we frequently associate with the context of security, such as “attack”, “malicious code”, “spoofing”, as well as “trusted”. None of them means what it normally means. “Attack” doesn't mean someone trying to hurt you, it means you trying to copy music. “Malicious code” means code installed by you to do what someone else doesn't want your machine to do. “Spoofing” doesn't mean someone's fooling you, it means your fooling Palladium. And so on.

5. A previous statement by the Palladium developers stated the basic premise that whoever developed or collected information should have total control of how you use it. This would represent a revolutionary overturn of past ideas of ethics and of the legal system, and create an unprecedented system of control. The specific problems of these systems are no accident; they result from the basic goal. It is the goal we must reject.

New meta-analysis checks the correlation between intelligence and faith

First systematic analysis of its kind even proposes reasons for the negative correlation.

by Akshat Rathi

Euripides was not an atheist and only used the word “fool” to provoke his audience. But, if you look at the studies conducted over the past century, you will find that those with religious beliefs will, on the whole, score lower on tests of intelligence. That is the conclusion of psychologists Miron Zuckerman and Jordan Silberman of the University of Rochester and Judith Hall of Northeastern University, who have published a meta-analysis in Personality and Social Psychology Review.

This is the first systematic meta-analysis of 63 studies conducted in between 1928 and 2012. In such an analysis, the authors look at each study’s sample size, quality of data collection, and analysis methods, then account for biases that may have inadvertently crept into the work. This data is next refracted through the prism of statistical theory to draw an overarching conclusion of what scholars in this field find. “Our conclusion,” as Zuckerman puts it, “is not new.”

“If you count the number of studies which find a positive correlation against those that find a negative correlation, you can draw the same conclusion because most studies find a negative correlation,” added Zuckerman. But that conclusion would be qualitative, because the studies’ methods vary. “What we have done is to draw that conclusion more accurately through statistical analysis.”

Setting the boundaries

Out of 63 studies, 53 showed a negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity, while 10 showed a positive one. Significant negative correlations were seen in 35 studies, whereas only two studies showed significant positive correlations.

The three psychologists have defined intelligence as the “ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience”. In short this is analytic intelligence, not the newly identified forms of creative and emotional intelligence, which are still subjects of dispute. In the various studies being examined, analytic intelligence has been measured in many different ways, including GPA (grade point average), UEE (university entrance exams), Mensa membership, and Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests among others.

Religiosity is defined as involvement in some (or all) facets of religion, which includes belief in the supernatural, offering gifts to this supernatural, and performing rituals affirming their beliefs. Other signs of religiosity were measured using surveys, church attendance, and membership of religious organizations.

Among the thousands of people involved in these studies, the authors found that gender or education made no difference to the correlation between religiosity and intelligence. However, age mattered. The negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence was found to be the weakest among the pre-college population. That may be because of the uniqueness of the college experience, where most teenagers leave home for the first time, get exposed to new ideas, and are given a higher degree of freedom to act on them. Instead, in pre-college years, religious beliefs may largely reflect those of the family.

The gifted, the atheists

Is there a chance that higher intelligence makes people less religious? Two sets of large scale studies tried to answer this question.

The first are based on the Terman cohort of the gifted, started in 1921 by Lewis Terman, a psychologist at Stanford University. (The cohort is still being followed.) In the study, Terman recruited more than 1,500 children whose IQ exceeded 135 at the age of 10. Two studies used this data, one conducted by Robin Sears at Columbia University in 1995 and the other by Michael McCullough at the University of Miami in 2005, and they found that “Termites,” as the gifted are called, were less religious when compared to the general public.

What makes these results remarkable is not just that these gifted folks were less religious, something that is seen among elite scientists as well, but that 60 percent of the Termites reported receiving “very strict” or “considerable” religious training while 33 percent received little training. Thus, almost all of the gifted Termites grew up to be less religious.

The second set of studies is based on students of New York’s Hunter College Elementary School for the intellectually gifted. This school selects its students based on a test given at a young age. To study their religiosity, graduates of this school were queried when they were between the ages of 38 and 50. They all had IQs that exceeded 140, and the study found that only 16 percent of them derived personal satisfaction from religion (about the same number as the Termites).

So while the Hunter study did not control for factors such as socioeconomic status or occupation, it did find that high intelligence at a young age preceded lower belief in religion many years later.

Other studies on the topic have been ambiguous. A 2009 study, led by Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster, compared religious beliefs and average national IQs of 137 countries. In their sample, only 23 countries had more than 20 percent atheists, which constituted, according to Lynn, "virtually all higher IQ countries." The positive correlation between intelligence and atheism was a strong one, but the study came under criticism from Gordon Lynch of Birkbeck College, because it did not account for complex social, economical, and historical factors.
Enlarge / The relationship between countries' belief in a god and national average IQ.

It’s the beliefs, stupid

Overall, Zuckerman, Silberman, and Hall conclude that, according to their meta-analysis, there is little doubt a significant negative correlation exists (i.e. people who are more religious score worse on varying measures of intelligence). The correlation is more negative when religiosity measures beliefs rather than behavior. That may be because religious behavior may be used to help someone appear to be part of a group even though they may not believe in the supernatural.

So why do more intelligent people appear to be less religious? There are three possible explanations. One possibility is that more intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. A 1992 meta-analysis of seven studies found that intelligent people may be more likely to become atheists when they live in religious societies, because intelligent people tend to be nonconformists.

The most common explanation is that intelligent people don’t like to accept any beliefs that are not subject to empirical tests or logical reasoning. Zuckerman writes in the review that intelligent people may think more analytically, which is “controlled, systematic, and slow”, as opposed to intuitively, which is “heuristic-based, mostly non-conscious, and fast." That analytical thinking leads to lower religiosity.

The final explanation is that intelligence provides whatever functions religion does for believers. There are four such functions as proposed by Zuckerman, Silberman, and Hall.

First, religion provides people a sense of control. This was demonstrated in a series of studies conducted between 2008 and 2010, which showed that threatening volunteers’ sense of personal control increased their belief in God. This may be because people believe that God makes the world more predictable and thus less threatening. Much like believing in God, higher intelligence has been shown to grant people more “self-efficacy,” which is the belief in one’s ability to achieve goals. So, if intelligent people have more control, then perhaps they don’t need religion in the same way that others do.

Second, religion provides self-regulation. In a 2009 study, it was shown that religion was associated with better well-being. This was interpreted as an indication that religious people were more disciplined in pursuing goals and deferring small rewards for large ones. Separately, a 2008 meta-analysis noted that intelligent people were less impulsive. Delayed gratification may require better working memory, which intelligent people have. So, just like before, intelligence is acting as a substitute for religion, helping people delay gratification without needing divine interventions.

Third, religion provides self-enhancement. A 1997 meta-analysis compared the intrinsically religious, who privately believe in the supernatural, to the to extrinsically religious, where people are merely part of a religious group without believing in God. The intrinsically religious felt better about themselves than the general public. Similarly, intelligent people have shown to have a sense of higher self-worth. Again, intelligence may be providing something that religion does.

Last, and possibly the most intriguing, is that religion provides attachment. Religious people often claim to have a personal relationship with God. They use God as an “anchor” when faced with the loss of a loved one or a broken relationship. Turns out intelligent people find their “anchor” in people by building relationships. Studies have found that those who score highly on measures of intelligence are more likely to be married and less likely to get divorced. Thus, intelligent people have less need to seek religion as substitute for companionship.

Give me the caveats

This meta-analysis only targets analytic intelligence, which surely is not the full measure of human intelligence despite the ongoing debate about how to define the rest of it. Also, although the review encompasses all studies conducted from 1928 to 2012, it only does so for studies written in the English language (two foreign language studies were considered only because a translation was available). The authors believe there are similar studies conducted in Japan and Latin America, but they did not have the time or resources to include them.

Zuckerman also warns that, despite there being thousands of participants overall ranging among all ages, almost all of them belong to Western society. More than 87 percent of the participants were from the US, the UK, and Canada. So after controlling for other factors, they can only confidently show strong negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity among American Protestants. For Catholicism and Judaism, the correlation may be less negative.

There are some complications to the explanations too. For example, the non-conformist theory of atheism cannot apply to societies where the majority are atheists, like Scandinavian countries. The possible explanations are also currently just that—possible. They need to be empirically studied.

Finally, not all studies reviewed are of equal quality, and some of them have been criticized by other researchers. But that is exactly why meta-analyses are performed. They help overcome limitations of sample size, poor data, and bad questionable analyses of individual studies conclusion.

As always, the word “correlation” is important. It hasn’t been shown that higher intelligence causes someone to be less religious. So, it wouldn’t be right to call someone a dimwit just because of their religious beliefs. Unless, of course, you are an ancient playwright looking to provoke your audience.

Guess Whose Email the NSA Can't Read

Its own.

Well, NSA employees can read each other's emails, probably. I mean, it wouldn't make much sense to have an email system if your employees couldn't read the emails. Would it?

It's just that the NSA can't read its employees' emails when you ask them to do it in order to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request.

"There's no central method to search an email [sic] at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," the NSA's FOIA officer told reporter Justin Elliott last week, apparently with a straight face. Elliott had asked for emails between NSA employees and National Geographic employees during a particular period (for a reason he explains in the linked report if you care). They called back asking him to specify particular employees (they have about 30,000) because, they said, they are not technically capable of searching their own email in bulk. Not. Technically. Capable. The system is "a little antiquated and archaic," the officer told Elliot.

The NSA's budget is estimated at $8-10 billion, it reportedly intercepts and stores 1.7 billion communications every day, using facilities that consume upwards of 70 megawatts of power, making it the single largest power consumer in the state of Maryland (it uses as much as the entire city of Annapolis), and it has some of the fastest if not the fastest supercomputers in the entire world not even counting the monster it is currently building in Utah. But its employees are still using, what, AOL.com? "You've got classified mail!" Okay then.