Who owns your e-mails?

When L/Cpl Justin Ellsworth was killed in Iraq, his father decided to create a memorial to his dead son using the e-mails he wrote and received while in the Middle East. But Yahoo! is refusing to release the messages. Who owns your e-mail after you die?
Police sergeant John Ellsworth has sparked a privacy debate in the US that has prompted many to reconsider who can access their e-mail.

Mr Ellsworth is locked in a legal fight with Yahoo! after his son, L/Cpl Justin Ellsworth, a US marine serving in Falluja, was killed by a roadside bomb.

L/Cpl Ellsworth was 20 when he died at the beginning of November, less than two months after arriving in Iraq. During that short spell of duty, the young soldier had spent much of his spare time e-mailing his folks back home through Yahoo! webmail.

"He was keeping a journal of sorts to put together for future history," John Ellsworth told BBC News. "He wanted to make sure that his generation, as well as following generations, have actual words from somebody who was there."

They are attempting, in effect, by contract, to extinguish a property right to the contents in the account

But Mr Ellsworth Snr was shocked when Yahoo! turned down a request to release his dead son's e-mails, on the basis of privacy.

Recognising the emotions involved, Yahoo! says it must nevertheless honour the terms of service which all 40 million US Yahoo! account holders must agree to. These state that survivors have no rights to the e-mail accounts of the deceased. Yahoo! accounts are deactivated after 90 days if they have not been used.

Other big players in the webmail market, such as AOL and Hotmail, have procedures for transferring e-mail accounts of the deceased to next of kin. Yahoo! UK, meanwhile, has less strict privacy terms than its US counterpart.

But Mr Ellsworth is not about to give up. Having spent weeks trying, unsuccessfully, to crack the password to his son's account, he has taken his story to the media, appearing on US network TV. He has also enlisted lawyers to fight his corner.

The case has split public opinion, with some urging Yahoo! to make a compassionate exception, while privacy activists believe there should be no exceptions.

A debate hosted by the website ZDnet illustrates the broad spectrum of feeling.


Yahoo's terms: The source of the debate
"The man is devastated at the prospect of his son's memories, what essentially could be his son's last written words, being obliterated forever. Just let him see it," writes one contributor.

Another talks of a family member who committed suicide: "There are many questions that remain unanswered for us and yet, I know that she would not have wanted us to access her e-mail account after her death."

So who does own your e-mail after you die?

Solicitor and technology expert Leigh Ellis, of Kaltons Technology Specialists, says in English law at least, the copyright vesting in e-mails, like other possessions, is included in the estate of the deceased. In which case the copyright as property, would pass to the executor.

The fact that this is webmail, and so is contained on disks owned by Yahoo!, makes no difference. The contents of the e-mails remain the property of those who wrote them.

But the nub of the Ellsworth case appears to rest on Yahoo's clause which states "You agree that your Yahoo! account is non-transferable and any rights to your... contents... terminate upon your death."

"They are attempting, in effect, by contract, to extinguish a property right to the contents in the account," says Mr Ellis.

Police access

However, another clause in the same Yahoo! terms appears to give some room for manoeuvre. It states that "Yahoo! may... disclose your... content if required to do so by law or in a good faith..."

The term is clearly drafted to give the police rights to access an account.

"Strictly speaking, anyone trying to access the e-mails of the deceased is fighting an uphill struggle against these clauses," says Mr Ellis. But given the emotions of a case such as Mr Ellsworth's, "Yahoo! may in the end relent to the adverse publicity arising from their resistance and the particular circumstances of the case.

"Defending non-disclosure of information after a person has passed away on the basis of privacy would present some difficulty in the UK as the Data Protection Act would not apply to the information."

In future, however, many webmailers may choose to side-step this process by entrusting their passwords to a loved one.

District sued over suspension

A Circleville family has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the authority of a school district to discipline students for incidents occurring off school grounds.
Back in June, a Valley Central High School student froze an egg, stuffed it into a high-powered "potato launcher," then shot it at a passing school bus, shattering the bus window and spraying glass into a child's eyes, neck and shoulder. This week, the egg shooter's father sued the school district for punishing his son.
According to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court by parent Steve Valastro, the Valley Central school district and its superintendent, Richard Hooley, violated his 17-year-old son's civil rights by suspending him from school for five months, from September 2004 until the end of this month. Valastro is seeking unspecified damages plus attorney fees and court costs.
This marks the fifth case that attorney Michael H. Sussman of Goshen has filed in the past year against local school districts for disciplining students. He won the first four cases, he said, and expects to win this one as well.
Valley Central's disciplinary code addresses only student acts performed on school grounds, Sussman said. Since the teen stood on his own property when he shot the spud gun, the school district had no right to discipline him, he said.
"School districts do not have responsibility outside their own parameters to regulate children's conduct," Sussman said. Because of the suspension, he added, the teen, a champion wrestler in his senior year of high school, could lose out on college scholarships because he was not allowed to compete in matches.
"It's possible the family could make money because their rights were violated," the attorney said. "That's how the system works."
Hooley declined to comment. But parents of children who were on the attacked bus had plenty to say.
"The nerve to do something like that!" shouted Jay Buchalski, a state police trooper whose daughter sat two seats back from the shattered windows. "Parents should get together and sue the kid's parents."
Terry Marotta, whose 16-year-old daughter was covered with shattered glass, agreed. The frozen egg went in one window and out another on the other side of the bus, she said.
"If it had hit someone directly, the person could have been blinded, handicapped or killed," Marotta said. "If I were the parent, I wouldn't brush it under the rug as if it were some kind of high school prank."
Valastro refused to comment for this story. Speaking on his behalf, Sussman said the criminal justice system has already disciplined the teen, whose name is not being used because of his age and the low level of the charge. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and will likely be sentenced next month to three years' probation and 50 hours of community service.
"Due process requires notice of what behaviors can be punished," Sussman said. "Without that notice, you can't exercise that authority."
Court judges have sided with Sussman in similar cases. In May, Orange County Judge Stewart Rosenwasser ruled that Newburgh Free Academy could not continue suspending Elzie Coleman, an 18-year-old student and Olympic-caliber sprinter who had been involved in a series of fistfights outside school. In September, Stephen Robinson, a federal judge in White Plains, ruled that Yonkers high school students who had been suspended for protesting budget cuts should be allowed to return to their classes.
The following month, another federal court judge, Colleen McMahon, ordered the Warwick School District to reinstate Brook Banker, a suspended high school volleyball star. The district failed to allow Banker to dispute the charges of having alcohol at school before punishing her, the judge ruled. And last month, the court ruled that a 16-year-old boy from Minisink should be returned to school because the girls he's accused of sexually abusing had gone unpunished in connection with the boy's countercharge that their behavior was consensual, violating the boy's right of equal protection under the law.
"Everything is going haywire," Buchalski said. "It is a strange world anymore."

< The important point here is that what the kid did has nothing to do with the school as far as punishment. Look at it this way: the school gets hurt, the school decides the punishment. See a problem yet? >

Auto Makers Forced To Unbundle Stereo from Vehicles

Detroit, MI ? A ruling today by the Michigan Supreme Court will force Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota and Volkswagen to stop installing stereos in vehicles sold in the US by the end of January 2005.

The antitrust suit filed by Sony against the automakers claimed the manufacturers use their monopoly in the automobile market to lock out third-party suppliers of car stereos. The suit also claimed that automakers engineered their cars to make use of alternate stereos difficult or impractical. The sole reason for this is to prevent users from switching to an aftermarket stereo.

John McNeal lead counsel for the automakers had this to say about the ruling and possible appeals. "There are still several arguments in this case that will need to be weighed seriously and we feel that our odds in the appeals process look good. For the sake of the consumer we can only hope that this decision is reversed quickly."

Many in the industry feel the biggest winners are the makers of aftermarket car audio equipment and companies specializing in installing stereos. New cars will no longer be able to play any form of media as shipped, so consumers wishing to listen to the radio or CD's will be forced to have a stereo installed.

"This is a great decision for the industry and the consumer. No longer will consumers be forced to use the inadequate and seamlessly integrated stereos provided by the automakers," said Michel Tso representative for Sony. "The consumer will only see benefits from this. They will now have limitless options for a stereo and will not be forced to pay for a stereo they don't want."

McNeal counters that this ruling will result in an increase in the base price of all cars of about $1000 for the next five years. "While our cost for the stereo itself is only $15 the cost of retooling production facilities to meet the requirements of this ruling will be staggering. We have no choice but to pass these costs onto the consumer."

N Korea wages war on long hair

Men's hairstyles reflect their 'ideological spirit'
North Korea has launched an intensive media assault on its latest arch enemy - the wrong haircut.

A campaign exhorting men to get a proper short-back-and-sides has been aired by state-run Pyongyang television.

The series is entitled Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle.

While the campaign has been carried out primarily on television, reports have appeared in North Korean press and radio, urging tidy hairstyles and proper attire.

It is the strongest media campaign against men's sloppy appearances mounted in the reclusive and impoverished Communist state in recent years.

The propaganda drive on grooming standards has gone a stage further than previous attempts. This time television identifies specific individuals deemed too shoddy.

Crew cut

Pyongyang television started the campaign last autumn with a five-part series in its regular TV Common Sense programme.


How the propaganda campaign looks on Pyongyang television

Stressing hygiene and health, it showed various state-approved short hairstyles including the "flat-top crew cut," "middle hairstyle," "low hairstyle," and "high hairstyle" - variations from one to five centimetres in length.

The programme allowed men aged over 50 seven centimetres of upper hair to cover balding.

It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy.

Men should get a haircut every 15 days, it recommended.

Named and shamed

A second, and unprecedented, TV series this winter showed hidden-camera style video of "long-haired" men in various locations throughout Pyongyang.

Hair is a very important issue that shows the people's cultural standards and mental and moral state

Minju Choson newspaper
In a break with North Korean TV's usual approach, the programme gave their names and addresses, and challenged the fashion victims directly over their appearance.

The North Korean media normally reserves the reporting of names of its citizens to exemplary individuals who show high communist virtues.

The series was shot at various public locations - on the street, at a sports stadium, a barbershop, a bus stop, a restaurant, a department store.

Some unruly-haired pedestrians or customers captured on camera "meanly ran away", the programme said, while others made excuses about being too busy to get a trim.

Television newsreels such as "Employees of Pyongyang Textile Plant keep their hairstyle and dressing neat and tidy" and "Hairdressers at Ch'anggwangwo'n manage men's hair according to the demands of the military-first era" have also aired.

What not to wear

State radio programmes such as "Dressing in accordance with our people's emotion and taste" link clothes and appearance with the wearer's "ideological and mental state".

Nodong Sinmun newspaper
Tidy attire "is important in repelling the enemies' manoeuvres to infiltrate corrupt capitalist ideas and lifestyle and establishing the socialist lifestyle of the military-first era," the radio says.

Newspapers too highlight the civic advantages of short hair and smart shoes.

Hair is a "very important issue that shows the people's cultural standards and mental and moral state", argues Minju Choson, a government daily.

"No matter how good the clothes, if one does not wear tidy shoes, one's personality will be downgraded."

For party papers such as Nodong Sinmun, the struggle against foreign and anti-communist influence is being fought out in the arena of personal appearance.

"People who wear other's style of dress and live in other's style will become fools and that nation will come to ruin," it says.

Student sues over suspension for wearing anti-gay shirt

LOS ANGELES ? A San Diego County school district was sued this week for allegedly violating the civil rights of a student who was suspended for wearing a T-shirt reading ?Homosexuality is Shameful.?

A federal lawsuit filed June 2 against the Poway Unified School District says Tyler Chase Harper was suspended for expressing his ?sincerely held religious beliefs? during and after an April 21 ?Day of Silence.? During the national event, high school and college students remain silent to show support for homosexuals, bisexuals and trans-gender students.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

?Because it?s a legal matter, the district is unable to comment,? said Sharon Raffer, spokeswoman for the 32,000-student school district.

Harper, 16, of Poway, is a sophomore at Poway High School. According to the suit, he is a Christian who believes that ?homosexual behavior is immoral, damaging to the practitioners and to human society in general, and is demonstrably contrary to the teachings of the Bible.?

According to the suit, on April 21 he wore a T-shirt hand-lettered with the words ?I Will Not Accept What God Has Condemned? on the front, and on the back it read ?Homosexuality is Shameful? and ?Romans 1:27,? a reference to a Bible passage.

When he wore a similar shirt the next day, a classroom teacher told him that he was violating the school dress code and must remove the T-shirt or go to the office, according to the lawsuit.

The suit claims that the school?s assistant principal said the shirt violated the code because it had homemade printing and was ?inflammatory,? and that the teenager was suspended by the principal when he refused to remove it.

The lawsuit also contends that a sheriff?s deputy whom it did not identify told the student that the shirt ?could encourage uprising and violence against homosexuals? and that a school vice principal said he must ?leave his faith in the car.?

According to the lawsuit, Poway High School?s student policy handbook states that the dress code forbids ?violence or hate behavior, including derogatory connotations directed toward sexual identity.? It alleges the policy is too broad and vague.

The school district policy forbids expressions of ?racial, ethnic, or religious prejudice? that might create a ?clear and present danger? of unlawful acts or disruption of school operations, the suit said.

But the lawsuit argues that Harper?s messages did neither.

?When are public school officials going to learn they are not allowed to silence constitutionally protected student speech just because they disagree with the student?? said a statement by Robert Tyler, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, which filed the suit.

The group is asking the court to bar the district and school from ?selectively banning religious expression? and to grant at least $25,000 in damages.

The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based defense fund provides funding, training and legal aid to lawyers and others to defend what it defines as ?the legal battle for religious freedom, sanctity of life, and the preservation of marriage and the family.?

The suit, which names the district and high school and various officials as defendants, alleges violation of the student?s rights of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and equal protection of the law.

Man Wants $1,000 To Return Soldier's Camera

PHILADELPHIA -- Many NBC 10 News viewers have responded with offers of help for a local soldier who lost his camera at an Eagles game. They wrote with outrage after hearing about a man in Syracuse who offered to return the camera -- for $1,000.

But NBC 10 heard from a lot of good-hearted people, too-- many offering help to the soldier.

Roger Schreiner understands why Army Spc. Elwood Wrigley's missing holiday photos mean so much to him. Schreiner is a former Army ranger who still keeps pictures of his bootcamp buddies at his Internet office in Fishtown. He said that those photos helped him get through the 1991 Gulf War in Kuwait.

"If you look in the footlockers of these soldiers, what do you see? You see photos of the people that they care about, photos that get them through every day," Schreiner said.

Schreiner, like many others who e-mailed NBC 10, were upset at Michael Crook. Crook said that he had found Wrigley's camera at last Sunday's.Eagles/Bengals game. He sent NBC 10 some e-mails and pictures as proof and he directed us to his Web site. He offered to return the photos for $1,000.

In a phone interview he made no apologies for asking for a finders' fee.

"To be perfectly honest, I have absolutely no remorse," Crook told reporter Vince DeMentri.

In turned out the photos weren't Wrigley's. The soldier's disappointment, though, turned into anger after learning of Crook's offer.

Wrigley was touched, though, by Schreiner's offer to pay a $500 reward for the return of his camera.

"Thanks Roger, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. It's good to see there are good people out there. Especially being a veteran himself, he understands. He understands what is the value of it. It's irreplaceable, honestly," Wrigley said.

Wrigley has volunteered to go back to Afghanistan for a second tour and he leaves next Tuesday.

Schreiner wasn't the only one to express his disgust at Crook asking for money to return Wrigley's photos. Here are several e-mails received by NBC 10:

"It makes me sick to know that people would do that to someone, especially with pictures that are so precious," said Erika, of Hamilton, N.J.

"It's such a shame that someone would do that to another person, let alone a person who is fighting to keep our freedom," said Melissa Whittington.

"Although I don't have the camera, my wife and I would be happy to get a replacement one for him, if it would help," said William Callahan.

Wrigley told NBC 10 that he doesn't care about the camera. He just wants the memory stick. He was sitting in section 228, row 15, seats 8 and 9 of Lincoln Financial Field. He lost a Sony Cyber-shot digital camera.

With Cameras on the Corner, Your Ticket Is in the Mail

IN a perfectly clear day in October, Carla Correa, a confessed neurotic when it comes to getting a ticket, powered her Honda Civic toward an intersection in Baltimore on her way to visit her boyfriend in Washington. When the light turned yellow, she did not simply cruise through, but instead slammed on the brakes.

Seconds later, a truck rammed her from behind, and her car was wrecked.

Why would she do such a thing? The answer could be found in a box mounted on a nearby post, with a lens pointed at her license plate.

"It's an intersection that I've been through a million times before, and I knew that it was a quick yellow light," Ms. Correa, 25, said in a telephone interview. She also knew that the intersection was equipped with a camera. "And when I saw the yellow, I freaked out."

Though unhurt, Ms. Correa has made a resolution: from now on, if it seems the light is about to turn red, she is going to run it. "If I hadn't known there was a red-light camera there, I would have gone through," she said. "Every time I see the red-light camera, I'm terrified by it. It's a $70 ticket." (Actually, it's $75.)

Her experience is not an anomaly. Cameras like the one she spotted are now in use in more than 100 American cities. Activated by road sensors when a car enters an intersection belatedly, the systems provide evidence of a violation, including photos of the license plate and in some cases, the driver.

While Baltimore reports that violations for running red lights have gone down 60 percent at the 47 intersections with such cameras, several studies in recent years - in places like San Diego, Charlotte, N.C., and Australia - have offered a fuzzier picture. The studies have shown that the reduction in side-angle collisions at the intersections has been wholly or largely offset by an increase in rear-end accidents like Ms. Correa's.

In addition, there has been criticism of the cameras' use to generate revenue from fines - in some cases exceeding $300 per violation, with points on a driver's record - and of revenue-sharing arrangements with providers of the technology. Those arrangements, critics contend, have led to the placement of cameras not necessarily where they would best promote safety, but where they will rack up the most violations.

Those questions, along with malfunctions and legal challenges, have led some local governments to remove the cameras. Virginia's legislature is considering whether to renew a law, expiring in July, that permits the cameras, used in six Virginia cities.

Despite the problems, many cities, including Philadelphia and Cincinnati, are moving forward in installing automated red-light cameras. Many others couldn't be happier with the technology. "We think it's doing a wonderful job," said Steve Galgano, executive director for engineering in the traffic division of the Department of Transportation in New York City, where 50 such cameras are in operation - along with 200 decoys - at periodically changing locations.

The story of the red-light camera is one of technology, safety, politics, behavior modification - and unintended consequences.

And some contend that revenue has trumped safety.

"I disapprove of the privatization of a police function," said Mark Kleinschmidt, a city councilman in Chapel Hill, N.C., where a private contractor not only installed the camera system but also carried out the initial screening of potential violations. Last year Mr. Kleinschmidt persuaded a slim majority of his colleagues to end the program after four months.

"I don't think we should bid it out to a corporation; it's strictly a police function," he said. "Then there's this distaste in the minds of many, that the whole concept is a corporate moneymaking scheme."

For their part, camera-equipped cities and the private companies that contract with them dismiss such claims, saying the cameras have reduced violations. The largest provider in the country, Affiliated Computer Services, has 55 clients in the United States and Canada, including Washington and San Diego. It provides camera systems and in some cases administers the processing of citations. The cameras first made their appearance in Europe and Australia in the 1970's, but came to the United States only in 1993, when, with little fanfare or warning, New York City started installing them.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which endorses the camera systems' use, 1,000 people are killed each year in red-light violations. Advocates of the cameras have championed them as effective tools in reducing accidents and deaths, freeing officers to perform other crime-fighting duties, and as an efficient way to raise revenue in the process.

When Mayor Anthony A. Williams of Washington acknowledged that twofold aim in 2002 ("The cameras are about safety and revenue," he said), his comments outraged AAA, which withdrew its support for the camera program there. About 120 cities in 18 states and the District of Columbia now use the cameras, according to statistics from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an enthusiastic backer of the cameras that receives all of its financing from insurers.

"We've been able to document clearly that red-light running is a problem," said Richard Retting, a senior transportation engineer at the institute and an author of several studies on the subject. The cameras "are very effective tools for enhancing safety consistently," he said, adding: "Drivers know what to expect. They know if they break a law there'll be a consequence."

That consequence is a ticket in the mail. Here is the chain of events before that happens: In most cases, a magnetic coil is embedded in the pavement just before an intersection. When the light turns red, this activates the coil, which helps the system record any vehicle that rolls over the coil, and its speed. A photo is snapped of the license plate, sometimes from both the front and the back (in California the driver's face is photographed), and the company or local officials, or both, review the image, and the ticket is sent out.

Officials at Affiliated Computer Services say they are developing laser technology that would be aimed at cars. If effective, it could replace the coil system. A pilot program in several cities will be introduced in the next few months, but officials declined to name the cities.

Some drivers have escalated the technological arms race by using simple sprays and shields that they believe obscure the license plates when photographed. The sprays, called PhotoBlocker and Photo Fog, cost $20 to $30. The drivers who swear by them claim that they have run red lights and not received tickets. Officials at Affiliated say that studies conducted by the company show the sprays to be ineffective. Nonetheless, many states, like Maryland, now specifically outlaw the use of them.

The resistance to the cameras is not just at the individual level, however.

Organizations like the National Motorists Association, a drivers' advocacy group based in Wisconsin, denounce the use of cameras. "It violates due process," said Greg Mauz, a truck driver from Florida and researcher for the association, "because it assumes you're guilty until proven innocent." Roger Hedgecock, a former mayor of San Diego who is now a radio talk show host there, called the cameras an old-fashioned shakedown.

In a court case that resulted in the dismissal of nearly 300 tickets in 2001, a former employee testified that Lockheed Martin IMS, which operated the San Diego system, regularly scouted intersections in some cities based on high traffic volume, not locations that were most accident-prone. Documents revealed that officials sought locations with steep gradients and short yellow-light times.

A California Department of Transportation auditor's report in 2002 concluded that the yellow-light duration at two camera-equipped intersections in San Diego had been shortened, but said this had been a mistake. Thousands of drivers were ticketed, though a handful won dismissals. The city's camera program was suspended in 2001, but has since resumed.

Today, officials at Affiliated Computer Services, which purchased Lockheed Martin IMS in August 2001 for $825 million, acknowledge the past troubles in San Diego. "It was a breakdown in communication with us - the vendor - and the department of transportation," said Maurice J. Hannigan, a vice president at the company.

To reverse some of the ill will, the company says it has restructured its contracts with cities to avoid any perception that it would benefit from maximizing the number of citations. Instead of receiving a share of the fines, Mr. Hannigan said, the company is now typically paid a flat monthly fee.

Even when the fines go solely to the public coffers, the tickets can be costly. In Sacramento, the maximum penalty for running a red light is $351. Those numbers add up. Even in Washington, where the fine is $75, the city has collected $28.9 million since installing the cameras in 1999, according to the city's Web site. (In some jurisdictions, violators also have points added to their record, which can increase their insurance rates.)

Until recently, findings on the effectiveness of cameras have been mixed at best. One of the most-cited studies, performed by Mr. Retting of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, found that crashes decreased at all intersections in Oxnard, Calif., by 5.4 percent after cameras were installed at some locations. Mr. Retting did not look specifically at intersections with the cameras, arguing that a spillover effect from the camera intersections would affect the data at all intersections.

Studies elsewhere, however, made a striking finding: rear-end accidents have shot up at intersections with cameras. In 2002 a consultant's study in San Diego reported that the number of crashes at camera intersections had increased by 3 percent after the cameras were installed, almost all of it a result of a 37 percent increase in rear-endings. "This finding is not consistent with the program's overall objective of improving traffic safety," the report's authors concluded.

But studies to be presented at a transportation conference next week in Washington by two researchers, Forrest M. Council and Bhagwant Persaud, reach a more nuanced conclusion. They found that rear-endings had gone up nearly 15 percent after cameras were installed in seven cities, with injuries from such accidents up 24 percent. Right-angle crashes declined by 24 percent, with injuries down nearly 16 percent. Weighing the economic impact and severity of injuries, they found the overall effect positive.

Or as Mr. Hannigan of Affiliated put it: "Would you rather have someone coming at you at 40 miles an hour, going through your window, or rear-ending you at 10?"

Toilet Brush Warning Wins Consumer Award

DETROIT - The sign on the toilet brush says it best: "Do not use for personal hygiene."

That admonition was the winner of an anti-lawsuit group's contest for the wackiest consumer warning label of the year.

The sponsor, Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, says the goal is "to reveal how lawsuits, and concern about lawsuits, have created a need for common sense warnings on products."

The $500 first prize went to Ed Gyetvai, of Oldcastle, Ontario, who submitted the toilet-brush label. A $250 second prize went to Matt Johnson, of Naperville, Ill., for a label on a children's scooter that said, "This product moves when used."

A $100 third prize went to Ann Marie Taylor, of Camden, S.C., who submitted a warning from a digital thermometer that said, "Once used rectally, the thermometer should not be used orally."

This year's contest coincides with a drive by President Bush (news - web sites) and congressional Republicans to put caps and other limits on jury awards in liability cases.

"Warning labels are a sign of our lawsuit-plagued times," said group President Robert Dorigo Jones. "From the moment we raise our head in the morning off pillows that bear those famous Do Not Remove warnings, to when we drop back in bed at night, we are overwhelmed with warnings."

The leader of a group that opposes the campaign to limit lawsuits admits that while some warning labels may seem stupid, even dumb warnings can do good.

"There are many cases of warning labels saving lives," said Joanne Doroshow, executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy in New York. "It's much better to be very cautious ... than to be afraid of being made fun of by a tort reform group."

The Wacky Warning Label Contest is in its eighth year.

Judge orders drug addict to stop having children

ROCHESTER, New York (AP) -- A Family Court judge who last year stirred debate about parental responsibilities ordered a second drug-addicted woman to have no more children until she proves she can look after the seven she already has.

The 31-year-old mother, identified in court papers only as Judgette W., lost custody of her children, ranging in age from eight months to 12 years, in child-neglect hearings dating back to 2000. Six are in foster care at state expense and one lives with an aunt.

The youngest child and two others tested positive for cocaine at birth and all seven "were removed from her care and custody because she could not and did not take care of them," Judge Marilyn O'Connor said in a December 22 decision made public Tuesday.

"Because every child born deserves a mother and a father, or at the very least a mother or a father, this court is once again taking this unusual step of ordering this biological mother to conceive no more children until she reclaims her children from foster care or other caretakers," O'Connor wrote.

In a similar ruling last March, O'Connor ordered a drug-addicted, homeless mother of four to refrain from bearing children until she won back care of her children. The decision, the first of its kind in New York, is being appealed.

Wisconsin and Ohio have upheld similar rulings involving "deadbeat dads" who failed to pay child support. But in other states, judges have turned back attempts to interfere with a person's right to procreate.

O'Connor said she was not forcing contraception or sterilization on the mother, who had children with seven different men, nor requiring her to get an abortion should she become pregnant. But she warned that the woman could be jailed for contempt if she has another child.

The New York Civil Liberties Union maintained that the opinion cannot be enforced because it "tramples on a fundamental right -- the right to procreate."

"There is no question the circumstances of this case are deeply troubling," said the group's executive director, Donna Lieberman. "But ordering a woman under threat of jail not to have any more babies ... puts the court squarely in the bedroom. And that's no place for the government."

Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire

THE computer circuits that control hand-held music players, cellphones and organizers may soon be in a new location: inside electronically controlled guns.

Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark are building a handgun designed to fire only when its circuitry and software recognize the grip of an authorized shooter.

Sensors in the handle measure the pressure the hand exerts as it squeezes the trigger. Then algorithms check the shooter's grip with stored, authorized patterns to give the go-ahead.

"We can build a brain inside the gun," said Timothy N. Chang, a professor of electrical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who devised the hardware for the grip-recognition system. "The technology is becoming so cheap that we can have not just a computer in every home, but a computer in every gun."

The main function of the system is to distinguish a legitimate shooter from, for example, a child who comes upon a handgun in a drawer. Electronics within the gun could one day include Global Positioning System receivers, accelerometers and other devices that could record the time and direction of gunfire and help reconstruct events in a crime investigation.

For a decade, researchers at many labs have been working on so-called smart or personalized handguns designed to prevent accidents. These use fingerprint scanners to recognize authorized shooters, or require the shooter to wear a small token on the hand that wirelessly transmits an unlocking code to the weapon.

At the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Michael L. Recce, an associate professor in the department of information systems, decided instead to concentrate on the shooter's characteristic grip. Dr. Recce created the software that does the pattern recognition for the gun.

Typically, it takes one-tenth of a second to pull a trigger, Dr. Recce said. While that is a short period, it is long enough for a computer to match the patterns and process the authorization.

To bring Dr. Recce's recognition software to life, Dr. Chang created several generations of circuits using off-the-shelf electronic components. He equipped the grips of real and fake handguns with sensors that could generate a charge proportional to the pressure put on them.

The pressure on the grip and trigger are read during the beginning of the trigger pull. The signals are sent to an analog-to-digital converter so that they can be handled by the digital signal processor. Patterns of different users can be stored, and the gun programmed to allow one or more shooters.

At first the group worked mainly with a simulated shooting range designed for police training. "You can't have guns in a university lab," Dr. Recce said.

The computer analysis of hand-pressure patterns showed that one person's grip could be distinguished from another's. "A person grasps a tennis racket or a pen or golf club in an individual, consistent way," he said. "That's what we're counting on."

During the past year, the team has moved from simulators to tests with live ammunition and real semiautomatic handguns fitted with pressure sensors in the grip. For five months, five officers from the institute's campus police force have been trying out the weaponry at a Bayonne firing range. "We've been going once a month since June," said Mark J. Cyr, a sergeant in the campus police. "I use a regular 9-millimeter Beretta weapon that fires like any other weapon; it doesn't feel any different."

For now, a computer cord tethers the gun to a laptop that houses the circuitry and pattern-recognition software. In the next three months, though, Dr. Chang said, the circuits would move from the laptop into the magazine of the gun. "All the digital signal processing will be built right in," he said.

Michael Tocci, a captain in the Bayonne Police Department, recently saw a demonstration of the technology. One shooter was authorized, Captain Tocci said. When this person pulled the trigger, a green light flashed. "But when other officers picked up the gun to fire, the computer flashed red to register that they weren't authorized," he said.

The system had a 90 percent recognition rate, said Donald H. Sebastian, senior vice president for research and development at the institute. "That's better fidelity than we expected with 16 sensors in the grip," Dr. Sebastian said. "But we'll be adding more sensors, and that rate will improve."

Dr. Chang said the grip for the wireless system would have 32 pressure sensors. "Now, in the worst case, the system fails in one out of 10 cases," he said. "But we've already seen that with the new sensor array, the recognition is much higher."

Dr. Sebastian said the team was considering adding palm recognition as a backup.

To develop a future weapon, the university is working with a ballistics research and development company, Metal Storm, of Arlington, Va. "We'll use our recognition system on their weapons platform," Dr. Sebastian said.

The Metal Storm gun has plenty of room for the pattern-recognition circuitry. Rounds are kept in the gun's barrel, not in a magazine in the grip. There is a small amount of the gun's own electronic circuitry in the handle to control the firing, said Arthur Schatz, senior vice president for operations at the company. "Otherwise it's pretty much empty, allowing the grip system to be housed within the handle," he said.

Captain Tocci of the Bayonne Police Department said the pattern-recognition technology was promising, particularly because accidental deaths occur when guns are not safely stored. "If a child picks up a gun that is not secured, this way it can't be fired," he said. Guns taken from a home during a robbery would be rendered useless, too.

"The premise the gun is based on has credibility," he said. When people see a live demonstration of the pattern-recognition system working, he said, "you think, yes, this is possible."

Does History Repeat Itself?

< Idiot Alert >
Something terrible is happening in the land of wooden shoes, windmills, Rembrandt (search) and wonderful breakfasts.

A Dutch hospital is euthanizing ? killing ? newborn babies who don't measure up to an arbitrary standard set by the hospital. The hospital at first requested guidelines for so-called "mercy killings" of newborns. It then revealed it has been engaging in the practice without any guidelines at all. Three years after the Dutch parliament passed a law allowing doctors to actively kill patients they deemed terminally ill, in great pain and with no prospects for recovery, it has come to this. At least with the elderly sick, they had to be consulted about their wishes. Newborns receive no such privilege.

I'm not surprised.

Once a single category of life is declassified as having no intrinsic value and a right to life, it is a very short step to declassify other categories when they are considered inconvenient, or burdensome.

Holland is a perfect example of what happens when there is no governing moral standard. The Dutch have decriminalized most drugs and people smoke dope openly in venues set aside for the practice. Prostitutes display their wares like mannequins in department store windows. And now we have at least one hospital murdering already born babies because someone has decreed them unworthy of life.

If ever there was a slippery slope to be studied, this is it.

The Dutch are now grappling with their open border policy. They have admitted thousands of radical Islamists who have not assimilated and are threatening the stability of the nation. A Dutch filmmaker was murdered last month by a radical who didn't like a film he made criticizing Islam's treatment of women.

And now we have the killing of newborns. All of this in a country where the Nazis murdered Ann Frank just because she was Jewish and therefore less than human.

Does history repeat? In Holland, apparently it does.
< /Idiot Alert >

< First of all, individuals have the right to choose their own life or death, a right they are afforded in the modern society. The criteria are anything but arbitrary. Triage is a necessary part of medicine and no matter what you think or say it not only should not but CAN NOT be eliminated. The "right to life" with these people always means the right to Try to Survive, a far cry indeed from having an actual life. One small reason that NOONE gets appropriate medical care without lots of money is that the extra that could be spread around is poorly spent. Decriminalizing drugs has led to a huge reduction in drug problems. >

Laser Wielder Faces Big Penalties

NEWARK, New Jersey -- Federal authorities Tuesday used the Patriot Act to charge a man with pointing a laser beam at an airplane overhead and temporarily blinding the pilot and co-pilot.

The FBI acknowledged the incident had no connection to terrorism but called David Banach's actions "foolhardy and negligent."

Banach, 38, of Parsippany, New Jersey, admitted to federal agents that he pointed the light beam at a jet and a helicopter over his home near Teterboro Airport last week, authorities said. Initially, he claimed his daughter aimed the device at the helicopter, they said.

He is the first person arrested after a recent rash of reports around the nation of laser beams hitting airplanes.

Banach was charged only in connection with the jet. He was accused of interfering with the operator of a mass transportation vehicle and making false statements to the FBI, and was released on $100,000 bail. He could get up to 25 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000.

Banach's lawyer, Gina Mendola-Longarzo, said her client was simply using the handheld device to look at stars with his daughter on the family's deck. She said Banach bought the device on the internet for $100 for his job testing fiber-optic cable.

"He wasn't trying to harm any person, any aircraft or anything like that," she said.

The jet, a chartered Cessna Citation, was coming in for a landing last Wednesday with six people aboard when a green light beam struck the windshield three times at about 3,000 feet, according to court documents. The flash temporarily blinded both the pilot and co-pilot, but they were later able to land the plane safely, authorities said.

"Not only was the safety of the pilot and passengers placed in jeopardy by Banach's actions, so were countless innocent civilians on the ground in this densely populated area," said Joseph Billy, agent in charge of the FBI's Newark bureau.

Then, on Friday, a helicopter carrying Port Authority detectives was hit by a laser beam as its crew surveyed the area to try to pinpoint the origin of the original beam.

According to the FBI, the Patriot Act does not describe helicopters as "mass transportation vehicles." As for why Banach was not charged with some other offense over the helicopter incident, Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, did not immediately return calls for comment.

A few hours after the helicopter was hit by the laser, FBI agents canvassed Banach's neighborhood, trying to find the source of the beams. Banach told the agents it was his daughter who shined the laser at the helicopter, according to court papers.

Similar incidents have been reported in Cleveland, Houston, Washington, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Medford, Oregon, raising fears that the light beams could temporarily blind cockpit crews and lead to accidents.

Last month, the FBI and the Homeland Security Department sent a memo to law enforcement agencies saying there is evidence that terrorists have explored using lasers as weapons. But federal officials have said there is no evidence the current string of incidents represents a terrorist plot.

Penn's Big Adventure

Last Thursday I was flying to LA on the Midnight flight. I went through security my usual sour stuff. I beeped, of course, and was shuttled to the "toss-em" line. A security guy came over. I assumed the position. I had a button up shirt on that was untucked. He reached around while he was behind me and grabbed around my front pocket. I guess he was going for my flashlight, but the area could have loosely been called "crotch." I said, "You have to ask me before you touch me or it's assault."

He said, "Once you cross that line, I can do whatever I want."

I said that wasn't true. I say that I have the option of saying no and not flying. He said, "Are you going to let me search you, or do I just throw you out?"

I said, "Finish up, and then call the police please."

When he was finished with my shoes, he said, "Okay, you can go."

I said, "I'd like to see your supervisor and I'd like LVPD to come here as well. I was assaulted by you."

He said, "You're free to go, there's no problem."

I said, "I have a problem, please send someone over."

They sent a guy over and I said that I'd like to register a complaint. I insisted on his name and badge number. I filled it out with my name. The supervisor, I think trying to intimidate me, asked for my license, and I gave it to him happily as he wrote down information. I kept saying, "Please get the police," and they kept saying, "You're free to go, we don't need the police." I insisted and they got a higher up, female, supervisor. I was polite, cold, and a little funny. "Anyone is welcome to grab my crotch, I don't require dinner and a movie, just ask me. Is that asking too much? You wanna grab my crotch, please ask. Does that seem like a crazy person to you?" I had about 4 of them standing around. Finally Metro PD shows up. It's really interesting. First of all, the cop is a BIG P&T fan and that ain't hurting. Second, I get the vibe that he is WAY sick of these federal leather-sniffers. He has that vibe that real cops have toward renta-cops. This is working WAY to my advantage, so I play it.

The supervisor says to the cop, 'He's free to go. We have no problem, you don't have to be here." Which shows me that the Feds are afraid of local. This is really cool. She says, "We have no trouble and he doesn't want to miss his flight."

I say, "I can take an early morning flight or a private jet. " The cop says, "If I have a citizen who is saying he was assaulted, you can't just send me away."

I tell the cop the story, in a very funny way. The cop, the voice of sanity says, "What's wrong with you people? You can't just grab a guy's crank without his permission." I tell him that my genitals weren't grabbed and the cop says, "I don't care, you can't do that to people. That's assault and battery in my book."

The supervisor says that they'll take care of the security guy. The cop says, "I'm not leaving until Penn tells me to. Now do you want to fill out all the paper work and show up in court, because I'll be right there beside you."

The supervisor says it's an internal matter, and they'll take care of it. "If you want to pursue this, we're going to have to go through the electronic evidence."

I say, "You mean videotape? Yeah, go get it."

She says, "Well, it'll take a long time, and you don't want to miss your flight. We have no problem with you, you're free to go."

The cop says, "Your guy grabbed his crank. That ain't right."

So, I fill out all the paper work and insist on a number to call to register a complaint. She says that I filled out a complaint, and I say, "I want more, give me another number. " She gives me a number that I find out later has been disconnected. I leave. I have a card with the name and number on it and the bad 800 number for the FAA.

My flight is way delayed, so I go to Burger King with Glenn - and all the feds are now off duty and at BK and sneering at us.

The next day the woman in charge of public relations calls me to "do anything to make my McCarran experience more enjoyable." I was a little under the weather with allergies and busy, so I didn't call back until yesterday.

It took some phone tag, but I finally got the woman on the phone. I was very cool and sweet. I explained the problem. "Do you allow your crotch to be grabbed without being asked?" I didn't exaggerate, I said that there was nothing sexual, I wasn't hurt, and it wasn't my genitals. I just said it was wrong. She said "Well, your feedback is really important because most people are afraid of us." She said, "I'd love to meet you so we could clear this up, and everyone wants to meet a celebrity." She said she had watched the videotape and there was no sound, but she saw him reach around. She said she couldn't tell me what was being done to him but . . . and I stopped her and said, she shouldn't do anything wrong.

I said that I had talked to two lawyers and they said it was really a weird case because no one knows if he can be charged with assault and battery while working in that job. But I told her, that some of my lawyer friends really wanted to find out. She said, "Well, we're very new to this job . . ." and I said, "Yeah, so we need these test cases to find out where you stand."

She said, "Well, you know a LOT about this." I said, "Well, it's not really the right word, but freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more of it."

She said, "Well, the airport is very important to all of our incomes and we don't want bad press. It'll hurt everyone, but you have to do what you think is right. But, if you give me your itinerary every time you fly, I'll be at the airport with you and we can make sure it's very pleasant for you."

I have no idea what this means, does it mean that they have a special area where all the friskers are topless showgirls, "We have nothing to hide, do you?" I have no idea. She pushes me for the next time I'm flying. I tell her I'm flying to Chicago around 2 on Sunday, if she wants to get that security guy there to sneer at me. She says, she'll be there, and it'll be very easy for me. I have no idea what this means.

I tell her that I'm still thinking about pressing charges, and I don't just care about me, it's freedom in general. I say the only thing that was good about it, was that while they were dealing with me, maybe they weren't beating up people in wheelchairs. It was amazing. All she was trying to do was make me happy. She said she'd burned a CD ROM of my video and it was being sent all around and they were going to change their training. She said, "We're federal employees, we're working for you, you pay us and we want customer satisfaction. It doesn't matter what the law is, we have to make you very happy so your flying experience is a pleasurable one, and most people don't give us this kind of intelligent feedback."

So, that was it. I'm flying on Sunday, I have no idea what will happen. How crazy is this? Do I really have some sort of mysterious VIP status to shut me up? Should I press charges? She said she was going to talk to the cop. I said he didn't see anything. She said, "Well, he may be able to see the forest for the trees, because he was right there." I quoted his "crank" comment and she laughed and then knew that was a very bad sign. I said, "He'll tell you I was polite, cold, angry, and funny" - that's more than should be expected of me. I still don't know what I'm going to do, but my advice to everyone is complain all you can and call the cops. I think it might make a little difference. Maybe you can become a VIP too.



Penn

Why can?t you back up your DVDs? Because entertainment execs don?t want you to

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Digitized prints can point finger at innocent

CLARKSBURG, W.Va. -- Deep inside a sprawling complex tucked in the hills of this Appalachian town, a room full of supercomputers attempts to sift America's guilty from its innocent.

This is where the FBI keeps its vast database of fingerprints, allowing examiners to conduct criminal checks from computer screens in less than 30 minutes--something that previously took them weeks as they rummaged through 2,100 file cabinets stuffed with inked print cards.

But the same digital technology that has allowed the FBI to speed such checks so dramatically over the last few years has created the risk of accusing people who are innocent, the Tribune has found.

Across the country, police departments and crime labs are submitting fingerprints for comparisons and for entry into databases, using digital images that may be missing crucial details or may have been manipulated without the FBI knowing it.

Not unlike a picture from a typical digital camera, a digital fingerprint provides less complete detail than a traditional photographic image. That matters little with pictures from the family vacation. But when the digital image is of a fingerprint, the lack of precision raises the specter of false identifications in criminal cases.

"There's a risk that not only would they exclude someone incorrectly--we have the potential to identify someone incorrectly," said David Grieve, a prominent fingerprint expert who is the latent prints training coordinator for the Illinois State Police crime lab system.

An FBI-sponsored group of fingerprint examiners was concerned enough about the quality of digital images that in 2001 it recommended doubling their resolution. Three years later, though, the vast majority of police agencies still use equipment with the lower resolution.

Equally troublesome, the most commonly used image-enhancement software, Adobe Photoshop, leaves no record of some of the changes police technicians can perform as they clean up fingerprint images to make them easier to compare.

This seemingly esoteric issue is crucial because it raises questions about a bulwark of the criminal justice system: chain of custody. If authorities cannot prove that a fingerprint is an accurate representation of the original and show exactly how it was handled, its validity can be questioned.

FBI officials recognize the resolution problem but say it leads to overlooking guilty people, not falsely accusing the innocent.

"The risk that we're hearing is that we miss people--because the resolution isn't enough--not that we're identifying people incorrectly," said Jerry Pender, deputy assistant director at the FBI's Clarksburg facility.

Potential for error rising

Such confidence is unwarranted, according to digital-imaging specialists and some leading fingerprint experts. And they say the potential for mistakes is growing inexorably as police departments around the nation switch from old inked cards to digitized computer images.

To do so, technicians scan an inked card into a computer, which converts it into a pattern of 0s and 1s that digitally represent the image, similar to how a fax machine works. And, like a fax machine, the process of digitizing the fingerprint loses considerable amounts of detail.

"It gives examiners the misleading impression that they're getting a better-quality image to examine," said Michael Cherry, an imaging expert who is on the evidentiary committee of the Association for Information and Image Management, a business technology trade group. "These images actually can eliminate fingerprint characteristics that might exclude a suspect."

Measuring the number of cases in which a digital image may have wrongly linked a suspect to a crime scene is difficult. The technology is so new that many defense attorneys do not know to ask if the fingerprint image entered into evidence has been digitized.

"I think it's a very real problem, but it's under the [radar] still," said Mary Defusco, director of training at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, a non-profit group that represents indigent defendants. "We have to get up to speed on it."

One of the nation's first successful challenges to the use of digital fingerprinting in the courtroom came in 2003 in Broward County, Fla.

The only physical evidence linking Victor Reyes to the murder of Henry Guzman was a partial palm print--an intriguing trace of evidence found on duct tape used to wrap the body in a peach-colored comforter.

A forensic analyst with the Broward County Sheriff's Office used a software program known as MoreHits along with Adobe Photoshop to darken certain areas and lighten others--a process called "dodge and burn," which has long been used in traditional photography.

Reyes' attorney, Barbara Heyer, argued that such digital enhancements were inappropriate manipulations of the evidence. "It just hasn't gotten to the point of reliability," Heyer said.

Jurors acquitted Reyes, largely because of sloppy handling of the evidence by police. But they also were troubled by the digital fingerprinting technology used in the case. The jury foreman, Richard Morris, who writes computer-imaging software for a living, said in a recent interview that he and his fellow jurors had significant concerns about it.

No record of image changes

"The makers of the [Adobe] software dropped the ball in not providing a digital record of every action applied to the image," Morris said. He said he would like to see lab analysts or police personnel use software that automatically would log any changes so other examiners could determine later whether the digital print had been altered inappropriately.

Ten years ago, only a handful of major police departments used digital fingerprinting. Today, more than 80 percent of the prints submitted to the FBI's Clarksburg facility are digital.

Along with the digital technology has come inexpensive software that allows personnel at many police stations to enhance the prints at their desks. One of the most widely used digital-print software programs, MoreHits, claims about 150 clients among local, state, federal and foreign law-enforcement agencies.

The creators of these explosively popular tools also recognize the potential problems.

"It's like a hammer. It's not evil unless someone who is evil picks it up and uses it," said Erik Berg, a forensic expert with the Police Department in Tacoma, Wash., who developed MoreHits.

Human element crucial

Defenders of the technology contend that concerns about it are overstated because computers only spit out a list of potential matches; typically, human fingerprint examiners at the FBI's lab and at state crime labs make the final matches introduced in court.

"The benefits to law enforcement with digital fingerprints are incalculable in terms of speed of identification and exoneration of the innocent," said Joseph Bonino, former chairman of the FBI's advisory policy board for the Criminal Justice Information Services division in Clarksburg. "They provide a high degree of accuracy, assuming your human examiners are properly trained."

Trust in that safeguard took a major hit last spring when the FBI falsely linked an Oregon lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, to terrorist bombings at Madrid train stations.

When Spanish authorities connected the Madrid print to an Algerian man, the FBI had to admit it erred.

The bureau initially blamed the quality of a digital fingerprint image forwarded from the Spanish National Police. An international panel of experts later concluded that the digital image was fine; instead, the panel found, several veteran FBI examiners had missed "easily observed" details that excluded Mayfield.

Asked last month about the questions involving digital prints, the FBI issued a statement saying it would not comment further until eight teams of forensic scientists--appointed after the Mayfield case unraveled--finish "methodically inspecting every aspect of the latent fingerprint process, which includes the examination of digital images."

The sleek computer equipment inside the bureau's facility in Clarksburg cannot negate this disturbing fact: The FBI does not know if a police agency has altered any of the thousands of new fingerprint images added every day to its database, which now has 48 million sets of prints.

As long as the submissions meet FBI standards on resolution, size and information about the subject, "we wouldn't have any concerns about the quality of images coming into IAFIS," said Steve Fischer, spokesman for the Clarksburg facility, referring to the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

Improprieties possible

But Fischer acknowledged that those standards are not a safeguard against improper manipulation of the images.

"If they were doing something out there," he said, "we wouldn't know about it."

The broader concern, though, remains the quality of the digital images themselves. An FBI-sponsored scientific working group of fingerprint experts cited concerns about the quality of digital images in 2001, when it recommended doubling their resolution, from 500 pixels per inch to 1,000.

But that is only a guideline, and most police departments haven't invested in newer equipment that would upgrade the digital images.

"The quality of the detail . . . in the [lower-resolution] digital image is not sufficient to support a lot of what fingerprint comparisons rely on," said Alan McRoberts, chairman of the working group and editor of the Journal of Forensic Identification.

The roots of using digital images for crime-solving date to the early 1970s, when San Diego police brought a palm print image to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in the hope that scientists could enhance it.

Police had found a bloody palm print on a bedsheet at a murder scene, but the weave of the sheet obscured the print's detail. The lab's scientists managed to separate the print from the bedsheet's weave using a process similar to one employed to enhance photographs taken of the moon and planets.

Since then, the drop in prices for such technology has made it widely available to law enforcement, but critics question whether all police staffers using it fully understand its limitations.

One solution to the problem is simple, according to imaging experts: Have defense attorneys ask the right questions.

Berg, the developer of the MoreHits software, outlined them: "If this is a digital image, has it been enhanced or is this the original capture with no changes to it? If it's been enhanced, I want you to show me what you did and tell me what your training is. And did you go out of your area of expertise to do this?"

If those questions aren't asked, Berg noted, a false identification might not be caught.

< Again they say "sorry, we don't mess up" instead of trying to keep from messing up >

Tigger 'fondled my breast'

Orlando, Florida - A 13-year-old girl testified that a Walt Disney World character worker dressed as Tigger fondled her breast while she posed for a photo with him and her mother at the Magic Kingdom.

"I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say," the girl said on Monday during the first day of the Disney worker's three-day trial on charges of battery and lewd and lascivious molestation.

Earlier on Monday, the worker, Michael Chartrand, 36, rejected a plea deal that would have spared him prison time if convicted.

Prosecutor William Jay offered Chartrand one year of probation and 50 hours of community service if he accepted the plea agreement for misdemeanour battery. Under the terms, Chartrand also would have been banned from theme parks and required to undergo a psychosexual evaluation.

"He didn't do it"

"The fact is this: by accepting it, my client says he did it. He didn't do it," said Jeffrey Kaufman, Chartrand's attorney. "We're going to fight it."

Chartrand now could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

Chartrand, who was suspended without pay, was accused of touching the girl's breast while he posed for a picture with her and her mother last February at Mickey's Toon Town in the Magic Kingdom. After his arrest in April, other women filed complaints alleging similar conduct.

During opening statements, Jay described Chartrand as "a 36-year-old man who abused his Walt Disney World job to steal the innocence of a child". The prosecutor also disputed claims that Chartrand didn't know where he was placing his hands because of the bulkiness of the costume's paws.

"This defendant knew where his paws were," Jay said.

The Tigger costume will be shown to jurors on Tuesday, and they will be allowed to try it on in the jury room during deliberations.

Kaufman tried to raise doubts about the girl's credibility during opening statements and while questioning her on the witness stand. He told jurors that the girl switched stories about the number of times she was groped and the order in which photos were taken of her with Tigger, a character from "Winnie the Pooh".

The defence attorney also suggested that the girl and her mother were pursuing the criminal case to help in any civil case they filed against Disney.

Kaufman, who also works part-time as a costumed character at Disney, said he expected jurors to handle the Tigger costume so they could see how difficult it would be to grope somebody inside the bulky outfit.

Before the trial started, a Disney lawyer had suggested that the orange Tigger costume be dyed black or white and its ears removed if it were to be introduced as evidence at the trial. But prosecutors said on Monday that the jury would see the Tigger costume as it is seen at the park.

< Facing 15 years in prison for this crime, the only evidence being their word agsinst his, is there any doubt this country is fucked up? >

ATHENS, Texas (AP) -- A man who pleaded guilty to aggravated assault had an additional six months tacked onto his eight-year sentence after he mooned

ATHENS, Texas (AP) -- A man who pleaded guilty to aggravated assault had an additional six months tacked onto his eight-year sentence after he mooned the judge.

Judge Jim Parsons held 40-year-old Ray Mason in contempt of court Monday after he dropped his pants and showed Parsons and the rest of the court his backside.

"He said something like, 'Hey, judge, look at this," Assistant District Attorney Barry Spencer recalled. About 70 other people were in the courtroom at the time, Spencer said.

"I've been practicing criminal law for well over 20 years, and I've seen a lot of things," said Mason's defense attorney John Sickel. "This is the first time anything like that has happened."

< Half a year in jail for a mooning, sounds fair to me, what a country... >

Censorship of video games wrongheaded

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's call for state laws to crack down on the sale and distribution of video games depicting violence and sex to minors and to force retailers to label such games should come as no surprise.

The conditions were prime for a "perfect storm" for censorship.

First, there was the holiday season with parents busily shopping for toys for their children. Then, thrown into the middle of the season was the release of an uber-violent video game called "JFK Reloaded" that allows a player to take on the role of Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, and fire off shots at the passing motorcade of President John F. Kennedy.

Tossed into this already combustible mix are reports released last month criticizing video games by groups with such save-us-please names as Mothers Against Violence in America and the National Institute on Media and the Family.

And then, of course, there are the parent-pandering politicians seeking to redeem American culture from the throes of violence that grip it. Fictional and fantasy violence, that is, not the kind where real lives are lost on battlefields thousands of miles away.

It's a perfect climate in which 1st Amendment interests of free speech are ready to be sacrificed at the altar of good press and the feel-good spirit of the season.

Blagojevich said he was outraged by JFK Reloaded, and singled out another recent video game release, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for his wrath.

Blagojevich, of course, is not alone among Illinois politicians. In fact, he is jumping on the bandwagon. Earlier this month, Chicago Ald. Edward Burke (14th) and Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th) introduced legislation in the City Council designed to restrict minors' access to video games depicting violence.

All of this angst and outrage may be well-intentioned, but it certainly gives short shrift to freedom of expression and the reality that legal precedent weighs strongly against the constitutionality of measures restricting the sale of violence.

It was Judge Richard A. Posner of Chicago and the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals who wrote a unanimous opinion for that court in 2001 striking down on 1st Amendment grounds an Indianapolis ordinance that similarly sought to limit the access of minors to video games that depict violence.

Posner wrote in that case, American Amusement Machine Association vs. Kendrick, that it is not just video gamemakers, retailers and distributors who have free-speech interests at stake. Posner observed that "children have 1st Amendment rights," adding that "to shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it."

Since that time, another federal appellate court has struck down a St. Louis County, Mo., law restricting the access of children to video games depicting violence. And in July of 2004, a federal judge in Washington state declared unconstitutional a state law that prevented minors from obtaining video games containing "realistic or photographic-like depictions of aggressive conflict in which the player kills, injures or otherwise causes physical harm to a human form in the game who is depicted ... as a public law enforcement officer."

In stark contrast with the decisions in Indianapolis, St. Louis County and Washington state, there is no judicial precedent that supports access-restricting measures like those proposed by Blagojevich.

But that lack of precedent and case law probably won't stop the proposed legislation from becoming law; what politician, after all, wants to be known as the one who supports graphic images of violence?

In the end, however, taxpayers will pay the cost of unsuccessfully defending such laws when they are inevitably challenged in court. It will then be a perfect storm for lawmakers to blast judges who uphold the constitutional protection of free speech.

U.S. preparing for lifetime jailing of terror suspects

WASHINGTON ? Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.

The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts. The outcome of the review, which also involves the State Department, also would affect those expected to be captured in the course of future counterterrorism operations.

"We've been operating in the moment because that's what has been required," said a senior administration official who said the current detention system has strained relations between the United States and other countries. "Now we can take a breath. We have the ability and need to look at long-term solutions."

One proposal is the transfer of large numbers of Afghan, Saudi and Yemeni detainees from the military's Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention center into new U.S.-built prisons in their home countries. The prisons would be operated by those countries, but the State Department, where this idea originated, would ask them to abide by recognized human-rights standards and would monitor compliance, the senior administration official said.

As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, plans to ask Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, defense officials said.

The new prison, dubbed Camp 6, would allow inmates more comfort and freedom than they have now, and would be designed for prisoners whom the government believes have no more intelligence to share, the officials said. It would be modeled on a U.S. prison and would allow socializing among inmates.

"Since global war on terror is a long-term effort, it makes sense for us to be looking at solutions for long-term problems," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. "This has been evolutionary, but we are at a point in time where we have to say, 'How do you deal with them in the long term?' "

The administration considers its toughest detention problem to involve prisoners held by the CIA. The agency has been scurrying since Sept. 11, 2001, to find secure locations abroad where it could detain and interrogate captives without risk of discovery, and without having to give them access to legal proceedings.

Little is known about the CIA's captives, the conditions under which they are kept ? or the procedures used to decide how long they are held or when they may be freed. That has prompted criticism from human-rights groups, and from some in Congress and the administration.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., vice chairman of the House intelligence committee who has received classified briefings on CIA detainees and interrogation methods, said "I think there should be a public debate about whether the entire system should be secret.

"The details about the system may need to remain secret," Harman said. At the least, she said, each detainee should be registered so that their treatment can be tracked and monitored. "This is complicated. We don't want to set up a bureaucracy that ends up making it impossible to protect sources and informants who operate within the groups we want to penetrate."

The CIA is believed to be holding fewer than three dozen al-Qaida leaders in prison. The agency holds most, if not all, of the top captured al-Qaida leaders, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, Abu Zubaida and the lead Southeast Asia terrorist, Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali.

CIA detention facilities have been located on an off-limits corner of the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, on ships at sea, and on Britain's Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean. The Washington Post reported last month that the CIA also has maintained a facility within the Guantánamo Bay complex, although it is unclear whether it still is in use.

In contrast to the CIA, the military produced and declassified hundreds of pages of documents about its detention and interrogation procedures after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. And military detainees are guaranteed access to the International Committee of the Red Cross and, as a result of a Supreme Court ruling, have the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal court.

But no public hearings in Congress have been held on CIA detention practices.

The CIA had floated a proposal to build a prison with the intent of keeping it secret, one intelligence official said. That was dismissed as impractical.

One approach used by the CIA has been to transfer captives to third countries willing to hold them indefinitely and without public proceedings, with access for interrogation by CIA and foreign liaison officers.

The practice, called "renditions," has been criticized by civil-liberties groups and others, who note that some of the countries have human-rights records that are criticized by the State Department.

Paying for Art, But Instead Getting Ads

IT was the 11th straight commercial - the second with Beyoncé trilling and shilling for Tommy Hilfiger - that pushed the audience over the edge.

These people had gone to Loews Lincoln Square to see a film. But at 4:45 p.m., the announced starting time of "The Aviator," they were pounded instead by an advertisement blitz. They knew, too, that a barrage of previews was still to come. Some at this popular theater complex on the Upper West Side reached the breaking point.

"Oh, come on!" a man cried in the dark.

"Give me a break!" a woman called out.

"We paid for a movie!" another man shouted.

That they did, and dearly: $10.50 for an "adult" ticket. A "child" or a "senior" paid $7. At the movies, apparently, anyone over 62, or even a mere 55 in some places, is not deemed an adult.

This audience was forced to put up with 6 minutes of ear-bursting commercials, followed by 11 minutes of thunderous coming attractions (which is another way of saying commercials). If people arrived early, as most did to find decent seats, they became prisoners as well to 27 advertisements that flitted silently across the screen in a continuous loop.

In all, some sat for as long as 50 minutes before finally getting what they had paid good money to see. Not surprisingly, they were fed up. If anything, their reactions were mild. At a recent screening of "I {sheart} Huckabees" in the same theater, the commercials drove one man to shout a strong, all-too-familiar obscenity at the screen. He was roundly cheered.

It may be too early to predict a full-throated consumer uprising. But the stirrings of rebellion are evident despite the happy talk from some theater owners. One major chain, Regal Entertainment Group, has cited an Arbitron survey contending that most audiences, especially younger ones, like advertisements.

Jason Thompson is skeptical. He is a graphic designer in Portland, Ore., who created an anti-commercials group called Captive Motion Picture Audience of America.

Like many moviegoers, he feels the advertisements are unfair and alien to American tradition. Movies are not television. You pay to get in. There is no mute button or channel changer. You're stuck, forced to listen to high-decibel sales pitches.

Beyond that, "movies are kind of an art form," Mr. Thompson said by phone. "We want to enjoy that art without having all these advertising messages rammed down our throats."

IT would have been nice to ask Loews Cineplex Entertaiment what it thinks. The company owns many theaters, including Lincoln Square. But Loews "does not comment on such questions," a spokeswoman said. Sure, why waste time discussing a matter of concern for many customers?

Granted, in a world of wars and killer tsunamis, this issue ranks far down the list of things to keep you tossing and turning at night. But movies, particularly during Christmas week, are as much a part of America as supersized fast food. The advent of the commercials leaves some people feeling they are being played for suckers.

"I don't just hate them - I resent them," Steve Rappaport said on Sunday at Loews Lincoln Square. "I think the reaction is starting to become more noticeable. I think it's because the commercials are getting longer." Another moviegoer, Elizabeth Cooke Levy, objected not only to the advertisements but also to their running when the film is supposed to start. "I'd like them to show the movie at the time they say they will," she said.

Plainly, the commercials have not stopped ticket prices from steadily rising. The National Association of Theater Owners - there's an acronym for you: NATO - says the average movie ticket in the United States cost $6.03 last year. That was 29 percent higher than five years earlier. Never mind that the Consumer Price Index rose less than 13 percent during the same period.

Now and then, headline-seeking politicians propose boycotts of theaters to protest high prices. But that suggestion doesn't fly any more than do occasional calls to stay clear of the concession stands, where theaters really make their money.

One idea from Mr. Thompson's group is to shout at the screen during commercials. That tactic has clearly begun to enjoy some support in New York. And who knows? Theater owners might eventually get the message.

"The way the ads have been increasing," Mr. Thompson said, "it seems they're trying to see how far they can go before the public pushes back."

U.S.: Did President Bush Order Torture?

(New York, December 21, 2004) U.S. President George W. Bush should fully explain why an FBI document suggests he authorized unlawful interrogation methods, Human Rights Watch said today. An e-mail to senior FBI officials released yesterday under a Freedom of Information Act request repeatedly referred to an Executive Order that permitted military interrogators in Iraq to place detainees in painful stress positions, impose sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, intimidate them with military dogs and use other coercive methods.

?The FBI e-mail is not proof of a presidential order to commit unlawful acts, but it strongly suggests that U.S. interrogators thought they were acting with the president?s approval,? said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. ?It?s no longer enough for Bush to issue a simple denial. A real explanation is needed.?

The e-mail was sent to senior members of the FBI on May 22, 2004, more than a year after the Pentagon reputedly disavowed the use of such interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay. The e-mail makes 11 references to an Executive Order ?signed by President Bush? that authorized these abusive interrogation methods. Since yesterday?s publication of the document, various executive agencies have denied the existence of such an Executive Order, stating that the FBI agent made a mistake.

Even if there were no formal Executive Order, Human Rights Watch is concerned that the FBI in Iraq believed that the executive branch had authorized certain abusive interrogation methods being employed by U.S. military personnel. Since the reporting of torture at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration has yet to fully detail the instructions on interrogation and treatment of detainees it has provided to U.S. forces in the field.

Other documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) described acts of torture and other unlawful treatment of detainees by U.S. personnel in Iraq and at Guantanamo. These included strangulation, putting lit cigarettes into detainees? ears, sleep deprivation, beatings, and chaining detainees in a fetal position for 18-24 hours or more.

Human Rights Watch and others have previously reported similar accounts by former detainees at U.S. detention facilities. In the documents released to the ACLU, at least one interrogation technique and information related to a ?cover-up? of abuses had been blacked out.

The various interrogation methods described in the FBI e-mail and in the other released documents are violations of U.S. obligations under international law. These include provisions of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting ?cruel treatment and torture? and ?humiliating and degrading treatment.? And they violate the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the United States is also a party.

Human Rights Watch called on the Bush administration to fully explain the ?Executive Order? and to release publicly all documents pertaining to the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. In addition, Human Rights Watch urged the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to hold hearings on this issue when the new Congress convenes in January.

?The released documents not only show the brutal torture of prisoners, but they also suggest a new link to the highest levels of the Bush administration,? said Roth. ?It?s time the U.S. government threw out the ?bad apples? argument and took a serious look at the whole barrel.?

A battle over sale of violent video games

CHICAGO ? When Francisco Rosa and his friends play video games, their favorites are the most violent: "Grand Theft Auto" - in which they steal cars, shoot police officers, and beat up prostitutes - and "Killzone."
All of the games are rated "M," for mature, but Francisco, who is 16, defends them, noting that they have the best graphics and technology.

If Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has his way, however, it could soon get tougher for boys like Francisco to buy such games.

During a week in which millions of kids woke up to video games under the tree, debate here has been raging over many games' content, and who should control access to them. The governor's proposal, which would make selling violent or sexual games to anyone under 18 a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison or a $5,000 fine, is just the latest maneuver in an ongoing battle among kids, parents, the game industry, civil libertarians, and politicians eager for parents' support.

It's a law, say experts, that would likely run afoul of the First Amendment. But it raises pressing issues: Are some games unsuitable for kids? And whose responsibility is it to monitor access?

"Parents get a double message from the industry," says Blois Olson of the National Institute on Media and the Family. "It gives ratings, but sometimes in the same sentence it says these games have no effect on children." He stops short, though, of supporting laws that regulate sales, calling instead for independent ratings, better enforcement, and education for parents.

The current game-rating system is similar to the one for movies. And, like the movie guidelines, it's self-regulated. A store can card teenagers, and many refuse to sell M-rated games to anyone under 17, but no law requires them to abide by the rule - and critics cite lax enforcement

"Games are more realistic than they ever have been. Something like "Pac-Man" can't even be compared to games that are 3-D, where the person controlling the joystick is behind the goggles of a fighter," says Abby Ottenhoff, a spokesperson for Governor Blagojevich. "As a society, there are certain things we have decided universally aren't appropriate for kids - alcohol, cigarettes, pornography. The governor believes these games are similar to those things and that the negative impact they can have on kids is real."

The problem with that analogy, say critics, is that items like cigarettes and alcohol don't fall under free-speech protection. Similar attempts to regulate video-game sales - including laws in Indianapolis, St. Louis County, and Washington State, have been struck down by courts as recently as July.

One problem is in defining the forbidden material, says Clay Calvert, codirector of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at Pennsylvania State University. Blagojevich's law would define violent games as, in part, "those realistically depicting human-on-human violence...."

"But what does the term 'realistic' mean, and how realistic does it have to be?" asks Professor Calvert. "When a term is vague, it can have a chilling effect on freedom of speech," and courts won't allow it to stand.

The governor hopes to defend the proposal with studies, such as ones from Iowa State University and Stanford, that link video-game use to aggression. But such research generally shows correlation, not causation, and the law limits its interest to causation.

Still, moves like this one are a perennially popular political maneuver that draws momentum from real-life incidents - the news that the Columbine perpetrators liked to play "Doom," for instance, or that two Tennessee teenagers who fired randomly at motorists, killing one person and wounding two more, admitted they were imitating Grand Theft Auto. Calvert says that in 2004 alone, he counted more than 20 state and local bills that tried to regulate game sales.

Even if such laws never pass muster with a court, many say video-game content needs attention, particularly from parents. One game that caught Blagojevich's attention was "JFK Reloaded," which has players take on the role of Lee Harvey Oswald, and was released on the anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. That game is Scottish and not for sale by US retailers, but parent watchdog groups say that popular games like "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" and "Halo 2" aren't much better.

In "Manhunt," the player stalks and kills victims in increasingly gruesome ways; in "Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude," players try to have sex with college women and the box urges them to "help Larry earn a BA in T & A."

"A game is different from watching a movie or reading a book - it's so interactive and lifelike," says David Mikec, a middle-aged recruiter browsing the PlayStation 2 aisle of a Chicago Best Buy. Though he enjoys some of the M-rated games, he says he's surprised himself with how conservative he's become regarding minors. "I played 'Manhunt' recently. I couldn't believe how violent it is. I wouldn't let anyone under 16 play it, but I think the majority of people who play it are kids."

In store aisles, titles like "Killzone" and "True Crime" are tucked in among "Finding Nemo" and "Harry Potter." But signs warn customers that the store checks IDs. And the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association, (IEMA) which represents about 85 percent of US game retailers, says enforcement has improved significantly since it decided to overhaul its policies last year.

A recent study by the National Institute on Media and the Family showed that 34 percent of children between 7 and 14 were able to buy M-rated games (about half of boys succeeded, and just 8 percent of girls) - an improvement from the year before. The research also shows that 87 percent of boys who play video games have tried M-rated ones.

"The governor's heart is in the right place, but he was misinformed," says Hal Halpin, president of the IEMA, noting that members have worked on posting signs, training staff, and demanding IDs. "Now that we've instituted these policies, we believe parents should be the ones deciding what they're kids play."

In Francisco's case, that means that even if sales were regulated, he'd still be able to play them. "I don't see anything wrong with them," says his father, as he heads to the cash register to buy the M-rated "Metal Gear Solid 3."

And his soft-spoken son doubts a law would hinder teens from getting the games. "I understand why their saying [we shouldn't play them]," he says. "But ... we hear these things in the streets. Playing the games takes our mind off other things."