The game-resale crackdown

Some communities now require anyone selling used video games to give fingerprints for police records. The question is: Why?
Some stores that buy used video games have begun to take their customers’ fingerprints so that the ink impressions can be turned over to police. However, the stores reveal that they’re just complying with local laws.

In addition to recording the drivers' licenses, telephone numbers, and addresses of customers who sell used games or consoles, some stores are routinely requiring thumbprints as well. Retailers are collecting the information under a law intended to regulate pawn shops and make it easy for law enforcement officials to track down thieves who fence stolen goods. A number of states have such laws, and Utah passed its own version just last month.

In California, the law has been on the books for more than a decade, but with the increased market for used games and DVDs, some retailers are taking a cautious approach and are collecting fingerprints just to make sure they don’t run afoul of local regulations.

Executive Director of the National Pawnbrokers Association Bob Benedict said that while pawnbrokers are regulated by a variety of local, state, and federal laws that require them to track customer information, states that require fingerprints are in the minority. GameStop, a Grapevine, Texas-based national chain with about 1,500 stores, is one of the companies that is requiring its customers to give thumbprints in some stores.

"We at GameStop make every effort to act in accordance with local regulations," company representative Matt Hodges said. "Where there are specific legal requirements, GameStop is complying."

Director of Marketing Liz O’Sullivan, a representative of GameStop’s rival, Electronics Boutique, said that, as a general rule, her chain does not collect such information but does comply with all local laws.

What those regulations are can change from city to city, and it’s often up to a city’s chief of police to make the call on which types of businesses will be required to collect fingerprints, Inspector Bob Rogers of the San Francisco Police Department said. The California law makes the requirement for "tangible personal property." Legally, that doesn’t mean items that can be touched but, rather, valuable goods that are frequently stolen--such as jewelry--Rogers said.

While pawnbrokers are required to record everything they take in, the law has caused confusion for other stores that buy used CDs, DVDs, or games. One video-rental store in San Francisco consulted with police before finally deciding to collect information from all of its customers who sold used items--just to be on the safe side.

"The issue where it’s tricky is this issue of tangible personal property," Rogers said. "They [people] may not understand that, or they [people] may be just trying to completely comply with the law by recording everything they take in."

Hollywood riled up over ClearPlay

A new DVD player - slim, black, looking much like all the rest - is just starting to show up on Wal-Mart's shelves. But this one has Hollywood spinning in anger.

The $70 player from a company called ClearPlay has built-in "filters" designed to skip over violence and nudity and to mute salty language in 100 movies, including such blockbusters as Terminator 3 and The Matrix. The Utah-based company is adding more films to its filter library all the time. It now has more than 600 titles available for download.

Editing of movies for different audiences is not unusual. Special cuts are routinely made for basic cable, broadcast TV and airlines. Some films tone down violence for release in other countries.

But those editing decisions are made by the movie studios, if not by the directors themselves. Not by a handful of people in Utah.

ClearPlay, founded by brothers Matt and Lee Jarman, has 11 employees. A "filtering technician" suggests changes; other developers and managers review and make the decisions. Users have the ability to fine-tune which of these filters to put into play, based on their personal sensitivities.

ClearPlay isn't the first company to try to clean up Hollywood movies. Others that came before:

•CleanFlicks. With stores in Utah and a few other states, the retailer sells DVDs and videos that have been edited to remove what some consider offensive content.

•MovieMask (www.moviemask.com). The $79.95 computer software developed by Trilogy Software mutes language and edits scenes when movies are played on PCs.

•The Movie Shield box. Due from Family Shield Technologies this summer, it connects between a TV and DVD player and works similarly to ClearPlay.

But ClearPlay is the first company to produce a stand-alone DVD player at a reasonably low price, placing it on shelves in the nation's largest retailer. That means what had been a somewhat obscure legal skirmish between Hollywood and the heartland has moved into mass-market urgency.

Wal-Mart sees a demand. Spokeswoman Karen Burke says the store's sales strategy is "based on what we think our customers want. That is basically the philosophy behind everything we carry." The stores also do not carry music CDs that have parental advisory labels; many record companies re-edit albums for sale there.

Studios and filmmakers are stunned that someone not involved in the creative process could technologically chip away at their work - and make money at it. So lawsuits aiming to get the processes deemed illegal are underway.

CleanFlicks started the legal maneuvering. One owner of a CleanFlicks store, Robert Huntsman, pre-emptively sued directors two years ago to have the sales and rental of edited videos deemed legal.

Since then, the Directors Guild of America countersued on behalf of big-name filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg (news), arguing that products that modify DVD movies constitute a trademark violation. Eight movie studios - Disney, MGM, Warner Bros., Sony, DreamWorks, Universal, Fox and Paramount - have joined the legal battle. As the copyright holders, studios say that products such as ClearPlay create unauthorized versions of movies.

ClearPlay counters that its technology does not make copies of movies, nor does it change the actual disc; it simply gives consumers the tools to watch movies as they wish. All sides are waiting for a federal judge in Denver to decide in one side's favor or schedule a pre-trial hearing.

Last week, ClearPlay gained an ally in Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who is pushing for the sides to settle. To force the issue, he says he is looking into introducing legislation that would protect the player from court decisions.

ClearPlay and the other cleanup technologies all are based in or have roots in Utah, specifically Brigham Young University in Provo. Jason Crop, who developed the Movie Shield technology with sister Tiffany and then sold it, says that's not just coincidence.

"There is a great entrepreneurial spirit about BYU and technology," Crop says. "I think what happened is the melting pot lent itself to these ideas. I think it honestly comes down to Mormon culture. You don't watch R-rated movies, or you be very careful what you watch."

Matt Jarman says ClearPlay, however, doesn't have a religious agenda. He founded the company, he says, so that he, his wife and three daughters could watch movies together. "In the same way that airline or TV versions aren't edited for any particular religion, ClearPlay provides filtering options in areas where there are general public sensitivities, like graphic violence, strong language and sexually explicit content."

Some still see that as a moral judgment being imposed on a creative vision. At the DGA, spokesman Morgan Rumph says many of the movies are edited bluntly and are changing the director's intent. "The DGA clearly believes the rights of artists, specifically directors, should be vigorously protected," he says.

Not surprisingly, directors such as Irwin Winkler (Life as a House, The Net) agree. "When you buy a video or a DVD of a film, you expect to see the work re-created in its original form, not some bastardization for the sake of someone else's idea of morality," he told the guild's magazine. "If you go into the museum and see the painting of the Three Graces, you don't expect them to be wearing bras because nudity offends some of the people who attend an exhibit with their children."

Still, the market for filtered DVDs could be substantial, especially in a post-Janet Jackson wardrobe-malfunction world.

"Whether it's the interest in parental control brought on by the Super Bowl incident or indecency on television, this seems to be of heightened interest," says Dave Arland of Thomson, which markets the player under the RCA brand. Yet, he adds, discussions about the player began months before the Super Bowl. Thomson is the first of several manufacturers that have talked with ClearPlay about bringing a machine to market.

At the National Institute on Media and the Family, research director Doug Gentile says that ClearPlay seems like an option "that would help parents get around 'ratings creep,' " in which PG and PG-13 films have titillating content to appeal to teens and older audiences. "Anything that makes it easier for parents to monitor and control the amount and content of media their kids watch is a good thing."

ClearPlay CEO Bill Aho points to an example: In The Patriot, a Revolutionary War action film starring Mel Gibson, "you see a head taken off with a cannonball. For some people, to see that might ruin their day. But they might like to see the movie with their kids without some of that content."

Hollywood could have addressed the issue itself, ClearPlay's Jarman points out. In 1997, when manufacturers and studios began pushing the fledgling DVD format, the ability to watch different versions of movies was part of the sales pitch. Jarman thought studios would put out DVD movies in lower-rated versions to hook those who were sensitive to violence and other content.

In fact, the only trend has been in the other direction, with DVD releases of "unrated" movies that have spicier content than the theatrical PG-13 and R-rated versions.

Some viewers are looking for more control. Michael Peterson, one of ClearPlay's first customers, bought a player earlier this month online. The 42-year-old Danville, Calif., investment banking professional, who served as an early tester of the product, says he and his wife, Shelley, "are offended by different things, (but) with ClearPlay we can both enjoy the movie."

They've watched ClearPlay versions of The Shawshank Redemption, Notting Hill, Catch Me If You Can, Erin Brockovich and The English Patient. "It doesn't change the movie. You literally only lose 30 seconds," he says. He says his wife always asks, "Can we ClearPlay it?"

The ClearPlay DVD player also comes in handy for their five children, who range in age from 7 to 18. "Every weekend we get 10 kids (including friends) who want to watch Terminator 3, The Matrix or some other movie that we can edit down to get rid of all the junk," he says.

DVDs may be just the start. ClearPlay is developing content filtering for broadcast TV, too. Jarman won't share many details about the process but says that "it works well. During playback, while watching something on television, it will mute language based on your settings."

Hollywood should be encouraging ClearPlay rather than fighting it, some say.

Jerilyn Kessel of Centris, a Santa Monica, Calif., entertainment research firm, says ClearPlay could help Hollywood's bottom line. "It's going to increase the business of video rental and purchases. I can't see how it can hurt it in any way."

ClearPlay's Aho, a non-Utah native who spent nine years in marketing and general management at Pizza Hut, says that since the player became available on Wal-Mart's Web site and has gotten press coverage, he has received "hundreds of e-mails saying, 'We will watch more movies with this.' When people watch more movies, that's good for Hollywood."

Big Brother to Watch Over Island

If you have ever seen the cult '60s British television program The Prisoner, in which captured Cold War spies live on an island under constant surveillance, you can imagine what life may soon be like on Ayers Island, on the Penobscot River near the University of Maine.

In coming years, visitors to Ayers Island, the site of an abandoned paper and textile mill in Orono, Maine, will be spied upon by a comprehensive network of video cameras, motion detectors and sensors. Lurking behind all of those sensors will be an artificial intelligence system that will decide who can be trusted and who is deserving of greater scrutiny.

The engineers, drawn largely from the nearby University of Maine, will use the network to test the reliability of new sensors. They will also attempt to demonstrate that AI, combined with ubiquitous sensors, may be able to provide civil authorities with comprehensive, real-time intelligence about the whereabouts of individuals and cars, and the status of buildings and other structures within a particular geographical area.

Ayers Island will be open to the public, who are expected to visit the island for its nature trails, amphitheater, sculpture garden and museum, all part of a planned renovation project for the island. A contemporary arts festival on Ayers Island is scheduled for this summer. Many cameras and motion detectors will be in place by that time, according to the company that owns the island, Ayers Island LLC.

The island's initial monitoring systems will be rudimentary, made from off-the-shelf parts and store-bought alarm systems.

But eventually, ubiquitous cameras and biometric readers, backed by a central computer, will recognize and record faces and license plates, and make it possible for someone sitting at a computer monitor to track individuals everywhere they go on the island, said George Markowsky, president of Ayers Island LLC.

"This is going to push the envelope on a lot of fronts," said Markowsky. "The goal is to detect anyone coming onto the island at any point, and to follow them if they exhibit suspicious behavior."

The central computer will pay special attention to individuals who seem to be trying to avoid detection, such as those slipping quietly onto the island in kayaks, for example. (The island is accessible via a one-lane bridge.)

The surveillance system will learn to recognize and trust regular visitors to Ayers Island, such as a woman who walks her dog on the island every morning, said Markowsky. "But if it sees three big guys it has never seen before, it will take notice," he said.

The system, called Intelligent Island, would also make Ayers Island less welcoming to visitors with nothing to hide, said a privacy lawyer who specializes in video tracking. Surveillance cameras put people on edge, and people learn to change their behaviors to avoid suspicion, or to conform to social norms, said Cedric Laurant, policy counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C.

"People start fitting in to what they think is good social behavior," Laurant said. "And that leads to increased discrimination against those that don't conform to those norms."

Markowsky is aware that the Intelligent Island system evokes the Big Brother scenario. He said he hopes his project sparks more discussion about surveillance and privacy rights. The Intelligent Island system, while intrusive, may also serve as a deterrent to crime, he said.

"It cuts both ways," Markowsky said, of the concern many have about being constantly monitored. "Which is worse? Knowing that a computer is tracking your movements, or walking around looking over your shoulder, being afraid someone is going to attack you?"

The Intelligent Island system will do more than follow individuals: Sensors embedded inside Ayers Islands' renovated and new buildings will monitor their structural integrity and tell rescue workers in a disaster if any people are inside the buildings.

"Firemen risk their lives rushing into burning buildings, because they don't know if any people are in them," said Markowsky. "It would be nice to know that a building is actually empty."

Markowsky has used funds from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Ayers Island and the old mill, which was shut down in the 1990s. His company is now seeking funds from the Department of Homeland Security to help pay for the Intelligent Island system.

Markowsky plans to make Ayers Island a showcase for homeland security technologies when he opens the island to public visitors and startup technology companies, which he hopes will rent office space on the island.

Ayers Island is already used for homeland security exercises by a Maine National Guard team specializing in nuclear, biological, chemical and explosive materials. The island will also be used this summer by scientists testing cargo-shipping containers from the Middle East and Asia for signs of tampering.

But Markowsky said participation by members of the public will be essential to the success of the Intelligent Island project. Signs will inform visitors they are being monitored.

"People everywhere are being watched a lot more than they realize," said Markowsky. "But here, there will be no doubt. This will be a huge surveillance project."

DVD player filters out nudity, violence

(CNN) -- The world's biggest retailer is offering a DVD player that slices out potentially offensive content from movies, such as nudity, violence and foul language.

The device, available at Wal-Mart for about $70, merges video-editing technology developed by ClearPlay with an RCA brand DVD player.

The DVD player works by cutting scenes or muting parts of the movie, according to guidelines from ClearPlay's staff of editors, said ClearPlay CEO Bill Aho.

"This gives you virtually unprecedented control over movies," Aho said. "You can decide what you want to see and what you don't, and the end result is something that is seamless."

Using a checklist of 14 categories, ranging from graphic violence to explicit drug use, buyers can skip over any scenes they deem inappropriate while leaving the rest of the movie intact.

With these filters, it can appear the offensively branded parts never existed.

For example, if the nudity filter is selected while watching "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," Arnold Schwarzenegger's naked body is seen squatting in a desert, but before the California governor can stand up and expose his backside -- as he does in the uncut version of the film -- the camera immediately moves to a close-up of his face.

Often the edits are imperceptible, but sometimes they can leave the viewer squinting at the TV, trying to read the silent lips of Johnny Depp as his many "hells" and "damns" are cut from "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."

"This is unique technology," said Tara Dunion, a representative from the Consumer Electronics Association. "It provides a good option for people who are looking for safe viewing alternatives for their children."

But the product have received staunch criticism from many in the movie industry. "Traffic" director Steven Soderbergh and members of the Directors Guild of America filed suit against ClearPlay in 2002.

"ClearPlay software edits movies to conform to ClearPlay's vision of a movie instead of letting audiences see, and judge for themselves, what writers wrote, what actors said and what directors envisioned," a guild representative said in a statement.

Aho argues that the ClearPlay DVD player does not violate copyright laws. It provides users with the power over movies they have had for years: the ability to fast-forward or mute scenes they choose not to watch, he said.

"This is new technology," Aho said. "It's going to take a while for the industry to get comfortable with it."

Dave Arland, a representative of RCA, said that no technology gives the depth of control that the ClearPlay DVD player provides. "There have been similar features in the past, but nothing as comprehensive as ClearPlay," Arland said.

The ClearPlay DVD player comes equipped with 100 preloaded movie filters and a wide range of titles, from "As Good as It Gets" to "Zoolander." If customers want more filters, they have to purchase a membership from ClearPlay.

For $20, three years of unlimited access is granted to ClearPlay's library of "classic" movie filters, all of which are 90 days old or more. If a member wants to view movies as soon as they are available on DVD, there is a charge of $4.95 a month or $49 a year.

ClearPlay is quick to offer filters for recent movies. Aho said editors are able to edit a movie in a matter of hours.

Members can download all filters from ClearPlay's Web site and burn them onto a recordable CD that is loaded into the DVD player, where it is stored. ClearPlay also will mail CDs to users for a small fee.

But there is still an untested market for the product. The most similar technology to ClearPlay's DVD player is the v-chip, which limits television programming based on a pre-assigned rating. Studies found a small percentage of parents with televisions equipped with the technology use it at all.

Despite the uncertainty, ClearPlay plans to expand its offerings in the future.

Aho said ClearPlay will release technology next year that censors offending content from cable television, a hot topic in the wake of the Super Bowl scandal involving Janet Jackson and the Federal Communications Commission's recent crackdown on Howard Stern's radio show.

"I see this as something everyone can use," Aho said.

"Maybe you will only use it when nephews and nieces are over, or maybe you will have it on all the time. Everyone will have their own applications for it. ... I expect this to become a standard feature on DVD players in the future. Press a button and activate a filter."

< How long before it's required somewhere? This kind of technology is exactly where they shouldn't be asking themselves if they can, but if they should. >

Darwin-Free Fun for Creationists

PENSACOLA, Fla., April 29 — Robert and Schön Passmore took their children to Disney World last fall and left bitterly disappointed. As Christians who reject evolutionary theory, the family scoffed at the park's dinosaur attractions, which date the apatosaurus, brachiosaurus and the like to prehistoric times.

"My kids kept recognizing flaws in the presentation," said Mrs. Passmore, of Jackson, Ala. "You know — the whole `millions of years ago dinosaurs ruled the earth' thing."

So this week, the Passmores sought out a lower-profile Florida attraction: Dinosaur Adventure Land, a creationist theme park and museum here that beckons children to "find out the truth about dinosaurs" with games that roll science and religion into one big funfest with the message that Genesis, not science, tells the real story of the creation.

Kent Hovind, the minister who opened the park in 2001, said his aim was to spread the message of creationism through a fixture of mainstream America — the theme park — instead of pleading its case at academic conferences and in courtrooms.

Mr. Hovind, a former public school science teacher with his own ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, and a hectic lecture schedule, said he had opened Dinosaur Adventure Land to counter all the science centers and natural history museums that explain the evolution of life with Darwinian theory. There are dinosaur bone replicas, with accompanying explanations that God made dinosaurs on Day 6 of the creation as described in Genesis, 6,000 years ago. Among the products the park gift shop peddles are T-shirts with a small fish labeled "Darwin" getting gobbled by a bigger fish labeled "Truth."

"There are a lot of creationists that are really smart and debate the intellectuals, but the kids are bored after five minutes," said Mr. Hovind, who looks boyish at 51 and talks fast. "You're missing 98 percent of the population if you only go the intellectual route."

The theme park is just the latest approach to promoting creationism outside the usual school curriculum route, which Mr. Hovind and others see as important, but too limited and not sufficiently appealing to modern young families. Creationist groups are also promoting creationist vacations, including dinosaur digs in South Dakota, fossil-collecting trips in Australia and New Zealand, and tours of the Grand Canyon ("raft the canyon and learn how Noah's flood contributed to the formation").

Dan Johnson, an assistant manager of the park, said there were also creationism-themed cruises, with lectures on the subject amid swimming and shuffleboard.

A Kentucky creationist group called Answers in Genesis says it is building a 100,000-square-foot complex outside Cincinnati with a museum, classrooms, a planetarium and a special-effects theater where moviegoers can experience the flood and other events described in Genesis.

Ken Ham, the group's chief executive, said marketing surveys suggested that the complex would draw not just home-schooling families and other creationists, but mainstream church groups and curiosity seekers. Mr. Ham said a former Universal Studios art director was designing exhibits for the complex, including dioramas of Adam and Eve and a model of Noah's Ark. The complex will open in 2006 at the earliest, Mr. Ham said.

At Dinosaur Adventure Land, visitors can make their own Grand Canyon replica with sand and read a sign deriding textbooks for teaching that the Colorado River formed the canyon over millions of years: "This is clearly not possible. The top of the Grand Canyon is 4,000 feet higher than where the river enters the canyon! Rivers do not flow up hill!"

There is a movie depicting the creation, the flood and the fall of man, which fast-forwards from a lush Garden of Eden to a New York City traffic jam.

There are no mechanized rides at Dinosaur Adventure Land — no creationist-themed roller coasters, scramblers or even a ferris wheel — but instead, a simple discovery center and museum and about a dozen outdoor games, each of which has a "science lesson" and "spiritual lesson" posted nearby. A group of about 60 parents and home-schooled children who visited Wednesday, including the Passmores, spent all afternoon trying the games, which promote religious faith more than creationist tenets.

Take Jumpasaurus, which involves jumping on a trampoline while trying to throw a ball through a hoop as many times as possible in a minute. The science lesson: "You will use coordination in this game, which means you will be doing more than one thing at once." The spiritual lesson, according to Mr. Johnson: "You need to learn to be coordinated for Jesus Christ so you can get more things done for him."

Somewhat more creationist in approach is the Nerve-Wracking Ball: a bowling ball on a rope, dangling from a tall tree branch. A child stands before the ball, and then a park guide gives it a shove from a specific angle, so that it comes careering back at the child's face only to stop just in front of it. The child wins if he does not flinch, proving he has "faith in God's laws" — in this case, that a swinging object will never come back higher than the point from which it took off.

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, which tracks creationist programs, said traditional creationists like Mr. Hovind had in fact given up on building intellectual credibility years ago.

"They have been going the grass-roots mainstream route for at least 20 years," she said. "So I'm not surprised they are the ones sponsoring group vacations and theme parks and things like that."

Dinosaur Adventure Land, tucked behind a highway lined with car dealerships in this metropolitan area of 425,000, sits next to Mr. Hovind's home and the offices of Creation Science Evangelism, which he said he founded in 1989. Mr. Hovind is well known in Pensacola, and even in a region where religious billboards almost outnumber commercial ones he is controversial. Escambia County sued him in 2000 after he refused to get a $50 permit before building his theme park, saying the government had no authority over a church.

Just last week Internal Revenue Service agents used a search warrant to remove financial documents from Mr. Hovind's home and offices, saying he was not paying taxes and had neither a business license nor tax-exempt status for his enterprises.

Mr. Hovind did not want to discuss the I.R.S. investigation, saying only, "I don't have any tax obligations."

The man who calls himself Dr. Dino is also controversial among creationists, some of whom say he discredits their movement with some of his pseudo-scientific claims. Mr. Hovind got into a dispute in 2002 with Answers in Genesis, when he took issue with an article it published called "Arguments We Think Creationists Should Not Use." One such argument was that footprints found in Texas proved that man and dinosaurs coexisted; Mr. Hovind said he considered the argument, now abandoned by many creationists, valid. Mr. Hovind said he gave 700 lectures a year and that 38,000 people had visited his park, at $7 a head. According to a map that invites visitors to pinpoint their hometown, most come from the Florida Panhandle and from Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Rachel Painter, camp director at the Alpha Omega Institute, which runs several creationist family summer camps in Colorado, said creationist vacations had gained popularity as the number of Christian home-schooling families had grown. The institute started its camps 18 years ago with 4 families per session, she said, but now up to 18 attend each, and from more states.

Wade and Joan Killingsworth, who belong to a home-schooling coalition called Solid Rock Christian School, said they took their children to Colonial Williamsburg over spring break and came to Dinosaur Adventure Land because it was similarly educational. But they and the Passmores, who traveled from Alabama with eight minivans of like-minded families, said this type of road trip had far more to offer.

"We've been to museums, discovery centers, where you have to sit there and take the evolutionary stuff," Mr. Passmore said. "It feels good for them to finally hear it in a public place, something that reinforces their beliefs."

A little more evidence that violence in the media doesn't cause violence in real life...

Common criminals face anti-terror laws

PHILADELPHIA--In the two years since law enforcement agencies gained fresh powers to help them track down and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on al-Qaida cells but on people charged with common crimes.

The Justice Department said it has used authority given to it by the USA Patriot Act to crack down on currency smugglers and seize money hidden overseas by alleged bookies, con artists and drug dealers.

Federal prosecutors used the act in June to file a charge of "terrorism using a weapon of mass destruction" against a California man after a pipe bomb exploded in his lap, wounding him as he sat in his car.

A North Carolina county prosecutor charged a man accused of running a methamphetamine lab with breaking a new state law barring the manufacture of chemical weapons. If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get 12-years-to-life in prison for a crime that usually brings about six months.

Prosecutor Jerry Wilson says he isn't abusing the law, which defines chemical weapons of mass destruction as "any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals.

Civil liberties and legal defense groups are bothered by the string of cases, and say the government soon will be routinely using harsh anti-terrorism laws against run-of-the-mill lawbreakers.

"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the NationalAssociation of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens."

Prosecutors aren't apologizing.

Attorney General John Ashcroft completed a 16-city tour this week defending the Patriot Act as key to preventing a second catastrophic terrorist attack. Federal prosecutors have brought more than 250 criminal charges under the law, with more than 130 convictions or guilty pleas.

The law, passed two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, erased many restrictions that had barred the government from spying on its citizens, granting agents new powers to use wiretaps, conduct electronic and computer eavesdropping and access private financial data.

Stefan Cassella, deputy chief for legal policy for the Justice Department's asset forfeiture and money laundering section, said that while the Patriot Act's primary focus was on terrorism, lawmakers were aware it contained provisions that had been on prosecutors' wish lists for years and would be used in a wide variety of cases.

In one case prosecuted this year, investigators used a provision of the Patriot Act to recover $4.5 million from a group of telemarketers accused of tricking elderly U.S. citizens into thinking they had won the Canadian lottery. Prosecutors said the defendants told victims they would receive their prize as soon as they paid thousands of dollars in income tax on their winnings.

Before the anti-terrorism act, U.S. officials would have had to use international treaties and appeal for help from foreign governments to retrieve the cash, deposited in banks in Jordan and Israel. Now, they simply seized it from assets held by those banks in the United States.

"These are appropriate uses of the statute," Cassella said. "If we can use the statute to get money back for victims, we are going to do it."

The complaint that anti-terrorism legislation is being used to go after people who aren't terrorists is just the latest in a string of criticisms.

More than 150 local governments have passed resolutions opposing the law as an overly broad threat to constitutional rights.

Critics also say the government has gone too far in charging three U.S. citizens as enemy combatants, a power presidents wield during wartime that is not part of the Patriot Act. The government can detain such individuals indefinitely without allowing them access to a lawyer.

And Muslim and civil liberties groups have criticized the government's decision to force thousands of mostly Middle Eastern men to risk deportation by registering with immigration authorities.

"The record is clear," said Ralph Neas, president of the liberal People for the American Way Foundation. "Ashcroft and the Justice Department have gone too far."

Some of the restrictions on government surveillance that were erased by the Patriot Act had been enacted after past abuses -- including efforts by the FBI to spy on civil rights leaders and anti-war demonstrators during the Cold War. Tim Lynch, director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said it isn't far-fetched to believe that the government might overstep its bounds again.

"I don't think that those are frivolous fears," Lynch said. "We've already heard stories of local police chiefs creating files on people who have protested the (Iraq) war ... The government is constantly trying to expand its jurisdictions, and it needs to be watched very, very closely."

Even blind old ladies terrify the cops

She was blind.

She needed her 94-year-old mother to come to her rescue.

And in the middle of the dogfight -- in which Eunice Crowder was pepper-sprayed, Tasered and knocked to the ground by Portland's courageous men in blue -- the poor woman's fake right eye popped out of its socket and was bouncing around in the dirt.

How vicious and ugly can the Portland police get? Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner. This 2003 case is so blatant, the use of force so excessive, the threat of liability so intimidating that the city just approved a $145,000 settlement.

But all those gung-ho fans of the cops can relax. Nothing has changed. Nothing will upset the status quo.

The cops aren't apologizing.

The cops aren't embarrassed.

The cops haven't been disciplined.

And the cops are still insisting, to the bitter end, that they "reasonably believed" this blind ol' bat was a threat to their safety and macho culture.

Eunice Crowder, you see, didn't follow orders. Eunice was uncooperative. Worried a city employee was hauling away a family heirloom, a 90-year-old red toy wagon, she had the nerve to feel her way toward the trailer in which her yard debris was being tossed.

Enter the police. Eunice, who is hard of hearing, ignored the calls of Officers Robert Miller and Eric Zajac to leave the trailer. When she tried, unsuccessfully, to bite the hands that were laid on her, she was knocked to the ground.

When she kicked out at the cops, she was pepper-sprayed in the face with such force that her prosthetic marble eye was dislodged. As she lay on her stomach, she was Tased four times with Zajac's electric stun gun.

And when Nellie Scott, Eunice's 94-year-old mother, tried to rinse out her daughter's eye with water from a two-quart Tupperware bowl, what does Miller do? According to Ernie Warren Jr., Eunice's lawyer, the cop pushed Nellie up against a fence and accused her of planning to use the water as a weapon.

Paranoia runs deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you're always afraid . . .

Afraid and belligerent. "Cops have changed," Warren said. "When I grew up, they weren't people who huddled together and their only friends were the cops. You had access to them all the time. You weren't afraid of them."

What did Police Chief Derrick Foxworth have to say about the case? "This did not turn out the way we wanted it to turn out," Foxworth said Friday. "Looking back, and I know the officers feel this as well, they may have done something differently. We would have wanted the minimal amount of force to have been used. But I feel we need to recognize Ms. Crowder has some responsibility. She contributed to the situation."

Granted. But Eunice was 71. She was blind. That probably explains why a judge threw out all charges against her and why the city, in a stone-cold panic, settled ASAP.

"This was like fighting Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder," Warren said. "It wasn't a fair fight."

No, but it was another excuse to haul out the usual code words about the cops' "reasonable" belief that they were justified to use a "reasonable amount of force to defend themselves."

If you have a different definition of "reasonable," you just don't understand the Portland police. You need to remember the words of Robert King, head of the police union, defending Officer Jason Sery in the March shooting of James Jahar Perez:

"What sets us apart from people like most of you is that you'll never face a situation in your job where -- in less than 10 seconds -- the routine can turn to truly life-threatening," King wrote. "When that happens to us, when we have to make that ultimate split-second decision, we don't just ask for your understanding, we ask for your support."

She was 71 years old. She was blind. She was lucky, I guess, that these cops -- set apart from people like most of us -- didn't make the usual split-second decision and draw their guns.

Boy suspended for allegedly exposing teacher to allergy

SOUTH ORANGE, New Jersey (AP) -- A sixth-grader was suspended after school officials accused him of threatening to expose a highly allergic teacher to peanut butter cookies, the boy's father said Thursday.

Loubert Gabriel said his son, 12-year-old Jules, had been kept out of class since April 2, after a girl in his social studies class at South Orange Middle School told the teacher that Jules had made the threat.

The father said Jules was carrying a snack packet of Nutter Butter cookies and did make a comment about having "something dangerous" but never said he had a weapon. "They mishandled this," Gabriel said.

Gabriel said the boy has not been allowed to return to classes pending a May 13 hearing by the district. The family had believed the suspension would be for 10 days, he said.

School district officials declined to comment Thursday.

Ingestion of even a morsel of peanut can cause people who are allergic to suffer severe reactions, from throat irritation to death. Gabriel said the teacher was not exposed to the cookies and had no reaction.

Teacher accused of ordering student thrown from window

COVINGTON, Ga. (AP) — A teacher at a Newton County school has resigned after officials say she admitted she told two students to throw a 14-year-old girl from a classroom window.
The teacher, a 63-year-old Conyers resident, was not immediately arrested after the Monday incident, which took place at Sharp Learning Center. But the Newton County Sheriff's Office is investigating.

The student, whose name was not released, was taken to Newton General Hospital on Tuesday night for neck pains and cuts to her body, said Newton County Sheriff's Office investigator Marty Roberts.

According to an incident report by resource officer Brian Chiappetta, the incident took place in the morning during second period. The students were in class when the teacher took a photograph of some of the students, the report said. When the girl asked why the teacher had taken her picture, the teacher allegedly responded with a disparaging remark about the girl's appearance.

The girl became upset and began to use profanity and hit the office assist button on the classroom wall, the incident report said. The teacher then allegedly told two 14-year-old boys to pick up the girl and throw her out the window.

The two boys later told principal Kenneth Daniels that they threw the girl out the window because they did not want to be written up for disobeying a teacher.

The teacher resigned Wednesday, Roberts said.

Roberts said he has been told that the school board will leave it up to the girl's parents to pursue criminal charges against the teacher. But he said his investigation is ongoing.

"I've had incidents involving schools, but I've never heard of such a thing where the teacher instructs students like this," Roberts said.

No Privacy for the Poor, Homeless

BERKELEY, California -- Activists and computer industry folks at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference are paying $140 a night to stay at a swanky hotel in Berkeley.

But they started the conference hearing about a group not usually talked about in these circles -- the homeless. A panel examined how massive databases and computer algorithms are being used to track the homeless or discriminate against the poor who need insurance.

Birny Birnbaum of the Center for Economic Justice tried to persuade the audience that insurance companies use credit report data and data-mining algorithms to single out the poor for higher insurance rates.

Birnbaum called the practice 21st-century redlining, referring to a now-outlawed banking practice that discriminated against minorities by refusing to issue mortgages to people buying homes in poorer neighborhoods.

But the panel spent most of its time talking about a new homeless database system mandated by the federal government.

Across the country, homeless shelters and other service providers are scrambling to implement an electronic homeless-management system by an October 2004 deadline set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Those systems, according to HUD draft standards, will include information on homeless individuals' incomes, mental health histories, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. The databases would keep the information for seven years.

The impetus for the homeless-management system came from Congress, which told HUD to come up with a better way to count the number of homeless people.

Cindy Southworth, technology director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, told conference goers that the mandated databases would endanger the lives of women fleeing a violent partner. She argued that there are simpler, cheaper and less-invasive ways to achieve the goal of a homeless census.

"What has ended up happening has been the development of massive database systems, county by county, state by state, that are putting together systems almost as invasive as sex-offender registries for domestic violence victims and other homeless folks who are using services," Southworth said.

"It is a fabulous tool for stalkers," she said. "We are taking the exact location and other information about a victim and sticking it in a central server that's not very secure."

Alameda County, which includes the city of Berkeley and has an average of 6,215 homeless people a week, has been wrestling with this dilemma for months.

Service providers hope the centralized information will supply useful information on a client's background. Meanwhile, clients are tired of filling out the same paper intake form multiple times, according to Megan Schatz, coordinator for Alameda County's Continuum of Care Council.

Schatz says the county has bought licenses for the ServicePoint system, which has layers of "locks" to keep sensitive information from being shared among and even within agencies.

"We are 100 percent committed to protecting the privacy of survivors of domestic violence," Schatz said.

But Southworth said many counties aren't as careful and are already demanding that shelters turn over detailed information on domestic violence victims to make funding sources happy.

Just across the bay from the conference, San Francisco shelters are using a centralized system that tracks homeless people using a digital fingerprint and photo.

Chance Martin, of the San Francisco-based Coalition on Homelessness, told the conference that the system was not helping the homeless get better care.

"The biggest feature of the database is billing and inventory control," Martin said.

The system also plays into the fears of mentally ill patients, military veterans and immigrants with "cloudy legal status," who fear, fairly or not, they are being spied upon by the government, according to Martin.

Southworth suggested several alternatives to massive centralized databases, including issuing smartcards to homeless people, or simply standardizing the day homeless shelters conduct bed counts to get an accurate estimate of the number of homeless people.

Kids Fingerprinted for Fla. School Bus Rides

For the past month, students in Lee County, Fla., have been thumbprinted every time they get on and off the school bus.

Lou Karnbach, director of the county's student transportation said the system is intended to keep students safe.

"This is a system that recognizes by numbers that somebody got on the bus ... when he got on the bus, and the location he got on the bus," she said.

The pilot program combines thumbprint tracking with global positioning systems that monitor driving habits like speed, stops and starts and overall safety.

But critics say thumbprinting school kids and putting them on what they call "Big Brother buses" is wrong.

"We're currently living in a surveillance society where every movement action and utterance is being tracked or correlated," said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union (search ). "It's not too late to put a halt to this. It's not too late to stop this growing monster."

In January, Karie Rathburn's son Todd was forgotten on a school bus before being found by another driver and taken to school . She's all for safety, but not fingerprinting.

"I feel it is a violation of the children's rights," she said.

New cars are getting too expensive to fix

Last fall, a brand new BMW 3-series car rolled into the Old Dominion Carstar Collision Center in Eugene, Ore. - literally. A teenager was "driving dad's car," says shop owner Patty McConnell, and rolled it over - with little apparent structural damage. The teen walked away, and normally the damage wouldn't have been hard to repair. But the BMW had so many air bags "it looked like a balloon," recalls Ms. McConnell. The new car, worth more than $30,000, was totaled.
Costly air bags, expensive electronics, and lightweight body materials are driving up the cost of fixing new cars. Not only do many more parts have to be replaced rather than repaired, but fewer and fewer body shops can afford the special equipment and training required to do the work."We're moving closer and closer to the disposable car," says Dan Bailey, an executive vice president at Carstar, the largest auto-body repair franchise in the United States.

Repairing a new car a decade ago, for example, cost an average of $2,578 per claim, while in 2003, the cost had ballooned to $3,681, a 43 percent increase that has outpaced inflation, says Kim Hazelbaker, senior vice president and head of loss claims analysis with the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) in Arlington, Va.

Normally it takes a lot of damage to total a brand-new vehicle. Insurance companies calculate the value of a car before the accident and subtract its value as scrap. As long as the result is more than the cost of repair, the car is worth fixing.

But many new cars today cost so much to fix that it's becoming harder to justify repairs. The BMW that hit McConnell's shop had dual front, side, and side- curtain air bags. Federal safety rules do not allow air bags to be reused. So each bag would have had to be replaced with a brand new one. The sensors and pyrotechnics that set them off also required replacement. Add the cost of labor, more than $1,000 for each air bag, and even more for the sensors, and the result is a totaled car.

Before the advent of air bags, only 8 percent of damaged cars were totaled. Today, the figure is nearly 20 percent and rising. "As they continue to put more air bags in these vehicles, the figure is going to continue to escalate," says Mr. Bailey of Carstar. Not only do the number of air bags (two in front have been required since 1996) increase costs, today's new "smart" air bags, with sensors that control whether they deploy and how hard, cost more than older bags. Seat belts, too, have "once-and-done" pretensioners that have to be replaced - even on unoccupied seats - after an accident.

"There are a lot [of electronics in cars] today that weren't there in the past," says Mr. Hazelbaker of HLDI. "And if they're damaged, they are going to have to be bought new. There's only one source, the automaker, so you're going to pay full retail price."

While air bags are the most expensive technology to repair after a crash, other high-tech items are also pushing up repair costs. For example, the world's bestselling vehicle, Ford's F150 pickup, uses a magnesium radiator mount - which gets crunched every time an F150 runs into anything. Magnesium is strong and light, but brittle. Even if it bends without breaking in an accident, a body shop can't bend it back. Like air bags, it has to be replaced at a cost of more than $300.

To meet fuel-economy requirements, automakers are using more lightweight parts. Magnesium, titanium, and carbonized plastic are among the rapidly expanding number of components found under the hood.

And then there's aluminum. At least five cars come with all-aluminum bodies and frames, including the Audi A8, Acura NSX, Honda Insight, Mercedes CL, and the new Jaguar XJ8. So far, few body shops are authorized to fix these cars. For example, only 13 body shops nationwide can do repairs on the XJ8. So if you wreck one in a remote area, insurance companies will factor in the cost of shipping it to an authorized shop.

Body shops that deal with aluminum have to wall off separate work areas and buy tools separate from those used on steel cars. That's because steel shavings can contaminate aluminum.

Because aluminum is difficult to weld, most parts are "bonded" (glued) and riveted together. A riveting tool to replace aluminum parts costs $10,000. Another tool to remove rivets runs $9,000. The total investment in training and tools to run an aluminum-body repair shop can run as much as $200,000.

"If we're going to keep up with changes in the industry in the next three to four years, it's going to take a bigger investment than we have ever seen," says Mr. Bailey. He predicts almost half of today's repair shops won't make that investment.

Even if your car remains accident-free, some of today's high-tech parts can leave you with big repair bills. The celebrated find for car thieves these days is xenon high-intensity-discharge headlights. They can cost up to $3,000 each. That's just for the part, not labor.

Stories of thieves ripping these headlights out of Audis and Nissans - and doing thousands more in body damage - are becoming legion in urban areas. Even when the lights aren't stolen, repairs can be expensive. One body shop that had to remove the lights from a new Audi A8 found they had to be sent back to the manufacturer to be reactivated; otherwise, they wouldn't work.

Now Nissan and other automakers have started using taillights with multiple LEDs rather than a single inexpensive light bulb. The LEDs light faster in a panic stop to give drivers following more warning, but they're also more expensive to replace.

From headlights to taillights, nothing is getting simpler in cars today. As a result, insurers are expecting higher premiums for these premium cars, says HLDI's Hazelbaker.

They've already raised rates on cars with xenon headlights. "Aluminum cars are too new to have reliable figures. And the companies are trying to stay competitive. But it will happen," he says of higher rates for aluminum cars.

To reduce costs, the repair industry is now pushing for measures that would allow body shops to use "preowned" never-used air bags from cars in junkyards. "That will have to come," says Bailey.

Meanwhile, the industry is bracing for more and more technology. "This is something the automakers have to do to meet their fuel economy requirements," says Bailey. "And we're going to have to learn to deal with it."

As cars get more complicated, fewer skilled technicians to repair them

If today's cars are harder to repair, the skills needed to repair them are also harder to come by.

Technicians - don't dare call them mechanics - often have to complete four years of school: two years of technical school and two more to obtain an associate's degree. After that, a student works as an apprentice for three years before being fully qualified.

Automotive technicians held about 818,000 jobs in 2002, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure is expected to increase by 10 to 20 percent annually.

"There's no shortage of general technicians, but there is a big shortage of qualified people to work on drivability and emissions issues," says Robert Rodriguez of Automotive Service Excellence. The Leesburg, Va., organization certifies repair shops and technicians.

These specialist technicians need advanced reading, problem-solving, and basic electronics skills, he says. "The best people to find are those who have worked in the IT [information technology] industry," he says.

Twenty years ago, repair manuals for certain cars were 100 or so pages long. Now, they hold over 1 million pages and are available only electronically, says John Paul, who handles repair-shop certification for AAA Southern New England.

Schooling at the Universal Technical Institute, a Phoenix-based network with several campuses in the US, costs up to $15,000, depending on proficiency. And technicians have to buy their own tools at a cost of $10,000 or more.

"We have to fight to get people who are bright and motivated," says Mr. Rodriguez. "There is tremendous pressure in society against letting little Johnny go into car repair," he says, adding, "I wouldn't want my kid to become a mechanic."

So recruiters are turning more to women and immigrants. More technical manuals are written in Spanish, says Rodriguez, who remains hopeful that the gap will be filled with time. "There are still a lot of these guys that have gas in their blood and all they want to do is work on cars," he says.

Shhh! The FBI's listening to your keystrokes

The FBI is trying to convince the government to mandate that providers of broadband, Internet telephony, and instant-messaging services build in backdoors for easy wiretapping.
That would constitute a sweeping expansion of police surveillance powers. Instead of asking Congress to approve the request, the FBI (along with the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration) are pressing the Federal Communications Commission to move forward with minimal public input.

The three agencies argue that the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) permits the FCC to rewire the Internet to suit the eavesdropping establishment. The bureau's not talking, but it seems to be all about ease of eavesdropping.
"The importance and the urgency of this task cannot be overstated," their proposal says. "The ability of federal, state and local law enforcement to carry out critical electronic surveillance is being compromised today."

Unfortunately for the three agencies, CALEA, as it's written, would not grant the request.

When Congress was debating CALEA, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh reassured nervous senators that the law would be limited to telephone calls. (CALEA was intended to let police wiretap conversations flowing through then-novel services like cellular phones and three-way calling.)

"So what we are looking for is strictly telephone--what is said over a telephone?" Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., asked.

Freeh replied: "That is the way I understand it. Yes, sir."

A House of Representatives committee report prepared in October 1994 is emphatic, saying CALEA's requirements "do not apply to information services such as electronic-mail services; or online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online or Mead Data (Central); or to Internet service providers."

Freeh, who has a sincere appreciation for wiretaps, had included Internet services in an earlier version of CALEA--but Congress didn't buy it. "Unlike the bills previously proposed by the FBI, this bill is limited to local and long-distance telephone companies, cellular and PCS providers, and other common carriers," Jerry Berman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Congress during a September 1994 hearing.

But now that more conversations are taking place through audio-based instant-messaging and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, the FBI and its allies are hoping that official Washington won't remember inconvenient details. Louis Freeh reassured nervous senators that CALEA would be limited to telephone calls.
"These (wiretapping) problems are real, not hypothetical, and their impact on the ability of federal, state and local law enforcement to protect the public is growing with each passing day," the police agencies say in their proposal to the FCC.

It's true that the FBI has a difficult job to do, especially after Sept. 11, 2001, but is this proposal necessary, let alone wise?

Police have long been able to intercept Internet traffic. In 1996, then-Attorney General Janet Reno announced that investigators were successfully tapping the Internet without any problems. Even earlier, the Secret Service's "datataps" of Masters of Deception members helped bust that hacking group in 1992. Efficient Internet wiretapping is exactly what the FBI's Carnivore system, also called DCS1000, is designed to accomplish.

Then why is the FBI so emphatic? The bureau's not talking, but it seems to be all about ease of eavesdropping. Sorting through an intercepted stream of data is difficult and means that Carnivore must be updated to unpack the Session Initiation Protocol used to set up VoIP and instant-messaging conversations. Ordering those companies to include a backdoor for police is a lot easier.

It's worth noting that the FBI is hardly alone. The National Sheriffs' Association, the Police Executive Research Forum, the Illinois State Police and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation have petitioned the FCC to grant the FBI's request.

They're even sharing talking points: Each of the groups included an identical paragraph in its letter to the FCC. "State and local law enforcement do not have the financial or personnel resources to develop costly ad hoc surveillance solutions for each new communications service," their letters said.

Maybe they're right. New technologies do present police with new headaches, and perhaps that justifies additional wiretapping powers. But the question will be: Who gets to make that call--elected representatives in Congress or well-meaning but unelected bureaucrats at the FCC?

Friend or Foe? A Digital Dog Tag Answers

AS violence boils in Iraq, American troops and allied forces are in danger - not just from local insurgents and militias, but from their own side as well.

Despite precautions taken by the G.I.'s, despite the growing accuracy of bombs and other weapon systems, despite an ever clearer picture of the combat zone from surveillance drones and spy satellites, soldiers continue to be killed by fire from their own comrades.

But new technologies being tested by the American-led forces have the potential to prevent many of these accidental attacks. Using a combination of radio frequency transponders, laser sensors and microwave-like transmitters, the Defense Department hopes to give every allied soldier, tank and plane a unique identifier to distinguish friend from foe.

Traditionally, mistaken attacks - what the military calls friendly fire - account for 15 percent or more of combat casualties, said Pete Glikerdas, who manages combat identification programs for the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command. "Our goal is to bring the friendly fire problem down to less than 3 percent," Mr. Glikerdas said.

In Iraq, the majority of accidental casualties have been caused by air-to-ground attacks, said Lt. Col. Wayne Shanks of the Joint Forces Command. In April 2002, for example, an American F-16 pilot killed four Canadian soldiers and wounded eight when he dropped a 500-pound bomb on a group that was training near Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Radio frequency tags - transponders about the size of a bar of soap - may help prevent such assaults.

From the grainy images produced by a fighter plane's sensors, it is often hard to tell what side a truck or a tank or a band of soldiers is on. When hit by a plane's radar signal, though, the radio tags send a signal back with additional information that identifies the equipment or person.

The most sophisticated of the tags sample the radar's waveform, like a recording engineer sampling a melody. To this, the tags "add a harmony, or even a counter-melody, with its own unique structure," said Jay Saffold, president of the Research Network, based in Kennesaw, Ga., which is evaluating combat identification systems for the Army. The new signal is returned to the aircraft, which then processes it and extracts the information sent by the tag.

Such transponders have been around in one form or another for decades. Yet increasingly powerful computer processors have allowed the tags "to go from suitcase or backpack size down to cigarette pack size," said Lt. Col Bill McKean of the Joint Forces Command. And that in turn is making the devices inexpensive enough for the Pentagon to start thinking about widely distributing them among troops.

The transponders are one of a number of identification technologies that American, British and French forces will test during combined exercises along the East Coast in June.

Mistaken attacks became a major issue for the Pentagon after the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, when they caused 24 percent of the deaths of American soldiers.

But a comprehensive effort to reduce such accidents has been slow in coming. "I don't think we've made a lot of progress in the last 10 years," Brig. Gen. Robert W. Cone of the Army said at a briefing last October.

The American-led forces in Iraq today have tools for preventing such mistakes, but many of them are decidedly low-tech: reflective panels that show up in weapons systems' thermal sights, and hand-held strobe lights that are invisible to the naked eye but instantly recognizable to a soldier wearing night vision goggles.

More important, perhaps, are the new satellite-based systems for tracking allied forces. Every few minutes, vehicles outfitted with the Army's Blue Force Tracking system communicate their whereabouts to a central headquarters. There, a composite map of the battlefield is created, showing where all of the units equipped with such tracking systems are. That picture is then sent to the vehicles over an encrypted high-frequency satellite link.

Instead of the tracking system and other so-called passive approaches, which simply transmit units' whereabouts, Colonel McKean and others are working to develop "cooperative" identification programs like the radio frequency tags. These are systems that allow a shooter to, in effect, ask his target whether he is a friend or not and enable the target to reply instantly.

For tanks and armored vehicles, the military wants to use millimeter waves, a shorter cousin of microwaves, to make the queries. The Battlefield Targeting Identification Device system uses a shoebox-size transmitter to send such waves toward a target before the shooting starts. An encrypted reply can return from as far as four miles away in less than a second, Mr. Glikerdas said.

The system's 25-pound transmitters are too heavy for troops moving around a combat zone on their own two feet, however. So instead, the laser range finders on soldiers' rifles are being retooled to ask the question, "Friend or foe?" All soldiers would wear sensor tags that, when hit by a laser beam from a range finder, would generate a "friendly" signal transmitted by the soldier's radio.

This approach has shortcomings, Mr. Glikerdas admitted. Rain, fog and dust can disrupt laser beams. And not every soldier has a radio; those are usually saved for a squad's commander.

Ivan Oelrich, the director of the Federation of American Scientists' strategic security project, said he worried that the whole "cooperative" approach might be flawed.

"You run the risk of giving your own position away if you're sending out a signal," Mr. Oelrich said. "Even if your enemy can't figure out the code, he can at least figure out that you're querying him. And he can start shooting in your direction."

No technology, Colonel McKean acknowledged, will ever be able to flawlessly pick out friend from foe, much less civilian from combatant. But clearing away even some of a war's fog is worthwhile nonetheless, he said.

"Improving the capabilities is still worth the cost," he said, "because you're saving lives."

No Chip in Arm, No Shot From Gun

PALM BEACH, Florida -- A new computer chip promises to keep police guns from firing if they fall into the wrong hands.

The tiny chip would be implanted in a police officer's hand and would match up with a scanning device inside a handgun. If the officer and gun match, a digital signal unlocks the trigger so it can be fired. But if a child or criminal would get hold of the gun, it would be useless.

The technology is the latest attempt to create a so-called "smart gun" and could be marketed to law enforcement agencies within a year, according to Verichip, which has created the microchip.

Verichip president Keith Bolton said the technology could also improve safety for the military and individual gun owners.

"If you let your mind wander to other potential uses, you can imagine the lives that could be saved," he said.

Verichip, which has marketed similar microchips for security and medical purposes, announced Tuesday a partnership with gun maker FN Manufacturing to produce the smart weapons. The companies have developed a prototype and are working to refine its accuracy, Bolton said.

Similar developments are under way at other gun manufacturers and research firms. The New Jersey Institute of Technology and Australian gun maker Metal Storm Ltd. are working on a prototype smart gun that would recognize its owner's individual grip.

"We're at an interesting age where all sorts of science fiction is becoming real technology," said Donald Sebastian, NJIT vice president for research and development and director of the project.

The technology could also eventually have an even bigger impact on the illegal gun trade, Sebastian said.

The FBI estimated that 67 percent of the 16,204 murders in 2002 were committed with firearms.

"You have a long-term benefit of making it much more difficult for a handgun to have any value to anyone other than the original owner," Sebastian said.

But until the smart-gun technology is repeatedly proved to be reliable, some law enforcement authorities remain leery.

The scanning device could malfunction, the officer's hand with the computer chip could be smashed during a fight or an officer might need to use a partner's gun, West Palm Beach police training Sgt. William Sandman said.

"We have power outages, computers crash. Would you risk your life knowing all those things that could go wrong?" Sandman said.

Verichip's Bolton said those concerns already are being addressed. He said the guns can be designed to work for an officer, his partner and a supervisor. Departments could set routines where the scanning devices in guns could be checked before every shift.

The chip needs no battery or power source. It works much like those that have been implanted in pets over the past decade so they can be identified if they get lost. Verichip, a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions, developed a "more intelligent" version two years ago for humans and estimates that about 900 people worldwide have been implanted with them.

The chips can be used instead of security key cards at office buildings or to use global positioning satellites to keep track of a relative who might suffer from Alzheimer's. It can store medical information that emergency rooms could read or financial and identification information to prevent fraud.

The chip, about the size of a grain of rice, is inserted into an arm or hand with a syringe, much like a shot is given.

Bolton said the company has seen no medical complications and that the technology will only improve with time.

Once the technology is accepted, legislation could follow to encourage the use of smart guns. New Jersey already has passed legislation that will require smart-gun technology on all handguns sold -- three years after the state attorney general certifies that smart guns are available in the marketplace.

The National Rifle Association opposes the legislation because of potential problems with smart-gun technology, but gun safety advocates argue that the technology could encourage gun ownership with the newfound sense of security.

"It seems that guns are the only product that haven't followed a path of development that leads to greater safety for the user. The only real change we've seen is to make them more lethal and smaller so they can be more easily concealed," said Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "This is one of the steps that hasn't been taken, and we think this debate is one that needs to take place."

Cooperation Not Legislation To Control Violent Video Game Sales

A proposal by state Assembly member Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to ban sales of violent video games to minors has this less-government-is-better proponent in a quandary. Too often, lawmakers at all levels of government write laws to make up for people's dumb choices and poor parenting. Unfortunately, we can't legislate stupidity out of the world.

But we also can't ignore the increasing violent nature of video games and the impact a steady diet of violence has on kids' mental health. Is it healthy for kids to play a game such as "Postal," in which the player roams through a town, gunning down unarmed citizens, including cheerleaders and the school marching band, as they beg for mercy? Absolutely not. Research shows that "playing violent video games appears to affect aggression by priming aggressive thoughts."

In addition, this potentially violence-inducing pastime is growing in popularity. Annual video-game sales now outpace revenue from movie tickets, and 90 percent of American children ages 2-17 regularly play video and computer games. According to an industry research group, the market share of games rated Mature, or M, more than doubled between 2001 and 2002 (the most recent information available). The same group reports that about 40 percent of those who play M-rated games are under 18.

While Yee's concern about the effect of violent games on youth is valid, his approach is wrong. Instead of turning to government regulation, the answer is a stronger partnership between the industry and parents.

Yee's legislation proposes to ban the sale of certain violent video games-- those involving acts that would be criminal in real life -- to minors. Unfortunately, the proposal creates a confusing new rating category that differs from the video-game industry's existing system.

Today, video games are rated according to those categorizations (much like the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system), which retailers voluntarily enforce. The ratings include Early Childhood (EC), Everyone (E), Teen (T), Mature (M) and Adult Only (AO). M-rated video games are meant for players 17 and up, and AO-rated games are for those 18 and older. The ratings include both age-appropriateness comments and 31 content descriptors (intense violence, strong sexual content, drug reference, blood and gore, etc.).

Even with the rating system in place, a 2000 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) "secret shopper" survey found that 85 percent of the time, teens directed by the FTC to deliberately attempt to purchase an M-rated game in order to determine whether they would be asked for identification managed to do so without being carded.

Yee wants to prohibit minors from buying a portion of the M-rated video games -- those involving acts that would be criminal in real life. (Just as not all R-rated movies are violent, not all M-rated video games portray violence.) The problem is that Yee has no feasible plan to help retailers understand which video products fall into his new category.

So, what would happen to retailers selling violent video games to minors if the law took effect but there were no clear guidelines about which games fall into the new state rating system? A Yee spokesman said lawmakers hoped to work with the industry to make it clear, but if the industry is not cooperative, he expects that the details would be worked out in court. In fact, Yee's spokesman added, the Assembly member expected that retailers would simply stop selling violent games rather than risk being held civilly liable under the proposed law.

That is just sloppy lawmaking. It isn't fair -- or competent -- lawmaking to put a vague law on the books and then expect retailers to sort it out.

Yee's staff point to the FTC secret-shopper survey as an example of how retailers do not take the rating system seriously, thereby creating the need for government regulation. But industry representatives argue that their voluntary rating system needs to be given a chance to work before the heavy hand of government is brought down.

The FTC survey on video games also documents that 30 percent of minors can get into an R-rated movie without being carded. Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association , believes his industry ultimately can do better than the movie industry, which has been rating movies for more than 35 years.

The video-game industry launched its rating system just 10 years ago. To educate parent and kids about the system, the industry created a "Check the Rating" public-education program, which includes public-service announcements starring Tiger Woods and Derek Jeter.

In reports issued in 2000 and 2002, the FTC has consistently called on the video-game industry to restrict sales of M-rated products to minors. In response, the nation's major video-game retailers last fall announced a national campaign to begin requiring identification before allowing purchase of an M-rated game. The Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association (IEMA) has promised that the new carding program will be in place by the 2004 holiday shopping season.

IEMA members include Best Buy, Blockbuster Entertainment, Circuit City, CompUSA, Electronics Boutique, Gamesource, Hasting Entertainment, Hollywood Video, KB Toys, K-mart, Meijer, Movie Gallery, Musicland, Shopko Stores, Target, Toys R Us and Wal-Mart.

Membership to this powerful association, whose members sell roughly 85 percent of all computer and video games purchased in the nation, will require participation in the carding program. The group says retailers will educate store employees about the importance of enforcing the carding program and will display signage and information about the rating system in member stores. As an added incentive, the association knows federal and state legislators such as Yee are itching to bring government into the picture if the carding system, once in place, is not seriously enforced.

But there is a missing component in this discussion about kids and violent video games: parents. The video-game industry and retailers can step up their efforts to limit minors' ability to purchase extremely violent or sexually explicit video games all they want, but if parents continue to allow their children to purchase and play these games, there is little government can do about it.

Those of us who believe extremely violent video games are harmful to children by promoting an acceptance of violence would like to believe young people are buying and playing the games without the full knowledge of their parents. The reality, according to the FTC, is that parents are involved in the purchase or rental of video games 83 percent of the time. The same report showed that parents are only nominally aware of the rating system and its age-based ratings and content descriptors.

New laws won't prevent young people from playing violent video games as long as their parents allow it. Parents, not government, need to be more involved in monitoring the media children are consuming.

Yee's concern about the impact of violent video games is understandable. But his energy would be better spent educating parents about the rating system and the dangers of allowing their children to play M-rated video games.

File-sharing to bypass censorship

By the year 2010, file-sharers could be swapping news rather than music, eliminating censorship of any kind.
This is the view of the man who helped kickstart the concept of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, Cambridge University's Professor Ross Anderson.

In his vision, people around the world would post stories via anonymous P2P services like those used to swap songs.

They would cover issues currently ignored by the major news services, said Prof Anderson.

"Currently, only news that's reckoned to be of interest to Americans and Western Europeans will be syndicated because that's where the money is," he told the BBC World Service programme, Go Digital.

"But if something happens in Peru that's of interest to viewers in China and Japan, it won't get anything like the priority for syndication.

"If you can break the grip of the news syndication services and allow the news collector to talk to the radio station or local newspaper then you can have much more efficient communications."

'Impossible to censor'

To enable this, Prof Anderson proposes a new and improved version of Usenet, the internet news service.

If there's material that everyone agrees is wicked, like child pornography, then it's possible to track it down and close it down

But what of fears that the infrastructure that allows such ad hoc news networks to grow might also be abused by criminals and terrorists?

Prof Anderson believes those fears are overstated. He argued that web watchdogs like the Internet Watch Foundation, which monitors internet-based child abuse, would provide the necessary policing functions.

This would require a high level of international agreement to be effective.

"The effect of peer-to-peer networks will be to make censorship difficult, if not impossible," said Prof Anderson.

"If there's material that everyone agrees is wicked, like child pornography, then it's possible to track it down and close it down. But if there's material that only one government says is wicked then, I'm sorry, but that's their tough luck".

Political obstacles

Commenting on Prof Anderson's ideas, technology analyst Bill Thompson welcomed the idea of new publishing tools that will weaken the grip on news of major news organisations.

Such P2P systems, he said, would give everybody a voice and allow personal testimonies to come out.

But the technology that makes those publishing tools accessible to everyone and sufficiently user-friendly will take longer to develop than Prof Anderson thinks, added Mr Thompson.

Prof Anderson's vision underestimates the political obstacles in the way of such developments, he said, and the question of censorship had not been clearly thought through.

"Once you build the technology to break censorship, you've broken censorship - even of the things you want censored," said Mr Thompson.

"Saying you can then control some parts of it, like images of child abuse, is being wilfully optimistic. And that's something that peer to peer advocates have to face."

The price of music...

Well, many online stores have been selling music for $0.99/track lately as a buffer zone against piracy. This seems like an appropriate price to us, based on a 5 minute song with decent airplay. The RIAA (villians that they are) are trying to increase that to 2 or more dollars.

There's another semi-related side to this issue, what about interlude tracks? Many albums have tracks that are little snippets of speech, or otherwise interspersed between the actual music. Should we pay the same buck for them? Of course not.

The solution is relatively simple. Full album prices should be set at a reasonable 10 to 15$, depending on the relative strength of the album. New releases from famous artists will cost more, and on down to about $5 for the lesser known and/or older works (and some should be less than that). If we let the record company decide these prices, but insist they cover the gamut, both they and we should be satisfied at the results.

Corrospondingly, individual tracks should be based upon their popularity by way of an automatic download/purchase tracker. The more people buy X, the more X costs, up to about 3 bucks or so. This allows the record companies to get the best price for their most important tracks (without going overboard) and lets us determine our own prices based on how much the music is actually worth to us. If we must have the latest thing, right now, we can pay extra. This is fair.

Consumers as a group will be able to determine the price for a given piece as well. If something is really good enough to warrant it, people will be willing to pay more and the price will rise. This also provides a de-facto rating system which could be used in all other sorts of ways to help guide music along the path where people wish to follow.

The record companies will have to set a base price on tracks, like a dime, to cover the actual distribution costs, but allowing cheap distribution for unknown tracks improves their bottom line for those tracks infinately (they get Nothing right now) and gives them the capability of rising through the ranks if they're really good.

Another good side-effect of this plan is to lessen the power of their publicity. When people can search by popularity, they're going to be more willing to look through the stacks to find out why their favorite artists other 8 songs off the album didn't make it to the top 500. In doing so, they'll be exposed to other music (and with a minor technical input, related sounding music of similar popularity).

In all, we wrestle with the record companies because we feel we have been overcharged for years. Buying an entire CD just because we like a couple of tracks on it is ludicrous. This solution may need a few bugs worked out, but has the best chance of balancing the interests of the RIAA, the artists, and ours as consumers, which are the most important of all.