‘Tanning salon owners will be subject to background checks and police inspections under stricter licensing rules adopted after one operator was charged with secretly videotaping female patrons undressing.
The new rules, which require an annual license for tanning salons, were approved by the City Council on Monday and will take effect in two months.
Salon owners will have to submit detailed background information and be subject to routine police inspections for hidden surveillance devices.’
‘A bill introduced to the US House of Representatives would require ISPs to record all users’ surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely.
The bill, dubbed the Safety Act by sponsor Lamar Smith, a republican congressman from Texas, would impose fines and a prison term of one year on ISPs which failed to keep full records.’
‘Prime Minister John Howard says he is glad the US military has drafted new charges against Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks.
The US military has revealed details of the drafted charges that include attempted murder and providing material support for terrorism.
Mr Howard says he is pleased there has been some progress in the case against Mr Hicks. [..]
Mr Hicks’s US military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, has questioned the charge of attempted murder, pointing out that the US military prosecutor has acknowledged that Mr Hicks never fired a shot in anger.’
‘A German court has ordered the arrest of 13 people in connection with the alleged CIA-backed kidnapping of a German citizen, regarded as one of the most notorious US “renditions” of a terror suspect, prosecutors said.
The prosecutor’s office in Munich, southern Germany, said the city’s administrative court had issued the arrest warrants against individuals thought to be CIA agents on suspicion of abduction and grievous bodily harm.
Authorities are probing allegations by Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German, that he was abducted by US agents in the Macedonian capital Skopje on New Year’s Eve 2003.’
‘With the rising use of radioisotopes in medicine and the growing use of radiation detectors in a security-conscious nation, patients are triggering alarms in places where they may not even realize they’re being scanned, doctors and security officials say.
Nearly 60,000 people a day in the United States undergo treatment or tests that leave tiny amounts of radioactive material in their bodies, according to the Society of Nuclear Medicine. It is not enough to hurt them or anyone else, but it is enough to trigger radiation alarms for up to three months.’
‘Edward Cowal, a registered sex offender in Florida, was the sole winner of a $14 million lottery drawing, officials said.
He elected to take a lump sum settlement of nearly $8 million before taxes.
State records show that Cowal has an extensive record of arrests for alleged offenses beginning in 1993, including burglary, lewd and lascivious or indecent assault upon a child, trespass, aggravated assault and driving under the influence.’
`The Princeton Diebold Virus Hack, if you’ve been living in a cave, found that a single person with 60 seconds of unsupervised access to the system, who either picked the lock (easy in 10 seconds) or had a key, could slip a vote-swapping virus onto a single machine which could then undetectably affect every other machine in the county to steal an entire election. [..]
This idiotic company has had a photograph of the stupid key sitting on their own website’s online store! (Screenshot at end of this article.)
Of course, they’ll only sell such keys to “Diebold account holders” apparently — or so they claim — but that’s hardly a problem. J. Alex Halderman, one of the folks who worked on the Princeton Hack and tried to keep the design of the key secret for obvious reasons, revealed Tuesday that a friend of his had found the photo of the key on Diebold’s website and discovered that was all he needed to create a working copy!’
`Mr Ruddock continues to assert that the Australian Government is doing all it can for David Hicks, and that it is working to ensure safeguards are in place for him to be given a fair trial. It is, however, difficult to imagine an outcome that could be more politically embarrassing or damaging for the Government than for David Hicks, after all this time, to be found not guilty of the charges suggested. It is surely of major importance to the Government now that he be tried and convicted of serious offences, and before this year’s election takes place.
All the evidence suggests that far from receiving anything like a fair trial, Mr Hicks will be charged and tried under procedures amounting to a kangaroo court of the most noxious kind. The fact that our Government continues to support this travesty gives the community every justification for reassessing the Government’s publicly stated view. In reality, it wants Mr Hicks convicted, and as soon as possible.’
`In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American. [..]
“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering. [..]
Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.”’
`Sex offenders could be forced to have hormone injections under radical plans to tackle crime being considered by Downing Street.
Strategists think the injections – effectively the “chemical castration” of sexual predators to suppress their urges – would help prevent attacks.
The controversial proposal is one of a number being looked at by Tony Blair’s strategy unit as part of the Prime Minister’s policy review.
Other ideas include installing microchips in the mentally ill to monitor their behaviour and sending text messages to parents to warn them a paedophile is at large in their area.’
‘The US Defence Department has drafted a manual for trying detainees at the Guantanamo Bay jail that would allow terror suspects to be imprisoned, convicted and executed on the basis of hearsay evidence or coerced testimony. [..]
According to a copy of the manual obtained by The Associated Press, a terror suspect’s defence lawyer cannot reveal classified evidence in their defence until the government has had a chance to review it.’
Also – Hicks faces flawed system:
`Australian terrorist suspect David Hicks faces trial by a fundamentally flawed and unfair system, the Law Council of Australia says.’
`The House lawmaker in charge of defense spending said Friday that he intends to force the closure of the Guantánamo Bay military prison and curb U.S. engagement in Iraq, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “absolutely” supports his efforts. [..]
He said the best way to control what course the war takes is for Congress to attach conditions to war-spending bills, because Bush is unlikely to veto a bill that provides money to keep fighting.
The Guant�namo military prison, where prisoners have been held without charges and abused, need to be closed to restore U.S. credibility, Murtha said.’
`You saw the stories that dominated the headlines in 2006: the war in Iraq, North Koreas nuclear tests, and the U.S. midterm elections. But what about the news that remained under the radar? From the Bush administrations post-Katrina power grab to a growing arms race in Latin America to the new hackable passports, FP delivers the Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2006.’
`Unfortunately, calling me alarmist or paranoid doesnt address what Im saying, it does nothing but calm your fears. The existence of a global elite is perfectly real, although the reader is of course welcome to deny it. And a great many of the men — and its all men, folks — who make up this global elite are on record, again and again, in no uncertain terms, stating that they would like to remove a large portion of the humans currently living on Earth.
To make matters worse, the technology to do this exists — in fact, there is an over-abundance of methods for mass murder at this point in human history. So here we have a very dangerous and disturbing nexus, a point where several threads overlap and intertwine. We have a small group of very powerful humans who have expressed the desire for population reduction and have the means to accomplish that goal within their possession.’
`They say money talks, and a new report suggests Canadian currency is indeed chatting, at least electronically, on behalf of shadowy spies.
Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence.
Security experts believe the miniature devices could be used to track the movements of defence industry personnel dealing in sensitive military technology.’
‘An actual British government poster outside a London Metro station. And you thought talk of a police state was just fearmongering.’
see it here »
`The leading certifier of US electronic voting systems, Colorado outfit Ciber, Inc., is no longer permitted to issue certifications, after federal investigators discovered appallingly haphazard testing regimes, the New York Times reports.
Ciber, which certifies the majority of US election devices, was unable to document how it supposedly tested the machines for accuracy and security. Due to the oddities of US elections regulations, no government agency is assigned this role; rather, device manufacturers pay whoever they wish to rubber-stamp their kit.’
`President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant.
Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.
A White House spokeswoman disputed claims that the move gives Bush any new powers, saying the Constitution allows such searches.’
`The FBI on Tuesday released documents showing at least 26 of the agency’s employees witnessed aggressive mistreatment and harsh interrogation techniques of prisoners by other government agencies or outside contractors at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“On several occasions witnesses saw detainees in interrogation rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to floor with no chair/food/water; most urinated or defecated on selves and were left there 18, 24 hours or more,” according to one FBI account made public.
One FBI witness saw a detainee “shaking with cold,” while another noted a detainee in a sweltering unventilated room was “almost unconscious on a floor with a pile of hair next to him (he had apparently been pulling it out through the night).”
Another witness saw a detainee “with a full beard whose head was wrapped in duct tape.”‘
`1. UKRAINIAN PARTISANS
From 1945 to 1952, the CIA trained and aerially supplied Ukrainian partisan units which had originally been organised by the Germans to fight the Soviets during WWII. For seven years, the partisans, operating in the Carpathian Mountains, made sporadic attacks. Finally, in 1952, a massive Soviet military force wiped them out.
2. CHINESE BRIGADE IN BURMA
After the Communist victory in China, Nationalist Chinese soldiers fled into northern Burma. During the early 1950s, the CIA used these soldiers to create a 12,000-man brigade which made raids into Red China. However, the Nationalist soldiers found it more profitable to monopolise the local opium trade.’
`It’s Saturday night in Middlesbrough, England, and drunken university students are celebrating the start of the school year, known as Freshers’ Week.
One picks up a traffic cone and runs down the street. Suddenly, a disembodied voice booms out from above:
“You in the black jacket! Yes, you! Put it back!” The confused student obeys as his friends look bewildered.
“People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,” said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars.’
`In early December, defense lawyers acting for Jose Padilla, a US citizen detained as an “enemy combatant,” released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk — taking him to the prison dentist. A group of masked guards in riot gear shackled his legs and hands, blindfolded him with black-out goggles and shut off his hearing with headphones, then marched him down the prison corridor.
Is Padilla really that dangerous? Far from it: his warders describe him as so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for “a piece of furniture.” The purpose of these measures appeared to be to sustain the regime under which he had lived for over three years: total sensory deprivation. He had been kept in a blacked-out cell, unable to see or hear anything beyond it. Most importantly, he had no human contact, except for being bounced off the walls from time to time by his interrogators. As a result, he appears to have lost his mind. I don’t mean this metaphorically. I mean that his mind is no longer there.’
`An Australian was barred from a London-Melbourne flight unless he removed a T-shirt depicting George Bush as the world’s number one terrorist.
Allen Jasson was also prevented from catching a connecting flight within Australia later the same day unless he removed the offending T-shirt.
Mr Jasson says Qantas and Virgin Blue were engaging in censorship but the airlines say the T-shirt was a security issue and could affect the sensitivities of other passengers.’
`There is very little that sums up the record of the U.S. Congress in the Bush years better than a half-mad boy-addict put in charge of a federal commission on child exploitation. After all, if a hairy-necked, raincoat-clad freak like Rep. Mark Foley can get himself named co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, one can only wonder: What the hell else is going on in the corridors of Capitol Hill these days?
These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula — a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.’
`The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone’s microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.
The technique is called a “roving bug,” and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.
Nextel cell phones owned by two alleged mobsters, John Ardito and his attorney Peter Peluso, were used by the FBI to listen in on nearby conversations. The FBI views Ardito as one of the most powerful men in the Genovese family, a major part of the national Mafia.’
`Without their knowledge, millions of Americans and foreigners crossing U.S. borders in the past four years have been assigned scores generated by government computers rating the risk that the travelers are terrorists or criminals.
The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.
The government calls the system critical to national security following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some privacy advocates call it one of the most intrusive and risky schemes yet mounted in the name of anti-terrorism efforts.’
`The week after his party lost both houses of Congress, President George W. Bush appointed a solid citizen in the anti-contraception movement to run the nation’s contraception program for the poor.
Dr. Eric Keroack, a gynecologist who started work Nov. 21, is a regular speaker at national anti-abortion events. This makes him a strange choice to lead a $283-million federal program, called Title X, whose main purpose is to “provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them.”
Consider that not one anti-abortion organization in the country supports the use of contraception. Even more troubling, Keroack has served on the medical advisory board of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a board open only to doctors who refuse to promote or prescribe contraception to teens. One in four of all patients served by Title X clinics are teenagers.
Keroack’s colleagues at the Clearinghouse refer to birth control advocates as “condom pushers” and the “safe sex cartel.” ‘
`A couple’s ill-concealed sexual play aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles got them charged with violating the Patriot Act, intended for terrorist acts, and could land them in jail for 20 years.
According to their indictment, Carl Persing and Dawn Sewell were allegedly snuggling and kissing inappropriately, “making other passengers uncomfortable,” when a flight attendant asked them to stop. [..]
They have been placed under legal surveillance until their trial on February 5. If found guilty, they both could be sent to jail for up to 20 years.’
`In a jail cell at an immigration detention center in Arizona sits a man who is not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime, not considered a danger to society.
But he has been in custody for five years.
His name is Ali Partovi. And according to the Department of
Homeland Security, he is the last to be held of about 1,200 Arab and Muslim men swept up by authorities in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
There has been no full accounting of all of these individuals. Nor has a promised federal policy to protect against unrestricted sweeps been produced.’
`Julia Wilson, a straight-A student at McClatchy High School, spends a lot of her free time on the networking website MySpace.
Until a few months ago the 14-year-old moderated her own group called “Let’s Stab Bush.”
That’s where Wilson posted a cartoon picture of President Bush which included the words “kill Bush” and showed him being stabbed in the hand.
She caught the attention of the Secret Service, which showed up on Wednesday to question her about the picture.
Two agents pulled her out of class and interviewed her for 15 minutes to see if she was really a threat to President Bush.’
