Friday, July 06, 2007

Family told of secret global plan

Family told of secret global plan

July 7, 2007

THE alleged bombmaker for last week's London and Glasgow attacks told his Indian family that he was working on a "large-scale confidential project".

The Times of India reported yesterday that the Indian national Kafeel Ahmed, an aeronautical engineer with a doctorate from a British university, was one of the men detained after driving a blazing car into Glasgow Airport. He is being treated for serious burns.

"I am involved in a large-scale confidential project. It is about global warming. I cannot reveal the details," he told his family in Bangalore before leaving for Britain in May, the Times of India said.

"It involves a lot of travelling … the project has to be started in the United Kingdom," he was quoted as saying. "Various people from various countries are involved in this."

On June 30 - the day after two car bombs were discovered and defused in London and just before the Glasgow attack - Ahmed told his family in India that his "earlier presentation failed" and asked them to pray for him.

Ahmed, whose first name has also been reported as being Khalid, has been identified as the elder brother of Sabeel Ahmed, an Indian doctor who has also been held in connection with the bombing plot.

Kafeel Ahmed, who lies seriously ill in a Scottish hospital with 90 per cent burns, is an engineer with a PhD, police now believe.

Sources claim he used a house in Houston, near Glasgow, to make the car bombs, packing the vehicles with gas cylinders and petrol.

The mobile phone detonators failed in the two Mercedes cars parked in London's West End and Ahmed chose to drive a third vehicle into the airport himself.

There were unconfirmed reports that the malfunction in the car bombs - one of which was parked outside London's Tiger Tiger nightclub - was due to a medical syringe.

The ABC television network in the US on Wednesday reported that a syringe had been used as part of the firing mechanism of the car bomb, but had not worked, despite repeated calls from the alleged bombers.

The British city of Cambridge is now thought to be at the heart of the terrorism plot in connection with which eight people - six of them National Health Service doctors - have been arrested.

Bilal Abdulla, 27, and Mohammed Asha, 26, studied together at Addenbrooke's Hospital there. Now it has emerged that Sabeel Ahmed, 27, had also spent time there recently.

His reśume in 2005 gave his address as an Islamic Academy in Gilbert Road, Cambridge, and said that his expertise was "computational fluid dynamics", in which computers are used to work out the interaction of fluids and gases with surfaces used in engineering.

Kafeel was visited in Cambridge by his brother, Sabeel, a junior doctor in Liverpool, and police believe it is there that they met Dr Abdulla, the passenger in the Jeep at Glasgow Airport, and Dr Asha.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Dr Abdulla was a deeply religious Iraqi angry that his prominent Sunni family "lost everything" following the 2003 invasion led by the US and Britain.

"He was hurt by the destruction of his family's property in Iraq," a close relative said during a 2½hour interview in Cambridge. "I think he wanted to be a martyr. He wanted to send out a message to withdraw troops from Iraq. He wanted to cause chaos and fear; he didn't want to kill people. He fears God, and all he wanted to do was die."

Dr Abdulla entered the medical profession reluctantly, pressured by his father, a professor of orthopaedic medicine in Iraq, the relative said. "He was forced into studying medicine. His heart was not in it. To be honest, he passed because his father was a well-known professor, and that's the way it worked in Iraq."

Telegraph, London; The Washington Post; AFP

Court throws out spying lawsuit

Court throws out spying lawsuit

3-judge panel splits along party lines over Bush’s surveillance program
BREAKING NEWS
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:11 a.m. ET July 6, 2007

CINCINNATI - A federal appeals court on Friday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging President Bush’s domestic spying program, saying the plaintiffs had no standing to sue.

In a 2-1 decision, two Republican appointees on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against allowing the lawsuit. A Democratic appointee judge disagreed, saying it was clear to him that the post-9/11 warrantless surveillance program aimed at uncovering terrorist activity violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

Although the Bush administration said in January the program is now overseen by a special federal intelligence court, opponents said that without a court order, the president could resume the spying outside judicial authority at any time.

The ruling Friday vacates an order by a U.S. District Court in Detroit last August that found the surveillance unconstitutional, violating rights to privacy and free speech and the separation of powers.

U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, one of the two Republican appointees who ruled against the plaintiffs, said they failed to show they were subject to the surveillance and therefore do not have standing for their claims.

U.S. Circuit Judge Ronald Lee Gilman, a Democratic appointee, disagreed, saying he felt the plaintiffs were within their rights to sue and that it was clear to him that the surveillance program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

Although the Bush administration said in January the program is now overseen by a special federal intelligence court, opponents said that without a court order, the president could resume the spying outside judicial authority at any time.

The American Civil Liberties Union led the suit on behalf of other groups including lawyers, journalists and scholars it says have been handicapped in doing their jobs by the government monitoring.

Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, one of the Republican appointees, said the plaintiffs failed to show they were subject to the surveillance and therefore do not have standing for their claims.

Other groups have filed challenges to the program in other courts; this case has proceeded the furthest.

The case will be sent back to the judge in Michigan for dismissal.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19632877/

Goldman Sachs receives death threat letters

Goldman Sachs receives death threat letters

FBI is investigating handwritten anonymous notes sent to newspapers

The Associated Press
Updated: 12:00 p.m. ET July 6, 2007

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - The FBI is investigating anonymous threats against the Goldman Sachs investment firm contained in handwritten letters warning that “hundreds will die.”

Sent to newspapers around the country, the letters threaten the investment titan, warning, “We are inside. You cannot stop us.”

The Star Ledger of Newark reported Friday the letters were all mailed from New York’s Queens borough, and signed “A.Q., U.S.A.” One of the letters, postmarked June 27, was received recently by the newspaper.

Goldman Sachs is based in New York, and has offices in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other cities. About 3,000 people work in its 44-story Jersey City tower.

“We take all of these things seriously,” said New York FBI spokesman Bill Carter. Postal inspection authorities also are investigating.

Company officials would not discuss the threat or their response to it.

“As a matter of policy, Goldman Sachs does not comment on internal security matters,” spokesman Michael DuVally told the newspaper.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19633806/

The enigmatic North American Union

By Judi McLeod Canada Free Press

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

The recent assertion of Robert Pastor, a leading proponent of a “North American Community”, that the NAU “cannot be inflicted upon unsuspecting citizens by stealth or in secret”, would be comforting, were it not for one little detail.

Pastor, vice president of international affairs at American University, insists that no one would be in favour of dissolving the United States.

But that’s exactly what the United Nation-led cabal of globalist elites wants to do.

Calling the North American Union a “straw man”, Pastor explained that “a union is a unified national state, so if you believe the North American Union, you would be in favor of dissolving the United States…I don’t know anyone who is proposing that,” Pastor told Nathan Burchfiel of CNSNews.com on June 18.

It is highly unlikely that Pastor hasn’t heard of the likes of global custodians UN poster boy Maurice Strong, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and financier George Soros, avocates of One World Order.

The United Nations patiently awaits One World Order as its Gaia given mandate.

Should there be any doubt in Pastor’s mind, Maurice Strong is the United Nations. Gorbachev isn’t throwing brickbats at the U.S. from the Russia that wasn’t so long ago the Soviet Union, but from American soil at the Presidio, and a plethora of leftwing organizations fomenting for One World Order continue to be bankrolled by the wealthy Soros.

How much more organized does it get, Professor Pastor?

“Every important initiative requires the consent of our elected officials. None of this can be done by stealth or in secret,” Pastor told Cybercast News Service.

Even as Pastor was speaking those words, American patriots were jamming White House telephone lines, reminding their Senators that borders are required if America is to stay America.

“The idea that somehow or other they’re going to wake up one day and George Bush will have stolen American sovereignty, or that I would have, or the Council on Foreign Relations, is totally absurd. That doesn’t really require a serious conversation.”

With those words, Pastor seems to make an argument that folks worried about being swallowed whole by the NAU, are only conspiracy theorists.

Yet Pastor reiterates that the United States has “agreements with hundreds of countries, we belong to hundreds of international organizations. Every treaty we have involves us sharing some responsibility with other countries, sharing some power in the United Nations (emphasis CFP’s). That’s the real world that we’re in today.”

It could be argued that some would like to change the UN view of the “real world we’re in today”.

Daneen Peterson, a researcher who studies the North American Union issue, argues that “the illegal alien problem is a mechanism for leveraging what is yet to come.

“Once the civil unrest and chaos caused by the overwhelming human tsunami of illegal aliens and MS-13 gang members reduces America to complete anarchy…the federal government will institute martial law.”

Strong, Gorbachev and Soros would consider that scenario as their dreams coming true.

According to its government-hosted website, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), is a “trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States, Canada and Mexico through greater cooperation and information sharing.”

On paper, government committees always sound benign.

Meanwhile, the only hopeful news on the NAU horizon is that Pastor doesn’t anticipate “any serious forward movement” during the meeting when President Bush, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper get together in August.

“The fact they’re having a meeting is a positive step and will offer the three governments a chance to hopefully move the relationship forward in a positive manner,” Pastor said. “But having said that, my impression from consultations is that this is a very low priority in all three governments.”

All the unwashed masses can do is hope so.

REPORT: Voters Believe Iraq Is Creating More Terrorists, Distracting From Domestic Priorities

ThinkProgress
Friday July 6, 2007

ThinkProgress has obtained results of a new poll released yesterday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, a conference hosted by The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute. The poll finds that voters of all parties are overwhelmingly pessimistic about the war in Iraq, believing the United States will fail. The war has distracted from the fight against terrorism and other domestic priorities. Some highlights:

– 82 percent say people in other countries view the United States unfavorably.

– 71 percent say people in other countries now view the American people unfavorably.

– 53 percent of American believe the largest threat facing the United State is from terrorist organizations.

– 83 percent of Americans believe the U.S. should share a leadership role with allies and other countries around the world.

– 63 percent of voters think the U.S. should focus on domestic problems instead of foreign affairs.

– 56 percent of Americans believe that the war in Iraq is distracting us from the war on terror.

– 67 percent believe the war in Iraq is creating more terrorists.

– 72 percent favor diplomacy to pressure with Iran.


Also yesterday at the festival, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) said, “Habeas corpus is coming back, and we’re going to solve that one.”

According to a recent LA Times/Bloomberg poll, 68 percent of the American public also wants Bush to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. The Center for American Progress recently released a report called Strategic Reset that lays out a plan for the withdrawal of virtually all U.S. troops within one year and phases out the U.S. “training of Iraq’s national security forces.”

More updates from the Aspen Ideas festival HERE.

Lou Dobbs On Dangerous Chinese Imports

ou Tube
Friday July 6, 2007

From toothpaste to children's toy's Chinese imports are endangering the health and well being of American's.

'Super' Zoom Surveillance Cams Used At Orlando Fireworks Show For First Time

Local 6 News
Friday July 6, 2007

For the first time, Orlando police used high-tech surveillance cameras with the ability to zoom in on individual faces from great distances to monitor this year's Fourth of July festivities, Local 6 News has learned.Seven cameras were strategically set up around Lake Eola to continually monitor every angle of the event.

"If something does look out of the ordinary, we can focus in and zoom in on it," an unidentified officer said. "If there is an area of interest we would like to look at, we have the capability for a very high level of zoom."

"A camera mounted on the back of the band shell can pick up faces all the way across the lake," Local 6's Erik von Ancken said.

Police said they had the park covered by cameras and patrol officers.

"People are nervous, but that is why we have so many officers out here," Orlando police Capt. Larry Zweig said.

Local 6 also reported that the idea of high-tech cameras may make some people nervous.

However, war veteran Michael Moody told Local 6 News that he appreciated the cameras and unseen security at the Orlando celebration and that it reminded him of what the U.S. Army uses in Iraq.

"I understand what the soldiers abroad are going through because I've been there on a couple of occasions," Moody said. "I feel as though the sacrifices they are making make this kind of thing possible."

Orlando police said they recorded every image captured by the cameras. They said the footage will be held for a week in case they must investigate crimes that have not been reported yet.

Apple accused of amassing data on Iphone customers

Nick Farrell
The Inquirer
Friday July 6, 2007

A ROW IS BREWING across the pond about the amount of data that AT&T and Apple are collecting on the connection forms for the Iphones.
On the application form, Jobs Mob and its new Telco acolyte AT&T are demanding punters hand over their social security numbers.

For reasons only known to itself, and Steve Jobs moves in mysterious ways his miracles to perform, Apple wants punters to hand over numbers it not only has no need for, but which could do a fair bit of damage in the wrong hands.

As News.com points out every tech paper in the US should be screaming about this, but they aren't because they are too busy praising the nice new phones in the hope that Apple will bung them a free one.

AT&T has a poor record when it comes to looking after customer details. Currently it is in the middle of a class action after it let the security services set up shop in its network without a warrant.

An iPhone will not only reveal phone call details but also provide snoops with the social security numbers of the people making the calls. Well it will make their lives easier.

No one will explain why Steve Jobs wants the information. His fans would give him an autobiography if he let them, but why he wants the social security numbers of ordinary people is anyone's guess.

News.com is worried that too many people will hand over the data in the heat of the moment, particularly if they have been queuing for one of the things for more than a few hours.

More here.

Police are gangs too

Police are gangs too

You Tube
Friday July 6, 2007

Atlanta police stand by officer's treatment of jaywalking historian

Andy McSmith
London Independent
Friday July 6, 2007

An eminent British historian who was arrested in Atlanta after a heated set-to with police has vowed to clear his name although an investigation has failed to prove his version of events.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto provoked the ire of a police officer in January when he tried to cross the road in the wrong place - a crime known as jaywalking. He claims he was roughed up by the officer; the officerinsists it was the academic who acted with belligerence.

Yesterday, an internal investigation by the city's police department concluded that Professor Armesto's arrest was entirely justifed and that his account of police manhandling was unfounded. But the lecturer and writer vowed to prove them wrong. "My goodwill is not inexhaustible, I'm not going to let this go," he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The academic is professor of global environmental history at Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of about 20 books. But he seems destined to go down in history as the man who tried to cross the road between the Hilton and Hyatt hotels in Atlanta, while he was in town for a conference of the History News Network.

What the professor did not know was that jaywalking is an offence in Georgia. When the young man in a bomber jacket told him that he should not cross at that point, the professor took his words as advice, and ignored it.

In fact, he had been addressed by 28-year-old Kevin Leonpacher, a police officer, who interpreted the act as deliberate defiance of the law. Before the professor - who had never previously had so much as a parking ticket - had fully grasped what was happening, he had been thrown to the ground, handcuffed, and arrested.

He later claimed that several policemen pressed hard on his neck and chest, leaving him bruised and in pain, not to mention bewildered and outraged.

In the city detention centre, he was locked in a "filthy" cell with other felons for eight hours. Officials demanded bail of more than £500. To find the money, he had to strike a deal with a bail bondsman.

When the case came to court, an embarrassed prosecutor accepted that a man in a bomber jacket might not look to a visiting European like a police officer. He suggested a plea of nolo contendere (no contest) but Professor Fernandez-Armesto feared a stain on his record might put his green card in jeopardy. Eventually, all charges were dropped.

But now an internal investigation by the Atlanta Police has backed Officer Leonpacher. A police spokeswoman, Judy Pal, pointed out that Professor Fernandez-Armesto was not arrested for jaywalking but for disobeying a lawful order from an officer. The police interviewed witnesses, including two civilians, who backed the officer's version of events. They accused the professor of being belligerent.

Professor Fernandez-Armesto dismissed the investigation as "profoundly incompetent" and said the investigators never sought his side of the story. He still bears scars on his head from the scuffle. He said he may sue.

Rick Shenkman, editor of the History News Network, said that throughout the conference there were complaints about police harassing pedestrians.

Another participant, Monica Ricketts, a PhD student at Harvard University, said she was accosted by an officer while crossing the street at the same spot. "He started yelling at us, blowing a whistle as we were crossing the street. He got in my face and was pointing his finger at me. It was so bizarre," she said.

GOP Congressman Joins Sen. Domenici in Breaking With White House on War

Editor & Publisher
Friday July 6, 2007

ALBUQUERQUE Rep. John Doolittle, a consevative California congressman, today joined others in his party rapidly deserting the president on the Iraq war.

At a town hall meeting in Rocklin and then in a meeting with the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee he questioned whether the conflict was worth the loss of more American lives. He said U.S. troops should be pulled back from the front lines "as soon as possible" and the fighting turned over to Iraqi forces.

A longtime supporter of the war, Doolittle called the situation in Iraq a "quagmire" on Thursday. "We've got to get off the front lines as soon as possible," Doolittle said at Rocklin City Hall, the Bee reported. "And in my mind that means something like the end of the year. We just can't continue to tolerate these kinds of losses.

"I don't want to keep having our people dying on the front lines. I am increasingly convinced that we never are going to succeed in actually ending people dying (in Iraq). I think it's going to be a constant conflict ... and if that is going to happen ... it needs to be the Iraqis dying and not the Americans."

Later he told the Bee's editorial board: "My belief is that the majority of my colleagues on the Republican side have become skeptical of all of this. And that's a big change."

Doolittle said colleagues in Congress -- including an increasing number of Republicans -- believe the war "is something different than we believed it to be. And we're gravely at risk by constantly having our troops exposed."

Earlier today, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) also called for a change in course in U.S. military strategy in Iraq — without waiting for the September report on the "surge." He joined other Republican senators as Richard Lugar who have recently broken with the White House on this issue.

Domenici said he supports a bipartisan Senate bill which backs the recent report by the Iraq Study Group and would create conditions that could allow for a drawdown of U.S. combat forces in Iraq by next March.

Parents of New Mexico's military war dead in the past told him the U.S. should stay in Iraq as long as it takes, Domenici said. Those same parents are asking him to do more to bring troops home sooner, he added.

His office released the statement below.
*

Pointing to his profound disappointment in the Iraqi government, U.S. Senator Pete Domenici today called for a redirection of U.S. military policy in Iraq and announced his support for bipartisan legislation to create conditions by which American combat troops can be removed from that nation.

Domenici, who serves on the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, announced his decision to support the legislation, the Iraq Study Group Recommendation Implementation Act (S.1545), at a news conference in Albuquerque Thursday.

"I want a new strategy for Iraq. I continue to completely support the men and women in the American Armed Forces. They have not failed us. It is the Iraqi government that is failing to make even modest progress to help Iraq itself or to merit the sacrifices being made by our men and women in uniform," Domenici said. "I am unwilling to continue our current strategy."

"I have carefully studied the Iraq situation, and believe we cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress to move its country forward," Domenici said. "I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq or a reduction in funding for our troops. But I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."

S.1545, introduced by Senators Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), embraces the recommendations in the Iraq Study Group Report issued by the bipartisan Baker Hamilton Commission. The bill makes the Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations the policy of the United States, and asks the Bush administration-working with military and diplomatic leaders-to implement those recommendations.

The bill is intended to create conditions that could allow for a drawdown of American combat forces in Iraq by March 2008. Under S.1545, the U.S. military could maintain a long-term but more limited presence in Iraq-focused on protecting American personnel and interests, training and advising Iraqi forces, and carrying out counterterrorism and special operations missions.

Domenici indicated that the provisions in S.1545 could be debated as part of the FY2008 Defense Authorization Bill that the Senate will take up next week.

Closest CIA bid to kill Castro was poisoned drink

Anthony Boadle
Reuters
Friday July 6, 2007

The closest the CIA came to killing Cuba's Fidel Castro was a 1963 attempt with a poison pill delivered by American mobsters that was to be slipped into a chocolate milkshake, a former Cuban intelligence chief said.

But the capsule stuck to the freezer where it was hidden in the cafeteria of the Havana Libre (ex Hilton) Hotel and ripped open when the would-be assassin waiter went to get the poison.

"That moment was the closest the CIA got to assassinating Fidel," retired state security general Fabian Escalante told Reuters in an interview this week.

Castro, who seized power in a 1959 revolution that turned Cuba into a communist state 90 miles away from the United States, has survived hundreds of attempts on his life by his enemies, from car ambushes to grenade attacks in baseball stadiums, Escalante said.

Some of the most imaginative cloak-and-dagger plots were the brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency, he said.

They included poisoned cigars, an exploding shell meant to be planted in his favorite underwater fishing location and a scuba diving wet suit tainted with toxins.

Among early attempts devised by the CIA to discredit Castro was a plan to place chemical powders on his boots that would cause his beard to fall out when he was in New York to speak at the United Nations in 1960.

When that failed, the CIA planned to slip him a box of cigars tainted with LSD so that he would burst into fits of laughter during a television interview, said Escalante, author of a book that documents 167 plots against Castro.

But it was the CIA's plans to poison Castro with botulinum toxins in the early 1960s that came closest to succeeding.

The agency acknowledged last week for the first time that the plot to assassinate Castro was personally approved by the Kennedy administration's CIA director Allen Dulles.

"FAMILY JEWELS"

The CIA declassified nearly 700 pages of secret records detailing some of its illegal acts during 25 years of overseas assassination attempts and domestic spying.

The agency's so-called "Family Jewels" describe the initial efforts to get rid of Castro by using a go-between to convince two top mobsters, Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficant, the head of the Mafia's Cuban casino operations, to assassinate Castro. Giancana suggested poisoning him.

Six potent pills were provided in 1961 to Juan Orta, identified as a Cuban official who had been receiving kickback payments from gambling interests, who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind. But Orta got cold feet.

Escalante said more poisoned pills, one batch disguised in a bottle of Bayer aspirins, were delivered through the Mafia to an opposition group that almost succeeded in March 1963 when Castro went for a milkshake.

Much of the information declassified by the CIA had been released in congressional investigations in the past.

Escalante, who detailed the poison pill plot in his book "The Secret War" published in 2005, said the agency was trying to "purify" itself but continues its skulduggery today.

While there is no evidence that the CIA has plotted to kill Castro since the Ford Administration banned assassination plots against foreign leaders in 1976, Escalante sees the hand of the CIA in more recent attempts by anti-Castro militants trained by the agency for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

Despite U.S. hostility, Castro remains Cuban leader at age 80, although bowel surgery forced him to hand over formal power to his brother Raul last July.

Escalante said effective Cuban security measures around Castro and the Cuban leader's intuitive "nose" for danger has kept him alive.

To this day, few Cubans know Castro's whereabouts, whether he is in a hospital or at home in a residential compound in western Havana called "Point Zero."

Ohio Newspaper Under Fire for Outing Gun Owners

Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com
Friday July 6, 2007

An Ohio newspaper's decision to publish the non-public records of concealed carry permit holders drew a strong response, and one gun rights advocacy group published personal but public information about the newspaper's editor.

The Sandusky Register on June 24 published the names, ages and home counties of the almost 2,700 concealed carry permit holders in its circulation area. Ohio gun laws restrict public access to concealed carry records but allow the media to access them.

The printing of the names sparked outrage from gun rights groups, including the Ohioans for Concealed Carry and the National Rifle Association. Critics argue that publishing names and identifying information about concealed carry permit holders puts them at risk being targeted for violence or identity theft.

"Now, someone who has a grudge has a list of targets/victims, and the only reason they have a list of targets/victims is because of the newspaper's unilateral action," the Buckeye Firearms Association said on its website.

BFA Legislative Chair Ken Hanson wrote that because of the newspaper's actions, "The general public may now know who owns and may or may not carry a gun. Additionally, the general public now knows who is not carrying a gun in their day to day activities."

In retaliation - and to illustrate the ease of finding personal information when given a name - the BFA began printing personal information about Sandusky Register Managing Editor Matt Westerhold. The information, while personal, is available through public records searches.

On its website, the group has printed Westerhold's phone numbers, automobile records, traffic ticket record, the address of a home he owns and information about the mortgage on the property. It has also printed redacted information on his birth date and Social Security number.

Cybercast News Service has independently verified most of the information through online public records searches, including his birth date, partial Social Security number, property holdings, and mortgage information.

The group defends its actions by saying that Westerhold, by approving the publication of the names and information about gun owners, is putting them at risk for the same kind of "this type of stalking/abuse."

Westerhold did not respond to phone calls and e-mails from Cybercast News Service requesting comment for this article.

In a commentary defending the publication decision, Westerhold acknowledged that the concealed carry permit holders are "law-abiding and upstanding" but said the decision to print their names was a "public service to readers who want to know who among them has been licensed to carry concealed weapons."

"They should be proud to be exercising their second amendment rights, and I believe most of them aren't as enraged with the Register's decision to exercise its first amendment rights in publishing the information as is the NRA, which demands secrecy," Westerhold wrote.

Ohioans for Concealed Carry President Jeff Garvas issued a statement criticizing the Register for choosing "to put a juicy headline controversy with no journalistic newsworthy content ahead of the safety of the public." He called for Westerhold's resignation and encouraged members to target advertisers to encourage them to abandon the paper.

A similar controversy erupted in Virginia in March. As Cybercast News Service previously reported, the Roanoke Times retracted its online database of Virginia concealed carry permit holders after a backlash from gun rights advocates revealed that some of the information was inaccurate and some of it shouldn't have been released.