Cop runs over suspect
Cops run over suspect that was 'allegedly wielding a knife and hit somebody in the head with a full beer can' prior to the police being called. So I guess that means they can run you over now.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Homeland Security Faked Test Results of Radiation Detectors
A new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office charges that the Department of Homeland Security used biased methods to enhance performance results in tests on a new generation of radiation detectors meant to protect U.S. ports.
At stake are $1.2 billion in contracts to produce advanced spectroscopic portal (ASP) monitors and thousands of lives should they fail to work.
Experts from four national laboratories were consulted prior to publication of the report (PDF) by the GAO, the nonpartisan audit and investigative arm of Congress, which was released yesterday.
(Credit: Domestic Nuclear Detection Office)The agency found that the DHS' Domestic Nuclear Detection Office "used biased test methods that enhanced the performance of ASPs." Specifically, it conducted preliminary tests and then allowed contractors access to the results, which they then used to adjust systems accordingly.
It is "highly unlikely that such favorable conditions" would be found in a real-world situation, the GAO report deadpanned.
Portals in use today detect radiation but cannot distinguish between different types. This leads to expensive and time-consuming delays at ports of entry when customs officers respond to false alarms, according to the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. To remedy this, DHS sponsored research on new technology to enhance detection capabilities at the nation's ports. In 2006, it awarded contracts to three companies based on performance tests in Nevada the previous year: Raytheon, Thermo Electron and Canberra Industries.
The GAO, however, was not convinced that any "additional detection capability provided by the ASPs was worth the considerable additional costs." The accounting agency found that the DHS had no sound basis for spending taxpayer money and "relied on assumptions of anticipated performance instead of actual test data." It recommended further testing and a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.
It wasn't the first time that problems had been found in the procurement process. In a March 2007 report (PDF), the GAO concluded that DHS' decision to procure and deploy the new equipment was not supported by the cost and suggested that the department come up with some "objective" assessments of ASP capability.
The question was whether the new equipment, at six times the cost of current models, was better able to detect radiation through different masking materials, such as a lead. The GAO charged that the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office did not test portal limitations or make any effort to replicate the material that would be used to mask a radiation source from detection, a "critical oversight in DNDO's original test plan." Instead, the detection office is attempting to get off the hook by substituting what are essentially computer simulations that are not comparable with "actual testing with nuclear and masking materials," according to the GAO.
The GAO recommended that production of the new portal monitors be delayed until the DHS provides a "sound analytical basis for its decision to purchase and deploy the new technology."
In Push to Stop Drunk Driving, Police Draw Blood
Authorities Often Must Force
Suspects to Give Sample;
A Dilemma for Doctors
Suspects to Give Sample;
A Dilemma for Doctors
Mr. Jones Dies Fighting
BROOKFIELD, Wis. -- After police stopped Robert H. Miller for driving erratically here one afternoon in February 2001, they asked for his license and registration.
Then they asked for something else: his blood. Having been convicted of drunk driving once before, Mr. Miller refused to cooperate. So after he was taken to a hospital, five officers pinned him to the floor as a medical technician stuck a needle in his arm. His blood-alcohol level was 0.266% -- more than twice the legal limit. Mr. Miller, who declined to comment, challenged the tactic in court but lost. He pleaded no contest, was sentenced to up to 90 days in jail and lost his license for 18 months.
In the past, police routinely asked suspected drunk drivers to blow into devices that extrapolated their blood's alcohol content from their breath. Now, authorities in most states are taking blood, by force if necessary.
"I've really pushed it," says John O'Boyle, district attorney of Pierce County, Wis. Lawyers sometimes successfully challenge breath tests in court or persuade juries to doubt them, but "blood tests tend to be pretty bulletproof," Mr. O'Boyle says. Moreover, it's impossible to force a breath test on someone, but taking blood requires no cooperation. "If we have to literally strap you down if you refuse, that's what can happen to you," says Lt. Tony Almaraz, a Nevada Highway Patrol spokesman.
Advocates say blood tests, once seldom used, now are a powerful weapon against drunk driving. But the tests raise two nettlesome questions: How much force should police be able to use in extracting blood from uncooperative suspects? And should medical professionals, who are honor-bound to obey patients' treatment wishes and protect their privacy, be compelled to do otherwise?
For half a century, breath tests have been the standard in the U.S. and remain in wide use. But as penalties for driving under the influence increased, many suspects started refusing to submit, figuring the penalty for declining -- often a one-year license suspension -- beats a DUI conviction.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found in a 1991 survey of 40 states that 19% of drivers arrested for DUI refused to be tested. More recent figures suggest that problem persists, with nearly 8,900 Massachusetts drivers, 11,900 Missouri drivers and 23,500 Florida drivers declining tests in 2001, officials in those states say.
Frustrated by the increasing savvy of drunks and defense attorneys, at least eight states -- Alaska, Arizona, Iowa, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada and Texas -- have in recent years enacted statutes specifically permitting police to use reasonable force to obtain blood samples in DUI cases.
Laws in at least seven other states allow police to take blood without the driver's consent, without explicitly authorizing force. In most other states, court rulings have authorized reasonable force to obtain blood. Many such rulings cite a little-known fact about driving laws in the U.S.: All motorists are considered to have consented to a search of their blood, breath or urine. Such "implied consent" laws were introduced in New York in 1953, and today all 50 states and the District of Columbia have them.
The circumstances under which blood can be taken vary. In some states, blood can be taken only from repeat offenders or in cases where people are killed or injured in crashes. Some allow exceptions for members of religious groups that oppose certain medical treatments and for those with health conditions that make blood draws dangerous, such as hemophiliacs. Warrants usually aren't required because alcohol dissipates from the bloodstream, leaving police little time to seek one -- an "exigent circumstance" long allowed by courts as an exception to Fourth Amendment warrant requirements.
No national statistics exist, but in Wisconsin the number of blood samples taken from DUI suspects has doubled since 1995, to 21,418 in 2003. State officials didn't track how many were legally intoxicated, but they say that in 92% of the 38,214 DUI cases handled in 2002, the drivers were convicted.
Alarmed by what they see as diminished police vigilance, anti-DUI activists praise the trend toward increased reliance on blood evidence. As the number of licensed drivers in the U.S. climbed, DUI arrests fell to about 1.5 million in 2002 from a 1990 peak of 1.8 million, and the estimated number of alcohol-related traffic deaths edged up slightly, to 17,419 in 2002. Drunk driving remains the second-most-common crime in the U.S. behind drug offenses.
Critics of the practice see a threat to privacy and civil liberties, with judges in Rhode Island, New Jersey and Wisconsin barring, limiting or questioning the practice in recent years. In Pennsylvania, the state police say they don't take blood if a driver refuses, but might if the driver is unconscious.
The ways in which blood is drawn vary considerably. Under one common scenario, drivers are stopped by police and asked to perform a field sobriety test. If they fail this, they are taken to a medical facility, such as a hospital, and blood is drawn there.
Some physicians are alarmed when doctors or those working for them draw blood for police without consent. The doctors argue that the Hippocratic Oath requires them to put patients' needs and desires first and to respect their privacy and decisions to decline medical procedures. The American College of Emergency Physicians said in 1998 that it opposes requiring or permitting doctors to give blood-test results to police "because such reporting fundamentally conflicts with the appropriate role of physicians in the physician-patient relationship."
"For me to draw blood from a patient who is refusing to have his blood drawn, unless I have compelling medical reasons for that blood sample, I'm committing assault and battery, and I'm not going to do it," says Dr. Phil Brewer, president of the Connecticut College of Emergency Physicians and a fellow at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Dr. Brewer says some doctors fear that reporting alcohol levels to the police might violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which makes the unauthorized disclosure of patients' records a crime. "Who's willing to take that risk?" he asks. "I don't want to be the test case."
The law, however, has an exception for certain "disclosures for law-enforcement purposes," according to rules drafted by the Department of Health and Human Services. Richard Campanelli, director of the department's civil-rights office, says the exception permits doctors to release blood-test results in DUI cases.
Some states have amended their laws to deal with patient confidentiality, requiring doctors to hand over patients' blood in DUI cases. Indiana requires that blood and test results be given to police "even if the person has not consented to or otherwise authorized their release." At least three other states -- Hawaii, Illinois and Pennsylvania -- have similar laws. Another 14 states authorize (but do not require) such disclosures, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
In practice, police face little resistance from the nurses and medical technicians who typically draw blood.
In 2000, a nurse at Community North Hospital in Indianapolis gave police and prosecutors a blood sample and the medical file of Eli Hannoy, who was in a wreck that killed two people, court records say. The hospital kept another blood sample. Tests of both revealed alcohol levels in the range of 0.2%, twice the limit, and he was convicted of operating a vehicle over the legal limit causing death, a felony. His conviction was overturned by the Indiana Court of Appeals, which found that police lacked probable cause to seek a blood sample, and the case is now set for retrial. The police sample cannot be used as evidence, the court ruled, but the hospital sample can be.
Mr. Hannoy's lawyer says his client "remains innocent until proven guilty." A Community North spokeswoman declines to comment "due to privacy considerations."
The U.S. Supreme Court last addressed taking blood against a driver's wishes in a 1966 case, Schmerber v. California. The defendant crashed his car into a tree after drinking at a tavern and a bowling alley. Injured, he was taken to the hospital. Police thought he looked drunk and directed a doctor to obtain a blood sample over the man's objection. He didn't physically resist, but challenged the action in an appeal of his DUI conviction. The Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that the incident didn't violate his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination or his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The majority stressed, however, that the decision was narrow, based on the "reasonable manner" in which the blood was obtained -- "by a physician in a hospital environment." The majority warned that "serious questions ... would arise" if the blood were extracted "in other than a medical environment -- for example, if it were administered by police in the privacy of the stationhouse" because allowing that might "invite an unjustified element of personal risk of infection and pain." It added that "more substantial intrusions, or intrusions under other conditions" might not pass muster.
These days, though, blood often is obtained under much different circumstances and sometimes via more-forceful means.
State and federal courts have countenanced a range of police conduct in obtaining blood, from putting a chokehold on the carotid artery of a suspected drunk in California to shooting one in the arm with a stun-gun in Delaware.
And blood often is extracted in police lockups and jailhouses -- just the sort of environment the Supreme Court said might be constitutionally troublesome.
Testimony in a federal suit last year shows that authorities in Las Vegas regularly obtain blood samples in the Clark County Detention Center. The suit involved a 1998 incident. Police found Terry Jones, then 33, asleep at the wheel of a parked car, an open Budweiser between his thighs. He was arrested, taken to the jail and ordered to submit to a blood test. Mr. Jones, who had two prior DUI convictions, put up a furious fight.
Guard Daniel Kresky testified that physical resistance to blood draws was a nightly event. Guards would use "whatever force is necessary," he testified, typically handcuffing defendants' arms behind their back, bending them over an examination table in the jail nurse's office and holding them down. Sometimes, drivers were held on the floor. "We always got our blood," he testified.
Mr. Jones, 270 pounds, tossed several officers off his back with a buck of his head. Two officers testified that another stood on and kicked Mr. Jones's head; that officer denied the charge. Suddenly, Mr. Jones went limp. The coroner ruled that Mr. Jones died of acute cardiac arrhythmia, a heart-rhythm disturbance. But a second autopsy, performed by a retired deputy medical examiner at the request of Mr. Jones's widow, found that his head had been beaten and his left eye crushed. "Had it not been for that trauma, he probably wouldn't have died," that doctor testified.
Last March, a jury ruled that police and jail officials weren't responsible. Paul Martin, the jail's chief, says it now uses a specially-made chair with Velcro straps to restrain drivers brought in for forced blood draws.
Encounters over drivers' blood are beginning to give some judges second thoughts.
In a Rhode Island case, police in 1997 arrested a woman on suspicion of DUI after a car she was driving struck and killed a motorcyclist. She submitted to a breath test, which found only minimal alcohol, but she refused to give blood, so the police got a warrant. Her blood tested positive for marijuana and cocaine.
In pretrial litigation, the state Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that taking her blood without consent violated a provision in the state's implied-consent law, which says that if a driver refuses to submit to a test, "none shall be given." The court said the provision was meant to "prevent a violent confrontation between an arresting officer and a suspect unwilling to submit." (The defendant later pleaded no contest to DUI resulting in death.) Some state lawmakers advocated changing the law to allow force, but the Legislature hasn't done so.
A year later, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that police in Edgewater went too far when they pinned a screaming, struggling suspected drunk driver to a hospital table, strapped down his legs and left arm and held him while a nurse drew eight vials of blood, which indicated that he was drunk. The court didn't bar the future use of force outright but said that under the circumstances the police used "unreasonable force." Barred from using blood evidence, prosecutors retried the man, who was convicted based on police testimony that he seemed drunk.
In Wisconsin, state Court of Appeals Judge Charles Schudson says in an interview that the state's blood-drawing practices come "painfully, painfully close to a violation of civil liberties." An outspoken critic of DUI laws he deems too lax, Judge Schudson voted to uphold the use of force to obtain blood but only because he concluded that Wisconsin legal precedent required that he do so. In a Court of Appeals opinion written in 2002, he took the unusual step of asking the state Supreme Court to reverse its previous decisions supporting forced blood draws. So far, it has not done so.
The Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind a DHS Contract
A dungeon-like room in the Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow is used for human testing. The institute claims its technology can read the subconscious mind and alter behavior.
Photo: Nathan Hodge
Photo: Nathan Hodge
MOSCOW -- The future of U.S. anti-terrorism technology could lie near the end of a Moscow subway line in a circular dungeon-like room with a single door and no windows. Here, at the Psychotechnology Research Institute, human subjects submit to experiments aimed at manipulating their subconscious minds.
Elena Rusalkina, the silver-haired woman who runs the institute, gestured to the center of the claustrophobic room, where what looked like a dentist's chair sits in front of a glowing computer monitor. "We've had volunteers, a lot of them," she said, the thick concrete walls muffling the noise from the college campus outside. "We worked out a program with (a psychiatric facility) to study criminals. There's no way to falsify the results. There's no subjectivism."
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone to many strange places in its search for ways to identify terrorists before they attack, but perhaps none stranger than this lab on the outskirts of Russia's capital. The institute has for years served as the center of an obscure field of human behavior study -- dubbed psychoecology -- that traces it roots back to Soviet-era mind control research.
What's gotten DHS' attention is the institute's work on a system called Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology, or SSRM Tek, a software-based mind reader that supposedly tests a subject's involuntary response to subliminal messages.
SSRM Tek is presented to a subject as an innocent computer game that flashes subliminal images across the screen -- like pictures of Osama bin Laden or the World Trade Center. The "player" -- a traveler at an airport screening line, for example -- presses a button in response to the images, without consciously registering what he or she is looking at. The terrorist's response to the scrambled image involuntarily differs from the innocent person's, according to the theory.
Gear for testing MindReader 2.0 software hangs on a wall at the Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow. Marketed in North America as SSRM Tek, the technology will soon be tested for airport screening by a U.S. company under contract to the Department of Homeland Security.
Gear for testing MindReader 2.0 software hangs on a wall at the Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow. Marketed in North America as SSRM Tek, the technology will soon be tested for airport screening by a U.S. company under contract to the Department of Homeland Security.
Photo: Nathan Hodge
"If it's a clean result, the passengers are allowed through," said Rusalkina, during a reporter's visit last year. "If there's something there, that person will need to go through extra checks."
Rusalkina markets the technology as a program called Mindreader 2.0. To sell Mindreader to the West, she's teamed up with a Canadian firm, which is now working with a U.S. defense contractor called SRS Technologies. This May, DHS announced plans to award a sole-source contract to conduct the first U.S.-government sponsored testing of SSRM Tek.
The contract is a small victory for the Psychotechnology Research Institute and its leaders, who have struggled for years to be accepted in the West. It also illustrates how the search for counter-terrorism technology has led the U.S. government into unconventional -- and some would say unsound -- science.
All of the technology at the institute is based on the work of Rusalkina's late husband, Igor Smirnov, a controversial Russian scientist whose incredible tales of mind control attracted frequent press attention before his death several years ago.
Smirnov was a Rasputin-like character often portrayed in the media as having almost mystical powers of persuasion. Today, first-time visitors to the institute -- housed in a drab concrete building at the Peoples Friendship University of Russia -- are asked to watch a half-hour television program dedicated to Smirnov, who is called the father of "psychotronic weapons," the Russian term for mind control weapons. Bearded and confident, Smirnov in the video explains how subliminal sounds could alter a person's behavior. To the untrained ear, the demonstration sounds like squealing pigs.
Elena Rusalkina demonstrates the terrorist-screening tool. She says it works faster than a polygraph and can be used at airports. Photo: Nathan HodgeAccording to Rusalkina, the Soviet military enlisted Smirnov's psychotechnology during the Soviet Union's bloody war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "It was used for combating the Mujahideen, and also for treating post-traumatic stress syndrome" in Russian soldiers, she says.
In the United States, talk of mind control typically evokes visions of tinfoil hats. But the idea of psychotronic weapons enjoys some respectability in Russia. In the late 1990s, Vladimir Lopatin, then a member of the Duma, Russia's parliament, pushed to restrict mind control weapons, a move that was taken seriously in Russia but elicited some curious mentions in the Western press. In an interview in Moscow, Lopatin, who has since left the Duma, cited Smirnov's work as proof that such weaponry is real.
"It's financed and used not only by the medical community, but also by individual and criminal groups," Lopatin said. Terrorists might also get hold of such weapons, he added.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Smirnov moved from military research into treating patients with mental problems and drug addiction, setting up shop at the college. Most of the lab's research is focused on what it calls "psychocorrection" -- the use of subliminal messages to bend a subject's will, and even modify a person's personality without their knowledge.
The slow migration of Smirnov's technology to the United States began in 1991, at a KGB-sponsored conference in Moscow intended to market once-secret Soviet technology to the world. Smirnov's claims of mind control piqued the interest of Chris and Janet Morris -- former science-fiction writers turned Pentagon consultants who are now widely credited as founders of the Pentagon's "non-lethal" weapons concept.
In an interview last year, Chris Morris recalled being intrigued by Smirnov -- so much so that he accompanied the researcher to his lab and allowed Smirnov to wire his head up to an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Normally used by scientists to measure brain states, Smirnov peered into Morris's EEG tracings and divined the secrets of his subconscious, right down to intimate details like Morris' dislike of his own first name.
The underlying premise of the technology is that terrorists would recognize a scrambled terrorist image like this one without even realizing it, and would be betrayed by their subconscious reaction to the picture. Photo: Nathan Hodge
"I said, 'gee, the guys back at home have got to see this,'" Morris recalled.
The Morrises shopped the technology around to a few military agencies, but found no one willing to put money into it. However, in 1993 Smirnov rose to brief fame in the United States when the FBI consulted with him in hope of ending the standoff in Waco with cult leader David Koresh. Smirnov proposed blasting scrambled sound -- the pig squeals again -- over loudspeakers to persuade Koresh to surrender.
But the FBI was put off by Smirnov's cavalier response to questions. When officials asked what would happen if the subliminal signals didn't work, Smirnov replied that Koresh's followers might slit each other's throats, Morris recounted. The FBI took a pass, and Smirnov returned to Moscow with his mind control technology.
"With Smirnov, the FBI was either demanding a yes or a no, and therefore our methods weren't put to use, unfortunately," Rusalkina said, taking a drag on her cigarette.
Igor Smirnov, founder of the Psychotechnology Research Institute, died of a heart attack in 2005. Smirnov is best known in the United States for consulting with the FBI during the 1993 Waco siege. Photo: Nathan Hodge
Smirnov died in November 2004, leaving the widowed Rusalkina -- his long-time collaborator -- to run the institute. Portraits of Smirnov cover Rusalkina's desk, and his former office is like a shrine, the walls lined with his once-secret patents, his awards from the Soviet government, and a calendar from the KGB's cryptographic section.
Despite Smirnov's death, Rusalkina predicts an "arms race" in psychotronic weapons. Such weapons, she asserts, are far more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
She pointed, for example, to a spate of Russian news reports about "zombies" -- innocent people whose memories had been allegedly wiped out by mind control weapons. She also claimed that Russian special forces contacted the institute during the 2003 Moscow theater siege, in which several hundred people were held hostage by Chechen militants.
"We could have stabilized the situation in the concert hall, and the terrorists would have called the whole thing off," she said. "And naturally, you could have avoided all the casualties, and you could have put the terrorists on trial. But the Alfa Group" -- the Russian equivalent of Delta Force -- "decided to go with an old method that had already been tested before."
The Russians used a narcotic gas to subdue the attackers and their captives, which led to the asphyxiation death of many of the hostages.
These days, Rusalkina explained, the institute uses its psychotechnology to treat alcoholics and drug addicts. During the interview, several patients -- gaunt young men who appeared wasted from illness -- waited in the hallway.
But the U.S. war on terror and the millions of dollars set aside for homeland security research is offering Smirnov a chance at posthumous respectability in the West.
Smirnov's technology reappeared on the U.S. government's radar screen through Northam Psychotechnologies, a Canadian company that serves as North American distributor for the Psychotechnology Research Institute. About three years ago, Northam Psychotechnologies began seeking out U.S. partners to help it crack the DHS market. For companies claiming innovative technologies, the past few years have provided bountiful opportunities. In fiscal year 2007, DHS allocated $973 million for science and technology and recently announced Project Hostile Intent, which is designed to develop technologies to detect people with malicious intentions.
One California-based defense contractor, DownRange G2 Solutions, expressed interest in SSRM Tek, but became skeptical when Northam Psychotechnologies declined to make the software available for testing.
"That raised our suspicion right away," Scott Conn, CEO and president of DownRange, told Wired News. "We weren't prepared to put our good names on the line without due diligence." (When a reporter visited last year, Rusalkina also declined to demonstrate the software, saying it wasn't working that day.)
While Conn said the lack of testing bothered him, the relationship ended when he found out Northam Psychotechnologies went to SRS Technologies, now part of ManTech International Corp.
Semyon Ioffe, the head of Northam Psychotechnologies, who identifies himself as a "brain scientist," declined a phone interview, but answered questions over e-mail. Ioffe said he signed a nondisclosure agreement with Conn, and had "a few informal discussions, after which he disappeared to a different assignment and reappeared after (the) DHS announcement."
As for the science, Ioffe says he has a Ph.D in neurophysiology, and cited Smirnov's Russian-language publications as the basis for SSRM Tek.
However, not everyone is as impressed with Smirnov's technology, including John Alexander, a well-known expert on non-lethal weapons. Alexander was familiar with Smirnov's meetings in Washington during the Waco crisis, and said in an interview last year that there were serious doubts then as now.
"It was the height of the Waco problem, they were grasping at straws," he said of the FBI's fleeting interest. "From what I understand from people who were there, it didn't work very well."
Geoff Schoenbaum, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine, said that he was unaware of any scientific work specifically underpinning the technology described in SSRM Tek.
"There's no question your brain is able to perceive things below your ability to consciously express or identify," Schoenbaum said. He noted for example, studies showing that images displayed for milliseconds -- too short for people to perceive consciously -- may influence someone's mood. "That kind of thing is reasonable, and there's good experimental evidence behind it."
The problem, he said, is that there is no science he is aware of that can produce the specificity or sensitivity to pick out a terrorist, let alone influence behavior. "We're still working at the level of how rats learn that light predicts food," he explained. "That's the level of modern neuroscience."
Developments in neuroscience, he noted, are followed closely. "If we could do (what they're talking about), you would know about it," Schoenbaum said. "It wouldn't be a handful of Russian folks in a basement."
In the meantime, the DHS contract is still imminent, according to those involved, although all parties declined to comment on the details, or the size of the award. Rusalkina did not respond to a recent e-mail, but in the interview last year, she confirmed the institute was marketing the technology to the United States for airport screening.
Larry Orloskie, a spokesman for DHS, declined to comment on the contract announcement. "It has not been awarded yet," he replied in an e-mail.
"It would be premature to discuss any details about the pending contract with DHS and I will be happy to do an interview once the contract is in place," Ioffe, of Northam Psychotechnologies, wrote in an e-mail. Mark Root, a spokesman for ManTech, deferred questions to DHS, noting, "They are the customer."
Department of Homeland Security Considers Mind-Control Tech
The technology, called Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology (SSRM Tek), is said to gauge a subject's involuntary response to subliminal messages. Images are shown to test subjects who press buttons in response. SSRM Tek supposedly measures those responses and understands what the subject is thinking subconsciously.
One obvious application of the technology may involve security checks at airports. Based on subjects' responses to the images and messages, "clean" respondents would be allowed through while "suspect" individuals would be taken through further testing.
Geoff Schoenbaum, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, dismisses PRI's technology, saying that modern neuroscience is just now trying to figure out how rats learn that a light can predict food. In reference to the idea of subconsciously sensing a person's intentions, he said, "If we could do [what they're talking about], you would know about it, it wouldn't be a handful of Russian folks in a basement."
Dollar at 30-Year Low Vs. Canada Dollar
By MATT MOORE The Associated Press
Thursday, September 20, 2007; 12:13 PM
FRANKFURT, Germany -- The dollar took another fall on currency markets Thursday, reaching one-to-one parity against the Canadian dollar for the first time in 30 years and plumbing a new low against the 13-nation European currency.
The dramatic half-point cut in U.S. interest rates announced this week, while aimed at shoring up U.S. credit markets, also had the effect of further weakening the dollar versus other currencies by reducing the cash yield on dollars. A lower dollar can make travel more costly for U.S. residents and can also pose the risk of making imported goods more expensive over time.
  A stack of Canadian dollars, also called loonies, and U.S. dollar bills are seen on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2007 in Montreal, Que. The Canadian dollar moved decisively above 99 U.S. cents, flirting with one-to-one parity with the American dollar for the first time since November 1976. (AP Photo/Ryan Remiorz, The Canadian Press) (Ryan Remiorz - AP) |
The euro breached the $1.40 barrier against the dollar on Thursday. That level had long been seen as a key benchmark in terms of solidifying the euro's position on currency markets and giving it momentum toward becoming a reserve currency of choice _ a position long held by the now-weakening dollar.
The 13-nation euro bought as much as $1.4064 in morning trading in Europe before falling back slightly to $1.4040, above its previous high Wednesday night of $1.3987, and more than the $1.3964 it bought in late New York trading.
The dollar also fell against other currencies, reaching parity with the Canadian dollar for the first time since November 1976. One U.S. dollar now buys one Canadian dollar.
David Jones, chief market analyst at CMC Markets in London, said the euro's rise is not likely to abate in the coming days, given fears about another interest rate decrease in the United States.
In Washington, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress that the credit crisis had created "significant market stress" and offered fresh assurances that regulators would take steps to curb fallout related to the mortgage mess.
Bernanke made the statement in testimony prepared for a hearing Thursday before the House Financial Services Committee. In his prepared testimony, Bernanke did not offer new clues about the Fed's next move on interest rates.
"I am sure we're going to see buyers moving in for the next target," Jones said, adding that he believes the euro will rise to $1.42 very soon.
"If not this week, it could be next week," he said. "People are using any weakness as a buying opportunity for euros."
Howard Archer, chief U.K. and European economist at Global Insight, said that $1.45 is a "serious possibility before the end of the year" because of the specter of more U.S. interest rate cuts.
"The Fed seems highly likely to cut U.S rates further, it now looks probable that the next move in U.K. interest rates will be down, while the ECB currently still retains a tightening bias," he said.
The euro's latest surge has come after the Fed lowered its key interest rate to 4.75 percent from 5.25 percent as it tries to keep the U.S. economy on track despite market turbulence from the subprime lending crisis. Most analysts had expected a quarter-point cut.
Lower interest rates, while used to jump-start the economy, can also weaken a currency by giving investors less return on investments denominated in the currency.
The European Central Bank kept its key rate unchanged at 4 percent earlier this month, backing off a planned increase in light of the subprime crisis and market volatility. Analysts are mixed on whether the bank will lift the rate in October.
The Bank of England meets next month, too, and is expected to keep its rate unchanged at 5.75 percent.
The rising euro has yet to cause great consternation among most of the 13 nations that share the euro, save for France, which has criticized its increase. As the euro rises it could dampen exports, particularly to the United States, making European-made products from automobiles to consumer appliances more expensive for American buyers.
On Thursday, Germany's finance ministry said the euro's strength meant that export growth in Europe's biggest economy had lost some of its vigor.
"The dynamism of exports is noticeably weaker than last year," the ministry said in its September monthly bulletin, citing the euro's appreciation against the dollar as a reason.
The dollar also fell against other currencies, dipping against the British pound to $2.0082 compared with $2.0025 late Wednesday, after U.K. retail sales in August rose by 0.6 percent from July.
The dollar slipped against the Japanese currency to 114.96 yen from 116.09 late Wednesday.
Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
London Telegraph
Thursday September 20, 2007
Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.
"This is a very dangerous situation for the dollar," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.
"Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States," he said.
The Saudi central bank said today that it would take "appropriate measures" to halt huge capital inflows into the country, but analysts say this policy is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to the collapse of the dollar peg.
As a close ally of the US, Riyadh has so far tried to stick to the peg, but the link is now destabilising its own economy.
The Fed's dramatic half point cut to 4.75pc yesterday has already caused a plunge in the world dollar index to a fifteen year low, touching with weakest level ever against the mighty euro at just under $1.40.
There is now a growing danger that global investors will start to shun the US bond markets. The latest US government data on foreign holdings released this week show a collapse in purchases of US bonds from $97bn to just $19bn in July, with outright net sales of US Treasuries.
The danger is that this could now accelerate as the yield gap between the United States and the rest of the world narrows rapidly, leaving America starved of foreign capital flows needed to cover its current account deficit - expected to reach $850bn this year, or 6.5pc of GDP.
Mr Redeker said foreign investors have been gradually pulling out of the long-term US debt markets, leaving the dollar dependent on short-term funding. Foreigners have funded 25pc to 30pc of America's credit and short-term paper markets over the last two years.
"They were willing to provide the money when rates were paying nicely, but why bear the risk in these dramatically changed circumstances? We think that a fall in dollar to $1.50 against the euro is not out of the question at all by the first quarter of 2008," he said.
"This is nothing like the situation in 1998 when the crisis was in Asia, but the US was booming. This time the US itself is the problem," he said.
Mr Redeker said the biggest danger for the dollar is that falling US rates will at some point trigger a reversal yen "carry trade", causing massive flows from the US back to Japan.
Jim Rogers, the commodity king and former partner of George Soros, said the Federal Reserve was playing with fire by cutting rates so aggressively at a time when the dollar was already under pressure.
The risk is that flight from US bonds could push up the long-term yields that form the base price of credit for most mortgages, the driving the property market into even deeper crisis.
"If Ben Bernanke starts running those printing presses even faster than he's already doing, we are going to have a serious recession. The dollar's going to collapse, the bond market's going to collapse. There's going to be a lot of problems," he said.
The Federal Reserve, however, clearly calculates the risk of a sudden downturn is now so great that the it outweighs dangers of a dollar slide.
Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan said this week that house prices may fall by "double digits" as the subprime crisis bites harder, prompting households to cut back sharply on spending.
For Saudi Arabia, the dollar peg has clearly become a liability. Inflation has risen to 4pc and the M3 broad money supply is surging at 22pc.
The pressures are even worse in other parts of the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates now faces inflation of 9.3pc, a 20-year high. In Qatar it has reached 13pc.
Kuwait became the first of the oil sheikhdoms to break its dollar peg in May, a move that has begun to rein in rampant money supply growth.Netanyahu 'admits Israeli strike'
BBC
Thursday September 20, 2007
The Israeli opposition leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, has made the first apparent admission of Israel's involvement in an alleged air strike against Syria.
In a live interview on Israeli TV, Mr Netanyahu said he had congratulated Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on the raid.
"I was a partner in the issue from the start, and I gave my backing," he said.
Mr Netanyahu was criticised for his remarks, after Israel had maintained an official policy of silence on the reported incident two weeks ago.
Speaking on Channel 1 news, Mr Netanyahu said: "When a prime minister does something that is important in my view and necessary to Israel's security... I give my backing."When asked if he had personally congratulated Mr Olmert on the operation, Mr Netanyahu said: "Yes". But the Likud party leader refused to give details of the attack.
Labour party secretary general Eitan Cabel told state radio: "I have no idea if this was stupidity, folly or a desire to steal credit.
"This is simply very dangerous conduct and the man is not worthy of leading."
Likud MP Yuval Steinitz said the remarks "were not wise".
Rising tensions
Damascus says Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace in the north of the country on 6 September, and describe the incident as a "hostile act".
The Syrian authorities say that the aircraft were forced away and that they fired their weaponry into a deserted area. Witnesses said the Israeli jets had been engaged by Syrian air defences in Tall al-Abyad, north of Raqqa and near the border with Turkey.
The Syrian government has briefed Western diplomats and complained to the United Nations.
US officials have indicated that at least one target in northern Syria was hit.
Israel and Syria technically remain at war and tensions between them have been rising in recent months.
The Syrian government has insisted that peace talks can be resumed only on the basis of Israel returning the Golan Heights, which it seized in 1967.
Israeli authorities, for their part, have demanded that Syria abandon its support for Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups before talks can begin.
The last peace talks between the two countries broke down in 2000.Tens of thousands of CCTV cameras, yet 80% of crime unsolved
Justin Davenport
London Evening Standard
Thursday September 20, 2007
London has 10,000 crime-fighting CCTV cameras which cost £200 million, figures show today.
But an analysis of the publicly funded spy network, which is owned and controlled by local authorities and Transport for London, has cast doubt on its ability to help solve crime.
A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.
In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average.
The figures were obtained by the Liberal Democrats on the London Assembly using the Freedom of Information Act.
Dee Doocey, the Lib-Dems' policing spokeswoman, said: "These figures suggest there is no link between a high number of CCTV cameras and a better crime clear-up rate.
"We have estimated that CCTV cameras have cost the taxpayer in the region of £200million in the last 10 years but it's not entirely clear if some of that money would not have been better spent on police officers.
"Although CCTV has its place, it is not the only solution in preventing or detecting crime.
"Too often calls for CCTV cameras come as a knee-jerk reaction. It is time we engaged in an open debate about the role of cameras in London today."
The figures show:
• There are now 10,524 CCTV cameras in 32 London boroughs funded with Home Office grants totalling about £200million.
• Hackney has the most cameras - 1,484 - and has a better-than-average clearup rate of 22.2 per cent.
• Wandsworth has 993 cameras, Tower Hamlets, 824, Greenwich, 747 and Lewisham 730, but police in all four boroughs fail to reach the average 21 per cent crime clear-up rate for London.
• By contrast, boroughs such as Kensington and Chelsea, Sutton and Waltham Forest have fewer than 100 cameras each yet they still have clear-up rates of around 20 per cent.
• Police in Sutton have one of the highest clear-ups with 25 per cent.
• Brent police have the highest clear-up rate, with 25.9 per cent of crimes solved in 2006-07, even though the borough has only 164 cameras.
The figures appear to confirm earlier studies which have thrown doubt on the effectiveness of CCTV cameras.
A report by the criminal justice charity Nacro in 2002 concluded that the money spent on cameras would be better used on street lighting, which has been shown to cut crime by up to 20 per cent.
Scotland Yard is trying to improve its track record on the use of CCTV and has set up a special unit which collects and circulates CCTV images of criminals.
A pilot project is running in Southwark and Lambeth and is expected to be rolled out across the capital.
The figures only include state-funded cameras.
The true number, once privately run units and CCTV at rail and London Underground stations are taken into account, will be significantly higher.Council OKs surveillance cameras around city
Rich Lord
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday September 20, 2007
Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's plan to use a $2.59 million federal port security grant to start a citywide surveillance camera system got its first OK from City Council yesterday, with enthusiasm for the proposed electronic eyes trumping privacy concerns.
"It would be my hope that we would be looking at some of the crime stats and see where the greatest amount of crime is occurring in the city," and put cameras there, said Councilwoman Tonya Payne, whose district includes the Hill District and parts of the North Side. "I want to know who's shooting whom."
If council gives its final approval Tuesday, the administration would be allowed to take the U.S. Homeland Security Department money, a fraction of which would go to hiring a consultant to help design the system. The city, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., the U.S. Coast Guard and several other agencies have formed a committee that will choose from among six national consultants.
The consultants and committee would then sort through ideas already submitted by 21 surveillance camera firms, and craft a request for proposals detailing what the city wants to build.
City Information Systems Director Howard Stern said he hopes to have the core of the system, plus some cameras near port areas, in place next year.
In addition to the federal funds, the city plans to spend $862,000 of its own money on the effort. It will have to find more money, however, if it is to meet Mr. Ravenstahl's stated goal of putting cameras citywide, Mr. Stern said, but building the right technological backbone is the key to the system.
"We want technology that allows us to expand the cameras into the neighborhoods," he said.
Councilman William Peduto asked that the administration add language promising to draft a privacy policy to the legislation before Tuesday's final vote. Mr. Stern said he would comply.
"We plan on having conversations with the [American Civil Liberties Union]," Mr. Stern said. "We are going to look at what other cities have done."
Council members also voted to allocate $135,000 over three years to equip Animal Control Division workers to euthanize captured wildlife. The money will cover a veterinarian's consulting fee and the cost of drugs. The vote means that role won't be contracted out as long as the administration can find a secure building in which to store the drugs and conduct euthanization.
Council postponed a vote on hiring Pine-based Co-exprise Inc. to conduct an auction and identify a new electricity supplier for city facilities. Mr. Peduto demanded a special meeting on the subject before any vote is taken.Bin Laden tape to declare war on Musharraf
LEE KEATH
AP
Thursday September 20, 2007
Osama bin Laden will release a new message soon declaring war on Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, al-Qaida announced Thursday.
The announcement of the upcoming message came as al-Qaida released a new video in which bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, boasted that the United States was being defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts.
Speakers in the video promised more fighting in Afghanistan, North Africa and Sudan's Darfur region.
The messages are part of a stepped-up propaganda campaign by al-Qaida around the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Earlier this month, bin Laden released two messages — including his first new appearance in a video in nearly three years.
A banner posted on an Islamic militant Web site on Thursday advertised that another message would be released, though it did not say whether bin Laden would appear in video or speak in an audiotape.
"Soon, God willing: 'Come to Jihad (holy war)', from sheik Osama bin Laden, God protect him" the banner read.
"Urgent, al-Qaida declares war on the tyrant Pervez Musharraf and his apostate army, in the words of Osama bin Laden," it read.
Such advertisements usually precede the release of the video by one to three days, according to IntelCenter, a U.S. counterterrorism group that monitors militant messages.
The sophisticated 80-minute video released Thursday on the same Web site was in the style of a documentary, intersplicing the speech by al-Zawahri with footage from the Sept. 11 attacks, interviews with experts and officials taken from Western and Arab television stations, and old footage and audiotapes of bin Laden.
Al-Zawahri began by condemning the Pakistani military's July assault on Islamic militants who took over the Red Mosque in Islamabad, and he paid tribute to one of the militants' leaders, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was killed in the fighting.
The siege "revealed the extent of the despicableness, lowliness and treason of Musharraf and his forces, who don't deserve the honor of defending Pakistan, because Pakistan is a Muslim land, whereas the forces of Musharraf are hunting dogs under (President) Bush's crucifix," al-Zawahri said.
"Let the Pakistani army know that the killing of Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his male and female students ... has soaked the history of the Pakistan army in shame and despicableness which can only washed away by retaliation," he said.
Bin Laden and al-Zawahri are thought to be hiding in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, where many analysts believe they have rebuilt al-Qaida's core leadership.
Al-Zawahri called for attacks on French and Spanish interests in North Africa and on U.N. and African peacekeepers expected to deploy in Sudan's wartorn Darfur region.
"What they claim to be the strongest power in the history of mankind is today being defeated in front of the Muslim vanguards of jihad six years after the two raids on New York and Washington," al-Zawahri said, speaking in what appeared to be an office, with shelves of religious books and an automatic rifle leaning against them.
"The Crusaders themselves have testified to their defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the lions of the Taliban," he said. "The Crusaders have testified to their own defeat in Iraq at the hands of the mujahideen, who have taken the battle of Islam to the heart of the Islam world."
The video included footage of al-Qaida's leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed, meeting with a senior Taliban commander. In contrast to past videos that showed al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in rough desert terrain, Abu al-Yazeed and the commander were shown sitting in a verdant field surrounded by trees as a jihad anthem played, extolling the virgins that will meet martyrs in paradise.
Abu al-Yazeed said al-Qaida's ties with the Taliban were strengthening. The Taliban commander, Dadullah Mansoor, said: "We shall target the infidels in Afghanistan and outside Afghanistan: inside all the infidel countries oppressing the Muslims. And we shall focus our attacks, Allah willing, on the coalition forces in Afghanistan."
Another clip in the video showed Abu Musab Abdulwadood, the leader of Algeria's main Islamic insurgency movement, addressing bin Laden and vowing that "our swords are unsheathed."
Al-Zawahri called on supporters in North Africa to "cleanse the Maghrib (western region) of Islam of the children of France and Spain ... Stand with your sons the mujahideen against the Crusaders and their children."
The video also included what IntelCenter said appeared to be old, but previously unreleased footage of bin Laden. The images show the terror leader, with a beard streaked with gray and a a white cloth draped over his head, in front of a map showing the Middle East and South and Central Asia. He points to the map with a stick and addresses an unseen audience.
He condemns Arab Gulf governments that have allied themselves with the United States, saying they have "sold the Islamic nation, colluded with the enemies of Islam and backed the infidels. And this is the greater form of being an infidel ... But Allah permitting, they shall leave the Gulf under the blows of the mujahideen," bin Laden said.US expert warns of fresh shocks
Eoin Callan
Financial Times
Thursday September 20, 2007
Fresh economic shocks on the scale of the current credit squeeze will occur if US house prices continue to fall, one of the country’s leading housing experts warned on Wednesday.
Robert Shiller, a Yale university economist, told a US congressional panel that he feared “the collapse of home prices might turn out to be the most severe since the Great Depression”.
“The decline in house prices stands to create future dislocations, like the credit crisis we have just seen,” he told the Senate’s joint economic committee.
The warning underlines an increasingly widespread view that the turmoil in financial markets and tightening lending conditions are early consequences of a slump in the US housing market that is gathering momentum.
Mr Shiller, who designed the respected Case-Shiller house price index and predicted the bursting of the dotcom bubble in a bestselling book, said that while there had been a focus “on lax and irresponsible lending standards, I believe that this loss in housing value is the major ultimate reason we see a crisis today.”
Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, told the Financial Times this week that double-digit falls in house prices from their peaks would not be surprising. A fall in house prices on that scale would be unprecedented in US history and would have an economic cost several times greater than the meltdown in the subprime mortgage market that triggered the current financial crisis.
The Center for Responsible Lending has predicted that foreclosures on subprime loans will lead to a cumulative loss of $164bn (€118bn, £82bn) in home equity. Investment banks have suggested the costs to financial institutions could be more than $300bn.
The joint economic committee heard from experts who said a 15 per cent fall in house prices would wipe out $3,000bn of household wealth.
Alex Pollock, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said: “Residential real estate is a huge asset class, with an aggregate value of about $21,000bn, and is of course the single largest component of the wealth of most households.
“A year ago it was common to say that while house prices would periodically fall on a regional basis, they could not on a national basis ... Well, now house prices are falling on a national basis,” he said.
Mr Shiller said it was “difficult to predict the depth, duration and all of the consequences” of the worsening housing slump.
“The Federal Reserve will undoubtedly take aggressive actions, which will mitigate its severity. But, if home price deflation persists or intensifies, they may discover that the Achilles’ heel of this resilient economy is the evaporation of confidence that can accompany the end-of-boom psychology,” he said.
Senator Charles Schumer, chairman of the joint economic committee, criticised the handling of the subprime crisis by the Fed and the Bush administration.
“Despite all the reassuring statements we’ve heard from the administration that the impact of this mess would be ‘contained’, it has not been contained, but has been a contagion that has spread to all sectors of the economy,” he said.Dollar hits new low against euro
BBC
Thursday September 20, 2007
The US dollar hit a new record low against the euro as investors sold the currency after the Federal Reserve's hefty interest rate cut.
The greenback dropped below the psychologically important $1.40 against the euro, deepening recent losses.
The euro jumped to $1.4018 in early Thursday trading, the highest since the launch of the single European currency.
ECB hints of interest rate rises, and stronger European growth, have also boosted the euro's value.
Dampen costs
Analysts have said that the impact of the plunging dollar on European consumer and businesses may be mixed.
Eurozone consumers may benefit from cheaper prices for some imported goods.
At the same time, there is some good news for eurozone companies because oil, metals and many raw material prices are quoted in dollars, meaning that the strength of the euro should dampen firms' input costs.
However, while the strong euro may cut some import costs, it could also have a negative effect on exports as European-made goods become more expensive.
The US the Europe's largest trading partner.
It could also hurt growth in Asia, with the US being the largest market for China, Korea, and other Asian exporters.
Dollar problems
The dollar has been weakening for some time.
The fundamental problem is the growing US trade deficit, now more than $700bn, as the US economy has imported far more goods than it has exported.
This has long been seen as unsustainable, and in the long-run some kind of currency adjustment has been seen as both inevitable and desirable.
But the recent change in policy by the US central bank has accelerated the decline, because people who put their money in dollars no longer get such a high rate of return.
The Fed acted in order to stem problems in the US housing market, caused by an increase in the number of people defaulting on loans, which could cause an economic slowdown across the board.
A US economic slowdown could also hurt the dollar in the short-term, although it might also lower the trade gap as there could be less demand for foreign goods by US consumers.
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