Wikileaks shrugs off threats by US Government.

The online whistle-blower WikiLeaks said it will continue to publish more secret files from governments around the world despite U.S. demands to cancel plans to release classified military documents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today firmly rejected government claims that federal agents have an unfettered right to install Global Positioning System (GPS) location-tracking devices on anyone’s car without a search warrant.

In United States v. Maynard, FBI agents planted a GPS device on a car while it was on private property and then used it to track the position of the automobile every ten seconds for a full month, all without securing a search warrant. In an amicus brief filed in the case, EFF and the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital argued that unsupervised use of such tactics would open the door for police to abuse their power and continuously track anyone’s physical location for any reason, without ever having to go to a judge to prove the surveillance is justified.

The court agreed that such round-the-clock surveillance required a search warrant based on probable cause. The court expressly rejected the government’s argument that such extended, 24-hours-per-day surveillance without warrants was constitutional based on previous rulings about limited, point-to-point surveillance of public activities using radio-based tracking beepers. Recognizing that the Supreme Court had never considered location tracking of such length and scope, the court noted: “When it comes to privacy…the whole may be more revealing than its parts.”

The court continued: “It is one thing for a passerby to observe or even to follow someone during a single journey as he goes to the market or returns home from work. It is another thing entirely for that stranger to pick up the scent again the next day and the day after that, week in and week out, dogging his prey until he has identified all the places, people, amusements, and chores that make up that person’s hitherto private routine.”

“The court correctly recognized the important differences between limited surveillance of public activities possible through visual surveillance or traditional ‘bumper beepers,’ and the sort of extended, invasive, pervasive, always-on tracking that GPS devices allow,” said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. “This same logic applies in cases of cell phone tracking, and we hope that this decision will be followed by courts that are currently grappling with the question of whether the government must obtain a warrant before using your cell phone as a tracking device.”

“GPS tracking enables the police to know when you visit your doctor, your lawyer, your church, or your lover,” said Arthur Spitzer, Legal Director of the ACLU-NCA. “And if many people are tracked, GPS data will show when and where they cross paths. Judicial supervision of this powerful technology is essential if we are to preserve individual liberty. Today’s decision helps brings the Fourth Amendment into the 21st Century.”

Attorneys Daniel Prywes and Kip Wainscott of Bryan Cave LLP also volunteered their services to assist in preparing the EFF-ACLU brief.

For the full opinion:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/US_v_Jones/maynard_decision.pdf

For more information on the case, formerly known as U.S. v. Jones:
http://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-jones

Consider the federal investigators who have “formally concluded” their investigation into the 2001 anthrax killings, pointing again to the late anthrax vaccine researcher Bruce Ivins as the case’s culprit.

Whatever history’s verdict on Ivins, one brouhaha at the center of the case has already outlived him — the story of “weaponized” anthrax.

“One of my biggest frustrations with this has been showing people the data, and it doesn’t matter,” says researcher Joseph Michael of Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M. Michael has presented electron microscope results that show the 2001 attack anthrax wasn’t weaponized for two years, “but still the idea refuses to go away.”

The notion took hold in October of 2001, as the Hart senate office building faced closure due to anthrax contamination, when then-House minority leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., described some of the anthrax used in the attacks as “weapons-grade material.” The claim sparked a flurry of reports about the peculiar properties of the attack spores, their high quality and lightness, which hastened their spread through the building’s ventilation system.

Fears centered around silica, the chief ingredient in sand, which allows small bacterial spores to float more freely in the air, or aerosolize, if applied as a coating, a Cold War bioweapons technique studied at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.

In particular, a 2001 warning that silica had been purposely added to the attack anthrax came from virologist Peter Jahrling of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The warning was delivered to White House officials (reported in Robert Preston‘s 2002 book, The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story), after U.S. Armed Forces Institutes of Pathology X-ray results showed silica present in samples of the attack anthrax. The fear gained currency in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war‘s beginning, which centered around fears of bioweapons, as well as chemical and nuclear weapons.

“The spores in the Washington, D.C. letters were of exceptional purity,” says the Justice Department’s just-released investigation summary.

So, as part of the investigation, Michael and his colleagues looked at the attack spores using electron microscopes, which can see at fine enough resolution, on the nanometer scale, to spot exactly where the silica resided.In so doing they knocked down the notion the attack anthrax had been weaponized with a silicon coating. Instead, they found silicon that occurred naturally inside the spores.

“I believe I made an honest mistake,” Jahrling told The Los Angeles Times, in a 2008 response to this news, adding he was “overly impressed” by his initial views of the attack spores under the microscope.

Still the idea lives on, for example, in a January opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, that cited scientists who see the amount of silica in the attack spores as “blowing the FBI‘s case out of the water.” (The FBI argued the lab where Ivins worked didn’t have the facilities to weaponize the anthrax.)

Michael calls it “remarkable” that the opinion piece didn’t note his team’s well-publicized findings. “As a sheltered scientist, it kind of shocks me,” Michael says. “People will believe what they want to believe.”

So, how did the silica get inside the spores then? A January Journal of Bacteriology study led by Ryuichi Hirota of Japan’s Hiroshima University offers one answer. Looking at Bacillus cereus, a bacterium closely related to anthrax, researchers find silica naturally ingest the stuff if grown in sand-laced Petri dishes. Further, the silica produces acid resistance in the bugs, something they need to survive a trip to the stomach of grazing animals, one way they spread in the wild.

But it doesn’t make the spores float any more easily, Hirota and colleagues find. FBI scientist Vahid Majidi in 2008 suggested the crushing the anthrax letters underwent in postal sorting machines likely contributed to the fineness of the powders released in the Senate office building.

“I have to wonder if the controversial (Wall Street Journal opinion) piece didn’t put pressure on the Department of Justice and FBI to close the case. Maybe they realized that continuing the case just encouraged such misinformation,” says anthrax scientist Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, who managed the investigation’s repository of 1,070 anthrax samples. “Everyone can judge for themselves how the investigation was handled and the strength of the conclusions. Not everyone will be happy with the FBI conclusions, but this is America and we revel in conspiracy theories.”

Source: USA Today

The Postal Service is ready to deliver lifesaving drugs to about a quarter of the residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul, the only metropolitan area in the nation where letter carriers have been trained to dispense medication after a large-scale terrorist attack involving biological weapons.

Six years after the government began exploring the idea of using postal workers as rapid-response medicine dispensers and eight months after President Obama ordered government agencies to develop a plan to do so, efforts are underway in six cities to train workers to deliver the drugs needed to counter anthrax or other potentially deadly agents, the White House says.

The White House won’t name the six cities, and Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa says she can’t talk about whether more cities are interested in the voluntary program.

Cities are not required to adopt the plan, and most have separate plans in place to set up distribution centers in schools, community health centers and other government buildings where people can go to pick up drugs in the event of an attack. The White House, however, says using the Postal Service is a cost-effective and efficient way to create a reliable system for drug distribution in a crisis because postal workers can get drugs to the elderly and others who can’t get out easily or wait in long lines.

“We need the capability” to get lifesaving drugs to people in a hurry because in the case of an anthrax attack, in particular, “what we know is: hours matter,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro says.

He says “many cities have expressed interest” in the program, especially now that there is a successful model to follow in Minneapolis.

The nation’s capital is among them. “We’re still looking at it,” says Dena Iverson of the District of Columbia Department of Health.

The projected cost to set up the program and train postal workers: $1 million per city, according to the White House.

In 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a series of small-scale anthrax attacks killed five people. Victims can be saved, however, if they begin taking antibiotics soon after they’ve been exposed.

“It doesn’t make any difference if we make all these new antibiotics and vaccines if we don’t have ways to get them to people,” says Randall Larsen of the WMD Center, a think tank that focuses on bioterrorism.

The idea of having letter carriers deliver drugs to people in their homes has been discussed since 2004.

Since then:

•In 2006 and 2007, test runs were done in Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston.

•In 2008, the Bush administration issued an emergency order allowing the Food and Drug Administration to approve advance distribution of antibiotics to letter carriers who volunteer for the program and their families so that they would be protected from exposure to anything they encounter on their rounds.

•In December 2009, Obama issued an executive order to jump-start the process. It gave federal agencies 180 days to develop a Postal Service model that could be replicated around the country. It also required the government to meet a demand from the Postal Service: that workers delivering the drugs be accompanied by law enforcement officers to protect them from panicked and potentially violent crowds.

Now, “we’re fine if they (terrorists) attack Minneapolis,” says James Talent, former vice chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. The Postal Service has “proven they can do it.”

With a model in place, the White House says it is working to expand the voluntary program to cities across the country.

Natalie Grant director of Boston’s Office of Public Health Preparedness says the city is awaiting instruction from the federal government about how to proceed.

Minneapolis postal worker Chris Wittenburg of the National Association of Letter Carriers says setting up the program is complicated. First, letter carriers have to volunteer, undergo medical tests to make sure they can take the antibiotics, be fitted for masks (no facial hair allowed) and be trained. Routes have to be combined, and systems set up to suspend regular mail delivery in an instant, call postal workers in and send them out carrying boxes of drugs and fliers telling people what to do.

About 60% of the city’s letter carriers volunteered for the program, which was given a trial run in May.

Workers there can now deliver drugs to 205,000 households, or 575,000 people, within eight hours. Officials plan to expand the program to reach all 735,000 households in the metro area.

The need to get drugs or other antidotes to people fast is a “unique situation,” Wittenburg says, “and the Postal Service is really the only organization with the capability to pull it off.”

Source: USA Today

Imprisoned for 27 years for a rape he didn’t commit, Michael Anthony Green walked out of jail a free man on Friday and in the process was able to leave behind some of the anger that had fueled his survival behind bars.

Accompanied by his attorney, Green walked out of the Harris County Jail and into the arms of about 20 family members who cheered him.

“Live life,” Green said, when asked what he is going to do now.

Green, 44, was released after the Harris County District Attorney’s Office reopened his case and new DNA tests it commissioned showed he did not commit the 1983 rape of a woman who had been abducted. During a court hearing Friday, a judge ordered that Green be released on a $500 bond, allowing him to be free while the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals makes a final ruling on his innocence.

Asked what kept him going the last 27 years, Green said that in part it was his anger.

“I took and channeled my anger into studying the law,” said Green, clutching a photograph of his mother, who died while he was in prison. “That’s how I lived, day by day … doing what I did. Get up in the law, try to find me a way out.”

Some of the anger that Green had held onto for so many years came to the surface on Thursday, when he had been originally scheduled to be freed on bond. His release was delayed to give him time to calm down after he became upset that he was put in handcuffs and leg restraints one final time as he was taken from the county jail to the courthouse, said Bob Wicoff, his attorney. Green said he got upset because one of the deputies escorting him tightened his handcuffs and threatened him.

Wicoff called it a misunderstanding but said Green was justified in his anger as his life had been taken away. Green entered prison at age 18. Some of the nieces and nephews who greeted him on Friday hadn’t been born when he was locked up.

Green said that while in prison, he didn’t give up hope, writing to state lawmakers, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and others proclaiming his innocence and asking that his case be reviewed.

In 1983, four men abducted a woman from a pay telephone in north Houston, taking her to a remote location where three of them raped her. The men drove off, leaving the woman there, and were later chased by police. The men abandoned their car and fled on foot. Green was detained by officers that night as he walked in the area.

The victim could not identify Green in person when he was first detained but later picked him from a photo lineup as one of her attackers. Green was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to 75 years in prison. He was the only person convicted in the case.

After District Attorney Pat Lykos was elected in 2008, she formed the Post-Conviction Review Section and it chose Green’s case as one of the first to look at. The review team found the only remaining evidence in the case — clothing worn by the victim during the rape — and had it tested. The results excluded Green.

Authorities were able to identify the four men who abducted the women. But because the statute of limitations on the rape has run out, they cannot be prosecuted.

“The tragedy in the Green case is not only was an innocent man in prison, the victim was denied justice, society was denied justice and the real criminals were free,” Lykos said Friday.

Lykos declined to criticize her predecessors when asked why it took so long for Green’s case to be reviewed. She said DNA testing was not available when Green was convicted, it didn’t come to the forefront until the 1990s and that even now Harris County — the country’s third-largest county — doesn’t have the resources to do all the testing it needs to do.

Green said he was grateful for the efforts by the district attorney’s office.

He and his attorney blame bad police work for his wrongful imprisonment, saying improperly suggestive identification procedures that were used in photo spreads and a live lineup helped lead to the victim incorrectly identifying Green as one of her attackers.

Houston police have declined to comment on Green’s case.

Wicoff said Green forgives the victim but is unsure if he will ever forgive the police.

Adrian Taylor, 50, Green’s older brother, said he’s disappointed it took so long for his brother to be released but now he wants to help him look to the future.

“I now have to get him to forgive, forgive and move on,” Taylor said

Source: Raw Story

Beginning August 1, men’s blue jeans and underwear sold at Walmart will carry electronic radio identification tags. The company, the world’s largest retailer, insists the devices are crucial to improving the logistics of inventory management, while critics point to the privacy concerns associated with the tags.

The markers in question, called radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, are implanted in the garments and can be read by hand-held scanners. Wal-Mart officials praise the portability of the tags and the boost in speed and accuracy they bring to inventory control. “This ability to wave the wand and have a sense of all the products that are on the floor or in the back room in seconds is something that we feel can really transform our business,” crows Raul Vasquez, Wal-Mart’s representative for its stores in the western states.

RFID tags are nothing new at Walmart (or many other retailers). Until now, however, the tags were chiefly used to track pallets of goods from factory to warehouse to the local outlet. After August 1, though, for the first time Walmart will bring the technology out of the storeroom and into the consumer’s pants — literally.

In order to understand why Walmart’s selling of clothes loaded with RFID tags is worrisome, one needs to know a bit about how the devices work.

Radio-frequency identification tags are made of two principal components: an integrated circuit for storing and processing data and modulating a radio-frequency (RF) signal; and an antenna for receiving and transmitting the radio signal.

There are three types of RFID tags in common use: active RFID tags, which contain a battery and transmits signals autonomously; passive RFID tags, which have no battery and require an external source to stimulate signal transmission; and battery assisted passive (BAP) RFID tags, which operate only when “turned on” by an outside source, but have significant higher forward link capability providing greater range. The tags being used by Walmart are reportedly the passive version.

The workings of the technology reveals the privacy privations feared by critics. These tags can be scanned not just by Walmart employees, but by anyone with a scanner tuned to the signal. And, the signal given off by these “inventory control devices” cannot be turned off. Even if removed by consumers, as Walmart anticipates, the tags remain active and, whether sitting in the garbage or in the closet, they are emitting a signal.

That perpetually “on” aspect of the RFID tags is what sends chills down the spine of privacy advocates like Katherine Albrecht. Albrecht is the founder of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, an organization dedicated to tracking the tracking.

Albrecht told reporters that, “This is the first piece of a very large and very frightening tracking system.”

Large and frightening are apt descriptions of a plan being implemented by a company with the global footprint of Walmart. The plain economic fact is that Walmart sets the standard for many other retailers by exerting control over suppliers and compelling them to alter their methods according to the wishes of the Behemoth of Bentonville.

This influence is felt by stores of all sorts that draw inventory from the same supply stream. Thus, as goes Walmart, so goes retail. This domino effect works to expand the scope of the RFID tracking issue to cover most of the population.

The Wall Street Journal reports that “several other U.S. retailers, including J.C. Penney and Bloomingdale’s, have begun experimenting with smart tags on clothing to better ensure shelves remain stocked with sizes and colors that customers want.”

International industry journals report that Indian suppliers to other retail heavy hitters such as Metro, Target and U.K.-based Tesco have already been issued directives to replace bar codes with RFID tags. While this may lower margins of these suppliers, it is also expected to create a demand for RFID tags in India. The value of the entire RFID market — tags, readers, software/services and labels — is expected to touch $5.63 billion in 2010, according to a recent survey conducted by IDTechEx.

Is there any doubt that supply will meet the challenges of demand? Especially when the demand is made by those earning their livelihood by catering to the wishes of Walmart.

Industry insiders, while trying to downplay the “Big Brother” aspect of the technology and promote the logistics applications, illuminate red warning lights in their praise of RFID. Robert Carpenter, chief executive of a group that helped universal product codes (UPC) reach ubiquity, now predicts the same saturation of retail by RFID codes.

There is, of course, a stark distinction between UPC and RFID. As stated above, RFID is always “live” and continuously transmits a signal despite the consumer’s efforts to remove them. UPC, on the other hand, can be removed and is a static, or dead, device and can be defaced or erased, thus terminating its tracking capabilities.

Another concern to Albrecht and others protective of the privacy of citizens is the potential for coordination with other objects embedded with the chips and carried by people who shop at Walmart.

According to Albrecht and other privacy sentinels, drivers in states along the Canadian border (Michigan and Washington) are now issued licenses containing RFID tags that enable them to cross back and forth across the border with ease. Albrecht explained her fear to USA Today that “retailers could scan data from such licenses and their purchases and combine that data with other personal information.”

Theoretically, stores could scan these licenses without foreknowledge of the consumer, then amalgamate all the data broadcast by the RFID tags to form a composite image of the activity, movements, and buying behavior of those carrying such licenses. Then the next time the consumer comes in the store, employees could instantly indentify the person and know how to tailor the consumer’s shopping experience, including the ads that run on the TVs placed throughout Walmart.

While such corporate surveillance may sound far-fetched, Albrecht argues that “there are a lot of corporate marketers who are interested in tracking people as they walk sales floors.” It isn’t just inventory that could be controlled, but access and advertising, as well.

Despite assurances from Walmart executives that the RFID technology will only be used to better manage inventory in order to cut costs and pass along those savings to consumers, those familiar with the immense potential for RFID scanning admit that “they’ll cut down on employee theft because it will be easier to see if something’s gone missing from the back room.”

So, the party line has gone from supply chain management, to cost-cutting for the consumer, to monitoring of employees. Still, advocates contend that there is nothing to worry about — unless you’re a supplier, a consumer, a driver, or an employee of Walmart.

Source: The New American

South Korea has deployed sentry robots capable of detecting and killing intruders along the heavily-fortified border with North Korea, officials said on Tuesday.

Boeing has unveiled its unmanned hydrogen-powered spy plane which can fly non-stop for up to four days.

The high-altitude plane, called Phantom Eye, will remain aloft at 20,000m (65,000ft), according to the company.

The demonstrator will be shipped to Nasa’s Dryden Flight Research Center in California later this summer to prepare for its first flight in early 2011.

Boeing says the aircraft could eventually carry out “persistent intelligence and surveillance”.

It is a product of the company’s secretive Phantom Works research and development arm.

Boeing says the aircraft is capable of long endurance flights because of its “lighter” and “more powerful” hydrogen fuel system.

“We flew Condor [the company's previous reconnaissance drone] for 60 hours in 1989 on regular jet fuel, and that was the maximum,” said Chris Haddox from Boeing Phantom Works. “Now we’re talking 96 hours.”

The company explained in a statement that Phantom Eye was “powered by two 2.3 litre, four-cylinder engines that provide 150 horsepower each”.

It is also very large, with a 46m (150ft) wingspan.

“It isn’t built for stealth – it’s built for endurance,” Mr Haddox told BBC News.

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has an ongoing interest in long-endurance high-altitude planes for surveillance and is considering a several different technologies, including solar power, to meet the requirements of what it refers to as its “Scavenger project”.

The aerospace and defence company Qinetiq are carrying out trials in conjunction with the MoD to develop a solar powered plane called Zephyr.

A spokesperson for the MoD said: “Four days is very good but we are considering a range of options for our deep and persistent reconnaissance requirements.

“Some of these options could be airborne for over a week.”

Source: BBC

German officials have launched legal proceedings against Facebook for accessing and saving the personal data of people who do not use the site.

Facebook could face fines of tens of thousands of euros under privacy laws.

The social networking firm confirmed it had received a letter about the action.

“We consider the saving of data from third parties, in this context, to be against data privacy laws,” said Johannes Caspar, head of Hamburg’s Data Protection Authority.

Mr Caspar said he had received a number of complaints from people who had not signed up to Facebook, but whose details had been added to the site by friends. He accused Facebook of saving private data of non-members without their permission, to be used for marketing purposes.

Switzerland is also reported to be concerned about the use of third-party data.

Facebook has until 11 August to formally reply to the legal complaint against it.

The California-based company told the BBC in an email that it was “currently reviewing (the complaint) and will readily respond to it within the given time frame”.

“Millions of Germans come to Facebook each day to find their friends, share information with them and connect to the world around them,” wrote spokesman Stefano Hessel.

Facebook has nearly 500 million users worldwide but according to figures by ComScore is only the fourth biggest social network in Germany.

‘Human right’

This is not the first time the social networking site has landed in hot water with data protection officials.

At the beginning of the year, Canada’s privacy commissioner launched an investigation into the site following complaints about privacy policies.

And back in May, Facebook faced a storm of criticism for the way it handled members’ data after unveiling new privacy settings.

A number of US senators made public calls at the time for the company to rethink its privacy safeguards.

Consumer Watchdog said it was not surprised that Europe was driving this latest legal action against Facebook.

“There are much stronger privacy laws in Europe than here, where privacy is viewed as a consumer protection issue as opposed to a fundamental human right,” the group’s John Simpson told BBC News.

“We see that a number of Silicon Valley companies don’t really understand how seriously privacy issues are taken in Europe and they will continue to run afoul of data protection laws there. I also think there is a growing reaction in the US that we should beef up our privacy laws along the lines of those in Europe.”

Source: BBC

The Pentagon’s spy unit has quietly begun to rebuild a database for tracking potential terrorist threats that was shut down after it emerged that it had been collecting information on American anti-war activists.

The Defense Intelligence Agency filed notice this week that it plans to create a new section called Foreign Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operation Records, whose purpose will be to “document intelligence, counterintelligence, counterterrorism and counternarcotic operations relating to the protection of national security.”

But while the unit’s name refers to “foreign intelligence,” civil liberties advocates and the Pentagon’s own description of the program suggest that Americans will likely be included in the new database.

FICOR replaces a program called Talon, which the DIA created in 2002 under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as part of the counterterrorism efforts following the 9/11 attacks. It was disbanded in 2007 after it emerged that Talon had retained information on anti-war protesters, including Quakers, even after it was determined they posed no threat to national security.

DIA spokesman Donald Black told Newsweek that the new database would not include the more controversial elements of the old Talon program. But Jeff Stein at the Washington Post reports that the new program will evidently inherit the old Talon database.

“Why the new depository would want such records while its parent agency no longer has a law enforcement function could not be learned,” Stein reports. “Nor could it be learned whether the repository will include intelligence reports on protest groups gathered by its predecessor.”

The Pentagon’s notice states that the database will collect “identifying information such as name, Social Security Number (SSN), address, citizenship documentation, biometric data, passport number, vehicle identification number and vehicle/vessel license data.” As only US residents have Social Security Numbers, it appears the program is being designed at least partly to contain domestic information.

Newsweek cites two unnamed US officials as suggesting that the new program essentially echoes the old one. When CIFA, the DIA division running Talon, was disbanded in 2008, “many of its personnel and some of its functions were transferred” to the new DIA unit running the new database program. The new program will be housed “in the same office space that CIFA once occupied, in a complex near suburban Washington’s Reagan National Airport.”

Mike German, a former FBI agent now working with the ACLU, says “Americans should be just as concerned” about the new database as the previous one under the Bush administration.

“It’s a little hard to tell what this is exactly, but we do know that DIA took over ‘offensive counterintelligence’ for the DoD once CIFA was abandoned,” he told the Post‘s Stein. “It therefore makes sense that this new DIA database would be collecting the same types of information that CIFA collected improperly.”

Source: Raw Story