Press stands up to White House on Abu Ghraib torture photos

A coalition of 14 media organizations and public interest groups organized by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have filed an amicus brief in federal court in New York urging the release of Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos. The coalition, which includes CBS, NBC and the New York Times, supports a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Pentagon, which has been pending since October 2003.
The government argues that the information is protected by Exemption 7(F) of the FOIA, which protects law enforcement records from disclosure when they "could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual." Citing recent riots in Afghanistan following Newsweek's publication of an article about claims of Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, the government says the release of Abu Ghraib photos could similarly incite violence against military personnel overseas.
"The government has taken the position in this case that the more outrageously the behavior exhibited by American troops, the less the public has a right to know about it," said Reporters Committee executive director Lucy Dalglish. "Such a stance turns the Freedom of Information Act inside out."

Detainee Files Suit for Torture During South Carolina Imprisonment

A lawsuit filed today against U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reveals the gratuitous cruelty inflicted on a foreign student held without charges for more than two years as an "enemy combatant" in a South Carolina naval brig, Human Rights Watch said. Although three men have been confined in the United States after being designated "enemy combatants" by President George Bush, the complaint by Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri provides the first look into the treatment of any of them in military custody. Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who had been studying in Peoria, Illinois, before his arrest, asked the federal district court in South Carolina to declare unconstitutional the severe and unnecessary deprivations and restrictions to which he has been subjected since he was placed in military custody in June 2003. Al-Marri had already initiated habeas proceedings challenging the legality of his detention as an enemy combatant. That case continues.
"It is bad enough that al-Marri has been held indefinitely without charges and incommunicado," said Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch's U.S. Program. "Now we learn that his life in the brig has also been one of cruelty and petty vindictiveness. Whatever the Bush administration believes he has done or wanted to do, there's no excuse for how they are treating him."

"I wish I had it. It would be nice."

Do you remember back in June there was that really embarassing revelation about terrorism training at the FBI?
In depositions for an employment discrimination lawsuit, the FBI’s top anti-terrorism guy, Gary Bald, said his first terrorism training came "on the job" when he moved to headquarters to oversee anti-terrorism strategy two years ago.
Asked about his grasp of Middle Eastern culture and history, Bald responded: "I wish I had it. It would be nice."
What happens to people like that after they make admissions like that in public?
Well in the Bush Administration, up is down and black is white and guys like that get promoted. That guy, Gary Bald, is the guy they now want to make head of the new FBI National Security Service. (The NSS itself is the big bad idea I ranted about on July 5th -- the elimination of the line between cops and spies).
Even Republicans are shocked at the idea – Senator Charles Grassley of Ohio is asking John Negroponte to not appoint Mr. On the Job Training.

Diplomatic Background on Iran's Nuclear Capability

Lost in the obscure pages of the early coverage of the Iraq war was a moment when, it seemed, the clerical regime in Iran flinched. Soon after Saddam fled and Baghdad became an American town, Iran suddenly entered into negotiations with Great Britain, France and Germany on ending its nuclear program, the most public point of friction with the US. After all, it was Saddam's supposed nuclear program that had been the casus belli for the American invasion, and Bush administration neo-conservatives had been hammering away at the Iranian program in a similar fashion.
Two developments ended this brief moment of seeming triumph for Washington. As a start, American officials [including John Bolton], feeling their oats, balked at the tentative terms negotiated by the Europeans because they did not involve regime change in Iran. This hardline American stance gave the Iranian leadership no room to maneuver and stiffened their negotiating posture.
At the time, in the wake of its successful three-week war in Iraq, the Bush administration seemed ready, even eager, to apply extreme military pressure to Iran. According to Washington Post columnist William Arkin, the official US strategic plan (formally known as CONPLAN 8022-02) completed in November 2003, authorized "a preemptive and offensive strike capability against Iran and North Korea". An administration pre-invasion quip (reported by Newsweek on August 19, 2002) caught perfectly the post-invasion mood ascendant in Washington: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."

CRS: Freedom of Speech and Press - Exceptions to the First Amendment [PDF]

Contents
Introduction
Obscenity
Child Pornography
Content-Based Restrictions
Prior Restraint
Commercial Speech
Defamation
Speech Harmful to Children
Children’s First Amendment Rights
Time, Place, and Manner Restrictions
Incidental Restrictions
Symbolic Speech
Compelled Speech
Radio and Television
Freedom of Speech and Government Funding
Free Speech Rights of Government Employees and Government Contractors . . 32
Government Employees
Government Contractors

CRS: Data Mining - An Overview [PDF]

While data mining represents a significant advance in the type of analytical tools currently available, there are limitations to its capability. One limitation is that although data mining can help reveal patterns and relationships, it does not tell the user the value or significance of these patterns. These types of determinations must be made by the user. A second limitation is that while data mining can identify connections between behaviors and/or variables, it does not necessarily identify a causal relationship. To be successful, data mining still requires skilled technical and analytical specialists who can structure the analysis and interpret the output that is created.
Data mining is becoming increasingly common in both the private and public sectors. Industries such as banking, insurance, medicine, and retailing commonly use data mining to reduce costs, enhance research, and increase sales. In the public sector, data mining applications initially were used as a means to detect fraud and waste, but have grown to also be used for purposes such as measuring and improving program performance. However, some of the homeland security data mining applications represent a significant expansion in the quantity and scope of data to be analyzed. Two efforts that have attracted a higher level of congressional interest include the Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) project (now-discontinued) and the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II) project (now canceled
and replaced by Secure Flight).

FCC Issues Rule Allowing FBI to Dictate Wiretap-Friendly Design for Internet Services

Today the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a release announcing its new rule expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). The ruling is a reinterpretation of the scope of CALEA and will force Internet broadband providers and certain Voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers to build backdoors into their networks that make it easier for law enforcement to wiretap them. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has argued against this expansion of CALEA in several rounds of comments to the FCC on its proposed rule.
CALEA, a law passed in the early 1990s, mandated that all telephone providers build tappability into their networks, but expressly ruled out information services like broadband. Under the new ruling from the FCC, this tappability now extends to Internet broadband providers as well.

Barcode Art on CD Saves Money for Lucky 80's Music Fans

In 2005, Sony BMG released a 3-CD set entitled Electric 80s The cover art for this compilation of "the greatest Eighties electric hits" featured a reproduction of a UPC bar code, with the title "ELECTRIC 80s" placed in the space at the bottom of the bar code where the human-readable numbers corresponding to that code would usually appear. (The real bar code — the one used for scanning the price of the item at checkout counters — was placed in a corner on the back of the packaging, as it is for nearly every similar item.)
Unfortunately for some retailers (such as Tesco supermarkets), the machine-readable version of the bar code used for the CD compilation's cover art was scannable by their systems, and sales clerks at those outlets who mistakenly passed the CD's cover (rather than its back) over point-of-purchase scanners ended up ringing up sales for £9.77, (US $17.46) considerably less than the set's listed price of £14.97 (US $26.76). Often the mis-scanning resulted in stores' mistakenly recording sales of singer Jack Johnson's new (and significantly less expensive) CD, In Between Dreams, instead.

Army whistleblower draws fire

Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse is the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting ("PARC" in the alphabet soup of military acronyms) in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Lest the title fool, she is responsible for awarding billions upon billions in taxpayers' money to private companies hired to resurrect war-torn Iraq and to feed, clothe, shelter and do the laundry of American troops stationed there.
She has rained a mighty storm upon herself for standing up, before members of Congress and live on C-SPAN to proclaim things are just not right in this staggeringly profitable business.
She has asked many questions: Why is Halliburton -- a giant Texas firm that holds more than 50 percent of all rebuilding efforts in Iraq -- getting billions in contracts without competitive bidding? Do the durations of those contracts make sense? Have there been violations of federal laws regulating how the government can spend its money?

Vast Melting of Siberian Peet Bog Releasing Billions of Tons of Methane

The researchers found that what was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometer across.
Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation was an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He added that the thaw had probably begun in the past three or four years.
Climate scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.
"When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
"This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing."

Abu Ghraib Images Would Threaten Security -- Pentagon

Gen. Richard Meyers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said in a statement put forth to support the Pentagon's case that he believed that riots, violence and attacks by insurgents would result if the images were released.
The papers were filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union to obtain under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) the release of 87 photos and four videotapes taken at Abu Ghraib. The photos were among those turned over to Army investigators last year by Spc. Joseph Darby, a reservist who was posted at Abu Ghraib.
The documents reveal both the high level and the determination of the Pentagon officials engaged in the effort to block the disclosure of the images, and their alarm at the prospect the photos might become public. In his statement, dated July 21, Myers said he had become aware on June 17 that the photos' release might be imminent. He said he had consulted with Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. central commander, and Gen. George Casey, the commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq. Both officers also opposed the release, Myers said.

Troops as Bloggers

Since the 1850s, when a London Times reporter was sent to chronicle the Crimean War, journalists have generally provided the most immediate first-hand depictions of major conflicts. But in Iraq, service members themselves are delivering real-time dispatches -- in their own words -- often to an audience of thousands through postings to their blogs.
"I was able to jot a few lines in every day, and it just grew from there," Le Bel, 24, of Haverhill, Mass., said in an e-mail. Her Web site has received about 45,000 hits since she started it a year ago.
At least 200 active-duty soldiers currently keep blogs. Only about a dozen blogs were in existence two years ago when the U.S. invaded Iraq, according to "The Mudville Gazette" ( http://www.mudvillegazette.com ), a clearinghouse of information on military blogging administered by an Army veteran who goes by the screen name Greyhawk.
Written in the casual, sometimes profane language of the barracks, the entries give readers an unfiltered perspective on combat largely unavailable elsewhere. But they are also drawing new scrutiny and regulation from commanders concerned they could compromise security

21 Administration Officials Involved in Plame Case

The cast of administration characters with known connections to the outing of an undercover CIA agent:

Karl Rove
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby
Condoleezza Rice
Stephen Hadley
Andrew Card
Alberto Gonzales
Mary Matalin
Ari Fleischer
Susan Ralston
Israel Hernandez John Hannah
Scott McClellan
Dan Bartlett
Claire Buchan
Catherine Martin
Colin Powell
Karen Hughes
Adam Levine
Bob Joseph
Vice President Dick Cheney
President George W. Bush

State Lawmakers: Feds Draining State Air Guard Resources

A proposed overhaul of more than two dozen Air National Guard units has emerged as the most contentious issue in the Pentagon's larger plan to close, consolidate or realign hundreds of military sites nationwide.
The Air Force wants to retire aging aircraft from many Guard units, close or consolidate some of their bases and give some units new missions, like flying remotely piloted Predator aircraft, that are better suited to today's national security environment, Air Force officials say.
But doing that would leave more than two dozen states without emergency aircraft to fight fires, recover from hurricanes and cope with other natural disasters, lawmakers say.
Officials from New England to the Pacific Northwest argue that the plan would leave them vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Illinois and Pennsylvania have gone so far as to file suit in federal court contending that the Defense Department cannot move Air Guard units without the consent of the state governors, who share authority with the president over use of the units.

"Winter Soldier:" Film Echoes the Present in Atrocities of the Past

Like a live hand grenade brought home from a distant battlefield, the 34-year-old antiwar documentary "Winter Soldier" has been handled for decades as if it could explode at any moment.
Now, the 95-minute film - which has circulated like 16-millimeter samizdat on college campuses for decades but has never been accessible to a wide audience - is about to get its first significant theatrical release in the United States, beginning on Friday at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. (Other bookings, including Chicago, Detroit, Hartford and Minneapolis)...
Its distributors say that the war in Iraq has made the Vietnam-era film as powerful as when it was new, and its filmmakers are calling it eerily prescient of national embarrassments like the torture at Abu Ghraib.
Seldom has a film seen by so few caused so much consternation for so many years.
When it was made at a three-day gathering in 1971 of Vietnam veterans telling of the atrocities they had seen and committed, major news organizations sent reporters but published and broadcast next to nothing of what they filed - prompting the veterans to organize what would be a pivotal antiwar demonstration in Washington a few months later.
When the film was finished a year later, it was shown at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals, at theaters in France and England, and on German television. But in the United States, the television networks would not touch it, the film never found a distributor, and it disappeared for decades after playing a week at a single New York theater and a one-time airing on Channel 13.

Crop King Monsanto Seeks Pig-Breeding Patent Clout

The patent applications, filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization, are broad in scope, and are expected to take several years and numerous rewrites before approval.
"We applied for a patent ... for some specific reproductive processes in swine," said Monsanto spokesman Chris Horner. "Any pigs that would be produced using this reproductive technique would be covered by these patents."
The practices Monsanto wants to patent basically involve identifying genes that result in desirable traits in swine, breeding animals to achieve those traits and using a specialized device to inseminate sows deeply in a way that uses less sperm than is typically required.
"We've come up with a protocol that wraps a lot of these techniques together," said Monsanto swine molecular breeding expert Mike Lohuis.

Bush Order Lets Him Control Roberts' Memos

A little-noticed order issued by President Bush almost four years ago gives White House lawyers the right to block the release of memos written by Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. when he worked for President Reagan.
The order, signed by Bush in November 2001, said the "incumbent president" had the right to approve the release of papers from the presidential libraries of his father, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan.
It set off a furor at the time among historians, archivists and librarians. They said it all but repealed the Presidential Records Act, a 1978 law that decreed a president's records were public property, not the private property of the former president. Under this law, a former president's papers were to be opened to the public 12 years after he left office. Exceptions could be made for national security reasons.
Bush's executive order added a new check. It said the "incumbent president may assert any constitutionally based privilege" after the 12 years had lapsed to block the release of files. Included among these many privileges were "records that reflect … legal advice or legal work."

US Bomb 'Kills Afghan Civilians'

At least four Afghan civilians were killed and many more wounded in a US bombing raid in the southern province of Zabul, locals and officials say.
Governor Ali Khail told the Associated Press US-led forces had made a mistake and villagers were among casualties.
The US said one of its soldiers and "at least 16 enemy forces" were killed in fighting in the area on Monday.
US forces said on Thursday that another US soldier and six militants had died in fighting in Paktika province.
Last month, the US military said it regretted that civilians had been killed in an air strike by US forces in eastern Konar Province.

Fake News Abounds, but Vigilance on Rise

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which conducts regular polling on attitudes toward the media, said that in 1985 about 84 percent of Americans said they believed most of what they read in their daily newspaper. By 2004, that had dropped to 54 percent.
What isn't clear is whether fabrications have become more common, or just easier to uncover.
These days, an army of amateur and professional media critics have made a hobby out of attempting to discredit news reports and statements by politicians.
Their work has been aided by powerful Internet tools that have made it easier than ever to detect stolen or false material, confirm identities or troll public records.
"Certainly the tools of verification are better and more readily available than they were in the Janet Cooke era," said Bill Mitchell of the Poynter Institute, a journalism school.

Crawfords "Lonestar Iconoclast" Offers Up-Close Coverage of Sheehan Protest

Although this type of coverage may be typical for larger media outlets, Smith said it’s very unusual, and demanding, for the newspaper with a three-person editorial staff that, under normal circumstances, only updates its Web site weekly. Now it’s server is under constant stress.
“We do what we can. We’re like any other media out there – we try to get the information as soon as we can do it,” he said. “We’re very limited with what we can do on our Web site, the way it’s established,” he added. “We’re going beyond what our capabilities are in some way.
“Here we are just an itty-bitty paper and we beat everybody else. We beat all the big guys as far as getting something out there and I guess that’s kind of satisfying. We’re just trying to make a big effort. We’re following a big story.”