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Secret drug company payments to doctors remain legal in 48 states

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

Only five states and the District of Columbia require that pharmaceutical companies report gifts they make to doctors, and even in these jurisdictions the laws are so poorly enforced that the details of these transactions remain a de facto secret, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers examined public records from Vermont and Minnesota, the only two states that require disclosure by pharmaceutical companies and make that data available to the public. By studying the data from 2002 to 2004, the researchers hoped to gain a better understanding of how money moves from the pharmaceutical to the medical industry.

“What we really found was laws aren’t working,” said study author Joseph Ross, of the geriatrics department of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

The researchers found that while reported payments were quite high, the details of those transactions were not available. In other cases, reported payments were so low as to be suspicious. For example, GlaxoSmithKline claimed zero dollars spent in Vermont in the time period studied, yet the state attorney general listed the company as making more payments than any other. In Minnesota, Amgen recorded zero dollars in payments in 2002 or 2004, but more than $4 million in 2003.

Part of the reason for this inconsistency is that gifts of drugs or items not yet on the market can be classified as “trade secrets” and not reported. But Ross believes that this loophole is being exploited.

“To designate every payment made as a trade secret … seems improbable,” he said.

Pharmaceutical companies have been known to give doctors extravagant gifts including all-expense-paid vacations or gourmet dinners as part of their marketing campaigns. According to Dr. Harlan Krumholz, an associate professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, this presents a conflict of interest that the public should know about.

Ross agrees. “If both parties think this payment is appropriate, then this information should be made available to the public,” he said.

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Watchdog: Corruption Hinders US-Funded Reconstruction Projects

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

The latest audit report to Congress on Iraq reconstruction says corruption in the country, including fraud, theft and skimming amounts to a “second insurgency” is hindering the rebuilding effort.

Stuart Bowen, who wrote the quarterly report, tells The Associated Press that except for security, corruption is the biggest challenge for the Iraqi government to overcome.

Failure to maintain projects, once transferred to the Baghdad government, also figures in the report. As an example, an Iraqi power plant in Dora rebuilt with tens of millions of U.S. dollars fell into disrepair once transferred to the Baghdad government.

Bowen also notes bright spots like increased oil production. And Iraq is generating more electricity despite problems at the Dora plant.

Bowen says it’s still too early to say whether the rebuilding effort will produce lasting results.

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E-voting hacks to get Capitol Hill spotlight

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

By Anne Broache

A recent report documenting computer scientists’ ability to hack into voting machines certified for use in the state of California has already begun reverberating on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who happens to be one of the chief sponsors of a bill that would prohibit paperless voting machines by the 2010 federal elections, says she plans to hold a hearing in September on the report in the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which she leads. The politicians are expected to break for the summer at the end of this week.

In a statement Tuesday, Feinstein expressed dismay at “how easily these machines could be hacked into and election results distorted,” based on her reading of the report.

“The findings are yet another reason that states and counties should consider a move to optical scan machines that provide an auditable, individual

without having to rely on a separate printer,” she went on.

The study, commissioned by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, focused on machines made by Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic, and Sequoia Voting Systems. The University of California researchers who conducted the testing rattled off a list of security weaknesses they were able to exploit in each of the machines–although they didn’t attempt to quantify how difficult it was to carry out the hacks.

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Committee demanding details of NSA data-mining

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

A House committee is requesting Justice Department documents on a data-mining project that identified the senders and recipients of calls and e-mails intercepted via the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program.

In a Monday letter, Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to hand over “all opinions, memoranda and background materials, as well as any dissenting views, materials, and opinions” about the data-mining program.

While the Bush administration has acknowledged OK’ing the controversial program in which the government wiretapped phone calls without obtaining a warrant, it has remained mum on whether it authorized the NSA to use computers to sift through databases to identify who participated in intercepted communications. (The computers reportedly do not identify the contents of the communications.)

Critics have said the surveillance program violates a 1978 act requiring a special court’s approval before eavesdropping on communications in intelligence cases.

In his letter, Conyers wrote that his committee is considering changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and therefore must be “fully apprised of these controversial, and possibly unlawful, programs.”

The Michigan Democrat continued, “It is difficult to craft appropriate legislative responses unless we have all of the relevant facts concerning these programs.”

The embattled Gonzales is at the center of the controversy and is presently defending himself against allegations that he lied to Congress about a dispute between the White House and Justice Department over the eavesdropping program’s legality.

Gonzales has denied there was any significant dissent over the program in the Justice Department, but former Deputy Attorney General James Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller have indicated otherwise.

At issue is a 2004 late-night hospital visit to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, which Gonzales claims did not involve discussion of “the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people.” Mueller testified last week that Ashcroft told him it did involve the program.

A former government official familiar with the program said over the weekend that the dispute was so contentious some officials, including Comey, threatened to resign from the administration in protest.

Last week, Gonzales told a Senate committee that the dispute involved “other intelligence activities,” which he declined to discuss. The former government official said that the dispute centered on data mining, not eavesdropping.

Gonzales will lean heavily on this distinction as he defends himself against perjury charges.

Democrats, however, say it doesn’t matter because the data-mining project was a facet of the NSA eavesdropping program. Also, the former government official who confirmed the existence of the data-mining program has said Gonzales “may have been splitting hairs.”

In his letter to Gonzales, Conyers questioned whether the White House leaked classified information about the data-mining program “to rehabilitate previous controversial testimony by you.” Conyers further said that the Judiciary Committee wants to know if the Justice Department knew about the leaks or authorized them.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and other top administration officials briefed a group of lawmakers on the issue Monday. Gonzales’ testimony was discussed during that session, said Sen. Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Specter added that the Bush administration has agreed to address the matter in writing by noon Tuesday, but the senator would not disclose what else was discussed during the 80-minute briefing, nor would he divulge which lawmakers were in attendance.

The White House is “preparing” the letter requested by Specter, spokesman Tony Snow said Tuesday. He would not comment on the noon deadline or the letter’s contents but said it would be delivered Tuesday.

President Bush acknowledged the NSA eavesdropping program in December 2005 and defended it as a vital counterterrorism tool. The program was authorized to intercept communications coming into or out of the United States involving people suspected of having links to al Qaeda, Bush said.

But the administration has not acknowledged using computers to identify who sent or received millions of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails.

Gonzales’ disputed statements — coupled with an ongoing controversy over the allegedly political dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys last year — have sparked bipartisan calls for the attorney general’s resignation or ouster.

One Republican, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, said Gonzales doesn’t have much credibility “and he would do us all a favor if he stepped down and allowed the president to select someone else.”

Last week, four Democratic senators called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to determine if Gonzales has committed perjury.

But the president has stood by his longtime ally, who has been alongside him since 1995, during Bush’s days as Texas governor. Vice President Dick Cheney also has run to Gonzales’ defense.

“I think Al has done a good job under difficult circumstances,” Cheney told CBS Radio on Monday. “The debate between he and the Senate is something they’re going to have to resolve, but I think he has testified truthfully.”

Cheney said he disagreed with Specter, who called Sunday for Gonzales to step down.

“I think the key is whether or not [Gonzales] has the confidence of the president, and he clearly does,” Cheney said.

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£31m poured into ID cards scheme

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

By Gemma Simpson

The ID cards scheme has cost more than £30m over the past financial year.

During the year ending 31 March, 2007, the government spent £30.9m on setting up the National Identity Scheme (NIS) — up from the £27.7m expenditure in the previous year, according to Home Office figures.

The £30.9m NIS-incurred expenditure was short of the initial budget of £55m, according to the Home Office Identity and Passport Service (IPS) Annual report and accounts for the year ended 31 March 2007.

The report said: “At the mid-year position this financial plan was revised due to the shift in emphasis to utilising existing public- and private-sector infrastructure to deliver the NIS, thus reducing planned procurement activity within the year.”

Last year, James Hall, chief executive of IPS, revealed the ID cards procurement timetable and said the “current best estimate” for the next ID cards procurement activity was April or May 2007.

More than 4.8 million biometric passports have also been dished out during the past financial year, with the IPS posting a deficit of £2.1m on its passport services — which is lower than the planned deficit of £15m, the report reveals.

The government estimates the ID cards scheme will cost more than £5.5bn to set up and run over the next 10 years, a figure which has been disputed by the London School of Economics, which forecasts the price could come in at almost £30bn.

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ID cards will give ‘false’ data

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

By Sarah Spiller

The government’s ID card system will give thousands of “false matches” when more than six million people are registered on its database, an academic has claimed.

Biometric data holding a person’s unique physiological characteristics will be stored on a microchip in the cards.

But Professor John Daugman, said using fingerprints as a key biometric measure will cause major problems.

The Identity and Passport Service has denied Professor Daugman’s claims.

Professor Daugman, of the University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory, said using a biometric scan of the iris - the coloured part of the eye controlling the amount of light that gets through to the retina - would give better accuracy than a fingerprint.

Plans to include the iris scan in the ID card biometric were put on hold by the government last December.

A small scale system using iris identification is operated by immigration officials at Heathrow and other UK airports.

Professor Daugman, who devised a mathematical process which converts the measurement of an iris into a record of identity, told BBC Radio 4’s File On 4, he expected problems once the government’s database passed the six million mark:

“Typically if you have a database of say six million people, the false match rate against them will be about one in a 1,000, and the true match rate is something like 95%.

“So this means that by the time the UK system had enrolled say six million people, which means two or three years into the roll-out, about one new person in a 1,000 will be making false matches against the database.”

He added that when the next million people were added to the database there would be 1,000 false matches.

Professor Daugman, who received an OBE for his work in 1999, said the bigger the database, the bigger the problem:

“For the scheme as a whole it means that it can no longer deliver the goal of one citizen, one identity, because it cannot survive so many comparisons without making false matches - so there will be false claims of multiple identities.

“It could still be useful for other purposes but I think it would have failed for reasons that are probably to date, predictable.”

He added: “I don’t want to be very pessimistic and say this whole system is doomed to fail but I will say that just from analysing the mathematical requirements, if it is just fingerprint, it is unlikely to be able to succeed.”

But James Hall, the chief executive of The Identity and Passport Service told File On 4: “We’ve always recognised that there will be question marks thrown up during the matching process and that will need to get resolved by manual intervention.

“We will work very closely with a biometric advisory group drawn from a number of experts from around the world who are giving very supportive advice around this.”

Mr Hall said: “We haven’t identified a date at which we will implement iris scanning. Our view is that either fingerprint or iris’s would work very effectively.

He added that fingerprints had been the basis of schemes started across Europe for travellers to the USA.

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MPs outraged by pupil fingerprinting

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

Guidelines raise concerns over security, consent and access

By Dinah Greek

MPs have criticised new guidance from Becta that shows schools can fingerprint pupils without first asking for parental permission.

Although the guidelines from Becta, the Government’s schools ICT agency, say schools should “fully involve parents in any decision to introduce biometric or fingerprint technology”, it is not mandatory to do so.

Under the Data Protection Act there is nothing that explicitly requires schools to seek the consent of parents before implementing a biometric technology system, causing outrage among some MPs.

Shadow Minister for Schools Nick Gibb said: “This is long-awaited but very disappointing guidance. It is very weak as it neither requires schools to seek parental consent nor recognises the serious issues at stake with schools fingerprinting children simply for administrative convenience. The Government needs to look more carefully at the fundamental principles these issues raise.”

Biometric technologies have been used by some schools for four years to help with cashless lunch queues, school libraries and attendance systems. Benefits cited include speeding up administration processes and cutting down on bullying and the theft of lunch money from pupils.

Although the Department for Children, Schools and Family said it has no figures on how many schools use biometric systems, a survey conducted by the campaigning organisation Leave them Kids Alone shows it is growing rapidly.

LKA has estimated that 3,500 primary and secondary schools now use biometric data systems and that approximately 750,000 children have been fingerprinted by their schools with around 20 new schools a week being added to those figures.

It is mostly fingerprint technology that is used but MPs are concerned that the Government has given little thought to issues of security, consent, keeping the data for longer, or permanently as well as access by other authorities such as the police.

Greg Mulholland Lib Dem Shadow Minister for Schools went so far as to say in a House of Commons debate that “the collection of biometric data by schools is not necessary”. He said using biometric systems utterly outweighed any positive benefits that may ensue.

Becta told Computeractive that if parents or children objected and refused to give their fingerprints, then schools could not force them to comply. A representative told us that if this was the case, the guidelines clearly point out that schools have to offer alternative systems, such as smartcards, to access the same services if pupils want to opt out or their parents object.

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Britain will take troops out of Iraq regardless of US, says PM

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

By Andrew Grice

Gordon Brown has paved the way for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq by telling George Bush he would not delay their exit in order to show unity with the United States.

After four hours of one-to-one talks with the US President at his Camp David retreat, Mr Brown told a joint press conference he would make a Commons statement in October on the future of the 5,500 British troops in the Basra region.

The Bush administration, under mounting domestic pressure to produce an exit strategy from Iraq, has been nervous that a full British withdrawal would add to the criticism. But Mr Brown made clear - and President Bush accepted - that Britain would go its own way, even if that gave the impression the two countries were diverging.

Mr Brown’s willingness to pursue an independent British policy in Iraq will be seen as an important break with Tony Blair. Mr Brown said the two leaders had had “full and frank discussions” - diplomatic code for some disagreements.

President Bush heaped praise on Mr Brown after their first meeting since he became Prime Minister, playing down suggestions that Mr Blair’s departure would weaken the strong US-UK partnership. Revealingly, Mr Brown did not return the personal compliments, instead focusing on the historic links between the two countries and predicting they would get even stronger. This reflected his desire for a more business-like relationship with the President, instead of the strong personal bond forged by Mr Blair.

The two leaders also had to paper over their different approaches on how to respond to terrorism. While maintaining a united front, Mr Brown told President Bush that the fight could not be won by military might alone, and called for a “Cold War-style” propaganda battle in the Muslim world.

Deliberately avoiding the phrase “war on terror,” Mr Brown said: “Terrorism is not a cause but a crime - a crime against humanity.” In contrast, the President spoke of “this war against extremists and radicals”. But he said of Mr Brown: “There is no doubt in my mind that he understands the stakes in the struggle.”

On Iraq, Mr Brown insisted Britain would honour its responsibilities but admitted there had been problems with political reconciliation and that the reconstruction effort had taken longer than expected.

He said that Britain’s decision in the Basra region would be based on the military advice from its commanders on the ground. Later, British officials insisted that the departure timetable was not being accelerated and said it was too soon to speculate on the plans that would be set out in October. Initially, they would mean handing military control to the Iraqis and moving to “overwatch”.

However, President Bush acknowledged that a British withdrawal could take place while the US remained in Iraq because, he said, decisions would be “results-orientated”. He said America could be there for “a long time”. He added that America’s next moves would be decided after a report in September by General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, on the “surge” of US troops in the Baghdad region.

But despite their differences over Iraq and terrorism, the two leaders agreed to work together to end the stalemate over a new world trade agreement, to resolve the crisis in Darfur and impose a new round of sanctions against Iran unless it halts its nuclear weapons programme.

Bush on Brown

* “I would describe Gordon Brown as a principled man who really wants to get something done.”

* “Not a dour Scot …not an awkward Scot…a humorous Scot.”

* “He’s got a strong commitment to helping people realize the blessing of education. I thank you very much for that vision.”

* “He’s a glass half full man.”

* [Referring to the death of Brown's 10 day old baby in 2002]

“He’s a man who’s suffered unspeakable tragedy - it’s strengthened his soul.

I was impressed.”

Brown on Bush

* “We have had full and frank discussions. We have had the capacity and ability to meet yesterday for two hours to discuss person-to-person some of the great issues of our time.”

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MoD’s PR army of spin is out of control

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

By Ben Bold

Britain’s defence chiefs are spending millions of pounds on more than 1,000 spin doctors to improve the public image of the armed forces, but admit that they have no idea who these PRs are or whether they are having an impact.

The startling admission was made in a report called The Defence Communications Strategy, which also marks the government’s first official acknowledgement that there is little or no public support for the war in Iraq.

Simon MacDowall, the Ministry of Defence’s director general of media and communications, oversaw the report, which he described as an attempt to reduce the bureaucracy in the department’s PR operations.

One section of the report reads: “We have no clear idea of the number of people involved in defence communications work or their costs. Over 1,000 people in the MoD have a media/communications job code. This excludes many military personnel involved in communications work.”

The MoD’s so-called communications department also confesses that it does not know whether its army of PR people is having any effect.

It said: “We need to be able to measure the impact of our communications effort both internally and externally.”

Ongoing operations in Iraq were specifically mentioned, including the lack of support for the war, although Afghanistan fared better.

The report stated: “Operations in Iraq are not supported by the majority of the public and operations in Afghanistan are supported by only a narrow majority. There is a lack of public understanding of the rationale behind each mission.”

The document also readily endorses the use of “news management” or “spin” to influence public opinion.

This is best achieved, it says, by “creating a steady stream of positive stories which directly promote the MoD and forces’ reputation, but also helps to offset the inevitable bad stories”.

The MoD said yesterday that the seventh British serviceman to die in Iraq this month was killed in a mortar attack on a British base in Basra. He was named as Lance Corporal Timothy Darren Flowers of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

The British death toll stands at 163.

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Aspartame: Missing the Point?

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

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