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The Secret American-Iranian Security Deal In Iraq

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Arab online newspaper published in London, is the only newspaper to report this a week ago but I waited few days to see if there is any development provides evidence to the newspaper claims, and the military campaign in Basra was what i am waiting for.Arab online says that there are secret Iranian – American negotiations at Ahmadinejad’s visit to Iraq [please remember there were other developments in this week period, like the U.S. embassy refused to meet the Iranian delegation…etc]

The report contains details and names of people who attended the meeting from both sides which we don’t need here, so this is what the newspaper said in short:

Ahmadinejad offered to calm the situation in Iraq, using the three days attacks-free visit to Iraq as a demonstration of what can Iran do, the second offer is to accept the long term Iraqi – American agreement

To remove Iraq from the 1546 U.N. resolution, which gives the permission for the “Coalition Forces” to use force any Iraq’s neighboring country, if intelligence reports give evidence that the country exporting terrorism to Iraq, there is also a chapter allowing American forces to use Iraqi territory to attack another countries.

- To end all American – European political and logistic support for the Iranian opposition, especially Iran’s Resistance Council Organization, Pijac Kurdish organization, and other small opposition groups [Arabs, Turkmen, Azari…etc].

- Stop the secret and public American administration incitement of toppling the Iranian regime.

- End the U.S. and Europe campaign to push for the Iranian Jews immigration to Israel.

- To put an end to the campaign of the need to for pre-emptive strikes against selective and sensitive intelligence, military and nuclear Iranian sites.

The most important part of these negotiations is; What Iran can do for the U.S. in Iraq:

Ahmadinejad mentioned that he is negotiating with a previous blessing from Ayatollah Khamenei, and that’s reassured the Americans about the seriousness of the negotiations.

So, Ahmadinejad commitments are:

- Intelligence cooperation in Iraq and the region, wihle Washington gives Iran a space to maneuver internationally, easing the international pressure and the embargo, as a result, Tehran to postpone uranium enrichment operations for a period of two years, with the approval of Iran’s nuclear programme by the inspection teams of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

- Full cooperation between Tehran and Washington in all areas, and Iran to ensure the submission of several laws in Washington’s favour by the Shiite coalition blocs and Iraqi Kurdistan Alliance, including oil and gas law, the provinces a law, as opposed to because the American President George Bush to use his powers delegated by the military gives him the right to selective attacks on Iranian sites sensitive, to ensure the security of the American forces and the Iraqi people.

This “Iran - American” deal raised concerns in Israel therefore they invited McCain, the Republican candidate to visit Tel Aviv and asked him to visit Baghdad to be informed about what has been achieved talking with the Iranians, promised him that if the mission is successful, then he will get the support of Tel Aviv and the Zionist lobby in America presidential election.

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Fingerprint Scanners Help Companies Track Workers

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

NEW YORK (AP) ― Some workers are doing it at Dunkin’ Donuts, at Hilton hotels, even at Marine Corps bases.

Employees at a growing number of businesses are starting and ending their days by pressing a hand or finger to a scanner that logs the precise time of their arrival and departure—information that is automatically reflected in payroll records.

Manufacturers say these biometric devices improve efficiency and streamline payroll operations. Employers big and small buy them with the dual goals of keeping workers honest and automating outdated record-keeping systems that rely on paper time sheets.

The new systems have raised complaints, however, from some workers who see the efforts to track their movements as excessive or creepy.

“They don’t even have to hire someone to harass you anymore. The machine can do it for them,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO. “The palm print thing really grabs people as a step too far.”

The International Biometric Group, a consulting firm, estimated that $635 million worth of these high-tech devices were sold last year, and projects that the industry will be worth more than $1 billion by 2011.

Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, a leading manufacturer of hand scanners based in Campbell, Calif., said it has sold at least 150,000 of the devices to Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s franchises, Hilton hotels and to Marine Corps bases, who use them to track civilian hours.

Protests over using palm scanners to log employee time have been especially loud in New York City, where officials are spending $410 million to install an automated attendance tracking system that may eventually be used by 160,000 city workers.

Scores of civil servants who are members of Local 375 of the Civil Service Technical Guild rallied Tuesday against a plan to add the city medical examiner’s office to the list of 17 city agencies which already have the scanners in place.

The scanners have rankled draftsmen, planners and architects in the city’s Parks Department, which began using them last year.

“Psychologically, I think it has had a huge impact on the work force here because it is demeaning and because it’s a system based on mistrust,” said Ricardo Hinkle, a landscape architect who designs city parks.

He called the timekeeping system a bureaucratic intrusion on professionals who never used to think twice about putting in extra time on a project they cared about, and could rely on human managers to exercise a little flexibility on matters regarding work hours.

“The creative process isn’t one that punches in and punches out,” he said.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Matthew Kelly, said the system isn’t meant to be intrusive and has clear benefits over old-style punch clocks or paper time sheets.

The city expects to save $60 million per year by modernizing a complicated record keeping system that now requires one full-time timekeeper for every 100 to 250 employees. The new system, dubbed CityTime, would free up thousands of city employees to do less paper-pushing.

Another benefit of the system is curtailing fraud. Several times each year, New York City’s Department of Investigation charges city employees with taking unauthorized time off and falsifying timecards to make it looked as though they worked.

Other cities have embraced similar technology.

Cities as big as Chicago and as small as Tahlequah, Okla., have turned to fingerprint-driven ID systems to record employee work hours in recent few years. And the systems have been introduced into plenty of other workplaces without much grumbling by employees, especially those already used to punching a clock.

But the New York workers aren’t the first to fight it. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees complained vigorously two years ago after the city of Pittsburgh proposed installing fingerprint readers.

“We had a lot of questions, a lot of concerns, and so far they haven’t put it in,” said AFCME Council 84 Director Richard Caponi.

Jon Mooney, Ingersoll Rand’s general manger of biometrics, said the privacy concerns are unfounded. The hand scanners don’t keep large databases of people’s fingerprints—only a record of their hand shape, he said.

Still, union officials in New York said they are concerned that the machines could eventually be used not just to crack down on employees skipping work, but to nitpick honest workers or invade their privacy.

“The bottom line is that these palm scanners are designed to exercise more control over the workforce,” said Claude Fort, president of Local 375. “They aren’t there for security purposes. It has nothing to do with productivity. … It is about control, and that is what makes us nervous.”

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MoD: British soldiers breached Iraqi’s human rights

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

British soldiers breached the human rights of an Iraqi who died while in UK custody in Basra more than four years ago, the defence secretary, Des Browne, said today.

Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist, suffered 93 injuries and died screaming in custody, witness statements read to the high court said.

Browne said the Ministry of Defence would also admit to violating the rights of eight other Iraqi men in September 2003 at a high court hearing due to take place on Friday.

Over the last few months, the court has heard harrowing accounts of the treatment of Iraqis by British troops in Basra.

Mousa was one of several men seized from a hotel when it was raided, and weapons were recovered, in 2003.

The men - all of whom were tortured - were detained under suspicion of being insurgents.

At times, some were hooded - a practice banned by the British government in 1972.

In a written statement, Browne said the government would admit “substantive breaches” of the parts of the European convention on human rights that protect the right to life and prohibit torture.

The armed forces minister, Bob Ainsworth, said “acts of abuse” had been carried out by a “very small minority” of British troops.

“I deeply regret the actions … and I offer my sincere apologies and sympathy to the family of Baha Mousa and the other eight Iraqi detainees,” Ainsworth added.

He said “all but a handful” of the more than 120,000 British troops who have served in Iraq had conducted themselves “to the highest standards”.

“But this does not excuse that, during 2003 and 2004, a very small minority committed acts of abuse, and we condemn their actions,” he added.

Seven members of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, including the commander of the 1st battalion, had faced the most expensive court martial in British history.

All were eventually acquitted of negligence and abuse after an investigation that cost more than £20m and took over three years.

A six-month military trial at the Bulford court martial centre, in Wiltshire, involved 100 witnesses, including eight Iraqis.

Corporal Donald Payne, 35, became the first British serviceman to admit a war crime after pleading guilty to the inhumane treatment of Iraqi prisoners. He was jailed for a year.

Much of the hearing rested on whether headquarters staff at 19 Mechanised Brigade had sanctioned the use of what British troops call “conditioning”.

The process involves the hooding, handcuffing and placing of terrorist suspects into stress positions, as well as depriving them of sleep, in order to make them more likely to answer questions.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group Liberty, said Mousa was “the Stephen Lawrence of Iraq”.

“A direct legal and moral consequence of today’s admission that Mousa and others were unlawfully tortured and killed in British custody is that there must be a wholesale independent inquiry into what went wrong,” she said.

“British soldiers should never be sent into post-conflict situations without adequate training and advice.”

Lawyers for the detainees said the soldiers’ actions were in breach of both the Geneva convention and the Human Rights Act.

Their demands for damages run into six figures, and today’s MoD announcement opens the door to unlimited compensation pay-outs to Mousa’s family and the eight other men.

Angela Balakrishnan and agencies
guardian.co.uk

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U.S., Canada violated rights of Gitmo detainee

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

OTTAWA – The U.S. is violating international norms by holding a Canadian former child soldier at Guantanamo Bay, his lawyers told Canada’s high court Wednesday as they sought to force the country’s intelligence service to provide details from their interviews with him.Omar Khadr’s attorneys argued Canadian intelligence officers violated Canada’s bill of rights by questioning him in 2003 and 2004 at the U.S. military base, where some 275 men are held for their alleged links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Khadr’s attorneys asked the Canadian Supreme Court to order Canada’s government to release details about the interrogations so the material can be used in Khadr’s war-crimes trial at Guantanamo, which is expected to begin this summer.

The lawyers condemned the U.S. war-crimes trial system and said Khadr should be tried before a proper court on charges that he killed a U.S. soldier with a grenade in a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old.

The so-called military commissions at Guantanamo were created by Congress and President Bush in 2006 after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the previous system, declaring it unconstitutional.

Broadening the scope of Wednesday’s hearing, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled last week that Khadr’s lawyers could raise the legality of his detention and forthcoming trial at Guantanamo. The Toronto-born Khadr has been locked up at Guantanamo since October 2002.

“Omar Khadr is before a military process that is abomination. To expect success in that unfair process is to hope a great deal,” attorney Dennis Edney said after the hearing.

A lawyer for Canada’s Justice Department, Robert Frater, accused Khadr’s lawyers of going on a “fishing expedition” for sensitive intelligence information. He said U.S. practices at Guantanamo Bay should not be on trial in a Canadian courtroom.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said the court would rule later.

Nathan Whitling, another Khadr attorney, argued that Canadian intelligence officers violated his client’s rights by interrogating him while he is detained under an unfair system.

“He was expressly prohibited from getting access to a court,” Whitling told the nine justices. “Canadians should have refrained from going down there and participating in his vulnerability.”

Several of the nine justices asked Frater to reveal which U.S. authorities were given information obtained in the questioning of Khadr. Frater acknowledged material was shared but declined to say who got it.

Khadr’s lawyers said the U.S. is violating juvenile justice rules set out by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and international agreements on civil and political rights and the treatment of prisoners.

Khadr is expected to be among the first detainees to face a U.S. war-crimes trial since the World War II era. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on charges including murder, conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

The U.S. military says it plans to charge about 80 detainees at Guantanamo, but so far no case has gone to trial.

One of Khadr’s brothers, Abdurahman Khadr, has acknowledged that their Egyptian-born father, Ahmed Said Khadr, and some of his brothers fought for al-Qaeda and stayed with Osama bin Laden. The elder Khadr was killed in Pakistan in 2003 when a Pakistani military helicopter attacked a house where he was staying with senior al-Qaeda operatives.

Another of Khadr’s brothers, Abdullah Khadr, is being held in Canada on a U.S. extradition warrant that accuses him of supplying weapons to al-Qaeda.

Khadr’s mother, two sisters and younger brother, were in the courtroom Wednesday. They declined comment.

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Blackwater’s Employment Investigated

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

House oversight committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman expanded his effort yesterday to investigate private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide, calling for a wide-ranging federal inquiry into the company’s employment practices. In letters to the Internal Revenue Service, the Small Business Administration and the Labor Department, Waxman (D-Calif.) questioned Blackwater’s classification of its workers as “independent contractors” rather than employees. That designation, which the government has questioned in the past, has allowed the company to obtain $144 million in contracts set aside for small businesses and to avoid paying as much as $50 million in withholding taxes under State Department contracts, he said.

A Blackwater spokeswoman called Waxman’s allegations “completely without merit” and said the company regrets his “decision to publicly air misleading information.” An IRS spokesman declined to comment. The allegations came as a team of Justice Department and FBI investigators completed a two-week visit to Baghdad, where they interviewed additional witnesses in connection with a Sept. 16 incident in which Blackwater security personnel guarding U.S. diplomats killed 17 civilians at a Baghdad traffic circle.

Although a grand jury was convened late last year in the case, federal prosecutors have not determined whether the contractors can be prosecuted under U.S. law. They are immune from Iraqi prosecution under a decree promulgated by the former U.S. occupation government in Iraq.The incident prompted criticism of the use of private security contractors by both the State and Defense departments. As a result, State promised to increase supervision of their activities, and the two departments developed comprehensive guidelines for them.

In Senate testimony late last month, administration officials said that 163,590 contractor personnel were working in Iraq under Defense contracts, slightly more than the number of U.S. troops there. Of those, 6,467 are armed security personnel, about 1,500 of them American citizens. State Department security contractors total 1,518, about half of them Americans. The officials said that many of the rest are British and South African. An additional 32,520 Defense contractor personnel are working in Afghanistan.

Blackwater, one of three U.S. companies that provide security for U.S. diplomats and official civilians in Iraq, has received nearly $1.25 billion in federal contracts from State and other agencies since 2000. According to Waxman, Blackwater has received contracts set aside for companies with fewer than 1,500 employees after self-certifying its own status. The addition of nearly 1,000 personnel in Iraq would put it over the Small Business Administration limit, but Blackwater has insisted that they are independent contractors it merely pays to work for the U.S. government. That designation allows the company to avoid withholding federal income tax from what company records have indicated is $1,222 per day the guards are paid.

Waxman also charged that Blackwater was violating Labor Department affirmative action regulations by withholding its employment records. In its statement, Blackwater said that its “classification of its personnel is accurate” and that it has “always been forthcoming about this aspect of its business with its customer, the U.S. government.”

Washington Post

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In Iraq, Was I a Torturer? Asks Soldier

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

When 27-year-old Ben Allbright returned from Iraq, he was treated like a hero. But he is haunted by the “harsh interrogations” he oversaw.

The prisons in Iraq stink. Ask any guard or interrogator and they’ll tell you it’s a smell they’ll never forget: sweat, fear and rot. On the base where Ben Allbright served from May to September 2003, a small outfit named Tiger in western Iraq, water was especially scarce; Ben would rig a hose to a water bottle in a feeble attempt to shower. He and the other Army reservists tried mopping the floors, but the cheap solvents only added a chemical note to the stench. During the day, when the temperature was in the triple digits, the smell fermented.

It got even hotter in the Conex container, the kind you see on top of 18-wheelers, where Ben kept his prisoners. Not uncommonly the thermometer inside read 135, even 145 degrees. The Conex box was the first stop for all prisoners brought to the base, most of them Iraqis swept up during mass raids. Ben kept them blindfolded, their hands bound behind their backs with plastic zip ties, without food or sleep, for up to 48 hours at a time. He made them stand in awkward positions, so that they could not rest their heads against the wall. Sometimes he blared loud music, such as Ozzy or AC/DC, blew air horns, banged on the container, or shouted. “Whatever it took to make sure they’d stay awake,” he explains.

Ben was not a “bad apple,” and he didn’t make up these treatments. He was following standard operating procedure as ordered by military intelligence officers. The MI guys didn’t make up the techniques either; they have a long international history as effective torture methods. Though generally referred to by circumlocutions such as “harsh techniques,” “softening up,” and “enhanced interrogation,” they have been medically shown to have the same effects as other forms of torture. Forced standing, for example, causes ankles to swell to twice their size within 24 hours, making walking excruciating and potentially causing kidney failure.

Ben says he never saw anything like that. The detainees didn’t faint or go insane, as people have been known to do under similar conditions, but they also “weren’t exactly lucid.” And, he notes, “I was hardly getting any sleep myself.”

When I first set off to interview the rank-and-file guards and interrogators tasked with implementing the administration’s torture guidelines, I thought they’d never talk openly. They would be embarrassed, wracked by guilt, living in silent shame in communities that would ostracize them if they knew of their histories. What I found instead were young men hiding their regrets from neighbors who wanted to celebrate them as war heroes. They seemed relieved to talk with me about things no one else wanted to hear — not just about the acts themselves, but also about the guilt, pain and anger they felt along with pride and righteousness about their service. They struggled with these things, wanted to make sense of them — even as the nation seemed determined to dismiss the whole matter and move on.

This, perhaps, is the real scandal of Abu Ghraib: In survey after survey, as many as two-thirds of Americans say torture is justified when it’s used to get information from terrorists. In an ABC/Washington Post poll in the wake of the 2004 scandal, 60 percent of respondents classified what happened at Abu Ghraib as mere abuse, not torture. And as recently as last year, 68 percent of Americans told Pew Research pollsters that they consider torture an acceptable option when dealing with terrorists.

Critics of the administration’s interrogation policies warn that the ramifications will be felt across the globe, including by Americans unlucky enough to be imprisoned abroad. Foreign policy scholars fear the fallout from Abu Ghraib has already weakened the U.S. military’s anti-terrorism capabilities. Lawyers warn about war crime tribunals. But hardly anyone is discussing the repercussions already being felt here at home. It’s the soldiers tying the sandbags around Iraqis’ necks and blaring the foghorns through the night who are experiencing the effects most acutely. And the communities they’re returning to are reeling as a result.

When I went to visit Ben in Little Rock, Ark., I wanted to know why this charming, intelligent, and overly polite 27-year-old had done what he’d done. For 10 days we rode around in his beat-up maroon 1970s Mercedes — running errands, picking up job applications, meeting his girlfriend for lunch. Ben wore pink shirts, hipster blazers and color-coordinated Campers; he used hair products, which to his friends meant being a metrosexual; he listened to indie rock, watched “The Daily Show” and wrote attitude-filled blogs on veterans’ rights, which meant being a liberal. He refereed football games, worshipped novelist Dave Eggers and placed special orders at McDonald’s so his meals would be fresh.

He was unemployed, fired from his latest job as a bank teller the day before I arrived. Ben had worked there for four months — the longest he’d held down a full-time job since coming home from Iraq. He’d tried tutoring high schoolers, bagging groceries and doing IT support for Best Buy. Part of the problem, he said, was the lack of good jobs in the area, part of it his own “flailing and procrastinating.” He had toyed with the idea of law school and scored a near-perfect 178 on the LSAT entrance test, but then turned down offers from schools such as NYU. While I was in town he picked up an application for a job at his corner liquor store. In high school he was one of two students voted most likely to become famous. “The other kid became a doctor,” Ben confessed, “and I, well, yeah …”

Continue http://www.alternet.org/rights/78649/?page=2

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Children in care to get Biometric IDs

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Children in care should get school photos and passports, Ministers said yesterday, as they launched plans designed to give thousands of vulnerable children in care a happy and healthy childhood. Whether this will mean biometric ID cards be default for this vulnerable group remains to be seen.

Biometric IDs for disabled children of those with special educational needs are often highly difficult to generate and use, for numerous complex reasons - and this area is highly sensitive.

The ideas were outlined by Kevin Brennan and Beverley Hughes, as they joined the Local Government Association and Association of Directors of Children’s Services to launch Care Matters: Time to Deliver, a practical guide for local partners on how to improve the lives of children in care.

Local Authorities and those working with children in care will be asked to focus on providing stability; listening more carefully to children in care, ensuring every child has a strong, stable relationship with their carers and having aspirations which are as high for these children as they are for their own.

The implementation plan sets out the practical steps Local Authorities need to take to make the plans outlined in the Care Matters agenda a reality for children in care, including:

* Considering friends and family care first
* Placing children close to home so they can stay in touch with friends and family, where that is in their interest
* Ensuring that a child’s education is not disrupted by unnecessary change of placement and school place
* Giving children in care the option to stay on in care or with their foster carers after the age of 16, if that is what they want
* Giving children a personal adviser up until the age of 25, if required

Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls said:
“If we are to achieve our vision of helping every child to get a world class education and succeed in life, we need to focus our efforts where they are needed most - on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged young people in our society.

“That includes the 60,000 children and young people in our care system. They are five times less likely to achieve five good GCSEs and eight times more likely to be excluded from school. They are less likely to go to university and more likely to end up in prison.

“I am determined to change this injustice and work to improve the lives and life chances of children in care and the most disadvantaged children.”

Speaking at the launch Children’s Minister Kevin Brennan said:
“Every child needs a good parent who looks out for them and responds to their needs. We want all local councillors and council officers to be mindful of their parenting role, and give these young people the support they need. And we want those who work with children and young people, like teachers, doctors and police officers and everyone who supports children in care to act like extended family members and share responsibility for helping them to fulfil their potential. I want these children to be cared about not just cared for.”

Joining Kevin Brennan, Children and Young People’s Minister Beverley Hughes said:
“For too long children have languished in a care system that allowed them to fail - if we are to make this country the best place in the world for our children and young people to grow up, that must include vulnerable children in care too. Our Children’s Plan aims to give children the best education, provide places to play safely and have interesting and exciting things to do outside of school - all of these opportunities must be open to children in care too.”

John Coughlan, Director of Children’s Services at the Association of Directors of Children’s Services said:
“ADCS is delighted to support the launch of the Care Matters Implementation Plan. We are particularly pleased with the inclusive approach the DCSF has taken in the development of this plan which we hope may be a model for other initiatives. The care of our most vulnerable children is a collective responsibility but one which is lead by local authorities - the emphasis on partnership within this plan is therefore fitting.

“Contrary to some perceptions, in the ADCS we know that we have a care system which succeeds in protecting and nurturing the majority of children who come into contact with it. But we also know that we can do better, especially in improving the educational and health outcomes of the most vulnerable. We believe this plan, alongside forthcoming legislation, can make a real difference to the lives of our children. That is what they are, all of our children. And that is why we think it essential that all concerned should be determined in their support of this implementation plan.”

Les Lawrence, Chair of the Local Government Association’s Children and Young People’s Board said,
“The LGA wants to work with councils and our national partners to improve life for children in care. We must make sure the good practice going on with these children in many local areas is spread everywhere. Lead Members for Children have an important role to play in listening to children in care and in making sure that local services respond to their needs; the LGA and IDeA are committed to supporting Lead Members in fulfilling their crucial responsibilities to these children.”

The implementation plan comes as the Children and Young People Bill makes its way back into the House of Commons for its second reading.

The Bill will make it a legal requirement for:
* schools to have a designated teacher to help the children in care in their school achieve their full potential
* local authorities to ensure social workers visit all looked after children and and make independent visitors available to more children in care
* local authorities to give children in care £2000 if they go on to higher education
* local authorities to appoint personal advisers

Over the next year, the Department for Children, Schools and Families will issue statutory guidance on measures in the Bill and on other proposals that do not need primary legislation such as:

* Virtual School Heads
* Child Trust Fund
* Designated Teachers
* and improving the health of looked after children

The Department will also organise a series of regional events with the Children’s Inter-Agency Group to keep up the momentum for change, involving all the sectors who need to play a part in improving the lives of children in care.

Hazel Blears from the Department for Communities and Local Government and Alan Johnson from the Department of Health are co-signatories to the plan.

Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Hazel Blears said:
“Children tell us that it is often the little things that matter most - like whether they have a passport and can go on a school trip or whether they were able to see their sister last week. The knowledge, skills and expertise to deliver these things is already there in the system - by sharing good practice, listening to and learning from each other, local leaders can ensure every child in care grows up safe, happy, healthy, secure, loved and able to fulfil their very real potential.”

The idea to ensure children in care have school photos and passports is not statutory or contained in guidance. Rather it is an illustration of how local authorities and other partners working with children in care should be thinking as parents do and act accordingly.

The Care Matters White Paper was issued on 21 June 2007.

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Don’t extend DNA database, says minister

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

The DNA database should probably not be extended and should certainly never become universal, Home Office Minister Tony McNulty has said, writes Matthew George.

He also told the Commons Home Affairs Committee, which is inquiring into whether Britain has a surveillance society, that such fears were the “meat of myths”.

He insisted the regulatory oversight of surveillance - ranging through the DNA database and CCTV cameras to automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) and interception of communications - was robust.

“The idea of big brother or big sister sitting on everybody’s shoulder makes great copy for the newspapers - but it is simply not the case.”

A review of the DNA database, being conducted as part of a wider look at the operation of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) which underpins it, will conclude later this year.

McNulty said it was looking at DNA retention issues, especially concerning under-18s and whether those not convicted of crimes should go on it, as well as if PACE should continue as the statutory basis, or whether the database should have its own primary legislation.

The recent convictions of murderers Steve Wright and Mark Dixie as a result of the database sparked a debate over whether it should be universal.

Lincolnshire chief constable Tony Lake, who speaks for the Association of Chief Police Officers on the database, says if it were universal there is absolutely no doubt more crimes would be solved.

Even more controversially, Gary Pugh, Scotland Yard’s director of forensic services, said primary school should be eligible for the database if they behaved in a way that indicated criminality in later life.

McNulty told the committee he was not convinced by a national DNA database: “There is a logic to it, but I cannot accept it. Broadly, where we are now is where we should be.”

However he stressed he did not agree with the premise the database was counter to civil liberties, not least because of the high-profile murder cases solved by because suspects being on it for minor crimes, such as assault.

Asked about Pugh’s comments, he replied: “I do not accept what he said at all and nor do Acpo as I understand it. We are getting into the realms of potential guilt or future guilt, and I don’t accept that at all.”

He would “probably lean against” putting non-recordable crimes on the database, and there would not be such a move if he has his way.

http://www.publicservant.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=5529

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‘Saddam paid for Congressmen trip’

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency had secretly financed a trip to Iraq by US lawmakers before the US invasion, federal prosecutors say.

An indictment unsealed in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam’s regime.

Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary. In exchange for coordinating the trip, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil.

The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott, David Bonior and Mike Thompson.

At the time, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq.

During the trip, the lawmakers expressed skepticism about the Bush’s claims that Saddam was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Though such weapons ultimately were never found, the lawmakers drew criticism for their trip at the time.

Sen. Don Nickles, the second-ranking Senate Republican at the time, said the Democrats ’sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government’.

AGB/PA

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Bid to keep MPs’ expenses under wraps

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

THE lengthy stand-off over MPs’ expenses was heading for the High Court last night after the House of Commons launched an eleventh-hour bid to keep the information secret.

A Freedom of Information tribunal had told the Commons to publish details of claims made by 14 MPs – including Gordon Brown and David Cameron – for furnishing their taxpayer-funded second properties.

But after a day of to-ing and fro-ing at Westminster, the Commons announced an appeal, citing security fears over one element of the FoI ruling which stated that the addresses of MPs’ London homes should be made public.

Last month’s ruling came after a three-year battle to make the details of MPs’ Additional Cost Allowance (ACA) available to the public.

MPs with seats outside London can claim up to £23,000 a year to maintain a second home. Most use that money to cover mortgage interest payments, but further claims for household items can be made from the so-called “John Lewis list” – including £10,000 on a new kitchen and even £50 on a shredder.

Parliament already releases the total amount of ACA each MP claims every year, but the FoI ruling would require a detailed item-by-item breakdown to be made public too.

The surprising ruling, by Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, that home addresses were covered by the Freedom of Information Act seems to have put the whole process on hold as both sides consult lawyers.

The rising costs of the legal battle – funded by the taxpayer – could provoke further controversy. The Commons has already spent more than £50,000 of public money fighting the release of MPs’ expenses, a figure which will balloon if the case ends up in the courts.

A spokeswoman for the House of Commons said MPs feared that if their second home addresses were published they would be less inclined to speak their minds, which would “inhibit democratic debate”.

Commons Speaker Michael Martin, said to have been “mindful” of MPs’ concerns, has taken advice from the security services.

The Commons spokeswoman said, “Having received advice he’s concerned that the information tribunal may have misdirected itself in law in deciding that home addresses of MPs should always be published subject to only limited exceptions.”

The Commons also considered that the tribunal gave “insufficient attention to the reasonable expectations” of MPs.

“The threats that MPs can face are unpredictable and subject to change,” the spokeswoman said, adding that release of their home addresses could “inhibit democratic debate” on a range of sensitive issues.

But campaigner Heather Brooke, who has been fighting for the information’s release, said, “They have had 28 days to do this so why the last-minute theatrical farce?”

The decision to appeal comes amid heightened awareness of MPs’ expenses regimes in the wake of the Derek Conway affair. Mr Conway was stripped of the Tory whip and expelled from the Commons for 10 days for overpaying his son out of his expenses.

A separate FoI request to see the ACA expenses of another group of MPs, together with staff, office costs and IT has been given a new disclosure deadline of April 4.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said last night, “The matter now seems set to be considered by the High Court where, no doubt, all the arguments for and against will be heard.

“It is, as yet, unclear how, if at all, this will impact on other decisions made recently by the Information Commissioner that further information about certain MPs’ expenses should be disclosed.”

Jenny Willott, the Lib-Dem MP for Cardiff Central, said, “One of my concerns is the idea of publishing home addresses; I have real concerns about that for personal security reasons. In terms of other expenses, I wouldn’t have any problem with that being published; I haven’t used my allowance for anything I would be ashamed about.

“I’ve always provided receipts for everything.”

Writing on his blog, Newport West MP Paul Flynn said, “The fairest way forward is to publish details of all MPs’ expenses simultaneously.”

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said the Commons was right to challenge the disclosure of addresses but suggested they should otherwise release the details of the ACA.

“I think it sends entirely the wrong signal that the House of Commons will appear in the public’s eye to be resisting a tribunal decision and we will look as though we are trying to protect our own backs,” he said.

“Having said that, I am sympathetic to the point that MPs’ addresses should not be made public. I think they have a right to query that point but no more.”

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said, “It’s unforgivable that MPs are spending so much taxpayers’ money to keep this information from the public.

“We deserve to know how our money is spent. Taxpayers don’t mind footing the bill for proper representation, but in return we should be told where the money goes.

“This has been dragged out at vast expense for years now – instead of paying lawyers to take it to the High Court, they should just hand over the information.”

Tomos Livingstone, Western Mail

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CCTV cameras not capturing many crimes

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

San Francisco’s 68 controversial anti-crime cameras haven’t deterred criminals from committing assaults, sex offenses or robberies - and they’ve only moved homicides down the block, according to a new report from UC Berkeley.

Researchers found that nonviolent thefts dropped by 22 percent within 100 feet of the cameras, but the devices had no effect on burglaries or car theft. And they’ve had no effect on violent crime.

Mayor Gavin Newsom called the report “conclusively inconclusive” on Thursday but said he still wants to install more cameras around the city because they make residents feel safer.

“When I put the first cameras in, I said, ‘This may only move people around the corner,’ ” he said. “But the community there said, ‘We don’t care, we want our alleyway back.’ No one’s actually had a camera up that they wanted torn down in the community.”

But not all city officials think it’s wise to spend money on public safety measures if the best thing that can be said about them is they have a placebo effect for worried residents.

“In their current configuration they are not useful, and they give people a false sense of security, which I think is bad,” said Police Commissioner Joe Alioto-Veronese. He added that previous studies of security cameras in other parts of the country have also shown that they do not deter violent crime.

The cameras have been installed in phases on some of the city’s roughest streets since 2005 with large concentrations of them in the Western Addition and Mission District and others in the lower Haight, the Tenderloin and near Coit Tower.

They’ve been controversial from the start. Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union say they’re a violation of privacy, and some members of the Board of Supervisors and Police Commission, as well as the city’s public defender, say they’re ineffective in fighting crime.

The cameras have contributed to only one arrest nearly two years ago in a city that saw 98 homicides last year, a 12-year high. The video is choppy, and police aren’t allowed to watch video in real-time or maneuver the cameras to get a better view of potential crimes.

Final report not ready

The city has spent $900,000 on the cameras so far and has budgeted $200,000 for 25 more cameras that need Police Commission approval to be installed. The commission has refused to approve the new cameras until seeing a report on whether they’re doing any good.

The city administrator contracted with researchers at UC Berkeley’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society to do the study, and the group published its preliminary results this week. A final report is expected in a few months, and the Police Commission will hold off on approving any new cameras until then, President Theresa Sparks said.

Researchers examined data from the San Francisco Police Department detailing the 59,706 crimes committed within 1,000 feet of the camera locations between Jan. 1, 2005, and Jan. 28, 2008.

These were the total number of crimes for which police had reports - regardless of whether the crimes were caught on video. The idea was to look at whether criminals stopped committing crimes at those locations because they knew cameras were there.

Using a complicated method, researchers were able to come up with an average daily crime rate at each location broken out by type of crime and distance from the cameras. They then compared it with the average daily crime rate from the period before the cameras were installed.

They looked at seven types of crime: larcenies, burglaries, motor vehicle theft, assault, robbery, homicide and forcible sex offenses.

The only positive deterrent effect was the reduction of larcenies within 100 feet of the cameras. No other crimes were affected - except for homicides, which had an interesting pattern.

Murders went down within 250 feet of the cameras, but the reduction was completely offset by an increase 250 to 500 feet away, suggesting people moved down the block before killing each other.

The final report is expected to analyze the figures in more depth and to include other crimes, including prostitution and drug offenses.

Kevin Ryan, director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, said it’s premature to dismiss the use of the cameras based on the preliminary report. He said the report shows the devices change behavior in some instances. “At the end of the day, if the report does suggest what I think it’s going to suggest, that it can be an effective tool, we’re going to have to deploy it in the most effective way we can,” he said.

Real-time monitoring sought

Ryan is pushing for the cameras to be monitored in real-time like they are in Chicago and other cities. Those police departments are often able to catch crimes in progress and immediately respond. Newsom does not support that idea.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who has long been a critic of the cameras, said the report is further proof they’re not improving public safety.

He said they’re no substitute for attacking the causes of crime and said money would be better invested in community-based policing, anti-violence projects in schools, and services that help ex-prisoners readjust to life in society so they don’t commit more crimes.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who heads the board’s public safety committee, pointed out that the report comes at a time when the city is facing one of its biggest budget deficits in recent memory.

He has supported the cameras because they make residents in high-crime areas feel safer, but he said that may not be enough of a reason to expand the program.

“We have to decide the fiscal value of that scarecrow strategy,” he said. “It gives people some psychological relief, but if the data shows the cameras don’t have the intended consequences, it’s going to come down to a matter of dollars.”

Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer

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