BREAKING: Discover How A Slacker Makes $100,000 A Year!

WEBMASTERS! Get Your Website To The Top Of Google

Judge denies request to subpoena Cheney

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Judge denies attorney’s request to subpoena Vice President Cheney in lawsuit over man’s arrest.

A judge denied a request to subpoena Dick Cheney in a lawsuit filed by a man who claims he was wrongfully arrested for comments he made to the vice president about the Iraq war.

Steve Howards’ attorney, David Lane, had argued that Secret Service agents involved in Howards’ arrest in Beaver Creek in June 2006 told different versions of the incident and that only Cheney could clear up what happened.

In denying Lane’s motion Tuesday to have U.S. marshals serve Cheney with a subpoena, U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer said Lane had “not made a sufficient showing to warrant a deposition at this time.”

Howards claims in his lawsuit that he was arrested and his constitutional rights violated when he happened upon Cheney and his security detail at a mall and took the opportunity to tell him: “Your policies in Iraq are disgusting.”

Lane said Shaffer’s rulings, including those blocking the release of videotapes that Lane said show the agents accusing each other of lying and trying to cover up what happen, have been very protective of the government.

“It’s a temporary setback, but he’s basically saying come back and try again,” Lane said.

Howards said he approached Cheney in a crowd in the resort town two hours west of Denver when he saw him shaking hands and posing for photos. He said he made the comment about the Iraq War and then left.

Howards alleges that Secret Service agent Virgil D. “Gus” Reichle Jr. questioned him minutes later, “badgering” him about whether he touched or assaulted Cheney. Howards said Reichle handcuffed him and told him he would be charged with assault.

At the jail, Reichle told Eagle County deputies to issue Howards a summons on a state charge of harassment, according to the lawsuit. The district attorney later dismissed the charge.

“Only the vice president can tell us whether he believed he had been `assaulted’ as Reichle contended, or harassed as the Eagle County charge indicated,” Lane argued.

In his ruling, Shaffer said Lane hadn’t shown that the information he’s seeking can only come from Cheney, a legal requirement when seeking testimony from high-ranking officials.

Have Your Say: Judge denies request to subpoena Cheney
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

VIDEO: Food shortages threaten 100 million

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Major funding needed to fight rapidly escalating crisis.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=SuDsG4WN9GM[/youtube]

Have Your Say: VIDEO: Food shortages threaten 100 million
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

‘Truthers’ blame US and Britain for the Holocaust

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Andrew Anthony

In Salman Rushdie’s soon-to-be-published novel, The Enchantress of Florence, one of the characters is Niccolò Machiavelli, the original dark prince of power politics. Il Machia, as he is called, is portrayed as a committed opponent of the obvious. ‘He believed in… hidden truth the way other men believed in God or love, believed that truth was in fact always hidden, that the apparent, the overt, was invariably a kind of lie.’

No doubt all of us have come across individuals with what might politely be termed an ultra-sceptical outlook. The kind of people who use phrases like ‘the powers that be’ without a sniff of irony. Certainty, not doubt, is actually their defining trait, their sure knowledge that the mysterious, omniscient ‘they’ are always responsible. Left to its own devices, this sort of mentality can appear almost charmingly eccentric. But two developments have in recent years helped turn an essentially harmless sensibility into something approaching a sinister ideology.

The first was the postmodern assault on the notion of objective truth that found academic favour in the 1980s and 1990s. A generation of humanities and social sciences students went through the theory mill and learned that reality is simply a cultural construction, a media confection. As very few academics, let alone undergraduates, ever ‘got’ deconstructionism, a bite-sized variety gained popularity: ‘problematising’.

This simplification encouraged the belief that, as George Walden once put it, the exception no longer proves the rule, it is the rule. If you could ‘problematise’ a single stress point of contention, then the whole narrative of objectivity would collapse.

The second development was the internet, which, for all its manifold benefits, has also helped flatten the hierarchy of evidential truth into one vast mass of competing perceptions. Out there on the limitless vistas of the web, empirical fact and wild rumour often appear to share equal billing.

Put these two trends together, add a widespread suspicion of Western governments and a growing boredom with liberal democracy, and you get the ideal conditions for what amounts to intellectual nihilism. Perhaps the most egregious example of this mushrooming cult are the 9/11 ‘Truthers’, that barmy army of opinion which holds that the official version of events leading up to that day is a government conspiracy.

The Truthers pride themselves on merely asking rather than answering questions. To which end, they ignore everything that supports the accepted version and concentrate on what they claim are its weak points - for example, the rapid collapse of the towers - to cast doubt on the overall story. Thus the exception becomes the rule.

But in fact the Truthers play host to various counterfactual theories - some of the more restrained hypotheses propose that it was an inside job, the planes were not passenger jets, and the Pentagon was not hit by a plane.

At the impressionable end of the scale, where rank naivety and fashionable cynicism merge, Charlie Sheen has promoted such theories and the Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard has suggested that the destruction of the World Trade Centre was a ‘money-sucker’ designed to avoid the cost of rewiring the towers. At the (only slightly) more sophisticated end, writers like Gore Vidal, and the Labour MP Michael Meacher, have speculated that some within the US administration may have had cause to turn a blind eye to the hijackers.

But it’s one thing to blame America for the attack on America. That’s hardly radical. No, if you really want to lay waste to the notion of historical truth and the fundamental principles on which Western democratic society is based, then you need to go one step further. You need to blame America for the attack on Nazi Germany.

Even within the liberal arts world, where America has long been a byword for injustice, bellicosity and corruption, Nazi Germany has remained the ultimate example of evil. And that presents a philosophical problem for the most zealous Bush-haters within the arts. If America helped stop a more depraved regime once, is it not at least theoretically possible that it could do the same again?

The common answer is to point out that Iraq and Afghanistan were hardly superpowers bent on global domination. The drawback to that response is that it’s a limited, pragmatic position - a politician’s argument - that lacks the kind of moral righteousness that appeals to a certain artistic imagination.

The bold solution, then, is to reposition Nazi Germany as the victim, and America (and Britain) as the aggressors. This, in essence, is the job the novelist Nicholson Baker appears to have taken on in his new non-fiction book Human Smoke. Baker, who in his novel The Fermata explored the erotics of excreting, seems here to immerse himself in its politics. He is the outrider for paranoid revisionism.

According to Adam Kirsch, writing in the New York Sun, Baker sets out to ‘convince the reader that America should not have fought Germany or Japan; that Franklin Roosevelt connived to get us into the war at the behest of the arms manufacturers, and probably knew about the bombing of Pearl Harbor in advance; that Winston Churchill was a proto-fascist; that in Japan’s invasion of China, China was the aggressor; that after the fall of France, Churchill was culpable in vowing to fight on, and not acceding to Hitler’s “peace” terms; that the Holocaust was, at least in part, Hitler’s response to British aggression, and that the only people who demonstrated true wisdom in the run-up to the war were American and British pacifists.’

Again, Baker’s method, according to Kirsch, is to ignore the overwhelming wealth of material that contradicts the above claims and to focus on any seeming anomalies or exceptions that support his case, no matter what the source. So, for example, in seeking to offload at least some of the blame for the Holocaust on to the British, Baker cites the mayor of Hanover’s reason for deporting Jews to the East, namely that the British bombing campaign had created a housing shortage.

There is much to be said against the British bombing of German cities, and indeed much has been said and written of a critical nature. But it can never be argued that it precipitated the Holocaust, quite simply because it did not, as any self-respecting historian would confirm, supported by a mountain of empirical evidence.

It’s essential for healthy intellectual debate that conventional wisdom is challenged. However, that requires an engagement with reality, not its negation. The mentality that sees 9/11 and 7/7 as government conspiracies, and the Second World War as a singular tale of Allied guilt, refuses to see what’s staring it in the face, so has no choice but to search for buried clues. Sometimes, though, the apparent is true because the only thing hidden is lies.

Have Your Say: ‘Truthers’ blame US and Britain for the Holocaust
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Washington ’speechless’ after 9/11 comments

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States said Wednesday it was “speechless” after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced doubts about the accepted version of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

“I am not sure what you say about a statement like that. It leaves one speechless,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

“It is just misguided, misinformed rhetoric,” McCormack said.

“I cannot tell whether or not it is something that he truly believes or if this is just an attempt to try to shake up public opinion in Iran or elsewhere,” McCormack said.

Earlier Wednesday, Ahmadinejad called the 9/11 attacks a “suspect event” in a speech at a public rally in the holy city of Qom.

“Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New York,” Ahmadinejad said, in an address carried live on state television.

“A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed, whose names were never published.”

“Under this pretext they (the United States) attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then a million people have been killed,” said the Iranian president.

This was the third time in just over a week that Ahmadinejad has publicly raised doubts about the September 11 airborne attacks on New York and Washington carried out by Al-Qaeda militants which killed nearly 3,000 people.

He raised the theme for the first time at a ceremony on April 8, Iran’s national day marking its disputed nuclear program, which the West fears could be used to make nuclear weapons.

The president of Iran at the time of the 9/11 attacks, Mohammad Khatami, strongly condemned the assault. Tehran did not oppose the US-led invasion of Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban regime, which was hostile to the Iranian government.

Have Your Say: Washington ’speechless’ after 9/11 comments
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Iranian President: 9/11 ’suspect event’

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

BBC

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York as a “suspect event” and queried the death toll.

“A building collapsed and they said 3,000 people had been killed but never published their names,” he said in a speech in the holy city of Qom.

He did not mention the planes hijackers flew into the twin skyscrapers.

On the fifth anniversary last year, the names of 2,749 people killed in New York were read out at a ceremony.

“Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New York,” President Ahmadinejad said.

“Under this pretext they [the United States] attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then a million people have been killed only in Iraq,” he said in the speech broadcast on state-run television.

Estimates of the number of lives lost in Iraq vary.

A World Health Organization survey in January this year suggested that 151,000 civilians had died between March 2003 and June 2006.

This was roughly in line with Iraqi government estimates, although one study in the Lancet medical journal put the toll at 655,000, while a UK-based polling agency suggested in September 2007 that up to 1.2m people may have died because of the conflict.

The Iranian president made similar remarks about 9/11 last week, on the country’s national nuclear day.

“How is it possible that with the best radar systems and intelligence networks, the planes could crash undetected into the towers?” he asked.

Mr Ahmadinejad did not say on Wednesday who he believed had been behind the attacks.

In November 2001, his predecessor as Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, condemned “the horrific terrorist attacks” of 9/11 in a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York.

They had, he said, been carried out by “a cult of fanatics who had self-mutilated their ears and tongues”.

Have Your Say: Iranian President: 9/11 ’suspect event’
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

FBI manufactured evidence

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

FBI Caused Delay in Terror Case Ahead of Senate Testimony.

By Ryan Singel | Wired

Counterterrorism officials in FBI headquarters slowed an investigation into a possible conspirator in the 2005 London bombings by forcing a field agent to return documents acquired from a U.S. university. Why? Because the agent received the documents through a lawful subpoena, while headquarters wanted him to demand the records under the USA Patriot Act, using a power the FBI did not have, but desperately wanted.

When a North Carolina State University lawyer correctly rejected the second records demand, the FBI obtained another subpoena. Two weeks later, the delay was cited by FBI director Robert Mueller in congressional testimony as proof that the USA Patriot Act needed to be expanded.

The strange episode is recounted in newly declassified documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents shed new light on how senior FBI officials’ determination to gain independence from judicial oversight slowed its own investigation, and led the bureau’s director to offer inaccurate testimony to Congress. The revelations are likely to play a key role in Capitol Hill hearings Tuesday and Wednesday on the FBI’s use of so-called national security letters, or NSLs

At issue is the FBI’s probe of a former chemistry graduate student at North Carolina State University who was then suspected aiding the deadly attack. The student has since been cleared of any involvement.

The agent investigating the student in the Charlotte, North Carolina field office obtained a grand jury subpoena demanding some university records on the student. But he was then advised by superiors in Washington DC to return the papers and draft an NSL demanding the documents instead.

Under the USA Patriot Act, FBI counterterrorism investigators can self-issue such letters to get phone records, portions of credit reports and bank records, simply by certifying that the records are relevant to an investigation. Unlike subpoenas, NSLs do not require probable cause, and at the time obliged the recipient to not discuss the demand with anyone, ever. In contrast, gag orders attached to grand jury subpoenas have expiration dates.

FBI agents have relied heavily on the power, issuing more than 100,000 NSLs in 2004 and 2005 combined. The first audit of the FBI’s use of the power found the agents became sloppy in their use of the power and one HQ office went rogue and issued hundreds of fake emergency requests for phone records.

The problem in the bombing case: the NSL demanded the university’s health records on the student. Even under the USA Patriot Act, which greatly expanded the NSL’s reach, university records and health records are exempt, making the order from headquarters a sure-fire path to delay.

The FBI even has sample letters for each of the 11 kinds of records NSL can be used to obtain. To comply with the demand from Washington, the Charlotte agent had to modify a sample letter intended for internet records.

The university, which had readily turned over the records in response to a subpoena, rejected the illegal NSL. Two weeks later, Mueller, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, portrayed the university as intransigent and said the incident showed the FBI needed the power to force the turnover of all sorts of records without having to involve the court system.

“Now in my mind, we should not, in that circumstance have to show somebody that this was an emergency,” Mueller testified on July 27, 2005. “We should’ve been able to have a document, an administrative subpoena that we took to the university and got those records immediately.”

Some of the declassified documents suggest that Mueller was himself misled by underlings, and wasn’t told that the records had already been turned over in response to a subpoena.

Additionally, no one reported the overreaching subpoena to the Intelligence Oversight Board until 2007, when the Inspector General started asking questions. Oversight rules require officials to report any possible violations within 14 days.

This week, the House and Senate Judiciary committees are holding new hearings on NSLs. Over the past two years, the Justice Department’s Inspector General has issued two damning reports on the agency’s sloppiness in using the letters. Additionally, several courts have struck down some aspects of the NSLs as unconstitutional, and reports have surfaced that intelligence and military units are using them for domestic investigations.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) has introduced legislation to rein in the use of national security letters, and provide penalties for abuses.

UPDATE: FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni responded to questions about the incident from Rep. Nadler in a hearing Tuesday, essentially saying it wasn’t a big deal since the FBI was entitled to the records, anyhow:

“I am not quite sure why the direction was give to issue an NSL in that case,” Caproni said. ”As I look at what I believe they were seeking from the university, an NSL was not the way to go. It’s unclear why HQ chose the wrong tool.”

Have Your Say: FBI manufactured evidence
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Secrecy Surrounds Death Penalty

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

At least 1,200 people were executed in 2007 and many more were killed by the state, in secret, in countries including China, Mongolia and Viet Nam.

The figures come from Amnesty International’s yearly statistics, Death Sentences and Executions in 2007, issued on Tuesday, which say that at least 1,252 people were executed in 24 countries and at least 3,347 people were sentenced to death in 51 countries. Up to 27,500 people are estimated to be on death row across the world.

The figures also show an increase in executions in a number of countries. Iran executed at least 317 people, Saudi Arabia 143 and Pakistan 135 – in comparison to 177, 39 and 82 executions respectively in 2006.

Eighty-eight per cent of all known executions took place in five countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the USA. Saudi Arabia had the highest number of executions per capita, followed by Iran and Libya. Amnesty International has been able to confirm at least 470 executions by China – the highest overall figure. However, the organization has said that the true figure for China is undoubtedly much higher.

China, which the report refers to as the world’s top executioner, classifies the death penalty as a state secret. As the world and Olympic guests are left guessing, only the Chinese authorities know exactly how many people have been killed with state authorization.

“The secretive use of the death penalty must stop: the veil of secrecy surrounding the death penalty must be lifted. Many governments claim that executions take place with public support. People therefore have a right to know what is being done in their name,” said Amnesty International.

During 2007, many countries continued to execute for crimes not commonly considered criminal, or after unfair procedures. Among them:

Ja’Far Kiani, father of two, was stoned to death for adultery in Iran in July.
A 75 year-old North Korean factory manager was shot by firing squad in October for failing to declare his family background, investing his own money in the factory, appointing his children as its managers and making international phone calls.
Mustafa Ibrahim, an Egyptian national, was beheaded in Saudi Arabia in November for the practice of sorcery.
Michael Richard was executed in Texas, USA, on 25 September after a state courthouse refused to stay open an extra 15 minutes to allow the filing of an appeal based on the constitutionality of lethal injections. Richard’s attorneys had been unable to file the appeal on time because of computer problems; problems they had already brought to the court’s attention. The US Supreme Court then refused to stop the execution. Earlier in the day, however, it had agreed in a Kentucky case to review the lethal injection issue, a decision that led to a de facto moratorium on all other lethal injection executions around the country. The Supreme Court’s ruling is expected later this year.

Three countries – Iran, Saudia Arabia and Yemen – carried out executions for crimes committed by people younger than 18 years of age, against international law.

However, 2007 was also the year where there was good news about the death penalty. The United Nations General Assembly voted – by 104 to 54, with 29 abstentions – to end the use of the death penalty.

“The UN General Assembly took the historic decision to call on all countries around the world to stop executing people. That the resolution was adopted in December with such a clear majority shows the global abolition of the death penalty is possible,” said Amnesty International.

“The taking of life by the state is one of the most drastic acts a government can undertake. We are urging all governments to follow the commitments made at the UN and abolish the death penalty once and for all.”

Have Your Say: Secrecy Surrounds Death Penalty
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Fighting dirty wars: spying for the arms trade

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

By Eveline Lubbers

The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) is a well respected Quaker and Christian-based pacifist group, which believes in non-violent protest. In the mid 1990s the group was stepping up a campaign against the £500m sale of BAe jets to Indonesia. The campaigners protested that the aircraft would be used to crush resistance in East Timor, which was seeking independence. The Sunday Times revealed in September 2003 that British Aerospace used a private intelligence company to spy on CAAT, since that time. Evelyn Le Chêne, a woman with considerable intelligence connections, sent daily reports on activists’ whereabouts to Britain’s largest arms dealer. The intelligence company was called Threat Response International.

This article is based on a detailed analysis of these secret reports. The files show how the Campaign Against the Arms Trade was subverted by infiltrators passing on information and manipulating the activists.

Evelyn Le Chêne was identified by the Sunday Times as a key player in a vast private intelligence-gathering network that gathered intelligence on the identities and confidential details of nearly 150,000 activists. This information was collated and marketed to British industrial companies. BAe was only one of her clients. It paid her for at least four years – from 1996 to 1999 – to spy on opponents of the arms trade. CAAT appears to have been her main target. Six to eight agents infiltrated the group over a period of time; there is reason to believe the spying went on until the date of the exposure in the Sunday Times in September 2003.

Previous research into the intelligence company had been conducted by Dutch grass-roots organisation buro Jansen & Janssen . I was involved in an investigation in 1998 that resulted in the exposure of an infiltrator. Adrian Franks had attracted attention when he tried to extend his connections with Dutch activist groups, such as the anti military research collective AMOK and the environmental network Aseed. The then 39-year-old Frenchman from Equihen Plage in Normandy used several surnames, and our investigation discovered he was the owner of a private intelligence company that collected information on activists. The name of this company was Risk & Crisis Analyses, whose parent company was registered in Rochester, UK.

This left us with a story, but also quite a few loose ends. It was established that Franks crossed the Channel regularly so buro Jansen & Janssen tried to interest British activist groups in the investigation. Although CAAT and Corporate Watch as well as other organisations (like Enaat) that Adrian claimed to be affiliated with had received warnings about Adrian from their Dutch counterparts, none of them followed up the leads. Our resources were tight. For the Dutch activists exposing Adrian was enough. The internet was in its infancy and there was no data on line relating to Risk & Crisis Analyses. Nor would it have been cheap to cross the Channel and carry on the investigation abroad. Not without the help, or the stimulus, of worried grass roots groups. If only we had known how close we were…

Five years later, in September 2003, David Connett of the Sunday Times found an account of the Jansen & Janssen investigation on the internet. He urgently needed confirmation that Adrian Franks, who also used the name Le Chêne, was related to Evelyn Le Chêne. Connett was investigating Threat Response International, a company which advised corporations on security threats. Evelyn Le Chêne was on the board. When she was first approached by British Aerospace to carry out surveillance work in the mid-1990s, she had been running a company named R&CA Publications from an office in an industrial estate in Rochester,UK. This was the same company that closed down and disappeared shortly after the Dutch exposure of one of its directors as a spy.

Adrian turned out to be Evelyn’s son, and was still working for her company, now called Threat Response International.
Because of my earlier involvement in the case the Sunday Times granted me access to the spy files. The files we examined – about 500 pages – basically consisted of printed reports to BAe, made by Evelyn Le Chêne, calling herself “Source P”.

This was a rare opportunity to investigate corporate spying and anti-activist infiltration from the inside. What follows in an analysis of the spy files, an assessment of the history and practices of both Adrian and Evelyn Le Chêne and some observations on what can be learned from this episode.

Daily reports

In late 1995, when John Major’s Conservative government was deciding whether to grant licences for the Hawk contract, the intelligence reports on CAAT’s activities were flowing into BAe’s offices at Farnborough, Hampshire on an almost daily basis.

The accounts of meetings are pretty detailed. They describe people, their habits and their willingness to participate in CAAT. They report people not having much time to engage themselves in campaign activities and cite familiar reasons such as illness, study, family and work commitments:

”A. is recovering from influenza and is not participating at all for the moment. She is still interested in doing CAAT ‘things’… However, this year she has been crying off sick or as being too tired or that she has something else to do when she is asked to participate in meetings and liaisons.”
“B. is increasingly tied up with writing a research dissertation for a degree and since her hernia operation has not been very active. She has been seldom at home when contact has been attempted.” [9 June 1997]

Le Chêne initially sent her briefings on an encrypted fax to BAe security offices on the ground floor of Lancaster House at Farnborough airfield. Later BAe set up software on her office computer so the company could access reports directly from her database. A Sunday Times’ source claimed the firm paid her £120,000 a year .

Le Chêne recruited at least half a dozen agents to infiltrate CAAT’s headquarters at Finsbury Park, north London, and a number of regional offices. During the four year infiltration that these records cover Le Chêne submitted thousands of pages of reports to BAe, which kept the company fully briefed on CAAT’s meetings, demonstrations and political contacts.

Some of the information was gathered by spies attending CAAT meetings posing as activists. However, the files also show that Le Chêne’s agents gained access to CAAT’s IT system and databases. Le Chêne reports to BAe that diskettes full of information from within CAAT have been acquired. One agent downloaded the entire contents of a CAAT headquarters computer including a membership list, personal folders and details of private donations.

Another striking aspect of the files is the repeated offer by one of the infiltrators to install a new computer system at CAAT’s offices and members homes.
Bank accounts were accessed, and Evelyn Le Chêne traced back anonymous donations to the bank where they were made. “A legacy has come through for Treat [Trust for Research and Education on Arms] for £4,000. The legacy money was anonymously donated through Draper, Crellings, Solicitors, Weybridge. This has gone into the Treat account which now stands at £4,000”. [22 August 1997]

Desks were rifled, diaries were read and address books photocopied so information could be passed to BAe. CAAT members were often followed. One such target was Anna B., described in one report as a “good-looking” 25-year-old, who was a key activist and networker for CAAT and student groups. The Sunday Times heard a tape recording of a phone conversation between Le Chêne and a senior officer in BAe group security which reveals that they discussed having Anna B. followed. Reports on Anna B. give details of her addresses, housemates, hairstyles, the contents of her diary and her alleged habit of smoking marijuana in the corridor.

Lessons to be learned

Given the level of infiltration and surveillance of CAAT on behalf of BAe what are the likely consequences for the activities of the organisation? Below I will try to explain how the information was used to counter and undermine CAAT’s campaigning work.

Lobbying

The Sunday Times wrote that Le Chêne’s agents were instructed to take a particular interest in connections between anti-arms trade pressure groups and the House of Commons. Meetings and correspondence with MPs of all three parties was closely monitored and advance warnings of any parliamentary events were forwarded to BAe.

According to a Sunday Times source, the agents collected a series of letters, many private, which were supplied to BAe. They included correspondence discussing British policy on the sale of arms to Indonesia with a number of leading Labour politicians such as David Clark, then shadow defence secretary, Jeremy Hanley, then Foreign Office minister, and Jack Straw, then home secretary.

When CAAT and two other pressure groups hired solicitors Bindman and Partners to seek a judicial review of the granting of export licences for arms companies, BAe was alerted to the contents of a letter sent by the firm to the then trade minister, Ian Lang.

BAe’s security department filtered the information and passed it on to their in-house government relations teams so they could be one step ahead of the campaigners when lobbying in parliament.

Direct action

Information on demonstrations and actions planned by CAAT was also highly prized by BAe. Often the reports detailed plans for upcoming demonstrations by activists at BAe’s sites. At one point the files give precise information on how a small group planed an ‘incursion’ of a BAe plant. They intended to walk through the site, leaving behind some signs or traces of their action (varying from symbols of protest to the destruction of a Hawk). In one case, the files outline where the group was to assemble, the route of their walk, who was taking part, and what they would bring. A map with the planned route to take was attached to the report.

In other cases Evelyn Le Chêne provided BAe with elaborate advice on how to deal with certain situations. In March 1996 CAAT set up a Rapid Response Network to organise a ‘die-in’ outside Parliament on the first Thursday after BAe announced the delivery of Hawk-fighters to Indonesia. Le Chêne’s advice was to carefully plan the timing of the announcement, counselling that the longer BAe delayed the announcement the more effective the CAAT protest would be. Le Chêne suggested that BAe announced the delivery to coincide with the Parliamentary recess. That way, the effect of the ‘die-in’ – lying dead in front of the Parliament – would be reduced to zero.

By infiltrating CAAT so thoroughly BAe were well placed to ‘respond’ to activists’ protest tactics.
Every occasion required a different tactic. Where it was activists’ strategy to have themselves arrested in order use the resulting court case to draw more attention to their cause, Le Chêne suggested that BAe pressure the police to make as few arrests as possible.

A similar pattern is evident in the BAe response to CAAT’s ‘snowball’ strategy, which planned that each direct action that resulted in arrests would lead to further and larger actions. The resulting court cases were to be used to argue that activists were committing a crime (criminal damage) in order to prevent a greater crime (genocide) and that they were therefore not guilty. This defence was successful for Chris Cole in his 1993 ‘BAe Ploughshares’ protest, and Evelyn Le Chêne was afraid that it would work for the four women activists awaiting trial for ‘disarming’ a Hawk fighter with hammers on 29 January 1996.

Le Chêne advised that the corporate response to these actions ought to be framed with reference to its effects on the longer-term protest.

When two protesters went to a BAe site seeking to be arrested, the police merely confiscated their wire cutters. They were reported to be annoyed, not least because they failed to generate publicity. “It is therefore difficult not to conclude that arresting activists does play into their hands and leads ultimately to larger protests in the future. On the other hand one does accept that to offer no counter would be unsustainable from a company point of view. Alternatives need to be discussed.” [8 March 1996] BAe also used Le Chêne’s insider knowledge to manage larger protests. Demonstrations outside more than 60 UK BAe sites were thwarted by tip-offs from infiltrators, a key tactic being the ambush of trespassers who were then served injunctions preventing them from returning.

Counterwork

CAAT’s work was opposed and stymied by BAe on other levels. When Evelyn Le Chêne heard that CAAT always received BAe press releases immediately after they were sent out through the BBC, her advice was to stop that procedure immediately: “Don’t send them or leave them to the last when it no longer matters.” [11 June 1997]

When CAAT campaigners requested a copy of the Defence Manufacturers Association (DMA) members list Evelyn Le Chêne was consulted by the Director General of DMA. She advised him not to cooperate. In her report to BAe she comments: “ My reply was that having such a comprehensive and up-to-date listing of all the defence support industries would cut down their own research time by 100% and likewise their expenditure for it by 200%. We are of the opinion that the recommendation was not heeded.” [14 May 1997]

According to the Sunday Times, the sophistication of BAe’s management of the activist threat was such that the names and addresses of activists were routinely run through the BAe computers to check if any were shareholders. In addition, the BAe switchboard was configured to flag up any calls from telephone numbers associated with the activists.

Disinformation

On several occasions Evelyn Le Chêne proposed feeding CAAT disinformation in order to cast them in a bad light. In February 1996 she referred to the climb-down Greenpeace made over the Brent Spar (when they mistakenly overstated the damage to the environment of dumping the oil platform into the ocean):
“On the question of sighting Hawks in the sky above Indonesia, we discussed an idea or two I had some weeks ago. You will recall that Greenpeace had an embarrassing climb-down recently because they cried wolf too often. It might be time now to have another think on the idea I had about discounting the Hawks in Indonesia story.” [20 February 1996]

By the end of January 1997, CAAT had joined the Clean Investment Campaign, which targeted organisations owning shares in military hardware production companies. CAAT prepared a public document with the help of – amongst others – Corporate Watch. Le Chêne commented: “Interestingly, they still appear not to have all their facts correct which could be a point worth encouraging” [27 January 1997]. The strategy appears to have been to encourage CAAT to make claims (in good faith) which could later be used to discredit the campaign. It would be interesting to know what became of these suggestions, and what other disinformation operations have been taken into effect. A fuller analysis of the Threat Response files may be able to shed more light on this matter.

Agent provocateur

Adrian Franks/ Le Chêne made a habit of proposing more radical actions than other campaign members. He repeatedly tried to incite people towards using more violence than they intended (given the pacifist origins of the group they tend to eschew violence). This was one of the reasons why he was not trusted by various people in different activist groups back in 1998.
The account in the files of one occasion when Adrian irritated other activists with his proposals for a more radical approach, showed his disappointment about the fact that there was “no sign of any interest” for his suggestions. This “assessment” (marked “Addressee – eyes only”) revealed he was sent there with a purpose.

“As at time of writing this report there would appear to be NO sign of any action taking place at the Paris Air show against any company including your own… The issue of doing something was raised three times. To have pressed harder would have been impolitic from a security point of view.” [19 May 1997]
He knew he risked his cover by pushing the issue, but he kept trying. One can only guess the strategy behind this. It could have been a tactic to provoke police action at a picket line and thus disturb the peaceful character of the protest. However, Adrian’s proposals had a disturbing influence on the ‘spadework’ of CAAT: people got irritated and vital coalition building, with organisations like Amnesty International, was thwarted due to an alleged lack of agreement on basic issues such as the character of direct action. In that sense, Adrian was more than an infiltrator; we could call this the work of an agent provocateur.

True Spy

The most important informer working for Evelyn Le Chêne was Martin Hogbin, referred to as her ‘excellent source’. Hogbin was an active volunteer with CAAT from spring 1997 before joining the staff in November 2001. He resigned and left early October 2003, as soon as the initial internal investigation implicated him as a suspect of spying.

Neither Hogbin nor Le Chêne co-operated to the investigations carried out by CAAT Steering Committee and the Information Commissioner. .
The Information Commissioner confirmed that Martin Hogbin was forwarding information by email to a company with links to Le Chêne. Ironically, the Data Protection Act 1998 prevented the Information Commissioner from giving CAAT details of the company concerned.
Research by the CAAT Steering Committee comparing the spy files with events that Hogbin had taken part in, confirmed that he started his surveillance work soon after he became actively involved with CAAT as a volunteer in spring 1997. A report on a trip to Farnborough attributed to Hogbin was dated 19 June that year. It was dated one day after the event, and it was a long and detailed report.

Administering professional reports so soon in his activist career within CAAT implicates Hogbin was brought in as an infiltrator, as opposed to someone who was ‘turned’ c.q. persuaded to secretly pass on information. The Threat Response files cover the period between June 1995 and December 1997; no spy reports are available that document the period after that. But since it was proven that he continued to forward emails until the exposure in the Sunday Times in September 2003, it can be assumed that he also filed his reports detailing CAAT activities until that date. This leads to the tentative conclusion that Martin Hogbin was a spy from beginning to end.

The fact that he was one of the few paid staff campaigners meant that Hogbin had access to almost anything that past through the office. This could be reports, plans, correspondence and other paperwork, but also address books, contact files, computers, diskettes and banking details.
As national campaigns and events co-coordinator Martin Hogbin was involved in much if not all campaigning against arms trade. He was the main organiser of protests at BAe annual meetings. CAAT supporters bought token shares in BAE so that they could attend the annual meeting and publicly challenge directors on arms sales to repressive regimes. He was involved in organising protests against BAe plants and arms fairs, his work varying from mobilising to the practical preparations, such as taking part in ‘recces’ to explore the terrain of action or organising the transport of fellow activists to demonstrations.

Hogbin also was a key networker in the movement, both in the UK as on the European level. He usually represented CAAT at the on meetings of the European Network Against Arms Trade and coordinated the mobilising against EuroSatory in the UK. (Many ENAAT meetings in 1997 and 1998 were attended by Adrian and Martin, both working for Evelyn Le Chêne) . Martin also played an important role in mobilising against the DSEi Arms Fair, considered the hugest anti militaristic event in the UK

At the CAAT office Hogbin was a well respected colleague and a very much liked member of the small staff. People thought they knew him well, including his family and children. Martin, in his fifties, seemed like an open and honest person, devoted to the cause. He made no secret of his past career at the South African arms manufacturer Denel; his apparent change of views only added to his credibility.
The fact that he was trusted not only complicated the investigations against him. Hogbin continued to come to anti-arms trade events since he left CAAT. The fact that the Privacy Commissioner linked him to Evelyn Le Chêne, didn’t stop people from other campaigns, both anti-arms trade and environmental from working with Martin Hogbin. In July 2005 he was reportedly still working for the Disarm DSEi campaign.

Remaining questions

It is important that there is some understanding of the difficult and painful choices the CAAT Steering Committee has recently faced. Hopefully there will be a time for further research. The opportunity to investigate a case from both sides does not arise very often. There is a lot left to be learned as so many questions remain unanswered. CAAT has started procedures against one of the alleged spies, but what happened to the five (perhaps seven) others? Who else was identified? Did they play a minor role within the organisation, or have they left CAAT since? Does that make it less important to find out where they have gone? Or is it too difficult to trace them after all these years?

It would surely be worth making a formal damage assessment and issuing a report that other groups could benefit from. How did CAAT deal with the internal frictions the exposure caused? How much damage was done, or rather, how did they find the resilience to continue their work? These questions relate to security issues that many activist groups need to deal with. How can openness be balanced against sensible caution? Do activist groups facing powerful and well-resourced opponents need to screen every volunteer and newcomer, and if so, how? How can activists avoid paralysis and live with the fact that they may be under surveillance?

From what we have seen above, it is shocking to realise how much time, effort and resources British Aerospace invested in undermining CAAT. That so many people infiltrated this relatively small network suggests that BAe were very concerned by the potential consequences of CAAT’s activism.
CAAT’s campaigning work signified a threat to BAe’s reputation. In addition, a successful campaign could mean the loss of large orders. Dick Evans, BAe’s then chief executive, received regular verbal briefings on the contents of Le Chêne’s reports from Mike McGinty, an ex-Royal Air Force officer who headed security, the Sunday Times was told. This tells us something about the importance of the intelligence material for BAe.

Le Chêne also claimed to target other groups such as Earth First! and Reclaim the Streets. The close connections and mixed membership of such groups meant she acquired information on Friends of the Earth, the Green Party, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the World Development Movement and animal rights charities, to name just a few. So, how close was the surveillance of these groups? Le Chêne herself boasted a database of 148,900 “known names” of CND, trades unions, activists and environmentalists (and this was back in 1996!). The most relevant to BAe was a ‘hardcore grouping’ of about 200 on whom she developed full biographies and profiles including national insurance numbers and criminal records where possible. To what other parties did she offer this information? And who accepted?

Road Protests

CAAT was not the only group Treat Response spied upon. The road protests against the Newbury Bypass for instance, receive more than average attention in the surveillance reports. Important events are reported on in great detail, apparently to warn BAe against the danger of an involvement of the anti defence groups with the environmental movement.

In the late 1990s the Newbury bypass became the focus of anti-roads groups when thousands occupied woodland were earmarked for destruction. The 8_-mile bypass finally opened in 1998 after years of protests delayed completion. The total cost of the project was £74m, of which nearly a third, £24m, was spent on security. Group 4 carried out work on behalf of the Highways Agency as well as construction companies such as Costain and Tarmac. This helped police many of Britain’s most controversial road-building projects.

The Sunday Times heard tape-recorded conversations involving Le Chêne reveal that she regularly passed information from her network of agents to Group 4. She said she had agents posted permanently at Newbury and passed on highly confidential personal information about protesters to the company. These included accommodation addresses, vehicle registration details, National Insurance numbers, unemployment benefit details and income support information.

The Spy Files reflect this work for Group 4. The detailed reports show that advanced warnings about the road protesters’ plans had been forwarded to the police and the private security forces involved. Much to her frustration, Le Chêne’s information was not used in the most adequate way – or rather: the way she thought was best:

“The policing level was low for the amount of people present and the security guard reaction was insufficient. In fairness to the latter, it has to be said that there were not enough of them to reasonably expect control of the situation with even half the protesters present. In addition the company concerned lacks a background of control to such groups and it showed. For protesters, this is an ideal double situation. On the police site it was evident that they tried to make up for the lack of numbers by the use of horses – environmentalists being animal lovers. But this showed as well and when the police, on the second occasion, charged the oncoming handslinked protesters, the horses naturally bumped them and this let to an increase in tension and the rest is history.”

The eviction of the protesters camp ended in an extremely violent confrontation with the police, now remembered as the Third Battle of Newbury (the first two took place in the 17th Century). Had the authorities listened to Le Chêne’s advise, it wouldn’t have come that far – or so it seemed:

“The numbers expected and what they would be doing and how they would do it, was known well in time and notified. It was apparently a decision on the part of the Highways Authority on how to deal with the situation that led to the low manning of police and security guards, although we are of opinion that where security guards were concerned, it was more a case of penny-scrimping by cash-strapped Costain.”

Le Chêne claimed she had at least two people infiltrated in the Newbury Bypass camp:

“According to two sources at Newbury on Saturday – neither of whom knows the other – the incident that led to the arsons was the police rush with horses. This would not explain, however, the police discovery of petrol-can-type Molotovs although this latter can be made up fast anyway.”

This last quote also reveals how easily Le Chêne assumed the discovered molotovs may just as well have been planted evidence.

Why a report to BAe would include such a detailed coverage of police dealing with anti road protests is not entirely clear. With anti-defence groups increasingly involved in the anti-road protest movement, Evelyn Le Chêne tried to promote herself and her knowledge of both movements. “Exactly who can be anyone’s guess who has a good knowledge of the background to both BAe’s problems and the anti-road protest movements.”

Group 4

An unnamed Group 4 spokesman admitted buying information on protesters. He told the Sunday Times: “We’ve certainly been obtaining information about protests at our customers’ sites. It is the sort of information that would be obtained in the pub about activities that may affect our customers; people or property”, he said. “We were getting information about where protesters would be and what times in advance. We would have paid for that information.”

On the board of Threat Response from the very beginning, was Barrie Gane, who also worked for Group 4, Britain’s largest security firm whose clients range from the prison service to the royal family and the government, and advertises its ability to guard its customers against espionage, sabotage and subversion. . Barrie Gane is a former deputy head of MI6, tipped to succeed Sir Collin McColl. However, he decided to leave the Service on early retirement after a rationalisation in 1993, and open up his knowledge and network for privatised intelligence companies. Corporate Watch called Barrie Gane one of the most important former intelligence men now working for the private branch of the business. At the time The Times concluded the appointment of Mr. Gane signals an upgrading of its international operation. “Mr Gane can bring the company knowledge of international terrorism, commercial espionage and risk assessment.” [3]

Was Group 4 the only party involved in the Newbury Bypass buying information from Threat Response International? In her reports, Evelyn Le Chêne claimed the police was well informed about the numbers of activists and their plans, and that she had agents posted permanently in Newbury.
Many environmental campaigners long suspected they were the subject of spying operations.

The Highways Agency explained in the Sunday Times that the government had funded security operations around road-building sites but it was the responsibility of the contractors involved. “Clearly we worked closely with the police and the contractors to ensure that this was carried out in a lawful way,” a spokesman told the paper in 2003.

The transport department working on orders from Treasury solicitors, spent more than £700,000 in the early 1990s employing the Southampton-based detective agency Bray’s to help them identify protesters. Private detectives were seen filming people and noting down public conversations. “Despite this, campaigners believed this type of surveillance alone could not account for some of the information contained in the dossiers issued by the department to support legal injunctions against them.”

In 2002, BBC Two reporter Peter Taylor made a series of documentaries called True Spies. In one of the issues he revealed how a hired spy stopped the Newbury protest. On TV, Sir Charles Pollard, then Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, explained why Newbury was a line in the sand. The protesters could not be allowed to win once the government had approved the building of the bypass the previous year. “The ones who were planning and tried to carry out seriously illegal acts are very subversive in a sense of subversive to democracy,” he says. On the BBC website summarising the documentary, Peter Taylor also wrote: “Special Branch resorted to their usual methods of gaining information on the opposition’s plans. They recruited informers and paid them anything from £25 to larger sums of money – even up to £1,000 a week.

Such sums may seem breathtaking but they’re a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of policing such a protest. A piece of vital intelligence might, for example, save tens of thousands ds. Despite this, stalemate still loomed and costs were rising, Thames Valley took the unprecedented step of recruiting an agent outside normal procedures. They’d heard of a particular individual who worked for a private security company with unique skills and a perfect pedigree to infiltrate the protesters. The police normally keep such private security companies at arm’s length as they’re in the business of making money from intelligence they gain.

Despite these reservations, Thames Valley decided to bite the bullet and hire the agent. The Chief Constable gave the go-ahead for a contract to be drawn up with the individual and the security company for which he worked, calculating that the value of his intelligence would far outweigh the cost of hiring him.
With the contract agreed, the agent’s main task was to get as close as possible to the leaders and in particular to let his handlers know of the best time to take the main tunnel that was holding up the contractors’ operations.”

Whether the company involved in this particular infiltration operation was indeed Threat Response International proved next to impossible to verify.
Peter Taylor went through his old notebooks, and came back with three other companies involved in the road protests: “Reliance Security plus Brays and Pinkertons both of whom apparently ran their own agents.” A Freedom of Information request about the possible involvement of Evelyn Le Cheyne with Thames Valley Police came back negative. Nor was it possible to “trace or locate any specific records or documents to answer the question whether or not Thames Valley Police hired an agent to infiltrate the protest groups during the building of the Newbury bypass”. The chief constable who confirmed contracting the private agent on BBC television in 2002, Charles Pollard now claims he can’t remember any details. He is however not surprised no paper trail can be found: “Of course at the time it was a very closely-guarded secret….so secret in fact that the company was only referred to within the few people who knew about it under a codeword!”

Whatever happened to the Newbury agent? “His cover was so good and his information so accurate, that Special Branch then directed him to infiltrate the animal rights movement”, BBC‘s Peter Taylor wrote. This correlates with the interests Adrian voiced at the time. But then again, Adrian was interested in everything that involved radical activism.

Conclusion

This case, The Threat Response Spy Files, reveals the need for a new cartography to map the shifting grounds of so-called corporate intelligence, as the boundaries between government surveillance and corporate intelligence have become blurred. Once a group is seen to pose a serious threat to powerful commercial or political interests it is at risk of special operations orchestrated by its opponents, whether or not such assessments are factually based.

In the past state intelligent programmes have tried to undermine successful campaigns or destabilize activist groups. Now private or privatised spy shops can access the same tools, sometimes with the support of state intelligence agencies. Though their goals may differ depending on their clients’ needs, corporate and state intelligence agencies often use the same methods of surveillance. Wider exposure, discussion and awareness of such tactics are necessary if public interest groups and campaigners are to protect themselves and the causes to which they are committed. The Threat Response Files offer us a rare and important opportunity to open up this debate.

Have Your Say: Fighting dirty wars: spying for the arms trade
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Guerilla art protest against ’surveillance society’

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Jon Land

A Banksy-style stunt in the heart of London protests against Britain’s surveillance society - just feet away from a CCTV camera.

The huge graffiti, which would have taken some time to paint, standing several stories high, bears the slogan: “One nation under CCTV” in white capital letters.

The slogan is depicted being painted by a person on a ladder in a red hooded jacket, as a uniformed official with a barking dog films the action.

The guerilla artwork is located just off Oxford Street but Banksy has yet to say whether he was responsible.

A spokeswoman for the secretive artist said that she had not had official confirmation that the work was Banksy’s, but said it looked like one of his pieces.

A Banksy painting showing two children pledging allegiance to a Tesco carrier bag flying on a mast recently appeared on the wall of a chemist.

Have Your Say: Guerilla art protest against ’surveillance society’
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Union attacks Big Brother CCTV plan for exams

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

PLANS to use CCTV to spy on students sitting exams have been branded as Orwellian.

The Examination Officers’ Association is planning to test the move in a small number of exam halls to stamp out cheating.

Chief executive Andrew Harland said devices like pens fitted with voice recorders were making invigilators’ jobs harder. He also believes it would protect members against unfound complaints of harassment.

However, Eileen Orriss, Association of Teachers and Lecturers Oldham branch secretary, likened the proposals to Big Brother.

The branch is concerned about the cost and the right to privacy in the workplace, and she added: “My personal feeling is it is the thin edge of the wedge. The ATL has already stated that we don’t want CCTV in classrooms.”

Graeme Hollinshead, head teacher at Grange School, Oldham, said schools employing outside staff, who don’t know the pupils, as invigilators may want to use CCTV.

This is not the case at Grange which has no interest in the move.

Oldham Sixth Form College also has no plans to spy on its 2,200 students during exams and vice-principal Mick Walsh said: “The use of CCTV is simply not an issue for us.

“All of our invigilators are chosen for their integrity and honesty and receive thorough training for the role. We’ve never received any complaints or had any issues raised about their conduct during exams, and we don’t envisage that would change.”

And John Ramsden, public relations manager for Huddersfield University, said that has been no calls to introduce the move in its exam halls, including at its University Centre Oldham campus.

“We would wait and see the outcome of the trial and then decide if it was appropriate. It might be that universities take it in board all told or it is left to individual universities to decide,” he said.

Have Your Say: Union attacks Big Brother CCTV plan for exams
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

From Inside a Cage at Guantanamo

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Have Your Say: From Inside a Cage at Guantanamo
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Enhanced Tracking Technology May Help RFID

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

By DON CLARK

A Los Angeles start-up says it has developed a way to dramatically expand the range of a popular wireless tracking technology, opening up many new applications for low-cost identification tags.

Closely held Mojix Inc. says its enhancements to a technology known as RFID — for radio frequency identification — sharply reduce the cost of setting up wireless networks that can cover entire warehouses, stores, distribution centers and yards where heavy equipment is stored.

Such networks can be used to quickly locate goods and track their movements without having to be close to a scanning device. Networks with similar capabilities today typically require sophisticated RFID tags that cost anywhere from around $4 to more than $1,000 each, said John Fontanella, an analyst at AMR Research. Mojix says its hardware uses simpler tags that cost as little as 10 cents each.

“I think this could have significant impact,” said Michael Liard, an analyst at ABI research, of Mojix’s technology.

RFID, a more-sophisticated successor to bar codes, is used for applications such as preventing shoplifting of garments in stores and handling payments at bridge toll gates. Applying identification tags to pallets and boxes of goods has been touted as a better way to track inventories at retailers, manufacturers and other companies. But adoption has been slower than some companies expected, because of conversion costs and other issues.

The least-expensive form of the technology uses what the industry calls “passive” RFID tags, which have no power source or means to transmit data on their own. They are activated by radio signals from a device called a reader, which allows the tags to answer by sending information such as product identification numbers.

Readers for passive tags typically have a maximum transmission range of about 30 feet, said Ramin Sadr, Mojix’s chief executive. Partly as a result, companies often only deploy RFID networks in limited locations, such has around loading docks so they can track goods entering and leaving warehouses.

But in the late 1980s, Mr. Sadr and other Mojix engineers worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on technology used in long-range communications to spacecraft. They attempted to apply some of those concepts to RFID. The system they developed uses a grid of low-cost transmitters to provide radio energy to nearby RFID tags, which respond by sending signals to an unusually sensitive central receiver, Mr. Sadr said.

Each of the company’s receivers can manage signals from 512 transmitters — each as far as 600 feet away, Mr. Sadr said. The resulting coverage area can be up to 250,000 square feet, or about 100 times the coverage area of previous systems based on conventional tag readers, he added. Mojix isn’t disclosing exact pricing, but estimates that a network based on its technology will cost 20% to 25% less than other typical RFID systems as well as offer more-sophisticated capabilities.

Mojix isn’t likely to lack for competition. Ronny Haraldsvik, vice president of marketing and industry relations at Alien Technology Corp., a maker of RFID tags and readers in Morgan Hill, Calif., said Mojix appears to be targeting long-range applications now served by companies that use active RFID tags. “They are very entrenched,” he said.

Have Your Say: Enhanced Tracking Technology May Help RFID
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Home Secretary accused of breaching election rules

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

By David Barrett, PA

The Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was accused of breaching election rules today by making a major anti-terrorism announcement during the run-up to local polls.

Ministers and government departments are supposed to observe a period of silence - or “purdah” - in the weeks before a vote.

The system is designed to prevent the party which is in power from having an unfair advantage during an election campaign.

But Ms Smith today announced 300 new police officers, community support officers and back-room staff will be moved to new duties combating radicalisation.

Conservative shadow communities and local government secretary Eric Pickles reported Ms Smith and other Labour ministers to the Cabinet Secretary for breach of Whitehall election rules.

A Tory spokesman said: “The announcement by the Home Office on police staff… breaks both the convention and official rules that official Civil Service resources should not be used to attempt to influence elections in the three weeks up to elections.”

Mr Pickles said: “It is clear that Labour ministers have intentionally broken Cabinet Office rules in an attempt to create a political smokescreen.

“They are trying to hide the fact that police authorities across the country are now axing the number of police officers, whilst hiking the police levy on council tax bills.”

Electors go the polls in some English and Welsh councils, as well as the London Mayor and Assembly, on May 1.

Purdah officially began on April 10 for Whitehall departments, and as far back as March 20 for the Mayoral elections.

It comes two weeks after Tories levelled similar accusations at Prime Minister Gordon Brown for promoting his party’s law and order policy on the day the Home Office ran £150,000 of adverts on neighbourhood policing in national newspapers.

Mr Pickles said: “This latest incident follows the abuse of the Government advertising budget by the Home Office.

“I fear that this is growing evidence of the politicisation of the Civil Service under Labour, as ministers desperately try to salvage a sinking election campaign.”

A Tory spokesman added: “The issue of police officers is of particular political sensitivity, given police authorities across the country are now cutting the number of police officers and hiking the police levy on council tax bills by way above inflation.

“Conservatives are accusing ministers of trying to grab headlines and mislead the public, as the Labour Party panics over their local elections and London Mayoral prospects.”

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “The Home Office attaches great importance to adherence to the rules governing elections, and gave this issue careful consideration, including discussing with the Cabinet Office.

“The Home Secretary’s speech today is about the prevention of terrorism, an issue of fundamental national importance and on which the Government has a duty to act.

“It is on this basis that the Home Secretary made her speech.

“As she made clear in her radio interview this morning, she believes that this is an issue which transcends party lines and is a response to a serious and urgent threat to our national security.

“Specifically, her speech gave further detail on how the key Prevent element of the UK-wide counter-terrorism strategy - the strand that deals with countering radicalisation at home - would be implemented.

“The Home Office took the view that it was appropriate that an announcement on an issue of national importance should be made.”

In a speech later today, Ms Smith is expected to say: “We recognise that we can neither arrest our way out of the problems we face nor protect ourselves to the point where the threat disappears.

“We need to dissuade that very small minority of people who wish to harm our communities from becoming or supporting terrorists. That is the long-term challenge.”

She will add: “I believe the resources allocated now to preventing terrorism work will enable us to develop a new kind of counter-terrorist policing, building upon and alongside your existing work.”

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats also questioned whether new money was being made available for the 300 new staff or whether it would be diverted from existing Home Office budgets.

Ms Smith said it was being funded by an extra £11 million this year announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review.

The move comes amid debate over controversial plans to extend the time limit for holding terror suspects without charge to 42 days.

Under the proposals, the Home Secretary would be able to immediately extend the limit to 42 days if a joint report by a Chief Constable and the Director of Public Prosecutions backed the move.

At the weekend, Ms Smith warned critics of the plans that as many as 30 active plots against the UK were now being probed.

Interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, she also denied she was “picking a political fight” over the 42-day issue.

“The legislation we are taking through Parliament in my view, in the view of senior police officers, is important to cover the risk in the future that in very exceptional cases 28 days might not be enough to fully investigate those plots.

“If other people are happy to take that risk, that’s up to them.”

Director of Liberty Shami Chakrabarti said: “The Home Secretary rightly wants to prevent radicalisation, but locking up innocents for 1,000 hours without charge isn’t going to help.

“If she wants to promote ‘mainstream voices’, how about those on her own backbenches who say that the right to know the charges against you before lengthy imprisonment was Britain’s greatest export to the democratic world?”

Shadow security minister Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones said the new measures announced today would have “limited impact”.

“The Government’s track record in countering radicalisation is weak,” she said.

“The Government delayed for far too long to prosecute those inciting violence like Abu Hamza.

“It has failed to deliver on its pledge to ban radical groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir. And it continues to let into Britain extremists like Hizbullah frontman Ibrahim Moussawi.

“We need long-term, concerted action across all of these areas and more direct involvement of moderate voices in British Muslim communities in the task of preventing radicalisation.”

Have Your Say: Home Secretary accused of breaching election rules
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Brain scanner predicts your future moves

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Ewen Callaway
New Scientist

Long before you decided to read this story, your brain may have already said “click that link”.

By scanning the brains of test subjects as they pressed one button or another – though not a computer mouse – researchers pinpointed a signal that divulged the decision about seven seconds before people ever realised their choice. The discovery has implications for mind-reading, and the nature of free will.

“Our decisions are predetermined unconsciously a long time before our consciousness kicks in,” says John-Dylan Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, who led the study. It definitely throws our concept of free will into doubt, he adds.

This is by no means the first time scientists have cast doubt on conscious free will. In the early 1980s, the late neuroscientist Benjamin Libet uncovered a spark of brain activity three tenths of a second before subjects opted to lift a finger. The activity flickered in a region of the brain involved in planning body movement.

But this region might perform only the final mental calculations to move, not the initial decision to lift a finger, Haynes says.

Brain decides

Haynes’s team delved deeper into the brain with a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that can measure brain activity while a subject carries out a task.

In this case, 14 volunteers lay in a brain scanner and were told to tap a button with a finger of the left or right hand whenever they felt the urge.

While the subject waited to make a choice, a screen flashed a random letter every half second. After a subject finally pushed a button, they were asked to indicate which letter had on the screen at the moment the decision was made. There is usually half second a lag between thought and action, Haynes says.

When Hayne’s team later analysed the fMRI scans, they found that the prefrontal cortex – a part of the brain that is involved in thought and consciousness – lit up seven seconds before the subjects pressed the button.

Unconscious will

By deciphering the brain signals with a computer program, the researchers could predict which button a subject had pressed about 60% of the time – slightly better than a random guess.

“It seems that the brain is making the decision before the person themselves,” he says.

Although we make some choices in a heartbeat, Haynes thinks his experiment captures the dawdling tempo of daily life.

“In most cases, we decide internally in a self-paced way: ‘Now I want to get some orange juice’ or ‘I’m going to get some apple juice instead’,'” he says

Our brains might pick beverages long before we realise, but Haynes thinks such decisions are still a matter of choice. “My conscious will is consistent with my unconscious will – it’s the same process,” he says.

Mind-reading

Chris Frith, a neuroscientist at University College London, also questions whether the experiment puts a dagger in the concept of free will.

Getting volunteers to lie in brain scanner and waiting to press a button could affect their brain activity in way normal decision-making doesn’t, he says.

And what if we don’t like our brain’s decision? Experiments to test whether a choice can be reversed are in the works, Haynes says. “We can’t rule out that people might be able to change their minds.”

Anticipating a person’s decision might one day find use in devices that wire our brains directly to a machine, he adds. A mind-reading car might anticipate lane changes and turns well before the driver ever knows his intentions.

“It’s good if the technology knows what the user is going to want – potentially before the user even knows what they are going to want,” he says.

Journal reference: Nature Neuroscience (DOI: 10.1038/nn.2112)

The Human Brain - With one hundred billion nerve cells, the complexity is mind-boggling. Learn more in our cutting edge special report.

Have Your Say: Brain scanner predicts your future moves
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

VIDEO: Torture - Impeachment or Complicity?

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Have Your Say: VIDEO: Torture - Impeachment or Complicity?
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Related News

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 11:58 pm and is filed under General, Political News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Translate: