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U.S. Food and Water Supply Poisoned by Perchlorate

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

By Joanne Waldron | According to a report by the Organic Consumers Association, a toxic chemical that is a byproduct of rocket fuel is rapidly poisoning the food and water supply in the United States. Known as perchlorate, this chemical has been found in 93% of the nation’s milk and lettuce supply in a recent FDA study. It has also been found in the drinking water for at least 22 states at extremely alarming levels. Perhaps the scariest statistic is that perchlorate has been found in the breast milk of 97% of the mothers who were tested.

What are Americans supposed to eat?

Unfortunately, lettuce and milk weren’t the only foods that were found to be contaminated. Perchlorate was found in tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, spinach, citrus, melons and more. Sadly, even organic vegetables were affected, because most crops are irrigated from polluted water sources. In a Wired.com article by Amit Asaravala, Bill Walker, the vice president of the Environmental Working Group’s West Coast operations, was quoted as saying, “The study confirms what we and some other people have been saying for a while — that perchlorate is not only a problem in areas with known water contamination but for anyone who eats food grown in the U.S.”

A report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) warns that ingesting lettuce or any other vegetable that is grown anywhere irrigated by the Colorado River would result in an exposure to an unsafe level of perchlorate per standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Farms that use this water for irrigation are responsible for growing almost all of the lettuce sold in the United States during the winter months. The EWG also reports that if a pregnant woman were to eat an ordinary serving of vegetables with the contamination levels that were found at Lucky Farms, a San Bernardino grower of lettuce and other vegetables, she would get a dose of rocket fuel over 100 times greater than what the EPA would consider “safe” for a liter of drinking water. Wow! Health-conscious consumers who eat a plant-based diet consisting of lots of dark, leafy greens, fruits and vegetables could actually be harming their health by consuming toxic levels of perchlorate.

Health Implications

According to a website by Laura Power, MS, PhD, LDN, perchlorate is a toxin that interferes with thyroid function by supplanting iodine in the body, causing harm to iodine transporters. This can be responsible for numerous health problems, notes Dr. Power, including “hypothyroidism, thyroid cancer, goiter, breast disease, disruption of the menstrual cycle, immune system dysfunction, poor fetal development, and mental retardation of newborns.” A book by Mary J. Shomon, Living Well with Hypothyroidism: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Tell You… That You Need to Know (Revised Edition), reports that in areas with the greatest amount of perchlorate contamination, rates of congenital hypothyroidism are much higher than normal which means that pregnant mothers need to be particularly concerned about this.

To illustrate the severity of the problem, a CDC study demonstrated that in the 36% of women in the U.S. with low iodine intake, just about any exposure to perchlorate at all was associated with a substantial change in levels of thyroid hormone. That’s over one in three women. Moreover, the Organic Consumers Association reports that for every one out of ten of these women, if they were exposed to as little as 5 ppb of perchlorate in drinking water, the subsequent hormone disruption would require treatment during pregnancy for sub-clinical hypothyroidism.

Fatigued, Depressed, and Overweight?

If a woman is overly fatigued, depressed or overweight, she may be suffering from hypothyroidism caused by perchlorate contamination. According to Dr. Power, there are many other symptoms of hypothyroidism such as brittle nails, poor memory, constipation, menstrual irregularities, high cholesterol, poor concentration, irritability, dry skin, dry hair, hair loss and more. Imagine how frustrating it might be for a woman who is drinking lots of water and eating lots of healthy salads but isn’t making any progress losing weight due to thyroid disease caused by perchlorate ingestion. Clearly, anyone who has the above symptoms should consult a qualified health care provider immediately.

Check the Water Supply

One thing everyone can do is to check their water supplies. A map provided by the EPA shows the location of all of the perchlorate releases as of April 2003. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) also provides a table of where top soil or ground water is contaminated by perchlorate and a table that shows sites of known perchlorate use in 36 states. As previously noted, many who live near the Colorado River are affected (about 20 million people).

Install a Water Filter

Those who live in areas that have been contaminated should definitely install a water filter capable of removing perchlorate, probably some type of reverse osmosis filter. These filters won’t remove all of the perchlorate, but it is best to reduce the amount of perchlorate to the extent possible. Reverse osmosis filters won’t remove things like radon from the water and are probably best combined with a carbon filter. Needless to say, those with children attending schools that use water contaminated with perchlorate should take action to demand that the schools install proper filters, too, as drinking perchlorate-contaminated water could cause developmental delays in children, according to Dr. Power.

Get Sufficient Iodine

Unfortunately, there is no way to remove perchlorate from contaminated vegetables, and buying organic produce doesn’t help when it comes to perchlorate. One can try to purchase vegetables that aren’t grown in areas that use contaminated water to irrigate crops, but this probably won’t be possible for the majority of people. Obviously, people can’t stop eating. However, it is absolutely essential to ensure that one’s diet has a sufficient amount of iodine to attempt to compensate for any perchlorate ingestion. Some people may wish to supplement with kelp or eat more sea vegetables, but it is best to discuss the proper dosage of any supplements with a qualified healthcare provider.

Write and Complain

Finally, one more thing that can be done is to write to lawmakers and demand that the people who are polluting the environment with perchlorate clean it up now. A number of people in some communities in California that have water that has been poisoned by perchlorate are being charged 15% surcharges to clean up the mess made by polluters, reports The Gilroy Dispatch. This is so wrong. According to Senator Feinstein from California, “Nearly all perchlorate has been produced by the Department of Defense and its contractors and in the country’s space programs.” Maybe everyone should write to NASA and The Department of Defense and complain, too.

The EPA has not established a maximum legal limit in tap water for perchlorate, according to a database maintained by the EWG. This is outrageous –- there are millions of people in the United States drinking water that has been contaminated with this toxin. Since perchlorate is currently unregulated in tap water, there are no violations recorded in the EPA’s violations database, ironically labeled the “Safe Drinking Water Information System.” Meanwhile, under the current federal tap water law, any level of perchlorate is legal! That’s right. Water suppliers are not even required to test for perchlorate. Given the health implications of perchlorate ingestion, the stupidity of this kind of lack of regulation is just incredible. Write to the EPA, and let them know that this lack of regulation is just insanity.

A Wake-up Call

When people have to be concerned with drinking a glass of water or eating a salad, there is a problem. The FDA reports that the inhibition of iodine uptake by perchlorate is a “precursor that can lead to hypothyroidism,” and pregnant women and their fetuses are “the most sensitive populations to the health effects of perchlorate.” How bad will the situation have to get before environmental regulators will no longer be able to ignore the mass poisoning of the nation’s food and water supply?

Contact Information

Contact The Environmental Protection Agency:

Mailing address:
Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water (4601)
Ariel Rios Building
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20460-0003

Phone and Fax:
Phone: 202-564-3750
Fax: 202-564-3753 (Director’s office)
Fax: 202-564-3751 (Drinking Water Protection Division)
Fax: 202-564-3752 (Standards and Risk Management Division)

or e-mail the Director, Cynthia Dougherty @ Dougherty.Cynthia@epa.gov

Contact the FDA:

Food and Drug Administration
5600 Fishers Lane
Rockville, Maryland 20857

or by telephone:

1-888-INFO-FDA (1-888-463-6332) — main FDA Phone Number (for general inquiries)

Contact local, state and federal officials - just enter zip code:

(http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/)

Contact the Department of Defense:

(http://www.defenselink.mil/faq/comment.html)
or +1 (703) 428-0711 +1

Contact NASA:

((http://www.nasa.gov/about/contact/ask_n…)

Public Communications Office
NASA Headquarters
Suite 5K39
Washington, DC 20546-0001
(202) 358-0001 (Office)
(202) 358-3469 (Fax)

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Judge says gov’t must produce waterboarding memos

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

A federal judge has ruled in New York that the government must either produce memos on waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods used by the CIA or explain why they should be kept secret.

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Corporate Whistleblowers Are Left Dangling

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

By JENNIFER LEVITZ | The Department of Labor, charged with enforcing the federal law protecting corporate whistleblowers at publicly traded companies, has been dismissing complaints on the technicality that workers at corporate subsidiaries aren’t covered.

The government has ruled in favor of whistleblowers 17 times out of 1,273 complaints filed since 2002, according to department records. Another 841 cases have been dismissed. Many of the dismissals were made on the grounds that employees worked for a corporate subsidiary, says Richard Moberly, a University of Nebraska law professor. He studies issues involving workers who face retaliation from employers for reporting wrongdoing, and based his findings on department data. The rest of the cases are either pending, withdrawn or were settled.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who helped craft the whistleblower provision — part of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance act — says the law was meant to cover workers in corporate subsidiaries. “Otherwise, a company that wants to do something shady, could just do it in their subsidiary,” he said.

Sharon Worthy, a Labor Department spokeswoman, said the agency “believes that there is no legal basis for the argument that subsidiaries of covered corporations are automatically covered” under the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower provision. “The plain language of the statute only applies to publicly traded corporations,” she said in a statement.

The agency declined to provide the exact number of cases dismissed because employees worked for a subsidiary. Ms Worthy said only 17 employees have won favorable findings because many cases are settled before adjudication. Records show 187 cases have been settled to date.

The dismissed cases include three whistleblower complaints against the German manufacturing conglomerate Siemens AG and two against London media giant WPP Group PLC. The Labor Department rejected all five cases because the employees worked for subsidiaries, agency records show. Both companies declined to comment.

Another pending case involves UBS AG, the Swiss bank. The plaintiff, Timothy Flynn, alleged that in June he was suspended from his job as a UBS financial adviser for cooperating with a Massachusetts investigation of the bank’s sales of auction-rate securities. Mr. Flynn’s attorney, Jason Archinaco, says the Labor Department has asked him to show that the UBS unit that employed his client is covered under the act.

UBS declined to comment.

The Sarbanes-Oxley act, passed by Congress in 2002 in response to the Enron Corp. and Worldcom Inc. scandals, included the first federal protection for corporate whistleblowers. Before, there was only a patchwork of state laws protecting them from retaliation. Under the act, remedies can include back pay, reinstatement and attorney’s fees.

The Labor Department’s division of Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforces the whistleblowers’ provision. It prohibits publicly-traded companies or “any other officer, employee, contractor, subcontractor, or agent of such company” from retaliating against employees who provide information or assist in investigations related to alleged fraud. According to Sen. Leahy, the provision was written to be “interpreted as broadly as possible.”

In a whistleblower case still pending at the Labor Department, Carri Johnson, a Minnesota woman, alleges she received a poor performance review and was fired from her job as a manager at Siemens Building Technologies Inc. in 2004 after reporting suspected fraud.

Financial figures for Siemens Building, based in Buffalo, Ill., are included in Siemens AG’s consolidated financial statements, which describe the unit as one of the company’s “operation groups.”

In a Labor Department filing, Siemens Building argued that it wasn’t covered under the whistleblower provision. In November, an administrative law judge at the department sided with the company. Ms. Johnson appealed to the Labor Department’s administrative review board, where the case is pending.

Gregory Jacob, the agency’s chief legal officer, has asked the review board to uphold the November decision, according to filings in the case. In a legal brief, he argued that Ms. Johnson had not shown that the two companies were “significantly interrelated” or that Siemens AG controls employment policies at Siemens Building. He also wrote that the Sarbanes-Oxley law does not “expressly” mention subsidiaries.

In the last two years, the Labor Department has dismissed two other Siemens whistleblower complaints because the plaintiffs worked at subsidiaries, according to agency filings. Nearly all of Siemens AG’s approximately 400,000 employees work at its business groups, according to Siemens AG’s 2007 SEC filings.

In the last year, department judges have dismissed two whistleblower complaints filed by employees at subsidiaries of WPP Group PLC, saying workers at its subsidiaries aren’t protected by Sarbanes-Oxley. In its annual report, WPP describes its various companies as being “centrally integrated.”

Joseph Burke, a former production director at Ogilvy & Mather, alleged that the WPP advertising unit decreased his job responsibilities and ultimately fired him in retaliation for his cooperation with a federal criminal investigation into his employer’s billing practices. Mr. Burke had testified in a 2005 federal trial, which led to the sentencing of two former Ogilvy executives to prison for overbilling the government for an antidrug campaign.

According to Labor Department filings, Ogilvy denied that Mr. Burke’s dismissal was related to his testimony and said he was part of a “reduction in force.” A company executive testified that Mr. Burke was a “terrific worker,” according to a summarized transcript of the hearing,

Ogilvy argued that Mr. Burke’s complaint should be dismissed because the company isn’t subject to the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower provision. In May, a Labor Department administrative law judge dismissed Mr. Burke’s whistleblower complaint, saying he “has not established, by a preponderance of evidence, that he is an employee of a company covered under” the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower provision.

Under Sarbanes-Oxley, whistleblowers eventually can appeal Labor Department’s rulings to federal circuit court. But they face “an uphill battle,” says Mr. Moberly, the law professor.

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White House strategy is to help McCain win in November

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

The Fake U.S. Victory in Iraq

The Independent | Political events in Iraq are seldom what they seem. The hand- over by the US military of control of Anbar province, once the heartland of the Sunni rebellion, to Iraqi forces is a case in point. The US will keep 25,000 American soldiers in Anbar, so the extent to which the Iraqi government will really take over is debatable. But the future of Anbar is a crucial pointer to the fate of Iraq. It is a vast area and one of the few parts of Iraq that is overwhelmingly Sunni.

The Iraqi government is dominated by Shia Islamic parties in alliance with Kurdish nationalists. The vital question now is whether or not this Shia-dominated government can reassure the Sunni minority that they are not going to be overrun as the US withdraws its forces. The Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is in a very confident mood. In the past four months he feels he has successfully faced down the Shia militiamen of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army by taking back control of Basra, Sadr City and Amarah. Then he refused to sign a new security accord with the US which President George Bush wanted to see agreed by August 31.

In the past few weeks he has been confronting his Kurdish allies over the future of the oil city of Kirkuk and the town of Khanaqin.

Mr Maliki may be overplaying his hand but there is no doubt that the Iraqi state is becoming more powerful in Iraq and the Mahdi Army, the Americans and the Kurds less so. The Americans in particular feel that he exaggerates the extent to which his success against the Mahdi Army was because of the new strength of the Iraqi security forces.

These troops were doing badly until they received American support.
Nevertheless, Mr Maliki’s position is strong. He seems to have realized that he may need the US, but the US also cannot do without him and is in no position to replace him as it did with his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Much of what the White House is now doing is done to help the Republicans in the presidential election. The aim is to give the impression that Iraq has finally come right for the US and victory is finally in its grasp. The surge is promoted as the strategy by which the tide was turned and it is true that the Sunni uprising against the US occupation has largely ended.

But it has done so for reasons that have little to do with the surge or American actions of any kind. Crucial to the success of the government against the Mahdi Army has been the support of Iran. It is they who arranged for the Shia militiamen to go home.

It takes real cheek for Mr Bush to claim yesterday that “Anbar is no longer lost to al-Qa’ida” since during the last presidential election in 2004, he was claiming that the media was exaggerating the success of the insurgents.

Patrick Cockburn is the Ihe author of “Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq

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Obama might pursue criminal charges against Bush administration

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

By Elana Schor in Washington | Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said earlier this week that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.

Biden’s comments, first reported by ABC news, attracted little notice on a day dominated by the drama surrounding his Republican counterpart, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

But his statements represent the Democrats’ strongest vow so far this year to investigate alleged misdeeds committed during the Bush years.

When asked during a campaign event in Deerfield Beach, Florida, whether he would “pursue the violations that have been made against our Constitution by the present administration”, Biden answered in the affirmative.

“We will not be stopped from pursuing any criminal offence that’s occurred,” he continued, going on to praise congressional committees for the deliberate pace of their inquiries into alleged Bush administration misdeeds.

Members of Congress are “doing the right thing, they’re not making false accusations about anything … they’re collecting data, subpoenaing records, they’re building a file”, Biden said.

“If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued – not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president — no one is above the law.”

Obama sounded a similar note in April, vowing that if elected, he would ask his attorney general to initiate a prompt review of Bush-era actions to distinguish between possible “genuine crimes” and “really bad policies”.

“[I]f crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” Obama told the Philadelphia Daily News. “You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

When asked about his comments by Fox news today, Biden said he has no evidence that criminal charges would be warranted and no intention of pursuing action against the current president.

“What is true is the United States Congress is trying to preserve records on questions that relate to whether or not the law has been violated by anyone,” Biden said, adding: “But, you know, there’s been an awful lot of unsavoury stuff that’s gone on. And the mere fact … that it occurred in a previous administration doesn’t mean [a subsequent] Justice Department, if, in fact, there’s evidence, shouldn’t pursue them. “But I have no evidence of any of that. No one’s talking about pursuing President Bush criminally.”

Congressional Democrats have issued a flurry of subpoenas this year to senior Bush administration aides as part of a broad inquiry into the authorisation of torturous interrogation tactics used at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Three Bush White House veterans have been held in criminal contempt of congressional committees for refusing to respond to subpoenas in an inquiry on the firing of federal prosecutors: former counsel Harriet Miers, former political adviser Karl Rove, and current chief of staff Josh Bolten. The battle over Miers’s and Bolten’s testimony is currently before a federal court.

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RNC protesters charged with terrorist offences

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

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Cabinet Office ordered to release secret memos on Iraq dossier

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Secret emails and memos showing how the Iraq war dossier was “sexed-up” must be released by the Cabinet Office, The Independent has learnt.

 

By James Macintyre | Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, has told civil servants to release undisclosed material which could provide “evidence that the dossier was deliberately manipulated in order to present an exaggerated case for military action”.

After repeated freedom of information requests, Mr Thomas says in a 20-page ruling given to The Independent that there is a clear public interest in seeing comments about drafts of the dossier between 11 and 16 September 2002, in the days before Alastair Campbell suggested changes. Mr Thomas adds that there is no national security justification for keeping these comments from politicians secret.

The Government’s case for the war was set out in the dossier about Saddam Hussein’s weapons capabilities, published on 24 September 2002 and overseen by the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir John Scarlett.

Mr Campbell suggested 11 changes to the draft, which were all adopted in the final week before publication, included changing how biological weapons “could be used” to “are capable of being used”, and changing “may have” to “have”, regarding the authority of Saddam’s sons’ to launch chemical or biological weapons. Tony Blair famously claimed in the document that Saddam could deploy weapons of mass destruction “within 45 minutes of an order to use them”.

The prospect of a return to the debate over the dossier – which led to a furious row between the BBC and the Government, the death of Dr David Kelly and the subsequent Hutton Inquiry – will horrify ministers who hoped Tony Blair’s departure from office last year had drawn a line under the affair.

Dr Kelly, a Ministry of Defence biological weapons inspector, committed suicide in Oxfordshire woodlands in July 2003 after finding himself at the centre of the WMD “sexing up” storm. The catalyst for the scandal was a report on Radio 4’s Today programme by the journalist Andrew Gilligan, who had met Dr Kelly to discuss Alastair Campbell’s role in the dossier.

Downing Street went on the hunt for the report’s source, and Dr Kelly’s name was mentioned in some reports before he apparently slit his wrists and took an overdose of prescription drugs.

In Lord Hutton’s subsequent inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death, a string of changes to the dossier by Mr Campbell and Jonathan Powell, Mr Blair’s chief of staff, were made public. The new ruling by the information commissioner follows a three-year campaign by the journalist Chris Ames, who believes the Government is withholding key information about its case for the war.

In a passage that appears to confirm for the first time the existence of new, so-far-undisclosed material, Mr Thomas says: “Having considered the information which was withheld by the Cabinet Office, the commissioner is not satisfied that all of the comments on the draft dossier constituted information which engages the section 24 exemption [relating to national security]“.

The commissioner points out that comments made by political figures – such as press officers in Downing Street – as opposed to intelligence officials, do not require protection on grounds of national security. “Specifically, he [the commissioner] does not consider that the comments arising from bodies other than the Defence Intelligence Staff, and some of the comments made by officials to the Defence Intelligence Staff relating solely to the drafting of the dossier, can be said to amount to information whose exemption is required for the purpose of safeguarding national security.”

The letter was signed on behalf of the commissioner by his deputy, Graham Smith. The Cabinet Office now has 35 days either to publish the information requested by Mr Ames, or to appeal.

Mr Ames said: “The commissioner has laid bare the Government’s farcical cover-up, which included shamelessly playing the national security card. He has also given a strong hint that the Government has concealed evidence of sexing-up to save political embarrassment.”

The ’sexed-up’ dossier

Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, was published on 24 September 2002 to coincide with the return of Parliament after a summer in which war in Iraq was edging closer. Tony Blair used the dossier to bolster his case for invasion. John Scarlett oversaw the compilation of the dossier, and allowed changes to be inserted by Alastair Campbell and others. The row between the Government and the BBC was ignited when Mr Campbell reacted furiously to a report by Andrew Gilligan on the Today programme implying that he had inserted a key claim in the dossier stating weapons could be launched in 45 minutes. Mr Gilligan’s report was said to have been based on conversations with intelligence sources, one of whom appeared to be Dr Kelly.

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New revelations on VP choice heighten crisis of McCain campaign

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

By Patrick Martin | After a series of politically damaging reports about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and her family, there is mounting speculation that Republican presidential candidate John McCain may be forced to replace her as his vice presidential running mate. As ABC News asked on its web site, “how long a trip is it from there to Tom Eagleton/Harriet Miers territory?” (both nominees who were compelled to withdraw.)

The candidate herself has not been heard from since her first weekend of campaigning with McCain. She has given only a single media interview—a family-oriented piece of puffery in People magazine, conducted last Friday—and will apparently accept the vice presidential nomination at Wednesday night’s session of the Republican convention without having answered a single press inquiry about her qualifications or political views.

Palin cancelled the one public appearance she was scheduled to make—a speech to the Republicans for Life caucus, a grouping of the most fanatical anti-abortion activists headed by Phyllis Schafly. The group had planned to give Palin an award for her opposition to abortion rights even before the vice presidential selection was announced.

On Monday, Palin and her husband Todd issued a brief written statement acknowledging that their oldest daughter Bristol, 17, was pregnant and planning to marry the father of her unborn child, subsequently identified as Levi Johnston, 18, a former hockey star at Wasilla High School.

While one cannot but feel sympathy for the two young people, barely more than children, now the subject of a media frenzy, there is little basis for extending that sympathy to Governor Palin or the array of reactionary, moralizing preachers and pundits who have suddenly discovered the value of privacy (something they routinely deny to young pregnant women who make a different choice than Bristol Palin).

As for claims that the candidate’s children should be off-limits in the campaign, Palin made her model family the main selling point on her fitness for the vice presidency, speaking at length of her son’s enlistment in the military and deployment in Iraq and her own efforts to combine motherhood and a political career.

In the People magazine interview, she went out of her way to mention that she was still breast-feeding her four-month-old son Trig, declaring, in response to a question about whether she was a “morning person,” that she occasionally had to “in the middle of the night, put down the BlackBerrys and pick up the breast pump.” She brought her four youngest children from Alaska to Dayton, Ohio to display on stage at the announcement of her candidacy, including the pregnant Bristol.

There is an overpowering element of hypocrisy in the whole affair. The Christian right seeks to impose fundamentalist precepts on the entire American population—by banning abortion, contraception, sex education, the teaching of evolution, stem cell research, etc. Yet they blithely defend Governor Palin on the grounds that Bristol’s pregnancy (as well as Todd Palin’s drunk-driving charge and similar incidents) are proof that the Palins are just regular folks. As McCain speechwriter Mark Salter declared, “These things happen. This has probably happened to millions of American families.”

It is certainly true that every American family has its issues and problems, immensely exacerbated by the deepening social and economic crisis of the profit system. And that is precisely why tolerance, sensitivity and social support are required, rather than the punitive, moralizing and dehumanizing strictures of those who claim to derive all of the governing principles of society from a literalist interpretation of the Bible.

There have been so many new facts uncovered about the Palin family over the last 48 hours, or assertions about her by the McCain campaign that have proven to be false, that it is possible here only to refer to them briefly.

* It was reported that Palin has hired a personal lawyer to respond to the investigation voted by the Republican-controlled state legislature of her efforts to fire her former brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper. The ethics panel was scheduled to report October 31, four days before the presidential election. Palin evidently aims to postpone this until after the vote.

* State election officials have confirmed that Todd Palin registered in 1995 and again in 2000 as a member of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP), a right-wing group dedicated to achieving a statewide referendum on secession from the United States, and whose slogan, “Alaska First,” contrasts ironically with the official McCain campaign slogan, “Country First.” Sarah Palin claims never to have been a member of the AIP, but AIP party chairwoman Lynette Clark told ABC News that both Palin and her husband belonged to the party in 1994 and attended its convention that year. Palin also addressed the AIP state convention as governor in 2007, by video hookup.

* Former officials of the town of Wasilla have said that Palin not only removed the police chief after she took office, but also sought to remove the town librarian and “asked the library how she could go about banning books.”

* While the McCain campaign has cited Palin’s titular role as head of the Alaska National Guard as constituting national security experience, officials of the Guard have rebutted this ludicrous claim. Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard, said neither he nor Palin play any role in national defense activities of the Guard, which are conducted entirely under federal control. Campbell himself was appointed in 2003 by Palin’s predecessor.

* Palin claimed to have played a leading role in rejecting the “bridge to nowhere,” a highly publicized $225 million boondoggle connecting the town of Ketchikan, Alaska to a nearby island populated by 50 people. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that she had initially supported the project, only reversing her position when the project came under attack in Congress. And in her capacity as mayor of Wasilla, she secured $27 million in federal earmarks for her town of 6,700 people—an average of more than $4,000 for every man, woman and child. The earmarks were inserted into legislation by Alaska’s senior senator, Ted Stevens, and Congressman Don Young, one indicted and the other now facing a corruption probe.

The McCain-Palin campaign was in increasingly defensive mode as media inquiries mounted. Although the Republican campaign was running television ads as recently as August 27 branding Democratic candidate Barack Obama as “dangerously unprepared to be president,” the Palin nomination has compelled them to unceremoniously scrap that line of argument, given 72-year-old McCain’s selection for his vice presidential running mate of a virtual unknown with less than two years’ experience as governor of one of the nation’s least populous states. Senior McCain adviser Charles Black blandly declared, “We never used experience as the big argument.”

Equally hollow were the complaints that false Internet rumors about Sarah Palin were now driving the media coverage of the election campaign. Chief campaign organizer Steve Schmidt blustered, “It used to be that a lot of those smears and the crap on the Internet stayed out of the newsrooms of serious journalists. That’s not the case anymore.” In reality, the McCain campaign has been profiting from Internet smears for months. A whole host of Republican Party-linked organizations have been flooding the Internet with scurrilous rumors against Obama, most notably attempts to link him with Islamic fundamentalism.

Some press accounts have begun to shed additional light on the extraordinary backstage maneuvers that produced the Palin nomination, detailing the inordinate influence of the Christian fundamentalists in vetoing McCain’s initial inclination to name Senator Joseph Lieberman or former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge as his running mate, because both support abortion rights.

The New York Times reported Tuesday, “With time running out—and as Mr. McCain discarded two safer choices, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as too predictable—he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later. Advisers to Mr. Pawlenty and another of the finalists on Mr. McCain’s list described an intensive vetting process for those candidates that lasted one to two months. ‘They didn’t seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before,’ said a Republican close to the campaign. ‘This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge.’”

NBC Political Director Chuck Todd reported on the network’s web site, “more and more reporters are learning just how close McCain came to picking [Lieberman] as his running mate. In fact, if my sources are correct, Lieberman was virtually a done deal inside McCain’s mind as of 10 days ago. But then, he was talked out of his pick by top adviser Charlie Black and campaign manager Rick Davis. Both believed a pro-choice running mate would create convention chaos.”

National Review Online underscored the influence of the Christian fundamentalists, noting that as the McCain campaign was drafting the statement announcing Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, a group of top McCain aides met. Their assignment “was to call a list of about 40 top evangelical and other cultural conservative leaders. Each one would get a personal explanation of the story, and each was asked for his or her reaction. The McCain people reached nearly everyone before the story broke, and the verdict was unanimous—all the leaders supported Palin and her place on the McCain ticket.”

While media criticism of the Palin nomination remains tentative and muted, there are reports of intense recriminations within the Republican camp. David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter and right-wing activist, told the Los Angeles Times, “I really hope McCain did his homework. I cannot stifle a growing sense of unease that he didn’t.”

The Times also reported Tuesday: “One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate’s closest supporters as ‘keeping their fingers crossed’ in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin’s potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain’s short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.”

The picture is extraordinary: a campaign flailing about in desperation, and, for all of McCain’s professions of “independence,” completely in thrall to the most reactionary elements in American political life.

The only thing which sustains the Republican Party and the McCain-Palin campaign is the complicity of the media and, most importantly, the Democratic Party itself. Obama issued a well-publicized statement denying that his aides were responsible for the Internet rumors about Sarah Palin, and declaring that candidates’ families should be off-limits in the political campaign. But neither Obama, nor his running mate Joseph Biden, nor any other Democratic Party representative dares to put the spotlight on the critical political fact demonstrated by the Palin nomination: the ability of extreme right-wing and fascistic elements to dictate the policies and even the candidates of the Republican Party.

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“Labour making our job harder” - police chief

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

By Vikram Dodd | One of Britain’s most senior police officers has claimed government policies have damaged public and police confidence in the criminal justice system.

Mike Fuller, chief constable of Kent, told the Guardian he believes dangerous criminals are avoiding jail or being released early because of a lack of places in the country’s prisons.He claims the crisis was entirely foreseeable: five years ago, ministers ordered police to bring more offenders to justice, but failed to think through the consequences.

He also said forces are over-inspected, with hours of his time each week wasted answering to 13 official national bodies, which sometimes gave contradictory advice and uncosted recommendations. Fuller said: “Sentencing policy would appear to be determined more by the number of prison places rather than the seriousness of the crimes people have committed. That means recidivist offenders are being released from prison when they should not be.”

Fuller is regarded as a contender to be the next commissioner of Scotland Yard. Several top officers are jockeying for position to succeed Sir Ian Blair, whose term must end by January 2010, though a series of crises mean some expect he may not survive until then. A report in today’s Times suggest that ministers, senior officials and leading police chiefs have secretly discussed replacement of the commissioner by the end of this year.

Fuller continued: “People committing serious and violent crimes are not receiving as long sentences as they should be, making the job of the police more difficult.”

To back up his claim, Kent police released details of some recent cases. According to the force, a burglar with 100 previous offences received a suspended sentence and then committed another one. Last week a man failed to appear in court having been given bail while awaiting sentence for 255 thefts from motor vehicles; police arrested him, and he was granted bail again - only to fail to show up at the time the court had ordered.

Fuller said he and his officers were frustrated at the overall situation that had emerged over the last two years: “The feeling is the police do their bit, they catch dangerous offenders, and sentencing policy is determined by prison places. It’s a police perception, it’s also my personal perception.” He said that five years ago the government gave a national directive to increase offenders brought to justice: “Not surprisingly, over that time, there has been increased pressure on prison places. What I’m saying, is these problems could have easily been foreseen.”

Asked who could have foreseen them he replied: “One would have to point to the government.”

It had failed to realise how important the public thought tough sentences were: “Sentencing is crucial to confidence. The government has underestimated how important sentencing is to public confidence.”

He said he was talking about offenders who commit burglary, car crime and violent street robberies, and not the most serious crimes of rape or murder.

Recorded crime has been falling for three years, and latest figures show a 12% year-on-year fall, but the prison population is up from 61,000 in 1997 to 83,000 today. The length of a typical jail sentence rose by 13% between 1996 and 2006 to 25.2 months, but has fallen from a peak of 25.9 months. Government figures also show the number of jail sentences handed out by the courts began to fall between 2005 and 2006, down 3% for crown courts and 7% for magistrates.

Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London, said: “The current overcrowding crisis at most is merely intensifying the long-term problem of prisons entrenching, rather than addressing, crime and offending.

“Ministers have exacerbated the problem by setting targets for the police and other criminal justice agencies that, as our research shows, often have little if anything to do with reducing crime or increasing the safety of the public. This is an argument for reducing our reliance on prison as a means of responding to crime, not building ever more places in response to ill-thought-out policy initiatives.”

Fuller is the first chief constable from an ethnic minority background, and he is seen as a possible future commissioner of the Met. His rivals for the highest job in British policing are Ulster’s top officer, Sir Hugh Orde; Bernard Hogan-Howe from Merseyside; and Sir Norman Bettison from West Yorkshire.

Fuller became Kent’s chief constable in 2004 after a 26-year career in the Met. He helped set up Operation Trident, tackling gun violence within African-Caribbean communities, and is a former chair of the Black Police Association. Fuller is also believed to be the only chief constable who is also a qualified barrister.

In the interview, Fuller also took aim at the government’s attempts to ensure the police are up to scratch. He said up to 13 bodies had the right to inspect his force: “There’s always somebody inspecting us, or we’re under the threat of inspection. It is a constant inspection process. Probably at least a third of my time is spent dealing with inspection, inspection processes, preparing for inspection, accounting to inspection bodies.” He said some inspection bodies made contradictory recommendations: “It actually takes us away from our core role. There’s been too many targets… We’ve been over-inspected by too many agencies who often don’t cost their recommendations, who often don’t talk to each other or share information…”

He said accountability was important, but this was best done at a local level: “There is more benefit in being locally accountable than being accountable to central government bodies.”

Fuller said his force faced this level of inspection despite performing well.

He refused to comment directly on the claim of racial discrimination bought by Met assistant commissioner Tarique Ghaffur against Sir Ian Blair. However, he said of a series of race claims bought by senior ethnic minority officers against the Met: “Potentially it is very damaging for recruitment if the service can’t be seen to progress BME [black and minority ethnic] officers and retain them.”

Of his own career, he said his race had led him to be the subject of more critical scrutiny: “I’m judged more critically by the media, by my staff, by my peers, because of my colour.”He had received a friendly reception from officers when he took over Kent four years ago. But he told of one officer who, despite having a black chief constable committed to diversity as a boss, had only carried out stops and searches on black people. The officer was caught two years ago and disciplined.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Public confidence in the criminal justice system has increased significantly in recent years and we are working hard to bring more offenders to justice and to improve services to victims and witnesses. Since 1997 the government has increased prison capacity by over 23,000 places. Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for the courts.”

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Amy Goodman: Why We Were Falsely Arrested

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

By Amy Goodman | ST. PAUL, Minn.—Government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy. As the Republican National Convention meets in St. Paul, Minn., this week, police are systematically targeting journalists. I was arrested with my two colleagues, “Democracy Now!” producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, while reporting on the first day of the RNC. I have been wrongly charged with a misdemeanor. My co-workers, who were simply reporting, may be charged with felony riot.

The Democratic and Republican national conventions have become very expensive and protracted acts of political theater, essentially four-day-long advertisements for the major presidential candidates. Outside the fences, they have become major gatherings for grass-roots movements—for people to come, amidst the banners, bunting, flags and confetti, to express the rights enumerated in the Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Behind all the patriotic hyperbole that accompanies the conventions, and the thousands of journalists and media workers who arrive to cover the staged events, there are serious violations of the basic right of freedom of the press. Here on the streets of St. Paul, the press is free to report on the official proceedings of the RNC, but not to report on the police violence and mass arrests directed at those who have come to petition their government, to protest.

It was Labor Day, and there was an anti-war march, with a huge turnout, with local families, students, veterans and people from around the country gathered to oppose the war. The protesters greatly outnumbered the Republican delegates.

There was a positive, festive feeling, coupled with a growing anxiety about the course that Hurricane Gustav was taking, and whether New Orleans would be devastated anew. Later in the day, there was a splinter march. The police—clad in full body armor, with helmets, face shields, batons and canisters of pepper spray—charged. They forced marchers, onlookers and working journalists into a nearby parking lot, then surrounded the people and began handcuffing them.

Nicole was videotaping. Her tape of her own violent arrest is chilling. Police in riot gear charged her, yelling, “Get down on your face.” You hear her voice, clearly and repeatedly announcing “Press! Press! Where are we supposed to go?” She was trapped between parked cars. The camera drops to the pavement amidst Nicole’s screams of pain. Her face was smashed into the pavement, and she was bleeding from the nose, with the heavy officer with a boot or knee on her back. Another officer was pulling on her leg. Sharif was thrown up against the wall and kicked in the chest, and he was bleeding from his arm.

I was at the Xcel Center on the convention floor, interviewing delegates. I had just made it to the Minnesota delegation when I got a call on my cell phone with news that Sharif and Nicole were being bloody arrested, in every sense. Filmmaker Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films and I raced on foot to the scene. Out of breath, we arrived at the parking lot. I went up to the line of riot police and asked to speak to a commanding officer, saying that they had arrested accredited journalists.

Within seconds, they grabbed me, pulled me behind the police line and forcibly twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me, the rigid plastic cuffs digging into my wrists. I saw Sharif, his arm bloody, his credentials hanging from his neck. I repeated we were accredited journalists, whereupon a Secret Service agent came over and ripped my convention credential from my neck. I was taken to the St. Paul police garage where cages were set up for protesters. I was charged with obstruction of a peace officer. Nicole and Sharif were taken to jail, facing riot charges.

The attack on and arrest of me and the “Democracy Now!” producers was not an isolated event. A video group called I-Witness Video was raided two days earlier. Another video documentary group, the Glass Bead Collective, was detained, with its computers and video cameras confiscated. On Wednesday, I-Witness Video was again raided, forced out of its office location. When I asked St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington how reporters are to operate in this atmosphere, he suggested, “By embedding reporters in our mobile field force.”

On Monday night, hours after we were arrested, after much public outcry, Nicole, Sharif and I were released. That was our Labor Day. It’s all in a day’s work.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America.

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LSD, Ecstasy Tested on Terminally Ill Patients

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Researchers are exploring the use of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and ecstasy as a form of “psychedelic psychotherapy” for terminally ill patients, London’s Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday.

A clinical trial involving LSD began in Switzerland, in June. Eight patients were given 200 micrograms of LSD and four patients were given 20 micrograms. They will be assessed for anxiety levels, quality of life and pain levels.

Scientists are also looking into the possibility of using ecstasy to treat patients dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The decision to study the two drugs came after two American studies showed psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, had promising mental health results in both sick and healthy individuals.

Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in California, carried out a study of 12 terminally ill patients who took psilocybin.

At least one patient, who has colorectal cancer and had lost hope, said she reached an “epiphany” while taking the mushrooms, that her fear of the disease was destroying the time she had left.

Grob’s study has yet to be published, but it comes on the heels of similar work at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md. Positive results were seen in 36 healthy individuals given psilocybin and observed in a laboratory there.

European researchers are hoping LSD and ecstasy will have similar effects.

Telegraph

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‘Stealing America’: Voting-Fraud Documentary

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

The numbers don’t add up.

By Michael Ordoña | $3.8 billion: The initial Help America Vote Act allocation that California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen said “pushed many counties into buying electronic systems that … were not properly reviewed or tested.”
Images
A scene from the documentary “Stealing America: Vote by V…Dorothy Fadiman, director of the documentary “Stealing Am… View Larger Images

18,000: Votes that did not register in a 2006 Sarasota County, Fla., local election using touch-screen machines, in a Democratic stronghold that the Republican challenger won by 368 votes.

Negative 16,022: Votes counted for Al Gore on a Diebold tabulator in Volusia County, Fla., in 2000.

Zero: The number of proven instances of election fraud involving electronic voting machines, according to industry spokespeople.

John McCain, Barack Obama, Paris Hilton; it doesn’t matter who one chooses if the votes aren’t counted properly. Dorothy Fadiman’s new documentary, “Stealing America: Vote By Vote,” is the latest in a line of recent films that question our electoral system’s ability - or propensity - to do just that (among the others: HBO’s Florida election-disaster drama “Recount” with Kevin Spacey; and David Earnhardt’s crisp documentary “Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections,” on Starz this month and available on DVD).

“I was working at the polls as a volunteer in 2004, and while we were being oriented, we were told that people were reporting that when they vote for Kerry, they’re getting Bush. It was rampant in South Florida. And we were told, ‘Don’t tell people, because we may be discouraging them from voting,’ ” said Fadiman, whose earlier documentaries on abortion rights garnered her an Oscar nomination and an Emmy win. Appalled by the lack of media coverage of the vote-switching phenomenon and other apparently widespread election irregularities, she spent the next four years making “Stealing America.”

Fadiman’s no-frills documentary touches on voters being purged from rolls in Florida in 2000 (she believes purging to be the single greatest threat to the 2008 election) and suspiciously insufficient distribution of voting machines in Ohio in 2004. But its most damning segments concern results that defied exit polling and the vulnerability of electronic voting machines.

“What we have here is an extraordinarily compelling case that our electoral system has gone terribly wrong,” said Brad Friedman of BradBlog and the Huffington Post, who appears in both “Stealing America” and “Uncounted.” “We’ve got one election after another that makes no sense whatsoever. They may have been rigged, they may have failed due to error - (but because they can’t be audited) it’s 100 percent faith-based voting.”

Friedman said he personally experienced vote switching on a Diebold disabled-accessible machine in Los Angeles in 2006, as four of his 12 votes flipped: “The Kerry-Bush error has occurred all over the country. And they seem to constantly benefit the Republican over the Democrat. If this is a random error that occurs because the machines are crappy, it should be 50-50.”

Chris Riggall is a spokesperson for Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold), one of the leaders in the voting-machine industry. When asked by e-mail if the machines’ security vulnerabilities discussed in various scholarly studies had been addressed, he responded that “sometimes the criticisms are not factual because they are based on incorrect assumptions (such as networking or the presence of wireless ports on machines). On other occasions, the studies have recommended valuable improvements. … There’s no question that the emphasis on system security by voters, election officials and the industry is much greater now than it was, say, five years ago.”

“I think the key issue right now is voter confidence,” said Peter Lichtenheld of Hart InterCivic, another industry leader with a number of contracts with California counties. Lichtenheld blamed the controversial elections in 2000 and 2004 and the perceived misconduct of certain officials such as Katherine Harris in Florida, not faulty electronic voting systems, for generating what he called “a sense of distrust.” While pointing out that his company’s systems were the only ones for which California Secretary of State Bowen did not require changes for use in 2007, he added, “Watchdogs are appreciated, for people to say, ‘Hey, we need to pay attention to this.’ That’s a great thing. (But) the naysayer community is marketing fear and intimidation.”

Riggall and Lichtenheld roundly criticized former Diebold Chief Executive Officer Walden O’Dell for his infamous 2003 letter to Republican donors that stated, in part, “I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year,” agreeing that it contributed to the atmosphere of distrust.

“It was a serious error in judgment that never should have occurred,” Riggall wrote. “In the aftermath of that mistake, we instituted new prohibitions against any political contributions or support by the management and staff of our company.” Riggall also said only one Ohio county used Diebold equipment in that election, and that Kerry collected 59 percent of the votes in that county.

As to industry assertions that there are no documented incidents of election crimes involving their machines, Hart InterCivic recently issued a report that dismissed most problems with electronic voting as “technical glitches … not indicative of election fraud.” Friedman pointed out that the industry has spent a great deal on legal efforts to prevent independent examination of suspect machines.

The report, “Election Fraud: Fact or Urban Legend?,” states that voter error, or more specifically, “ballot layout was determined to be the most likely explanation for the (18,000 non-votes) in the 2006 Sarasota County election.” It also points out that taking issue with election results is natural for “supporters of the losing side.” But Fadiman rejects the notion that such concerns are partisan.

“It turns out between 1996 and 2006, when you see these discrepancies between exit polls and vote tallies, they go in one direction. So that’s like saying a film about slavery is partisan because you don’t give equal credence to the position of slave owners,” she says, then relates the story in her film of a Democratic Ohio state senator who personally experienced vote flipping and said he was told by his own party not to talk about it. “If the Republicans stole this election, the Democrats were willing accomplices.”

Fadiman’s film includes testimonials by people who saw their own votes switch.

“There were lots of tears in the interviews, anger, sadness, frustration,” Fadiman said. “There’s only one tear in the film: Kim Akins, an African American attorney doing election protection. What she saw was there were very long lines and not enough machines, and what she said was, ‘I hope these people come back and vote again.’ “

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Blair bodyguard left gun in cafe

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

A police firearms officer left a gun in a coffee shop where it was discovered by a member of the public.

The pistol was reportedly left in the toilets of a central London branch of Starbucks by a police bodyguard who was once Tony Blair’s close protection officer.

A report claims the gun, a semi-automatic Glock 17, was left on the floor of the cafe’s only toilet for 20 minutes.

It belonged to a high-flying female officer in her 30s, it is claimed. She took off the belt holding the firearm when she used the toilet and then bought a coffee, forgetting she had left the gun behind.

The pistol was eventually linked to her when police compared its serial number to those logged at a police armoury.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “A police-issue firearm was left unattended in a central London cafe on August 29 and was found by a member of the public.

“The weapon belongs to a Metropolitan Police authorised firearms officer who was on duty at the time.”

It is understood the gun was left in the coffee shop by mistake.

An investigation is being carried out by Scotland Yard’s Directorate of Professional Standards.

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Hundreds Arrested for RNC Protest

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

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Big brother, big bother?

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Is the proposed Communications Data Bill a step too far for the British way of life? Timothy Pitt-Payne reports

 

By Timothy Pitt-Payne | On 15 July this year, the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, published his annual report. At the launch of the report he commented on the Government’s proposed Communications Data Bill. Referring to media suggestions that the Bill would make provision for a massive government database holding details of everyone’s telephone and internet communications, he stated that any such proposal would be “a step too far for the British way of life”.

The way in which personal information is held by the Government is a subject of increasing public debate in the UK. There are concerns about the nature and the volume of information that is acquired and retained — this is one of the reasons why the Government’s identity card proposals are so controversial. There are also concerns about security. Public confidence was severely damaged in November 2007, when CDs containing child benefit information about some 25 million individuals were lost by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). Since then there has been a series of further security breaches; most recently on 19 August, when a private contractor informed the Home Office that it had lost a computer memory stick containing personal details of tens of thousands of criminals.

The legal background to the Communications Data Bill is complex, but needs to be set out in a little detail in order to make sense of the Commissioner’s concerns. The story begins with a European Union (EU) Directive of 2006 imposing requirements for the retention of “communications data” by telecoms providers and internet service providers (ISPs) across member states. Communications data in this context essentially means information about who is communicating with whom, when and where they are communicating, and what means of communication they are using. It does not include information about the actual content of the communication.

So in relation to telephone usage, communications data would include the timing and destination of phone calls, but not what was said. In relation to internet usage, communications data would not include details of the actual websites visited from a particular computer, though it would include information about when and for how long that computer had been used to access the internet. Even with these limitations, the information covered by the directive can potentially tell you a great deal about ordinary individuals. This kind of information could be used, for example, in order to try and ascertain the whereabouts of a particular individual at a specific time.

Implementation of the Directive in the UK has proceeded in two stages. The first stage was the Data Retention Regulations 2007, which implemented the directive in relation to landlines and mobile phones (but not ISPs). The regulations require telecoms providers to retain communications information for a minimum of 12 months. The regulations do not themselves confer any right for Government to obtain access to the retained information. Instead, access is governed by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA 2000) and related regulations, under which various public bodies can access the retained information on request. The potential bases for access are wide-ranging, and are not confined to national security or the prevention of crime. For example, there is a right of access in the interests of the UK’s economic well-being, and another for the protection of public health. A court order is not required, though an order can be sought if access is refused by the telecoms provider.

The Government’s draft legislative programme for 2008-09 was published in May. This contained the first reference to a Communications Data Bill, intended to complete the implementation of the Directive. The draft programme
is uninformative about the detailed content of the proposed Bill, though it is envisaged that the Bill will extend to ISPs — since these were not covered by the 2007 regulations.

Media concern about the implications of the Bill began with a story in The Times on 20 May, suggesting that the Bill will adopt a radically different approach from the 2007 Regulations. According to the story, what is being contemplated is the creation of a central database under government control, containing all the retained records. Instead of merely retaining communications data and providing it on request, providers would automatically pass all of their communications data to the database.

Any proposal of this nature would prompt a number of important questions. One is whether the database would be confined to ISP records, or whether it would also cover telecoms records (the story suggested that both would be covered). A second question is what kind of information would be held. Would the database be confined to communications data, as defined in the Directive? Or would it include information about the actual content of telephone calls, emails and internet usage? And the third and most important question is who would be entitled to use the database, and in what way?

On any view a proposal of this nature would also raise some serious concerns, fully justifying the Information Commissioner’s comments. There is the obvious risk of further security breaches. The possibilities range from accidental large-scale disclosure (as in the HMRC case) to isolated instances of unauthorised access by individual employees. Imagine, for instance, an individual with access to the database who wants to know if his new partner still speaks to her ex-boyfriend on the phone. A second and even more serious risk is that, once the database has been created, more and more ways of using it will be found. Under RIPA 2000, both the range of authorities entitled to access communications data and the purposes for which they are permitted to have access can be amended without the need for primary legislation. If the Bill adopts a similar approach, then there would be the risk of incremental extensions, with limited parliamentary scrutiny. Interest in the database’s contents would not necessarily be confined to the UK. For instance, how would the UK Government respond if the US authorities asked for access to any information held on the new database about passengers intending to travel to the US?

The Information Commissioner has repeatedly warned about the danger of developing a ‘surveillance society’. The danger comes from a combination of legal and technological developments: legal developments that facilitate the collection of personal information on a wide scale, and technological developments that allow that information to be exploited in ever more sophisticated ways. In real life, the quintessentially British double-decker bus that played a starring role in the Olympic closing ceremony would undoubtedly have been monitored by CCTV cameras. Facial recognition software now allows CCTV images to be linked to databases of information about identifiable individuals. The more information about us is held on centralised databases, the greater the potential risk posed by this kind of linkage. For a description of what a surveillance society of the future might look like in practice, Cory Doctorow’s recent dystopian novel, Little Brother, is highly recommended.

Meanwhile, we wait to see the detail of the Communications Data Bill. It is hoped that the fears expressed by The Times and the Information Commissioner will not be borne out when the Bill is published. Public trust in the way in which personal information is held by Government is at a very low ebb. Proposals for massive new databases are not the right way to win it back.

Timothy Pitt-Payne is a barrister at 11KBW and visiting professor of information law at Northumbria University.

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