Pattern of Abuse: A decorated Army officer reveals new allegations of detainee mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan. Did the military ignore his charges? The U.S. Army has launched a criminal investigation into new allegations of serious prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan made by a decorated former Captain in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, an Army spokesman has confirmed to TIME. The claims of the Captain, who has not been named, are in part corroborated by statements of two sergeants who served with him in the 82nd Airborne; the allegations form the basis of a report from Human Rights Watch obtained by TIME and due to be released in the... (more)
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Futuristic Shopping In The Works At Chicago LabCHICAGO -- With wobbly wheels and squeaky carts, you may have thought grocery technology was confined to bar codes and coupon dispensers.
You might want to think again.
Some stores are equipping their carts with self-checkout scanners. And soon, they could be combining those scanners with the data they've been gathering on your shopping habits every time you check out.
At Chicago's Accenture Technology Labs, researchers think it will work like this: a... (more)
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British government announces new attacks on civil libertiesOn September 15, Home Secretary Charles Clarke announced details of the proposed draft Terrorism Bill that represents a fundamental attack on democratic rights and civil liberties. The government plans to push the bill through Parliament as soon as Christmas.
Among its proposals are measures to extend the period police can hold “terror suspects” without charge from two weeks to three months.
A law will be passed outlawing the “glorification” ... (more)
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Software blocks 'unwanted' music files and "unwanted" file-swapping applicationsThe International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the recording industry worldwide, has teamed up with the Motion Picture Association to offer file-swappers Digital File Check. It's what the entertainment industry has been waiting for -- a programme that not only wipes file-sharing software from your PC but also blocks "unwanted" file-swapping applications from being installed. DFC will also allow users to delete copyrighted music and video files from the PC's sh... (more)
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Big Brother under the skinBy Judi McLeod
Thursday, September 22, 2005
It's 2005 and Big Brother is not watching you; he's under your skin.
A company is implanting Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags in corpses in Mississippi to help identify the dead in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Principals of Florida-based VeriChip said RFID tags had already been implanted into 100 corpses on behalf of the Mississippi State Department of Health. (1993-2005 Red Her... (more)
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No2ID ejected from government's ID roadshowFour No2ID campaigners were ejected from Gateshead Metro Centre yesterday, after their attempts to protest against the introduction of a national identity register and identity card were deemed "inappropriate" for local shoppers.
Home Office Minister Andy Burnham was due to appear at the centre as part of his whistlestop tour aimed at persuading the nation of the benefits of ID cards and biometric technologies.
No2ID argues that the Home Office is rigorously exc... (more)
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US plans for star wars: U.S. deploys warfare unit to jam enemy satellitesThe U.S. military is bracing for future attacks in space, and the Air Force has deployed an electronic-warfare unit capable of jamming enemy satellites, the general in charge of space defenses says.
"You can't go to war and win without space," said Gen. Lance Lord, the four-star general in charge of the Colorado-based Air Force Space Command.
Gen. Lord said in an interview with The Washington Times that his command plays a key role in monitoring space, prote... (more)
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British Forces 'Free Jailed Servicemen'British forces using around 10 tanks have broken down the walls of Basra jail to free two service personnel arrested for firing on Iraqi policemen.Witnesses said about 150 Iraqi prisoners fled the jail as well.The Ministry of Defence would not comment on the report.
Violence erupted earlier in the city after the two men were arrested for allegedly shooting dead one policeman and wounding another.
The MoD refused to comment after officials said that they were underco... (more)
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Brzezinski believes U.S. needs to shed paranoia If the United States wants to be a great world leader, it has to climb out from under the bed, a former presidential adviser says.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as the national security adviser under President Carter, discussed the dangers of being a fear-driven nation Thursday night in front of about 140 people at the Cleveland Play House. His lecture was the first in a Cleveland Council on World Affairs series called "An Independent Opinion."
Our country has lo... (more)
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FLASHBACK: "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted(CBS) On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.
He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.
"In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.
Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to ha... (more)
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The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorismThe Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism, limiting Congress's ability to oversee spending, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released yesterday.
The Defense Department has reported spending $191 billion to fight terrorism from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks through May 2005, with the annual sum ballooning from $11 billion in fiscal 2002 to a projected $71 billion in fiscal 20... (more)
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Poll: Fewer than half think U.S. will win in IraqWASHINGTON (CNN) -- A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Thursday indicated fewer than half of Americans believe the United States will win the Iraq war, and 55 percent of those surveyed said it should speed up withdrawal plans.
Only 21 percent said the United States definitely would win the war in Iraq, which began when a U.S.-led coalition invaded in 2003 to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Another 22 percent said they thought the United States probably would win.
... (more)
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Feds Evoke "State Secrets Privilege", "the most powerful privilege the government has", To Steal Inventor's PatentWhen New England inventor Philip French had his epiphany 15 years ago, he didn't dream it would lead to an invention that would be pressed into service in a top-secret government project, or spawn an epic court battle over the limits of executive power. He was just admiring a tennis ball.
The ball's seam, with its two symmetrical halves embracing each other in a graceful curve, intrigued him. "I thought, my god, I bet you can do something with that kind of shape," he recalls. He w... (more)
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Tyco Exec: Abramoff Claimed Ties to AdministrationRepublican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general.
Timothy E. Flanigan, general counsel for conglomerate Tyco International Ltd., said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last we... (more)
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California Wants to Serve a Warning With FriesAmericans may have plenty of reasons to fear French fries. While they are one of the country's favorite foods, they are soaked with trans fats, loaded with sodium and full of simple carbs, the bad kind. And, it turns out, they are also full of a chemical called acrylamide, which is known to cause cancer in laboratory rats and mice.
That discovery a few years ago has raised questions about the safety of fries, as well as potato chips, which are also packed with acrylamide.
<... (more)
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Minutemen planning national action at U.S. bordersFORT WORTH, Texas - (KRT) - In late September 2004, retired CPA Jim Gilchrist was stopped at a red light in California traffic when the idea struck him: a force of citizen volunteers named after the Revolutionary-era Minutemen. Only instead of fighting British redcoats, these modern-day volunteers would be arrayed along the border to fight illegal immigration.
Gilchrist teamed with Chris Simcox, a newspaper publisher in Tucson, Ariz., to form the controversial Minuteman project, w... (more)
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NYT Writers Sue Google, Accusing It of Copyright ViolationThree authors filed suit against Google yesterday contending that the company's program to create searchable digital copies of the contents of several university libraries constituted "massive copyright infringement."
The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court in Manhattan, is the first to arise from the Google Print Library program, the fledgling effort aimed at a searchable library of all the world's printed books.
Google intends to make money from the pro... (more)
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias ships 1,000,000 barrels of petroleum to the United StatesThe Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C. issued a press release late this morning to inform that Venezuela President Hugo Chavez’ pledge to ship approximately an additional one million barrels of gasoline to the United States in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation will begin to come to fruition on September 25 with the arrival at Port Everglades (Florida) of the bulk tanker 'B/t Energy Pride' with a first shipment of 240,000 barrels.
The gasoline, ... (more)
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National Security Watch: The militarization of disaster responseIt's something seasoned emergency management professionals have seen before: Everything seems to go wrong in a domestic response to a natural disaster, and the public and the politicians, tired of bureaucratic bungling, look for a savior in the form of the military.
"It's a sentimentalism that always comes back," says Art Botterell, a five-year veteran of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and an occasional consultant to the Department of Homeland Security. Botterell says aft... (more)
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