30,000 Secret Warrant Per Year To Spy On People In The United States

WASHINGTON, DC – Federal judges approve about 30,000 secret warrants to spy on people in the USA every year, and the innocent probably will never know they were watched, says a U.S. jurist involved in issuing the orders.

Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith writes in a new paper, highlighted by Ars Technica, that the 2006 total outstripped the entire output of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court since it was created in 1979, and the number is probably growing.

The secret orders are authorized by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, known as ECPA. Smith writes that the volume of such cases “is greater than the combined yearly total of all antitrust, employment discrimination, environmental, copyright, patent, trademark and securities cases filed in federal court.”

The warrants and the court’s proceedings are not open to public scrutiny. A three-judge panel reviews denials of applications for the warrants, but the court is not adversarial or open, and many orders are never unsealed.

Here are some of Smith’s findings, which will be published in the Harvard Law & Policy Review:

These electronic surveillance orders … grant law enforcement access to the electronic lives of our citizens — who we call, where we go, when we text, what websites we visit, what emails we send. Unlike most court orders, electronic surveillance orders are permanently hidden from public view by various ECPA provisions, including sealed court files, gag orders, and delayed-notice. It’s as though these orders were written in invisible ink — legible to the phone companies and electronic service providers who execute them, yet imperceptible to targeted individuals, the general public, and even other arms of government, including Congress and appellate courts.

This regime of secrecy has many unhealthy consequences: Congress lacks accurate empirical data to monitor the effectiveness of the existing statutory scheme and adapt it to new technologies; appellate courts are unable to give effective guidance to magistrate judges on how to interpret ECPA’s complex provisions in light of changing technology; and citizens are not informed about the extent of government intrusion into their electronic lives. With Congress on the sidelines, appellate courts not engaged, and the public in the dark, the balance between surveillance and privacy has shifted dramatically towards law enforcement, almost by default.

To get to his 30,000 estimate, Smith combined an earlier government survey with data from his own court’s docket, Ars Technica notes.

Smith calls for “structural changes” in the law to “eliminate unnecessary secrecy,” including an end to “automatic gagging” and sealing orders. He suggests a publicly available “warrant cover sheet” that features basic information about every electronic surveillance order.

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More Federal Government Debt Racked Up In Last 15 MONTHS Under Obama Than In Previous 195 YEARS Under 43 Presidents

WASHINGTON, DC – The Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which took office in January 2011, has enacted federal spending bills under which the national debt has increased more in less than one term of Congress than in the first 97 Congresses combined.

In the fifteen months that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives–led by Speaker John Boehner–has effectively enjoyed a constitutional veto over federal spending, the federal government’s debt has increased by about $1.59 trillion.

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution says: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” A law appropriating money cannot be enacted unless it is approved by the House.

The approximately $1.59 trillion in new debt accumulated since the Republican-controlled House gained a veto over federal spending legislation is more than the total increase in the federal debt between 1789, when the first Congress convened, and October 1984, when the 98th Congress was nearing the end of its second session.

Rep. Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania served as speaker in the first Congress. Rep. Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts served his third term as speaker in the 98th Congress.

When Boehner became speaker on Jan. 5, 2011, the federal government was operating under a continuing resolution that had been passed on Dec. 21, 2010 by a lame-duck Congress. That CR expired on March 4, 2011.

On March 1, 2011, Boehner agreed to a new short-term spending deal with President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders to keep the government running past the March 4, 2011 expiration of the old CR. Since March 4, 2011, federal expenditures have been carried out under a series of CRs approved by both the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate and signed into law by President Obama.

At the close of business on March 4, 2011, the total federal debt was $14,182,627,184,881.03, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt. At the close of business on May 31, 2012, it was 15,770,685,085,364.14. That is an increase of $1,588,057,900,483.11—in just 15 months.

All of the debt accumulated by the federal government throughout the history of the country did not exceed $1.588 trillion until October 1984.

Under the Republican-controlled House, the federal debt has been increasing at an average pace of about $105.9 billion per month.

Frederick Muhlenberg served two non-consecutive terms as speaker–in the first and third Congresses. At the end of the first Congress, in 1791, the total debt of the federal government was about $75.5 million, according to the U.S. Treasury.

Tip O’Neill served as speaker in the 95th through 99th Congresses, from 1977 through 1986.

At the end of September 1984, during the 98th Congress, the total national debt was approximately $1,572,266,000,000.00, according to the Treasury Department’s Monthly Statement of the Public Debt for that month. At the end of October 1984, it was $1,611,537,000,000.00, according to the Monthly Statement of the Public Debt.

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Traffic Congestion Eases Under Obama Economy As High Gas Prices, Inflation, And Lack Of Jobs Effects Drivers

WASHINGTON, DC – Traffic congestion dropped 30% last year from 2010 in the USA’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, driven largely by higher gas prices and a spotty economic recovery, according to a new study by a Washington-state firm that tracks traffic flows.

That was the largest drop since the nation plunged into recession in December 2007.

Of the 100 most populous metro areas, 70 saw declines in traffic congestion while just 30 had increases, says Jim Bak, co-author of the 2011 U.S. Traffic Scorecard for Kirkland, Wash.-based INRIX.

That was a reversal of what happened in 2010, when 70 had increases in congestion and 30 had declines. Tampa had the biggest increase in congestion, and Minneapolis the biggest drop.

“We’re experiencing a stop-and-go economy right now,” Bak says. “The data indicate the country may be experiencing the jobless recovery economists warned of during the recession.”

Bak says the data show that the reduction in gridlock on the nation’s roads stems from rising fuel prices; lackluster gains in employment and modest increases in highway capacity because of construction projects completed under the federal stimulus program.

In some cases, the connection between job growth and increased congestion was clear. Cities that outpaced the national average of 1.5% growth in employment experienced some of the biggest increases in traffic congestion: Miami, 2.3% employment growth; Tampa, up 3%, and Houston, up 3.2%.

Cities that had big drops in congestion often were those that saw road construction slow considerably from 2010 to 2011 and those where gasoline prices were well above the national average at the peak in April 2011.

The decrease in congestion in Minneapolis came as the number of road projects dropped from 283 in 2010 to 258 in 2011, Bak says. “So much of the roadwork and construction that was a result of the stimulus is now completed. Construction work in general is down, as governments are reining in spending.”

Prices at the pump affected how long motorists sat in traffic. “Cities that consistently had gas prices equal to or lower than the national average, and that experienced modest job growth, were the cities that tended to have increases in congestion,” Bak says. Atlanta, which had a 2011 average gas price 20 cents less than the national average and a 1.2% growth in employment, saw the fourth-biggest jump in congestion.

The busiest morning and afternoon commute times were 8 a.m. Tuesday and 5:30 p.m. Friday, INRIX found.

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White Births No Longer A Majority In US – Less Than 1/2 Newborns Are White

WASHINGTON, DC — After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States.

Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history.

Such a turn has been long expected, but no one was certain when the moment would arrive — signaling a milestone for a nation whose government was founded by white Europeans and has wrestled mightily with issues of race, from the days of slavery, through a civil war, bitter civil rights battles and, most recently, highly charged debates over efforts to restrict immigration.

While over all, whites will remain a majority for some time, the fact that a younger generation is being born in which minorities are the majority has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life and its identity. “This is an important tipping point,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, describing the shift as a “transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”

Signs that the country is evolving this way start with the Oval Office, and have swept hundreds of counties in recent years, with 348 in which whites are no longer in the majority. That number doubles when it comes to the toddler population, Mr. Frey said. Whites are no longer the majority in four states and the District of Columbia, and have slipped below half in many major metro areas, including New York, Las Vegas and Memphis.

A more diverse young population forms the basis of a generational divide with the country’s elderly, a group that is largely white and grew up in a world that was too.

The contrast raises important policy questions. The United States has a spotty record educating minority youth; will older Americans balk at paying to educate a younger generation that looks less like themselves? And while the increasingly diverse young population is a potential engine of growth, will it become a burden if it is not properly educated?

“The question is, how do we reimagine the social contract when the generations don’t look like one another?” said Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, co-director of Immigration studies at New York University.

The trend toward greater minority births has been building for years, the result of the large wave of immigration here over the past three decades. Hispanics make up the majority of immigrants, and they tend to be younger — and to have more children — than non-Hispanic whites. (Of the total births in the year that ended last July, about 26 percent were Hispanic, about 15 percent black, and about 4 percent Asian.)

Whites still represent the single largest share of all births, at 49.6 percent, and are an overwhelming majority in the population as a whole, at 63.4 percent. But they are aging, causing a tectonic shift in American demographics. The median age for non-Hispanic whites is 42 — meaning the bulk of women are moving out of their prime childbearing years.

Latinos, on the other hand, are squarely within their peak fertility, with a median age of 27, said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. Between 2000 and 2010, there were more Hispanic births in the United States than there were arriving Hispanic immigrants, he said.

The result is striking: Minorities accounted for 92 percent of the nation’s population growth in the decade that ended in 2010, Mr. Frey calculated, a surge that has created a very different looking America from the one of the 1950s, when the TV characters Ozzie and Harriet were a national archetype.

The change is playing out across states with large differences in ethnic and racial makeup between the elderly and the young. Some of the largest gaps are in Arizona, Nevada, Texas and California, states that have had flare-ups over immigration, school textbooks and priorities in spending. The nonrural county with the largest gap is Yuma County, Ariz., where just 18 percent of people under 20 are white, compared with 73 percent of people over 65, Mr. Frey said.

More Foreign Spies Active On US Soil Than At Peak Of Cold War

WASHINGTON, DC – A former top CIA covert officer who ran one of the spy agency’s secret domestic networks says there are now more foreign spies on U.S. soil than at the peak of the Cold War. The former officer, Hank Crumpton, who also served as deputy director of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center and led the U.S. response to 9/11, speaks candidly to Lara Logan about his life as a spy on 60Minutes, Sunday, May 13at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

As the chief of the CIA’s National Resources Division, the highly-sensitive, secret domestic operation, he conducted counter-intelligence within the U.S. “If you look at the threat that is imposed upon our nation every day, some of the major nation states — China in particular — [have] very sophisticated intelligence operations, very aggressive operations against the U.S.,” says Crumpton. “I would hazard to guess there are more foreign intelligence officers inside the U.S. working against U.S. interests now than even at the height of the Cold War,” he tells Logan. “It’s a critical issue.”

Also critical in Crumpton’s mind is the danger posed by al Qaeda, especially factions operating in North Africa. “I’m particularly concerned about al Qaeda in Yemen, which is fractured as a nation state,” he says. “The Sahel, if you look at al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, they pose a threat, and in Somalia. Those are the places I’d be concerned,” says Crumpton.

Crumpton says al Qaeda could make a comeback in Afghanistan if the U.S. withdraws too quickly. The current situation there reminds him of a “Greek tragedy,” he tells Logan. “You’ve got so many mistakes on the U.S. side, and you’ve got a feckless, corrupt government on the Afghan side. I am really more pessimistic now than I’ve been in a long time,” says Crumpton.

The retired spy also tells Logan about the early months in Afghanistan after 9/11, when the U.S. effort to topple the Taliban was led by the CIA and about how two administrations’ failure to let CIA assets kill Osama bin Laden led to the development of predator drones.

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New York Governor: US Turning Into Nation Of People Sitting On Couch Waiting For Next Government Check

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Gov. Chris Christie said the country is becoming a “paternalistic entitlement society” this morning in a speech at a conservative conference headed by former President George W. Bush.

Addressing Bush and other national Republicans, Christie said he hasn’t seen a less optimistic period in the country in his lifetime.

“Government’s telling them stop dreaming, stop striving, we’ll take care of you,” he said at a theater at the New York Historical Society. “We’re turning into a paternalistic entitlement society. That will not just bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally.”

“We’ll have a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check,” Christie said.

Christie and Bush kicked off a day-long conference on pro-growth tax policy run by the President George W. Bush Institute, a group that Bush said allows him to engage in public policy issues behind the scenes.

Speakers throughout the day include Steve Forbes, Congressman Paul Ryan, Karl Rove and several governors. In addition to Bush, Henry Kissinger was in the audience for Christie’s 30-minute speech.

Bush said the topic of the conference is how to grow the private sector. He introduced Christie by complimenting his “enormous personality” and “belief in the individual,” saying even Texans had taken note of the governor.

“We admire the courageous stance you take,” said Bush, who nominated Christie to be U.S. Attorney.

“I was a proud member of the Bush administration for seven years,” Christie said, later adding that Bush “inspired a whole new generation of conservative Republican leaders.”

Christie spent much of his speech recapping his first two budgets, pension and health benefit overhaul for public workers, and the 2 percent cap on property taxes, stressing bipartisanship but also touting his ability to stick to his principles.

“We developed relationships with the other side of the aisle that allowed them to trust us. And that doesn’t happen overnight,” Christie said. “Day after day after day you have to sit with our colleagues and convince them of the goodness of your spirit and of the understanding that compromise is not a dirty word.”

He used his veto of the millionaire’s tax and his current pursuit of a 10 percent income tax cut as examples of the type of pro-growth tax policy that Bush referenced. He said the public sector in New Jersey is smaller, while he has created jobs in the private sector.

“If you can do this in New Jersey, you can do it anywhere,” Christie said. “Most importantly you can do it in Washington D.C. What we need again is some leadership that is not going to take no for an answer.”

Though Christie alluded to national politics, he spent most of the speech on New Jersey issues. Neither he nor Bush mentioned President Barack Obama, or the likely Republican presidential nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Christie has endorsed and campaigned for Romney, while Bush has not publicly endorsed any of the GOP candidates.

“I have decided to stay out of the limelight,” Bush said. “I don’t think it’s good, frankly, for our country to undermine the president and I don’t intend to do so. But I do intend to remain involved in areas that I’m interested in.”

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Cops Keep Getting Killed – Highest Rate Since 2008

WASHINGTON, DC — As violent crime has decreased across the country, a disturbing trend has emerged: rising numbers of police officers are being killed.

According to statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 72 officers were killed by perpetrators in 2011, a 25 percent increase from the previous year and a 75 percent increase from 2008.

The 2011 deaths were the first time that more officers were killed by suspects than car accidents, according to data compiled by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The number was the highest in nearly two decades, excluding those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

While a majority of officers were killed in smaller cities, 13 were killed in cities of 250,000 or more. New York City lost two officers last year. On Sunday, four were wounded by a gunman in Brooklyn, bringing to eight the number of officers shot in the city since December.

“We haven’t seen a period of this type of violence in a long time,” said Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly of the New York Police Department.

While the F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials cannot fully explain the reasons for the rise in officer homicides, they are clear about the devastating consequences.

“In this law enforcement job, when you pin this badge on and go out on calls, when you leave home, you ain’t got a promise that you will come back,” said Sheriff Ray Foster of Buchanan County, Va. Two of his deputies were killed in March 2011 and two wounded — one of them paralyzed — by a man with a high-powered rifle.

“That was 80 percent of my day shift,” he said.

After a spate of killings in early 2011, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asked federal authorities to work with local police departments to try to come up with solutions to the problem.

The F.B.I., which has tracked officer deaths since 1937, paid for a study conducted by John Jay College that found that in many cases the officers were trying to arrest or stop a suspect who had previously been arrested for a violent crime.

That prompted the F.B.I. to change what information it will provide to local police departments, the officials said. Starting this year, when police officers stop a car and call its license plate into the F.B.I.’s database, they will be told whether the owner of the vehicle has a violent history. Through the first three months of this year, the number of police fatalities has dropped, though it is unclear why.

Some law enforcement officials believe that techniques pioneered by the New York Police Department over the past two decades and adopted by other departments may have put officers at greater risk by encouraging them to conduct more street stops and to seek out and confront suspects who seem likely to be armed. In New York and elsewhere, police officials moved more officers into crime-ridden areas.

“This technique has become more popular across the country as smaller departments have followed the larger cities and tried to prevent crime,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “Unlike several decades ago, there is this expectation that police matter and that police can make a difference.”

Commissioner Kelly said, “We try to put those officers where there is the most potential for violence.” However, he pointed out that most of the officers who have been shot in New York since December were not part of a proactive police deployment but were responding to emergencies.

Some argue that the rise in violence is linked to the tough economy. With less money, some states are releasing prisoners earlier; police departments, after years of staffing increases, have been forced to make cutbacks.

“A lot of these killings aren’t happening in major urban areas,” said James W. McMahon, chief of staff for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “One of the concerns we are looking at is that a number of officers are being laid off or furloughed or not replaced.”

The police chief in Camden, N.J., J. Scott Thomson, whose force of 400 was cut by nearly half last year because of financing issues, said that having fewer officers on the street “makes it that much more difficult to create an environment in which criminals do not feel as emboldened to assault another person, let alone a law enforcement officer.”

The murder of a veteran officer last April in Chattanooga, Tenn., was typical of many of the 2011 episodes.

Sgt. Tim Chapin, a veteran nearing retirement, rushed to provide backup to officers who had responded to reports of a robbery outside a pawnshop and were under fire. Sergeant Chapin got out of his car and chased the fleeing suspect, who had been convicted of armed robbery. During the pursuit, the sergeant was fatally shot in the head.

As part of the F.B.I.’s efforts to prevent officer deaths, the bureau trains thousands of officers each year, highlighting shootings like the one in Chattanooga to teach officers about situations in which they are most vulnerable. Those situations are typically pursuits, traffic stops and arrests, said Michelle S. Klimt, a top F.B.I. official at its Criminal Justice Information Services Center in Clarksburg, W.Va., who oversees officer training.

“Every stop can be potentially fatal, so we are trying to make sure the officers are ready and prepared every single day they go out,” Ms. Klimt said. “We try and teach that every day you go out, you are going to be encountered with deadly force by someone trying to kill you.”

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Man Treated Like A “Criminal” By US As He Tries To Enter To Attend 10 Year Old Son’s Funeral – Story Goes On To Mention He Got The Boot For Being In US Illegally In 2007…

A Mexican national said he has been barred from entering the United States to bury his 10-year-old son, a U.S. citizen who died Tuesday in a house fire in northeastern Pennsylvania that killed three other people.

Attorneys for Fidelmar “Fidel” Merlos-Lopez are trying to win humanitarian parole so he can attend the funeral, but say U.S. Customs and Border Protection has rebuffed their efforts.

Damien Lopez died in a Shenandoah row house along with his cousin, aunt and 7-month-old half-brother. The funeral is set for Monday, with burial the next day.

“I told the customs officer that all I want is a permit to see my boy for one last time. They treat me as if I am a criminal,” Lopez, 34, a bus driver, said in an interview Saturday. “Right now, I need their support, and they are refusing to help me.”

Lopez has been waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border near Laredo, Texas, since the fire.

“He’s out of his mind. Can you imagine? Your son is dead in a fire and you can’t even get across. It’s clear they are giving us the runaround,” said Elizabeth Surin, his Philadelphia-based immigration lawyer.

A spokeswoman for the border agency did not return a phone message left at her office Saturday.

Lopez was a teenager when he entered the United States illegally in 1995 and wound up in Shenandoah, a blue-collar town with a large Hispanic population. He married a U.S. citizen who gave birth to Damien in 2002. He later divorced Damien’s mother and married his current wife, Danielle Lopez, who’s also a U.S. citizen.

In 2007, police in nearby Frackville stopped Lopez for running a red light and turned him over to immigration authorities. He agreed to leave the U.S. voluntarily and began the process of applying for legal permanent residence.

Surin, his immigration lawyer, said he was well on his way to getting his green card and rejoining his family in Shenandoah when tragedy struck.

“He’s trying to comply, trying to follow the rules of U.S. immigration law, but they are using that against him now. This whole thing is really heart-wrenching,” she said.

Humanitarian parole is granted to immigrants who have a compelling emergency that requires temporary entry into the United States. It is used sparingly: The government approves only about 25 percent of the 1,200 applications it gets each year.

Surin said Lopez qualifies. In fact, the Mexican husband of Tiffany Sanchez, the 29-year-old woman who died in the fire, was granted humanitarian parole to attend the funeral, she said.

Surin said border officials told her that Lopez was denied entry because he didn’t have a relationship with Damien. She said it’s just the opposite: Lopez shared partial custody of Damien and paid his ex-wife child support before leaving the United States.

Lopez, who worked as a mechanic in Shenandoah, said he was very close to his son.

“I have a video of him. I watch it often. Of when he graduated from kindergarten, you know how they do those parties. He was wearing his cap, a shirt and a tie,” Lopez said.

Though he hadn’t seen Damien in more than three years, they spoke over the phone twice a week.

“He used to tell me, ‘Come back, come back,'” he said. “I have been thinking that maybe it’s my fault because there may have been a reason he asked me that.”

His current wife said Lopez, who lives in Naucalpan de Juarez, a suburb of Mexico City, had been looking forward to returning to the United States. Now he’s desperate to get back, if only for a few days. But time is running out.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” said Danielle Lopez, 28, a hairdresser who was born and raised in Shenandoah. “It’s his child, his flesh and blood, his firstborn son. It’s horrible.”

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U.S. Credit Card Security? – No Much…

US – Four giant card-payment processors and large U.S. banks that issue debit and credit cards were hit by a data-security breach after third-party services provider Global Payments Inc discovered its systems were compromised by unauthorized access.

It was not immediately clear how many cardholders became victims of the breach, which affected MasterCard Inc, Visa Inc, American Express Co and Discover Financial Services, as well as banks and other franchises that issue cards bearing their logos.

U.S. law enforcement authorities including the Secret Service are investigating and MasterCard said it has hired an independent data-security organization to review the incident.

The shares of Atlanta-based Global Payments, which acts as a credit-checking middleman between merchants and card processors, were halted on Friday afternoon after dropping more than 9 percent on the news.

MasterCard shares fell 1.8 percent to close at $420.54, Visa shares dropped 0.8 percent to $118, American Express shares fell 0.1 percent to $57.86, while Discover rose 1.2 percent to $33.34.

Analysts said any financial losses from the data breach would be shouldered by merchants, card issuers and Global Payments rather than Visa or Mastercard, which operate payment networks.

Global Payments said it determined that an unauthorized entity had accessed its systems and possible customer card data in early March. Krebs on Security, a blog that first reported the incident on Friday, said accounts had been compromised for over a month, between January 21, 2012 and February 25, 2012.

Global Payments is holding an investor conference call Monday morning to discuss the issue.

This Global Payments breach is just the latest in a long string of incidents that have put the personal information of millions of credit and debit cardholders at risk.

Individual banks and processors said they had not yet determined the full extent of the breach, but Krebs on Security described it as a “massive” breach that may affect more than 10 million cardholders.

Some industry experts suggested the figure might be much less, perhaps on the order of tens of thousands. Bernstein Research analyst Rod Bourgeois noted that Global Payments is a relatively small player in the transactions services industry, servicing 800,000 merchants with a 3.5 percent market share. By contrast, the largest competitor, First Data, services millions of merchants, with 22.6 percent of the market.

JPMorgan Chase & Co, as well as American Express and Discover, which issue their own cards, said they are monitoring customers’ accounts and would issue new cards to anyone whose information may have been compromised.

Citigroup Inc said it has been notified by processors of the breach. Bank of America Corp declined to comment on the matter and Wells Fargo & Co said it was too early to comment on the impact.

Banks and processors emphasized customers would not be held liable for any fraudulent charges that may occur.

Mike Simonsen, the Chief Executive of real-estate research company Altos Research, said he may have been a victim.

Simonsen said he was contacted by his bank, Bank of America Corp, last week about his Visa card. Although there were no unauthorized transactions, the representative told him a vendor or law enforcement agency had flagged his account as compromised and so he would receive a new one.

“It was very unusual,” he said.

PROCESSING PIPELINE

Global Payments, which has about 3,700 employees, was spun off from information-services firm National Data Corp in 2001. For the fiscal year ended May 31, Global Payment reported revenue of $1.9 billion, an increase of 13 percent from the year-earlier period. According to a company presentation in January, the company was projected to report fiscal 2012 revenue in the range of $2.15 billion.

The company is scheduled to report fiscal third-quarter results on Wednesday and there had been the expectation Global Payments would report improving results. On Wednesday, Sterne Agee raised its price target for Global Payments to $65 a share from $58.

Global Payments is one of dozens of companies that operate along the payment-processing chain, between the time a person swipes a card to pay and the time the payment is delivered.

The account number, expiration date and possibly the cardholder’s name is sent from the point of payment to a processor, which then connects to Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover. Information is then sent to the card issuer — often a bank — which ultimately authorizes the transaction.

The actual transfer of money occurs later.

Processing companies, which perform millions of authorizations each day, are supposed to encrypt card information. But a breach could occur if someone gains access to the system and identifies a gap in the encryption.

The information that was likely collected illegally from Global Payments is called Track 1 and Track 2 data. A person improperly using the information can transfer the account number and expiration date to a magnetic strip on a card and then try to use the card on a website.

Thousands of U.S. banks that issue credit and debit cards receive daily alerts regarding breaches through a system referred to as CAMS, said Thomas McCrohan, an analyst with Janney Capital Markets.

The illegal use of the data could be stymied if an online merchant asks for the three or four digits printed on a card known as the “CVV code.”

“The systems can all be made tighter, but if they’re too tight no transactions would ever be approved,” said Edward Lawrence, a director at Auriemma Consulting Group, a payment systems consultant. “You still have to allow commerce to occur.”

Rep. Mary Bono, a California Republican who chairs the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, condemned the Global Payments breach and urged Congress to adopt stronger data-security legislation this year.

“You shouldn’t have to cross your fingers and whisper a prayer when you type in a credit card number on your computer and hit ‘enter,'” she said in a statement.

RIPPLE EFFECTS

The Visa-Mastercard-Discover breach is the first major instance this year of consumer information put at risk by technological flaws or hacking, but there are plenty of examples of massive data breaches in recent years affecting banks, retailers, technology companies and payment processors.

Last June, Citigroup said computer hackers breached the bank’s network and accessed data of about 200,000 cardholders in North America.

Sony Corp also reported several recent attacks, including one last year in which hackers accessed the personal information on 77 million PlayStation Network accounts.

Google Inc suffered a major attack on its Gmail accounts in 2011 that it said appeared to originate in China. Attacks against Gmail users involved direct attempts to compromise accounts by tricking users into revealing information – so-called “phishing” – or by gathering their passwords from other websites, rather than compromising Google systems, according to the company.

Separately, TJX Companies Inc and Heartland Payment Systems Inc have had their systems compromised.

On Friday, retailers were already beginning to look for fraudulent purchases from the compromised card accounts stemming from the Global Payments breach. They will bear the financial brunt of those crimes under rules worked out with the card associations and issuers, analysts said.

“Our merchant community is sitting here girding itself and looking at their own fraud-prevention strategies and bracing for the influx of bad transactions,” said Tom Donlea, managing director for the Americas at the nonprofit Merchant Risk Council. “After Heartland and after the Sony breach, there was an increase in fraud activity.”

(This version of the story corrects paragraph 29 to delete statement Google systems were compromised and adds that Gmail users were targets of a “phishing” scam)

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US Has Secret Charges Against WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange After He Embarrassed US Goverment By Exposing Lies And Information

United States prosecutors have drawn up secret charges against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, according to a confidential email obtained from the private US intelligence company Stratfor. embarrassing

In an internal email to Stratfor analysts on January 26 last year, the vice-president of intelligence, Fred Burton, responded to a media report concerning US investigations targeting WikiLeaks with the comment: ”We have a sealed indictment on Assange.”
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Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks speaks at a press conference in London, Monday, Feb. 27, 2012. WikiLeaks said on Monday that it was publishing a massive trove of leaked emails from U.S. intelligence analysis firm Stratfor, shedding light on the inner workings of the Texas-based think tank. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

”If I thought I could switch this dickhead off without getting done I don’t think I’d have too much of a problem.” … Stratfor’s Chris Farnham on Assange. Photo: AP

He underlined the sensitivity of the information – apparently obtained from a US government source – with warnings to ”Pls [please] protect” and ”Not for pub[lication]”.

Mr Burton is well known as an expert on security and counterterrorism with close ties to the US intelligence and law enforcement agencies. He is the former deputy chief of the counter-terrorism division of the US State Department’s diplomatic security service.

Stratfor, whose headquarters are in Austin, Texas, provides intelligence and analysis to corporate and government subscribers.

On Monday, WikiLeaks began releasing more than 5 million Stratfor emails which it said showed ”how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients”.

The Herald has secured access to the emails through an investigative partnership with WikiLeaks.

The news that US prosecutors drew up a secret indictment against Mr Assange more than 12 months ago comes as the Australian awaits a British Supreme Court decision on his appeal against extradition to Sweden to be questioned in relation to sexual assault allegations.

Mr Assange, who has not been charged with any offence in Sweden, fears extradition to Stockholm will open the way for his extradition to the US on possible espionage or conspiracy charges in retaliation for WikiLeaks’s publication of thousands of leaked US classified military and diplomatic reports.

Last week the US Army Private Bradley Manning was committed to face court martial for 22 alleged offences, including ”aiding the enemy” by leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks.

In December the Herald revealed Australian diplomatic cables, declassified under freedom of information, confirmed WikiLeaks was the target of a US Justice Department investigation ”unprecedented both in its scale and nature” and suggested that media reports that a secret grand jury had been convened in Alexandria, Virginia, were ”likely true”.

The Australian embassy in Washington reported in December 2010 that the Justice Department was pursuing an ”active and vigorous inquiry into whether Julian Assange can be charged under US law, most likely the 1917 Espionage Act”.

In recent answers to written parliamentary questions from the Greens senator Scott Ludlam, the former foreign affairs minister Kevin Rudd indicated Australia had sought confirmation that a secret grand jury inquiry directed against Mr Assange was under way.

Mr Rudd said ”no formal advice” had been received from US authorities but acknowledged the existence of a ”temporary surrender” mechanism that could allow Mr Assange to be extradited from Sweden to the US. He added that Swedish officials had said Mr Assange’s case would be afforded ”due process”.

The US government has repeatedly declined to confirm or deny any reported details of the WikiLeaks inquiry, beyond the fact that an investigation is being pursued.

The Stratfor emails show that the WikiLeaks publication of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables triggered intense discussion within the ”global intelligence” company.

In the emails, an Australian Stratfor ”senior watch officer”, Chris Farnham, advocated revoking Mr Assange’s Australian citizenship, adding: ”I don’t care about the other leaks but the ones he has made that potentially damage Australian interests upset me. If I thought I could switch this dickhead off without getting done I don’t think I’d have too much of a problem.”

But Mr Farnham also referred to a conversation with a close family friend who he said knew one of the Swedish women who had made allegations of sexual assault against Mr Assange, and added: ”There is absolutely nothing behind it other than prosecutors that are looking to make a name for themselves.”

While some Stratfor analysts decried what they saw as Mr Assange’s ”clear anti-Americanism”, others welcomed the leaks and debated WikiLeaks’s longer-term impact on secret diplomacy and intelligence.

Stratfor’s director of analysis, Reva Bhalla, observed: ”WikiLeaks itself may struggle to survive but the idea that’s put out there, that anyone with the bandwidth and servers to support such a system can act as a prime outlet of leaks. [People] are obsessed with this kind of stuff. The idea behind it won’t die.”

Stratfor says it will not comment on the emails obtained by WikiLeaks. The US embassy has also declined to comment.

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Federal Goverment Hiding Data On Domestic Use Of Drone Aircraft

WASHINGTON, DC – The domestic use of stealth drones to survey America from the skies is no joke. The Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged that the US government has used the planes on the home front for years, but why and how is largely unknown.

An advocacy group aims to change that.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit based out of San Francisco, California, filed a Freedom of Information Act request back in April to learn more about domestic drone use in America. Eight months later, the Department of Transportation (and its subdivision that deals directly with domestic drones, the Federal Aviation Administration), has failed to follow through. On Tuesday this week, the EFF responded by formally filing a suit against the DoT, “Demanding data on certifications and authorizations the agency has issued for the operation of unmanned aircraft, also known as drones.”

Aside from what is leaked out of the Pentagon to the media, much isn’t clear about drone use except for a seemingly endless series of misadventures that have plagued the Department of Defense in recent months. As the US military continues drone operations overseas, the craft fleets have been linked to the firing of missiles, the monitoring of both insurgents and civilians and escalating tensions between the US and Iran. In terms of military use, drone operations have yielded widespread opposition from the likes of constitutional rights advocates, presidential candidate Ron Paul and the American Civil Liberties Union. Regardless, the government is only adding an arsenal of more and more craft to its fleet every month, adding international bases and investing billions in new unmanned planes.

American drone missions overseas are being launched for obvious reasons, despite how the government describes it. Domestic use, however, is largely kept in the shadows and is rarely discussed. San Francisco’s EFF says that at least 285 missions have occurred in America, but they want to know more about them. The US government, however, is being far from accommodation in regards to their request.

With the filing of the suit on Tuesday, the EFF hopes that they will be able to finally let the public understand why spy planes are being flown through American skies without the people of the country given any reason or warning as to why.

“There is currently no information available to the public on which specific public and civil entities have applied for, been granted or been denied certificates or authorizations to fly unmanned aircraft in the United States,” the EFF’s complaint says. In April they filed their FOIA request for information, and with no response nearly a year later, they have determined that by September of 2011, almost 300 missions by 85 separate users were certified by the FAA in all. The FAA, a component of the DOT, approves all domestic drone missions. A recent report revealed that the they are currently in the works to approve non-federal use of the spy craft planes in the US, drafting a legislation that will umbrella any local law enforcement unit to deploy drones as they would a street cruiser or bike cop.

“This is a tool that many law enforcement agencies never imagined they could have,” Steven Gitlin of AeroVironment Inc. told the Los Angeles Times in November. His company is already in the works to supply law enforcement agencies with 18,000 of small drone crafts once the FAA grants them clearance.

In the meantime, however, the federal government continues to operate these missions without explaining why. Such a shadowy-nature has only increased paranoia for Americans skeptic of the Big Brother branding near synonymous with the Obama administration, and an ongoing assault on the civil liberties of citizens is driving those previously unaware of drones to disavow the use.

“The use of drones in American airspace could dramatically increase the physical tracking of citizens – tracking that can reveal deeply personal details about our private lives,” EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch says in a statement. “Drones give the government and other unmanned aircraft operators a powerful new surveillance tool to gather extensive and intrusive data on Americans’ movements and activities,” she adds, noting that the usage rises “significant privacy concerns.”

“We’re asking the DOT to follow the law and respond to our FOIA request so we can learn more about who is flying the drones and why,” Lynch pleads in explaining the suit.

While America waits for the truth, they are left with only one option: to prefer for the worst and cover their tracks.

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Anonymous Posts Thousands Of Police Officers Personal Information On Web After Occupy Movement Camp Evictions

US – Computer hackers are avenging the Occupy movement by exposing the personal information of police officers who evicted protesters and threatening family-values advocates who led a boycott of an American Muslim television show.

In three Internet postings last week, hackers from the loose online coalition called Anonymous published the email and physical addresses, phone numbers and, in some cases, salary details of thousands of law enforcement officers all over the country.

The hackers said they were retaliating for police violence during evictions of Occupy protest camps in cities around the country, but law enforcement advocates slammed the disclosures as dangerous.

“I hope the individuals behind these cyberattacks understand the consequences of what they are doing,” said John Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. “There are very dangerous criminals out there who might seek retribution” against any of these police officers.

Another hacker calling himself ihazcAnNONz struck the website of the Florida Family Association. The group opposes gay marriage and has promoted a successful but highly controversial boycott of advertisers on the reality TV show “All-American Muslim.”
Occupy D.C. protesters stand off with police as they block 14th and K streets NW in Washington on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011. (T.J. Kirkpatrick/The Washington Times)Occupy D.C. protesters stand off with police as they block 14th and K streets NW in Washington on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011. (T.J. Kirkpatrick/The Washington Times)

The group says the show is “propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Shariah law.”

Supporters of the show say it depicts ordinary Muslim-American families living their normal lives, and they accuse its critics bigotry.

The hacker, ihazcAnNONz, warned the Florida family group, “Your hatred, bigotry and fear mongering towards Gays, Lesbians and most recently Muslim Americans has not gone unnoticed!”

In an Internet posting, he told the family association he was reading its email, and he provided email addresses and partial credit-card information of two dozen or so of the group’s supporters. He referred to the Occupy Wall Street movement’s slogan about the “1 percent” and the “99 percent.”

“I am going to assume most of the people who receive your newsletter, email you and make donations are potentially part of the 99 percent … who have been mislead by all of your [expletive] and god talk,” he wrote, adding that he therefore would not post confidential information on them.

The family association did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Last week, a hacker calling himself Exphin1ty posted the email and physical addresses, phone numbers and encrypted passwords of more than 2,400 police officers and corporate security executives.

“We have seen our fellow brothers and sisters being teargassed for exercising their fundamental liberal rights,” he wrote.

He urged fellow hackers with access to greater computing power to crack the encryption on passwords and see if the victims had used the same password for any other accounts.

Websites that require users to register typically store data such as names, email addresses and passwords on their servers.

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Flaw In iTunes Allowed Hackers And Spys Access To Users Computers For 3+ Years

UK – A British company called Gamma International marketed hacking software to governments that exploited the vulnerability via a bogus update to iTunes, Apple’s media player, which is installed on more than 250 million machines worldwide.

The hacking software, FinFisher, is used to spy on intelligence targets’ computers. It is known to be used by British agencies and earlier this year records were discovered in abandoned offices of that showed it had been offered to Egypt’s feared secret police.

Apple was informed about the relevant flaw in iTunes in 2008, according to Brian Krebs, a security writer, but did not patch the software until earlier this month, a delay of more than three years.

“A prominent security researcher warned Apple about this dangerous vulnerability in mid-2008, yet the company waited more than 1,200 days to fix the flaw,” he said in a blog post.

“The disclosure raises questions about whether and when Apple knew about the Trojan offering, and its timing in choosing to sew up the security hole in this ubiquitous software title.”
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On average Apple takes just 91 days to fix security flaws after they are disclosed, Mr Krebs wrote.

Francisco Amato, the Argentinian security researcher who warned Apple about the problem suggested that “maybe they forgot about it, or it was just on the bottom of their to-do list”.

In response to reports that FinFisher targeted iTunes, Apple has said that it works “to find and fix any issues that could compromise systems”.

“The security and privacy of our users is extremely important,” a spokeswoman said.

This month’s iTunes update 10.5.1 explained that “a man-in-the-middle attacker may offer software that appears to originate from Apple”, adding that the “issue has been mitigated”.

Gamma International has not commented on the matter. Registered in Winchester, the firm is one of several companies that sell computer hacking services to governments. They offer “zero day” security flaws, which have not been publicly disclosed, so attempts to exploit them are unlikely to be detected by anti-virus programs.

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American Traffic Solutions Created Scam Nonprofit “National Coalition for Safer Roads” To Promote Their Red Light Cameras

US – Last month, a group alling itself the National Coalition for Safer Roads (NCSR) obtained a great deal of exposure for red light cameras through the “National Stop on Red Week” publicity campaign. Several police departments around the country participated, with most news reports treating the issue as a public service announcement. Documents show the group coordinating this effort, NCSR, is controlled exclusively by the photo ticketing firm American Traffic Solutions (ATS).

As previously reported, NCSR is the creation of David Kelly, the head of the public relations firm Storm King Strategies, and ATS is just one of Kelly’s many clients. According to congressional records, Kelly has received at least $580,000 since 2009 to lobby in favor of ticketing for the National Safety Council; for legislation mandating ignition interlocks on behalf of interlock manufacturers; and for reduced CAFE standards on behalf of Jaguar-Land Rover.

Documents incorporating NCSR Inc as a nonprofit entity in the state of Missouri confirm that NCSR is anything but the independent campaign of “victims, parents, medical professionals and first responders” as the group’s publicity material suggests. NCSR’s board of directors instead consists of three individuals: James D. Tuton, ATS president; George J. Hittner, ATS General Counsel; and Charles Territo, ATS spokesman.

While NCSR’s website does mention that it is “supported by American Traffic Solutions,” it fails to disclose the complete control ATS has over the entity’s operations. Matt Hay, former city councilman for the city of Arnold, Missouri and creator of the WrongOnRed website, suggests NCSR is, in effect, misusing public funds.

“In Missouri, we had public officials on the public payroll filming commercials and participating in other advertising for the National Coalition for Safer Roads,” Hay told TheNewspaper. “With the revelation that these two entities, American Traffic Solutions and National Coalition for Safer Roads, are the same, it raises real concerns over the legitimacy of what amounts to propaganda they produce as well as the ethical issue of public employees advertising for a private firm on taxpayer time.”

For Stop on Red Week, NCSR released a glossy, 18-page manual for elected officials and police chiefs to use to celebrate the benefits of red light cameras. It included sample letters to the editor, press releases talking points and city council resolutions. Those playing ball with the effort have been rewarded with highly lucrative jobs. John Wintersteen, the former chief for photo radar pioneer Paradise Valley, and Ron Reagan, the former state representative responsible for legalizing cameras in Florida, both are now part of NCSR-ATS.

Each new city that signs up for a photo ticketing contract represents millions in revenue for ATS. In 2005, the firm attempted to trademark the phrase “Safety Pays.” A copy of NCSR’s incorporation filing is available in a 550k PDF file at the source link below.

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9/11 Hysteria: Mall Of America Security Guards Gone Wild – FBI Assists In Returning Lost Cell Phones To Owners – War On Cameras

US – On May 1, 2008, at 4:59 p.m., Brad Kleinerman entered the spooky world of homeland security.

As he shopped for a children’s watch inside the sprawling Mall of America, two security guards approached and began questioning him. Although he was not accused of wrongdoing, the guards wrote a confidential report about Kleinerman that was sent to police.

The reason: Guards thought the Avon, Conn., man might pose a threat because he looked at them in a suspicious way.

The episode is one of many cases in which seemingly innocent people have been ensnared by the mall’s counterterrorism initiative, an investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting and National Public Radio has found.

In many cases, information about people stopped at the mall has found its way into the hands of law enforcement without their knowledge. The information in reports obtained by reporters includes birth dates, employer names, Social Security numbers, and names of family members and friends. Some reports contain shoppers’ travel plans and surveillance images.

Nearly two-thirds of the people mentioned in more than 100 reports were minorities.

Mall of America officials say its security unit conducts up to 1,200 “security interviews” each year for a variety of reasons. Officials say the program focuses only on behavior.

“The government is not going to protect us free of charge, so we have to do that ourselves,” said Maureen Bausch, the mall’s executive vice president of business development. “We’re lucky enough to be in the city of Bloomington where they actually have a police substation here [in the mall]. … They’re great. But we are responsible for this building.”

Najam Qureshi, who once owned a mall kiosk that sold items from his native Pakistan, recalls when his father left a cellphone on a table in the food court. An FBI agent came to their home, asking if they knew anyone who might want to hurt the United States.

An Iranian man, now 62, began passing out during questioning. An Army veteran sobbed in his car after being questioned for nearly two hours. Much of the questioning has been done in public while shoppers mill around.

The Center for Investigative Reporting and NPR obtained 125 suspicious activity reports totaling more than 1,000 pages referring to the mall and dating back to 2005. Bloomington police and a state intelligence center released the reports under the state public records law. It’s unclear how many other reports may have been shared with law enforcement.

The documents give a glimpse inside one of the legacies of the terrorist attacks 10 years ago. In 2008, the mall’s security director, Douglas Reynolds, told Congress that the mall was the “number-one source of actionable intelligence” provided to the state’s fusion center, an intelligence hub created after 9/11 to pull together reports from an array of law enforcement sources.

Heightened awareness

The push to encourage Americans to report suspicious activity began in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, when government officials and citizens found out that hints about the attackers had been missed by intelligence analysts.

The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security launched programs urging citizens and the private sector to report suspicious activity. Among those formally enlisted were parking attendants, Jewish groups, stadium operators, landlords, security guards, fans of professional golf and auto racing and retailers such as the Mall of America. Visitors “may be subject to a security interview,” the mall’s website says.

Commander Jim Ryan of the Bloomington police said shoppers are not under arrest when stopped for questioning by private guards. He said even he would walk away if the questioning seemed excessive.

“I don’t think that I would subject myself to that, personally,” he said. Ryan, however, defends security procedures at the mall.

In nearly two-thirds of the cases reviewed, subjects are described as African-American, people of Asian and Arabic descent, and other minorities,.

Mall spokesman Dan Jasper said the private security guards do not conduct interviews based on racial or ethnic characteristics because “we may miss someone who truly does have harmful intent.” He said subjects are chosen “solely on suspicious behavior” and research indicates that “profiling based on ethnic or racial characteristics is ineffective and a waste of valuable time and resources.”

Ryan said the reports are crucial to the nation’s safety and could be held by his agency for two decades or longer. He acknowledged that the mall’s methods, and its reports to law enforcement, may “infringe on some freedoms, unfortunately.”

“We’re charged with trying to keep people safe. We’re trying to do it the best way we can,” he said. “You may be questioned at the Mall of America about suspicious activity. It’s something that may happen. It’s part of today’s society.”

Anyone can be questioned

Dale Watson, a former top counterterrorism official with the FBI, said the mall’s reports suggest that anyone could be targeted for intrusive questioning and surveillance.

“If that had been one of my brothers that was stopped in a mall, I’d be furious about it — if I thought the police department had a file on him, an information file about his activities in the mall without any reasonable suspicion to investigate,” said Watson, who helped investigate the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Shoppers, who for the most part had no idea that a visit to the mall led to their personal information being shared with law enforcement, reacted with anger and dismay when shown their reports.

“For all the 30 years that I have lived in the United States, I’ve never been a suspect,” said Emil Khalil. The California man was confronted at the mall in June 2009 for taking pictures, and he said an FBI agent later questioned him at the airport. “And I’ve never done anything wrong.”

In 2005, the Mall of America hired Mike Rozin to lead a new special security unit. Its officers look for unexplained nervousness, people photographing such things as air-conditioning ducts or signs that a shopper might have something to hide, according to records.

Last January, guards spotted a suspicious man who tried to run, but was arrested. The man had a loaded handgun, Rozin said. “Potentially that day, my … officer prevented a disaster, a case of indiscriminate shooting,” he said.

Rozin acknowledged that the vast majority of people who come into contact with his unit “have done nothing wrong, have no malicious intent.” He said interviews average five minutes.

Shaken by encounter

Francis Van Asten’s experience with mall security lasted much longer. On Nov. 9, 2008, the Bloomington resident videotaped a short road trip from his home to the mall. Van Asten, now 66, planned to send it to his fiancée’s family in Vietnam so they could see life in the United States.

As he headed down an escalator, camera in hand, mall guards saw him. “Right away, I noticed he had a video camera and was recording the rotunda area,” a security guard wrote in a suspicious activity report.

Van Asten, a former U.S. Army missile system repairman, was questioned for about two hours, records show. He was asked about traveling to Vietnam and how he came to know people there. Van Asten was even asked through which mall door he entered.

Suspecting he was conducting surveillance, guards asked what was on the camera. “The footage of all the vehicles and structures of the east ramp really worried me,” the security guard wrote.

Authorities were concerned about footage of a plane landing at nearby Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Van Asten said it was not clear to him at the time why he was stopped. He was told nothing prohibited him from taking photographs or footage of the mall. But the guards alerted Bloomington police, who notified the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. Van Asten was given a pat-down search, and the FBI demanded that his camera’s memory card be confiscated “for further analysis.”

Exhausted and rattled, Van Asten had trouble finding his car after the ordeal. “I sat down in my car and I cried, and I was shaking like a leaf,” Van Asten said.

Man files discrimination suit

Bobbie Allen, now 47, headed to the Mall of America on June 25, 2007, for lunch with a woman. As he waited for her, Allen sat alone writing in a notebook, which caught the attention of guards, who wrote in Allen’s suspicious activity report: “Before the male would write in his notebook, it appeared as though he would look at his watch. Periodically, the male would briefly look up from his notebook, look around, and then continue writing.”

Guards asked for his name and for whom he was waiting. Allen, a musician who lives in downtown Minneapolis, became frustrated, saying the questioning was intrusive. Allen, who is black, felt singled out for his race, according to the report. The guard responded that he was “randomly selected” for an interview.

The guards called Bloomington police after deciding that Allen was uncooperative and his note-taking “suspicious.” He was cleared, but a suspicious activity report was compiled, complete with surveillance photo, age, height, address and more. Much of that information ended up in a Bloomington police report.

Allen complained to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and sued. Department investigators found probable cause to support Allen’s claim of racial discrimination. Allen declined an interview, citing a settlement with the mall.

Not everyone reacted negatively to being written up. After information naming him was sent to the FBI, Sameer Khalil of Orange County, Calif., said he believed police and private security have important jobs to do.

“I think [the mall’s program] makes America safer,” he said.

Lost cellphone brings FBI

Businessman Najam Qureshi once had a small kiosk at the mall so his aging father, a former aeronautical engineer named Saleem, could keep busy. One day in early 2007, Saleem Qureshi left his cellphone in a mall food court. When he returned for it, security personnel had established a “perimeter” around the phone and a nearby stroller and two coolers that did not belong to him.

The “suspicious” objects eventually were cleared by security, documents show. But mall guards pursued Saleem Qureshi with questions. “At one point, he moved to his kiosk and proceeded to take items off of two shelves just to switch them around,” security guard Ashly Foster wrote in a report. “… He seemed to get agitated at points when I would ask more detailed questions.”

On a trip to the Twin Cities in May 2008, Kleinerman, a human resources director for the Cigna health services firm, stopped at the mall to return shoes and buy a SpongeBob SquarePants watch for one of his kids.

Two security officers reported that Kleinerman was “closely observing” them deal with an unrelated call. They considered his behavior “very odd,” and followed him to “watch for behavioral indicators,” Officer Sean McArdle wrote in a suspicious activity report.

Later, they attempted an interview, but Kleinerman refused, the report said. Kleinerman was told he had two options: Answer questions, or police would be called. Kleinerman said in an interview he repeatedly asked why he was stopped, but got no answer until a supervisor arrived and said shoppers sometimes “exhibit cues” the mall looks for.

“I explained to them why I was there,” Kleinerman said. “That really should have ended it, even if there was something odd about what I was doing. Yet for 45 minutes, they kept trying to get my name and information and seemed to get more upset with me the more I wouldn’t comply.”

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White Kids Are The Minorty In 10 U.S. States – Whites Will Be The Minority In U.S. By 2042

US – White children are now in the minority among people under 18 in 10 U.S. states and 35 large metro areas, according to a Brookings analysis of 2010 Census data.

The number of white children in metro areas including Atlanta, Georgia; Dallas, Texas; Orlando, Florida; and Phoenix, Arizona, fell below that of other children in the last decade as the population of white children nationwide declined by 4.3 million, the report said.

The decline occurred as the number of children identified as “new minorities” – Hispanics, Asians and other racial groups apart from whites, blacks and American Indians – grew by 5.5 million, the report said.

Hispanics registered an increase of 4.8 million, which kept the nation’s overall child population from declining, the report said. The figure also reflects changes in the racial makeup of the overall U.S. population showing that Hispanics are the nation’s fastest growing minority group.

Hispanics now comprise 23% of children, up from 12% in 1990, while whites now comprise just 53% of youth, down from nearly 70% in 1990.

The findings also underscore projections that the country stands to become “white minority” by 2042. The child population stands to hit that mark in 2023.

“Slower growth among whites owes in part to their lower fertility rate –about 1.9 births per white woman, compared with 3.0 births per Hispanic woman – as well as a relatively low contribution to population growth from immigration. From 2000 to 2009, only 15% growth in the immigrant population was attributable to whites, versus 78% for Hispanics, Asians and other new minorities,” the report stated.

“Whites are also aging more rapidly than other groups. This contributes to their lower growth rate, as proportionately fewer white women are in their child-bearing years. The median age of whites is 41, compared to 27 for Hispanics, 35 for Asians, and a staggering 20 for the population of more than one race. As a further reflection of these age differences by race and ethnicity, just one-fifth of U.S. whites are under age 18, compared with one-third of all Hispanics.”

The study also found that the decline in white children reduced the growth rate of the overall child population, from 13.7% in the 1990s to 2.6% in the 2000s. Though variation from state to state in child growth was considerable, on the whole, 46 states registered declines in their white child populations.

Not surprisingly, most of the states that experienced growth in populations of minority children are the ones where white children are in the minority: California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi and Maryland.

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“War On Cops?” Propaganda Surfaces After String Of Police Officers Catch Bullets And Die

US – Authorities are worried a recent wave of police officer shootings may not be a coincidence.

In just 24 hours, at least 11 cops were shot around the country.

The most recent incident at a fugitive’s house in St. Petersburg, Fla., left two officers dead and a U.S. marshal wounded Monday. Hours earlier, an Oregon officer was critically wounded after being shot multiple times during a traffic stop.

Monday’s violence followed a bloody Sunday that left an officer in Indianapolis critically wounded during a traffic stop shooting, four officers in Indianapolis wounded after a gunman opened fire in a precinct and two more officers in Washington wounded in a shootout in a Walmart parking lot.

“It’s not a fluke,” Richard Roberts, a spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, told MSNBC.com. “There’s a perception among officers in the field that there’s a war on cops going on.”

Florida officers Tom Baitinger and Jeffrey Yaslowitz were killed Monday when agents tried to arrest 39-year-old Hydra Lacy Jr. on an aggravated battery charge. Police believe Lacy opened fire on the agents, also injuring an U.S. marshal.

Lacy, who was found dead at home following an hour-long standoff, had a long and violent criminal record including a sexual battery conviction.

In Oregon, a gunman is still on the loose after shooting officer Steven Dodds, 45, during a traffic stop Monday. Police say the gunman, driving a 1984 Dodge truck, led police on a chase after the shooting and fired several shots at officers but missed, before being stopped by spike strips and escaping on foot into a wooded area. He is described as armed and extremely dangerous.

Indianapolis Police Chief Paul Ciesielski says he believes 60-year-old Thomas Hardy is the man who shot officer David Moore twice in the face and in his chest and leg during a traffic stop Sunday, critically wounding Moore.

The Indiana Department of Correction says Hardy had a criminal history dating back to at least 1984, when he was sentenced to 13 years in prison on a burglary conviction. He was released on parole in 1990, but has been in and out of prison since then on various charges, including seven sentences for theft, one for cocaine possession and one for misdemeanor battery.

Detectives in Port Orchard, Wash., are investigating why a man ran from deputies and then opened fire in a Walmart parking lot Sunday, sparking a shootout that left him and the woman he apparently was with dead and two officers wounded.

The Kitsap County Sheriff’s deputies were answering a call about a suspicious person at the store. When they located the man and tried talking to him he ran, then opened fire as the officers followed.

Both men were hit and unable to return gunfire, but a female officer arriving on the scene shot and killed the gunman, sheriff’s spokesman Scott Wilson said. Authorities said it wasn’t immediately known who shot the woman, who died later at a Tacoma hospital.

And in Detroit, 38-year-old Lamar D. Moore was fatally shot after opening fire at a police station, wounding the precinct commander, two sergeants and an officer the day before a family spokesman said his brother was to be sentenced in a double-homicide case.

“There’s nothing in this that makes sense at all,” Police Chief Ralph Godbee told reporters during a briefing on the case.

While all the shootings don’t appear to be connected, Roberts says they have one thing in common.

“We don’t have any data, but there seems to be a type of criminal out there looking to thwart authority,” he told the station.

According to National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, an organization that tracks police casualties, there have already been as many officer deaths in January 2011 as there were in January of last year. The organization reported that officer deaths were up 43 percent in 2010 compared to 2009.

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First Military Tribunal Case At Bush’s Torture Prison Is Child That U.S. Interogator Threated With Gang Prison Rape

WASHINGTON, DC – After working for a year to redeem the international reputation of military commissions, Obama administration officials are alarmed by the first case to go to trial under revamped rules: the prosecution of a former child soldier whom an American interrogator implicitly threatened with gang rape.

The defendant, Omar Khadr, was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan and accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier. Senior officials say his trial is undermining their broader effort to showcase reforms that they say have made military commissions fair and just.

“Optically, this has been a terrible case to begin the commissions with,” said Matthew Waxman, who was the Pentagon’s top detainee affairs official during the Bush administration. “There is a great deal of international skepticism and hostility toward military commissions, and this is a very tough case with which to push back against that skepticism and hostility.”

Senior officials at the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon have agreed privately that it would be better to reach a plea bargain in the Khadr case so that a less problematic one would be the inaugural trial, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials. But the administration has not pushed to do so because officials fear, for legal and political reasons, that it would be seen as improper interference.

Mr. Khadr’s trial at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay started earlier in August but was put on a monthlong hiatus because a lawyer got sick and collapsed in court. The pause has allowed the administration to consider the negative images the trial has already generated.

Chief among them are persistent questions about the propriety of prosecuting a child soldier. Moreover, in a blow to establishing an image of openness, the Pentagon sought to ban journalists who wrote about publicly known information that it decreed should be treated as secret.

The judge declined to suppress statements Mr. Khadr made after an Army interrogator sought to frighten him with a fabricated story about an Afghan youth who disappointed interrogators and was sent to an American prison where he died after a gang rape. In a pretrial hearing, the interrogator confirmed making that implicit threat, but the judge ruled it did not taint Mr. Khadr’s later confessions.

And prosecutors disqualified an officer from the jury because he said he agreed with President Obama that Guantánamo had compromised America’s values and international reputation.

Administration officials would speak only anonymously about their deliberations on whether to try to abort the trial. But their view about the need improve the system’s perceived credibility — so allies will cooperate by providing evidence or extraditing defendants — was echoed by Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security in the Bush administration.

“It is important for the government to be able to proceed through a trial, to do so in a transparent way, and have the world see that this is a fair process with strong safeguards and full due process,” he said. “The sooner that happens, the better.”

No one intended the Khadr case to be the first trial under the revamped system.

He had already been charged when President Obama froze the tribunals in January 2009. In November, after Congress overhauled commission rules, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. included Mr. Khadr in an initial batch of five detainees who would remain in the military system.

At the time, officials say, it was assumed that other referrals would quickly follow. But controversy over Mr. Holder’s decision to move five other detainees to the regular court system for a trial in New York over the Sept. 11 attacks shut down the process, and military prosecutors resumed Mr. Khadr’s case.

Mr. Khadr, who was born in Toronto and comes from a Qaeda-linked family, was a teenager in 2002 when he was found, heavily wounded, at a compound in Afghanistan after a firefight with United States troops. A grenade blast in that battle killed an Army sergeant, Christopher Speer.

Investigators concluded that Mr. Khadr threw the grenade — a theory defense lawyers reject. A videotape found at the compound was said to show Mr. Khadr helping to make and plant roadside bombs. But the centerpiece of five charges against him is Sergeant Speer’s killing.

Earlier this summer, prosecutors and retired Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, the commission “convening authority” who must approve any sentence, apparently raised the possibility of a deal that would allow Mr. Khadr to serve only a few years, rather than a potential life sentence, if he pleaded guilty.

But Mr. Khadr, now 23, reacted by firing two defense lawyers. He told the court he was offended by what he saw as an attempt to “legitimize the sham process” by dangling “the least sentence possible” to coerce a confession.

Still, Dennis Edney, a Canadian lawyer assisting the Khadr family, said a deal involving a lesser charge, like conspiracy to support terrorism, remained possible.

“I would strongly recommend a reasonable deal to Omar if the murder charge was off the table,” Mr. Edney said.

Sergeant Speer’s wife, Tabitha Speer, might object to that outcome. She attended the opening of the trial and has written of her husband’s death, “The pain now carried by both myself and our children will last a lifetime.”

Administration officials have discussed whether senior civilian leaders at the Pentagon or elsewhere could get involved, helping to revive plea negotiations or even directing Admiral MacDonald to offer a more attractive offer. (Admiral MacDonald did not respond to an interview request.)

A similar high-level intervention would clearly be allowed in the regular court system, where the attorney general supervises prosecutions. But tribunal rules insulate commission officials.

A provision in the Military Commissions Act prohibits “unlawful command influence,” defined as attempting “to coerce, or, by any unauthorized means, influence” the judgment or actions of prosecutors or the convening authority. Officials are debating what that means.

The provision’s wording was suggested to lawmakers in 2006 by Col. Morris D. Davis, then the chief commissions prosecutor, who complained that Bush appointees had inappropriately pressured him to take aggressive steps like using evidence he considered tainted by torture.

Now retired, Colonel Davis said he believes the provision was not meant to bar pressure to sweeten a plea offer: “It’s clearly not ‘command influence’ to do something favorable to the accused,” he said. “The whole concept was the opposite of that.”

Still, the statute makes no such distinction. And officials do not want to risk intervening, lest it become partisan ammunition for conservatives who might accuse them of using political interference to coddle a terrorist.

Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School, said there was “ no clear answer” to how far administration officials may intrude. But given the risks, he said, “they are right to be cautious.”

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Threats Against Federal Judges And Prosecutors Soar

US – Threats against the nation’s judges and prosecutors have sharply increased, prompting hundreds to get 24-hour protection from armed U.S. marshals. Many federal judges are altering their routes to work, installing security systems at home, shielding their addresses by paying bills at the courthouse or refraining from registering to vote. Some even pack weapons on the bench.

The problem has become so pronounced that a high-tech “threat management” center recently opened in Crystal City, where a staff of about 25 marshals and analysts monitor a 24-hour number for reporting threats, use sophisticated mapping software to track those being threatened and tap into a classified database linked to the FBI and CIA.

“I live with a constant heightened sense of awareness,” said John R. Adams, a federal judge in Ohio who began taking firearms classes after a federal judge’s family was slain in Chicago and takes a pistol to the courthouse on weekends. “If I’m going to carry a firearm, I’d better know how to use it.”

The threats and other harassing communications against federal court personnel have more than doubled in the past six years, from 592 to 1,278, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Worried federal officials blame disgruntled defendants whose anger is fueled by the Internet; terrorism and gang cases that bring more violent offenders into federal court; frustration at the economic crisis; and the rise of the “sovereign citizen” movement — a loose collection of tax protesters, white supremacists and others who don’t respect federal authority.

Much of the concern was fueled by the slaying of U.S. District Judge Joan H. Lefkow’s husband and mother in their Chicago home in 2005 and a rampage 11 days later by an Atlanta rape suspect, who killed a judge, the court stenographer and a deputy. Last year, several pipe bombs exploded outside the federal courthouse in San Diego, and a drug defendant wielding a razor blade briefly choked a federal prosecutor during sentencing in Brooklyn, N.Y. In March, a homicide suspect attacked a judge in a California courtroom and was shot to death by police.

“Judges today have dangerous jobs, and that danger has many dimensions,” said David Sellers, a spokesman for the administrative office of the U.S. Courts. “They are worried about security and safety 24 hours a day.”

Although attacks on federal court personnel have not increased, the explosion of vitriolic threats has prompted a growing law enforcement crackdown aimed at preventing them. The U.S. Marshals Service, which protects judges and prosecutors, says several hundred require 24-hour guard for days, weeks or months at a time each year, depending on the case.

“We have to make sure that every judge and prosecutor can go to work every day and carry out the rule of law,” said Michael Prout, assistant director of judicial security for the marshals, who have trained hundreds of police and deputies to better protect local court officials, an effort that began last year with Northern Virginia and Maryland officers.

“It’s the core of our civil liberties,” Prout said.

State court officials are seeing the same trend, although no numbers are available. “There’s a higher level of anger, whether it’s defendants or their families,” said Timothy Fautsko, who coordinates security education for the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg and said threats are coming from violent offenders along with divorce, probate and other civil litigants.

The threats are emerging in cases large and small, on the Internet, by telephone, in letters and in person. In the District, two men have pleaded not guilty to charges of vowing to kill a federal prosecutor and kidnap her adult son if she didn’t drop a homicide investigation. The judge in the CIA leak case got threatening letters when he ordered Vice President Richard B. Cheney’s former chief of staff to prison. A man near Richmond was charged with mailing threats to a prosecutor over three traffic offenses. The face of a federal judge in the District was put in a rifle’s cross hairs on the Internet after he issued a controversial environmental ruling, judicial sources said.

Hundreds of threats cascaded into the chambers of John M. Roll, the chief U.S. district judge in Arizona, in February after he allowed a lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants against a rancher to go forward. “They cursed him out, threatened to kill his family, said they’d come and take care of him. They really wanted him dead,” said a law enforcement official who heard the calls — which came from as far as Richmond and Baltimore — but spoke on condition of anonymity because no one has been charged.

David Gonzales, the U.S. marshal in Arizona, said deputies went online and found Roll’s home address posted on a Web site containing threatening comments. They put the judge under 24-hour protection for about a month, guarding his home in a secluded area just outside Tucson, screening his mail and escorting him to court, to the gym and to Mass. “Some deputies went to church more in a week than they had in their lives,” Gonzales said.

Roll said that “any judge who goes through this knows it’s a stressful situation” and that he and his family were grateful for the protection.

The stress nearly overcame Michael Cicconetti, a municipal court judge in Painesville, Ohio, after police played a tape for him of a defendant in a minor tax case plotting to blow up the judge’s house. “I hear a man’s voice talk about putting a bomb in the house, and another voice says, ‘What if there are kids involved?’ and the first man says, ‘They’re just collateral damage,’ ” the father of five recalled.

Cicconetti evacuated his family for a terrifying week in which they were under guard and stayed at friends’ houses. “I couldn’t go to work for two weeks. I was too shaken up. I couldn’t think,” he said. For months, the judge was nervous every time a car drove by his home. His children were afraid to go to bed; their grades dropped.

The judge now has a security system in his home — and a stun gun within reach in court.

Sibley Reynolds, a state court judge in Alabama who prosecutors said was threatened last year by the son of a defendant convicted of stealing about $3,000 from a humane shelter, packs the real thing — a Colt automatic pistol. He keeps it under his robe, in his waistband.

“I don’t go anywhere without my security with me,” Reynolds said.

Court officials could not say how often judges arm themselves. But the marshals have installed home security systems for most federal judges since the Lefkow incident, and many are removing their photos from court Web sites and shielding their home addresses. Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan in the District said judges who have handled terrorism matters are hesitant to travel to the Middle East, or to South America if they’ve had drug-trafficking cases.

U.S. District Judge Wayne Andersen in Chicago said he has “stopped even mentioning publicly that I have children. Normally, parents want to be visibly associated with their kids. Judges now think everything is on the Internet.”

The Judicial Conference of the United States, the policymaking arm headed by the Supreme Court chief justice, will soon distribute a DVD with security tips. It will be called Project 365, for security 365 days a year.

“Judges today are far more security-conscious than they ever have been,” said Henry E. Hudson, a federal judge in Richmond who is working on the DVD. “I don’t think it’s at the point where it’s interfering with their judgment and dedication to their jobs.”

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US Police Departments Hurting For Funds Amid Depression

US – The recession is altering local law enforcement in the U.S. by forcing some agencies to close precincts, merge with other departments or even shut down.

Once largely spared from the deepest budget cuts, some police departments are struggling to provide basic services, police officials say.

“For the first time, because of the economy, police departments … may have to change how they do business,” says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank. “People will see a change in the basic delivery of services,” from longer police response times to a dramatically reduced police presence in some communities.

Harlan Johnson, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, said political leaders are “choosing whether they keep the streetsopenor the police on patrol,” though it’s too early to tell whether the changes will increase crime.

The Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus plan gives about $4 billion to local law enforcement, including $1 billion to hire and retain officers. But the hiring money has not been distributed, and applicants have requested more than is available.

• In Pennsylvania, 19 suburban and rural police agencies have closed in the past 15 months, and seven others have cut patrols. The “unprecedented” closures and cuts have forced the state police — who face their own budget struggles — to assume full or partial public safety responsibility for about 54,000 more people, says Lt. Col. Lenny Bandy, deputy commissioner of operations for the state police.

• In Minnesota, nine small police agencies have closed in the past five months, leaving sheriffs’ departments to protect the public. The Elko New Market Police Department was briefly the 10th shuttered agency, until residents last month demanded that the City Council reverse its 2-week-old decision to eliminate it. “A lot of people felt that we were sending a potentially dangerous public message … without a police department,” says Mayor Jason Ponsonby, who opposed the closure.

• In Portland, Ore., police are consolidating operations by eliminating two of five patrol precincts. Portland police spokesman Greg Pashley says some residents fear response times will rise and established officers will be replaced by others who are unfamiliar with local problems. He says the move, which takes effect in June, was needed to cut costs, but he believes it will not compromise safety.

• In Southern California, Indio and its neighbors Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs, Cathedral City and Beaumont have merged some key functions and also plan to combine dispatch operations to increase efficiency. “It’s the legacy of the budget crunch,” Indio’s Capt. Richard Banasiak says.

Appeared Here

US Police Departments Hurting For Funds Amid Depression

US – The recession is altering local law enforcement in the U.S. by forcing some agencies to close precincts, merge with other departments or even shut down.

Once largely spared from the deepest budget cuts, some police departments are struggling to provide basic services, police officials say.

“For the first time, because of the economy, police departments … may have to change how they do business,” says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank. “People will see a change in the basic delivery of services,” from longer police response times to a dramatically reduced police presence in some communities.

Harlan Johnson, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, said political leaders are “choosing whether they keep the streetsopenor the police on patrol,” though it’s too early to tell whether the changes will increase crime.

The Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus plan gives about $4 billion to local law enforcement, including $1 billion to hire and retain officers. But the hiring money has not been distributed, and applicants have requested more than is available.

• In Pennsylvania, 19 suburban and rural police agencies have closed in the past 15 months, and seven others have cut patrols. The “unprecedented” closures and cuts have forced the state police — who face their own budget struggles — to assume full or partial public safety responsibility for about 54,000 more people, says Lt. Col. Lenny Bandy, deputy commissioner of operations for the state police.

• In Minnesota, nine small police agencies have closed in the past five months, leaving sheriffs’ departments to protect the public. The Elko New Market Police Department was briefly the 10th shuttered agency, until residents last month demanded that the City Council reverse its 2-week-old decision to eliminate it. “A lot of people felt that we were sending a potentially dangerous public message … without a police department,” says Mayor Jason Ponsonby, who opposed the closure.

• In Portland, Ore., police are consolidating operations by eliminating two of five patrol precincts. Portland police spokesman Greg Pashley says some residents fear response times will rise and established officers will be replaced by others who are unfamiliar with local problems. He says the move, which takes effect in June, was needed to cut costs, but he believes it will not compromise safety.

• In Southern California, Indio and its neighbors Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs, Cathedral City and Beaumont have merged some key functions and also plan to combine dispatch operations to increase efficiency. “It’s the legacy of the budget crunch,” Indio’s Capt. Richard Banasiak says.

Appeared Here