CIVIL LIBERTIES
PHARMACISTS DENYING BIRTH CONTROL
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/americas/4425603.stm
BBC - A growing number of pharmacists across America are refusing to dispense birth control and the morning-after pill, because it goes against their religious and moral convictions. This development has led to state legislatures across the country taking action, either to protect women's rights to obtain birth control or to uphold the pharmacist's right to refuse it.
The issue has become heated in several states, which already have laws allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives, including birth control pills.
In Arizona, the House of Representatives recently approved legislation that would put into place a conscience clause for pharmacists who have objections to handing out birth control.
But in April, Illinois Governor Rod R Blogojevich filed a rule requiring Illinois pharmacies to dispense all such prescriptions immediately and without question.
"More and more pharmacists do not want to hand over the birth control package and feel that it is within their rights to lecture women about their morals," said Judy Waxman of the National Women's Law Centre in Washington DC.
______________________________________________________________________________
NEW ORLEANS STUDY FINDS BLACKS DISCRIMINATED AGAINST IN BARS
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-04-14-bourbon-study_x.htm?csp=34
AP - The study, conducted by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, paired black and white men of similar body type, dress and manner, and sent them into bars within minutes of each other. Of the 28 bars visited, 40% charged the black customers more for drinks. . . Ten% of the bars informed the blacks — but not the whites — that there was a drink minimum, and 7% told their black customers that they would have to meet a dress code.
______________________________________________________________________________
TINY CAMERAS ALLOW THE WATCHED TO WATCH THE WATCHERS http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002240978_spyware14.html
PAUL ANDREWS, SEATTLE TIMES - With cameras getting smaller and cheaper all the time, and showing up on everything from cellphones to lapel pins, round-the-clock surveillance is becoming available to average citizens. As much as some may recoil against the thought, experts headlining a four-day conference in Seattle said yesterday putting one's own life on record could prove the best defense against growing government and corporate incursions into privacy.
Speaking at the Association for Computing Machinery's Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, Steve Mann termed the process "sousveillance" - pronounced soo-veillance and roughly French for "to watch from below" - in contrast to surveillance, or to watch from above. In general, the term refers to using a wearable or portable video camera to record your every action.
Using sousveillance, conference panelists said, police-brutality victims or protesters at a rally would be able to record illegal actions taken against them by police.
With a wireless camera and connection, the images could be transmitted in real time over the Internet, a protection in case police moved to seize or destroy the equipment, said Mann, a University of Toronto professor who has pioneered use of wearable computing devices, including cameras and digital eyeglasses.
______________________________________________________________________________
OHIO OFFICIALS STEAL MORE THAN VOTES
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2005/04/10/20050410-A1-02.html
BOING BOING - State liquor officials in Ohio hired a woman to pose undercover as a stripper -- and gave her someone else's driver's license for an assumed identity, based on a bizarre interpretation of state law. Haley Dawson has never been a stripper. But Ohio liquor-control agents took her identity and gave it to a 22-year-old college student who they had recruited to work undercover as a nude dancer. As part of an investigation that resulted in nothing more than misdemeanor charges, police paid University of Dayton criminal-justice student Michelle Szuhay $100 a night to take it all off in early 2003 — as liquor-control officers drank beer and watched in the audience for three months, court papers show.
______________________________________________________________________________
400 GOP CONVENTION PROTEST ARRESTS DROPPED AFTER VIDEOS SURFACE
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/nyregion/12video.html?ei=5094&en=034b59d6aece5085&hp=&ex=1113364800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=
NY TIMES - Dennis Kyne put up such a fight at a political protest last summer, the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue. "We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed," the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. "I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own."
Accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest, Mr. Kyne was the first of the 1,806 people arrested in New York last summer during the Republican National Convention to take his case to a jury. But one day after Officer Wohl testified, and before the defense called a single witness, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges.
During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.
A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention.
For Mr. Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.
______________________________________________________________________________
DANGEROUS TASER USE INCREASING
http://www.alternet.org/rights/21718/
ANNE-MARIE CUSAC, THE PROGRESSIVE - The use of tasers -- even on the elderly and children as young as one year old -- is increasing. High-powered tasers are the new fad in law enforcement. They are becoming ever more prevalent even as their safety is increasingly in question. The proliferation of tasers in police departments across the country has led to unconventional uses. Among those hit by tasers are elderly people, children as young as one year old, people apparently suffering diabetic shock and epileptic seizures, people already bound in restraints, and hospital mental patients. Police used tasers against protesters at the 2003 Miami Free Trade Area of the Americas demonstration and against rowdy fans at the 2005 Fiesta Bowl. School systems are employing the weapons, with some officers carrying tasers even in elementary schools.
But doctors, reporters, and human rights groups have raised questions about the safety of the devices, which shoot two barbs designed to pierce the skin. The barbs are at the end of electrical wires carrying 50,000 volts. Last summer, The New York Times reported that at least fifty people had died within a short time after being hit with a taser. By November, when Amnesty International released its own report, that number had risen to more than seventy.
In February, Chicago police used the device against a fourteen-year-old boy, who went into cardiac arrest but survived, and a fifty-four-year-old man, who died. The Chicago Police Department, which had recently purchased 100 of the devices, decided not to distribute them until it had investigated the incidents.
The Department of Justice is conducting its own investigation into the safety of the devices. It has selected researchers at Wake Forest University and the University of Wisconsin to run independent taser studies.
______________________________________________________________________________
BEST BUY HAS MAN ARRESTED FOR USING LEGAL $2 BILLS
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43685
WORLDNET DAILY - A man trying to pay a fee using $2 bills was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail after clerks at a Best Buy store questioned the currency's legitimacy and called police.According to an account in the Baltimore Sun, 57-year-old Mike Bolesta was shocked to find himself taken to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, Md., where he was handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service was called to weigh in on the case. . . After Best Buy personnel reportedly told Bolesta he would not be charged for the installation of a stereo in his son's car, he received a call from the store saying it was in fact charging him the fee. As a means of protest, Bolesta decided to pay the $114 bill using 57 crisp, new $2 bills. As the owner of Capital City Student Tours, the Baltimore resident has a hearty supply of the uncommon currency. He often gives the bills to students who take his tours for meal money.
"The kids don't see that many $2 bills, so they think this is the greatest thing in the world," Bolesta says. "They don't want to spend 'em. They want to save 'em. I've been doing this since I started the company. So I'm thinking, 'I'll stage my little comic protest. I'll pay the $114 with $2 bills.'". . .
According to the Sun report, the police arrest report noted one employee noticed some smearing of ink on the bills. That's when the cops were called. One officer reportedly noticed the bills ran in sequential order.
Said Bolesta: "I told them, 'I'm a tour operator. I've got thousands of these bills. I get them from my bank. You got a problem, call the bank.' I'm sitting there in a chair. The store's full of people watching this. All of a sudden, he's standing me up and handcuffing me behind my back, telling me, 'We have to do this until we get it straightened out.'. . .
Secret Service agent Leigh Turner eventually arrived and declared the bills legitimate, adding, according to the police report, "Sometimes ink on money can smear."
______________________________________________________________________________
NEW HELICOPTER CAN TRACK YOU EVERYWHERE
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/03/320.asp
[As the reader who sent us this noted, "What's interesting is the UK is planning to create a national database of everyone that is scanned, i.e., you could eventually search for where anyone has ever been at a given time."]
THE NEWSPAPER, UK - Police in the UK have successfully tested a 160 MPH helicopter that can read license plates from as much as 2,000 feet in the air. The Eurocopter EC135 is equipped with a camera capable of scanning 5 cars every second. Essex Police Inspector Paul Moor told the Daily Star newspaper: "This is all about denying criminals the use of the road. Using a number plate recognition camera from the air means crooks will have nowhere to hide."
The use of Automated Plate Number Recognition is growing. ANPR devices photograph vehicles and then use optical character recognition to extract license plate numbers and match them with any selected databases. The devices use infrared sensors to avoid the need for a flash and to operate in all weather conditions.
Within the U.S., two cities are using the technology in a device called "Bootfinder" to identify and tow vehicles with unpaid parking tickets or even overdue library books. One woman's car in Connecticut was towed out of her driveway because she had $85 in unpaid parking tickets. Legislation is pending in Texas to allow the use of RFID to scan and ticket passing motorists who have expired automobile insurance.
One of the companies that sells the camera scanning equipment touts its potential for marketing applications. "Once the number plate has been successfully 'captured' applications for it's use are limited only by imagination and almost anything is possible," Westminister International says on its website. UK police also envision a national database that holds time and location data on every vehicle scanned. "This data warehouse would also hold ANPR reads and hits as a further source of vehicle intelligence, providing great benefits to major crime and terrorism enquiries," a Home Office proposal explains.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/americas/4425603.stm
BBC - A growing number of pharmacists across America are refusing to dispense birth control and the morning-after pill, because it goes against their religious and moral convictions. This development has led to state legislatures across the country taking action, either to protect women's rights to obtain birth control or to uphold the pharmacist's right to refuse it.
The issue has become heated in several states, which already have laws allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives, including birth control pills.
In Arizona, the House of Representatives recently approved legislation that would put into place a conscience clause for pharmacists who have objections to handing out birth control.
But in April, Illinois Governor Rod R Blogojevich filed a rule requiring Illinois pharmacies to dispense all such prescriptions immediately and without question.
"More and more pharmacists do not want to hand over the birth control package and feel that it is within their rights to lecture women about their morals," said Judy Waxman of the National Women's Law Centre in Washington DC.
______________________________________________________________________________
NEW ORLEANS STUDY FINDS BLACKS DISCRIMINATED AGAINST IN BARS
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-04-14-bourbon-study_x.htm?csp=34
AP - The study, conducted by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, paired black and white men of similar body type, dress and manner, and sent them into bars within minutes of each other. Of the 28 bars visited, 40% charged the black customers more for drinks. . . Ten% of the bars informed the blacks — but not the whites — that there was a drink minimum, and 7% told their black customers that they would have to meet a dress code.
______________________________________________________________________________
TINY CAMERAS ALLOW THE WATCHED TO WATCH THE WATCHERS http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002240978_spyware14.html
PAUL ANDREWS, SEATTLE TIMES - With cameras getting smaller and cheaper all the time, and showing up on everything from cellphones to lapel pins, round-the-clock surveillance is becoming available to average citizens. As much as some may recoil against the thought, experts headlining a four-day conference in Seattle said yesterday putting one's own life on record could prove the best defense against growing government and corporate incursions into privacy.
Speaking at the Association for Computing Machinery's Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, Steve Mann termed the process "sousveillance" - pronounced soo-veillance and roughly French for "to watch from below" - in contrast to surveillance, or to watch from above. In general, the term refers to using a wearable or portable video camera to record your every action.
Using sousveillance, conference panelists said, police-brutality victims or protesters at a rally would be able to record illegal actions taken against them by police.
With a wireless camera and connection, the images could be transmitted in real time over the Internet, a protection in case police moved to seize or destroy the equipment, said Mann, a University of Toronto professor who has pioneered use of wearable computing devices, including cameras and digital eyeglasses.
______________________________________________________________________________
OHIO OFFICIALS STEAL MORE THAN VOTES
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2005/04/10/20050410-A1-02.html
BOING BOING - State liquor officials in Ohio hired a woman to pose undercover as a stripper -- and gave her someone else's driver's license for an assumed identity, based on a bizarre interpretation of state law. Haley Dawson has never been a stripper. But Ohio liquor-control agents took her identity and gave it to a 22-year-old college student who they had recruited to work undercover as a nude dancer. As part of an investigation that resulted in nothing more than misdemeanor charges, police paid University of Dayton criminal-justice student Michelle Szuhay $100 a night to take it all off in early 2003 — as liquor-control officers drank beer and watched in the audience for three months, court papers show.
______________________________________________________________________________
400 GOP CONVENTION PROTEST ARRESTS DROPPED AFTER VIDEOS SURFACE
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/nyregion/12video.html?ei=5094&en=034b59d6aece5085&hp=&ex=1113364800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=
NY TIMES - Dennis Kyne put up such a fight at a political protest last summer, the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue. "We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed," the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. "I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own."
Accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest, Mr. Kyne was the first of the 1,806 people arrested in New York last summer during the Republican National Convention to take his case to a jury. But one day after Officer Wohl testified, and before the defense called a single witness, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges.
During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.
A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention.
For Mr. Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.
______________________________________________________________________________
DANGEROUS TASER USE INCREASING
http://www.alternet.org/rights/21718/
ANNE-MARIE CUSAC, THE PROGRESSIVE - The use of tasers -- even on the elderly and children as young as one year old -- is increasing. High-powered tasers are the new fad in law enforcement. They are becoming ever more prevalent even as their safety is increasingly in question. The proliferation of tasers in police departments across the country has led to unconventional uses. Among those hit by tasers are elderly people, children as young as one year old, people apparently suffering diabetic shock and epileptic seizures, people already bound in restraints, and hospital mental patients. Police used tasers against protesters at the 2003 Miami Free Trade Area of the Americas demonstration and against rowdy fans at the 2005 Fiesta Bowl. School systems are employing the weapons, with some officers carrying tasers even in elementary schools.
But doctors, reporters, and human rights groups have raised questions about the safety of the devices, which shoot two barbs designed to pierce the skin. The barbs are at the end of electrical wires carrying 50,000 volts. Last summer, The New York Times reported that at least fifty people had died within a short time after being hit with a taser. By November, when Amnesty International released its own report, that number had risen to more than seventy.
In February, Chicago police used the device against a fourteen-year-old boy, who went into cardiac arrest but survived, and a fifty-four-year-old man, who died. The Chicago Police Department, which had recently purchased 100 of the devices, decided not to distribute them until it had investigated the incidents.
The Department of Justice is conducting its own investigation into the safety of the devices. It has selected researchers at Wake Forest University and the University of Wisconsin to run independent taser studies.
______________________________________________________________________________
BEST BUY HAS MAN ARRESTED FOR USING LEGAL $2 BILLS
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43685
WORLDNET DAILY - A man trying to pay a fee using $2 bills was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail after clerks at a Best Buy store questioned the currency's legitimacy and called police.According to an account in the Baltimore Sun, 57-year-old Mike Bolesta was shocked to find himself taken to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, Md., where he was handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service was called to weigh in on the case. . . After Best Buy personnel reportedly told Bolesta he would not be charged for the installation of a stereo in his son's car, he received a call from the store saying it was in fact charging him the fee. As a means of protest, Bolesta decided to pay the $114 bill using 57 crisp, new $2 bills. As the owner of Capital City Student Tours, the Baltimore resident has a hearty supply of the uncommon currency. He often gives the bills to students who take his tours for meal money.
"The kids don't see that many $2 bills, so they think this is the greatest thing in the world," Bolesta says. "They don't want to spend 'em. They want to save 'em. I've been doing this since I started the company. So I'm thinking, 'I'll stage my little comic protest. I'll pay the $114 with $2 bills.'". . .
According to the Sun report, the police arrest report noted one employee noticed some smearing of ink on the bills. That's when the cops were called. One officer reportedly noticed the bills ran in sequential order.
Said Bolesta: "I told them, 'I'm a tour operator. I've got thousands of these bills. I get them from my bank. You got a problem, call the bank.' I'm sitting there in a chair. The store's full of people watching this. All of a sudden, he's standing me up and handcuffing me behind my back, telling me, 'We have to do this until we get it straightened out.'. . .
Secret Service agent Leigh Turner eventually arrived and declared the bills legitimate, adding, according to the police report, "Sometimes ink on money can smear."
______________________________________________________________________________
NEW HELICOPTER CAN TRACK YOU EVERYWHERE
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/03/320.asp
[As the reader who sent us this noted, "What's interesting is the UK is planning to create a national database of everyone that is scanned, i.e., you could eventually search for where anyone has ever been at a given time."]
THE NEWSPAPER, UK - Police in the UK have successfully tested a 160 MPH helicopter that can read license plates from as much as 2,000 feet in the air. The Eurocopter EC135 is equipped with a camera capable of scanning 5 cars every second. Essex Police Inspector Paul Moor told the Daily Star newspaper: "This is all about denying criminals the use of the road. Using a number plate recognition camera from the air means crooks will have nowhere to hide."
The use of Automated Plate Number Recognition is growing. ANPR devices photograph vehicles and then use optical character recognition to extract license plate numbers and match them with any selected databases. The devices use infrared sensors to avoid the need for a flash and to operate in all weather conditions.
Within the U.S., two cities are using the technology in a device called "Bootfinder" to identify and tow vehicles with unpaid parking tickets or even overdue library books. One woman's car in Connecticut was towed out of her driveway because she had $85 in unpaid parking tickets. Legislation is pending in Texas to allow the use of RFID to scan and ticket passing motorists who have expired automobile insurance.
One of the companies that sells the camera scanning equipment touts its potential for marketing applications. "Once the number plate has been successfully 'captured' applications for it's use are limited only by imagination and almost anything is possible," Westminister International says on its website. UK police also envision a national database that holds time and location data on every vehicle scanned. "This data warehouse would also hold ANPR reads and hits as a further source of vehicle intelligence, providing great benefits to major crime and terrorism enquiries," a Home Office proposal explains.
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 6:13 AM
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