May 28, 2010

Reporting from Washington —

If Bob Burns is correct, terrorists may betray themselves someday by jiggling on a Nintendo Wii balance board, blinking too fast, curling a lip like Elvis — or doing nothing at all.

Burns and his team of scientists are researching whether video game boards, biometric sensors and other high-tech devices can be used to detect distinct nonverbal cues from people who harbor "mal-intent," or malicious intent.

"We're looking pre-event," said Burns, the No. 2 at the Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency, a counterpart of the fabled Pentagon agency that developed Stealth aircraft and the Internet.

"We're trying to detect a crime before it has occurred."

OK, roll the sci-fi thriller "Minority Report," in which Tom Cruise and other "pre-crime" cops use psychic visions to arrest murderers before they kill. Or maybe "The Men Who Stare at Goats," a George Clooney comedy inspired by real military experiments with supposedly psychic soldiers.

The work on mal-intent, which has cost $20 million so far, represents the future in screening: trying to find the bomber, not just the bomb.

"Sometimes people look at our projects and say, 'This is crazy,' " conceded Burns, a former submarine weapons officer.

If Burns' group is delving into the mind of terrorists, another Homeland Security agency is studying its face.

The human factors division has spent nearly $20 million to experiment with micro-expressions, or super-quick flickers of facial muscles, that may — or may not — indicate hostile intent.

Researchers are studying 275 videos of test interviews — frame by painstaking frame, 30 frames a second, each video up to 10 minutes long — so analysts can catalog "micro-facial emotional leakages."

"We are breaking new ground here," said Larry Willis, the project director.

The need for improvement is clear. Security teams trained to spot suspicious behavior have pulled 152,000 people out of airport lines in recent years, according to a report this month from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

That led to about 1,100 arrests, mostly for immigration violations and outstanding warrants. No one was charged with terrorism.

But screeners failed to spot 16 travelers who later were linked to failed terrorist plots in New York and Virginia, jihadist training in Pakistan and lethal attacks in Somalia, Afghanistan and India.

The report didn't include the Nigerian accused of trying to light a bomb in his underwear on a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day, or the Pakistani American who was pulled off a plane in New York on charges of trying to explode a car bomb in Times Square.

According to the report, the Transportation Security Administration failed to validate the underlying science before deploying 3,000 behavior detection officers to 161 commercial airports, about a third of the nation's total.

"A scientific consensus does not exist on whether behavior detection principles can be reliably used for counter-terrorism purposes," the report said.

Paul Ekman, the nation's foremost researcher into nonverbal cues that indicate deceit, disputes that claim and argues that more human observers with better training are needed. He doubts that high-tech tools can do the job any better.

"I'm ambivalent [about mal-intent] because it's a very high-risk endeavor," said Ekman, a professor emeritus at UC San Francisco. "The odds are against it actually working in the field. But if you're going to try it, they're doing the best job that can be done."

Ekman dismissed Willis' work, however. "The research already shows that not every person intending harm shows micro-expression," he said. "So it's a waste of time."

Other senior researchers and academics say both research teams appear to be on the right track.

"I was very skeptical at first," said Gary Berntson, a professor of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics at Ohio State University. "But it's not voodoo science. It's cutting-edge."

Mark Frank, a psychologist who studies nonverbal behavior at the State University of New York at Buffalo, called the work worthwhile.

"If the science helps us make better guesses, I think that is very productive," Frank said. "Or at least it's the right approach."

David Matsumoto, director of the Culture and Emotion Research Laboratory at San Francisco State University, cautioned that people "want a silver bullet, a 100% foolproof system."

"That's never going to happen," he said. "But can they deploy something that's better than we have now? I think both programs are well on their way to doing that."

The mal-intent project began in 2007 and is based on the unproven premise that technology can identify and interpret physiological, behavioral and paralinguistic cues from someone with mayhem in mind.

Rather than using a Ouija board, researchers have linked high-resolution cameras, low-level lasers and other devices to measure fidgeting, pupil dilation, skin temperature, heart rate and other supposed clues.

"Let's be clear," said Dan Martin, the project's director of research. "There is no terrorist cue, no Pinocchio growing of the nose to indicate a plotting terrorist."

At least in theory, the sensors would record key data as each traveler moved down a security line. A computer algorithm then would analyze any shifts triggered by a guard's questions and raise an alert if necessary.

The network is supposed to disregard travelers stressed out from flight delays, screaming infants, indigestion or other hassles.

"Whether or not your grandmother is afraid of flying doesn't matter," Martin said. "The question is how your grandmother responds to specific stimuli, and that indicates whether she should be pulled out for secondary screening."

John Verrico, a Homeland Security spokesman, said operators also will watch for people who show no response "because you have to take into account there are people who train themselves not to reveal themselves."

Age affects responses more than gender, race or ethnicity, the research shows. Experiments have included only Americans so far, so the system's utility with visitors from other countries and cultures is unclear.

Burns will unveil the project Friday in Boston at a convention of the Assn. for Psychological Science, the nation's premier group of psychological researchers.

Privacy advocates, civil libertarians and some social scientists are incredulous.

"This is like eugenics 100 years ago when scientists said you could tell criminals by the shape of their eyes or the slope of their head," said Lillie Coney, associate director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It was bogus science then and it's bogus science now."

Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the work "absurd on its face."

Bella DePaulo, visiting professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara, said she doubted researchers could ever simulate what a terrorist thinks or feels.

"Lots of people, myself included, have studied how you tell when people are lying or telling the truth," she said. "But they're telling little lies. They're not trying to blow up a bomb or fly a plane into a building. How do you test for that?"

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pre-terror-20100528,0,4838396,print.story

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Number of poor students at public schools rises

May 27, 2010

The percentage of public schools with more than three-quarters of its students meeting eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch — a key indicator of poverty — has increased in the last decade, and children at these schools are less likely to attend college or be taught by teachers with advanced degrees.

The findings come from a special report on high poverty schools included in the 2010 Condition of Education study, which reports on a broad range of academic indicators across grades K-12 and higher education.

The U.S. Department of Education report released Thursday found that the percent of high poverty schools rose from 12% to 17% between the 1999-2000 and 2007-2008 school years, even before the current recession was fully felt.

By comparison, the overall poverty rate for children increased from 17% to 18%, leading researchers to believe that that a higher percentage of poor kids were signing up for the meal program.

In all, there were 16,122 schools considered high poverty. Students at these schools face a number of disadvantages:

“It's a persistent challenge,” said Val Plisko, associate commissioner for early childhood, international and crosscutting studies at the National Center for Education Statistics, which produced the report.

Students at high poverty schools are more likely to be minorities. Latinos students, for example, made up 46% of students at high poverty elementary schools and 11% of students at low poverty schools in the 2007-2008 school year. White students, by comparison, made up 14% of students at high poverty elementary schools, and 75% at low poverty elementary schools.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2010/05/number-of-poor-students-at-public-schools-rises.html

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Senate Democrats stop bid to send 6,000 troops to border

May 27, 2010

President Obama's Democratic allies in the Senate on Thursday killed a move by former presidential rival John McCain to send an additional 6,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Arizona Republican says the security situation along the border has deteriorated so badly that 3,000 troops are needed just to help protect his state. Even though McCain won support from a dozen Democrats, he failed to muster the 60-vote super-majority required to adopt his plan under the rules of the 100-member Senate.

Democrats also repelled more than $2 billion in additional border security spending proposed by border state Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Jon Kyl of Arizona.

The action came as the Senate continued debate on an almost $60-billion measure funding Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan, foreign aid and domestic disaster relief.

The Republican proposals were comparable to those made several years ago when many Republicans pressed border security steps, such as a border fence, instead of a more comprehensive approach to overhauling the U.S. immigration system. Obama supports comprehensive immigration reforms, but prospects for substantive legislation appear bleak in an election year. On Tuesday, he promised to send 1,200 National Guard troops to the border.

In the past, McCain has advocated changes to immigration laws that would give illegal immigrants already in the U.S. an opportunity to earn their citizenship. But as violence along the border has escalated — and in the face of a spirited primary challenge from former Rep. J.D. Hayworth — McCain has adopted a harder line on immigration issues.

“The borders are broken,” McCain said Thursday. “We have an obligation to our citizens to secure our border and allow them to lead lives where they [do] not live in fear.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2010/05/democrats-stop-bid-to-send-6000-troops-to-border.html

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Johnson & Johnson slow to act on problem drugs, FDA says

An agency official tells the House oversight committee that it had urged the company to improve practices well before the recall of children's Tylenol and other medications.

By Andrew Zajac

May 28, 2010

Reporting from Washington —

Tribune Washington Bureau

The Food and Drug Administration, alarmed by quality-control problems with children's Tylenol and other Johnson & Johnson medications, prodded senior company officials last February to improve manufacturing and react faster to consumer complaints, a senior agency official told a congressional panel Thursday.

But promised improvements didn't come quickly enough, and it was not until April 30 that the company — under FDA pressure — announced the largest recall of pediatric over-the-counter medicine in history.

Johnson & Johnson is under investigation by FDA's criminal division to determine whether any of its missteps warrant prosecution, Joshua Sharfstein, the FDA's principal deputy commissioner, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Sharfstein characterized Johnson & Johnson's corporate culture as slow to respond and not always open about its actions.

In addition to last month's recall, the company pulled 8 million bottles of children's medications off the market in September 2009 because of a quality-control issue, and several million bottles of medications because of complaints of a musty odor that some consumers said made them sick.

Johnson & Johnson was required to notify the FDA of the consumer complaints within three days, Sharfstein said, but it waited a year to do so.

"What was troubling was there was a pattern of FDA finding out about things late," he said.

Colleen Goggins, chairwoman of Johnson & Johnson's consumer division, apologized "to the mothers and fathers and caregivers for the concern and inconvenience" caused by the April recall, which covered more than 40 compounds for infants and children — including Benadryl, Motrin and Zyrtec in addition to Tylenol.

In one previously undisclosed case, Johnson & Johnson learned in 2008 of a possible problem with its Motrin pain reliever but, instead of recalling it, hired a contractor who sent people out to buy up the product without revealing what they were doing.

Buyers were instructed to "simply 'act' like a regular customer…. THERE MUST BE NO MENTION OF THIS BEING A RECALL," according to an instruction sheet obtained by House investigators.

Some lawmakers dubbed it "a phantom recall."

Goggins told the House Committee On Oversight and Government Reform that she did not know what instructions the buyers were given, but said, "I don't believe there was any intent mislead or hide."

She emphasized that there were no known illnesses or deaths linked to the products recalled in April.

But authorities disclosed that there had been hundreds of adverse events, including 37 deaths since Jan. 1, 2008 — including seven since April 30. However, the FDA has not established that any of the deaths or adverse events were caused by the medications, Sharfstein said.

Before the recall, an FDA inspection at the Fort Washington, Pa., plant that produced the pediatric medications found bacterial contamination of an ingredient, inadequate employee training, substandard equipment maintenance and a failure to investigate dozens of reports of foreign materials in medication.

After the recall, Johnson & Johnson closed the plant, which won't reopen until the company finishes a review of the North American drug-making operations of McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the subsidiary that produced the recalled medications, Goggins said.

Johnson & Johnson will present a plan for improving its manufacturing processes to the FDA by July 15, she said.

Goggins framed the recalls as problems confined to McNeil.

But Sharfstein said Johnson & Johnson bore responsibility, noting that the February meeting was "extraordinary" because it marked the FDA's attempt to go over the heads of McNeil executives to top decision-makers in the conglomerate.

"There are still many unanswered questions" about Johnson & Johnson's openness in addressing its problems, said oversight committee Chairman Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.). He promised further scrutiny of the company.

Towns and ranking GOP member Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) agreed that the hearing highlighted the need for the FDA to have its own authority to recall medications, instead of having to rely on drug-makers to do so.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tylenol-hearing-20100528,0,7859852,print.story

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America's 'casualty gap'

On Memorial Day we honor the brave men and women in uniform. In doing so, we shouldn't overlook a hidden aspect of war: the socioeconomic inequality in who makes the ultimate sacrifice for the nation.

Douglas L. Kriner and Francis X. Shen

May 28, 2010

Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 5,000 Americans have lost their lives in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — almost 600 of them Californians. This sacrifice, and the sacrifice of all of our brave men and women in uniform, will be honored over the Memorial Day weekend. In honoring their service, we should not overlook a very real though hidden aspect of war: the socioeconomic inequality in who makes the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the nation.

Over the last six years, we have studied this inequality by collecting and analyzing data on the hometowns of more than 400,000 members of the armed forces who died in World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. By integrating these records with census data, we demonstrate unambiguously that, beginning with the Korean War, disadvantaged communities have suffered a disproportionate share of the nation's wartime casualties, while richer communities have been more insulated from the costs of war. Furthermore, the data suggest that this "casualty gap" between rich and poor communities has reached its widest proportions in the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Although the military uses the term "casualty" in reference to both killed and wounded soldiers, following the standard practice in political science our study uses the term casualty to denote deaths.

Nationally, in the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq wars, communities in the lowest three income deciles suffered 35%, 36% and 38% of the casualties, respectively. Yet communities in the top three income deciles sustained significantly fewer casualties — 25%, 26% and 23% of the casualties, respectively.

More advanced statistical analyses, which account for a variety of other important factors, also offer strong evidence of casualty gaps between communities with different levels of income and education. In Los Angeles, for example, citywide almost 27% of residents hold a college degree. By contrast, in the specific L.A. neighborhoods that have lost a young man or woman in Iraq, less than 12% of residents graduated from college. Similarly, in New York City, the citywide average median family income is nearly $42,000, while the average in neighborhoods that have experienced an Iraq war casualty is $34,000, 19% lower.

Assertions of a casualty gap are not new. In the Civil War, there were cries of a "rich man's war, poor man's fight." But documenting this inequality has proved difficult. Previous studies were limited in scope and produced conflicting findings. This confusion led commentators such as William F. Buckley to describe Vietnam as an "all-American effort" of shared battlefield sacrifice. Our study, however, definitively shows that the burden of war death in Vietnam, Korea and Iraq has not been shouldered equally.

It is possible that the casualty gap is an inescapable consequence of broader social inequity and the military's important role as an engine of opportunity and upward mobility. But the gap also plainly conflicts with a norm of shared military sacrifice that is as old as the republic. George Washington proclaimed that every citizen who enjoys the rights and privileges of citizenship "owes not only a proportion of his property but even of his personal service to the defense of it."

What would happen if the nation openly acknowledged the casualty gap? Would citizens rethink questions of war and peace? To find out, we conducted a series of original public opinion survey experiments with nationally representative samples of Americans. We found that citizens informed about the existence of a casualty gap were significantly more likely to oppose ongoing military operations and less willing to support future ones than were their peers who were not informed about casualty inequalities. For example, in evaluating a hypothetical military mission to halt Iran's nuclear weapons program, respondents told about casualty inequalities in the Iraq war said they would tolerate 40% fewer casualties to achieve the mission's goals than would their peers who were not given this information.

These experimental results suggest that if Americans were to learn of wartime inequalities, the public would become more circumspect about future military action. However, the casualty gap is not part of our national dialogue. The reason is clear: Casualty inequalities challenge our fundamental American values. Bringing a frank and honest discussion of the casualty gap into the public sphere could significantly alter the tenor of political discourse in Washington.

We call on policymakers, military leaders and the public to acknowledge and discuss the disproportionate wartime burden borne by America's poorest and most disadvantaged communities. Let us remember the full human costs of military action, including the socioeconomic inequality they underscore, and weigh them carefully when crafting American military policy.

Douglas L. Kriner is an assistant professor of political science at Boston University. Francis X. Shen is a fellow in the MacArthur Foundation Law & Neuroscience Project and a visiting scholar at Vanderbilt Law School. They are the authors of the recently published book "The Casualty Gap: The Causes and Consequences of American Wartime Inequalities."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0528-shen-warcosts-20100528,0,1033623,print.story

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From the New York Times

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New U.S. Strategy Focuses on Managing Threats

By DAVID E. SANGER and PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s first formal national security strategy describes a coming era in which the United States will have to learn to live within its limits — a world in which two wars cannot be sustained for much longer and the rising powers inevitably begin to erode some elements of American influence around the globe.

Mr. Obama argues that the United States is confident enough to live with that reality and that after nearly a decade of organizing its national security policy around counterterrorism, it must return to a broader agenda. “The burdens of a young century cannot fall on American shoulders alone,” Mr. Obama says in the introduction of the strategy released on Thursday. “Indeed, our adversaries would like to see America sap our strength by overextending our power.”

But this document, required by Congress, is also bound to reignite the argument over the way Mr. Obama has redirected American foreign policy over the past 16 months. His critics — inclined to portray him as too eager to apologize for America’s failings and too willing to surrender the nation’s role as the single, indispensable superpower — are likely to extract elements of the new document to bolster their case.

But to Mr. Obama’s team, it is a document that recognizes the world as it is and ends a era of illusion in which Washington confused projecting power with achieving results. “We are no less powerful,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday at the Brookings Institution. “We are shifting from mostly direct application and exercise of American power,” she said, to one of indirection, that requires patience and partners, and gets results more slowly.

“In a world like this, American leadership isn’t needed less,” she said. “It is needed more. And the simple fact is that no global problem can be solved without us.”

The 52-page document tries to blend the idealism of Mr. Obama’s campaign promises with the realities of his confrontations with a fractious and threatening world. It describes an America “hardened by war” and “disciplined by a devastating economic crisis,” and it concludes that the United States cannot sustain extended wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan while fulfilling other commitments.

That line is just one of many subtle slaps at former President George W. Bush. While Mr. Bush’s 2002 document explicitly said the United States would never allow the rise of a rival superpower, Mr. Obama argues that America faces no real military competitor but that global power is increasingly diffuse.

Both Mrs. Clinton and the principal author of the report, Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, argued that Mr. Obama recognized that reality when he pressed the Group of 8 nations — the largest industrialized economies and Russia — to cede more power to the Group of 20, which includes fast-emerging powers like China, India and Brazil.

Although Mr. Obama has put a renewed focus on the Afghan war and increased C.I.A. drone strikes against militants in Pakistan, the strategy rejects Mr. Bush’s focus on counterterrorism as the organizing principle of security policy. Those efforts “to counter violent extremism” — Mr. Obama avoids the word Islamic — “are only one element of our strategic environment and cannot define America’s engagement with the world.”

He goes on to argue that “the gravest danger to the American people and global security continues to come from weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons.” But he also dwells on cyberthreats, climate change and America’s dependence on fossil fuels as fundamental national security issues, issues that received little or no attention in Mr. Bush’s document, although Mr. Bush focused on them more in his second term.

“It is a rather dramatic departure from the most recent prior national security strategy,” said Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations.

The differences are clearest in a section on the use of force, which makes no mention of pre-emptive attacks against countries or nonstate actors who may pose a threat, as Mr. Bush did in 2002. But Mr. Obama does not explicitly rule out striking first.

“While the use of force is sometimes necessary, we will exhaust other options before war whenever we can, and carefully weigh the costs and risks of action against the costs and risks of inaction,” he says. When it is necessary, he adds, “we will seek broad international support.”

Mr. Bush’s aides had said they would not seek a “permission slip” for such actions. Mr. Obama phrases that idea more softly, saying “the United States must reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend our nation and our interests, yet we will also seek to adhere to standards that govern the use of force.”

Mr. Obama also defines security more broadly than his predecessor did, making the case, for example, that reducing the budget deficit is critical to sustaining American power. Mrs. Clinton focused much of her Brookings presentation on that theme, arguing that American commanders and diplomats see the long-term national debt as one of the largest threats to American influence and to the country’s ability to project power abroad.

Still, for all its self-conscious rejection of the Bush era, the document reflects elements of continuity. For example, it does not disavow using the state secrets act to withhold information from courts in terrorism cases, although it argues for prudent and limited use. It also insists that “we will maintain the military superiority that has secured our country, and underpinned global security, for decades.”

It does not make the spread of democracy the priority that Mr. Bush did, but it embraces the goal more robustly than is typical for Mr. Obama, a reflection of a struggle in his administration about how to handle a topic so associated with Mr. Bush. Mr. Obama commits to “welcoming all peaceful democratic movements” and to “supporting the development of institutions within fragile democracies.”

Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from the United Nations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/world/28strategy.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Arizona Law Is Stoking Unease Among Latinos

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

PHOENIX — When Gov. Jan Brewer signed Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law, giving police departments broad power to make immigration checks, she sought to allay concerns from Hispanic citizens and legal residents that they would be singled out for scrutiny.

“We have to trust our law enforcement,” Ms. Brewer said. “It’s simple reality. Police officers are going to be respectful. They understand what their jobs are. They’ve taken an oath, and racial profiling isn’t legal.”

Those words ring hollow to many Latinos, including Jesus Ruiz, 25, a college student in Mesa, Ariz., who, like many Latinos here, believes that all too often the police view them suspiciously and single them out for what they consider questionable stops or harassment.

In one stop in 2004, Mr. Ruiz said, an officer pulled him over for speeding 10 miles over the limit and went on to question him on where he was going to school and whether he lived with his parents, and finally asked for his Social Security number.

“I was thinking, is he supposed to be asking me for that and all these questions for a speeding ticket?” said Mr. Ruiz, who spray painted himself white and wrote on his body, “Am I reasonably suspicious?” at a recent protest against the new law, which goes into effect in late July.

But it is not just young people.

Judge Jose Padilla of Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, says that twice since he became a judge in 2006, the police have pulled him over, alleging minor traffic infractions. Even though Judge Padilla, 60, did not disclose his occupation, he ended up not receiving a ticket. He said his complaints to the police department led to sensitivity training for the officers.

Judge Padilla believes the stops were based on his Hispanic ancestry and the fact that his 1988 pickup truck has large wheels and resembles a low rider, a customized car popular in Mexican-American culture but also favored by some street gangs.

“This has been lifelong, these stops,” he said, “and it is not just me.”

Now, Latinos and several police chiefs say they worry that the law, which requires the police, “when practicable” and if they have reasonable suspicion, to check the immigration status of people they stop, detain or arrest for another reason, will widen a chasm of trust that they have struggled to close.

Those concerns have reached the Justice Department, which is considering challenging the law in court, out of a concern, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on ABC’s “This Week,” that “we could potentially get on a slippery slope where people will be picked on because of how they look as opposed to what they have done.”

Though President Obama again criticized the law at a news conference Thursday, a majority of Americans support it, according to a CBS News poll released Tuesday. But recent surveys suggest a split along ethnic lines, with a majority of Latinos opposed to it. An Associated Press-Univision poll released May 13 showed nearly two-thirds of Hispanics opposed the Arizona law, compared with just 20 percent of non-Hispanics (45 percent favored it and 30 percent were neutral).

Antonio Bustamante, a veteran civil rights lawyer here who is helping organize protests against the law, explained by saying, “The majority in the country has not experienced being profiled so they don’t perceive it as an issue, just like they don’t accept discrimination in the country because they have not been discriminated against.”

Roberto Villaseñor, the chief of police in Tucson, said in a recent conference call with reporters that his city “is divided about this issue,” and he worries that immigrants will not report crimes or turn in criminals out of fear, justified or not, they will end up deported.

The law, Chief Villaseñor said, will instill “a level of mistrust” particularly in immigrant communities and break down years of efforts to combat the perception that the police collaborate with immigration agents.

Already, he said, there are anecdotal reports that some police departments in the state are asking people for their papers. He said his department had received a picture of a patrol car near a Border Patrol vehicle, as if proximity proved that officers were already collaborating to carry out the law.

Tensions between law enforcement and some Latinos have deep roots but have been aggravated by a spate of recent incidents and lawsuits.

A study conducted as part of the settlement of a racial profiling suit brought against the Arizona State Police found that over a one-year period ending in 2007, blacks and Hispanics were two and a half times more likely than whites to be searched by highway patrol officers even though the rate of seizure of contraband among whites was higher than for Hispanics and about the same as for blacks.

Memories also burn strong here of the so-called Chandler roundup, where the police in that Phoenix suburb worked with immigration agents to arrest more than 400 illegal immigrants — stopping scores of Latino citizens and legal residents to check their papers, in the process. The city settled a subsequent lawsuit for $500,000.

Today, a federal lawsuit and a Justice Department investigation continue against Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, who has been criticized for using stops for traffic offenses in a series of “crime suppression operations” to check people’s immigration status throughout metropolitan Phoenix.

It remains unclear what criteria the police will use in deciding what is a reasonable suspicion a person they stop is an illegal immigrant.

The new state law says the police cannot use race, color or ethnicity “except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.”

Some civil rights lawyers find that clause worrisome.

They note that federal courts and the Arizona Supreme Court have upheld the right of federal agents enforcing immigration law to consider someone’s ethnicity, especially at or near the border, when deciding to question someone suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

A training manual as part of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program known as 287(g), which deputizes specially trained state and local police as immigration officers, lists a number of factors that can be used to make an immigration query, including “Does the subject have a thick foreign accent or appear not to speak English?” and “Does the subject’s appearance look like it is ‘out of place’ or as though the subject has just traveled?” and “Is the area known for its attraction to illegal aliens?”

Federal officials said the manual was being revised to clarify the criteria and emphasize that several other factors must be considered.

David Salgado, a Phoenix police officer who has filed one of five lawsuits to block the law, said it would be impossible not to take race or ethnicity into account to develop reasonable suspicion, given the proximity to the border and region’s large Hispanic population.

Officer Salgado said the fact that officers can check immigration status only after a stop for another reason is essentially meaningless because “you drive two or three blocks down the street I will find something to pull you over for — going over the double line, forgetting to signal for a lane change, it’s not hard.”

Nina Perales, a lawyer with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which also has sued, said non-Hispanic illegal immigrants would get a free pass.

“How does law enforcement form a reasonable suspicion that a white person is an alien absent a flat-out admission they are?” Ms. Perales asked.

Still, many Arizonans who support the law believe racial profiling concerns are overblown or a smokescreen to hide a belief that borders should be wide open.

“The police will do the right thing. The majority of them do,” said Sunday Schwein, a retired nurse in Payson, Ariz. “I really doubt they will pick people out just because of their race.”

Under an executive order signed by Ms. Brewer, the state’s police training board is developing a training course designed to guide officers in developing reasonable suspicion that somebody is an illegal immigrant.

A letter from the board to the governor last week indicated the training, in the form of a DVD with handouts for every officer in the state, would reflect that given to federal immigration officers as well as the state’s Department of Public Safety.

While several police chiefs oppose the law, groups representing rank-and-file officers support it and play down the concerns about racial profiling.

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, a union representing police officers that supports the law, said some factors that might provoke reasonable suspicion include someone not carrying identification or using fake identification or possessing foreign identification without a visa.

But many Latinos remain unconvinced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/28immig.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Decades Later, Ex-Police Commander in Chicago Goes on Trial in Abuse Cases

By EMMA GRAVES FITZSIMMONS

CHICAGO — The retired police commander, now white-haired and in ill health, sat silently in a courtroom here as federal prosecutors described how, more than two decades ago, he hit a suspect over the head with a stapler and stuck a gun in another suspect’s mouth.

It was a courtroom moment many in this city believed might never come: the retired commander, Jon Burge, 62, on trial in connection with long-known reports of abuse by dozens of men at the police station he led in the 1980s. Technically, Mr. Burge is not charged with those reports of abuse — the statute of limitations ran out on such a possibility. But federal prosecutors have charged him with perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying about the abuse in a civil lawsuit, so the claims of abuse are still front and center in the courtroom this week.

Mr. Burge has pleaded not guilty. His arrival in court this week for a trial that is expected to last more than a month reopened a painful chapter for the city, which long ago created widespread distrust of police among black residents. Over the years, the scandal has contributed to the emptying of Illinois’s death row by a former governor, prompted numerous civil lawsuits, and left deep scars on relations between the police and residents of the city’s South Side.

Prosecutors told jurors in opening statements that Mr. Burge, and a group of detectives under his command, smothered suspects with plastic bags, gave them electrical shocks and conducted mock executions. A prosecutor said the South Side station that Mr. Burge led had “a dirty little secret” of torturing suspects to get confessions.

“The defendant not only knew about it, but participated in it,” the prosecutor, Betsy Biffl, said.

But defense lawyers portrayed Mr. Burge, who now lives in Florida and has prostate cancer, as a hard-working police officer and Vietnam veteran who carried out “heroic work” as he rose through the department’s ranks. His lawyer, William Gamboney, said those accusing him of wrongdoing were criminals and gang members who could not be trusted to tell the truth. “I’m fairly certain you are not going to like these people,” Mr. Gamboney said.

Among those in the tense, packed courtroom gallery this week was the mother of one of the men who says Mr. Burge abused him. The issue of race has arisen once again in the courtroom; at one point during jury selection, the judge, Joan Humphrey Lefkow of Federal District Court in Chicago, refused to remove two people from the jury after noting that most of the people the defense had tried to strike were black.

On Thursday, Anthony Holmes testified about being abused by Mr. Burge and other detectives when he was arrested on murder charges in 1973. During cross-examination, a defense lawyer asked him, in a contentious exchange, why his allegations of torture never arose in his trial or during the 10 years he served in prison after his conviction.

The perjury charges that Mr. Burge now faces stem from a civil lawsuit filed in 2003 by Madison Hobley, who claimed he was tortured at a police station in 1987. Prosecutors say Mr. Burge provided false written statements in the case when asked whether he or other officers had abused suspects.

In 2006, a report by special state prosecutors essentially supported what dozens of inmates had said about being brutalized while in custody. That report, which took more than four years and included more than 700 interviews, increased public pressure to file charges against Mr. Burge. As recently as 2008, the city approved a $20 million settlement with four former death row inmates who said they had been abused under Mr. Burge. If he is found guilty, Mr. Burge faces up to 20 years in prison for each obstruction of justice charge, five years for perjury and a $250,000 fine on each count.

Advocates for those who say Mr. Burge harmed them described this trial as an important symbol, but not the end of the scandal. Flint Taylor, a lawyer who has represented more than a dozen such men, said at least 20 people who say they were abused were still in prison and deserved new trials in which their coerced confessions were not used as evidence.

The rest of the officers who abused suspects — those who worked for Mr. Burge — must also be charged, Mr. Taylor said.

“There can’t be closure for the Chicago community and the men who were tortured until not only Burge is brought to trial but also the men who worked with him,” Mr. Taylor said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/28chicago.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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A Massachusetts Move on Immigration Law

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Senate on Thursday approved a series of measures to tighten immigration enforcement, reflecting election-year unease over the issue in a Democratic-controlled Legislature that has spurned such crackdowns in the past.

The measures, which passed 28 to 10 in an amendment to a budget bill, would require state contractors to confirm that their workers were here legally and prohibit the contractors from doing business with the state if they were found to employ illegal immigrants.

The changes would also codify into law an existing state policy that bars illegal immigrants from qualifying for resident-tuition rates at state colleges. And they would require public housing agencies to give legal residents priority for subsidized housing.

In addition, the state attorney general’s office would be required to set up a hot line for people to anonymously report businesses that hire illegal immigrants, and to investigate any such reports.

“It’s a reaction to a political climate that has been successfully manipulated by extremist elements,” said Frank Soults, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. “Lawmakers who always supported immigrants before have suddenly turned and voted for the most anti-immigrant bill we’ve seen in Massachusetts in years.”

But Senator Steven A. Baddour, a Democrat who supported the legislation, said it was crucial.

“We have an illegal immigration problem that needs to be addressed here in the Commonwealth,” Mr. Baddour said, “and this is a good bipartisan solution.”

The vote came several weeks after the State House, also controlled by Democrats, narrowly rejected a measure that would have barred illegal immigrants here from receiving state and federal benefits. It is not yet clear how much support the Senate measures will muster in the House.

A Suffolk University/7 News poll released Wednesday found that 84 percent of voters want the state to require proof of citizenship before awarding benefits like public assistance. The poll of 500 registered voters, which had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, also found that 53 percent supported Arizona’s new immigration law.

But only 40 percent said that Massachusetts should pass a similar law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/28mass.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Troops and the Border

President Obama made a surprise decision on Tuesday to send 1,200 additional National Guard troops to the border with Mexico and seek more money to combat drug smuggling. It followed a testy meeting with Republican senators, many of whom have been pressing the administration to take drastic action to lock down the border.

Take your pick of possible explanations for Mr. Obama’s sudden move: a political tactic to gain cover for immigration reform; a re-election gift to Senator John McCain of Arizona, who is in a desperate primary struggle with a border hawk; a realistic effort to stem illegal flows of drugs and people north, guns and money south (the least-convincing explanation).

Mexico is in a vicious fight to the death with the drug cartels. Thousands of people south of the border have already been killed. While the war has not yet spilled into this country — the violent crime rate is down in many American border cities and towns — anxiety is high. But adding a thousand or so border troops won’t stop the cartels or repeal the law of supply and demand. It won’t lessen American addicts’ hunger for drugs or Mexican traffickers’ appetite for sold-in-America guns.

The Obama administration is making other sensible efforts to stem the crime flows: checking southbound rail cars at the border for illegal guns, money and other contraband; helping Mexico battle the cartels; sharing more information among American law-enforcement agencies.

Getting serious about security, though, means looking beyond the border. Addressing Congress last week, President Felipe Calderón of Mexico practically begged lawmakers to reinstate the assault-weapons ban that Washington let expire in 2004, greatly contributing to violence in his country.

Congress also urgently needs to crack down on rogue gun dealers whose sales to straw purchasers help arm the drug cartels and close the notorious loophole that allows gun traffickers to purchase large numbers of weapons from unregulated private sellers at gun shows for shipment across the border. Mr. Obama has avoided these fights — and get-tough-on-the-border Republicans are pressing in the opposite direction.

The Republicans also insist that border security has to come before immigration reform. But a tighter border without a legal path for unskilled labor only makes human smuggling part of the criminals’ business plan. Unlike bricks of cocaine, people can be smuggled more than once and their families shaken down for easy cash.

With comprehensive immigration reform, law-abiding workers will come and go with visas, and the people left to illegally cross the Arizona desert will be drug traffickers, gun runners and other undesirables. Then a thousand or so troops might actually make a difference.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/opinion/28fri2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the White House

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Time to Get Ready for Hurricane Season

Posted by Craig Fugate

May 27, 2010

Today marks only six days until the start of hurricane season. FEMA is working across the administration and with our state and local officials to be ready and earlier today I joined Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, NOAA Administrator Dr. Lubchenco, Bill Read of the National Hurricane Center and five FEMA regional administrators to brief President Obama about our continuing efforts.

FEMA has been in regular contact with Governors, congressional delegations, and emergency managers in coastal states to ensure they have the tools and resources they need to prepare for, respond to, and recover from any potential hurricane impacts.

FEMA, the states, and local governments all have important roles, but the bottom line is - we can only be as prepared as the public is prepared. The fact is FEMA is only part of the team. State, tribal and local offices, the private sector, faith-based groups, non-profits, and most importantly, the general public, all have a role to play as well.

Families and business in coastal communities all need to take steps now to prepare for hurricane season – but because no one is immune from emergencies, you should take these steps to increase your preparedness whether you live in a hurricane-prone area or not.

They include putting together a communications plan, getting an emergency kit, and staying informed and following the instructions of local officials. Ready.gov is a valuable source of information on preparedness, with links for business and children as well.

FEMA also recently launched a mobile version of our website, which can be found at m.fema.gov, to give people quick access to the disaster information and tools on their smart phones.

This season there has also been a lot of questions on the BP oil spill. Our planning has certainly involved consideration of the effects that the BP oil spill could have on the response capabilities and recovery scenarios. But, the existence of the spill does not change FEMA’s initial priority during a response, which is to support the states and do everything possible to protect lives and property. And my message to the public is – whether or not we have an oil spill, if you have a major hurricane coming, you have to listen to the advice of your state and local officials, and if they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate.

Hurricane season officially starts June 1st. So now’s the time to get ready – get a family communications plan, put together an emergency kit, and pay attention to announcements and instructions from local officials. Being prepared will go a long way toward keeping your family safe this summer.

For more information on how to how your family can become better prepared, visit www.ready.gov.

Craig Fugate is the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/27/time-get-ready-hurricane-season

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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CBP, TSA Provide Reminders and Travel Tips to Summer Travelers

May 27, 2010

Washington – In anticipation of the summer travel season, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration joined efforts to provide travel tips to summer travelers.

CBP and TSA recently implemented initiatives to facilitate travel while protecting the homeland against various threats. With the summer travel season rapidly approaching, the two agencies want to educate travelers about these initiatives in order to make their travel experience a more enjoyable one.

CBP reminds travelers:

Additionally, CBP offers the following travel tips:

TSA reminds travelers:

Additionally, TSA offers the following travel tips:

For more information please visit the CBP and TSA Web sites. ( CBP HomePage ) ( Transportation Security Administration )

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the unified border agency within the Department of Homeland Security charged with the management, control and protection of our nation's borders at and between the official ports of entry. CBP is charged with keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons out of the country while enforcing hundreds of U.S. laws.

http://cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/news_releases/national/05272010.xml

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Working Together to Confront Terrorism

Our priority and the founding principle of the Department of Homeland Security is preventing and disrupting terrorist attacks on America. As President Obama makes clear in his recently announced National Security Strategy – the first since the creation of DHS to integrate homeland security and national security – our government has no greater priority than the safety and security of the American people.

Indeed, President Obama has emphasized the need to both build and integrate the capabilities upon which that security depends. Nowhere is that integration more essential than in our efforts to prevent and disrupt terrorist attacks. This mission is not ours alone – everyone has a role to play.

Every day, the men and women of DHS work directly with international, federal, state, local and tribal partners in a unified effort against the evolving threats we face. This kind of coordination is essential to meet the evolving challenges of the world in which we live – one in which the accelerated flow of ideas, goods, and people, while vital to supporting and advancing our interests, also creates security threats that are increasingly borderless and unconventional.

In my time as Secretary, I have also focused on the threats that take place here at home: domestic-based terrorism and violent extremism. In the last few months, we have seen individuals in our country engaged in plots to kill Americans after interacting with radical individuals online or in terrorist training camps abroad. The fact that a number of these individuals, like the Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad, are U.S. citizens makes this a uniquely dangerous challenge.

Some of these terrorists have ties to al Qaeda or other terror groups - like David Headley, who pled guilty for his role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, or Najibullah Zazi, who pled guilty to plotting to bomb the New York subway. Other suspects have been online followers of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen based in Yemen who is a self-proclaimed member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and who supports the use of violence against America.

Domestic terrorists or extremists can be particularly difficult to detect because they often attempt to exploit the freedoms of our open society in order to plot and carry out acts of violence. That is why we are constantly working to find new ways to counter these threats.

Currently, DHS is working with federal, state, and local law enforcement, and with a range of community groups, to better combat the threats posed by domestic-based terrorism. We do this by ensuring that law enforcement at every level has access to information and intelligence about threats so they are fully equipped to confront them on the frontlines.

The Department of Homeland Security is also working directly with communities to help them combat violent extremists that target vulnerable individuals before they are radicalized. Just last week, the Homeland Security Advisory Committee issued a series of recommendations on implementing successful community policing practices to confront this new challenge.

This process has been aided by the active involvement of many religious, ethnic and community organizations, including leaders from the Muslim, Arab, Sikh, and South Asian communities, who have played critical roles in thwarting violence, and underscoring the enormously positive roles that these communities play in enriching our national life.

As we work together to confront the terrorist challenge, we must acknowledge that keeping our country safe demands trust and cooperation. Terrorism is a tactic designed not just to kill, but to undermine our freedom. We must forge strong partnerships between communities and state, local and federal law enforcement, build resilience, and maintain vigilance at all times not only to prevent acts of terrorism, but also to protect the very freedoms that make this country great.

No nation—particularly a free and open society of 300 million Americans—can prevent every single threat to its citizens. But we will continue to do everything in our power to guard against terrorism and we will remember that America is – and always will be–a strong and a resilient country. We will never let a violent fringe take that away.

Janet Napolitano

http://journal.dhs.gov/2010/05/working-together-to-confront-terrorism.html

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Connecting DHS to the Private Sector

A few months ago, the DHS Private Sector Office started a project to gather all the training, publications, guidance, alerts, newsletters, programs, and services available to the private sector from across the department. The idea was to centralize all this information and publish it in a catalog for our private sector partners, providing them direct lines of access to critical resources at DHS - whether they need a contact in the Intelligence and Analysis Private Sector Partnership Program, or if they just want to read the latest on this blog - the Private Sector Resources Catalog was to be a "white pages" of sorts where our partners in academia, the non-profit world, NGOs, and the business sector could find at-a-glance information on any topic or office within DHS.

The resulting product turned out to be a fantastic resource we think has value both for the intended private sector audience and for the public alike. The catalog provides information, contact numbers and email addresses, and websites for almost every program, office, and component within DHS. Need the 4-1-1 on the 3-1-1 liquid restrictions for passenger travel on commercial airlines, or information about TSA's Security Grant Programs? Just visit the TSA Programs and Services section. Want a run down of all the DHS Centers of Excellence? Check out the Science and Technology Directorate section. There is also an A-Z appendix of key program office and component contacts from around the department.

We hope that our partners in the private sector and indeed the public will find this a useful resource. President Obama and Secretary Napolitano are committed to increased transparency and public access to those serving in the public trust; the catalog is another tool that serves that purpose.

Check out the new Private Sector Resources Catalog, and leave your feedback in the comments section of the blog.

http://blog.dhs.gov/2010/05/connecting-dhs-to-private-sector.html

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