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From the New York Times

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It's Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know

by NOAM COHEN

A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game.

But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts.

The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin.

Mr. Spitz has provided a rare glimpse — an unprecedented one, privacy experts say — of what is being collected as we walk around with our phones. Unlike many online services and Web sites that must send “cookies” to a user's computer to try to link its traffic to a specific person, cellphone companies simply have to sit back and hit “record.”

“We are all walking around with little tags, and our tag has a phone number associated with it, who we called and what we do with the phone,” said Sarah E. Williams, an expert on graphic information at Columbia University's architecture school. “We don't even know we are giving up that data.”

Tracking a customer's whereabouts is part and parcel of what phone companies do for a living. Every seven seconds or so, the phone company of someone with a working cellphone is determining the nearest tower, so as to most efficiently route calls. And for billing reasons, they track where the call is coming from and how long it has lasted.

“At any given instant, a cell company has to know where you are; it is constantly registering with the tower with the strongest signal,” said Matthew Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania who has testified before Congress on the issue.

Mr. Spitz's information, Mr. Blaze pointed out, was not based on those frequent updates, but on how often Mr. Spitz checked his e-mail.

Mr. Spitz, a privacy advocate, decided to be extremely open with his personal information. Late last month, he released all the location information in a publicly accessible Google Document, and worked with a prominent German newspaper, Die Zeit, to map those coordinates over time.

“This is really the most compelling visualization in a public forum I have ever seen,” said Mr. Blaze, adding that it “shows how strong a picture even a fairly low-resolution location can give.”

In an interview from Berlin, Mr. Spitz explained his reasons: “It was an important point to show this is not some kind of a game. I thought about it, if it is a good idea to publish all the data — I also could say, O.K., I will only publish it for five, 10 days maybe. But then I said no, I really want to publish the whole six months.”

In the United States, telecommunication companies do not have to report precisely what material they collect, said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who specializes in privacy. He added that based on court cases he could say that “they store more of it and it is becoming more precise.”

“Phones have become a necessary part of modern life,” he said, objecting to the idea that “you have to hand over your personal privacy to be part of the 21st century.”

In the United States, there are law enforcement and safety reasons for cellphone companies being encouraged to keep track of its customers. Both the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration have used cellphone records to identify suspects and make arrests.

If the information is valuable to law enforcement, it could be lucrative for marketers. The major American cellphone providers declined to explain what exactly they collect and what they use it for.

Verizon, for example, declined to elaborate other than to point to its privacy policy, which includes: “Information such as call records, service usage, traffic data,” the statement in part reads, may be used for “marketing to you based on your use of the products and services you already have, subject to any restrictions required by law.”

AT&T, for example, works with a company, Sense Networks, that uses anonymous location information “to better understand aggregate human activity.” One product, CitySense, makes recommendations about local nightlife to customers who choose to participate based on their cellphone usage. (Many smartphone apps already on the market are based on location but that's with the consent of the user and through GPS, not the cellphone company's records.)

Because of Germany's history, courts place a greater emphasis on personal privacy. Mr. Spitz first went to court to get his entire file in 2009 but Deutsche Telekom objected.

For six months, he said, there was a “Ping Pong game” of lawyers' letters back and forth until, separately, the Constitutional Court there decided that the existing rules governing data retention, beyond those required for billing and logistics, were illegal. Soon thereafter, the two sides reached a settlement: “I only get the information that is related to me, and I don't get all the information like who am I calling, who sent me a SMS and so on,” Mr. Spitz said, referring to text messages.

Even so, 35,831 pieces of information were sent to him by Deutsche Telekom as an encrypted file, to protect his privacy during its transmission.

Deutsche Telekom, which owns T-Mobile, Mr. Spitz's carrier, wrote in an e-mail that it stored six months' of data, as required by the law, and that after the court ruling it “immediately ceased” storing data.

And a year after the court ruling outlawing this kind of data retention, there is a movement to try to get a new, more limited law passed. Mr. Spitz, at 26 a member of the Green Party's executive board, says he released that material to influence that debate.

“I want to show the political message that this kind of data retention is really, really big and you can really look into the life of people for six months and see what they are doing where they are.”

While the potential for abuse is easy to imagine, in Mr. Spitz's case, there was not much revealed.

“I really spend most of the time in my own neighborhood, which was quite funny for me,” he said. “I am not really walking that much around.”

Any embarrassing details? “The data shows that I am flying sometimes,” he said, rather than taking a more fuel-efficient train. “Something not that popular for a Green politician.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1301141053-rgPq0NjhytwDwsVlr/1Nzw&pagewanted=print

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Southern Lawmakers Focus on Illegal Immigrants

Some of the toughest bills in the nation aimed at illegal immigrants are making their way through legislatures in the South.

Proposed legislation in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, where Republicans control the legislatures and the governors' mansions, have moved further than similar proposals in many other states, where concerns about the legality and financial impact of aggressive immigration legislation have stopped lawmakers.

Dozens of immigration-related bills showed up early in legislative sessions across the South. Some were aimed at keeping illegal immigrants from college or from marrying American citizens. Most died quickly, but three proposals designed to give police broader powers to identify and report illegal immigrants are moving forward.

The conservative political landscape, and a relatively recent and large addition of Latinos, both new immigrants and legal residents from other states, have contributed to the batch of legislation, say supporters and opponents of the proposed laws.

“The South has become a new gateway for immigrants,” said Wendy Sefsaf of the Immigration Policy Center, a research organization. “People see the culture shift, and they are a little bit freaked out.”

The Hispanic population in Alabama, for example, has increased by 144 percent since 2000, according to new census figures. In Mississippi, the numbers jumped by 106 percent, and in North Carolina by 111 percent. Over all, however, numbers remain small. Only about 4 percent of the population in Alabama is Hispanic. In South Carolina, the figure is 5 percent.

But Georgia has the seventh-largest population of illegal immigrants in the country, according to a report by the Pew Hispanic Center. There, a version of a law pioneered in Arizona would allow local police officers to inquire about the immigration status of people they suspect of committing crimes, including traffic violations.

It allows people to sue local agencies if they believe the law is not being enforced and also requires that some businesses use E-Verify, a free federal employment eligibility database.

Backers of the bill and opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center, say it stands a good chance of making it to Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican who has not yet said whether he will sign it, despite voicing support for strong immigration controls during his campaign last year.

The Georgia Senate also passed a bill this month that would charge an undocumented resident caught driving drunk with a felony. American citizens face only a misdemeanor charge.

At a rally at the Georgia State Capitol on Thursday, several thousand people showed up to protest the legislation. Many were Hispanic workers from around the state who had taken the day off to attend.

Six Georgia lawmakers who are pushing the House version of the bill issued a statement after the march saying, “There are millions of Georgia citizens working and raising their families who no longer are willing to accept the loss of job opportunities to the nearly 500,000 illegal aliens in our state or to subsidize their presence with their hard-earned tax dollars.”

State Senator Jack Murphy, a Republican who sponsored another version of the legislation, said his bill was written carefully to avoid some the problems that backers of the Arizona law have encountered, including accusations of racial profiling.

“I don't want to cost business and jobs by having some image problem,” he said. “My bill specifically says you will not profile.”

A similar bill is heading through the legislature in South Carolina. It would also make it illegal to transport immigrants anywhere, including a hospital or a church.

In Alabama, legislators are working on similar bills in the House and the Senate, which would also make it a crime to knowingly rent to an illegal immigrant.

Legislators leading the efforts say their bills are not based in racism, nor are they anti-immigration. They simply want to better control the flow of people into the United States and be fair to those who have arrived through proper channels. Without federal action, the states have a responsibility to step in.

“The bill is intended to make South Carolina a very hostile place for those who are in this country illegally,” said State Senator Lawrence K. Grooms. “Our hope is that they leave the country or go to a state where they are more welcome.”

That might be happening. The pending legislation in Georgia is regularly discussed among customers at the little taqueria in the back of Mercado Acupulco, an Atlanta grocery store.

For four years, business at the store was good, said Maira Garcia, 25, whose father owns the business. But lately, Ms. Garcia and other business owners who cater to a Latino clientele have seen fewer customers. People are planning to leave Georgia to go back to their home countries or to other states where the perception is that life will be easier, she and her customers said.

“I'm hearing rumors that things are going to change real bad,” said Raul Martinez Soto, 23, who moved to the United States from Morelia, Mexico, about four years ago. “Everyone is scared,” he said. “They ask what is the point to kicking us out of here?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/us/26immig.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Trying to Save a City, or at Least a Part

DETROIT — In a city where residents are still fleeing at a historic rate, there is no shortage of clichéd reminders that this place has been redefined by abandonment: crumbling factories, blocks filled with boarded-up houses, and empty streets overgrown with weeds.

But here, along the tidy, tree-lined streets that wind through a collection of neighborhoods known as Grandmont Rosedale, where owning one of the stately brick homes has long been a local symbol of success for the city's striving middle class, residents are digging in to fight the flight and hold their community together.

They chip in for services the city has trouble affording, like snow plowing. They band together for neighborhood crime patrols. They run sports leagues, hold block parties and circulate community letters.

And they try to keep the place filled with people.

Marsha Bruhn, a longtime resident and retired director of the Detroit Planning Commission, watched with alarm as several nearby houses fell into disrepair after their owners departed.

First she paid to have the lawns mowed. Then she ran off squatters. Finally, she took a bolder step: buying, renovating and reselling two houses. And she is in the process of trying to buy a third.

“I did it because I was tired of what was happening,” Ms. Bruhn said. “It was having a negative impact on my property, on our street and our neighborhood. I want to be part of the solution.”

The dedicated corps of local volunteers is having some success, though victories in Detroit are measured by a different standard.

Once the fourth-largest city in America, with a peak population of 1.85 million, Detroit now ranks 18th, with 713,777 residents, according to census data released this week.

One in four residents left over the past 10 years; those who remained are plainly unable to fill the generous borders established during more optimistic times.

Pockets of prosperity remain throughout the city, but they are increasingly the exception. The Grandmont Rosedale area, about 15 minutes northwest of downtown, does not have the highest incomes or biggest homes, though both are well above average. But it has used a fierce sense of community to market itself as a safe and stable alternative to the suburbs.

The population here, unlike that of most of the city, actually grew in the 1990s. At the start of the decade, the vacancy rates for homes was less than 3 percent, a fraction of the citywide average. James Tate, a City Council member and lifelong resident, said that commitment to the community — about a third of people here pay voluntary dues — protected the neighborhood.

“The lesson we learned,” he said, “is that it's important that a neighborhood doesn't slide into a blighted situation in the first place.”

But there are troubling signs that have many inside and outside the community worried about just such a slide.

The population dropped over the past decade by 2,122, or 14 percent, to 12,617, said Dale Thomson, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan -Dearborn. The vacancy rate has reached 10 percent. One of those empty houses, sold for $14,000 to a local redevelopment nonprofit group, once belonged to a former president of General Motors.

“If that neighborhood goes, the city goes,” said Kurt Metzger, an urban affairs expert and demographer who studies census data for the city.

Marja Winters, deputy planning director for the city, said that in the past Detroit put a priority on funneling money into the most distressed communities, believing — or hoping — that healthier communities could take care of themselves.

But even strong participation among residents is not enough to overcome the escalating pressures facing these neighborhoods, she said. “We can no longer sit by and expect Grandmont Rosedale to take care of itself.”

Potential solutions, however, like Mayor Dave Bing's proposal to use incentives to encourage people to concentrate in a smaller number of healthy neighborhoods, are still mostly abstractions.

So it falls to people like Charles Pruitt to keep the neighborhood feeling like a neighborhood. On an island of grass at the center of a tree-lined boulevard, he was tending a small public garden in the cold this week, clearing dead foliage to make room for the flowers already emerging from the cold soil.

“Any direction you point, you can go find homes that are empty or demolished or burned,” said Mr. Pruitt, 79, a retired high school counselor who moved here a decade ago. “The city is down, but this neighborhood is surviving. And people here care.”

And it falls to people like William Young Jr., 65, a retired Army sergeant whose anger about a break-in at his house prompted him to attend a police training program for citizen volunteers.

During his weekly shift patrolling the neighborhood this month, he discovered a young man trying to force his way into a neighbor's house. Mr. Young pulled his gun and ordered the man to lie on the ground until the police arrived.

“I live here. There's nowhere I'm going to go. So I have to help,” he said. “I want there to be something left for the next generation, because this is one of the last nice neighborhoods in the city of Detroit.”

And if falls to people like Tom Goddeeris, a resident who leads the nonprofit Grandmont Rosedale Development Corporation, which has been using donations and grant money to buy vacant properties, rehabilitate them and sell them — typically at a loss — to protect against the decay that follows emptiness and neglect.

“We're a neighborhood that can recover and return to stability,” he said. “You can't say that about the rest of the city.”

The many forces behind Detroit's shrinking population are well known by now: the decline of the auto industry, the high taxes and insurance, the troubled schools, the concerns about crime. Even here, they were too much for some.

Beverly Jones, 48, a director of day care at a Baptist church, decided to move to the suburbs almost two years ago. She gave up on Grandmont Rosedale after her house was broken into for the fifth time and her son, who happened to be there, shot one of the burglars.

The decision to leave the city where she had lived her entire life, and where she still works, was made easier because her house was in foreclosure. After she left, it sold for $9,000, a little more than a tenth of what she paid for it a decade earlier.

“It was time to go,” Ms. Jones said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/us/26detroit.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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The Shame of New York's Group Homes

Nearly four decades ago, amid repeated scandals, New York State closed the huge state hospitals that essentially warehoused the developmentally disabled. Now, an investigation by The Times has shown that New York's group homes for the disabled — thousands of widely dispersed, state-licensed residences that were intended to replace and mitigate the cruelty of the warehouses — have themselves gone to rot.

The system, as Danny Hakim reported, operates with little oversight and tolerates shocking abuses. Employees who sexually attack, beat, berate or neglect patients can do so with little risk of punishment. Crimes are not reported, accusations are ignored by senior officials, repeat abusers are shuffled from home to home. A web of union rules shields problem employees.

There were 13,000 allegations of abuse in group homes in 2009 alone, though fewer than 5 percent were referred to law enforcement. The state Office for People With Developmental Disabilities prefers to investigate such matters internally, even though, as The Times reported, it does not use standard evidence-gathering techniques and its investigators generally lack training.

The results speak for themselves. The Times reviewed 399 disciplinary cases involving 233 state workers accused since 2008 of serious offenses like physical abuse and neglect. Each case involved substantiated charges against a worker who had already been disciplined at least once. In one-quarter of the cases involving physical, sexual or psychological abuse, the workers were transferred to other homes. The state tried to fire 129. Against stiff resistance from the Civil Service Employees Association, it fired only 30.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has already dismissed Max Chmura, who led the agency, and Jane Lynch, chief operating officer of the state's Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons With Disabilities. There may be more dismissals and hearings. But the cleanup also has to be bottom-up, bringing not just better oversight but better employees.

Group homes cannot be havens for repeat offenders, and worker education and training must be improved. Caring for the disabled with autism and cerebral palsy is challenging work, requiring gentleness, strength and imagination. These are decent union jobs, but the state must ensure that qualified people fill them.

The answer is not a return to centralized control, to the disgraceful era of Willowbrook State School. The disabled deserve to live in surroundings as close as possible to those of normal family life. The answer lies in the state's urgent obligation to protect those who cannot defend themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26sat3.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Martinsville student is shot at school; suspect is 15

MARTINSVILLE, Ind. -- Dylan Gregory and his classmates hid under their desks in a locked classroom. An administrator whisked Sierra Smith past police cars clustered around the school's entrance.

Deborah Lewis realized only after she got home that the two quick pops she had heard as she drove away from her son Jacob's school were gunshots.

"I called him and he said, 'Mom, it was 20 feet from me,' " she said, tearing up.

Students and parents struggled to make sense Friday of the shooting of one 15-year-old boy -- allegedly by another -- inside the doors of West Middle School just before classes started.

The Morgan County prosecutor's office expects to file charges against the suspect as early as Monday, Deputy Prosecutor Bob Cline said.

The victim, Chance Jackson, an eighth-grader at the school, was in critical but stable condition after undergoing surgery at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, police said.

Police found and arrested the suspect, who had fled on foot, a few miles from the school less than an hour after the shooting, Indiana State Police spokesman Sgt. Curt Durnil said. A search dog later found a handgun south of the middle school, near a shopping center.

Durnil and Assistant Superintendent Randy Taylor said the suspect, a 15-year-old eighth-grader, had been expelled from school, so he should not have been on school grounds.

Police and school officials released few details about the shooting, but several students were in the area where it happened just after 7 a.m.

Eighth-grader Natalie Arnold said she witnessed the shooting and spent the morning in interviews at the Morgan County Jail. She said she saw Chance and the suspect together; some words were exchanged, and "Chance moved back to get away."

A gun was pulled, she said, and two shots reverberated through the school halls. Natalie said students ran to tell teachers of the shooting, and Chance was on the floor, just inside the school doors, bleeding from two wounds in the abdomen.

Friday was the last day of classes before spring break at the school, which has about 600 students and 39 teachers.

The attack prompted a five-hour lockdown at the school while about 200 panicked parents and grandparents gathered outside. Minutes after the shooting, students said, an announcement over the school's public address system ordered them into their classrooms.

Dylan, 11, said he and his classmates crouched under their desks, confused and scared. They relied on text messages and Facebook posts to learn more about the situation. Cellphone calls and Facebook messages flew back and forth as students tried to make sense of what was going on.

"Comment on this if you know how many times Chance got shot and where he got shot," one student posted.

Those who checked the Facebook page listed in the suspect's name found a chilling message: "Today is the day."

Sierra, 14, quickly learned the reason administrators had been so anxious to get her inside: The suspect had not yet been caught.

"I never thought anything like this could actually happen," she said.

Students said they passed the hours in lockdown by studying or watching educational television. School staff said they made counselors available.

Eventually, parents who showed identification were allowed into the building, seven at a time. Among them were Joe and Amanda Olmsted, who have two sons at the school.

One of the boys had called Amanda Olmsted to tell her about the shooting, but his cellphone cut off during the conversation.

"I've been through stressful situations before; I've broken down into tears," Joe Olmsted said, "but it was nothing like today. This is the most stressful thing I've been through in my life."

Many questions remained unanswered Friday night. No information was made public on why the suspect was expelled or when. Authorities would not comment on a possible motive in the shooting or on possible charges. It's not clear whether the 15-year-old would be charged as a juvenile or an adult.

Taylor, the assistant superintendent, said security has been increased in Martinsville Schools, though it's not clear whether that was before or after the shooting.

In the absence of clear statements about what happened from authorities, the city was buzzing with speculation.

Students say the boys had been fighting over a girl for several months, and that the conflict might have escalated at a school dance last week. A few parents said students had tried to alert the school to the possibility that the suspect was a threat, though one school official dismissed that contention as a malicious rumor.

Martinsville High School was the subject of a death threat targeting teachers last week, which is still under investigation, and an October shooting threat in which a student is thought to have been disciplined.

Many parents said Friday they have received phone messages at least twice in the past two weeks about problems and lockdowns at the schools.

A statement from Chance's family, which lives in Brooklyn, asked the community for prayers and for privacy.

The suspect is being held in the Johnson County Juvenile Detention Center. His court-appointed attorney, Michael C. Ice, Martinsville, could not be reached for comment.

Paragon Town Marshal Brian Goss recalled an incident in which the suspect was involved in a fight with another teenager several months ago. There were no charges.

"This is really a shame," he said of the shooting. "One boy is hurt, and the other has messed up his life."

http://www.indystar.com/article/20110326/LOCAL/103260339/Martinsville-student-shot-school-suspect-15?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CCommunities

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Get prepared for earthquake that could hit the area

Friday, March 25, 2011

by NAT LEVY
BELLEVUE REPORTER

The 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami earlier this month decimated parts of Japan: More than 25,000 people are either dead or missing, with the number expected to rise. Buildings were toppled and villages washed away. And this occurred in a country widely held as one of the best prepared for a natural disaster.

The horrifying results and images have forced cities, states and countries all over the world to again ask the question, what if it happened here?

Bellevue Emergency Management hosted a forum Wednesday to discuss that exact question. Disaster preparation officials emphasized geological similarities to the area of Japan where the quake struck on March 11. The latest death/missing persons toll could have been more if it weren't for the extensive pre-planning that was done in Japan.

"Japan is probably the most prepared place in the world," said Bellevue Emergency Manager Luke Meyers. “They do things that we have not even thought about in our country. They have a real level of commitment. Their level of resolve and preparedness is something we should all admire.”

Like Japan, Western Washington sits on a subduction zone, a spot where an oceanic tectonic plate collides with, and slides underneath, a continental plate. The earthquakes occur when rocks break and crumble.

The zone rests approximately 50 miles off the coast, and has produced several large earthquakes in the past, including the 2001 Nisqually quake that measured a 6.8 magnitude.

"We sit on a very similar situation to Japan," Meyers said.

With the lingering threat of earthquakes, emergency management officials urged citizens to be prepared. Emergency kits with several days worth of food and water, batteries, flashlights and other crucial items should be a part of every household, they said.

Responders have many aspects of an earthquake to deal with, from restoring power, to fixing roads, to getting key businesses and services operational, to rescuing and searching for injured individuals. The additional geographic barriers of the bridges from Bellevue to Seattle makes preparation all the more critical. Responders may not be able to get to everyone immediately. Officials urged families and neighborhoods to develop plans to shelter in place until responders can arrive.

Bill Mitzel, business continuity manager for QBE Americas, said more than one-third of small businesses and one-fifth of large businesses don't have an emergency plan. Disasters at home can destroy the company offices and directly affect employees, but disasters in places such as Japan can have detrimental effects on businesses as well. Mitzel spoke about General Motors, which had to close several of its plants temporarily as key parts it receives from Japan were unavailable due to the earthquake.

“The better preparations are in advance of the incident, the better communications are, the better the company is going to be able to get back to work,” he said.

More important than even the plan are the employees. If a business wants to keep functioning following a disaster, employees must know that their families are safe and secure before they can get back to work, Mitzel said. Without that, the best plan is doomed to failure.

The buildings those people live and work in need earthquake preparation as well. Several Eastside governments use the Federal Emergency Management Administration's Project Impact, which helps home and business owners retrofit buildings for earthquake protection by bolting them to the foundation, bracing cripple walls, connecting floor joists, and strapping the water heater.

Whether it be businesses, families or buildings, the key to minimizing the damages that become inevitable in the wake of an earthquake or tsunami is to be ready.

“No matter what it is, we're going to have to deal with these things, so we have to prepare beforehand,” said Bellevue Emergency Preparation Coordinator Vernon Owens. “It's not a question of if we will have an earthquake, but when, so prepare now. Don't wait.”

For more information visit Bellevue's Emergency Management website or Facebook page.

http://www.seattlepi.com/sound/437694_sound118594589.html

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