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From Los Angeles Times

U.S. releases videos of Osama bin Laden

Seized from the late Al Qaeda leader's raided Pakistani compound, one video shows a gray-bearded, unkempt Osama bin Laden. Other information gathered in the raid shows that he remained to the end the terrorist group's operational leader, a U.S. intelligence official says.

By Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times

May 8, 2011

Reporting from Washington

Initial analysis of the huge cache of documents seized at Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound shows he was not a figurehead but the operational leader of Al Qaeda, an active manager who communicated regularly with terrorist partners about plots and tactics, a senior intelligence official said.

"As a result of the raid, we've acquired the single largest collection of material from a senior terrorist ever," said the official, who spoke to reporters Saturday on condition of anonymity. "The materials have already provided us some important insights.… We are already disseminating intelligence across the U.S. government based on what we found."

The official, who refused to be identified because of the nature of his work, called the Bin Laden operation "the greatest intelligence success in a generation."

Seeking to dispel any doubts that it was Bin Laden who was killed, the U.S. government also released five videos seized at the compound, one showing Bin Laden as he did not intend to be seen in public.

With a blanket draped over his shoulders, he is huddled with a remote control in his hand, sometimes rocking back and forth while watching television footage of himself. His unkempt gray beard contrasts with the dark black and apparently dyed beard in outtakes also released Saturday of Bin Laden's public appeals.

The material found in the raid "confirms how important it was to go after Bin Laden," CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said in a statement.

An early review of digital, audio and paper documents "clearly shows that Bin Laden remained an active leader in Al Qaeda, providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group," the unnamed intelligence official said. "Though separated from many Al Qaeda members who are located in more remote areas of the region, he was far from a figurehead. He was an active player, making the recent operation even more essential for our nation's security."

A CIA-led multi-agency task force is cataloguing, translating and analyzing the material, the official said, and "the treasure trove of information has provided some golden nuggets on communications within the Al Qaeda group."

Although he lived for five or six years in a compound without a telephone or Internet connection, Bin Laden continued to issue orders and encourage terrorist plots through a network of couriers, the official said. "He remained focused on inspiring and engineering international terrorism and on attacking the U.S.," the official added.

However, the official would not say what sort of instructions Bin Laden issued, what plots might have been in the works or whether any of the material seized has produced information that can be acted upon immediately.

He did allow that Bin Laden "appeared to show continuing interest in transportation and infrastructure targets."

The official added that, despite conventional wisdom that Bin Laden was living in a remote location and not able to communicate with his followers, "it was always our working assumption that he was involved in aspects of Al Qaeda's operational planning."

U.S. Navy SEALs shot and killed Bin Laden on Monday after the CIA tracked him to a compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad, 35 miles north of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

The evidence seized during the raid also includes phone numbers and documents that officials hope will help lead to other Al Qaeda figures and shed light on whether anyone in the Pakistani government was protecting Bin Laden. The U.S. has not found any evidence that the government knew he was there, the official said.

One segment of video footage released Saturday shows Bin Laden, looking perhaps older than his 54 years, watching footage of his younger self on television firing weapons. Officials did not play the audio, saying they didn't want to release Al Qaeda propaganda.

These are the sorts of videos only Bin Laden would have possessed because he was careful about his public image, the official said.

One video was a never-released "Message to the American people," officials said, believed to have been recorded between Oct. 9 and Nov. 5, 2010.

In the video, Bin Laden condemned U.S. policy and denigrated capitalism, the official said.

"We don't know why the video hasn't yet appeared," the official said.

Other footage showed Bin Laden rehearsing for video messages.

"Our takeaway is that he jealously guarded his image," the official said.

The U.S. released the videos, he said, "to underscore two main points. First, the videos make clear that Bin Laden remained active in Al Qaeda's propaganda efforts, especially in shaping his own image. Second, it is highly unlikely that some of this footage would have resided anywhere else but with Bin Laden."

The official also recounted the reasons the U.S. was certain Bin Laden was the tall man they shot: His wife called him by name during the raid; facial comparisons of eyes, ears and nose were a match with a 95% certainty, and the DNA matched a profile compiled from his extended family. The chance that it wasn't Bin Laden is "1 in 11.8 quadrillion," the official said, drawing laughter from reporters.

Al Qaeda "is damaged by Bin Laden's death, but remains dangerous," the official said. He noted that the group released a statement Friday acknowledging Bin Laden's death.

"It is noteworthy that the group did not announce a new leader, suggesting it is still trying to deal with Bin Laden's demise," he said. "It's also noteworthy that they acknowledged the death came in Pakistan, because in the past they have tried to obscure the reality of their presence in that country."

It's an open question who would take over after Bin Laden, the official said, because Ayman Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's No. 2, is unpopular among some elements.

To some members of Al Qaeda, the official said, Zawahiri is extremely controlling, a micromanager and not especially charismatic.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bin-laden-tapes-20110508,0,2358226.story

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Two women wounded in San Pedro shooting; citizens arrest suspect

A woman was taken into custody by citizens Saturday afternoon after she shot and wounded two other women during a dispute in San Pedro, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The shooting occurred about 12:40 p.m. near the intersection of Oliver and Centre streets, Officer Norma Eisenman said. Police found the two victims, ages 50 and 35, with gunshot wounds, but their injuries were not life threatening. Good Samaritans detained the suspect until police took her into custody, Eisenman said. The name of the female suspect was not immediately released.

Police are searching for a male friend of the suspect, who they said may have the weapon used in the shooting. The shooting was not gang-related, police said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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Internet data collection: The privacy line

From cellphones to the Internet, data collection is widespread. Can we limit it, and should we?

May 8, 2011

Apple introduced its Macintosh computer in 1984 with a now-famous Super Bowl commercial that showed a lone rebel striking out against Big Brother. So it was ironic that researchers recently accused the company of an Orwellian intrusion into consumer privacy: Its iPhones and iPads appeared to be tracking their users' movements. Apple eventually offered a rebuttal, and it hustled out a software update to address the concerns. Nevertheless, the episode helped strengthen the push in Congress for some basic consumer privacy protections.

Such safeguards are amply justified, given the burgeoning business that has emerged around the collection and dissemination of personal information. But as the Apple controversy illustrates, there is an important distinction between collecting information about individuals and invading their privacy.

The brouhaha began late last month after researchers for the O'Reilly Radar technology blog drew attention to a file on iPhones and iPads that recorded the GPS coordinates of nearby Wi-Fi access points and cellphone towers. The record stretched back for months, with the location information time-stamped and frequently updated.

The outcry lasted about a week, until Apple finally issued a statement declaring that it was "not tracking the location of your iPhone." The file in question, the company said, was a widely sourced database of Wi-Fi and cellular landmarks used to calculate the device's location faster while using less battery power. It acknowledged that its devices were sending location information back to Apple, but it insisted that the data were anonymized and collected merely to improve its databases of location and traffic information.

Apple has updated its software to minimize the amount of location data stored on the devices, and the episode seems to be over. The fuss it generated, though, is instructive. It shows that many people consider information about their location to be sensitive; they're willing to share it as part of a mobile service, but they don't want it to be recorded. It also shows that the public recoils from anything that smacks of corporate surveillance, even if the purported snoop is a company that makes a wildly popular product.

The public is concerned about being tracked online too, and for good reason. Numerous companies are collecting vast amounts of information about individuals' browsing habits, sometimes combining it with personal information gleaned from public records or disclosures made on social networks. The collection and use of these data may not only be invisible to users but also surprising.

A good example is what Facebook is doing with the "Like" button it has persuaded more than 2.5 million websites to display. The button ostensibly lets Facebook users recommend things they encounter online — a blog post, for example — to their friends on the social network. But researcher Arnold Roosendaal of the Netherlands found that once a Facebook user has clicked on a single "Like" button, Facebook will be alerted to all of his or her subsequent visits to any Web page with a "Like" button. The company even tracks individuals who aren't Facebook members, Roosendaal reported, although it cannot identify them by name.

Facebook's approach is similar to what many online advertising networks do in order to target pitches based on people's browsing behavior. To some technology advocates, this sort of data gathering is harmless. In fact, they say, "behavioral targeting" benefits Internet users in at least two ways: It reduces the number of irrelevant ads they see, and it generates significantly more revenue for sites than non-targeted ads. That revenue helps sites offer content for free.

Individuals should have a say in the matter, however, when sensitive and personally identifiable information is collected and shared. Simply using the Web shouldn't be tantamount to consenting to electronic surveillance. The challenge for policymakers is figuring out how to give consumers the right degree of control without making it impractical for companies to make innovative uses of personal information — in other words, to balance privacy concerns against the demand for ever-more-functional devices and services.

Several proposals are circulating in Congress, including a bill by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) that would require companies to develop easy-to-understand privacy policies and alert users when they decide to disclose or sell personally identifiable information; a measure by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would require companies to obtain users' permission before collecting sensitive personal information; and a proposal by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) to require the Federal Trade Commission to adopt a system enabling consumers to prevent companies from tracking their movements online.

We'll save the discussion of the various proposals' pros and cons for another day. For now, we urge lawmakers to stay out of the FTC's way as it seeks to enforce the principles it recently enumerated in a consent degree regarding Google Buzz, a social network that many Google email users were thrust into unwittingly. Those include a duty to design products and services to protect personal information against unintended disclosures, and to seek users' permission before making new and unexpected uses of the information previously collected. Both of these ideas draw on the clear and straightforward "Fair Information Practices" that a federal advisory panel laid out almost four decades ago — well before Apple warned Super Bowl audiences about Big Brother's prying electronic eyes.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-privacy-20110508,0,2004240,print.story

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Mexico's drug war: Crossing borders

It is time the U.S. joins Mexico in saying enough to the cartels and drug violence.

By Rubén Martínez

May 8, 2011

Last year I visited a friend of mine, journalist Raúl Silva, in a working-class neighborhood of Cuernavaca. A popular destination for tourists and students of Spanish, the city, about 60 miles south of the Mexican capital, was on edge. Only a few weeks before, a drug gang had audaciously displayed its power, issuing a curfew one Friday night, warning that anyone out after 8 p.m. might be "mistaken" as an enemy and killed. A terrified public huddled indoors, and although no serious violence occurred, the incident left a deep scar.

Raúl and I spoke for hours, and I realized too late that I faced a taxi ride on a dark two-lane road to return to my wife and children in a nearby town. I asked Raúl if he thought it was safe. "You should be OK," he said, without much assurance in his voice.

It was a 30-minute ride with a gregarious cabbie who lectured me about (what else?) la guerra del narco , the drug war. "They" were all implicated, he told me, the cartel bosses and the mules, of course, but also the business elites, the governments, the addicts — on both sides of the border. In other words, there was no border.

There was a long stretch on that ride during which we passed not a single car. I asked the cabbie if he was worried. Not exactly; in Spanish, he invoked the classic fatalism: "When your time's up, it's up." I made it back to my family without incident.

A year later the road is dark as ever. Nearly 300 bodies were discovered in April in narcofosas , mass graves of victims of the cartels. For Mexicans on both sides of the border, the Cinco de Mayo celebration, like last year's centennial of the revolution and bicentennial of independence, has been overshadowed by the violence.

And yet an unlikely spark of hope has been lighted in recent weeks, and it began with the death of a poet's child. Javier Sicilia, of Cuernavaca, a well-known author and regular columnist for Mexico's leading political weekly Proceso, penned an anguished manifesto after his son, Juan Francisco, and several of Juan Francisco's friends were killed in a narco-related crime (the victims had no known connection to the drug trade). Sicilia's open letter is as lucid as it is piercing, a cry in the desert and righteous denunciation.

"What I want to tell you today about those mutilated lives," wrote Sicilia of his son and by extension all victims of the drug violence, "about that suffering, about the indignation that these deaths has provoked, is simply that we have had enough ."

That italicized final phrase is an imperfect translation of the highly colloquial " estamos hasta la madre ," which invokes "mother," as Mexicans often do in Spanish, in an elastic and metaphorical way. We are up to our "mother" in this suffering; we can take it no more; it has violated the most profound and sacred spaces of our spirit. The phrase becomes a mantra in Sicilia's letter.

" Estamos hasta la madre ," he addressed the politicians, "with your struggle for power that has torn apart the fabric of the nation," and likewise to the cartels, "with your violence, loss of honor, cruelty, your senselessness."

Sicilia's words galvanized the public and gave Mexicans a real-life, mad-as-hell "Network" moment. " Estamos hasta la madre " appeared on signs held up by grandmothers and children in protest marches nationwide, on countless Facebook pages, on the lips of people across all social strata. On Cinco de Mayo, Sicilia led several hundred protesters out of Cuernavaca on a march scheduled to arrive in Mexico City today, just one in a weekend of promised demonstrations.

Skeptics wonder exactly how a simple plea for peace and justice can stop the cycle of violence and impunity. But Sicilia is facing death and despair the only way he knows how, with the poetry of protest.

What is missing in all of this is us — I mean those of us on this side of the border who don't live

in immigrant neighborhoods. (There, there is already great distress, the perennial longing for the homeland becomes tragically poignant. There is no homeland to return to; the risk in too many cases is too great.)

Among the broader American public there has been no "Network" moment, no eloquent call to action. The drug war is perceived as Mexico's, not ours, never mind that the weapons doing the bloodletting are in great part supplied by the United States — and not just through private dealers. We are implicated in the violence through the Mérida Initiative, a U.S.-led program that provided $750 million in technical support in 2009 and 2010 for the Mexican military, which promotes itself as above the corruption of state and local police but which has had thousands of human rights complaints logged against it, according to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission.

And of course Americans have a more personal connection with the "Mexican" drug war. There is no innocent recreational drug use. Most of the cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine consumed in the United States is produced in or transported through Mexico. Almost all the blood spilled in the war has been in Mexico, but perhaps our bloodshed is the devastation experienced by addicts, their families and their communities.

I am years clean, long finished with the cocaine that I was once addicted to, but I cannot claim that my hands are clean. I was part of a global market, played my role as a consumer, entered the vast constellation of relationships that pushes and pulls drugs, money and guns across the border — and takes its toll on both sides.

There must be a language of "we" in this war because we are all its victims and victimizers. Let us listen to Javier Sicilia: " Estamos hasta la madre ." Or we should be — all of us.

Rubén Martínez, a professor at Loyola Marymount University, hosts a "performance salon" at the Echo in Echo Park, which on May 14 will feature artists and musicians addressing the issue of the drug war.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0508-martinez-sicilia-20110508,0,387415,print.story

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From Google News

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Napolitano: ‘State by state won't cut it'

By Leon Stafford

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

While U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wouldn't comment on Georgia's Arizona-like immigration bill, she said Saturday that state legislative initiatives are not the way to address the issue.

“This is what [President Barack Obama] has said and I've been saying, state by state won't cut it,” Napolitano said in a speech to the Atlanta Press Club. “It's got to be a federal reform of immigration laws.”

The secretary was also in town to assess storm damage in Ringgold today and to address graduation at Emory University on Monday.

Napolitano, who declined to comment on Georgia's immigration HB 87, was governor of Arizona before taking over Homeland Security halfway into her second term. She said states are taking on immigration because of an “underlying frustration that this has not yet been dealt with at the national level, which is really where it should be dealt with so that there is national consistency where immigration is concerned.”

Immigration reform was arguably the hottest topic in this year's legislative session. HB 87, which Gov. Nathan Deal said he will sign soon, will create new requirements to ensure new workers are eligible for employment in the U.S. and empowers police to investigate the immigration status of certain suspects.

Brian Robinson, a spokesman for Deal, said the governor agrees Congress must address the issue, but said talks in Washington fall apart because Democrats insist on amnesty. In the meantime, states are burdened with the costs associated with illegal immigration such as schools, police and health care, he said.

“We are taking action in the only way that we can,” Robinson said.

Napolitano argued that illegal immigration is down 36 percent and said Homeland Security has beefed up audits of employers to catch those who hire illegally.

What troubles her is that the debate on the issue suggests the federal government is asleep at the wheel.

“I think these efforts on a state by state level first of all have predicated a falsity,” she said. “The falsity is that there has been nothing done, and that the border somehow is out of control. That is incorrect.”

Rep. Matthew L. Ramsey, R-Peachtree City, who introduced HB 87, said he applauds any effort the federal government has made to curb illegal immigration. But he said the fact remains that states, which have had to cut budgets across the board in one of the worst recessions in history, cannot afford to fund those who are here illegally.

“Any suggestion that states should continue to wait for the federal government to do something, with all due respect, is laughable,” he said. “We have been hearing that for decades.”

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/napolitano-state-by-state-939276.html?printArticle=y

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