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From the Los Angeles Times

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17 employees exposed to radiation at Idaho nuclear lab

Seventeen employees at the Idaho National Laboratory were exposed to radiation Tuesday afternoon from plutonium during a routine operation at a decommissioned reactor, officials at the lab said.

The employees were taken to a medical facility at the lab for observation, though the exposure was said to be low-level.

The lab said the public was not in danger and no release of radiation had occurred outside the facility.

The sprawing federal facility conducts a wide range of research, but the facility where the incident occured conducts work on civilian nuclear energy.

Plutonium is not highly radioactive, but inhaling or ingesting the material can cause chronic exposure and has been linked to elevated risk of cancer.

The lab could not say whether the employees were exposed to a flash of radiation or to airborne material. The exposure occurred when employees opened a container that had the plutonium inside. Sara Prentice, a spokeswoman, said it was not known what the employees were doing inside the reactor building, but she described it as a routine operation.

The incident is being managed by laboratory leaders and officials from the Energy Department's Idaho office, she said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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Potential to track people via GPS alarms Supreme Court justices

The Supreme Court justices, both conservative and liberal, voiced alarm on Tuesday at the idea of giving the government unlimited power to monitor people in public through the use of GPS devices or other tracking technology.

The comments came during an argument over whether FBI agents need a search warrant before they secretly install a GPS tracker on a suspect's car.

A government lawyer insisted that because no one has a right to privacy when they move on the public streets, the Constitution puts no limits on such high-tech surveillance.

It would “not be a search if you put a GPS device on all of our cars, monitored out movements for a month?” asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

“The justices of this court?” said deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben.

Yes, Roberts said.

“Under our theory and under this court's case, the justices of this court when driving on public roadways have no greater expectation ... ”

“So your answer is yes,” Roberts interjected.

The chief justice said he understood the notion that agents could follow a person on foot or in a car, but “this seems dramatically different.”

The new technology allows an agent to sit at in an office and monitor the movements of many persons, he said.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said he had the same concern. The “heart of the problem,” he said, is that computers now permit the government to gather huge amounts of information on people and their activities. “Isn't there a real change” because of computers and surveillance technology, he asked.

Dreeben said no. It's “not a dramatic change,” he said, in part because the government has no interest in tracking large numbers of citizens. He said the FBI uses GPS devices sparingly to monitor suspicious persons, including in terrorism cases.

But the justices kept returning to the same point. “Under the government's theory, any of us could be monitored whenever we leave home,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“If you win,” said Justice Stephen G. Breyer, “ it sounds like ‘1984,' ” a reference to George Orwell's novel of a futuristic state with total surveillance of the populace by the government.

Despite the justices' worries over unlimited surveillance, the argument did not offer a strong clue as to how the court will rule.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy suggested they might opt for a ruling focusing on whether government agents could attach the GPS to a Jeep owned by Antoine Jones, a suspected drug dealer and the defendant in the case being considered by the court.

“That seems to me a trespass,” Scalia said.

But such a ruling would not decide the broad question of whether the government can use tracking technology to follow a person for weeks without first obtaining a search warrant.

The U.S. court of appeals in Washington overturned Jones' drug conviction and ruled agents violated his rights under the 4th Amendment to be protected against “unreasonable searches.”

Scalia said he agreed with the government's underlying theory. “Our cases say there is no search when you are moving in public,” he said. There is no search unless “you establish an invasion of privacy,” he added.

An attorney for Jones argued that most persons would think their privacy was invaded if they learned an agent had put a device on their car and monitored them for a month. “Our position is if you [agent] want to use a GPS device, you must get a [search] warrant,” said Stephen Leckar, a Washington lawyer.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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Life without parole for young criminals -- it's too cruel

The Supreme Court will whether it is inherently cruel and unusual to lock up someone forever for a crime committed when the perpetrator hasn't developed an adult capacity to grasp the consequences of his or her actions.

November 9, 2011

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases brought by inmates in Alabama and Arkansas who were sentenced to life in prison without parole for killings they committed as 14-year-olds. On the face of it, that sounds right; in the popular imagination, it's those Bible-belt states in the South that subject children to unthinkable lifelong punishment before they are deemed, by society's cooler heads, to have had the mental and emotional capacity to vote, smoke a cigarette or even see a movie made for older teens.

It was in a Florida case last year that the Supreme Court rejected life without parole for juveniles whose crimes fell short of murder. Once again, it was the federal judiciary that had to straighten out a Southern state only too willing to impose the too-cruel and, for a teenager, too-unusual sentence of life without parole for a crime in which no one died, committed by someone with less than full adult capacity.

But those stereotypes of Southern justice are misleading; it is not only in the South that such cruel and uneven punishments are meted out. In fact, we in supposedly enlightened California come close to first place for cruel treatment of youth offenders. Year after year, California Democrats who live in fear of the county prosecutors' and victims' families' lobbies have voted down attempts to eliminate sentences of life in prison without parole for juveniles.

Now the Supreme Court will consider what California and so many other states have not: whether it is inherently cruel and unusual, under the 8th Amendment, to lock up someone forever for a crime committed when the perpetrator hasn't yet developed an adult capacity to grasp the consequences of his or her actions.

If the justices rule as they should — if they reject life without parole for a crime committed as a juvenile — the impact of their action will be stunningly modest. Prison doors will not swing open. Convicted murderers will not be set free. Rather, inmates convicted of murder will be resentenced, most of them to life with the possibility of parole. That means that one day they will be able to ask — merely ask — a parole board to deem them to be, as adults, people who have sufficiently repented and gone through enough rehabilitation to live their later lives outside of prison. That's how civilized nations (meaning every other nation on Earth) treat their youth criminals. It's not too late for the U.S. to catch up.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-juveniles-20111109,0,4507276,print.story

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From Google News

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"This is a test": U.S. set for alert check

For 30 seconds beginning Wednesday at 2 p.m., "this is a test" will be broadcast on radio, TV and cable stations, satellite radio and television services, and wireline video service providers across the country.

The national alert and warning system was established to enable the president to address the American people during emergencies and disasters. The system never has been tested nationwide.

The National Weather Service, governors and state and local emergency officials also can use aspects of the system for localized alerts

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57321252/this-is-a-test-u.s-set-for-alert-check/

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Texas

Rowlett Police Department selected as finalist for Community Policing Award

From the FBI

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Phony Document Rings Broken Up
Alleged California Ringleader Arrested

11/07/11

It just got a little harder to get a phony driver's license or Social Security card in the U.S.

On November 3, more than 300 law enforcement officers from a variety of federal and local agencies executed dozens of search warrants and arrests involving fraudulent document rings operating in California, Illinois, and Texas that reached into a number of other states and Mexico.

One of the main targets of the investigation was Alejandro Morales Serrano, who is believed to be a key player in this criminal conspiracy. Serrano and a number of his associates allegedly manufactured and sold the raw materials used to create the phony documents—like sheets of plastic laminates, monochrome card printer ribbons, hard plastic cards, and magnetic card reader/writer machines. Serrano was also one of those arrested during the law enforcement sweep.

The indictment alleges that the false documents were created on a large scale in California, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Illinois, and Michigan. In addition to U.S. driver's licenses and Social Security cards, these documents also included U.S. Permanent Residency cards (a.k.a., “green cards”), Mexican consular ID cards, and Mexican driver's licenses.

According to the indictment, the illegal document-making operation supported the manufacturing of fake driver's licenses for approximately 40 U.S. states and a number of Mexican states.

Searches conducted during the takedown resulted in significant seizures from various residences, other locations, and vehicles and included plastic laminates used to produce the documents, computers, and stacks of phony documents that would have undoubtedly ended up on the black market had it not been for law enforcement's intervention.

The indictment doesn't specify when Serrano began his alleged “manufacturing” career, but it does state that he was heard on a law enforcement wiretap telling someone he'd been engaged in the business for more than a decade.

What were the phony identification documents used for? The investigation revealed that they were used by used by illegal aliens to get jobs as well as to apply for citizenship and residency-related benefits. We also believe that the operation supported other crimes—and criminals—like credit and bank fraud, tax fraud, identity theft, and pharmaceutical diversion.

Of course, one of law enforcement's concerns about fraudulent document activity is that a fake identity document could potentially end up in the hands of someone with a more nefarious plan in mind—like a spy or a terrorist trying to enter the U.S. to steal information or harm Americans.

Explained Steven Gomez, Special Agent in Charge of the Counterterrorism Branch in our Los Angeles office, “False documents are utilized by a wide variety of criminals to facilitate their illegal activity as well as to conceal their identities from law enforcement. This multi-agency operation disrupted criminal activity, but also identified a national security vulnerability.”

In a related case worked by the FBI and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, several individuals were identified in a conspiracy to manufacture and distribute false identification documents with the materials supplied by Serrano.

Both investigations and subsequent takedowns were the result of the collaborative efforts of many agencies, including the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement, as well as agencies in Illinois, Texas, and elsewhere in California.

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/november/documents_110711/documents_110711

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