XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 07/17/11

Sunday, 17 July 2011

Police Across the Nation Will Roll Out Face-Recognizing iPhone Tech This Year -

A controversial piece of facial recognition technology (and a PopSci “Best of What’s New 2010” alum) is rolling out in police stations across the country this fall, and naturally not everyone is happy about it. The Mobile Offender Recognition and Identification System (MORIS) uses an augmented iPhone to snap pictures of faces, scan fingerprints, and even to image irises, and then combs through police databases looking for matching identities. This, understandably, has privacy and civil liberties advocates crying foul.
The MORIS device attaches to the back of an iPhone, adding roughly 1.75 inches to the thickness of the smartphone. Police officers armed with the tool can take a photo of a person’s face from about five feet away, or scan his or her iris from about six inches, and wirelessly beam that data to law enforcement databases elsewhere to look for a match. It can also perform remote fingerprint matching.
Similar biometric technology has been deployed by the U.S. military in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to confirm the identities of civilians entering military safe zones and to search for known insurgents at checkpoints. But rolling it out in the streets of the U.S. has plenty of people concerned with privacy and Constitutional issues.The technology lives in a somewhat gray area of the law. It’s generally permissible to take a photo of anyone in a public space, but when a law enforcement agent does so--and especially when he or she then cross references it against a criminal database--that could constitute a search, and therefore should require a warrant.

Read more - http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-07/amid-privacy-fears-police-across-nation-will-roll-out-face-recognizing-iphone-tech-year

Illegal Immigrants From India will account for about 1 in 3 non-Mexican illegal immigrants caught in Texas -

Police wearing berets and bulletproof vests broke down the door of a Guatemala City apartment in February hunting for illegal drugs. Instead, they found a different kind of illicit shipment: 27 immigrants from India packed into two locked rooms.
The Indians, whose hiding space was furnished only with soiled mattresses, claimed to be on vacation. But authorities quickly concluded they were waiting to be smuggled into the United States via an 11,000-mile (17,700-kilometer) pipeline of human cargo -- the same network that has transported thousands of illegal immigrants from India, through Central America and Mexico and over the sandy banks of the Rio Grande during the past two years.

Indians have arrived in droves even as the overall number of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. has dropped dramatically, in large part because of the sluggish American economy. And with fewer Mexicans and Central Americans crossing the border, smugglers are eager for more "high-value cargo" like Indians, some of whom are willing to pay more than $20,000 for the journey.
"Being the businessmen they are, they need to start looking for ways to supplement that work," said Rosendo Hinojosa, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley Sector, at the southernmost tip of Texas, which is the most active nationwide for apprehending Indian nationals.
Between October 2009 and March 2011, the Border Patrol detained at least 2,600 illegal immigrants from India, a dramatic rise over the typical 150 to 300 arrests per year.
The influx has been so pronounced that in May, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate committee that at some point this year, Indians will account for about 1 in 3 non-Mexican illegal immigrants caught in Texas.
Most of the border-jumpers are seeking jobs, even though India's economy is growing at about 9 percent per year. Once safely inside the U.S., they fan out across the country, often relying on relatives who are already here to arrange jobs and housing.
Indians have flooded into Texas in part because U.S. authorities have cracked down on the traditional ways they used to come here, such as entering through airports with student or work visas. The tougher enforcement has made it harder for immigrants to use visas listing non-existent universities or phantom companies.
Also contributing to the spike was a quiet change in travel requirements in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Beginning in 2009, those nations sought to attract investors by allowing visitors from India to enter without visas.
Mexican authorities have been unable to stop smugglers from moving illegal Indian immigrants over their country's southern border, then north to Texas. Instead, Mexico asked neighboring Guatemala to restore the visa requirement for Indians, which it did June 6.
Still, the lack of a visa requirement allowed at least 8,300 Indians to enter Guatemala and fewer than 28 percent of them exited legally, according to Enrique Degenhart, director of Guatemalan immigration. The others disappeared to continue heading north.
Indeed, the group of Indians police discovered in Guatemala City eventually went free because, at the time, they were in Guatemala legally.
Meanwhile, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras still don't require visas for Indians, meaning smugglers can shift routes and use those countries as alternate jumping-off points for the journey north.
El Salvador's director of immigration, Ruben Alvarado, said officials have begun quizzing arriving Indians about what Salvadoran tourist sites they intend to visit in an attempt to spot those entering the country simply to head north.
Indians caught by U.S. authorities often claim they fled their homeland because of religious persecution. Then they wait for months in federal detention centers like Port Isabel, in the town of Los Fresnos, about an hour's drive from the Texas-Mexico border.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/07/16/more-illegal-immigrants-from-india-crossing-border/?test=latestnews

Marcus Bachmann, husband of prez cand. Michele Bachmann claims recording of him comparing gays to barbarians was doctored -

Marcus Bachmann, husband of presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and proprietor of Bachmann & Associates, told the Star Tribune on Thursday that audio of him comparing gays and lesbians to barbarians was doctored. The audio clip was used extensively in the media following reports that Dr. Bachmann’s clinic performed therapy aimed at “curing” gays and lesbians of homosexuality.

In the clip, Point of View radio host Penna Dexter asked Dr. Bachmann what parents should do if a teenager tells them they might be gay.

Bachmann said parents should tell them what the Christian Bible says about homosexuality.

Here’s a transcript of his full remarks:

Dexter: Today The Wall Street Journal came out with an article, “What do you say when your teenager is gay?” What do you say to Christian parents who come up with this?
Bachmann: Well, I think you clearly say, what is the understanding of God’s word on homosexuality. And I think that this is no mystery that a child or pre-adolescent, particularly adolescents, will question and wonder about sexuality. That’s nothing new under the sun since the beginning of time. But I don’t think we should take that as, because we wonder or we think or we question, does that take us down the road of homosexuality —
Dexter: Could you add the word experiment to that?
Bachmann: Well, certainly, there’s that curiosity. But again, we, like, you know, it is as if we have to understand: Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. And just because someone feels it or thinks it, doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to go down that road. That’s what’s called the sinful nature. And we have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps.
Let’s face it what’s our culture doing today? What is our public school system doing today? They are giving full wide open doors to children not only giving encouragement to think it, but to encourage actions steps. That’s why when we understand the percentage of homosexuals in this country is small but by these open doors we can see it is starting to increase.

He told the Star Tribune that he wasn’t talking about gays and lesbians.

“I was talking in reference to children. Nothing, nothing to do with homosexuality. That’s not my mindset. That’s not my belief system. That’s not the way I would talk,” Bachmann said.

Radio host Dexter backed Bachmann up. “It was an endearing term, in a way, that made sense to me and to our audience,” Dexter told the Minneapolis paper. “We believe that children are born with a nature that inclines them to challenge and break rules, and that it is thus the parents’ responsibility to guide their children along good and productive paths.”

Whether or not Bachmann was referring to children or gays and lesbians, based on the interview, it is clear that Dr. Bachmann does not view being gay or lesbian as a good and productive path.

In addition to suggesting his intent was misunderstood, Bachmann also told the Star Tribune that someone must have doctored the audio. That’s similar to what a staff person at Bachmann’s clinic told Truth Wins Out, the group that went undercover to determine whether or not the clinic was conducting “ex-gay” therapy.

Goldman Bet Against Entire European Nations - Who Were Clients - Same Way It Bet Against Its Subprime Mortgage Clients -

It is well-documented that big banks like Goldman Sachs made money by betting against investments which they themselves bundled and sold to their own clients, such as packages of subprime mortgage-related products such as collateralized debt obligations.
This practice not only was illegal and unethical, but actually worsened the subprime crisis. Seethis, this, this, this and this.
But did you know that the big banks did the same thing with entire European nations?
As Andrew Gavin Marshall notes:

Greece has a total debt of roughly 330 billion euros (or U.S. $473 billion).[New York Times] So how did this debt get out of control? As it turned out, major U.S. banks, specifically J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, “helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules.” The deficit rules in place would slap major fines on euro member states that exceeded the limit for the budget deficit of 3% of GDP (gross domestic product), and that the total government debt must not exceed 60% of GDP. Greece hid its debt through “creative accounting,” and in some cases, even left out huge military expenditures. While the Greek government pursued its “creative accounting” methods, it got more help from Wall Street starting in 2002, in which “various investment banks offered complex financial products with which governments could push part of their liabilities into the future.” Put simply, with the help of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, Greece was able to hide its debt in the future by transferring it into derivatives. A large deal was signed with Goldman Sachs in 2002 involving derivatives, specifically, cross-currency swaps, “in which government debt issued in dollars and yen was swapped for euro debt for a certain period -- to be exchanged back into the original currencies at a later date.” The banks helped Greece devise a cross-currency swap scheme in which they used fictional exchange rates, allowing Greece to swap currencies and debt for an additional credit of $1 billion. Disguised as a ‘swap,’ this credit did not show up in the government’s debt statistics. As one German derivatives dealer has stated, “The Maastricht rules can be circumvented quite legally through swaps.”[Spiegel]

In the same way that homeowners take out a second mortgage to pay off their credit card debt, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase and other U.S. banks helped push government debt far into the future through the derivatives market. This was done in Greece, Italy, and likely several other euro-zone countries as well. In several dozen deals in Europe, “banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books.” Because the deals are not listed as loans, they are not listed as debt (liabilities), and so the true debt of Greece and other euro-zone countries was and likely to a large degree remains hidden. Greece effectively mortgaged its airports and highways to the major banks in order to get cash up-front and keep the loans off the books, classifying them as transactions.[New York Times]

Further, while Goldman Sachs was helping Greece hide its debt from the official statistics, it was also hedging its bets through buying insurance on Greek debt as well as using other derivatives trades to protect itself against a potential Greek default on its debt. So while Goldman Sachs engaged in long-term trades with Greek debt (meaning Greece would owe Goldman Sachs a great deal down the line), the firm simultaneously was betting against Greek debt in the short-term, profiting from the Greek debt crisis that it helped create.[Business Insider]

Read more - http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/goldman-bet-against-its-european.html

Victoria Police Department is facing criticism for YouTube video - how to turn powdered cocaine into crack cocaine -

A 55-second YouTube production created by the Victoria Police Department is facing criticism for potentially serving as an instructional video on processing illegal drugs.

The video features drug expert Sgt. Connor King describing how to turn powdered cocaine into crack cocaine.

A community group that works with people addicted to drugs is baffled that the police would produce such a video.

"You really question why they would, in their greatest imagination, spend their time and effort and money producing something like this when there is so many other positive things they could have focused on," said Rev. Al Tysick, of the Dandelion Society.

Victoria police say the video is intended to illustrate what sort of suspicious activity the public should be on the look-out for, such as people in their neighbourhood discarding large numbers of emptied baking soda boxes.

Crack cocaine, which is smoked in a pipe, is a crystallized form of powdered cocaine and baking soda is a major crack ingredient.

"A drug dealer will take the cocaine hydrochloride and they will mix it with common household baking soda," Const. King says in the video. "They will mix it using water and heat and the finished product will be crack cocaine."

A Victoria police spokesperson says only one person has complained about the video since it was posted on Tuesday.

The video can be viewed on the Victoria Police Department channel on YouTube.