Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers. In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives. Such requests run counter to the Justice Department’s internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas. The requests and orders are sealed at the government’s request, so it is difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied. The issue is taking on greater relevance as wireless carriers are racing to offer sleek services that allow cellphone users to know with the touch of a button where their friends or families are. The companies are hoping to recoup investments they have made to meet a federal mandate to provide enhanced 911 […]
Jordan’s Islamist opposition has suffered a major defeat in the parliamentary election; it is set to lose two-thirds of the 18 MPs it had in the last parliament. While the party itself has blamed electoral fraud, infighting and a failure to deliver on campaign promises also played a role-but perhaps the most important factor is an unfavourable electoral system. With a weaker Islamist presence in parliament, the prospects for political reform in Jordan are dimmer. The Islamic Action Front (IAF)-Jordan’s only coherent opposition party-won just six of the 22 seats it targeted in the November 20th election to the 110-seat parliament, Jordan’s interior ministry announced on November 21st on the basis of preliminary results. The IAF, which is the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, had targeted 22 constituency seats that it thought it had a good chance of winning. The six-seat haul is a surprisingly poor showing, despite the institutional impediments that the IAF faces. In the previous election, held in June 2003, the party won 18 seats. The elections themselves went smoothly, with few disruptions to the voting process and an estimated turnout of 54%. However, turnout was well below 50% in the more […]
Long before the dentists and the doctors got there, before the nurses, the hygienists and X-ray techs came, before anyone had flicked on the portable mammography unit or sterilized the day’s first set of surgical instruments, the people who needed them showed up to wait. It was 3 a.m. at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Virginia - Friday, July 20, 2007 - the start of a rainy Appalachian morning. Outside the gates, people lay in their trucks or in tents pitched along the grassy parking lot, waiting for their chance to have their medical needs treated at no charge - part of an annual three-day ‘expedition’ led by a volunteer medical relief corps called Remote Area Medical. The group, most often referred to as RAM, has sent health expeditions to countries like Guyana, India, Tanzania and Haiti, but increasingly its work is in the United States, where 47 million people - more than 15 percent of the population - live without health insurance. Residents of remote rural areas are less likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to have health insurance and more likely to be in fair or poor health. According to the Department of Health and Human […]
The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into Taliban hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area. Despite tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, the insurgents, driven out by the American invasion in 2001, now control ‘vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries’, the Senlis Council says in a report released yesterday. On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a ‘significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change’. It says the territory controlled by the Taliban has increased and the frontline is getting closer to Kabul – a warning echoed by the UN which says more and more of the country is becoming a ‘no go’ area for western aid and development workers. The council goes as far as to state: ‘It is a sad indictment of the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
