Sun, August 29, 2004

Predators like pedophile Karl Toft and rapist Larry Takahashi could be tracked by cops for life through the new national sex offender registry that comes into force this fall. But Alberta says the registry doesn't have enough teeth and should be capable of more.

Alberta Solicitor General spokesman Peter Tadman said yesterday the system should be able to track sex offenders using satellite technology.

"So police can easily locate offenders in the course of their investigations," said Tadman.

"It could be better."

The federal Sex Offender Information Registration Act received royal assent in April, but the law behind the registry doesn't actually come into force until the fall.

Authorities here aren't sure yet when the system will be up and running in Alberta.

In the meantime, police across the country are currently figuring out how to implement the new Sex Offender Database that will run in conjunction with the current Canadian Police Information Centre.

A court order is required for convicted offenders to be registered on the database. Once the order is in place, offenders have 15 days to register and must re-register annually or within 15 days of changing their address, said officials.

Alex Swann - spokesman for Anne McLellan, deputy prime minister and minister of public safety - said times vary for how long an offender's information stays in the database.

"Offenders may be required to register for between 10 years and life, depending on the severity of their sentence," said Swann. "Nobody can hide."

Swann also pointed out that critics who say the system isn't tough enough have to remember it was designed while taking into account what each province wanted or didn't want.

"We had to bring them all together," he said.

City police Det. Wil Tonowski, co-chair of Alberta's committee to implement the system, said one of the biggest benefits is officers will be able to track sex offenders longer.

Sex offenders are currently tracked under a section of the Criminal Code, but that only lasts for so long, he said.

"Once it's over after that one year, most of these offenders are free and clear," said Tonowski.

Toft, who was a guard at New Brunswick's Kingsclear Youth Training Centre and now lives at an Edmonton halfway house, received a 13-year prison term for sex crimes at the jail from the mid-1960s to the 1980s.

"Balaclava Rapist" Larry Takahashi is now at a B.C. halfway house. He had been serving three concurrent life sentences at a minimum-security prison in B.C. for sex attacks against seven women between 1979 and 1983. Police believe he committed up to 120 rapes in the Edmonton area.

DAN PALMER,

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/EdmontonSun/News/2004/08/29/607451.html

Will the Canadian Government also try to force ALL of us to have our "papers" when we go out to get our groceries?

Students ordered to wear tracking tags

December 8, 2004 © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A Republican congressman is decrying the intelligence reform bill set to pass Congress today, saying it creates a de facto national ID-card system.

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, says by establishing standards for state driver's licenses on a federal level, the government is setting up a national system that's "not proper in a free society."

The bill, which established a new cabinet-level national intelligence director and expands some law-enforcement powers, passed the House of Representatives last night 336-75 and is scheduled for a Senate vote today.

"This is America, not Soviet Russia," said the libertarian-leaning Paul in a statement. "The federal government should never be allowed to demand papers from American citizens, and it certainly has no constitutional authority to do so."

"A national identification card, in whatever form it may take, will allow the federal government to inappropriately monitor the movements and transactions of every American," Paul continued. "History shows that governments inevitably use such power in harmful ways. The 9-11 commission, whose recommendations underlie this bill, has called for internal screening points where identification will be demanded. Domestic travel restrictions are the hallmark of authoritarian states, not free nations. It is just a matter of time until those who refuse to carry the new licenses will be denied the ability to drive or board an airplane."

Though the bill doesn't call for a standardized national card, Paul says by telling states what must be included on driver's licenses, the federal government is overstepping its bounds.

"Nationalizing standards for drivers licenses and birth certificates, and linking them together via a national database, creates a national ID system pure and simple," he said. "This legislation imposes federal standards in a federal bill, and it creates a federalized ID regardless of whether the ID itself is still stamped with the name of your state."

Paul likens an internal checkpoint plan to a "Soviet-style internal passport system."

Said Paul: "Subjecting every citizen to surveillance and screening points actually will make us less safe, not in the least because it will divert resources away from tracking and apprehending terrorists and deploy them against innocent Americans!"

Some House Republicans tried but failed to include in the bill a provision barring states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Other Republicans see the bill as another layer of useless bureaucracy.

"I believe creating a national intelligence director is a huge mistake," Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill, told the Associated Press. "It's another bureaucracy, it's another layer of government. It would not have prevented 9-11 and it will not prevent another 9-11."


http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41828

Boston Globe |  January 11, 2005

Despite criticism from civil libertarians, investigators plan to continue collecting DNA samples from Truro residents for clues to the three-year-old slaying of fashion writer Christa Worthington, Cape and Islands investigators said yesterday.

"It's been going on for three years and I expect that it's going to
continue," said Michael O'Keefe, district attorney of the Cape and Islands, after reviewing a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. The ACLU objected to the sweeps for voluntary DNA samples, saying there was an element of coercion in approaching men at local shops and gathering spots and that the tactic is unlikely to yield a suspect.

Carol Rose, executive director of the state ACLU, and John Reinstein, the chapter's legal director, said in a letter to O'Keefe and Truro Police Chief John Thomas that similar DNA sweeps nationwide have led to few matches or convictions.

"It would be an entirely different matter if this undertaking held at least some prospect of bringing to light information that would help to solve the tragic death of Christa Worthington," wrote Reinstein. "But experience and common sense tell us it will not."

Frustrated by dead-ends in the investigation of the January 2002 fatal stabbing of Worthington, who had reported for Women's Wear Daily, Elle, and W, Truro and State Police fanned out last week to the local post office, groceries, and the town dump to approach men and politely ask them to submit DNA swabs. About 800 men live in the community.

Worthington, 46, was found slain in the kitchen of her isolated Truro
bungalow on Jan. 6, 2002, with her 2-year-old daughter, Ava, uninjured by her side.

One key clue in the case is that Worthington had sex shortly before her death, according to investigators. But despite the semen sample, police have not been able to determine the identity of her sex partner. Police have investigated Worthington's former boyfriend and other men, including a married man who is Ava's father, but all have been ruled out as possible matches for the sample.

After FBI investigators recommended the townwide testing as the case grew colder, local police recently purchased several hundred boxes of DNA sample kits to cast a wider net among men in Truro.

But the objections to the sampling -- which authorities stress is
voluntary -- are that refusing to provide a sample invites undue suspicion and that once authorities have DNA samples, they may be reluctant to discard them.

Since the public testing began last week, several townspeople have become increasingly wary. The investigators have made plaintive appeals to help find whoever killed the mother of Ava, now 5.

The talk of the town has turned to who volunteered their DNA, and who did not. "I am completely interested in any of the methods the district attorney's office is using in this case, but I'm not comfortable with this current method," said Truro resident Maria Flook, who wrote about the Worthington case in "Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod."

And while residents of the upper Cape joke to friends in Truro about the DNA collection, Flook said, "we don't think it's really that funny.

"It isn't completely a voluntary thing," she added. "And I think when they say they're looking at people who aren't volunteering, there is a little different pressure . . . This is a very personal decision, and it's one that's made public. I think it's splitting people up individually. I think people are confused about wanting to help but not wanting to cross the line of their personal rights and personal boundaries."

Reinstein said that he raised the ACLU's concerns with O'Keefe by phone yesterday and that O'Keefe assured him that DNA samples and personal information attached to them such as name, birthdate, race, and sex would be destroyed after no match was found to the sample from the crime scene. Thus far, Reinstein said, the ACLU has no legal action planned to try to stop further DNA collection.

O'Keefe said "everyone's entitled to their view" on the practice of
collecting DNA samples from Truro's male residents. He said the ACLU had no problem with the searches when they were first announced.

"There are many reasons" for people to decline giving their DNA, "and the prosecutors and police certainly understand those," O'Keefe said yesterday. "Nonetheless, police will certainly look at those reasons, and they have some judgment and some discernment on that issue, and . . . we'll see what it produces."

A viable suspect was found in just one of 18 cases when police requested voluntary DNA samples from potential suspects, according to a September 2004 study by the Police Professionalism Initiative cited in the ACLU letter.

"If there is a Truro resident who would be identified by submitting his DNA, it is a virtual certainty that he will not come forward," stated the ACLU letter. "He has not done so in the three years that the investigation has been active. There is no reason to believe he will do so now."
 

HOWARD WOLINSKY / Chicago Sun Times | March 31 2006

GPS chips in cell phones can do a heck of a lot more than help 911 workers locate you in an emergency, as Jim Fuentes' son Eric discovered while zooming down a highway at 85 mph.

The elder Fuentes received an SMS "speed alert" on his phone telling him his son was booking it. The same alert was available via an e-mail or on a Web site,

And there's more to this system, known as "Whereabouts, Family Tracking and Navigation" developed by Aurora-based Clarity Communication Systems Inc., a start-up founded by Fuentes and seven other former Lucent wireless software engineers in 1998.

Whereabouts, now being tested by a Midwestern wireless company, also enables parents to set up "geo-zones," which send out alerts when the phone enters or leaves a defined area. Fuentes said the system, for example, can be used to see if a child is home in time for curfew.

Subscribers can use Whereabouts to check on the location of others on a phone list, whether stationary or mobile. A button can be pushed to tell other subscribers when a user has arrived at a location. And the phone has an SOS button that can be used to call for help.

Lisa Carter, vice president of corporate development and marketing at Clarity, agreed the tracking system potentially could compromise some users' privacy. "We can't control how the phones are used," she said.

Within a family, she said minors provided with phones by their parents would have to comply with the tracking system. However, she said Clarity is developing a "privacy manager" that would require users to request or refuse tracking.

Carter said phone users would quickly realize they are being tracked because the phone interface has a map showing where users are located.

Carter said other products on the market would be more easily used for spying than cell phones that need to be regularly recharged.

Clarity is part of the emerging market of location-based services built on basic location information available on most cell phones to help 911 operators.

Robert Gourdine, director of marketing of the North American Internet & Wireless Business Unit of Chicago-based Navteq, the leading provider of digital map data, said there are "huge business opportunities" for companies such as Clarity that develop location-based services.

"The industry is moving beyond location and navigation. You can overlay any type of service on top of location information, and create something new," he said.

Clarity found its way into the location-based services business as a result of developing gear for Lucent aimed at helping wireless phone companies locate phones as required under the federal mandate for 911 services on cell phones.

Leo Modica, Clarity's principal engineer, said "We discovered to our surprise how accurate the GPS devices were on cell phones. They were accurate in the best case to within 5 to 10 feet."

Fuentes said cellular companies were open to new ideas since the new location systems required billions of dollars of investment and would only be used for 911 calls on average once every two years per customer.

Clarity got into the location business in early 2003 with Navigator, a GPS-based service on a cell phone, which provides directions, points of interests and turn-by-turn, voiced-guided navigation. The service is available for Nextel customers for a $9.99 activation fee plus $6.95 per month. For more information, go to www.way-to-go.net.

Navigator morphed into Whereabouts, which last year won an award for personal security in Navteq's Global LBS Challenge, a competition designed to encourage location technology innovation and reward it with cash prizes and Navteq software licenses. Clarity is a semi-finalist in the business applications category in this year's LBS Challenge with its Where2Talk product, which combines Clarity's push-to-talk technology with location services.

Subscribers who use Where2Talk can see current locations of other users on a contact list. The service has a PC-based Dispatch Console that maps a team, and enables a dispatcher to contact team members based on their location, pushing them directions or other information onto their handsets.

Bill Jenkins, vice president of business development at Clarity, said Where2Talk is aimed at builders, delivery services and other companies with "deployed work forces," but could be used by families and friends to keep track of each other.

_____________________

Gadgets make people easy to track

WASHINGTON - For better or for worse, it's rapidly getting easier for others to know where you are, sometimes 24/7.

 

David Millward / London Telegraph | April 3 2006

Technology which could be the basis of a British pay-as-you-drive road-pricing scheme is about to be used to issue instant speeding tickets in parts of the Middle East.

Work on setting up the world's biggest "spy in the sky" network for tracking cars will begin within weeks, with around 10,000 black boxes to be fitted in vehicles in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

It is anticipated that 700,000 cars will be equipped with black boxes within three years.

Whitehall is understood to be monitoring the experiment in the United Arab Emirates.

"Technology is developing all the time. What makes this particularly interesting is the scale on which they are prepared to work," said a Whitehall source.

"The fact that they are ready to put this into several hundred thousand cars will help us make a judgment on whether satellite-based road pricing is really viable."

However the use of the technology to crack down on speeding would prove more controversial, even though experts such as the RAC Foundation doubt the Government would risk the unpopularity of introducing it here.

The boxes will make speed cameras redundant. With 21.6 road accident deaths per 100,000 population, the emirates' authorities are desperate to slow traffic down. Even speed cameras have proved ineffective with drivers often driving at more than 100mph. The technology can not only tell where cars are, but how fast they are travelling.

Motorists flouting the country's speed limit will first get a warning, perhaps through

the car radio or on the satellite navigation screen. If this is ignored, they can expect an automatic speeding ticket.

The authorities, which will receive a constant flow of data at a control centre, will be able to govern exactly when the errant motorist receives a ticket by setting a "tolerance level" - a margin for error above the speed limit.

The boxes - which preliminary estimates suggest could cost between £100 and £400 - could be installed when a car applies to have its annual licence renewed. Fitting the boxes - which will be about six by five inches - should take no longer than half an hour.

The medium term goal is road-pricing, but the ability to track the movement of cars has other uses.

There has been an approach from Saudi Arabia which wants to adapt the technology to prevent a repetition of the lorry bomb attacks on western compounds.

This will be done by tracking vehicle movements and using spy satellites to establish "secure zones" within

the country. The black boxes will also be used to track

convoys passing through "sensitive" parts of the Middle East.

The work in Dubai and Abu Dhabi is a co-operative project between IBM and the United Arab Emirates' government- backed high tech company CERT.

It comes as the EU presses ahead with "Project Veronica", a scheme looking at the widespread introduction of black boxes to help police piece together events leading up to an accident.

 

Old Big Brother Had A Farm, E - I - ID - O!

Alan Scholl - Thursday, April 5, 2007