- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

AD: New on-line zine needs YOUR help!
by viewzone＠cyber-host.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This message is sent in compliance with the new e-mail bill: SECTION 301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of s. 1618 Sender : ViewZone, 1 Phelps Lane, Simsbury, CT 06070 Phone : 1-860-651-7433 E-mail : viewzone(a)cyber-host.net To be removed from our mailing list, simply reply with "REMOVE" in the subject. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- We'd Like Your Help ViewZone is an on-line magazine that looks at life from different angles. It's hard to describe but we think you'll enjoy it - AND we want your opinion. Viewzone is a little crazy at times, thought provoking, sometimes controversial - but always entertaining. """"We hate spam (except for breakfast) - but we thought you'd want to check out this new on-line magazine. It's FREE and, well, we'd like your opinion on what you see.""""" Weird science, humor, reality(!), interesting personalities and interesting adventures... check us out! (e-mail back from the site) We're at: http://www.viewzone.com Gary Vey CEO, Viewzone Magazine

1 0

RE: your mail
by Brown, R Ken 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim Griffiths wrote: > Jim Burnes wrote: >> I usually ignore these type of messages, but this one gets my vote >> for the most clueless post of all time. ;-) >and then Bernardo replied to John Perry's troll, err, offer of help... >>>Sure thing! Just send us your full name, address (mailing and physical), >>>and phone number. I'm sure you will get plenty of help. >>Here is my address >>26 H Kamagong St., Commonwealth, Quezon City, Philippines,1121 >I reckon that one gets my vote...:) :-) But even Cluelesser is the guy who just asked for help with a firewall configuration on the NT system admin list and gave a 5 screensfull description of how they have set up their firewall and servers, what proxies they have, what they block and allow through... down to and including saying that they *haven't* installed the MS recommended hotfixes for NT security. Of course, it could always be bait. As, I suppose, could the Italian Bank post, although if I was dragnetting for stupid hackers I'd have hoped I'd be able to come up with something more plausible. Ken Brown

2 1

IP: "Bioarmageddon"
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: "Bioarmageddon" Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 06:56:14 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/bioterrorism/bioarmageddon.html Bioterrorism Special Report: Bioarmageddon By Debora MacKenzie Sooner or later there is going to be a biological attack on a major city. Are we prepared to deal with it? Not a chance, says Debora MacKenzie It begins with a threat. A terrorist group declares that unless its demands are met within 48 hours, it will release anthrax over San Francisco. Two days later, a private plane flies across the Bay, spreading an aerosol cloud that shimmers briefly in the sunlight before disappearing. Scenario one: thousands are killed in the panic as 2 million people flee the city. Another 1·6 million inhale anthrax spores. Antibiotics are rushed in, but the hospitals are overwhelmed and not everyone receives treatment. Most of the country's limited stock of anthrax vaccine has already been given to soldiers. Emergency crews provide little help as there are only four germ-proof suits in the whole city. More than a million of the Bay Area's 6.5 million residents die. Scenario two: in the two days before the attack, citizens seal their doors and windows with germ-proof tape. They listen to the radio for instructions, their gas masks, drugs and disinfectants ready. Few panic. When sensors around the city confirm that the cloud contains anthrax spores, hospitals receive the appropriate antibiotics and vaccines. Trained emergency teams with germ-proof suits and tents set up in the places where automated weather analyses show the deadly cloud will drift. With advance preparation and rapid response only 100,000 people die. A terrorist who plans to drop anthrax over San Francisco tomorrow can count on causing the murder and mayhem described in the first scenario--at least according to the simulation that generated these scenarios last year. The question facing policy makers now is: how do we move toward the second scenario? That terrorists may someday turn to biological weapons is no longer a matter of debate (see "All fall down", New Scientist, 11 May 1996, p 32). "Terrorism has changed," says Brad Roberts of the US government-backed Institute for Defense Analyses in Virginia. "Traditional terrorists wanted political concessions," he says. "But now, some groups say their main aim is mass casualties. That makes biological weapons appealing." Terrorists would have little trouble getting their hands on the technology. Hearings in South Africa in June revealed that the apartheid government produced terrorist weapons containing anthrax, Salmonella and cholera. Soviet scientists who have prepared weapons-grade anthrax and smallpox are known to have emigrated, possibly to well-funded terrorist groups like the one run by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Even small groups such as the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan have been able to cook up vats of Salmonella or botulin, the toxin that causes botulism. With bioweapons so readily available, how can governments protect us from a terrorist armed with anthrax, smallpox or plague? In May, scientists, policy makers and security experts gathered in Stockholm to discuss how to limit the devastation of a biological attack on civilians. Until now, most biological defence strategies have been geared to protecting soldiers on the battlefield rather than ordinary people in cities. The situations are quite different, and novel technologies are needed for civilian defence. Suppose a commuter stumbled across a time bomb filled with anthrax on an underground railway platform. Until this year, no police force in the world had any way to disarm such a device safely. One novel solution that attracted attention at Stockholm was a tent full of antiseptic foam. Researchers at Irvin Aerospace in Fort Erie, Ontario, have developed a dome-shaped tent made of ultratough Mylar that can be filled with a stiff foam--the exact composition of which is a closely guarded secret--that kills germs and also neutralises chemical weapons. Once covered by the foam-filled tent, the bomb can be safely detonated. But what if germs are already in the air? The protective suits and masks used by most emergency services don't have seals tight enough to exclude microorganisms, making them useless against biological attacks, says Jack Sawicki, a former fireman who now works for Geomet Technologies near Washington DC. And the lack of standards for gas masks sold to civilians in most countries makes it as likely that a mask will suffocate you as save you, he says. The suits developed for the military do work--their tight joints and zippers keep bugs out--but they are too pricey for the average fire department. Both Geomet and Irvin Aerospace are about to market civilian bio-suits. In the meantime, other companies are designing protective gear that actually kills pathogens. Molecular Geodesics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, is developing a suit made of a tough, sponge-like polymer that traps bacteria and viruses, which are then destroyed by disinfectants incorporated into the fabric. Stealthy attack None of this gear will do any good, however, if the emergency services do not know there has been an attack. And an assault may not be obvious. A terrorist might not use a weapon that goes off with a dramatic bang, or even produces an obvious cloud of germs. The first hint of a biological attack may be a sudden cluster of sick people. Even that will be missed unless someone is watching. And few are. In the US, financial cutbacks have crippled programmes to track disease outbreaks, natural or deliberate. Some could be either, such as food poisoning caused by Escherichia coli O157 or Salmonella. Medical agencies fear that the extra money requested by President Bill Clinton this spring as part of an anti-terrorist initiative will not be enough to create an adequate surveillance network. In Europe, disease surveillance is only beginning to be organised on the continent-wide scale needed to track a biological emergency. But in addition to monitoring infected people, Nicholas Staritsyn of the State Research Centre for Applied Microbiology near Moscow says that more effort should be made to find out which bugs live where. For example, a particular variety of anthrax may occur naturally in South Africa, but not in Canada. Having access to such information could help authorities to distinguish between natural outbreaks and deliberate attacks. Even when infected people start turning up at local hospitals, early diagnosis of their illness might not be easy, says Steve Morse, who heads the US programme on new diagnostic technologies run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The first symptoms of anthrax, plague and many other potential agents of bioterrorism resemble those of flu: headaches, fevers, aching muscles, coughing. What's more, some of these symptoms might be brought on by panic attacks, which are likely to be widespread among people who have just been told that they are the victims of a biological attack. One answer discussed in Stockholm would be for hospitals to have the type of high-tech detectors being developed to identify airborne pathogens on the battlefield. With a detector at each bedside, doctors could pick out the volatile molecules released by damaged lung membranes at a very early stage of infection and instantly tell whether a patient was a victim of a biological attack, says Mildred Donlon, head of environmental detection research at DARPA. Eventually, DARPA would like to develop a detector that weighs no more than 2 kilograms, can identify as few as two particles of 20 different biological agents in a sample of air, costs less than $5000 and does not give false negatives. Such detectors could be deployed around cities to give early warning of airborne disease. In the meantime, researchers led by Wayne Bryden at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore are working on revamping the traditional laboratory workhorse, the mass spectrometer, for use in the field or in hospitals. They've reduced this unwieldy piece of equipment to a suitcase-sized machine that can distinguish between, say, Shigella, which causes dysentery, and Salmonella. A shoebox-sized version, says Bryden, could be ready in five years. Other researchers are experimenting with devices that would not seem out of place in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Tiny electronic chips that contain living nerve cells may someday warn of the presence of bacterial toxins, many of which are nerve poisons. Like a canary in a coal mine, the neurons on the chip will chatter until something kills them. "Anything that stops it singing is immediate cause for alarm," says Donlon. While the "canary on a chip" could detect a broad range of toxins, other devices are designed to identify specific pathogens. One prototype consists of a fibre-optic tube lined with antibodies coupled to light-emitting molecules. In the presence of plague or anthrax bacteria, or the toxins botulin or ricin, the molecules light up. Outwitting our defences Devices based on antibodies are far from foolproof. First, you need to have the correct antibodies--not easy when you consider the vast number of pathogens you'd need to include, and their ever-changing repertoire of surface proteins. "And even the right antibodies can identify only what is on the outside of a particle," Donlon points out. Bugs can be encapsulated in gels or biological polymers to foil antibodies, or normally harmless bacteria engineered to carry nasty genes. "I want to know what is on the inside," she says. To do this, DARPA-funded researchers are developing identification techniques based on RNA analysis. Unlike DNA, which is now used to identify unknown organisms, RNA is plentiful inside cells and need not be amplified before identification begins. And messenger RNA molecules reveal not only what a microorganism is, but what toxins it is making. Once the biological agent has been identified, how do you combat it? Vaccinating people before they are exposed is one answer. This is the strategy the military is betting on. Last year, the US military launched a programme to develop vaccines against potential biological weapons. It will create jabs for diseases for which none exist, such as Ebola, and improve existing vaccines--including the 30-year-old anthrax vaccine being given to 2·4 million American soldiers. But vaccines are no cure-all. An attacker need only generate a germ that sports different antigens to those used in a vaccine to render that vaccine ineffective. Plus, as bioterrorists get more sophisticated, they will develop novel, possibly artificial, pathogens against which conventional vaccines will be useless, predicts Morse. To get around these problems, DARPA is looking at ways of developing vaccines quickly enough for them to be created, mass-produced and distributed after an attack. The first step, which many researchers including those in the fast-paced field of genomics are now working on, involves speeding up DNA sequencing so that an unknown pathogen's genes could be detailed in a day. The resulting sequences could then be the basis for developing an instant DNA vaccine. Making the vaccine is only half the problem, however. Soldiers can be ordered to take shots, but immunising the rest of the population is another matter. Civilians are unlikely to volunteer for the dozens of vaccinations that would be necessary to protect them against every conceivable biological threat. An attack would make many change their minds, but in such circumstances there might not be enough to go around. Although Clinton has called for the stockpiling of vaccines, the US has only 5 million doses of smallpox vaccine--not enough to contain a hypothetical attack, says Ken Berry, president of the American Academy of Emergency Physicians. Ken Alibek, the former second-in-command of the Soviet germ warfare programme who revealed earlier this year that the Soviets had weaponised tonnes of smallpox, argues that it is short-sighted to put too much effort into developing vaccines. Instead, says Alibek, who is now at the Batelle Institute in Virginia, researchers should concentrate on ways to treat victims of biological weapons. Today's antibiotics may be useless because germs could be equipped with genes for resistance to all of them. Russian scientists have already created such a strain of anthrax (This Week, 28 February, p 4). For any treatment to be effective amid the potential chaos of a bioterrorist attack, speed will be of the essence. At the Stockholm meeting, researchers reported their efforts to develop drugs that work against a wide variety of infections and so can be used even before definitive diagnosis. Some are trying to take advantage of recently identified similarities in the way many pathogens produce disease to develop broad-spectrum drugs. For example, Ebola, anthrax and plague all kill their victims by inducing a widespread inflammatory reaction similar to toxic shock syndrome. A team in Cincinnati is testing an anti-inflammatory drug that could stop all of them. Another gang of bacteria--including plague, Salmonella, Shigella and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (one of the bacteria that can cause pneumonia and meningitis)--relies on very similar proteins to latch onto human cells and inject toxins. Drugs that block this system might save people from all these germs, Åke Forsberg of the Swedish Defence Research Establishment in Umeå told the meeting. The trouble with all these new anti-bioweapon gizmos, gadgets and medicines is that it's far from certain that they would be available in time to shield the first major city targeted for a bioterrorist attack. At the moment, the US is one of the few countries taking the bioterrorist threat seriously. Sweden, France and Israel have trained emergency teams and stockpiled gas masks. Other countries do not seem concerned. "The threat of bioterrorism has not seized our European friends," says Mike Moodie of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, a think-tank near Washington DC. "They feel it's too improbable." Perhaps they should reconsider. Berry, who helped run the doomsday simulations that ravaged San Francisco, says: "Security experts are not asking if a biological attack on a civilian population is going to happen, but when." >From New Scientist, 19 September 1998 © Copyright New Scientist, RBI Limited 1998 ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

1 0

IP: IRS official predicts Y2K snafus
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: IRS official predicts Y2K snafus Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 12:20:40 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: Government Executive Magazine http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0998/091798n1.htm September 17, 1998 DAILY BRIEFING IRS official predicts Y2K snafus By Nancy Ferris nferris(a)govexec.com The new chief information officer at the IRS is predicting there will be tax processing problems in the upcoming filing season because of the agency's speeded-up program to fix year 2000 bugs in its computer systems. CIO Paul J. Cosgrave, speaking today at a luncheon meeting of the Association for Federal Information Resources Management, said 98 percent of the IRS's software will be fixed by early next year, when the 1998 filing season begins. But, he added, "there will be some problems" because not all of the fixes will be perfect. Asked afterward how serious the problems would be, Cosgrave said it was too early to tell. The agency is working hard to minimize their effect, he added. The good news, he said, is that when the century change actually occurs on Dec. 31, 1999, the IRS will have put its Y2K problems behind it. "We're a year early," he said. The agency is spending close to $1 billion on Y2K fixes. Cosgrave, a well-known consultant, was brought in to help the IRS straighten out its troubled systems modernization program and build new systems to support the reorganized agency. He said the IRS will exercise more central control over information technology and try to standardize the systems environment. "Today we have 17 e-mail systems in the IRS," he said by way of example. The reorganization announced by IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti will replace the service's current regional structure with four new units serving specific groups of customers. That change, combined with the systems modernization program, will lead to new job responsibilities for many IRS employees, Cosgrave said. The agency will move some headquarters functions to field offices and move some back office employees to customer service jobs. But because it can't relocate many of the affected workers, it plans to "use more remote assignment work," where employees in one location work for managers in another, Cosgrave said. The IRS also will dramatically increase its investment in employee training, from $3.5 million this year to $11 million two years from now. ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

1 0

ADV: Your Email Journal Of HOME BUSINESS & MODERN NETWORKING
by future 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Get your own FREE Lifetime Subscription at: http://futurevisiononline.com/html/default_free_newsletter_series.html ------------------------------------------------------------ Now you can receive valuable insider's information for FREE! You will learn the real "InsideStrategies"- used by prospering individuals nationwide to gain Financial Independence...All Right from the Comfort of Your Own Home! And it's Absolutely FREE-You Will Find Out How To: - Multiply your income right from home. - Save thousands every year with a home business. - Assess income that can continue long after you retire. - Turn your computer, phone, and mail into profit. - Start a home business-and save money doing it! - Break free of your J.O.B. (Just Above Broke) - Get thousands of dollars of free advertising. - Profit putting in just a few hours a week from home. - Be your own boss and keep all the profit. - Have greater success in casual dress than a suit and tie. - Control your earnings with no ceiling on your income. - Make more money from home than your 9 to 5 spouse. - Make money your very first month in business. - And Much Much More...ALL FREE!!! Now you can instantly be receiving valuable information, and find out how to make more money than ever-right from home...And the best part is it's FREE! If you are interested in real ways to make money right from home-each issue of this professional journal will provide you with a wealth of information. Get you FREE Lifetime Subscription now at: http://futurevisiononline.com/html/default_free_newsletter_series.html Your Email Journal Of... HOME BUSINESS & MODERN NETWORKING "FREE Lifetime Subscription" ------------------------------------------------------------ Get your own FREE Lifetime Subscription at: http://futurevisiononline.com/html/default_free_newsletter_series.html P.S. This is a absolutely FREE subscription you can cancel at any time by simply selecting the unsubscribe option sent with each issue. This extremely valuable journal is available by subscription only. You can get your FREE Lifetime Subscription right now at: http://futurevisiononline.com/html/default_free_newsletter_series.html --------------- To never receive commercial emails or offerings from any vendor please reply with 'REMOVE' in the subject field.

1 0

CTIA Daily News from WOW-COM - August 18, 1998
by CTIA Daily News 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

========================================== Welcome to today's edition of the CTIA Daily News from WOW-COM. Please click on the icon / attachment for the most important news in wireless communications today. If you cannot open the icon/attachment, please visit http://www.wow-com.com/professional/ for the wireless daily news. Don't miss the major conference on implementing Phase 2 of the E-911 requirement--August 26-27 in San Francisco. For more information, click http://www.wow-com.com/pdf/locntech.pdf ===========================================

1 0

CTIA Daily News from WOW-COM - August 19, 1998
by CTIA Daily News 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

========================================== Welcome to today's edition of the CTIA Daily News from WOW-COM. Please click on the icon / attachment for the most important news in wireless communications today. If you cannot open the icon/attachment, please visit http://www.wow-com.com/professional/ for the wireless daily news. Don't miss the major conference on implementing Phase 2 of the E-911 requirement--August 26-27 in San Francisco. For more information, click http://www.wow-com.com/pdf/locntech.pdf ===========================================

1 0

IP: [Spooks] CIA Losing Its Best Operatives
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Bridget973(a)aol.com Subject: IP: [Spooks] CIA Losing Its Best Operatives Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 21:43:13 EDT To: ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com Subject: [Spooks] CIA Losing Its Best Operatives Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 22:51:13 -0500 From: Bob Margolis <rttyman(a)wwa.com> To: Spooks <spooks(a)qth.net> WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA is pumping money and people into recruiting efforts to battle a trend that the agency's departing inspector general says has sapped the clandestine service of its most experienced hands. Agency officials outlined Tuesday initiatives that CIA Director George Tenet announced internally last month to increase pay, provide hiring bonuses and shorten the waiting time for job offers. ``There are plenty of headhunters out there ready to pounce on strong candidates,'' Tenet told agency employees in his announcement. ``To delay is to lose.'' The program is intended to combat a problem outlined in an op-ed article by outgoing CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz who said the CIA's Directorate of Operations, the clandestine spy service, is losing its best people amid organizational drift and declining morale. ``The picture is not encouraging,'' said Hitz, the CIA's chief watchdog from 1990 until this year. Writing in an op-ed article in The Washington Post, Hitz said the Directorate of Operations ``has been shrinking in size and capability since the end of the Cold War.'' A recent study showed departures from the agency due to attrition ``involved high-quality officers the agency could not afford to lose,'' Hitz wrote. The number of CIA employees is classified, but the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based group that follows intelligence matters, estimates it has shrunk from more than 20,000 to about 16,000 since the Cold War. The clandestine service is estimated at several thousand. Agency and congressional officials said the critique may be outdated as the CIA pumps new money and energy into recruiting. But one knowledgeable congressional staffer said the problem got so bad that an entire incoming class of operatives -- perhaps a few dozen recruits -- had to be canceled for lack of money. Hitz pointed to the difficulty of recruiting in a booming economy and to low morale as a result of ``the lack of a clear mission'' at CIA. ``Nobody worth his or her salt is going to join an organization that has lost faith in itself, is confused about its mission and is trapped in the sclerosis of a middle-aged bureaucracy,'' he said. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a former CIA clandestine operative, said an instinct to blame the CIA every time a risky intelligence venture fails is taking its toll. ``With so many unyielding critics, the CIA has become gun-shy,'' Goss said. Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Hitz has been a leading critic of the clandestine service and may himself be partly to blame for low morale. Still, Kerrey agreed recruitment is a serious agency problem. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the committee chairman, said the CIA must focus more clearly on defining its mission and outlining how it will use field operatives to combat terrorism, weapons proliferation and drug trafficking. In recent months, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have pushed for more money for the CIA's so-called human intelligence efforts, including its field operatives. -=-=- AP NEWS The Associated Press News Service Copyright 1998 by The Associated Press All Rights Reserved --- Submissions should be sent to spooks(a)qth.net To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe spooks" to majordomo(a)qth.net -- bridget973(a)aol.com Black Helicopters on the Horizon: http://members.xoom.com/bridget973 ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

1 0

IP: Killed by Police? Keep it Secret
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Killed by Police? Keep it Secret Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 10:12:07 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: Rocky Mountain News http://www.insidedenver.com/news/0919secr1.shtml Secrecy pushed in killings by police But critics say names of officers should always be made public By Kevin Vaughan Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer A move is afoot in Colorado to keep the names of police officers who shoot people secret. A Greeley judge this week ruled that the public has no right to know which officers shot and killed four people over the past two years. "That seems like sort of the ultimate double standard to me, because I can shoot and kill someone in my house in self-defense, and my name will be open as a matter of public record," said Chris Cobler, managing editor of the Greeley Tribune. The paper had sued the Greeley Police Department, the Weld County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's office to obtain the officers' names. At least one legislator praised Weld District Judge Jonathan Hays' Wednesday ruling. "I am strongly opposed to releasing the names of those officers that have not been found accountable, or found guilty, in a shooting," said state Sen. Ken Arnold, R-Westminster. Arnold spent 28 years with the Colorado State Patrol before becoming a lawmaker. The State Patrol and most other Colorado police agencies release the names of officers involved in shootings -- some agencies immediately, others in weeks or months. But newspaper editors and the American Civil Liberties Union worry that the disclosure practice may soon end because of the ruling. In Aurora, Police Chief Vern Saint Vincent has refused to identify two officers who killed a gunman in a domestic dispute a week ago, citing the same legal provisions the Greeley judge used. Saint Vincent said his decision is temporary, and he plans to identify the officers after investigating threats against them. But he may change his mind. He said he expects his officers to lobby for secrecy and that he'll consider it. "There simply can't be a right to privacy for someone with the full authority of a law enforcement officer who has used deadly force against a citizen," said Tom Kelley, an attorney for the Colorado Press Association. "You could make the argument that anyone accused of a crime has a right to privacy, which I don't think anyone would take very seriously." At issue is the interpretation of two state laws governing the release of public records and criminal-justice documents. The laws spell out what the public has a right to see. Hays ruled that police shootings are not "official actions" as defined by the Criminal Justice Records Act. As such, they fall under an area of the law that allows police and sheriff's departments to withhold information that is "contrary to the public interest." Identifying the officers, Hays wrote, "plays no significant, positive role in the functioning of the criminal-justice process." But one of the state's top cops doesn't see it that way. "I just have this problem with the idea that that should be a blanket policy," said Pat Ahlstrom, executive director of the state Department of Public Safety. "We don't see it that way. They're public officers, and the act of using force and deadly force is subject to public scrutiny." The department oversees the State Patrol and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. A check of other law enforcement agencies in the Denver area found that all routinely release the names of officers in shootings. "There's really no reason for us not to release the names," said Adams County sheriff's Sgt. Mike Kercheval. Different agencies have different rules about when the names are released. For some, it comes within 24 hours of a shooting. Others wait longer. Lakewood, for example, withholds the name of an officer involved in a shooting until the investigation is finished. "It is the same procedure that is afforded any citizen in Lakewood that is investigated in a shooting," police spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough said. "For us, it is not a matter of 'if.' It is simply a matter of 'when."' Cobler said the Tribune has no plan to appeal this week's ruling. But others said they expect an effort to change it, either through an appeal or by attempting to change the laws to make them clearer. "Let's change the statute," said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado. Arnold, however, said he trusts police and prosecutors to investigate shootings thoroughly. September 19, 1998 ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

1 0

Free $10 Coupon on Music Boulevard
by Music Boulevard Customer Service 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Music Boulevard Customer: We are writing to you today because our records indicate that you have established an account with us but have not made any purchases. We are interested in getting any comments or suggestions about your experience with Music Boulevard to determine if there is anything we should be doing better. If you would like to share your thoughts, please "reply" to this email or send an email to me at newmanlisa(a)n2k.com. And, as a small token of our appreciation, we would like to give you a $10.00 COUPON FOR ANY MUSIC PURCHASE* on Music Boulevard, simply by visiting: http://www.musicboulevard.com/69367 We are confident that once you have shopped with us, you'll agree that Music Boulevard is a great way to find, hear and buy music. Sincerely, Lisa Newman, VP/Customer Service newmanlisa(a)n2k.com *Limit one per customer. Expires on August 31, 1998 at 11:59 PM E.S.T. One more thing: If you are not interested in receiving future emails from Music Boulevard, send an email to: remove-musicblvd(a)sparklist.com and you'll automatically be removed from this list. Thanks.

1 0