When asked by a reporter in Iowa about Mr. Robertson’s comments today, Mr. Giuliani replied, “9/11.”

Government seeks to redefine privacy

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer 44 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information.

Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act.

Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.

The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil, to protect Americans' privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a court order between 2001 and 2007.

Some lawmakers, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, appear reluctant to grant immunity. Suits might be the only way to determine how far the government has burrowed into people's privacy without court permission.

The committee is expected to decide this week whether its version of the bill will protect telecommunications companies.

The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T says the government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San Francisco.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.

Man jailed in photo incident awarded $8,000

By Christine Clarridge

Seattle Times staff reporter

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BOGDAN MOHORA

Bogdan Mohora was taken into custody after photographing this Nov. 2, 2006, arrest in Seattle. The photographer has altered the picture to protect the identities of two individuals.

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ACLU

Bogdan Mohora called his experience "frightening and humiliating."

An amateur photographer who was taken into custody last year after shooting pictures of two Seattle police officers making an arrest on a public street received an $8,000 settlement this week, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington announced Thursday.

The photographer, Bogdan Mohora, later was released and was never charged with a crime. The two officers who arrested him were disciplined, according to police.

During a news conference Thursday, Mohora, 26, said he was walking on Pike Street near Second Avenue on Nov. 2 when he saw two Seattle police officers arresting a man.

Mohora said he snapped a few shots of the arrest from a distance of more than 10 feet and was walking away when he was approached by a female friend of the man being arrested.

Mohora said the woman told him she believed the arrest of her friend was wrong, and that he was being arrested on a warrant that had been quashed. She asked Mohora about obtaining copies of the photos, he said.

Two officers, James Pitts and David Toner, then ordered Mohora to hand over his camera, according to ACLU staff attorney Aaron Caplan, who handled the case. Mohora said that when he asked what he had done wrong, the officers handcuffed him and took his camera, wallet and satchel. They then drove him to a holding cell at the Seattle Police Department's West Precinct, Mohora said.

When he was released about an hour later, he said, he was told that he could be charged with disturbing the peace, provoking a riot or endangering a police officer.

Mohora was not charged and, in violation of department policy, police did not write up an incident report on the arrest, according to ACLU Legal Director Sarah Dunne.

"Being arrested for simply being a witness to police activity was frightening and humiliating," Mohora wrote in a claim he later filed against the city. "It bothers me to think that police can abuse their authority by arresting innocent witnesses and then not even make standard police reports to document what happened."

After the ACLU intervened on Mohora's behalf, the city's claim department agreed to pay Mohora $8,000.

The ACLU said the police Office of Public Accountability investigated the officers' actions and sustained the complaint, finding the officers acted inappropriately. Seattle Police Department spokeswoman Deanna Nollette said both officers were disciplined with written reprimands for a lack of professionalism and poor exercise of discretion.

City Attorney Tom Carr said he couldn't comment on the settlement because the claim was handled by the city's risk-management department.

Caplan said the public has a right to observe and document police activity that occurs in a public location.

Simon Wiesenthal Center presents 9/11 sites alongside radical Jihadist sites to House Hearing on "Terrorism and the Internet"

9/11 Blogger | November 13, 2007

On Tuesday, November 6, 2007, a House Homeland Security Subcommittee
had a hearing on "Terrorism and the Internet".* The hearing featured
presentations from several groups, including a former employee of the
RAND Corporation, and Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The hearing was chaired by Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, and ranking
Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert.

Toward the end of the hearing, Weitzman rolls out a PowerPoint presentation that presents a few 9/11 truth sites sandwiched in between websites that offer training in terrorist tactics, and a website that glorified the attack of 9/11. Among the websites presented under the heading "Internet: Incubator of 9/11 Conpiracies and Disinformation", are Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth , and other sites, such as Killtown's, who brought this Hearing to our attention .

Now, we wouldn't want anybody getting the wrong idea here. Here at 911blogger we are opposed to any and all terrorist activities, including STATE SPONSORED TERRORISM . Don't really care who the state is either. It's all bad.

Californians, if Harman is your representative , please set her straight. Washington state, if Reichert is your critter , don't let him absorb this crap with no static .

CSPAN has been more than fair to 9/11 skeptics. Last year they broadcast Alex Jones' American Scholars Symposium , in 2005, they broadcast David Ray Griffin , and they will probably listen to feedback regarding this broadcast.

View the hearing as a video stream here -- the pertinent section begins at the 43:31 mark, but I recommend watching the entire program, because there is so much disinformation in the broadcast itself, it's hard to know where to begin unraveling it.

Homeland Security - Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_...

Please ask the Simon Wiesthenthal Center (Mark Weitzman in particular) to stop conflating terrorist violence with 9/11 truth, and even though he has not extended the courtesy to us, be polite;

Get Kids Vaccinated Or Else, Parents Told
Pr. George's Threatens Legal Action

By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 14, 2007; Page B01

The parents of more than 2,300 Prince George's County students who failed to get needed vaccinations could face fines of $50 a day and up to 10 days in jail if their children do not meet the state's immunization requirements, county officials said yesterday.

The threat of legal action is a last resort after months in which Prince George's has struggled to get its 131,000 students immunized for chicken pox and hepatitis B, as mandated by the state. More than 2,300 students have not been immunized and have been barred from attending schools, almost two months after a Sept. 20 deadline for meeting the requirement.

"The goal is to get kids in school," State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey said. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)
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"We can do this the easy way or the hard way, but it's got to get done," Prince George's State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey (D) said at a news conference in Upper Marlboro. "I'm willing to move forward with legal action."

School officials have made calls, sent letters and conducted home visits to make arrangements for free appointments for the needed shots. But often the students' addresses and phone numbers have been outdated, making contacting them difficult. Other students have received the vaccines but failed to get the necessary booster shots.

The school system turned to the justice system as a final option and received the backing of Circuit Judge William D. Missouri, the county's administrative judge, and Circuit Judge C. Philip Nichols Jr., who handles juvenile matters.

"This is an educational crisis," said R. Owen Johnson Jr., chairman of the school board. "This is a public health and a children's rights issue."

Nichols and Ivey sent another round of letters to the families still out of compliance. Nichols's letter ordered the parents to show up at Prince George's Circuit Court for a court hearing and a free vaccine; Ivey's letter warned that "unexcused absences by your child may subject you to a criminal charge."

They expect almost 1,700 children to show up Saturday with their parents for the first in a series of Circuit Court hearings on the matter. School officials said the parents would receive a verbal reprimand from the judge and be ordered to have their children immunized in the courthouse. The students would then be allowed to return to school.

Parents who do not appear could face fines of $50 for each day they fail to get their children immunized after being charged. They also could serve up to 10 days in jail. Ivey said he hoped charging parents would not be necessary.
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"The goal is to get kids in school, not to put parents in jail," Ivey said.

Missouri said he looked forward to talking to the parents who had not gotten their children immunized, to understand why.

"I'd like to know exactly what the reasons are because the reasons may be able to be addressed without ratcheting it up to this point," he said.

Schools officials said they were sorry the crisis had gone this far, but that it needed to be solved immediately.

"This has really, really been a difficult time for us," said Betty Despenza-Green, the school system's chief of student services. "It hurts us when any child is out of school because he needs to be immunized, and so we felt we needed to be creative. We need those students immunized. We need them in schools."