By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science WriterTue Jul 1, 12:07 AM ET
In 2002, at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, a business consultant named Dede Osborn took a psychedelic drug as part of a research project. She felt like she was taking off. She saw colors. Then it felt like her heart was ripping open. But she called the experience joyful as well as painful, and says that it has helped her to this day.
"I feel more centered in who I am and what I'm doing," said Osborn, now 66, of Providence, R.I. "I don't seem to have those self-doubts like I used to have. I feel much more grounded (and feel that) we are all connected."
Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience.
Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had.
The drug, psilocybin, is found in so-called "magic mushrooms." It's illegal, but it has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries.
The study involved 36 men and women during an eight-hour lab visit. It's one of the few such studies of a hallucinogen in the past 40 years, since research was largely shut down after widespread recreational abuse of such drugs in the 1960s.
The project made headlines in 2006 when researchers published their report on how the volunteers felt just two months after taking the drug. The new study followed them up a year after that.
Experts emphasize that people should not try psilocybin on their own because it could be harmful. Even in the controlled setting of the laboratory, nearly a third of participants felt significant fear under the effects of the drug. Without proper supervision, someone could be harmed, researchers said.
Osborn, in a telephone interview, recalled a powerful feeling of being out of control during her lab experience. "It was ... like taking off, I'm being lifted up," she said. Then came "brilliant colors and beautiful patterns, just stunningly gorgeous, more intense than normal reality."
And then, the sensation that her heart was tearing open.
"It would come in waves," she recalled. "I found myself doing Lamaze-type breathing as the pain came on."
Yet "it was a joyful, ecstatic thing at the same time, like the joy of being alive," she said. She compared it to birthing pains. "There was this sense of relief and joy and ecstasy when my heart was opened."
With further research, psilocybin (pronounced SILL-oh-SY-bin) may prove useful in helping to treat alcoholism and drug dependence, and in aiding seriously ill patients as they deal with psychological distress, said study lead author Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins.
Griffiths also said that despite the spiritual characteristics reported for the drug experiences, the study says nothing about whether God exists.
"Is this God in a pill? Absolutely not," he said.
The experiment was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The results were published online Tuesday by the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Fourteen months after taking the drug, 64 percent of the volunteers said they still felt at least a moderate increase in well-being or life satisfaction, in terms of things like feeling more creative, self-confident, flexible and optimistic. And 61 percent reported at least a moderate behavior change in what they considered positive ways.
That second question didn't ask for details, but elsewhere the questionnaire answers indicated lasting gains in traits like being more sensitive, tolerant, loving and compassionate.
Researchers didn't try to corroborate what the participants said about their own behavior. But in the earlier analysis at two months after the drug was given, researchers said family and friends backed up what those in the study said about behavior changes. Griffiths said he has no reason to doubt the answers at 14 months.
Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, called the new work an important follow-up to the first study.
He said it is helping to reopen formal study of psychedelic drugs. Grob is on the board of the Heffter Research Institute, which promotes studies of psychedelic substances and helped pay for the new work.
Returning from a brief vacation to Germany in February, Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. Agents searched Hogan's luggage and then popped an unexpected question: Was he carrying any digital media cards or drives in his pockets? "Then they told me that they were impounding my laptop," says Hogan, a freelance investigative reporter whose recent stories have ranged from the origins of the Iraq war to the impact of money in presidential politics.
Shaken by the encounter, Hogan says he left the airport and examined his bags, finding that the agents had also removed and inspected the memory card from his digital camera. "It was fortunate that I didn't use that machine for work or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information," he said. When customs offered to return the machine nearly two weeks later, Hogan told them to ship it to his lawyer.
The extent of the program to confiscate electronics at customs points is unclear. A hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on the Constitution hopes to learn more about the extent of the program and safeguards to traveler's privacy. Lawsuits have also been filed, challenging how the program selects travelers for inspection. Citing those lawsuits, Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, refuses to say exactly how common the practice is, how many computers, portable storage drives, and BlackBerries have been inspected and confiscated, or what happens to the devices once they are seized. Congressional investigators and plaintiffs involved in lawsuits believe that digital copies?so-called "mirror images" of drives?are sometimes made of materials after they are seized by customs.
A ruling this year by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that DHS does indeed have the authority to search electronic devices without suspicion in the same way that it would inspect a briefcase. The lawsuit that prompted the ruling was the result of more than 20 cases, most of which involved laptops, cellphones, or other electronics seized at airports. In those cases, nearly all of the individuals were of Muslim, Middle Eastern, or South Asian background.
Travelers who have their computers seized face real headaches. "It immediately deprives an executive or company of the very data?and revenue?a business trip was intended to create," says Susan Gurley, head of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which is asking DHS for greater transparency and oversight to protect copied data. "As a businessperson returning to the U.S., you may find yourself effectively locked out of your electronic office indefinitely." While Hogan had his computer returned after only a few days, others say they have had theirs held for months at a time. As a result, some companies have instituted policies that require employees to travel with clean machines: free of corporate data.
The security value of the program is unclear, critics say, while the threats to business and privacy are substantial. If drives are being copied, customs officials are potentially duplicating corporate secrets, legal records, financial data, medical files, and personal E-mails and photographs as well as stored passwords for accounts from Netflix to Bank of America. DHS contends that travelers' computers can also contain child pornography, intellectual property offenses, or terrorist secrets.
It makes practical sense to X-ray the contents of checked and carry-on luggage, which could pose an immediate danger to airplanes and their passengers. "Generally speaking, customs officials do not go through briefcases to review and copy paper business records or personal diaries, which is apparently what they are now doing now in digital form?these PDA's don't have bombs in them," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. More troubling is what could happen if other countries follow the lead of the United States. Imagine, for instance, if China or Russia began a program to seize and duplicate the contents of traveler's laptops. "We wouldn't be in a position to strongly object to that type of behavior," Rotenberg says. Indeed, visitors to the Beijing Olympic Games have been officially advised by U.S. officials that their laptops may be targeted for duplication or bugging by Chinese government spies hoping to steal business and trade secrets.
Clive Stafford Smith The Guardian, Thursday June 19, 2008
Welcome to 'the disco'
For US interrogators seeking to disorientate and break Iraqi prisoners it's 'torture lite' - rock music played at excruciating volumes. But while the song choices may sometimes verge on the unintentionally funny, this appropriation of music by the military is anything but a joke.
According to US military authorities, it was God himself who first wrote the strategy of "torture by music" into the field manual - by turning the amplifier up to 11 on the enemy. "Joshua's army used horns to strike fear into the hearts of the people of Jericho," retired US Air Force Lt-Col Dan Kuehl told the St Petersburg Times. "His men might not have been able to break down literal walls with their trumpets, but the noise eroded the enemy's courage." Kuehl, who teaches psychological operations (or psyops) at Fort McNair's National Defense University in Washington DC, added, "Maybe those psychological walls were what really crumbled."
It is not clear whether God would approve of the current US playlist: the number one slot is taken by the death metal band Deicide, whose track Fuck Your God is played at prisoners in Iraq. That said, the proponents of torture by music doubtless think they have come a long way since the early 1990s, when the FBI blasted loud music at the Branch Davidians during the Waco siege in Texas. The repertoire then included Sing-Along With Mitch Miller Christmas carols, an Andy Williams album and These Boots Are Made for Walking by Nancy Sinatra.
However unpleasant it may be to have such tunes blasted at your compound, bringing the music into an enclosed interrogation cell was a quantum leap in psyops. Nonetheless, in the strange lexicon of 21st-century America, the US military calls this "torture lite". Torture is apparently OK if it is not too "heavy". Metallica's Enter Sandman has been played at cacophonous levels for hours on end in Guantánamo Bay and at a detention centre on the Iraqi-Syrian border. One Iraqi prisoner said it was done at "an unidentified location called 'the disco'".
Unfortunately, some artists are not offended by their work being used to torture. "If the Iraqis aren't used to freedom, then I'm glad to be part of their exposure," James Hetfield, co-founder of Metallica, has said. As for his music being torture, he laughed: "We've been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music for ever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?" Such posturing may go with the territory for an artist of the Metallica genre, so there is no need to speculate about whether Hetfield is being naive or wilfully ignorant. But no sane person voluntarily plays a single tune at earsplitting volume, over and over, 24 hours a day, and expects to stay sane.
Despite this, to date, the Pentagon's semanticists have achieved their purpose, and many people think that torture by music is little more than a rather irritating enforced encounter with someone else's iPod. Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who is still held in Guantánamo Bay, knows a bit about such torture. The CIA rendered him to Morocco, where his torturers repeatedly took a razor blade to his penis throughout an 18-month ordeal.
When I later sat across from him in the cell, he described how psyops methods were worse than this. He could anticipate physical pain, he said, and know that it would eventually end. But the experience of slipping into madness as a result of torture by music was something quite different.
"Imagine you are given a choice," he said. "Lose your sight or lose your mind." While having your eyes gouged out would be horrendous, there is little doubt which you would choose. Mohamed remains in Guantánamo. The US military will decide, probably within two weeks, whether to go forward with a military commission, based on "evidence" that was tortured out of him.
To those who have the misfortune to study torture, all this is old hat. Members of the IRA interned in Northern Ireland in the 1970s recall the use of loud noise, piped into their cells, as the worst aspect of their ordeal. One Guantánamo interrogator blithely estimated that it would take about four days to "break" someone, if the interrogation sessions were interspersed with strobe lights and loud music. "Break" is another euphemism that is bandied about among torturers, as if "breaking" a person was some kind of psychological truth serum. Of course, the "results" you get from a "broken" prisoner have little to do with truth.
Beyond pure barbarism, there are various reasons why music torture fails in its ambition. As ever in this "war on terror", there is a disconnect between the purported goal of the US forces ("actionable intelligence") and the methods used to achieve it. An order comes down from on high, from a Bush bureaucrat who has a bright idea, and it is left to soldiers in the field to use their imagination. How some bored soldiers came up with David Gray's song Babylon, played at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, defies analysis. Sometimes, people simply misunderstand lyrics: in 1984, Ronald Reagan tried to co-opt Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA as a patriotic anthem to get himself re-elected, despite the song being about government betrayal of Vietnam veterans.
Sometimes the selections used are wryly appropriate for prisoners being held without trial for years on end: Queen's We are the Champions ("I've paid my dues/Time after time/I've done my sentence/But committed no crime") was a torturer's favourite at Camp Cropper in Iraq. Other songs unwittingly give voice to what could well be the prisoners' inner thoughts: Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name Of ("Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses ... /Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!") was used at Guantánamo.
Inevitably, when poorly trained interrogators are encouraged to let their imaginations soar, they veer towards their own idiosyncratic perversions. One budding Emcee artfully mixed the sound of crying babies (which humans seem hardwired to abhor) with a television commercial for Meow Mix cat food.
Ultimately, though, the most overused torture song is I Love You by Barney the Purple Dinosaur. On the face of it, the lyrics may seem deeply inappropriate: "I love you, you love me - we're a happy family./With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you,/Won't you say you love me too?", but anyone whose child watches the television programme will know how grating it is. In the torture trade, this is called "futility music", designed to convince the prisoner of the futility of maintaining his position.
It is time that those musicians who oppose the use of music to torture fellow human beings made some noise - and they are beginning to. This year's Meltdown festival at London's South Bank, which Massive Attack are curating, has highlighted the issue of torture by music. Projections showing the horror of renditions and secret prisons will be used on their world tour.
When President Bush visited the UK at the weekend, we greeted him by playing the Barney the Purple Dinosaur theme tune. What next? Perhaps the release of a special compilation: we could call it Now That's What I Call Torture, President Bush's selection of eight songs he would take to a desert island, and blast it at him for all eternity.
'It's an issue that no one in the industry wants to deal with'
There is a clear reluctance within the record industry to discuss the use of music as torture. The Guardian attempted to contact artists whose songs have reportedly been used by the US military in detainment camps - a diverse group that includes metal bands Metallica, AC/DC, Drowning Pool and Deicide, hip-hop superstar Eminem, Bruce Springsteen, British singer-songwriter David Gray and the makers of children's TV favourite Barney the Dinosaur. In most cases, inquiries were met with a polite but firm "no comment" from management and PR representatives, or calls were simply not returned.
"It's an issue that no one wants to deal with," says David Gray, one of the few artists willing to speak about the subject. "It's shocking that there isn't more of an outcry. I'd gladly sign up to a petition that says don't use my music, but it seems to be missing the point a bit."
Gray's music became associated with the torture debate after Haj Ali, the hooded man in the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs, told of being stripped, handcuffed and forced to listen to a looped sample of Babylon, at a volume so high he feared that his head would burst.
"The moral niceties of whether they're using my song or not are totally irrelevant," says Gray. "We are thinking below the level of the people we're supposed to oppose, and it goes against our entire history and everything we claim to represent. It's disgusting, really. Anything that draws attention to the scale of the horror and how low we've sunk is a good thing."
The singer wonders whether governments who use music as a torture technique without asking permission from the artists involved could face legal action. "In order to play something publicly, you have to have legal permission and you have to apply for that.
I wonder if the US government bothered, but I very much doubt it. Perhaps you could sue, but let's face it, they're outside the law on the whole thing anyway."
However, Gray's anger is far from a universal reaction. Steve Asheim, drummer for the death-metal band Deicide, questions whether music really counts as torture. "Look at it this way," he says. "These guys are not a bunch of high school kids. They are warriors, and they're trained to resist torture. They're expecting to be burned with torches and beaten and have their bones broken. If I was a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay and they blasted a load of music at me, I'd be like, 'Is this all you got? Come on.' I certainly don't believe in torturing people, but I don't believe that playing loud music is torture either."
Deicide's Fuck Your God is said to be a favourite for military interrogators, and the song topped the infamous "torture playlist" compiled by the American investigative magazine Mother Jones. It is worth noting that the lyrics are in fact anti-Christian, just as Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA and Eminem's White America, also claimed as torture tracks, contain anti-establishment messages. But, as Asheim points out, "Most people who listen to this kind of music don't give a shit about a political message. They just wanna rock."
Was the song specifically chosen for its sonic and cultural impact on detainees? Asheim doesn't think so. "I don't believe there's a room where they discuss what songs they can play to annoy the prisoners.
I think they just show up at work with whatever they're listening to at the time. There's no shortage of metal-heads in the army, that's for sure. These guys who are going into battle, they're not listening to Elton John beforehand."
Asheim's theory raises the question of how the apparently innocuous Barney the Dinosaur music made it into a field dominated by hip-hop and death metal. Barney's producers, HIT Entertainment, declined to comment for this article. However, the creator of Barney's song I Love You, Bob Singleton, admits he "just laughed" when he heard it was being used by interrogators.
"It seemed so ludicrous that something totally innocuous for children could threaten the mental state of an adult," he says. "I would rate the annoyance factor to be about equal with hearing my neighbour's leaf blower. It can set my teeth on edge, but it won't break me down and make me confess to crimes against humanity. Will Barney songs break your psyche? I think that idea turns music into something like voodoo, which it certainly isn't. If that were true, then the inverse would be true. Playing hymns to someone strapped to a chair wouldn't make them a Christian."
Singleton, a classically trained composer, wrote and produced for the TV series Barney and Friends between 1990 and 2000. He says that the morality of what is done with his music once it is out of his hands is beyond his control.
"I would find it unfortunate that one of my works for kids was used as the underscore for a stripper, for example. I would prefer that my music for Barney is put to its best use with children, but beyond that there's not much I can do. Plus, we're not talking about dynamite or nuclear devices here. Music is just music. It's supposed to touch your mind, your body, and your emotions to varying degrees; but it doesn't fundamentally change people. I think that gives it much more credit than it deserves." Paul Arendt
· Clive Stafford Smith is the director of Reprieve, the UK legal action charity that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners. Reprieve has hosted presentations at Meltdown at the South Bank Centre, London SE1, the last of which is the play Rendition Monologues, which is being stage on Saturday. For more information, see Reprieve, or contact Reprieve, PO Box 52742, London EC4P 4WS (020-7353 4640).
WASHINGTON, June 20 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday that could shield phone companies from billions of dollars in lawsuits for their participation in the warrantless surveillance program begun by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The White House-backed, compromise measure -- which triggered a firestorm of opposition from civil liberties groups -- would also overhaul U.S. spy powers and replace a temporary surveillance law that expired in February.
The Senate is expected to give the bill final approval next week with the help of the two major presidential contenders -- Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama -- clearing the way for Bush to sign it into law.
"It will help our intelligence professionals learn our enemies' plans for new attacks," Bush said just hours before the House approved the bill, 293-129. "It ensures that those companies whose assistance is necessary to protect the country will themselves be protected from liability."
Democrats faced election-year pressure to pass the bill, fearing failure to do so would let Republicans paint them as weak on security and force them to accept what they saw as a more objectionable Senate version of the legislation.
Besides providing telecommunications companies with a court review of lawsuits, the bill would increase judicial and congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence activities and bolster protection of civil liberties -- but not as much as civil liberties groups and a number of Democrats would like.
Obama, a liberal Democrat from Illinois, and McCain, a conservative Arizona Republican, issued statements while out of town campaigning for the White House.
Obama said, "I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program ... and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives -- and the liberty -- of the American people."
Said McCain, "I will support this measure and hope that politics will be put aside in favor of this vital national security matter."
Caroline Fredrickson of the American Civil Liberties Union, denounced the bill, saying, "No matter how often the opposition calls this bill a 'compromise,' it is not a meaningful compromise, except of our constitutional rights."
'A SOUND BALANCE'
"This is not the bill I would have written in an ideal world," said House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer, a chief negotiator of the measure. But, he added, "Together, we have worked to develop a bill that strikes a sound balance."
The bill authorizes U.S. intelligence agencies to eavesdrop, without court approval, on foreign targets believed to be outside the United States.
Critics complain this allows warrantless surveillance of Americans who communicate with them. The bill seeks to minimize such eavesdropping but foes say the safeguards are inadequate.
The measure also clarifies that to conduct electronic surveillance of a person in the United States, the government must obtain a warrant from U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The bill would not provide the retroactive immunity that Bush had demanded for telecommunication companies that took part in the warrantless spying program he started.
Instead, U.S. district courts would be able to dismiss a suit if there were written certification that the White House asked a company to participate and assured it the program was legal.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, described the bill as a sham.
"While the bill purports not to grant immunity ... it is in fact a mere fig leaf that effectively provides a complete legal shield to the companies for the invasions of privacy and illegal activities they may have committed," Nadler charged.
About 40 civil lawsuits have been filed accusing AT&T Inc (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) of violating Americans' privacy rights.
Damages could total in the billions of dollars.
Critics charge Bush, in authorizing his spy program, violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to get approval from a secret court to conduct electronic surveillance on foreign targets in the United States.
The president maintains he acted legally, saying he had the wartime power to authorize the program. But he put it under FISA jurisdiction in January 2007. Terms remain secret.
The bill requires FISA approval of U.S. procedures to monitor the phone calls and e-mails of enemy targets and directs inspectors general of a number of federal agencies to review the surveillance and report to Congress. (Editing by David Alexander and Vicki Allen)
First...it's after 3 AM, I've been up for over 22 straight hours, and I'm wide awake! To say "steez was hot" would be a ghetto fabulunderstatement.
On Raida...
1) He used Final Scratch (or something just like it) his whole set -- and you could not tell by listening at all. Just like wax.
2) He knew exactly how to structure his set to cover both the "party rockin" and "tricks showcase" bases. First he gave the crowd a tour of his favorite classics, with notable bunches of Wu, Dre/Snoop, and NY underground tracks. Then after a brief crowd hype on the mic he pulled out all the moves that he first immortalized in his 1995 DMC World Championship routine and never looked back, rocking crazy, crowd-pumping trick material for the entire latter third of his set. Raida may not have changed his repertoire a whole lot since he won his title, but he is definitely even more confident and brash since then, and knows how to please a crowd.
3) He drinks Heineken, though he probably finished only about half a beer's worth over his entire set. Alcohol is definitely not the drug of choice in this scene anyway.
On Q...
1) He is really short. Yeah, you probably kinda knew that already, but he is actually so short that he stood on his flight cases in order to be comfortable at the venue tables. His presence is as big as King Kong though, so whatever.
2) He wipes the sweat/grease off his fingers while playing really quickly. Like you'd see him swipe his fingertips on the hip/butt area that his shirt covered, but only in a flash and for a fraction of a second in between cuts. I bet if you filmed him doing it he would be too fast for the camera's frame rate, just like Bruce Lee.
3) He really is the Michael Jordan of DJing, right down to the "hang your tongue out your mouth when you're really into it" part.
4) He was the only DJ of the night (there were several different opening DJs/acts too) that did not use Final Scratch. All real 12s, though of course many were his official solo and custom pressed discs. That's neither necessarily good nor bad, but just the way it is.
5) He was apparently spotted "stretching" in the wings before his performance.
6) He got crazy applause and support from a crazy crowd. There were at most 100 heads there, but they made noise like it was 1000.
On the night as a whole...
1) Sound was good. There were a couple moments when the vocal mics weren't turned up as much as they could have been, but perhaps the vocalists weren't projecting a whole lot either.
2) There were actually a reasonable number of attractive females there. Sure, they were almost all probably girlfriends-in-tow, but a good number were dancing and obviously enjoying what was otherwise a certified sausage party.
3) There were some "Sparks Girls" there promoting their particular poison between Raida and Qbert, and then again, for some idiotic reason, during Qbert's set. Despite being two hot young things in tiny little shorts, when they tried to toss Sparks merchandise into the crowd during QBert, it actually pissed off the audience to the point that a good many Sparks ballcaps and tshirts were tossed back on to the stage by the booing crowd!
4) I'm gonna be all over 10 different videos and about 1000 different stills taken at the show -- I had the best seat in the house, on the balcony, all the way against the front wall, as far behind and above the tables as you could be.
Detention camp at Guantánamo Bay won't close, but it won't be the same By William Glaberson Friday, June 13, 2008
The Guantánamo Bay detention center will not close today or any day soon.
But a Supreme Court decision Thursday stripped away the legal premise for the remote prison camp that officials opened six years ago in the belief that U.S. law would not reach across the Caribbean to a U.S. naval station in Cuba.
"To the extent that Guantánamo exists to hold detainees beyond the reach of U.S. courts, this blows a hole in its reason for being," said Matthew Waxman, a former detainee affairs official at the Defense Department.
And without that, much will change.
The decision granted detainees the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts, meaning that federal judges will now have the power to check the government's assertions that the 270 men still held there are dangerous terrorists. That will force officials to answer questions about evidence that they have long deflected despite international criticism and expressions of support, from President George W. Bush on down, for closing the camp.
Some cases, though no one can be sure how many, are likely to result in court orders freeing detainees. The government said Thursday that its prosecutions before military commissions at Guantánamo would continue, but habeas corpus suits resulting from the justices' decision are certain to complicate the 19 war crimes cases under way, giving detainees' lawyers a vehicle to try to stop those proceedings.
Just as important, some lawyers said, defending scores of cases would be a huge burden for the government, probably increasing pressure inside the Bush administration to send detainees back to their home countries.
Nearly 100 of the 270 detainees are Yemenis. U.S. officials have said they have not repatriated many of them because of fears that they would be released quickly. The decision Thursday, several lawyers said, could encourage U.S. officials to take their chances, shrinking the population by a third or more.
Detainees' lawyers have long said that the government would not be able to justify the detention of many of the men. Pentagon officials, on the other hand, have maintained that classified evidence establishes that many of them are dangerous. The federal courts will now have the power to sort through those claims.
But the justices' decision did not change some realities that have long made it easier to say that the Guantánamo detention center should be closed than to figure out how. Just last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who advocates closing the camp, told Congress that "we're stuck" in Guantánamo.
One military official said Thursday that those complications remained as confounding after the ruling as they were before. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the court ruling and spoke on condition of anonymity, noted that practical difficulties had stalled plans for an alternative to Guantánamo. Among those is the question of where to put detainees whom the administration views as too dangerous to release.
Under the decision, it appears that the detainees would have the same rights to challenge their status whether they are at Guantánamo or at a military base or prison inside the United States. "If the detainees have constitutional habeas rights at Guantánamo," the official said, "what incentive is there to go through the logistical, fiscal and legislative pain of bringing them to the U.S.?"
The 5-4 defeat for the administration's detention policies was unqualified: A majority of the justices said the Constitution applied at Guantánamo.
"Liberty and security can be reconciled," the majority opinion said.
But lawyers said many questions remained unanswered, including the breadth of the detainees' protections.
The question of whether detainees have habeas rights has long been a central issue in the battle over Guantánamo. Scores of such cases had been in the courts before Congress sought to strip federal judges of the power to hear them. Habeas suits by virtually all the 270 detainees are now expected to commence or be revived, lawyers said.
Such cases give federal judges broad powers to review the government's reasons for holding a prisoner. But once a judge is satisfied that there is a legitimate basis, a case can end quickly with a ruling in the government's favor.
"Habeas is not a get-out-of jail-free card," said Jonathan Hafetz, a detainees lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. "It just provides a fair, legitimate and independent sorting process to determine who should and who should not be held."
Bush appeared Thursday to hold open the possibility of a new legislative effort to alter the decision's result. But for the moment, the administration seemed tangled in a dilemma of its own making, left with a detention camp housing some admitted architects of terror, including the 2001 attacks on the United States, but with the idea evidently dead that the camp was beyond the reach of the courts.
In his testimony to Congress last month, Gates said the Pentagon had "a serious not-in-my-backyard problem" in finding a substitute for Guantánamo. He also listed other concerns that the administration says have kept it from coming up with a plan for closing the detention camp.
Among those, he said, is a Pentagon conclusion that about 80 detainees cannot be charged with war crimes, perhaps because the evidence is not strong enough, but are nonetheless considered too dangerous to release. About 80 other detainees are to be charged with war crimes, the Pentagon has said.
Some administration supporters argued that Thursday's ruling provided unrealistic protections for men captured during war. Under such circumstances, the government cannot be expected to present orderly evidence justifying detention as it would in civilian cases, said David Rivkin, a lawyer who was in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration.
"The level of due process they require," Rivkin said, "will be impossible to meet and therefore will result in the release of a substantial number of enemy combatants."
June 9, 2008 11:23 AM PDT Your papers please: TSA bans ID-less flight Posted by Chris Soghoian
In a major change of policy, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that passengers refusing to show ID will no longer be able to fly. The policy change, announced on Thursday afternoon, will go into force on June 21, and will only affect passengers who refuse to produce ID. Passengers who claim to have lost or forgotten their proof of identity will still be able to fly.
As long as TSA has existed, passengers have been able to fly without showing ID to government agents. Doing so would result in a secondary search (a pat down and hand search of your carry-on bag), but passengers were still permitted to board their flights. In some cases, taking advantage of this right to refuse ID came with fringe benefits--being bumped to the front of the checkpoint queue.
For a few years after September 11, 2001, TSA's policies when it came to flying without ID were somewhat fuzzy. The agency, like many other parts of the Bush Administration, has hidden behind the shroud of classification--in TSA's case, labeling everything Sensitive Security Information.
Seeking to clarify the rules, activist John Gilmore took the U.S. government to court in 2004. Gilmore chose to take a particularly hard line, by refusing to show ID to TSA and also by refusing to undergo the more thorough "secondary screening" search. He eventually lost his case before the 9th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. While the judges were not willing to let Gilmore avoid the secondary screening search, they did at least recognize the right to travel without showing ID--providing that passengers are willing to be subject to a pat down and a bit of probing:
"The identification policy requires that airline passengers either present identification or be subjected to a more extensive search. The more extensive search is similar to searches that we have determined were reasonable and consistent with a full recognition of appellants constitutional right to travel."
Since then, in at least two letters to citizens, TSA has re-affirmed this right. In March 2008, a TSA official wrote that:
"If a traveler is unwilling or unable to produce a valid form of ID, the traveler is required to undergo additional screening at the checkpoint to gain access to the secured area of the airport."
A change in policy
In a press release issued on Thursday with little fanfare, TSA announced a major change in its rules.
"Beginning Saturday, June 21, 2008 passengers that willfully refuse to provide identification at security checkpoint will be denied access to the secure area of airports. This change will apply exclusively to individuals that simply refuse to provide any identification or assist transportation security officers in ascertaining their identity."
This new procedure will not affect passengers that may have misplaced, lost or otherwise do not have ID but are cooperative with officers. Cooperative passengers without ID may be subjected to additional screening protocols, including enhanced physical screening, enhanced carry-on and/or checked baggage screening, interviews with behavior detection or law enforcement officers and other measures."
To clarify: Passengers who refuse to show ID, citing a constitutional right to fly without ID will be refused passage beyond the checkpoints. Passengers who say they have left their ID at home, will be searched, and then permitted to board their flights.
While TSA's announcement stated that the goal of the change was to "increase safety," this blogger disagrees. The change of rules seems to be a pretty obvious case of security theater. Real terrorists do not refuse to show ID. They claim to have lost their ID, or they use a fake.
TSA's new rules only protect us from a non-existent breed of terrorists who are unable to lie.
Fixing flaws vs. security theater
In a research paper published in 2007, I outlined a number of glaring loopholes allowing the total circumvention of the much criticized no-fly lists. The two main flaws were that passengers can modify boarding passes, and that they can refuse to show ID.
In December 2007, TSA began testing out a secure, authenticated, tamper-proof boarding pass scheme. It has since been rolled out to a number of major airports around the country.
With hundreds of millions of dollars having already been spent on the various no-fly lists, it is at least interesting to see that someone at TSA is now spending time on fixing the loopholes in the system. The most glaring of this has long been the fact that passengers can refuse to show (or claim to have forgotten) their ID. Simply put, without being able to know who is walking through a checkpoint, there is no way to know that the "bad guys" have been caught by the no-fly list.
TSA's new rule, while perhaps motivated by a desire to beef up security, is significantly flawed. Terrorists will lie, and claim to have lost their ID--while law-abiding citizens wishing to assert their rights will be hassled, and refused flight.
Of course, all of this is premised on the idea that the no-fly list is actually a useful safety tool--something that I, and a number of other prominent security experts, strongly disagree with. Simply put, terrorists do not pre-register their intent.
As Bruce Schneier has noted before, the no-fly list is a collection of hundreds of thousands of people who are too dangerous to fly, but not guilty enough to be charged with a crime.
These are interesting times, indeed.
Thanks to Gary @ View from the Wing for spotting TSA's announcement.
PS Bonus: Planet Rock backwards into Electric Kingdom courtesy of Egyptian Lover:
10 airports install body scanners By Thomas Frank, USA TODAY BALTIMORE — Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation's busiest airports in one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body parts.
The Transportation Security Administration recently started using body scans on randomly chosen airline passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, Albuquerque and New York's Kennedy airport.
Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport near Washington starts using a body scanner Friday. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.
"It's the wave of the future," said James Schear, the TSA security director at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, where two body scanners are in use at one checkpoint.
Schear said the scanners could eventually replace metal detectors at the nation's 2,000 airport checkpoints and the pat-downs done on passengers who need extra screening. "We're just scratching the surface of what we can do with whole-body imaging," Schear said.
The TSA effort could encourage scanners' use in rail stations, arenas and office buildings, the American Civil Liberties Union said. "This may well set a precedent that others will follow," said Barry Steinhardt, head of the ACLU technology project.
Scanners are used in a few courthouses, jails and U.S. embassies, as well as overseas border crossings, military checkpoints and some foreign airports such as Amsterdam's Schiphol.
'The ultimate answer'
The scanners bounce harmless "millimeter waves" off passengers who are selected to stand inside a portal with arms raised after clearing the metal detector. A TSA screener in a nearby room views the black-and-white image and looks for objects on a screen that are shaded differently from the body. Finding a suspicious object, a screener radios a colleague at the checkpoint to search the passenger.
The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers' faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person's gender. "You can actually see the sweat on someone's back," Schear said.
The scanners aim to strengthen airport security by spotting plastic and ceramic weapons and explosives that evade metal detectors and are the biggest threat to aviation. Government audits have found that screeners miss a large number of weapons, bombs and bomb parts such as wires and timers that agents sneak through checkpoints.
"I'm delighted by this development," said Clark Kent Ervin, the former Homeland Security inspector general whose reports urged the use of body scanners. "This really is the ultimate answer to increasing screeners' ability to spot concealed weapons."
The scanners do a good job seeing under clothing but cannot see through plastic or rubber materials that resemble skin, said Peter Siegel, a senior scientist at the California Institute of Technology. "You probably could find very common materials that you could wrap around you that would effectively obscure things," Siegel said.
'You have to go along with it'
Passengers who went through a scanner at the Baltimore airport last week were intrigued, reassured and occasionally wary. The process took about 30 seconds on average.
Stepping into the 9-foot-tall glass booth, Eileen Reardon of Baltimore looked startled when an electronic glass door slid around the outside of the machine to create the image of her body. "Some of this stuff seems a little crazy," Reardon said, "but in this day and age, you have to go along with it."
Scott Shafer of Phoenix didn't mind a screener looking at him underneath his shorts and polo shirt from a nearby room. The door is kept shut and blocked with floor screens. "I don't know that person back there. I'll never seem them," Shafer said. "Everything personal is taken out of the equation."
Steinhardt of the ACLU said passengers would be alarmed if they saw the image of their body. "It all seems very clinical and non-threatening — you go through this portal and don't have any idea what's at the other end," he said.
Passengers scanned in Baltimore said they did not know what the scanner did and were not told why they were directed into the booth.
Magazine-sized signs are posted around the checkpoint explaining the scanners, but passengers said they did not notice them.
Darin Scott of Miami was annoyed by the process.
"If you don't ask questions, they don't tell you anything," Scott said. When he asked a screener technical questions about the scanner, "he could not answer," Scott said.
TSA spokeswoman Sterling Payne said the agency is studying passenger reaction and could "get more creative" about informing passengers. "If passengers have questions," she said, "they need to ask the questions."
Passengers can decline to go through a scanner, but they will face a pat-down.
Schear, the Baltimore security director, said only 4% of passengers decline.
In Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where scanners have been tested since last year as an alternative to pat-downs, 90% of passengers choose to be scanned, the TSA says.
"Most passengers don't think it's any big deal," Schear said. "They think it's a piece of security they're willing to do."
