LORETTA LYNCH FIGHTS TO PROTECT MUSLIMS, SILENT ON LAQUAN MCDONALD CASE:

#‎LorettaLynch‬

LORETTA LYNCH FIGHTS TO PROTECT MUSLIMS, SILENT ON LAQUAN MCDONALD CASE:

 Following the Mass Shooting incident in San Bernardino, California by two Radical Islamist Extremists who were confirmed supporters of ISIL, U.S. Attorney General LORETTA LYNCH (North Carolina native) has come out swinging to protect the Civil Liberties of MUSLIM citizens living on American Soil.

So now Mrs Lynch wants to PROSECUTE or Target any American citizen who calls out ISIL'S brutal acts being committed on American soil because she doesn't want MUSLIMS living on American soil to be Offended, or to feel uncomfortable.

Does anyone recall Mrs Lynch publicly speaking out about a political Cover-up in the LAQUAN MCDONALD murder case over in Chicago??

While it's true the Media announced that a Federal Investigation will be launched in the Laquan McDonald case, Mrs Lynch has NOT personally commented on this covered up tragedy.

Yet she publicly declared with righteous indignation, to PROSECUTE any American citizen who calls out ISIL'S brutal acts being committed on American soil by Extremists.

Please make note of this.

~ Department of Justice Will Go After Anti-Muslim Hate Speech

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch pledged that the Department of Justice will go after hate speech that might incite violence against the Muslim community, she told a crowd of Muslim-Americans and supporters Thursday night.

“Obviously this is a country that is based on free speech,” Lynch told the audience at the Muslim Advocates dinner in Arlington, VA. “But when that edges towards violence…we will take action.”

Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group, asked Lynch to address concerns about an uptick in anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate crimes.

Since 9/11, Lynch says that the Department of Justice has investigated more than 11,000 acts of anti-Muslim rhetoric, which have led to 45 prosecutions. “I think sadly, that number is going to rise,” said Lynch.
Farhana Khera, Director of Muslim Advocates, told ABC News that the organization and 46 others, including the Presbyterian and American Baptist churches, sent a letter in late September to the RNC and DNC expressing concern over “divisive rhetoric being used by some presidential candidates.”

Khera said the inflammatory language towards Muslims on the campaign trail has persisted. Only the DNC responded to the letter.

In recent weeks, Donald Trump advocated for a national registry of Muslim Americans -- which he later denied -- and claimed that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated after the September 11 attacks.

“The demagoguery has to stop,” Muslim American Congressman Andre Carson (D-IN), who introduced Lynch, told ABC News. Carson said that public figures make these remarks because they “get affirmation from being provocative.”

But Lynch says that language generates fear.

“When you feel that fear, that sense of lack of control, and the inability to do something about it, you start to spin and try to find ways that you think will be the easy fix…anti-Muslim rhetoric becomes that path,” said Lynch. “We also will not give into fear.”

Post Sources: ABC News, YouTube

North Carolina's Terrible Mental Health System Investigated By Feds!

Feds Launch Probe Of N.C. Mental Health System


The U.S. Justice Department has opened a formal investigation into North Carolina's struggling mental health system, the first step in a process that could trigger a federal edict for sweeping reform.

The probe is the result of a complaint filed in July by the advocacy group Disability Rights North Carolina, which contends that the state is violating the Americans With Disabilities Act for failing to provide proper housing for people with mental illness.

Nearly a decade after the state Department of Health and Human Services closed thousands of beds in government-run psychiatric hospitals as part of a reform effort, more than 6,400 people with severe mental illness are housed in adult care homes scattered across the state, living in sometimes squalid and dangerous conditions.

The mental patients, their care typically paid for with taxpayer money, are often far younger than the elderly residents with whom they are housed. In the last two years, at least four residents with mental illness have been killed by fellow patients who had histories of severe mental illness and violence.

Vicki Smith, the executive director of Disability Rights, said the federal investigation could force the state to take actions to fix the mistakes made during North Carolina’s 2001 reform effort, which has also resulted in people with mental illness routinely languishing for days in emergency rooms because no bed in a psychiatric facility is available.

Word of the federal investigation also comes as the state is debating further cuts to the state’s mental health system and moving to close Dorothea Dix Hospital.

“Now DHHS is going to have to answer a whole series of questions about why mental health reform has failed,” Smith said. “This is huge, from our point of view. Huge.”

The Justice Department informed the state of its pending investigation through a five page letter received by DHHS administrators in Raleigh on Thursday. However, the state department did not publically reveal the news until it issued a three-sentence media release earlier today, hours before the start of the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Renee McCoy, a spokeswoman for the state agency, said there would be no comment beyond the media release, which said the state will “work with the Department of Justice to provide all necessary documents and information in response to the complaint.”



Budget Cuts Hitting North Carolina's Mental Health System With Vengeance


Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and social anxiety disorder, Vinh Gazoo has been in a psychiatric hospital five times.

Recently released from jail after a six-month sentence stemming from a crime resulting from his mental health issues, Gazoo says he now survives week to week because of the Mental Health Association in North Carolina.

nonprofit association that helps mental health patients, the organization helps pay for his medication. Its employees and volunteers drive him to doctor's appointments and therapy sessions.

Gazoo was notified this week that those services have been dropped because of state budget cuts.

The $19 billion state budget resulted in a nearly 12.75 percent or $738 million decrease in the Department of Health and Human Services' anticipated $5.54 billion budget for the fiscal year.

About $75 million of DHHS's community services $390 million budget, which helps fund the Mental Health Association was cut, according to executive director John Tote.

"The cuts we have been waiting on from the General Assembly, they're here now, and they're hitting with a vengeance," he said.

Now, the Mental Health Association is laying off approximately 40 percent of its employees.

"Those 175 folks – in the positions they have – affect the lives of about 2,000 individuals across the state (who have) significant mental illness," Tote said.

He estimates approximately 4,000 mental health providers across the state will soon be out of work. The result, he says, will be thousands of patients without services.

Tote blames lawmakers, saying they were much more concerned with politics than providing services for DHHS.

Rep. Verla Insko, D-Orange, who serves on the state House Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services and also chairs the mental health legislative committee, agrees.

Insko says she doesn't think most lawmakers fully grasped the budget cuts and the impact they would have. For many people with mental illness, she says, there is no safety net other than emergency rooms and mental hospitals.

"As an advocate, it's galling," Tote said. "As a person, it's sad – terribly sad."

For Gazoo – now, his option is a walk-in clinic, but he says he has no way to pay for the services he needs and no way to get there. He says he'll likely either wind up back in jail or in a psychiatric facility.

"That's the two choices I have, because without my medication, I get pretty violent," he said.



Feds Indict Former Chief Of Charlotte Non-profit Group Serving Mental Health Patients


The former leader of a Charlotte nonprofit mental health agency has been indicted on charges that he embezzled nearly $150,000 from the program.

Prosecutors said in court documents Wednesday that 50-year-old Edward Gerard Payton directed employees of Mecklenburg Open Door to provide him loans or payment advances. Authorities contend he actually embezzled the money, and only repaid part of it.

The court documents also say Payton used agency credit cards and vehicles inappropriately.

The documents contend that Open Door shuffled funds that belonged to clients when regular funds ran short because of Payton's activities. One charge says Payton was warned about the seriousness of his activities by the agency's former CFO, but continued to embezzle. The indictment claims Payton used the money to pay alimony, child support, and tax liens.

Mecklenburg Open Door ran several group homes and helped manage finances for many mentally ill and homeless clients. Payton was the agency's executive director from 2006 to August of this year. He was fired after the board of directors confronted him about the money.

Mecklenburg County severed its relationship with the agency in Nov. 1. They have since hired a new agency called Monarch to take over its responsibilities.

Payton was arrested Wednesday. Court records don't list an attorney, and a message left at a phone number listed in his name was not returned. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of his five counts.

Mecklenburg County has reacted to the scandal by changing its standards for county contractors like Mecklenburg Open Door. Outside agencies will now be required to have yearly audits of finances.

"We're actually going beyond what general accounting standards require to make sure that Mecklenburg County residents know we are watching their money," said Jennifer Roberts, chairwoman of the Mecklenburg County Commission.





Kenneth Jermaine Chapman's Death vs Carolinas Medical Center's Racist System


Carolinas Medical Center/ Carolinas Health Care System has been previously sued on numerous occasions by several African-American families for Racist Medical practices leading to premature, medically preventable deaths.

Many of those lawsuits were quietly settled with families of those Black patients who died due to intentional improper care or NEGLIGENCE.

Such lawsuits and bad reputation is the reason why Carolinas Medical Center/ Carolinas Health Care System now exist instead of Charlotte Memorial Hospital, the old CMC.

Thus its safe to say Carolinas Medical Center and Charlotte Memorial Hospital are one in the same.

How do I know this?

I always do my research and I talk to people personally affected by what I post on my Blog.

People will tell me things they might not disclose to the Charlotte Observer because the Charlotte Observer has a history of practicing Biased reporting and Discrimination in its publication of articles.

Kenneth Jermaine Chapman was an African-American Charlotte citizen who recently killed three members of his family and later himself.

Prior to his destructive actions he desperately sought Mental Health Care assistance from Charlotte's Carolinas Medical Center.

In fact he sent out an S.O.S. which was intentionally ignored.

Mr. Chapman clearly, verbally expressed to CMC Staff he had thoughts of hurting others and killing himself.

Did CMC Staff report his thoughts to Charlotte DSS even though they knew this man had minor children in the home?

NO!

They didn't give a darn because Ken Chapman was Black and wasn't an affluent citizen.

Now if Ken Chapman had connections with an Affluent, Politically-connected Black Charlotte citizen, than of course they may have taken Mr. Chapman's situation more seriously, but because he was just a poor Black man they didn't give a darn!

The result?

A Black Man who killed his wife, two of his children and than later himself.

If you think Jennifer Roberts (board chair) and the other Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Commissioners are seriously concerned about this matter or seriously concerned about investigating Mr. Chapman's case...DON'T BET ON IT!

If you think Charlotte's weak, scared Black Leaders are going to speak up...DON'T BET ON IT!

The only two Charlotte-Meck. County Commissioners who do really care, Harold Cogdell Jr. & Vilma Leak (both African-Americans) will be blocked from doing anything constructive by Jennifer Roberts (board chair), "Ms. N.C. Corruption" herself.

This tragic incident helps to further demonstrate how Racism is deeply woven into all facets and levels of Charlotte, NC's community, including the Health Care System.

Charlotte's other main Medical Center, Presbyterian Hospital isn't much better.

Its a private facility where Blacks go in but don't come out.

Presbyterian Hospital also has a long history of Black Patients needlessly dying but that's a story for another day.

As I was saying Carolinas Medical Center's staff intentionally did NOT prevent Mr. Chapman's death, nor did they help protect his family however.....

I'll bet Mr. Chapman's surviving relatives receive a huge bill for his so-called "treatment".

In fact thousands upon thousands of African-Americans within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Region have Carolinas Medical Center Medical Bills on their Credit Reports.

Many of those bills are decades old.

Many of those bills are due to Billing errors from Carolinas Medical Center.

Many of those bills are due to Carolinas Medical Center INTENTIONALLY overbilling Black patients.

How does Carolinas Medical Center skirt Federal Law as it relates to Medical Bills which are older than 7 years old?

Carolinas Medical Center pays Equifax, Experian and Trans Union Credit Reporting agencies to sell those old Medical bill accounts to Debt Collectors, who create new account numbers for those decades old bills and continue screwing up the Credit Ratings for hundreds of thousands of North Carolina's Black citizens.

Is this really Racism you ask??

Yes!

For White Patients treated by Carolinas Medical Center staff everything is handled entirely different.

White Patients who visit Carolinas Medical Center for treatment receive proper care regardless of their situation and...

They aren't intentionally overcharged, neither are their Credit Reports damaged even if they don't possess Medical Insurance because NOT every White patient has Private Medical Insurance, just like there are many Black patients treated at CMC who DO possess Private Medical Insurance.

I'd say its time for the Federal Gov't including the FTC, to take a look at how Carolina Medical Center intentionally provides inadequate treatment to its Black patients, how they consistently & intentionally overbill Black patients and how they are paying big bucks to 3 major Credit Reporting agencies (mainly Equifax) for the sole purpose of selling Medical Bill Accounts which are decades old to Debt Collectors.

Just watch the Levine Family, old Charlotte money and one of Carolinas Medical Center/ Carolinas Health Care System largest contributors, use their big bucks to help defend CMC in any possible lawsuit.

The Levine Family is Charlotte's "Savior".

They often come to Charlotte's aid in a crisis however ONLY after the crisis occurs.

They run Charlotte's so-called Leaders including Jennifer Roberts and Anthony Foxx.

The Levines are most likely indirectly involved in most of Charlotte's Racist activities being carried out however, because they are super rich everyone is afraid of them.

If Ken Chapman were a White Man residing in Charlotte, NC neither he nor his family members would be dead today.

Or at least his family members would be alive today.

Both Carolinas Medical Center/ Carolinas Health Care System, Charlotte DSS and quite possibly the Levine Family are ALL legally Responsible for the Chapman Family's death stemming from total NEGLIGENCE.

If I were related to Mr. Chapman's family I would most definitely SUE and demand a Federal Probe to be conducted.

Sadly enough Kenneth Jermaine Chapman's relatives are probably uneducated or too afraid of Charlotte's Racist, Unfair systems to take legal action.

Charlotte's Racist, Scared Leaders know this which is why nothing will probably change.






Patient Advocates: N.C.'s Mental Health System Needs Fixing


Recent reports of patient abuse and neglect at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro is more proof that the state's troubled mental health-care system needs restructuring and more funding, patient advocates say.

"There isn't a system of psychiatric facilities in this state," said Vicki Smith, executive director of Disability Rights North Carolina. "What we have are individual hospitals."

Smith said there needs to be a consistent standard level of care across the state's four psychiatric hospitals and that right now, hospitals only try to meet the minimum standards of care to receive funding.

She blamed that on job vacancies, lack of training, lack of supervision and oversight and inadequate pay. Many state agencies also rely on a temporary work force, and that means the quality of patient care is not always the same, she said.

Better recruiting and retention are needed, she said, to attract more qualified and attractive job candidates.

It's something the state's mental health oversight committee also suggested at a meeting earlier this week. John Tote, with the Mental Health Association in North Carolina, says the General Assembly needs to make more funding available.

Advocates believe Health and Human Services Secretary Dempsey Benton has taken aggressive steps to overhaul the system since taking over last year.

For example, he's starting to hold workers more accountable, Smith said. His recent decision to close a ward at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro in the wake of a patient's death sends a big message, she said, partly because there aren't enough beds for patients there.

On Thursday, Benton said the Division of Mental Health must find an independent hospital management firm to evaluate Cherry Hospital.

However, Smith and Tote are concerned that any progress Benton is making could suffer a setback when a new governor is elected in November and if a new DHHS secretary is appointed.

"Four months left scares me," Smith said. "What concerns me is that with a new administration, the tendency will be to study the problems."

That would not be true if the gubernatorial candidates are already investigating and discussing the problems the mental health system faces. Advocates say they have not heard any specific plans from either candidate so far, however.

"Folks are going to be behind the eight ball, and if that's the case we'll see a perpetuation of the situation," Tote said.



North Carolina Mental-Hospital Workers To Be Re-trained After Patient Abuse Claim


The Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services says workers at a troubled state mental hospital will be retrained following an allegation of abuse that went unreported for several days.

"The patient was not harmed. The issue was that they handled it improperly, so we're going to make sure that we're restructuring a whole bunch of training at Cherry Hospital," Lanier Cansler said Thursday. "It really gave us a clue to the fact that they thought they were doing it right."

The intensive training will be for everyone who works at the Goldsboro facility and involve a list of prohibited actions that result in immediate termination, Cansler said.

Cherry Hospital is in jeopardy of losing approximately $800,000 in federal funding following the incident last month in which a mental health technician dragged a 22-year-old male patient and covered his face with a pillow to keep him from spitting while staff tried to restrain him.

Among the findings in a report by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, the hospital "failed to provide care in a safe setting by failing to investigate the allegation of patient abuse in a timely manner" by allowing the same staff member to continue caring for the patient for 19 days after the allegation was reported.

Cansler told members of the Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Joint Legislative Oversight Committee Thursday morning that the incident went unreported for so long, not because staff tried to hide it but because they didn't know they did anything wrong.

No one will lose their job over the case, Cansler said, despite a zero-tolerance policy he put in place soon after taking over the department in 2008.

"I will not hold an employee responsible for doing something improperly if they've never been trained to do it right," he said. "That's our responsibility, and we're going to make sure it happens."

DHHS must now submit a plan of correction detailing the new training by May 21 to CMS, which oversees the federal insurance plans and reimburses hospitals for treating patients under the programs.

The federal agency revoked Cherry Hospital's certification in 2008, when a 50-year-old patient died after staff left him sitting unattended in a chair for nearly 24 hours. The hospital lost an estimated $8 million to $10 million in federal funding as a result.

Three employees were ultimately fired, two resigned and 10 others were disciplined in that incident. Several former employees were also charged with and convicted of physically and sexually assaulting patients in other cases.

Mental health advocates and state officials have blamed a lack of training and inadequate pay as contributing factors to the problems the hospital has faced.

Canser said Gov. Bev Perdue's proposed budget for the next fiscal year provides $500,000 for additional training at state facilities. A federal match would bring the total to around $800,000.


View Larger Map


Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, WCNC, WRAL, Google Maps

ACORN Broke No Laws According To Congressional Research Report

Report Finds Acorn Broke No Laws


The controversial community organizing group ACORN has not broken any laws in the last five years, according to a Congressional Research Service report released Tuesday evening.

The report, requested by Representative John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, said that federal agencies, mainly the Departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development, have awarded money to the group 48 times since 2005. But, in none of those instances did Acorn violate the terms of their funding, the report said.

Since the 2008 elections, the group, which works primarily to expand voter registration and affordable housing, has become a key Republican target. A series of scandals brought to light by conservative activists led to multiple Congressional hearings and repeated attempts to deny it taxpayer funding.

Acorn has been the subject of scores of investigations—a total of 46 inquiries by federal, state, and local agencies, including the FBI and the Treasury Department, and five by Congress as of October 2009, according to the report.

The report found no evidence that voters attempting to cast ballots at the polls had been improperly registered by Acorn, a chief Republican accusation.

The report also said that a sting-style effort to publicize the group’s allegedly illegal activities, may have broken state laws. Two conservative activists set off a firestorm in September when they posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking financial advice and secretly videotaped Acorn employees offering advice on how the couple could hide their illicit activities and avoid paying taxes.

Also on Tuesday, a Federal court in Brooklyn, New York, rejected the administration’s request to reconsider its ruling that a House resolution barring the group from receiving federal funding was Unconstitutional.

Earlier this month a judge ruled that the law constituted a “bill of attainder,” legislation intended to punish specific people or groups.

In November the US Justice Department also concluded that the Obama administration can legally pay the group.



View Larger Map


Sources: NY Times, ACORN, Google Maps

Legalized Marijuana Comes To Colorado Ski Town..."I Believe I Can Fly"

(Feds issue new Medical Marijuana Policy.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Marijuana Moves Into the Open in a Ski Town


High-altitude partying is a deeply carved tradition in ski country, where alcohol in the open and illicit drugs in the shadows have been intertwined for years.

Even before last week’s town vote here that decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana, one of the best-selling T-shirts at Shirt and Ernie’s on Main Street winked at what it means to live and play 9,600 feet up in the Rockies.

“Dude,” the shirt says, “I think this whole town is high.”

But what the town’s drug ordinance could mean for the local culture and economy, as well as its potential impact on the resort industry if more ski towns go Breckenridge’s way, has become part of the discussion as people scan the skies and wait for snow.

For business owners ever vigilant about the town’s image, safety-minded resort managers and footloose ski and snowboard vagabonds whose ranks have given towns like this a tinge of wildness since the first ski bum washed a dish or waited a table, marijuana is openly discussed as perhaps never before.

The leader of the group that organized the petition drive leading to the vote, Sensible Colorado, said that Breckenridge, where 71 percent of voters approved the marijuana measure on Election Day, was the opening salvo in a town-by-town strategy toward the goal of a vote on statewide legalization within a few years.

Local efforts, said the group’s founder and chairman, Sean T. McAllister, are now organizing or under way in two other Colorado resort towns, Durango and Aspen. After the election, Mr. McAllister said, people in Montana and Washington called seeking advice on starting voter initiatives.

Breckenridge’s part-time Mayor, Dr. John Warner, a dentist who voted against the measure but remained publicly neutral before the election, said the three dozen or so e-mail messages he had received since the vote had been mixed.

About half of the messages were negative, Dr. Warner said, and included comments from people who said they had canceled reservations and would never come back. Other respondents said they were thrilled about the town’s vote and could hardly wait to visit and spend some money.

State and federal law still make marijuana possession a crime in Colorado, but residents here say that local enforcement has not been a high police priority.

A spokeswoman for the Breckenridge Resort Chamber of Commerce, Carly Grimes, said she thought that because of those other laws, little would change. But she said that some chamber members were concerned about perceptions — that the statute could send a message of broader drug tolerance that could turn off visiting families, who remain a cornerstone of the economic base.

“This is not going to become a little Amsterdam,” she said, referring to the Dutch capital, an international symbol of libertarian drug use.

At Vail Resorts, a publicly traded company that owns the Breckenridge resort, a spokeswoman said she expected no change in management practices.

The spokeswoman, Kelly Ladyga, said that resort employees were already trained to be “hypervigilant” in watching people for dangerous behavior from drugs or alcohol and that the company reserved the right to test any employee for drugs if “reasonable suspicions” are raised or an accident occurs.

“We’re a family-friendly resort, and together with the town we remain committed to delivering an exceptional guest experience,” Ms. Ladyga said. “Boarding a lift or using a slope or trail while under the influence of alcohol or drugs is prohibited.”

At Home for the Holidays, a year-round Christmas store, the manager, M. Musso, who asked that only her first initial be used, said her customers tended to be older and more conservative. The young and the rowdy, who crowd the bars when the lifts close, usually do not shop for Christmas baubles, she said.

“I don’t think that’s the type of person we want flocking into Breckenridge,” said Ms. Musso, who opposed the ordinance.

But it is also easy to find people like Chelsey Vogt, a 21-year-old snowboarder originally from upstate New York who foresees what she calls change for the better — from local marijuana users’ becoming more open and comfortable to pot-smoking visitors drawn by the town’s new stance.

“It’s been here forever,” said Ms. Vogt, who works for a property maintenance company when not on the mountain. “Now people can just be more comfortable walking down the street having some marijuana in their pocket — definitely including me.”

One Town Council member who supported the ballot measure, Jeffrey J. Bergeron, said he thought history had played a role in assembling a majority of voters. Mr. Bergeron, who has lived in Breckenridge for nearly 30 years, said many longtime residents vividly remembered the 1970s and 1980s, when cocaine use became a rage and then a scourge, destroying lives and businesses before fading in the 1990s. Through that lens, he said, marijuana looks comparatively benign.

But Mr. Bergeron said he had not expected a backlash, and he now worries that business could take a hit.

“It was a gesture in the right direction,” he said. “I just wish some other town had done it.”

Whether the new measure will lead to more accidents on the slopes is anyone’s guess.

Colorado is one of the few states whose legal codes specify that collisions between skiers are not a natural risk of the sport. The provision, passed by the legislature in 1990, imposes what lawyers call a higher standard of care and potential legal liability upon skiers who cause accidents than do most other states with big resort industries.

James H. Chalat, a lawyer in Denver who specializes in personal injury and ski cases, said that of the hundreds of lawsuits stemming from skiing accidents handled by his firm, Chalat Hatten & Koupal, over 29 years, marijuana had been a factor in only one collision between two skiers.

Alcohol, on the other hand, has often been an aggravating cause, with a drunken skier or snowboarder plowing into somebody else, causing injury.

In any accident, though, evidence of marijuana use would be looked at. “If somebody is stoned, that’s not helpful,” Mr. Chalat said. “It’s a dumb thing.”



View Larger Map


Sources: NY Times, MSNBC, Google Maps

High Court Examines Life Imprisonment For Juveniles Who Commit Non-Homocidal Crimes

(Part 1 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing the seriousness of the new federal mandatory sentencing guidelines. This video is targeted towards urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in Boston by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace, Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)



(Part 2 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing The seriousness of the new Federal mandatory sentencing guidelines for urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)











High court looks at life in prison for juveniles


A seemingly divided Supreme Court wrestled Monday with whether teenagers can be locked away forever for their crimes. The question arose in two cases involving Florida men who are serving life prison terms with no chance of parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. Their lawyers argue that the sentences for people so young are cruel and unusual, in violation of the Constitution, because young people have greater capacity to change.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the Supreme Court opinion four years ago that ruled out the death penalty for people under 18, judging them less responsible than adults. So most eyes were on him Monday as the court considered whether to extend that rationale to life without parole sentences.

But Kennedy offered little hint of his position, at one point suggesting it might be difficult to distinguish between juveniles and adults in cases that do not involve the death penalty.

"Why does a juvenile have a constitutional right to hope, but an adult does not?" he asked.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg provided a possible answer, wondering whether teenagers can be accurately evaluated at the time they are sentenced. It may be possible that only after some years have passed that the state can determine, "Has this person overcome those youthful disabilities?" she said.

A second chance?

On the other side of the issue, Justice Samuel Alito questioned whether every last juvenile offender had to be given a second chance. "Some of the actual cases in which this sentence has been imposed in Florida involve factual situations that are so horrible that I couldn't have imagined them if I hadn't actually seen them," Alito said, recounting two that involved the rape of children.

In the two cases before the court, Joe Sullivan was sent away for life for raping an elderly woman when he was 13 and Terrance Graham was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17.

Graham, now 22, and Sullivan, now 34, are in Florida prisons, which hold more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide.

The justices could distinguish between the two based on the difference in their ages at the time of the crimes: It could rule that someone as young as Sullivan was must eventually be considered for parole without granting Graham any relief from his sentence.

Sullivan's lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, stated his basic argument simply: "To say to any child of 13 that you are only fit to die in prison is cruel." Sullivan would be resentenced to 40 years in prison if he were to win his case at the high court, he said.

Kennedy's opinion in 2005 was rooted in two principles — that death is different from other punishments and that children are less culpable than adults.

Following that ruling, Stevenson noted that juveniles on death row in Florida — all convicted of murder — "got a better sentence than Joe Sullivan," life prison terms with the possibility of parole.






US Supreme Court Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths

"He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can."

And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time, Sullivan was 13 years old.

Now, 20 years after that sentencing in a courtroom in Pensacola, Fla., the Supreme Court will consider whether Sullivan's prison term -- and what his supporters say is an only-in-America phenomenon of extreme sentences for juveniles -- violates the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

The case -- which has drawn widespread notice and briefs from former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and others describing their own youthful crimes -- is likely to be a cardinal criminal justice decision for the court this term.

It is a natural outgrowth of the court's bitterly divided ruling in 2005 that juveniles cannot be executed for murders they commit.

Those challenging sentences of life without parole for teenagers base their optimism on words in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion in that case: "The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. . . . It would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformed."

Sullivan is represented by Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, who said his client's sentence is no different from the punishment the court found unconstitutional.

"They are both effectively death sentences," Stevenson said in an interview. "One is death by execution, and the other is death by incarceration, but they are both terminal sentences."

Only two 13-year-olds in the country have been sentenced to life without parole for crimes that were not homicides, Stevenson said, and both of them are held in Florida.

Florida officials would not discuss Sullivan's case before the November arguments, but their brief to the court said states are within their rights to lock up forever those thought to pose a perpetual threat to society.

"There is no consensus against life sentences for juveniles, particularly for heinous crimes such as sexual battery," Florida Solicitor General Scott Makar wrote.

Across the country, 111 people are serving life sentences without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles that did not result in a death, according to one report; 77 of them are locked up in Florida, for crimes including armed robbery and carjacking. The state took a get-tough approach in the 1990s in response to a crime wave that was "compromising the safety of residents, visitors, and international tourists, and threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's brief to the court states.

That brief came in the case of Terrance Jamar Graham, a second petition the court accepted. Graham, of Jacksonville, received a life sentence after being part of a group that robbed a barbecue restaurant when he was 16; while on probation a year later, he was part of an armed burglary. Again, a judge doubted Graham's ability to ever change his ways; his accomplices served short sentences.

A range of issues

In accepting both cases and deciding to hear them separately, the court gives itself a wide range of issues to ponder. The justices may rule that such sentences are acceptable for 17-year-olds, for instance, but not 13-year-olds. They could look at the relative seriousness of the crimes, or differentiate the non-homicides in both cases with crimes in which someone is killed.

Sullivan, who his lawyer said had been living on the streets since he was 10, had a troubled history with the law. He had 17 offenses before the crime at issue. In 1989, he and two friends burglarized the home of a 72-year-old woman one day while she was away, then returned later. The woman was raped by one of the juveniles; she never saw his face, identifying him only as a "dark, colored boy." But she remembered that he said something like, "If you can't identify me, I may not have to kill you."

At the one-day trial, Sullivan was made to say the words over and over. The victim listened and said: "It's been six months. It's hard, but it does sound similar."

The other boys singled out Sullivan as committing the rape.

"The conviction itself was very questionable," Stevenson said. "We do think he's innocent."

But that is not at issue in the case before the Supreme Court. Stevenson only seeks to have Sullivan, now 33, resentenced so that at some point he becomes eligible for release.

Stevenson contends that Florida made no conscious policy decision that 13-year-olds should be eligible for life without parole for a non-homicide. No state that has debated the question has set the age that low. Instead, he said, Sullivan and others were caught up in a legislative reaction to escalating crime.

"What happened is we lowered the minimum age for trying kids as adults and brought them into the adult system, and we expanded the range of very harsh sentences for an adult, and these two things have collided," he said.

Besides the two Floridians serving life sentences for non-homicides committed at 13, seven others have received that sentence for crimes resulting in a death, Stevenson said.

An Index of Mercy

But the state of Florida and its supporters said that is evidence that the sentences are carefully applied to the worst of the worst.

"It is a rare and agonizing decision to sentence a juvenile to life-without-parole," said a brief filed by Louisiana and 18 other states. "But rare does not mean unconstitutional. Rather, rarity is an index of mercy -- of reluctance to take this severe step."

The National District Attorneys Association, supporting Florida, said that while life without parole for juveniles might be unusual, "permanent incarceration for the most violent, hardened juvenile offenders is by no means 'cruel.' "

Sullivan and Graham are supported by a wide-ranging group of organizations: the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and academics and social scientists who argue that juveniles cannot be held responsible for their actions in the same way adults are. For the same reason, they say, younger teenagers are not entrusted with decisions such as voting, marrying or drinking.

A group of educators and social scientists told the court that such research was crucial to the 2005 decision that juveniles should not be subject to the death penalty. "The principal purposes of sentencing -- punishing the culpable and deterring the rational -- are not furthered by denying the possibility of parole to adolescents," the group said.

Graham and Sullivan are also supported in an unusual friend-of-the-court brief by former juvenile offenders such as Simpson, director and actor Charles Dutton, and a poet, a software executive and a former assistant U.S. attorney.

"At some point, you have to look at them again and ask, 'What have you done with your life?' " said Simpson, who said that as a youth he burned down an abandoned federal building, destroyed property and fought with a police officer. "Maybe 90 percent of them you throw back in, but what about the other 10 percent?"



View Larger Map

Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Youtube, US Probation Department, 4Peace, Stop Handgun Violence Inc., Google Maps

Life Sentences For Youth Violates Constitutional Rights...US Supreme Court To Decide

(Part 1 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing the seriousness of the new federal mandatory sentencing guidelines. This video is targeted towards urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in Boston by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace, Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)



(Part 2 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing The seriousness of the new Federal mandatory sentencing guidelines for urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)





US Supreme Court Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths

"He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can."

And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time, Sullivan was 13 years old.

Now, 20 years after that sentencing in a courtroom in Pensacola, Fla., the Supreme Court will consider whether Sullivan's prison term -- and what his supporters say is an only-in-America phenomenon of extreme sentences for juveniles -- violates the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

The case -- which has drawn widespread notice and briefs from former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and others describing their own youthful crimes -- is likely to be a cardinal criminal justice decision for the court this term.

It is a natural outgrowth of the court's bitterly divided ruling in 2005 that juveniles cannot be executed for murders they commit.

Those challenging sentences of life without parole for teenagers base their optimism on words in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion in that case: "The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. . . . It would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformed."

Sullivan is represented by Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, who said his client's sentence is no different from the punishment the court found unconstitutional.

"They are both effectively death sentences," Stevenson said in an interview. "One is death by execution, and the other is death by incarceration, but they are both terminal sentences."

Only two 13-year-olds in the country have been sentenced to life without parole for crimes that were not homicides, Stevenson said, and both of them are held in Florida.

Florida officials would not discuss Sullivan's case before the November arguments, but their brief to the court said states are within their rights to lock up forever those thought to pose a perpetual threat to society.

"There is no consensus against life sentences for juveniles, particularly for heinous crimes such as sexual battery," Florida Solicitor General Scott Makar wrote.

Across the country, 111 people are serving life sentences without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles that did not result in a death, according to one report; 77 of them are locked up in Florida, for crimes including armed robbery and carjacking. The state took a get-tough approach in the 1990s in response to a crime wave that was "compromising the safety of residents, visitors, and international tourists, and threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's brief to the court states.

That brief came in the case of Terrance Jamar Graham, a second petition the court accepted. Graham, of Jacksonville, received a life sentence after being part of a group that robbed a barbecue restaurant when he was 16; while on probation a year later, he was part of an armed burglary. Again, a judge doubted Graham's ability to ever change his ways; his accomplices served short sentences.

A range of issues

In accepting both cases and deciding to hear them separately, the court gives itself a wide range of issues to ponder. The justices may rule that such sentences are acceptable for 17-year-olds, for instance, but not 13-year-olds. They could look at the relative seriousness of the crimes, or differentiate the non-homicides in both cases with crimes in which someone is killed.

Sullivan, who his lawyer said had been living on the streets since he was 10, had a troubled history with the law. He had 17 offenses before the crime at issue. In 1989, he and two friends burglarized the home of a 72-year-old woman one day while she was away, then returned later. The woman was raped by one of the juveniles; she never saw his face, identifying him only as a "dark, colored boy." But she remembered that he said something like, "If you can't identify me, I may not have to kill you."

At the one-day trial, Sullivan was made to say the words over and over. The victim listened and said: "It's been six months. It's hard, but it does sound similar."

The other boys singled out Sullivan as committing the rape.

"The conviction itself was very questionable," Stevenson said. "We do think he's innocent."

But that is not at issue in the case before the Supreme Court. Stevenson only seeks to have Sullivan, now 33, resentenced so that at some point he becomes eligible for release.

Stevenson contends that Florida made no conscious policy decision that 13-year-olds should be eligible for life without parole for a non-homicide. No state that has debated the question has set the age that low. Instead, he said, Sullivan and others were caught up in a legislative reaction to escalating crime.

"What happened is we lowered the minimum age for trying kids as adults and brought them into the adult system, and we expanded the range of very harsh sentences for an adult, and these two things have collided," he said.

Besides the two Floridians serving life sentences for non-homicides committed at 13, seven others have received that sentence for crimes resulting in a death, Stevenson said.

An Index of Mercy

But the state of Florida and its supporters said that is evidence that the sentences are carefully applied to the worst of the worst.

"It is a rare and agonizing decision to sentence a juvenile to life-without-parole," said a brief filed by Louisiana and 18 other states. "But rare does not mean unconstitutional. Rather, rarity is an index of mercy -- of reluctance to take this severe step."

The National District Attorneys Association, supporting Florida, said that while life without parole for juveniles might be unusual, "permanent incarceration for the most violent, hardened juvenile offenders is by no means 'cruel.' "

Sullivan and Graham are supported by a wide-ranging group of organizations: the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and academics and social scientists who argue that juveniles cannot be held responsible for their actions in the same way adults are. For the same reason, they say, younger teenagers are not entrusted with decisions such as voting, marrying or drinking.

A group of educators and social scientists told the court that such research was crucial to the 2005 decision that juveniles should not be subject to the death penalty. "The principal purposes of sentencing -- punishing the culpable and deterring the rational -- are not furthered by denying the possibility of parole to adolescents," the group said.

Graham and Sullivan are also supported in an unusual friend-of-the-court brief by former juvenile offenders such as Simpson, director and actor Charles Dutton, and a poet, a software executive and a former assistant U.S. attorney.

"At some point, you have to look at them again and ask, 'What have you done with your life?' " said Simpson, who said that as a youth he burned down an abandoned federal building, destroyed property and fought with a police officer. "Maybe 90 percent of them you throw back in, but what about the other 10 percent?"



View Larger Map

Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Youtube, US Probation Department, 4Peace, Stop Handgun Violence Inc., Google Maps

FBI Scanning Driver's Licenses To Catch Fugitives...Mistaken Identity Possibilities, Privacy Violations

(Illinois Exoneree Jerry Miller discusses his 1982 wrongful conviction and the 24 years he was incarcerated for a crime DNA now proves he didn't commit. Jerry was the 200th person exonerated by DNA testing nationwide - learn more at www.innocenceproject.org)







Driver's licenses scanned in search for fugitives


In its search for fugitives, the FBI has begun using facial-recognition technology on millions of motorists, comparing driver's license photos with pictures of convicts in a high-tech analysis of chin widths and nose sizes.

The project in North Carolina has already helped nab at least one suspect. Agents are eager to look for more criminals and possibly to expand the effort nationwide. But privacy advocates worry that the method allows authorities to track people who have done nothing wrong.

"Everybody's participating, essentially, in a virtual lineup by getting a driver's license," said Christopher Calabrese, an attorney who focuses on privacy issues at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Earlier this year, investigators learned that a double-homicide suspect named Rodolfo Corrales had moved to North Carolina. The FBI took a 1991 booking photo from California and compared it with 30 million photos stored by the motor vehicle agency in Raleigh.

In seconds, the search returned dozens of drivers who resembled Corrales, and an FBI analyst reviewed a gallery of images before zeroing in on a man who called himself Jose Solis.

A week later, after corroborating Corrales' identity, agents arrested him in High Point, southwest of Greensboro, where they believe he had built a new life under the assumed name. Corrales is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles later this month.

"Running facial recognition is not very labor-intensive at all," analyst Michael Garcia said. "If I can probe a hundred fugitives and get one or two, that's a home run."

Law enforcement database?

Facial-recognition software is not entirely new, but the North Carolina project is the first major step for the FBI as it considers expanding use of the technology to find fugitives nationwide.

So-called biometric information that is unique to each person also includes fingerprints and DNA. More distant possibilities include iris patterns in the eye, voices, scent and even a person's gait.

FBI officials have organized a panel of authorities to study how best to increase use of the software. It will take at least a year to establish standards for license photos, and there's no timetable to roll out the program nationally.

Calabrese said Americans should be concerned about how their driver's licenses are being used.

Licenses "started as a permission to drive," he said. "Now you need them to open a bank account. You need them to be identified everywhere. And suddenly they're becoming the de facto law enforcement database."

State and federal laws allow driver's license agencies to release records for law enforcement, and local agencies have access to North Carolina's database, too. But the FBI is not authorized to collect and store the photos. That means the facial-recognition analysis must be done at the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles.

"Unless the person's a criminal, we would not have a need to have that information in the system," said Kim Del Greco, who oversees the FBI's biometrics division. "I think that would be a privacy concern. We're staying away from that."

Dan Roberts, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, added: "We're not interested in housing a bunch of photos of people who have done absolutely nothing wrong."


Scanning for similarities

Gone are the days when states made drivers' licenses by snapping Polaroid photos and laminating them onto cards without recording copies.

Now states have quality photo machines and rules that prohibit drivers from smiling during the snapshot to improve the accuracy of computer comparisons.

North Carolina's lab scans an image and, within 10 seconds, compares the likeness with other photos based on an algorithm of factors such as the width of a chin or the structure of cheekbones. The search returns several hundred photos ranked by the similarities.

"We'll get some close hits, and we'll get some hits that are right on," said Stephen Lamm, who oversees the DMV lab.

The technology allowed the DMV to quickly highlight 28 different photos of one man who was apparently using many identities. It also identified one person who, as part of a sex change, came in with plucked eyebrows, long flowing hair and a new name — but the same radiant smile.

Mistaken for a terrorist?

The system is not always right. Investigators used one DMV photo of an Associated Press reporter to search for a second DMV photo, but the system first returned dozens of other people, including a North Carolina terrorism suspect who had some similar facial features.

The images from the reporter and terror suspect scored a likeness of 72 percent, below the mid-80s that officials consider a solid hit.

Facial-recognition experts believe the technology has improved drastically since 2002, when extremely high failure rates led authorities to scrap a program planned for the entrances to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Lamm said investigators reviewing the galleries can almost always find the right photo, using a combination of the computer and the naked eye.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, questioned whether the facial-recognition systems that were pushed after the Sept. 11 attacks are accurate or even worthwhile.

"We don't have good photos of terrorists," Rotenberg said. "Most of the facial-recognition systems today are built on state DMV records because that's where the good photos are. It's not where the terrorists are."



DNA exonerates a second Forsyth Inmate


While Joseph Abbitt grew older in prison, forensic science grew more sophisticated, enough to prove the truth he'd been telling since 1991.

Abbitt walked out of jail Wednesday, 14 years after a jury found that he raped two teenage sisters in the early morning darkness as they dressed for school. He swore his innocence from the day police found him, which, at the time, sounded like hot air from a man who had seen plenty of trouble on the streets of Winston-Salem.

On Wednesday, new DNA tests on long-kept evidence proved that an unidentified man had violated the girls.

"We're here today not because of any wrongdoing by any one person," David Hall, a Forsyth County assistant district attorney, told the judge. "We're here because of the inexact science long ago. Science has marched on over the years."

Abbitt is the seventh man in North Carolina exonerated by DNA evidence years after being sentenced. Nationally, he joins 241 men exonerated by more sophisticated testing of DNA; three quarters of them, like Abbitt, had been wrongly identified by witnesses. An untold number of others never had the chance to prove their innocence because evidence from the crime was destroyed long before the state passed laws requiring that the pieces be kept forever.

As these things go, Abbitt, 49, was lucky. He was convicted in Forsyth County, where the exoneration of another man had weighed on the conscience of the district attorney.

Darryl Hunt was freed in 2003 after serving 18 years for the rape and murder of a Winston-Salem woman. His innocence was a sucker punch for Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith.

"We did not want another Darryl Hunt case," Keith said. "I couldn't take it."

Keith wanted to sleep through the night not wondering whether his office had banished other innocent men to prison. In 2005, his office compiled a list of every suspect from Forsyth County in prison -- 2,247 total. Keith mailed each a letter, advising the inmates that if they thought a new DNA test would help prove a claim of innocence, he'd make the test happen.

Only 150 inmates took him up on the offer. Of those, 80 were reviewed by the local bar association and students at Wake Forest University Law School, who looked for cases that had evidence that could be tested. Only Abbitt's case resulted in exoneration.

Abbitt appealed directly to the N.C. Center for Actual Innocence, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping prisoners who believe they were wrongly convicted. In 2008, Christine Mumma, the center's director, solicited the help of Keith and the Winston-Salem police department to look for any shred of evidence remaining in Abbitt's case.

In one of the department's six warehouses, Winston-Salem Capt. David Clayton hit pay dirt: the girls' two rape kit exams, undisturbed since the day the state lab sent them back with a report saying it couldn't get a positive read. Clayton immediately drove them to a state lab for more testing. The kits were eventually sent to a private lab for more sophisticated work.

A logical suspect

In 1995, Abbitt's conviction made sense. He'd been in trouble with the law before; he had even been charged in another sex crime years before. The girls, 15 and 13 at the time of the crime, knew him, and said, with certainty, that he was the man who snuck into their house and raped them at knife-point. They saw paint on his shoes and pant-legs; Abbitt had been working as a painter.

Abbitt always swore his innocence. His family believed him and never thought a jury would convict him.

"We all knew he didn't do it," his brother Thurmond Abbitt said Wednesday. "It hurt to watch that fall upon him."

A hulking man in a beige dress shirt and glasses, Joseph Abbitt wept as a judge granted his freedom. Abbitt hung his head and shook with sobs; Mumma rubbed his arm.

The judge offered an apology. Abbitt nodded.

When Abbitt finally spoke, he did not rant against the system that wronged him. Instead, he focused on the girls violated by someone years before.

"I pray for those two young victims every day," Abbitt told a judge. "I hope they catch the one who did this because these two young girls are still the victims of this awful crime."

Keith plans to do that. On Wednesday, a judge signed an order allowing $5,000 to pay for more DNA tests at a private lab, where they hope to decipher the signature of the real rapist.



View Larger Map


Sources: MSNBC, FBI, McClatchy Newspapers, News & Observer, Winston-Salem Journal, Innocence Project, Youtube, Google Maps

Yes, Government Control (Limited) Should Be Allowed In Cyberspace...Preventing Viruses, Terrorist Attacks, etc.,

How much Government control in Cyber Crisis?

There's no kill switch for the Internet, no secret on-off button in an Oval Office drawer.

Yet when a Senate committee was exploring ways to secure computer networks, a provision to give the president the power to shut down Internet traffic to compromised Web sites in an emergency set off alarms.

Corporate leaders and privacy advocates quickly objected, saying the government must not seize control of the Internet.

Lawmakers dropped it, but the debate rages on. How much control should federal authorities have over the Web in a crisis? How much should be left to the private sector? It does own and operate at least 80 percent of the Internet and argues it can do a better job.

"We need to prepare for that digital disaster," said Melissa Hathaway, the former White House cybersecurity adviser. "We need a system to identify, isolate and respond to cyberattacks at the speed of light."

So far at least 18 bills have been introduced as Congress works carefully to give federal authorities the power to protect the country in the event of a massive cyberattack. Lawmakers do not want to violate personal and corporate privacy or squelching innovation. All involved acknowledge it isn't going to be easy.

For most people, the Internet is a public haven for free thought and enterprise. Over time it has become the electronic control panel for much of the world's critical infrastructure. Computer networks today hold government secrets, military weapons specifications, sensitive corporate data, and vast amounts of personal information.

Millions of times a day, hackers, cybercriminals and mercenaries working for governments and private entities are scanning those networks, looking to defraud, disrupt or even destroy.

Just eight years ago, the government ordered planes from the sky in the hours after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Could or should the president have the same power over the Internet in a digital disaster?

If hackers take over a nuclear plant's control system, should the president order the computer networks shut down? If there's a terrorist attack, should the government knock users off other computer networks to ensure that critical systems stay online? And should the government be able to dictate who companies can hire and what they must do to secure the networks that affect Americans' daily life.

Government officials say the U.S. must improve efforts to share information about cyberthreats with private industry. They also want companies to ensure they are using secure software and hiring qualified workers to run critical systems.

Much like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, cybersecurity has attracted the interest of a number of House and Senate committees, all hoping to get a piece of the oversight power:

* Bills in the House Homeland Security Committee bills would protect the electric grid and require the department to secure its networks.

* The Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee is writing legislation aimed largely at federal agencies.

* The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is working on a bill that promotes public awareness and technical education, raises the planned White House cyberadviser to a Cabinet-level position and calls for professional cyberstandards. An early draft would have given the president the power to shut down compromised federal or critical networks in an emergency.

Bloggers howled that the government was taking over the Internet. Business leaders protested, and Senate aides reworked the bill. Early versions of the second draft are more vague, giving the president only the authority to "direct the national response" to a cyberthreat.

Committee spokeswoman Jena Longo said the bill "will not empower a government shutdown or takeover of the Internet and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false."

She said the president has the constitutional authority to protect the American people and direct the response to a crisis — including "securing our national cyberinfrastructure from attack."

Privacy advocates say the government has not proven it can do a better job securing networks than the private sector.

"The government needs to get its own cybersecurity house in order first before it tries to tell the private sector what to do," said Gregory T. Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Nojeim said the Senate Commerce Committee bill appears to leave "tough questions to the president, and that isn't comforting because some presidents will answer those questions in troubling ways."

U.S. officials acknowledge that their networks are scanned or attacked millions of times a day. Spies have breached the electrical grid. In July, hackers simultaneously brought down several U.S. government Web sites and sites in South Korea.

Home computers are targets, too. A study by security software provider McAfee Inc. says as many as 4 million computers are newly infected each month and turned into "botnets" — armies of computers used by someone without their owners' knowledge. As many as 10 percent of the world's computers might be unknowingly infected.

Shutting down a compromised system may sound like a good idea, but "it's not like the Internet has an on-off switch somewhere you can press," said Franck Journoud, manager of information security policy for the Business Software Alliance.

Most industries are federally regulated, so the government should work within those systems to plan for disasters, said Journoud, whose group has met with lawmakers and the White House on cyberpolicies.

Rather than setting minimum standards, business groups say the U.S. should endorse existing voluntary industry ones.

Cyberexperts also argue that when hackers infiltrate a critical network, the solution is not to shut down the system, but to isolate and filter out the offending computer codes.

Private companies are willing and able to protect their systems without government mandates, said Tom Reilly, president of ArcSight, a cybersecurity software company. He said the government should concentrate on protecting critical infrastructure and data privacy, and promote education on cybersecurity.

"People want to know if they are one of the 10 percent of the computers that are infected," he said. "They just don't know what to do. Most people just hope they're one of the other nine."



Justice: No privacy problems in Cyber program

The US Justice Department has concluded that a beefed-up surveillance program that monitors federal employees' Internet traffic does not violate their rights or those of private citizens who communicate with them.

But the review of the Einstein 2 program was limited and leaves important questions unanswered, said the vice president of an Internet freedom watchdog group.

Einstein 2 is a second-generation automated program designed to detect cyber attacks on government computer networks.

The review, completed last month and released Friday, said the system addresses potential privacy concerns by warning employees when they log in that their communications may be monitored.

Such warnings "eliminate federal employees' legitimate expectations of privacy" on government computers, acting Assistant Attorney General David J. Barron wrote.

The review reaches the same conclusion as a study undertaken by the Justice Department during the Bush administration.

Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said his group agrees with the report's conclusion, as far as it goes.

"If you send an e-mail to the government, you can't complain that they read it," Dempsey said, after reviewing the two reports.

But the memos do not address how Einstein works in practice, including whether it also monitors communications between private parties and if so, what it does with any information it collects, Dempsey said.

"Those questions haven't been fully answered and they deserve to be," he said.

The memos also do not deal with the next-generation program, Einstein 3, which is intended to both detect and stop cyber attacks against government computers.



View Larger Map

Sources: MSNBC, Wikipedia, AP, Google Maps