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Park shooting ruled justified

A National Park Service ranger who shot and killed a camper July 27 at Crater Lake was justified in using deadly force, federal prosecutors have concluded. Ronn Ward, 38, of Sunnyvale, Calif., was shot and killed after he charged two rangers while brandishing a large wooden club, the Park Service said. The U.S. attorney's office in Medford conducted an investigation and released the results on Thursday. "It was reasonable for the officer to believe that deadly physical force was necessary under the circumstances to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself from the imminent use of unlawful deadly force by Ward," the investigators said in a prepared statement. Investigators said one ranger used pepper spray in an attempt to stop Ward, and a second ranger shot Ward twice in the chest at a range of six feet. The report said Ward was closing in on the rangers. From the time the rangers arrived until Ward was shot, less than two minutes elapsed, after dark, the investigators said. "This was an incredibly fast-paced, rapidly-evolving, moving situation," said Dave Brennan, the park's chief ranger. Autopsy results indicated Ward's blood alcohol level was 0.27 percent, more than three times the legal limit for driving. There was no evidence of other drugs in his system....

Phone tip leads to sixth pot farm on national forest

It began when a hiker in the Prescott National Forest stumbled across some interesting-looking plants Wednesday and notified authorities. It ended on Thursday, after a stakeout, with the arrest of a Mexican national from Los Angeles charged with marijuana production. Authorities say that so far at least 1,000 pot plants have been pulled from a field near Paulden, marking the sixth pot farm found in an Arizona national forest this year. Four marijuana plots have been found on the Tonto National Forest and one on the Coconino, said Jim Payne, Southwest regional spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. Those earlier busts netted about 100,000 marijuana plants, he said. Wilderness areas used for marijuana farms across the West are often protected by forest canopies or situated in canyons where they are hard to spot and hard to access, Payne said. The Prescott discovery "wasn't unexpected," said Lt. James Jarrell, who heads the Yavapai County Sheriff's special crimes section. "This is generally known as the general harvest time for this part of the state." Deputies arrested Acejo Rodriguez-Martinez, 28, of Los Angeles at the site....

In 4-Year Anthrax Hunt, F.B.I. Finds Itself Stymied, and Sued

Richard L. Lambert, the F.B.I. inspector in charge of the investigation of the deadly anthrax letters of 2001, testified under oath for five hours last month about the case. But Mr. Lambert was not testifying in a criminal trial. He and his teams of F.B.I. agents and postal inspectors have not found the culprit. Instead, he and six other F.B.I. and Justice Department officials have been forced to give depositions in a suit over news media leaks filed by Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, the former Army biodefense expert who was under intensive scrutiny for months. Four years after an unknown bioterrorist dropped letters containing a couple of teaspoons of powder in a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., what began as the largest criminal investigation in American history appears to be stalled, say scientists and former law enforcement officials who have spoken with investigators. The failure to solve the case that the authorities call "Amerithrax" is a grave disappointment for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Postal Inspection Service, the investigative arm of the Postal Service. The letters were the first major bioterrorist attack in American history and killed five people, sickened 17 others, temporarily crippled mail service and forced the evacuation of federal buildings, including Senate offices and the Supreme Court. A former law enforcement official who keeps up with several investigators said, "From the people I've talked to, it's going nowhere." The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity over leaks in the case, said some agents still formally assigned to the investigation were mostly working on other cases, because "there's nothing for them to do."....

Military May Play Bigger Relief Role

President Bush's push to give the military a bigger role in responding to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina could lead to a loosening of legal limits on the use of federal troops on U.S. soil. Pentagon officials are reviewing that possibility, and some in Congress agree it needs to be considered. Bush did not define the wider role he envisions for the military. But in his speech to the nation from New Orleans on Thursday, he alluded to the unmatched ability of federal troops to provide supplies, equipment, communications, transportation and other assets the military lumps under the label of "logistics." The president called the military "the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice." At question, however, is how far to push the military role, which by law may not include actions that can be defined as law enforcement _ stopping traffic, searching people, seizing property or making arrests. That prohibition is spelled out in the Posse Comitatus Act of enacted after the Civil War mainly to prevent federal troops from supervising elections in former Confederate states. Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said, "I believe the time has come that we reflect on the Posse Comitatus Act." He advocated giving the president and the secretary of defense "correct standby authorities" to manage disasters. Presidents have long been reluctant to deploy U.S. troops domestically, leery of the image of federal troops patrolling in their own country or of embarrassing state and local officials....

Bush Wants to Consider Broadening of Military's Powers During Natural Disasters

President Bush said Monday that he and Congress should immediately begin discussing whether to amend federal law so the military could take responsibility right away in natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. While Mr. Bush had raised the idea before, his comments, at an appearance at the Energy Department, were his first explicit remarks about changing the 127-year-old law that restricts the role of federal troops when they act on American soil. His proposal would also appear to take considerable responsibility away from the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is part of the department. "I don't want to prejudge the Congress's discussion on this issue because it may require change of law," Mr. Bush said, apparently referring to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, written in response to the huge federal military presence in the South during Reconstruction. It prohibits the military from engaging in law enforcement, but many exceptions have been carved out. Many Pentagon officials have expressed concern about broadening the military's responsibilities to include what would, in effect, be police work, along with its combat role. They argue that it would require very different training, equipment and force levels. Earlier this month, Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland security, said in an interview about the military's response to Hurricane Katrina that "what we ought not do is convert D.O.D. into a department of first responders."....

Bill Would Permit DNA Collection From All Those Arrested

Suspects arrested or detained by federal authorities could be forced to provide samples of their DNA that would be recorded in a central database under a provision of a Senate bill to expand government collection of personal data. The controversial measure was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week and is supported by the White House, but has not gone to the floor for a vote. It goes beyond current law, which allows federal authorities to collect and record samples of DNA only from those convicted of crimes. The data are stored in an FBI-maintained national registry that law enforcement officials use to aid investigations, by comparing DNA from criminals with evidence found at crime scenes. Sponsors insist that adding DNA from people arrested or detained would lead to prevention of some crimes, and help solve others more quickly. "When police retrace the history of a serial predator after he is finally caught, they often find that he never had a prior criminal conviction, but did have a prior arrest," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said in a statement. "That means the only way they are likely to catch such a perpetrator after his first crime -- rather than his 10th -- is if authorities can maintain a comprehensive database of all those who are arrested, just as we do with fingerprints." Privacy advocates across the political spectrum say the proposal is another step in expanding government intrusion. "DNA is not like fingerprinting," said Jesselyn McCurdy, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It contains genetic information and information about diseases." She added that the ACLU questions whether it is constitutional to put data from those who have not been convicted into a database of convicted criminals. The provision, co-sponsored by Kyl and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), does not require the government to automatically remove the DNA data of people who are never convicted. Instead, those arrested or detained would have to petition to have their information removed from the database after their cases were resolved....

National Security Agency gets fix on Internet users

Internet users hoping to protect their privacy by using anti-virus software, Web anonymizers, false identities and disabled cookies on their computer's Web browser have something new to worry about – a patent filed by the National Security Agency (NSA) for technology that will identify the physical location of any Web surfer. Patent 6,947,978, granted this week, describes a process based on latency, or time lag between computers exchanging data, of "numerous" known locations on the Internet to build a "network latency topology map" for all users. Identifying the physical location of an individual user, reports CNET News.com, could then be accomplished by measuring how long it takes to connect to an unknown computer from numerous known machines, and using the latency response to display location on a map. The rate at which data travels over the Internet constantly varies due to the amount of traffic, the size of data files, the constant changing of hardware and software by millions of users. Sometimes the system is slow, sometimes it is fast. Because of this variation, knowing how long it takes for a signal to travel to a location and back is not sufficient to identify it's location. But knowing the latency of the entire system at a given moment and the latency for a specific computer provides a means of knowing relative locations, however fast or slow the Internet is operating. While most users are unaware of it, their computers are able to "ping" website addresses to trace the route their connection took and how much time was required to complete the operation. Likewise other computer users – hackers, for example – can ping their computer as well when connected to the Internet. It is this feature that the NSA's patent seeks to exploit. The NSA patent does not describe the intended use of the technology by the agency, noting only general uses like measuring the "effectiveness of advertising across geographic regions" or flagging a password that "could be noted or disabled if not used from or near the appropriate location," according to CNET News. But given NSA's status as the nation's premier cryptologic organization, it's unlikely the technology will be used to improve advertising....

Federal Judge Halts New Orleans Gun Seizures

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana this afternoon issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and National Rifle Association (NRA), bringing an end to firearm seizures from citizens living in and around New Orleans. District Judge Jay Zaney issued the restraining order against all parties named in a lawsuit filed Thursday by SAF and NRA. Defendants in the lawsuit include New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief Edwin Compass III. "This is a great victory, not just for the NRA and SAF, but primarily for law-abiding gun owners everywhere," said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. "We are proud to have joined forces with the NRA to put an end to what has amounted to a warrantless gun grab by authorities in New Orleans and surrounding jurisdictions. "Over the past three weeks," he continued, "residents who had lost virtually everything in the devastation following Hurricane Katrina had also essentially been stripped of something even more precious, their civil rights, and their right of self-defense, because of these gun seizures. "SAF and NRA had no alternative but to take action," Gottlieb added. "If these gun confiscations had been allowed to continue without challenge, it would have set a dangerous precedent that would have encouraged authorities in other jurisdictions to believe they also could suspend the civil rights of citizens in the event of some other emergency. "What must happen now, and quickly," said Gottlieb, "is for authorities in the New Orleans area to explain how they will return all of those firearms to their rightful owners, and do it promptly. What this ruling affirms is that even in the face of great natural disasters, governments cannot arbitrarily deprive citizens of their rights. Thanks to some great teamwork between SAF and the NRA, this sort of thing will hopefully never happen again."....

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