FLE

Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal. Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week. Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the documents, but Nacchio's lawyer said last year that the NSA had approached the company about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records. In the court filings disclosed this week, Nacchio suggests that Qwest's refusal to take part in that program led the government to cancel a separate, lucrative contract with the NSA in retribution. He is using the allegation to try to show why his stock sale should not have been considered improper. Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts. The allegations could affect the debate on Capitol Hill over whether telecoms sued for disclosing customers' phone records and other data to the government after the Sept. 11 attacks should be given legal immunity, even if they did not have court authorization to do so....
New scanner may replace metal detectors The federal government will begin testing a body-scanning machine that could eventually be used instead of the metal detectors passengers walk through at airports. Tests were scheduled to begin Thursday at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport with passengers pulled out of the security line for secondary screening. Passengers may request the full-body scan - which blurs faces so the person being screened cannot be recognized - instead of the traditional pat-down used across the country. The new machine uses radio waves to detect foreign objects. Since February, the Phoenix airport has been testing a similar machine that uses so-called backscatter radiation to scan the entire body. The backscatter uses a narrow, low-intensity x-ray beam that's scans the entire body at a high speed. The amount of radiation used during this scan is equal to 15 minutes of exposure to natural background radiation such as the sun's rays. Officials are trying to determine if the body-scan machines are a more effective search tool than a pat-down. Both types of machines check for explosives, metal, plastic and liquids - anything hidden on the body, said Mike Golden, the Transportation Security Administration's chief technology officer. The new type of device being tested, called a "millimeter wave" machine, doesn't use radiation, Golden said Wednesday during a demonstration for reporters at the agency's headquarters in Arlington, Va. Instead, it uses electromagnetic waves to create an image based on energy reflected from the body....
Fear of Flying? I do a tremendous amount of flying commercially, most of it internationally, and there is almost nothing about air travel that promises the convenience and relaxation it had many years ago. But, beyond all of this unpleasantness it is today painfully obvious that an air passenger--once inside the confines of an airport in any part of the world--has no rights whatsoever. This includes not even the right to be protected from security and law enforcement personnel who do not seem to understand any force other than deadly force. Security, police, and passenger screening personnel in any airport have near-dictatorial powers and almost limitless discretion to decide who needs to be put into a chokehold and thrown into a windowless room until someone can decided what set of ridiculously overblown charges need to be leveled against them. A case in point being the 42-year-old female Secret Service agent, Monica Emmerson, who this past June was threatened with arrest and surrounded by a phalanx of Transportation Security Agency (TSA) officers for the heinous crime of having spilled on the floor at Reagan National Airport ordinary drinking water from her 19-month-old toddler's sippy cup....
Grad student suspended after pro-gun-rights e-mail A Minnesota university has suspended one of its graduate students who sent two e-mail messages to school officials supporting gun rights. Hamline University also said that master's student Troy Scheffler, who owns a firearm, would be barred from campus and must receive a mandatory "mental health evaluation" after he sent an e-mail message arguing that law-abiding students should be able to carry firearms on campus for self-defense. Hamline spokesman Jacqueline Getty declined on Wednesday to answer questions about the suspension, saying that federal privacy laws prohibited the school from commenting. Scheffler had previously waived his privacy rights in a letter to Hamline University President Linda Hanson. The nonpartisan civil liberties group FIRE, which stands for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has taken up Scheffler's case, but with no luck so far. In a letter to FIRE on September 28, Hamline's attorneys said the school would not reconsider Scheffler's punishment. Scheffler had sent the pair of e-mail messages after Hamline offered students counseling after the Virginia Tech shooting in April, which took place half a continent away. His response was that, if administrators were truly concerned about safety on campus, they should "lift a ridiculous conceal carry campus ban and let the students worry about their own 'security.'" Scheffler is licensed under Minnesota law to carry a concealed sidearm, which requires a background check and specific training.... Florida cop, hurt during drowning call, sues toddler's family A police officer who slipped and injured a knee responding to a toddler's near-drowning has sued the family of the 1-year-old boy, who suffered brain damage and can no longer walk, talk or swallow. Casselberry Sgt. Andrea Eichhorn alleges Joey Cosmillo's family left a puddle of water on the floor, causing her fall during the rescue efforts. She broke her knee and missed two months of work. The boy fell into the pool outside the family's home in suburban Orlando in January and now lives in a nursing home and eats and breathes through tubes. "The loss we've suffered, and she's seeking money?" said Richard Cosmillo, 69, the boy's grandfather, who lived in the home with his wife and the boy's mother. "Of course there's going to be water in the house. He was sopping wet when we brought him in." Eichhorn's attorney, David Heil, said she has persistent knee pain and will likely develop arthritis. He said city benefits paid by workers' compensation and some disability checks helped with medical bills, but it wasn't enough. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages....UPDATE - Due to the huge public outcry the lawsuit has been withdrawn.