Thursday 03-21-13

TSA tested, scrapped program that tracked Bluetooth devices

Lines can be long at airport security. The Transportation Security Administration knows too. Documents obtained by Eyewitness News showed TSA tested a project to measure how long.

Sensors in the terminal found Bluetooth devices, honed in on the signals and tracked how long it took people to get through security.

An internal TSA document stated it worked by, "…detecting signals broadcast to the public by individual devices and calculating a wait time as the signal passes sensors positioned to cover the area in which passengers may wait in line."

It said the information would be encrypted and destroyed within two hours to protect people's privacy. TSA tested the technology in 2012 in Las Vegas and Indianapolis, but bailed on it.

"This is an expensive and needlessly complicated way of estimating wait times, compared with say a ticket agent writing the time at the front of the line," said Julian Sanchez, author of "Wiretapping the Internet."

TSA has taken criticism in the recent months for its handling of passenger privacy, including enhanced pat downs and whole body scanners.

A spokesman for the Association of Airline Passengers Rights said his group isn't comfortable with Bluetooth tracking and TSA has a history of saying it's keeping passenger information private and then changing its story.

TSA documents show the agency considered posting warning signs alerting passengers that Bluetooth sensors were active, but officials didn't return comment when Eyewitness News asked if the signs were posted at the cities where the technology was tested.

A spokesman confirmed they've scrapped the program before it became public.

http://www.wpxi.com/news/news/local/tsa-tested-scrapped-program-tracked-bluetooth-devi/nWyfh/

California Seizes Guns as Owners Lose Right to Keep Arms

Wearing bulletproof vests and carrying 40-caliber Glock pistols, nine California (STOCA1) Justice Department agents assembled outside a ranch-style house in a suburb east of Los Angeles. They were looking for a gun owner who’d recently spent two days in a mental hospital.

They knocked on the door and asked to come in. About 45 minutes later, they came away peacefully with three firearms.

California is the only state that tracks and disarms people with legally registered guns who have lost the right to own them, according to Attorney General Kamala Harris. Almost 20,000 gun owners in the state are prohibited from possessing firearms, including convicted felons, those under a domestic violence restraining order or deemed mentally unstable.

“What do we do about the guns that are already in the hands of persons who, by law, are considered too dangerous to possess them?” Harris said in a letter to Vice President Joe Biden after a Connecticut school shooting in December left 26 dead. She recommended that Biden, heading a White House review of gun policy, consider California as a national model.

As many as 200,000 people nationwide may no longer be qualified to own firearms, according to Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis. Other states may lack confiscation programs because they don’t track purchases as closely as California, which requires most weapons sales go through a licensed dealer and be reported.

“Very, very few states have an archive of firearm owners like we have,” said Wintemute, who helped set up the program.

Funding Increase

Harris, a 48-year-old Democrat, has asked California lawmakers to more than double the number of agents from the current 33. They seized about 2,000 weapons last year. Agents also took 117,000 rounds of ammunition and 11,000 high-capacity magazines, according to state data.

“We’re not contacting anybody who can legally own a gun,” said John Marsh, a supervising agent who coordinates the sometimes-contentious seizures. “I got called the Antichrist the other day. Every conspiracy theory you’ve heard of, take that times 10.”

The no-gun list is compiled by cross-referencing files on almost 1 million handgun and assault-weapon owners with databases of new criminal records and involuntary mental-health commitments. About 15 to 20 names are added each day, according to the attorney general’s office.

Probable Cause

Merely being in a database of registered gun owners and having a “disqualifying event,” such as a felony conviction or restraining order, isn’t sufficient evidence for a search warrant, Marsh said March 5 during raids in San Bernardino County. So the agents often must talk their way into a residence to look for weapons, he said.

At a house in Fontana, agents were looking for a gun owner with a criminal history of a sex offense, pimping, according to the attorney general’s office. Marsh said that while the woman appeared to be home, they got no answer at the door. Without a warrant, the agents couldn’t enter and had to leave empty- handed.

They had better luck in nearby Upland, where they seized three guns from the home of Lynette Phillips, 48, who’d been hospitalized for mental illness, and her husband, David. One gun was registered to her, two to him.

“The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” regardless of who the registered owner is, said Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office.

Involuntarily Held

In an interview as agents inventoried the guns, Lynette Phillips said that while she’d been held involuntarily in a mental hospital in December, the nurse who admitted her had exaggerated the magnitude of her condition.

Todd Smith, chief executive officer of Aurora Charter Oak Hospital in Covina, where documents provided by Phillips show she was treated, didn’t respond to telephone and e-mail requests for comment on the circumstances of the treatment.

Phillips said her husband used the guns for recreation. She didn’t blame the attorney general’s agents for taking the guns based on the information they had, she said.

“I do feel I have every right to purchase a gun,” Phillips said. “I’m not a threat. We’re law-abiding citizens.”

No one was arrested. Most seized weapons are destroyed, Gregory said.

“It’s not unusual to not arrest a mental-health person because every county in the state handles those particular cases differently,” Gregory said by e-mail. “Unless there’s an extenuating need to arrest them on the spot, we refer the case” to the local district attorney’s office, she said.

Convicted Felons

Agents more often arrest convicted felons who are prohibited from buying, receiving, owning or possessing a firearm, Gregory said. Violation of the ban is itself a felony.

The state Senate agreed March 7 to expand the seizure program using $24 million in surplus funds from fees that gun dealers charge buyers for background checks.

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, a gun lobby based in Fairfax, Virginia, that says it has more than 4 million individuals as members, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the program.

Sam Paredes, executive director of the Folsom-based advocacy group Gun Owners of California, praised the program, though not how it is funded.

“We think that crime control instead of gun control is absolutely the way to go,” he said. “The issue we have is funding this program only from resources from law-abiding gun purchasers. This program has a benefit to the entire public and therefore the entire public should be paying through general- fund expenditures, and not just legal gun owners.”

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-12/california-seizes-guns-as-owners-lose-right-to-bear-arms.html

Arizona could soon approve gold, silver as legal tender

Arizona could soon become the second U.S. state to recognize gold and silver as legal tender if the Arizona House approves SB 1439.
The bill has already won the approval of Arizona’s State Senate and the Arizona House Financial Institutions Committee which voted the legislation out of committee on a 4-2 vote Monday. The measure now goes to a vote of the Arizona House.
Thus far, only the State of Utah has officially recognized gold and silver as legal tender, although the issue has been under consideration this year in four states including Arizona. The Arizona bill defines legal tender as a mode of paying debts and taxes.
The measure also states that any coin or bullion that has gold or silver content and is issued by the United States Government can be defined as legal tender. However, no one can be compelled to accept coin or bullion containing gold or silver. The measure would also mandate that coin or bullion containing gold or silver issued by the U.S. Government cannot be taxed as property since it is to be considered money.
If the Arizona Legislature enacts SC 1439 and Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signs the measure into law, gold and silver would go into effect as legal tender in the state in 2014.
However, House Joint Resolution No. 590 --which would have established a joint subcommittee to study whether the Commonwealth of Virginia should adopt a rule recognizing gold or silver billion or gold or silver coin authorized by the U.S. Government as legal currency—died in the Virginia General Assembly’s State Senate last month.
In January the South Dakota Legislature rejected House Bill 1100 which would have made U.S. Government-minted gold and silver coins legal tender that could be used to pay state taxes at their market value.
Meanwhile, Senate Bill 99, Indiana’s version of recognizing U.S.-issued gold and silver coins as legal tender, appears to be buried in the Indiana State Senate Committee on Tax and Fiscal Policy.
The organizations, the Gold Standard Institute and American Principles in Action, have both championed state efforts to rule gold and silver legal tender.
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en/mineweb-political-economy?oid=182807&sn=Detail