4276
as always:

It is best to read this journal from the beginning. . .

<http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2006/02/08/>

it makes more sense then. ....

or just explore the journal at: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/>

may i recommend: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/01/04/>

and a follow up to that: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/10/12/>
---------------------------------------------

i don;t use the word often, but i will now - not to em[phasize an organized religious belief but to stress the timing and the import of the observation - but as God is my witness, and hte morning after I post of the fdeath of hte mount desert isle doctor from harvard who studies sharks, and that according to her and her mom one of the residences, i say, as god is my witness, when i got off the train in mansfield this evening just a few moments ago, visrginia rossborough was there, lighting a cigarette, her hair punked up a bit in the shark doo so oft reported, and she walked down the stairs as if to head to mansfield center. . . recall, the address i shared with marr (seen thursday evening by lesley university) and rossborough appearing on fried's assistant's computer screen at harvard . . .

wow. . .

and i get home in tome for a good celtics win on the TV. . .

and find on boston.com (but i got the e-mail earlier this day from the woman herself):

Harvard seeking spending cuts to weather downturn
November 10, 2008 04:27 PM Email| Comments (23)| Text size – +
(File photo by Wendy Maeda/Globe staff)
Drew Faust: "We need to be prepared to absorb unprecedented endowment losses and plan for a period of greater financial constraint.”

By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff

The economic crisis is hitting the nation’s richest university.

Harvard University president Drew Faust said today the university is looking for ways to reduce spending, raising the prospect of cuts to programs and compensation. Harvard also is assessing all aspects of its sweeping plans to expand across the Charles River in Allston, she said.

“We must recognize that Harvard is not invulnerable to the seismic financial shocks in the larger world,” Faust wrote in an e-mail to faculty, staff, and students.

She did not specify what cuts were on the table.

Faust affirmed Harvard's commitment to recent initiatives to expand financial aid for low- and middle-income families. Students from families making below $60,000 a year will still get a free ride, she said. And families making up to $180,000 per year can expect to pay no more than 10 percent of their income.

Tuition increases during the tough economy should be kept modest, Faust said.

Harvard's move follows a range of belt-tightening at colleges and universities across the country.

Last month, Boston University instituted a hiring freeze and a moratorium on all construction that is not already underway. Today, Dartmouth College said it would reduce spending after its endowment lost $220 million during the recent downturn. The New Hampshire school's endowment had finished the fiscal year at $3.66 billion.

Harvard’s endowment before the financial crisis was $36.9 billion, the largest in the nation, and funded more than a third of the university’s annual operating budget. But it, like other college endowments, has taken a major hit, Faust said.

"While we can hope that markets will improve, we need to be prepared to absorb unprecedented endowment losses and plan for a period of greater financial constraint,'' she said.

The university cannot expect continued generous contributions from donors and foundations, Faust said. The pool of federal grant money for research also is at risk of drying up.

"We need to be prepared to absorb unprecedented endowment losses and plan for a period of greater financial constraint,” she said.

Faust said she has met with faculty deans in recent weeks as well as the Harvard Corporation, the body that oversees the university, to discuss ways to reduce spending for this school year and next.

“We have to think not just about what more we might wish to do, but what we might do at a different pace or do without,” she said. “Tradeoffs and hard choices that can be avoided in times of plenty cannot be averted now.”


--------

so its something that i met a museum guard on the mbta coming home - and we chatted, he and i. . . a good chat . . . but funny that - for recall the 7/3/2006 essays and the "The Haven" essay . .. and the museu, of fine arts and the letting go of the guards . . . cost-cutting for overspending all along . . .

actually - the U just can't catch the Bush League check any more . . . perhaps some of most ofhte black funded projectsd and U income are ending. . .

but a lot to report today since the last entry. . .

and i'll shy off hte work stuff, but for another viscusi reminder with the moving of the copier. . .

oy . . .

but an e-0mail did come in from an NN related to the biol;abs - and the topic reflected something i;ve youched upon herein though a different substance - and i took this as more and more noose closing by the HUMF, and yet it is more "admission" all . . .

I already related the maine plates that passed (and then the arizona one) when i walked hte forst time to holyoke - 5257 PA and 8989 K and then 6340 XSH (as in the harvard sponsored research on me - without my consent and against my will: experiment shhhhhhhhhhhhh - ah, i;ve no reason to) . . . and then the seemingly homeless man in front of aubon pain and then getting off the 7th floor holyoke elevator when i was boasrding it? know where he went down to? i went back to he 7th floor later in the day- for one of hte best temp gigs I ever had at havrard - to drop off paperwork for grant checks to promote cultural awareness . . . anyway - the smoking man went down to the left of the elevator banks: Vice President of Administration; Institutional REsearch; Harvard University HUman REsources; University Administration; Labor RElations; and Budgets and Financial Planning - SEE PREVIOUS ENTRIES HEREIN FOR ALL!

as always:

It is best to read this journal from the beginning. . .

<http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2006/02/08/>

it makes more sense then. ....

or just explore the journal at: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/>

may i recommend: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/01/04/>

and a follow up to that: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/10/12/>
---------------------------------------------

out for chinese food after the afternoon entry, and 61N A76 drives under the DEAS Bridge - the engineering school. . . kevin neurobiology, automaton free? probve it and recompence/ . .

and then form the truck (and recall the katherine harvey (ah - harvey of farscape- see previosu entries: 8/10/2006 and other entries)- and john coffee and strokes! and HU with the stroke thing yesterday in the news . . .

hmmm . . .

after leaving hte truck, CH 6306 C (NH) and 681 ROF (CT). . . see previos entries . . .

coke harvard 1996 see and sex research operation faculty/federal. . .

and thenb AXS 9926 (NY) and PJL 371 (TX). . . and texas is bush league - robohuman. . .

and out for he after lunch smoke and the siemen's truck (they're all over harvard , you know - siemen;s trucks. . . ) went by - new hampshire plate on this one: 225 4028 (NH) . . . as in catch 22 the five years 6/8? see previous entries . . .

teh drew gilpin fause about harvard and economics came through at 247 PM - ah: 24/7 - hypersurveillance form the office of the president - see previosu entries . . . and given the blackberry/bluetooth connections today. . . well . . .more of harvard et al and experiments in maine - see previous entirs. . .

as always:

It is best to read this journal from the beginning. . .

<http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2006/02/08/>

it makes more sense then. ....

or just explore the journal at: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/>

may i recommend: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/01/04/>

and a follow up to that: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/10/12/>
---------------------------------------------

for a photo spam blitz then began to the work's e-mail . . . asin picked your pictures out of hte trash and i;ve got your pictures etcetera . . . ah: more games for mthe humf in maine . . .

and massachusetts - see previosu entries december of 2002 at gresh's place - 36 pearson (there;s that name again!). . .

then to holyoke again and 8669 LB passes with a cab 3608 . . . the eighty-six sixty-nine pond is something - and i wonder if that refers again to pound hall, which used to be HLs human resources . . .

see previous entries . . .

3/6/08? okay:

March 6th, 2008



3217 [Mar. 6th, 2008|07:10 am]
morning - no issues with the computer and its speed this morning. . .

from bostonherald.com:

Sylvester Stallone and Chris Rock make witness list in wiretapping trial

By Associated Press | Thursday, March 6, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Celebrity News

Photo by Brian Vander Brug/LA Times
LOS ANGELES - Private investigator Anthony Pellicano has boasted he could get Hollywood information that others couldn’t. He must now prove to a jury he didn’t break the law in the process.

The wiretapping trial of the tough-talking Pellicano and four co-defendants was expected to begin Thursday with opening statements, a day after a jury was impaneled.

Pellicano, 63, is representing himself at trial and could provide fireworks when he cross-examines some of his former clients and employees expected to testify.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors released a list of 127 potential witnesses that included Sylvester Stallone, Chris Rock and Garry Shandling.

Pellicano is accused of running a criminal enterprise that wiretapped phones and bribed police and telephone workers. Prosecutors said he obtained confidential information that could be used to gain an advantage in divorce, business and other cases.

Prosecutors estimate Pellicano and two co-defendants — retired Los Angeles police Sgt. Mark Arneson and former telephone company employee Rayford Earl Turner — collected nearly $2 million from what they say was a racketeering scheme.

Pellicano and his co-defendants, including Kevin Kachikian and Abner Nicherie, have pleaded not guilty.

"At the end of the day I hope the jurors understand one thing — that I’m not a criminal enterprise," Pellicano told The Associated Press in an interview last month from federal prison. "If they understand that I’m ecstatic."

Fourteen people have been charged, and seven already pleaded guilty to a variety of charges including perjury and conspiracy. Six of those seven, including film director John McTiernan and former Hollywood Records president Robert Pfeifer, are expected to be called by prosecutors.

Other prominent Hollywood players on the potential witness list include one-time Walt Disney Co. president and agent Michael Ovitz; Brad Grey, chairman and chief executive officer of Paramount Pictures; and Ron Meyer, president and chief executive officer of Universal Studios.

Stallone and Shandling were alleged victims in the case. Stallone told the AP last month that he wouldn’t mind testifying.

One of the first prosecution witnesses was expected to be retired baseball player Matt Williams, who had a bitter divorce with his second wife, actress Michelle Johnson, in 2002. Prosecutors said in a court filing they have an audio recording of Williams and Pellicano, but didn’t elaborate.

The trial is expected to last up to 10 weeks.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/track/celebrity/view.bg?articleid=1078211
----------

see previous emntries. . .

boston.com:

FBI chief says privacy abuses persisted
Agency took personal data until last year
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post | March 6, 2008

WASHINGTON - FBI Director Robert Mueller told senators yesterday that agents improperly used a type of administrative subpoena to obtain personal data about Americans until internal procedures were changed last year.

Mueller said a forthcoming report from the Justice Department's inspector general will find that abuses recurred in the agency's use of national security letters in 2006, echoing problems similar to those identified in earlier audits.

Inspector General Glenn Fine reported a year ago that the FBI used such letters - which are not subject to a court's review - to improperly obtain telephone logs, banking records, and other personal records of thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005.

An internal FBI audit also found that the bureau potentially violated laws or agency rules more than 1,000 times in such cases.

Mueller testified that a follow-up report from Fine's office, due to be released this month, will "identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March." But Mueller emphasized that the time frame in the report "predates the reforms we now have in place" to avoid further abuses.

"We are committed to ensuring that we not only get this right, but maintain the vital trust of the American people," Mueller said.

At the hearing yesterday, Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy condemned the FBI's "widespread illegal and improper use of national security letters" and urged Mueller to be more attentive to the problem.

"Everybody wants to stop terrorists," said Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. "But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want those protected."

A year ago, lawmakers of both parties called for limits on the FBI's use of the security letters, which demand consumer information from banks, credit card companies, and other institutions without a warrant as part of investigations into suspected counterterrorism and espionage. Congress has not followed through with legislation, however, and Mueller sought to assure lawmakers that internal changes will solve the problems. He said new FBI procedures, including the creation of a compliance office to monitor the use of security letters, will "minimize the chance of future lapses."

But Michael German, a former FBI agent who is national security policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement that "it's becoming more and more obvious that outside oversight is essential since the Bureau's learning curve is sadly unimpressive."

"Instituting judicial oversight would guarantee that someone would be looking over the shoulder of agents using a tool as invasive" as a national security letter, German said. The ACLU and other civil liberties groups argue the government's use of security letters should be significantly narrowed or brought under court supervision.

Under questioning from Leahy about the Bush administration's controversial use of harsh techniques for interrogating suspected terrorists, Mueller defended the FBI's practice of using "noncoercive" techniques on criminal and terrorism suspects, saying they are "effective and sufficient and appropriate."

Mueller said the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit has found that building trust with prisoners is "particularly effective." He pointed to the FBI's interrogation of Saddam Hussein, which yielded crucial details about the former Iraqi government's actions and motivations.

"The experts that we have . . . believe that our techniques are effective, and are sufficient and appropriate to our mission," Mueller said.

"And those techniques are founded on a desire to develop a rapport and a relationship."
================================

You see, with me, there's been an offenseive nature to the trolling (offensive as in ugh that's ickcy and offensive as in one needs to defend against). . .

and from boston.com (Ari Juels in in the news!):

T card has security flaw, says researcher
Cracked code could lead to counterfeits, study team warns
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | March 6, 2008

A computer science student at the University of Virginia asserts that he has found a security flaw in the technology behind the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's CharlieCard system.

German-born graduate student Karsten Nohl specializes in computer security. Nohl and two fellow security researchers in Germany say they've cracked the encryption scheme that protects the data on the card. The team warns that their breakthrough could be used to make counterfeit copies of the cards, which are used by commuters to pay for MBTA bus and subway rides.

"You could have thousands of cards and sell them in the underworld," said David Evans, an associate professor of computer science at the university, and Nohl's adviser. Nohl himself is on spring break and could not be reached.

The CharlieCard uses a Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, chip. The card is pressed against a detector, which reads data from the chip and deducts the price of a subway or bus ride from the owner's account.

The T spent $192 million to introduce the CharlieCard in 2006. The system replaced cash and tokens.

A press release issued by the University of Virginia said Nohl's research team obtained the same kind of chip, then used abrasives to scrape away the chip layer by layer. By examining the chip circuitry, they were able to figure out the encryption algorithm it uses and found weaknesses that made it easy to break. Next, the team was able to use commercially available RFID readers to capture data from any RFID-equipped cards that came within range. They could then decrypt the data on those cards and copy them. Nohl said that his team needed only about $1,000 worth of equipment to dismantle the chip and crack the code.

Nohl said that the RFID chip they compromised, the MiFare Classic by NXP Semiconductors of the Netherlands, is the one used in London's subway system and in the MBTA CharlieCard. But MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo refused to confirm or deny this. "It's MBTA policy not to discuss security measures around its smart card technology," he said.

A 2004 policy analysis of the CharlieCard system produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that it would be based on MiFare technology.

NXP Semiconductors issued a statement saying that Nohl's team breached only one of several security features built into the MiFare Classic chip. "This does not breach the security of the overall system," the company said. "Even if one layer were to be compromised, other layers will stop the misuse."

Evans said it might be hard to solve the issue. "There are chips that have a much higher security level available," he said. "They cost more and it is not a trivial matter to upgrade the system."

Ari Juels, chief scientist and director of computer security company RSA Laboratories in Bedford, said that Nohl's research illustrates that there are serious security flaws in many smartcard applications. "The vulnerability is most certainly for real," Juels said.

---------------------------

So why then ought I have been introduced to this man in 1997? See previous entries. . .

oy . . .

butthat was 5+ years before the latest pair of glasses. . . hmmm . .. when could I have been RFID'ed . . . only time I can think is hernia surgery # 2 from 1990 and the foot surgery of late 2001 (and that through Somerville Hospital initially and then, a HArvard Affiliate again, Cambridge Hospital, form which I at hte CA(org) meeting was tagged to be recruited. . .

oy . . .

bu this also supports the animal tagging research of primateand other kind via the museums and HU . . . and the reaso nwhy the anthropological terror studies seems to be pulling back . .

to, a lot of yesterdays observations on the ealk to work for hte second shift appear to indicate that the hUMF effort along these lines is pulling back . . .

hmmm . . .

from the YAhoo InBox (the personal acocunt):

Yahoo! Mobile Mail, search and more on your phone Wed Mar 05, 2008 13k
-------

yes, recall how phone and mail etc were fragged (and what of uploads there)?

and bulk spam (old acount, the one under attack or that I'm d-spammed attacked through):

Eulottery International CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU HAVE WON OUR 1ST QUOTER Wed Mar 05, 2008 21k
---------------------
quoter? recall that "quote" is a word the phone scrabble game does not allow. . .

and from the InBox:

Matt Wells New MediaGuardian event - Radio Reborn 2008 Thu Mar 06, 2008 14k
TOYOTA AWARD PROMOTION AWARD NOTIFICATION. Thu Mar 06, 2008 2k
---------

Hmmmmm . . . matt Wells? see previous entries. . .

nytimes.com:

March 6, 2008
Foundation Is Questioned After Memoir Is Exposed
By MOTOKO RICH
The author who confessed this week to making up her memoir, “Love and Consequences,” about growing up as a foster child in gang-ridden South-Central Los Angeles, appears also to have made up a foundation that she claimed was helping “to reduce gang violence and mentor urban teens.”

Margaret Seltzer, who wrote under the pseudonym Margaret B. Jones, referred to the International Brother/SisterHood in the author biography that appeared on the back flap of the book. The memoir was published by Riverhead Books, a unit of Penguin Group USA, and released last Thursday. With help from her agent, Faye Bender, Ms. Seltzer also set up a Web site, brothersisterhood.com, in October to describe the foundation and promote her book. Since the revelations about the book, however, Ms. Bender has taken down the Web site.

No record of the foundation could be found with the Internal Revenue Service or the states of Oregon, where Ms. Seltzer lives, or California.

Ms. Bender said she helped set up Ms. Seltzer’s foundation Web site because the author said she lacked money to buy Internet server space. “She explained several times that it was a budding organization,” Ms. Bender said. “She said that the people involved were gang members and they were working to help other gang members and help other kids not get into gangs.” Ms. Bender said she asked no further questions, but added that Ms. Seltzer did not solicit funds on the site.

Ms. Seltzer’s cellphone was not taking messages on Wednesday, and she did not return an e-mail message or a message left with Ms. Bender. But in a telephone interview on Monday, Ms. Seltzer said she met many gang members and their families through her activism. “You meet one person, you meet their friends, you meet their family and that’s your friends,” she said. “All I can say is it’s a very, very small world.”

Leaders of several other groups combating gang violence in Los Angeles who were listed on Ms. Seltzer’s Web site said they did not know of the International Brother/SisterHood or of Ms. Seltzer or Margaret B. Jones.

“I’ve never heard of her before in my life,” said Malik Spellman, an intervention prevention specialist at Unity T.W.O., which works to provide social services and stop gang activity in many South-Central Los Angeles neighborhoods and was listed on Ms. Seltzer’s site. “I believe if she was active, I would probably know her by name or the organization.”

Ms. Seltzer claimed in the book to be part American Indian and said she grew up with an African-American foster family in South-Central Los Angeles running drugs for the Bloods. In fact she has no such heritage and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of suburban Los Angeles with her biological family and graduated from a private Episcopal day school.

Khalid Shah, executive director of Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace Foundation, another organization listed by Ms. Seltzer, said he had not heard of Ms. Seltzer or her foundation. “She’s been doing her homework if she has all those organizations listed,” he said. “She must know something about something, or has done a lot of reading. It’s easy to get a lot of stuff off the Internet.”

Constance L. Rice, a co-director of the Los Angeles office of Advancement Project, a civil rights advocacy group, who wrote a report last year about reducing gang violence for the Los Angeles City Council, said that there were 50,000 to 80,000 gang members in Los Angeles County, and it was always possible that Ms. Seltzer worked with some of them. But Ms. Rice said that she did not know Ms. Seltzer or her foundation and noted that, as a white woman, Ms. Seltzer would have likely stood out in most neighborhoods of South-Central Los Angeles.

Ms. Rice said it was just as likely that Ms. Seltzer had taken her inspiration from television and movies. “She’s been watching too much of ‘The Shield,’ ” said Ms. Rice, referring to the rough-edged police drama on FX set in Los Angeles. “All you have to do is go to a couple of movies or watch ‘The Wire,’ ” the Baltimore street drama on HBO. “You could riff off that forever,” she said.

Ms. Seltzer said on Monday that although she fabricated the personal story, many of the incidents in the memoir were based on experiences of friends in the gang world.

Geoffrey Kloske, publisher of Riverhead, said that all he knew about the foundation was the wording that Ms. Seltzer asked to include on the book jacket. The publisher agreed to do so, no questions asked.

------

Why is mom telling me of familial stresses like hte kid from ME years ago? Sean? Death by Cop?

Oy . . .

Let it go - and the IT guy under hyperstress at mom;s work?

well. . . I'm merely tring to figure outthat which is wring? to keep it form happening to others. . .

see previous entries; readthe journla form the beginning . . .

and from nytimes.com:

March 6, 2008
U.S. Universities Join Saudis in Partnerships
By TAMAR LEWIN
Three prominent American universities — the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University — are starting five-year partnerships, worth $25 million or more, with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a graduate-level research university being built in Saudi Arabia.

Under the agreements, the mechanical engineering department at Berkeley, the computer-science department and Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford, and the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas will help pick the faculty and develop the curriculum for the new university, known by the acronym Kaust, which is scheduled to open next year with a $10 billion endowment.

Over the five years, each university will receive a $10 million gift, $10 million for research on their home campus and $5 million for research at Kaust, as well as administrative costs.

“The agreement will allow us to improve our facilities here in California, and fund a stream of graduate students, without taxing our existing infrastructure,” said Albert Pisano, the chairman of Berkeley’s mechanical engineering department, which he said had voted 34 to 2 to proceed with the agreement. “We’re going to work on projects that are good for the Middle East and for California, like energy sources beyond petroleum, improved water desalination, and solar energy in the desert.”

Despite its enormous oil wealth, Saudi Arabia lacks world-class research universities. In the last few years, as the Persian Gulf nations have begun to worry about the eventual need to convert from an oil-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, they have started offering lavish inducements to American universities to bring their expertise to the region.

Although men and women will be able to mingle freely at the new university, faculty members at the American institutions said they were concerned about the possible pitfalls of working in a society where women cannot drive, gay rights do not exist and Israelis are not welcome.

The agreements do contain an exit clause. “We have a 30-day cancellation provision, allowing us to leave the agreement with no penalty if at any time we are dissatisfied,” Dr. Pisano said.

University officials said they had addressed the issues of academic and personal freedom head-on.

“We are working with a university that has guaranteed nondiscrimination on the basis of race, religion or gender,” said Peter Glynn, director of the Stanford institute. “We recognize that this university operates in Saudi Arabia. Having said that, this university recognizes that if it wants to be world-class, it has to be able to freely attract the best students and faculty from around the world.”

He acknowledged that the issue could be sticky. “We have several Israeli faculty involved with this, but to be honest, there’s very little of what Stanford will be doing that will involve travel to Saudi Arabia,” he said. He added that Stanford’s main role would be devising the curriculum and recruiting initial faculty members, from around the world. “We believe this university can have a major impact in Saudi Arabia and in the region, and that’s why we’re doing this.”

Kaust has already announced partnerships with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the Institut Français du Pétrole, the National University of Singapore, the American University of Cairo, the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and others.

-----------

See previous entries. .. oy . . .

washingtonpost.com:

National Dragnet Is a Click Away
Authorities to Gain Fast and Expansive Access to Records

By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 6, 2008; A01



Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots.

As federal authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police agencies from Alaska and California to the Washington region poured millions of criminal and investigative records into shared digital repositories called data warehouses, giving investigators and analysts new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues.

Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time.

Although Americans have become accustomed to seeing dazzling examples of fictional crime-busting gear on television and in movies, law enforcement's search for clues has in reality involved a mundane mix of disjointed computers, legwork and luck.

These new systems are transforming that process. "It's going from the horse-and-buggy days to the space age, that's what it's like," said Sgt. Chuck Violette of the Tucson police department, one of almost 1,600 law enforcement agencies that uses a commercial data-mining system called Coplink.

With Coplink, police investigators can pinpoint suspects by searching on scraps of information such as nicknames, height, weight, color of hair and the placement of a tattoo. They can find hidden relationships among suspects and instantly map links among people, places and events. Searches that might have taken weeks or months -- or which might not have been attempted, because of the amount of paper and analysis involved -- are now done in seconds.

On one recent day, Tucson detective Cynthia Butierez demonstrated that power in an office littered with paper and boxes of equipment. Using a regular desktop computer and Web browser, she logged onto Coplink to search for clues about a fraud suspect. She entered a name the suspect used on a bogus check. A second later, a list of real names came up, along with five incident reports.

She told the system to also search data warehouses built by Coplink in San Diego and Orange County, Calif. -- which have agreements to share with Tucson -- and came up with the name of a particular suspect, his age and a possible address. She asked the software to find the suspect's links to other people and incidents, and then to create a visual chart displaying the findings. Up popped a display with the suspect at the center and cartoon-like images of houses, buildings and people arrayed around him. A final click on one of the houses brought up the address of an apartment and several new names, leads she could follow.

"The power behind what we have discovered, what we can do with Coplink, is immense," Tucson police Chief Richard Miranda said. "The kinds of things you saw in the movies then, we're actually doing now."

Intelligence-Led Policing

The expanding police systems illustrate the prominent roles that private companies play in homeland security and counterterrorism efforts. They also underscore how the use of new data -- and data surveillance -- technology to fight crime and terrorism is evolving faster than the public's understanding or the laws intended to check government power and protect civil liberties, authorities said.

Three decades ago, Congress imposed limits on domestic intelligence activity after revelations that the FBI, Army, local police and others had misused their authority for years to build troves of personal dossiers and monitor political activists and other law-abiding Americans.

Since those reforms, police and federal authorities have observed a wall between law enforcement information-gathering, relating to crimes and prosecutions, and more open-ended intelligence that relates to national security and counterterrorism. That wall is fast eroding following the passage of laws expanding surveillance authorities, the push for information-sharing networks, and the expectation that local and state police will play larger roles as national security sentinels.

Law enforcement and federal security authorities said these developments, along with a new willingness by police to share information, hold out the promise of fulfilling post-Sept. 11, 2001, mandates to connect the dots and root out signs of threats before attacks can occur.

"A guy that's got a flat tire outside a nuclear facility in one location means nothing," said Thomas E. Bush III, the FBI's assistant director of the criminal justice information services division. "Run the guy and he's had a flat tire outside of five nuclear facilities and you have a clue."

In a paper called "Intelligence-Led Policing: The New Intelligence Architecture," law enforcement authorities working with the Justice Department said officers " 'on the beat' are an excellent resource for gathering information on all kinds of potential threats and vulnerabilities."

"Despite the many definitions of 'intelligence' that have been promulgated over the years, the simplest and clearest of these is 'information plus analysis equals intelligence,' " the paper said.

Efforts by federal authorities to create national networks have had mixed success.

The federal government has long successfully operated programs such as the Regional Information Sharing System, which enables law enforcement agencies to communicate, and the National Crime Information Center, an index of criminal justice information that police across the country can access. Though successful, those systems offer a relatively limited look at existing records.

A Department of Homeland Security project to expand sharing substantially, called the Information Network, has been bedeviled by cost overruns, poor planning and ambivalence on the part of local and state authorities, according to the Government Accountability Office. Almost every state has established organizations known as intelligence fusion centers to collect, analyze and share information about possible leads. But many of those centers are underfunded and undermanned, and some of the analysts are not properly trained, the GAO said last year.

Federal authorities have high hopes for the N-DEx system, which is to begin phasing in as early as this month. They envision a time when N-DEx, developed by Raytheon for $85 million, will enable 200,000 state and local investigators, as well as federal counterterrorism investigators, to search across millions of police reports, in some 15,000 state and local agencies, with a few clicks of a computer mouse. Those reports will include names of suspects, associates, victims, persons of interest, witnesses and any other person named in an incident, arrest, booking, parole or probation report.

The system will be accessible to federal law-enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, and state fusion centers. Intelligence analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center and FBI's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Center likely will have access to the system as well.

"The goal is to create a one-stop shop for criminal justice information," the FBI's Bush said.

In the meantime, local and state authorities have charged ahead with their own networks, sometimes called "nodes," and begun stitching them together through legal agreements and electronic links.

At least 1,550 jurisdictions across the country use Coplink systems, through some three dozen nodes. That's a huge increase from 2002, when Coplink was first available commercially.

At least 400 other agencies are sharing information and doing link analysis through the Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or Linx, a Navy Criminal Investigative Service project built by Northrop Grumman using commercial technology. Linx users include more than 100 police forces in the District, Virginia and Maryland.

Hundreds of other police agencies across the country are using different information-sharing systems with varying capabilities. Officials in Ohio have created a data warehouse containing the police records of nearly 800 jurisdictions, while leaving it to local departments to provide analytical tools.

Same Data, New Results

Authorities are aware that all of this is unsettling to people worried about privacy and civil liberties. Mark D. Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who is now a security consultant for FTI Consulting, said that the mining of police information by intelligence agencies could lead to improper targeting of U.S. citizens even when they've done nothing wrong.

Some officials avoid using the term intelligence because of those sensitivities. Others are open about their aim to use information and technology in new ways.

One widely used Coplink product is called Intel Lead. It enables agencies to enter new information, tips or observations into the data warehouses, which can then be accessed by people with proper authority. Another service under development, called "predictor," would use data and software to make educated guesses about what could happen.

"Intel Lead is particularly applicable to the needs of statewide criminal intelligence and antiterrorism fusion centers as well as federal agencies who need to bridge the intelligence gap," said a news release by Knowledge Computing, the company that makes Coplink.

Robert Griffin, the chief executive of Knowledge Computing, said Coplink yields clues and patterns they otherwise would not see. "It's de facto intelligence that's actionable," Griffin said.

Managers of Linx are eager to distinguish their system from the commercial Coplink and its more extensive capabilities. They acknowledge their system includes data-analysis capabilities, and it will feed information to counterterrorism and intelligence authorities. In fact, the system is designed to serve as a bridge between law enforcement and intelligence.

But they said Linx is not an intelligence system under federal laws, because it relies on records police have always kept. "It does not create intelligence," said Michael Dorsey, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agent in charge. "It creates knowledge."

To allay the public's fears, many police agencies segregate information collected in the process of enforcing the law from intelligence gathered on gangs, drug dealers and the like. Projects receiving federal funding must do so.

Nearly every state and local jurisdiction has its own guides for these new systems, rules that include restrictions intended to protect against police intrusiveness, authorities said. The systems also automatically keep track of how police use them.

N-DEx, too, will have restrictions aimed at preventing the abuse of the data it gathers. FBI officials said that agencies seeking access to N-DEx would be vetted, and that only authorized individuals would have access. Audit trails on whoever touches a piece of data would be kept. And no investigator would be allowed to take action -- make an arrest, for instance -- based on another agency's data without first checking with that agency.

But even some advocates of information-sharing technology worry that without proper oversight and enforceable restrictions the new networks pose a threat to basic American values by giving police too much power over information. Timothy Sample, a former intelligence official who runs the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, is among those who think computerized information-sharing is critical to national security but fraught with risks.

"As a nation, our laws have not kept up," said Sample, whose group serves as a professional association of intelligence officials in the government and intelligence contracting executives in the private sector.

Thomas McNamara, chief of the federal Information Sharing Environment office, said a top goal of federal officials is persuading regional systems to adopt most of the federal rules, both for privacy and to build a sense of confidence among law enforcement authorities who might be reluctant to share widely because of security concerns.

"Part of the challenge is to leverage these cutting-edge tools so we can securely and appropriately share that information which supports efforts to protect our communities from future terrorist attacks," McNamara said. "Equally important is that we do so in a manner that fully protects the information privacy and legal rights of all Americans."

Miranda, the Tucson police chief, said there's no overstating the utility of Coplink for his force. But he too acknowledges that such power raises new questions about how to keep it in check and ensure that the trust people place in law enforcement is not misplaced.

"I don't want the people in my community to feel we're behind every little tree and surveilling them," he said. "If there's any kind of inkling that we're misusing our power and our technology, that trust will be destroyed."

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Ah - another Amy's Kid's name . . . and van Kirk came form Arizona, and his mom was quite religious . . . see previous entrries. . .

I have sensedthat inkling . . . see previous entries. . .

washingtonpost.com:

DHS Strains As Goals, Mandates Go Unmet

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 6, 2008; A01



Stumping for President Bush's ill-fated immigration overhaul in 2006, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff vowed that his department would wrest "operational control" of the nation's borders away from human and drug traffickers within five years.

That projection was based on the prospect of tough new enforcement measures as well as a temporary-worker program meant to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants, including the most ambitious use of surveillance technology ever tried on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Two years later, the legislative overhaul has been shelved, development of the "virtual fence" has been delayed, and its designers are going back to the drawing board. Completion of its first phase has been put off until as late as 2011, congressional investigators say. The possibility of this outcome was flagged early on by internal and external watchdogs, who warned of unrealistically tight deadlines, vague direction to contractors, harsh operating conditions and tough requirements of Border Patrol end-users.

The virtual fence is not the first major contractor-led technology effort to be ineffective, incomplete or too expensive to sustain since the Department of Homeland Security was formed five years ago this month. Former officials, private-sector partners and independent analysts say the evolving 208,000-worker, $38 billion agency remains hindered by a crisis-of-the-moment environment, in which the rush to fulfill each new mandate or meet every threat undermines its ability to hold a strategic course and deliver promised results.

Among a slew of high-profile projects that have gone astray, DHS has struggled to field next-generation explosive-detection "puffer devices" at airports and has projected it could take $22 billion and 16 more years to deploy advanced baggage-screening systems in airports.

It scaled back and indefinitely delayed the "exit" half of a $10 billion, biometric entry-exit system to track foreign visitors using digital fingerprints and photographs, citing technological and cost problems. Homeland Security also faces a congressional mandate after the Dubai Ports World controversy to scan 100 percent of U.S.-bound shipping containers overseas, while scientific and logistical problems have hampered a $1.2 billion effort to field highly effective nuclear detection devices.

To be sure, the department's managers in its first half-decade have labored hard to oversee 22 rivalrous components. They have improved aviation security and forged a more unified strategy for improving border security and using intelligence.

DHS spokesman Russ Knocke noted that Chertoff this week requested a comprehensive review of airport screening policies to increase efficiency and eliminate outdated steps, and that the department has begun tracking exiting visitors at airports and expects more progress soon at land borders. DHS also moved faster than required to launch experimental scanning efforts at several overseas ports.

Still, the ever-growing list of troubled programs illustrates the extent to which each new crisis -- from the 2001 terrorist attacks to Hurricane Katrina to the Dubai ports scare to the Bush administration's push for comprehensive immigration policy revisions -- has forced DHS leaders to launch costly initiatives with broadly defined goals that wind up missing their targets.

"You felt the pressures. You see the threats. You see the political needs and you think, 'We need to make sure it's the best we can do to solve this problem as soon as we can.' And that's a constant problem with the department," said C. Stewart Verdery Jr., assistant secretary of policy for border and transportation security from 2003 to 2005, who now is a private consultant.

If the Pentagon is the bureaucratic equivalent of Washington's biggest, hardest-to-turn battleship, "DHS is like a speedboat and it keeps turning . . . constantly shifting gears," Verdery said. "If you told people five years ago there was going to be a billion dollars for a fence, people would have laughed at you."

Department veterans complain that its contract-management system is weak, and that it still has trouble working with experts both inside and outside government to set rigorous, enforceable requirements on contractors.

"You have management issues, political pressure, the complexity of what is arguably a very tough thing to do, all within an unreasonable deadline and it's kind of the old adage -- we can hurry up and do it fast, or we can take a little bit longer and do it right," said George W. Foresman, DHS assistant secretary for preparedness from 2005 to 2007. "External pressures on DHS made this a hurry-up-and-do-it-fast."

Chertoff disputed congressional investigators' findings based on DHS work schedules indicating that completion of the first phase of the virtual fence may be delayed up to three years, including a planned expansion of the tower system to another stretch in Arizona -- 37 miles near Yuma -- and a span near El Paso.

Instead, he said that technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson caused only a half-year delay, produced "functionally workable" tools that are helping agents now, and are only a small part of a broad deployment of other ground, aerial and mobile sensors.

But contractor Boeing Corp., which received about $18 million for its work, is being paid an additional $60 million to replace the program's key component and original goal, better software to link sensors and users. Boeing will also test and integrate equipment in laboratories instead of the field and will work more closely with Border Patrol agents, DHS and company officials said.

When DHS announced the fence contract in September 2006 and called for an operational pilot by June 2007, Chertoff said that "we're not interested in performing science experiments on the border," and he emphasized the need for proven technology. "A common complaint about government is there's a lot of lofty rhetoric, but there's no metrics, there's no holding to deadlines, and the achievement always falls short of what the original proposal is. Well, we're very mindful of that," he said.

In May 2006, however, then-Rep. Martin O. Sabo (Minn.), ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, had warned Chertoff in a letter that DHS's contract solicitation did not set a price tag for providing up to "6,000 miles of secure U.S. border" and failed to define its measure of success for controlling the border -- a benchmark for which DHS acknowledges it still has no wholly satisfactory definition.

"The only conclusion I can reach is that the SBINET solicitation is a public relations document," Sabo said in his letter. "It provides the Administration with the cover to say that you are doing something to secure the borders."

DHS and its precursors had already been stung by two earlier U.S. border surveillance programs, spending $429 million between 1998 and 2005 and reaping a warning system triggered by insects, horses and weather, DHS's inspector general reported in December 2005. Border Patrol agents eventually ignored 60 percent of the sensor alerts, while 90 percent of the rest were false alarms and only 1 percent led to arrests.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a former chairman of the Senate Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, this week called the pilot fence -- known as Project 28 -- a good-news, bad-news story: It did not work as expected, he said, but its cost was curbed by DHS leaders. Funding a virtual fence was politically necessary for Bush's immigration overhaul to advance, Gregg said, but "I think everyone presumed that once we funded it, it would work." He added: "I don't know where we go from here."

DHS officials are scheduled to testify before the House spending panel today about whether the agency's December 2006 projection that it could secure the border by 2011 with technology, physical fencing and vehicle barriers for $7.6 billion will change. Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), former chairman and now the panel's ranking minority member, called "delays and excuses within the Secure Border Initiative . . . unacceptable. We need to know when it will work, how much it will cost and what we are paying for."

Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary from 2005 until October 2007, said Americans must learn to allow DHS to balance risks against resources, whether in controlling the border, securing inbound sea cargo or tightening airport security.

"People keep demanding with each new homeland security challenge, 'Fix this today,' " Jackson said. "DHS is not funded to address every one, there's not time to do every one, and some of the increased effort needed to eliminate all risk for a given problem ends up . . . wasting time, focus and dollars."

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There was a Colleen at Rosie's place (98-00) who lived in Worcester, MA, and it is from Worcester MA that an extended familial relation - acording to the mother unit - has been p[opped off and cop shot. . . I do not want to pursue the article in the Worcester papers . . . but in the Worcester area was the 4-H camp (Camp Marshall?), and the Peabody guy who set up the maya cart had the 4-H logo on his coat . . . hmmm . . .

more "admissions?" then why must pewople be injured if there's no VEritas herein?

and so what of unfocussed, black-funded DHS programs? for the EAR RINGING persists. . . oy . ..

anoither HUMF shot across the bow to family connecting things back to HU?

thecrimson.com:

Square Shelter Celebrates 25th Birthday

Published On 3/6/2008 3:51:27 AM

By CORA K. CURRIER

Crimson Staff Writer


When James Shearer arrived at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, he was without a job and living on the streets. But while living at the shelter, Shearer cofounded Spare Change News—one of the nation’s first street newspapers dedicated to benefit the homeless—and now 16 years later, he is president of the Homeless Empowerment Project.

Harvard Square Homeless Shelter—the country’s only entirely student-run shelter—provided a home to Shearer like it has done for countless others for the past 25 years.

Shearer spoke about his life-changing experience at the shelter at its 25th anniversary commemoration last night at the Institute of Politics.

A panel of local activists, including Massachusetts State Representative Alice K. Wolf and former representative Jarrett T. Barrios ’90-’91, praised the services that the shelter has provided to the community and debated solutions to homelessness at a national level.

Barrios was a volunteer at the shelter—then known as “UniLu” for its location in the basement of the University Lutheran Church—beginning his freshman year at Harvard. He said that late nights collecting food donations from local restaurants and buying pizza from Pinnochio’s for the shelter’s guests inspired his career in public service.

“I knew the name of every [homeless] person in the Square,” said Barrios. “Those names and those stories are part of our community.”

The shelter is currently open from November to April each year and is manned by over 150 volunteers. It sleeps 24 each night and provides breakfast and dinner for many more in the homeless community.

In addition to being the only shelter in the country exclusively staffed by undergraduate volunteers, it is one of the most inexpensively-run shelters in Massachusetts, according to the shelter’s directors.

Philip F. Mangano, a Boston native who directs the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness in Washington D.C., said that the shelter was notable for providing more than just “a blanket and a bowl of soup.” He said that it also implements programs that help people at the shelter get access to health services, jobs, and permanent housing.

In addition to the volunteers—both undergraduate and Cantabrigian—who organize the shelter’s day-to-day operation, the student directors have also developed a team of “resource advocates.” These students are trained by professional lawyers and social workers and help guests with the technical details of applying for jobs and housing.

Shelter director Chiara Condi ’08 said that the resource advocates provide longer-term, more personal help than that provided by over-burdened state services.

“We fill the gaps between people and social services with more human relationships,” said Condi.

Despite these efforts, homelessness remains a major problem, according to shelter directors, who said that roughly 6,000 people are currently homeless in Boston.

To expand their services, the shelter is trying to arrange an endowment to be managed by the Harvard Management Company, according to one of the shelter’s directors, Eleanor R. Wilking ’09. The shelter currently receives the majority of its funding from the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance.

Many at last night’s events praised the shelter’s ability to bridge the gap between Harvard and the surrounding community.

“The relationship between Harvard and the community has its problems, and at the shelter, students and community members can interact and contribute together,” said Wolf.

Volunteers said they value the relationships that they develop with the shelter’s guests.

Shu Yang ’10 said that the shelter has been the highlight of his time at Harvard.

“It is a learning experience. You gain an appreciation of the pressing social issues in the world,” said Shu. “And, it’s a great time.”
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Spin? No - the place, when not used for alternate purposes, is a damned good one . . . funny, then, this article here the day Ari Juels of RFID is also in the paper? Why tag the homeless?

snippet from thecrimson.com:

Students Protest, HUDS Responds
By ESTHER I. YI
Thursday, March 06, 2008 3:43 AM
Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) executive director Ted A. Mayer issued an open letter yesterday to disgruntled students outlining six days of new menu changes and addressing concerns about food quality in light of rising prices.
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funny - they;ve been trying to get a new menu up at work here in ME for a while now. . .

the mail rom posting at the science center at HU? the putnam gallery there, and the same family member concerned earlier herein with the on common ground book lend just ere the CO time?

hmmm . ..

sure seems like another HUMF spin/admission post these journal entries, eh?

more, i am sure, later - today's mit/hu/abt job postings may be indicative (if the general public is allowed to see them). . .

oy . . .

more, i am sure, later. . .
link post comment




3218 [Mar. 6th, 2008|08:18 am]
Who neededthe Poster Boy? Who needed me to demonstrate the efficacy of whatever?

The fmaily "admission" this morning . . . ties the HUMF in Rockland with Jamaica PLain.CA(org) . . . see previous entries . . .

which means the stoled ID back ethen was a part of something largetr and darker . . . and adds credence to my thinking that my life was not to have been my own for quite a while. . .

oy . . .

Readthe journal form the beginnig, folks, and help if you can . . . too often the press seems to have spun around these journal entries. . .

not good, not good for the little guy . . .

more, i am sure, later. . .
link post comment




1318 [Mar. 6th, 2008|03:29 pm]
Interesting day. . . still. . .

some notes . . .

beautiful weather. . .

looking forward to the weekend. . .

curious this combination from HU HR:

33174 F-T 058 Design & Implementation Manager
Financial Administration Financial Administration Systems Solution 03/06/2008
33170 P-T 047 Part - Time Animal Care Technician
Faculty of Arts and Sciences Molecular & Cellular Biology 03/06/2008
33166 F-T 058 Design & Implementation Manager
Financial Administration Financial Administration Systems Solution 03/06/2008
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from nytimes.com:

Nobelist Retracts Research on Smell
E-Mail
Print
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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 6, 2008
Filed at 3:22 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- A Nobel Prize winner has retracted a paper published in 2001 about the sense of smell.

The study by 2004 Nobelist Linda Buck used mice to find details of how the nervous system carries odor signals from the nose to the brain. But in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, Buck and her co-authors said they couldn't duplicate their findings.

And they said they'd found inconsistencies between the paper and the study's original data. It was not immediately clear how important the retracted research was to the body of work that led to Buck's Nobel.

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damn. . .

nytimes.com:

March 6, 2008
Gift to Teach Business to Third-World Women
By STEPHANIE STROM
Goldman Sachs & Company will donate $100 million to give at least 10,000 women a business education and, more broadly, to develop and enhance business education programs at universities in Africa, the Middle East and other developing regions, the firm announced Wednesday.

The gift is one of the largest corporate donations since 2000, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

“No country will ever achieve its full potential if half of its talent pool is stymied or underrepresented,” said Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive.

The program will span five years and include programs to benefit disadvantaged women in the United States.

Mr. Blankfein said investing in educating women in the developing world for managerial roles and in building educational programs to develop business expertise and talent would benefit the economies of the countries where Goldman’s money will be spent, and that would be to the firm’s benefit. Goldman follows economic growth around the world, Mr. Blankfein said, “but also we try to create it, because that’s how our bread gets buttered as a business.”

Shareholders often object to spending corporate profits on philanthropy, and Mr. Blankfein said he expected he would get some objections to the gift. A few years ago, for instance, Goldman had to answer to shareholders angry at the company for donating a $35 million tract of 735,500 acres on the island of Tierra del Fuego, Chile, to the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Goldman spent more than a year developing the program on business education. Its partners in the endeavor range from the Pan-African University in Lagos, Nigeria, to the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona.

Its focus on women mirrors the efforts of many nonprofit groups that are working to give women financial tools in the belief that it will benefit their communities.

Marcellina Mvula Chijoriga, dean of the faculty of commerce and management at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, used her experience to illustrate women’s broader impact on society. One of 10 children of parents who had no formal education, Dr. Chijoriga has four children of her own and supports 10 more children in her extended family.

She said Goldman’s gift to institutions like hers would enable women “to be managers of computer companies instead of running salons.”

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3/6/08 will continue next entry. . .

as always:

It is best to read this journal from the beginning. . .

<http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2006/02/08/>

it makes more sense then. ....

or just explore the journal at: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/>

may i recommend: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/01/04/>

and a follow up to that: <http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/10/12/>
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