Drones on U.S. soil shouldn't surprise

The Parrot eBee drone on display near Paris on June 18, 2013. (Francois Mori/AP)When it comes to domestic surveillance, sometimes Congress seems like it?s expressing shock and outrage about something it already knows?or should have known. Take the use of drones on U.S. soil.

FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted at a hearing this week that his agency uses unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance on U.S. soil. Mueller insisted the FBI used drones ?in a very, very minimal way??but his comments did nothing to quiet the raging debate over privacy rights in the aftermath of National Security Agency spying revelations.

Mueller didn?t help himself when, asked by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, whether the FBI had set limits on when drone use on U.S. soil is OK, he replied: ?I will tell you that our footprint is very small. We have very few and have limited use, and we're exploring not only the use but also the necessary guidelines for that use.? It sounded like the drone equivalent of shooting first and then asking questions.

?If there?s a legitimate law-enforcement reason for using them, they ought to say what that law-enforcement reason is,? Grassley later told CNN. ?The right of privacy is at stake.?

There?s ample bipartisan fear that drones pose a major threat to privacy. Mueller himself echoed those concerns and invited Congress to impose limits on their use ?down the road.?

Grassley also told CNN that it was ?absolutely not? known that the FBI used drones on U.S. soil (OK, technically, in U.S. airspace) and called Mueller?s reply ?enlightening.?

But FBI use of drones on U.S. soil isn't exactly a state secret. The Associated Press noted in March that "last month, the FBI used drones to maintain continuous surveillance of a bunker in Alabama where a 5-year-old boy was being held hostage." And the use of drones for surveillance on U.S. soil is a well-reported phenomenon. How well? The Congressional Research Service (exactly what it sounds like) produced a 20-page report in April 2013 titled "Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations: Fourth Amendment Implications and Legislative Responses" (the report was obtained and made public by the Federation of American Scientists).

A critical line in that report:

Within [the Department of Homeland Security], Customs and Border Protection?s (CBP?s) Office of Air and Marine (OAM) has flown missions to support federal and state agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Defense (DOD), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Secret Service, and the Texas Rangers.

And Congress has been funding those kinds of efforts since at least August 2010. That's when a border security bill allocated $32 million to give the authorities two new drones. The legislation cleared the House of Representatives by a voice vote and sailed through the Senate without opposition.

In July 2012, the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management held a hearing titled "Using Unmanned Aerial Systems Within the Homeland: Security Game Changer?" Its chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, wasn't shy about using his opening statement to describe the government's use of drones.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection began first looking at using drones back in 2004. Now, CBP owns ten UAS aircraft. These systems have been used to surveil drug smuggling tunnels; video dams, bridges, levees, and riverbeds at risk of flooding; and assist with the deployment of National Guard resources responding to local flooding. CBP has flown missions in support of the Border Patrol, Texas Rangers, U.S. Forest Service, FBI, and others. These systems have become a force multiplier for military operations and border security.

None of this argues for complacency. Much of what the federal government has disclosed about its drone use we owe to dogged efforts by groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has produced a peerless body of work on the issue?right down to a map of installations and institutions that have the green light to fly drones on U.S. soil.

But when it comes to congressional oversight, voters might do well to remember the example of another authority figure who was "shocked, shocked" to find inappropriate behavior.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/congress-surprised-drone-u-soil-shouldn-t-194751908.html

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Viator named Duquesne University biomedical engineering chief

Duquesne University has appointed Dr. John A. Viator as director of the new Biomedical Engineering Program.

Viator will lead a program that is going to have its first students in the fall of 2014. He is associate professor in bioengineering and dermatology at the University of Missouri and has also worked at the University of California, Irvine, and the Office of Naval Research, among others. He was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

?We are very pleased to have secured the commitment of someone of Dr. Viator?s caliber to lead our new Biomedical Engineering Program,? Duquesne President Dr. Charles J. Dougherty said in a prepared statement. ?He is an accomplished scholar and designer of innovative medical devices. Viator will help us build a faculty committed to quality undergraduate teaching. We also expect him to play an important role in applying our Catholic and Spiritan mission to this emerging new world of biomedical engineering.?

Paul J. Gough is digital producer at the Pittsburgh Business Times. Contact him at pgough@bizjournals.com or 412-208-3827. You can also follow him on Twitter.

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Greene Uses Facebook Albums as Wanted Flyers

Facebook is not just for keeping in touch with friends and family, sharing pictures, and status updates. Now it's a tool for catching wanted people.?

The Greene County Sheriff's Office is using the social media site to track down crime suspects. Sheriff's deputies are posting pictures of wanted people on Facebook and they are getting more tips than ever.

"We will post on Facebook to cast a larger net, especially with if there are suspects that could be outside of our jurisdiction," said Michael Martin, sheriff's deputy. He says since the sheriff's office started online it has made more arrests leading to convictions.?

The sheriff's office Facebook page has more than 900 likes, and even more people?are looking at the pictures. ?On April 28, the office posted a "People of Interest" album. Nineteen people shared it with their followers, meaning thousands could have seen the pictures.

"We found the results to be extraordinary," Martin said.?

Reporting a tip is always confidential. You can message, email, call or text the sheriff's office.?

Facebook has also been successful because of its real-time capabilities. Rather than somebody seeing a flyer on a wall days or weeks after an event, they will come across pictures faster - maybe even that exact hour or day - on Facebook.

Source: http://www.nbc29.com/story/22636667/greene-uses-facebook-albums-as-wanted-flyers

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Biden: Gun control opponents 'will pay a price?

Vice President Joe Biden (Fernando Vergara/AP)

Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, seeking to revive efforts to pass gun-reform legislation in Congress, warned lawmakers opposed to reform that Americans aren't on their side.

"The country has changed" since the deadly shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Biden said during remarks delivered on Tuesday afternoon in the White House's South Court auditorium. Lawmakers "will pay a price?a political price ... for not getting engaged and dealing with gun safety."

Two months after the Senate failed to support the expansion of background checks for gun purchasers despite intense pressure from the administration, victims rights groups and others, the White House announced on Tuesday that the issue remains a top priority for the administration and its supporters in Congress and elsewhere.

"This fight isn?t over. Far from it," Biden said.

Before Biden's remarks, the White House, in an attempt to demonstrate commitment to the issue of reducing gun violence, announced on Tuesday that the administration has completed or made progress?Biden later described it as "major progress"?on 21 out of 23 executive actions. The actions were produced by a gun violence task force the vice president led after the Newtown shooting and were issued by President Barack Obama in January.

Progress, Biden said, has been made on ending the ban on government research of gun violence, creating incentives for states to share information about potentially dangerous gun purchasers, enhancing the tracking of guns recovered in criminal investigations and more.

He also announced that guides from the departments of Education, Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services that can help develop "high-quality emergency operations plans" for K-12 schools, higher-education institutions and places of worship have been released. He said 100 school districts nationwide now have increased access to resources including federal training on shooter situations.

?The Administration has more work to do to complete the remainder of the executive actions that the President announced in January," a progress report released on Tuesday by the White House reads. "But Congress must also act. Passing common-sense gun safety legislation, including expanding background checks and making gun trafficking a federal crime, remains the single most important step we could take to reduce gun violence.?

The report repeats a line often used during the Senate?s debate of expanded background checks: "A vast majority of the American people? support these steps.

?It is time for Congress to take action and get this done," the report adds.

Many stakeholders in the gun debate believed the administration?s best chance to get Congress to pass gun-reform measures died with the failed vote for expanded background checks in April, when Newtown was fresh in the minds of the public and politicians and many interest groups were active in the debate over gun violence.

But the administration and Senate Democratic leaders were unable to wrangle support from key Democrats from guns rights states in addition to select Republicans.

?It came down to politics,? Obama said as he chastised Congress from the Rose Garden the night of the April 17 vote. ?They caved to the pressure.?

Obama added, ?All in all, this was a pretty shameful day in Washington."

The White House says it has continued to publicly court Congress, but other than Biden?s recent event on mental illness, it has held few public events related to gun violence.

When pressed about whether the administration is pursuing potential swing Democrats in the Senate on the issue of background checks with the same intensity as it did during the Senate?s spring gun debate, the White House has mostly declined to offer any specifics other than to confirm that conversations are ongoing.

On Monday, a senior administration official once again declined to release details about these types of meetings, saying the White House remains "engaged with members of Congress" on the issue.

During his remarks on Tuesday, Biden declined to mention lawmakers by name, but said that "he knows" some senators who voted against expanded background checks "wonder now whether that was a prudent vote."

He added that he's received "phone calls from those members of Congress?many of whom voted no" asking for the administration to "find a way for us to revisit this."

The vice president said, "We need to make sure the voices of those we lost are the loudest ones we hear in this fight."

The two executive actions where progress has not been made, according to the report, are confirming a director to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (something up to Congress as the administration has already nominated Todd Jones, who has served as acting director) and hashing out mental health benefits with Health and Human Services.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/biden-tout-progress-executive-actions-reduce-gun-violence-114010300.html

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Fears of violence as Egypt nears June 30 protests

CAIRO (AP) ? Massive nationwide protests that Egypt's opposition plans for June 30 are taking on a dangerous edge.

Opponents of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi are convinced that this is the best and perhaps the last opportunity to drive him from power. They say they have tapped into widespread public discontent over shortages, broken infrastructure, high prices and lack of security, and can bring that anger into the streets.

Morsi's Islamist backers have vowed to defend the president with counter-demonstrations. Police have signaled they want to stay out of the conflict. The powerful military, widely suspected to be at odds with the president, is keeping its cards close to its chest.

As a result, fears are high of potential violence on the day, the anniversary of Morsi's 2012 inauguration as Egypt's first freely elected leader.

The date is shaping up as the culmination of polarization that has sharpened throughout the year. Protests erupted repeatedly the past year ? frequently leading to clashes with Islamist supporters of Morsi ? but often they were fueled by particular issues like political maneuvers by Morsi or police brutality.

This time, Morsi's opponents, led by a mix of liberal and secular movements and street activists, say the sole purpose is to force him out by showing the extent of public rejection of his presidency. Many talk as if that is a matter of "when" and not "if." They plan ambitious "post-Morsi" steps: suspending the Islamist-backed constitution and naming the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court as interim president, followed by the drafting a new constitution by a panel of experts and new presidential elections.

"We will take to the streets and the squares and stage sit-ins," said Hossam Mustafa, the chief organizer for the protests in southern Egypt. "We will not leave until the president leaves. We will win back Egypt for all Egyptians."

Already, protest organizers have clashed with Morsi supporters in several parts of the country, including clashes in the Nile Delta city of Tanta on Tuesday that left 10 injured. On Sunday night, clashes in the oasis province of Fayoum southwest of Cairo left at least 100 injured, and similar fights have broken out in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Damanhour.

In expectation of possible violence, the gates of Morsi's Cairo presidential palace have been reinforced. The walls of the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic group from which the president hails, have been fortified.

The protest campaign is rooted in an activists' petition drive the past few months called "Tamarod" ? or "Rebel" ? that claims to have collected up to 15 million signatures on a call for Morsi to step down and for early elections to be held. Organizers of the campaign say its success shows how anger at the government and the Brotherhood has transcended the core opposition to the public at large.

"The will of Egyptians is stronger than anyone," Tamarod spokesman Mahmoud Badr told reporters on Tuesday. "The Egyptians who removed the tyrant Hosni Mubarak will most certainly be able to remove the failed tyrant Mohammed Morsi." He vowed the protest campaign can continue as long as needed, even as summer temperatures rise and the Muslim holy month of fasting, Ramadan, begins, around July 10.

Morsi's supporters, in turn, have depicted the campaign ? and the planned protests ? as an attempt by supporters of ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak to overturn democracy. Morsi, whose term is four years, has vowed to deal "decisively" with those trying to force him out.

Senior Brotherhood leader Essam el-Erian told The Associated Press on Monday that the protest calls are "unconstitutional, illegal and irrational" and are not backed by genuine popular support. He cast doubt on the Tamarod signatures, reflecting claims by Morsi supporters that they are forged.

Raising the specter of clashes, el-Erian said Morsi's supporters would defend the presidential palace in Cairo's Heliopolis district if "state institutions" fail to defend it against the protesters.

Some hard-line clerics have issued fatwas, or edicts, saying that organizers and participants in the planned protests are "kuffar," or non-believers, who deserve to be killed.

Assem Abdel-Maged, a senior leader of the hard-line Gamaa Islamiya, said the protest organizers are communist and "radical' Coptic Christians. "It is another phase of the counter-revolution that we have suffered from for so long," he said.

Hanging over the June 30 plans is the sense of a year's building tension coming to a head, centered on the question of the basic legitimacy of the troubled political system that emerged after Mubarak's fall in February 2011. In the polarization, talk of national reconciliation is falling on deaf ears.

Morsi opponents accuse him and the Muslim Brotherhood of using their victories in a string of post-Mubarak elections to monopolize power. June 30 is crucial, the campaigners argue, because the Islamists are increasing their hold and it will eventually become difficult to remove them.

For Morsi's supporters, the protest campaigners are trying to overturn democracy itself because they are unable to compete at the election box. They say old regime loyalists have frustrated Morsi's attempts to deal with the nation's woes, which they argue are worsened by repeated opposition protests.

In last year's election, Morsi defeated Mubarak's last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq in a runoff, with about 52 percent of the vote. His win is widely thought to have been possible only because of the support of young reform activists who did not want a Mubarak loyalist to rule. The same activists are now at the forefront of the opposition.

They say the Brotherhood and its Islamist allies have run roughshod over the judiciary, stacked the deck by pushing through a constitution they largely wrote, imposed their agenda and broke campaign promises for an inclusive administration, freedom of expression and consensus.

The anti-Morsi campaign has been fueled by widespread frustration over host of troubles in the nation of 90 million people, from surging crime, rising prices and unemployment to power cuts, fuel shortages and traffic congestion. Many of those signing the Tamarod petition have blamed Morsi for failing to deal with the problems.

"It is a surrealistic and absurd regime that will not and cannot be allowed to continue," said reform leader and Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei. "We must put an end to it with our own hands and through peaceful and civilized means."

Islamist parties loyal to Morsi plan protests of their own across the nation Friday and are considering occupying sites where the president's opponents plan sit-ins on June 30.

Mustafa, the anti-Morsi organizer in the south, said he fully expects violence on the protest day in his home province of Assiut, as well as in Minya province to the north. The two provinces are Islamist strongholds and have large communities of Christians opposed to Morsi's government.

A police officers association announced over the weekend they would stay on the sidelines on June 30, protecting only their own installations and key facilities like banks, foreign embassies and hospitals.

"We promised ourselves not to repeat past mistakes. The police are the police of the people and the state," they said in a statement. "We hereby pledge not to use a baton or a firearm against any peaceful protester and that we abide by complete neutrality."

The Interior Ministry, in charge of the police, says security forces will monitor protests from a distance and intervene only in the event of clashes.

The military's position is less clear. Its top brass have over the months sent subtle but telling hints of their displeasure over the policies of Morsi and his Islamist backers. They, however, have also seized every available opportunity to make clear that their mandate is not just to protect the nation against external threats but also to maintain security at home and that they will side with the people if they ever intervene.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fears-violence-egypt-nears-june-30-protests-184940411.html

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