-Caveat Lector-
RadTimes # 57 - October, 2000
An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.
"We're living in rad times!"
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Contents:
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--Czech Police Measures Bring Severe Violations of Human Rights
--Biometrics: a safeguard or invasion of privacy?
--FBI nabs 'anarchist' fugitive
--Hawking says greenhouse effect threatens human race survival
--New iceberg breaks off Antarctic ice shelf
--Justices To Examine Police Power
--Juvenile murders: Guns least of it
--Internet DNA test will name fathers
Linked stories:
*Worldwide internet licenses to be granted
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Begin stories:
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Czech Police Measures Bring Severe Violations of Human Rights
In Prague, the city of Kafka, hundreds of international visitors have been
left wondering about the precise name of their crime, after the Czech
police began a policy of random arrest following the Global Day of Action
on Tuesday. As a result of the arrests, visitors have however become much
clearer about the status of human and civil rights in the Czech Republic: a
range of serious injuries suffered by those arrested demonstrates that the
police campaign - in a country sure of gaining EU membership - has seen
gross violations of Human Rights. In addition, it is claimed that Czech
police have systematically ignored the legal rights of detainees.
The arrests began at around 10pm on the night of Tuesday September 26th -
the Global Day of Action, to bring attention to the economic policies of
the IMF and World Bank whose annual meetings were taking place in Prague.
The vast majority of those arrested were engaged in no illegal activity
whatsoever. Most were on their way to dinner or entertainment. Many
arrestees had not even attended the demonstrations. Two of those arrested
were German schoolboys.
Set against this, the police had made very few arrests during the
demonstrations, even when circumstances isolated the purportedly dangerous
elements from the main mass of protestors - as for instance during the
anarchist led stone throwing near Muzeum. Instead they waited until well
after these incidents were over and then targeted people walking about the
streets of Prague.
The spree of attacks appeared to be aimed at producing terror and
intimidation. Typical arrests included no explanation of the arrest in any
language, and the deployment of excessive force. Both are illegal. Police
violence ranged from the merely stupid, such as hair-pulling,
finger-twisting, shoving; to the criminal beating and kicking of
unresisting prisoners, slamming them against walls, severe constriction of
plastic cuffs, and the sexual harassment of female arrestees.
Police abuses continued and often escalated once prison was reached. Czech
jailers forced prisoners to stand with legs spread wide and head pressed
against the wall, often for up to three hours. Some women were ^searched^
by male officers whilst in this position, while many others were physically
harassed and beaten .
Some incidents were truly repulsive. A black arrestee was hog-tied for
several minutes and struck on the head and back by police with truncheons.
Severe abuses often seemed racially motivated. Another incident saw a
Jewish man taken away and beaten for more than 30 minutes, sustaining
cracked ribs down the whole of one side of his torso. One woman being
interrogated by police ^fell^ from an upper floor window, breaking her
spine. Severe torture has alleged to have occurred in at least one case.
Upon registration, the suspension of basic human rights continued. Some
women were strip searched and humiliated. The telephone calls mandated by
Czech law were totally denied, usually on the basis of falsehoods, eg ^we
have no telephone^. That this was a policy of strictly political repression
was demonstrated in at least one prison when a group of neo-fascist
prisoners, found in possession of clubs, a mace and a gun and captured in
the commission of actual and non-imaginary crimes, were immediately granted
access to the telephone. They were released after a few hours and given
their weapons back. Some 30% of police officers had voted for the far right
party in recent Czech elections.
Other violations of Czech law included the photographing of uncharged
detainees, possibly for use in international intelligence databases; not
giving food, blankets or medical attention; keeping detainees in prison
without charge well after the 24 hour deadline, and severe overcrowding. Up
to 20 prisoners were kept in cells measuring around nine feet by nine. Even
in the absence of charges or explanation, detainees were given 24 hours to
leave the Czech Republic upon release.
The following is a collective statement issued by about fifty people
detained after the first spree of arrests: ^The Czech Republic has
apparently signed up to the European Charter of Human Rights, yet all these
factors point unambiguously to a deliberate campaign to deny protestors
their rights on both an individual and collective level. These abuses
cannot be tolerated by the international community. We demand that the EU,
it^s member nations, the US, Canada and all other nations secure a thorough
investigation leading to the prosecution of the responsible agents. The
international community should also ensure the immediate release of all
political prisoners in Prague. Moreover full Czech membership of the EU
should be made conditional in respect of a substantial review of the Czech
law enforcement system.
We believe that what has happened in Prague cannot be judged separately
from the kind of tactics used against indigenous communities living in
Southern nations who suddenly find themselves standing in the way of the
development schemes funded by the IMF and World Bank. The current abuses
are only one more piece of evidence the World Bank and IMF promote
systematic political repression against their opponents to fulfill their
objectives.^
----
UPDATE: Yesterday afternoon, in further evidence of growing political
repression surrounding the demonstrations in Prague, Czech police raided
the press offices of INPEG, the coalition group involved in organising the
recent activities. The crackdown came as news of police abuses began to
filter out following the morning releases of those detained in the first
arrests. Media workers were also being targeted as police allegedly began
arresting those leaving the Independent Media Centre in Prague.
----
*** Names of those signing the quoted statement can be given on request.
For more information/interview please contact Tim Edwards. e-mail:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or telephone 01273 720501 Saturday onwards.
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Biometrics: a safeguard or invasion of privacy?
By Jon Van
Chicago Tribune Staff Writer
October 2, 2000
The science of biometrics promises to make it easier for travelers to book
flights and cross borders, but it also makes it easier for governments to
know exactly where an individual is at any given moment.
One system now being developed by several federal agencies, including the
Department of Defense and National Security Agency, uses computers and
video cameras to identify and track "suspicious characters" in public
places such as airports. The goal is to focus on body dynamics such as gait
to spot suspects at a distance and to use facial recognition technology to
identify them as they move closer to video cameras.
The four-year, multimillion-dollar initiative is probably the most
ambitious effort yet to give authorities the kind of surveillance
capabilities that send shivers down the spines of privacy advocates.
A dramatic decline in the price of video equipment and the spread of
security video cameras make this an especially appealing time to try to
develop what federal authorities call Human ID at a Distance, said Jonathon
Phillips, the project's leader and a scientist with the National Institute
of Standards and Technology.
"We hope to have a system in place to begin doing experiments next year,"
said Phillips, who described the project at a conference on biometrics held
at the institute's headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., last month.
Biometric technology that uses biological traits such as fingerprints and
retinal patterns to identify individuals is well developed for use in
situations where the target cooperates. In fact, biometric advocates argue
the technology can be used to safeguard privacy because it can help prevent
criminals from stealing the identities by using bogus ID cards.
In situations where people don't cooperate—indeed where they may not even
know they're being watched—making an identification is far more difficult,
said Phillips. Even so, researchers are confident they can gather a lot of
useful information using video cameras and computers, perhaps supplemented
with other technologies like radar and infrared vision.
One company already markets a system that enables computers to identify
individuals in a crowd using facial recognition.
Visionics Corp., based in Jersey City, claims that a surveillance system
using 250 security cameras in a section of London has helped police cut
overall crime by 40 percent.
A Visionics system was employed in Mexico to scrutinize voter registration
photos and eliminate people who registered multiple times. The firm also
sells equipment to private enterprises.
"Casinos use it to identify card spotters," said Joseph Atick, Visionic's
chief executive, who said the federal Human ID initiative will make
recognition technology more powerful.
Atick said that the spread of cheap video cameras to wireless phones that
connect to the Internet at high speed will provide a vast new opportunity
for facial recognition technology.
"This will be a huge platform that's not intended for biometric purposes,
but that will support them," Atick said.
While law enforcement officials may welcome technology to help them catch
bad guys, many in the biometrics industry worry that a backlash from
privacy advocates could scuttle efforts to market the technology commercially.
That definitely concerns Evan Smith, senior vice president of the EyeTicket
Corp. of McLean, Va., which promotes iris recognition technology applied to
the travel and entertainment industries.
EyeTicket wants to offer customers tickets for airplanes, movies, sporting
events and concerts by identifying themselves through patterns on the
colored part of their eye. They can do this at automated kiosks and skip
long lines served by human ticket clerks.
As he promotes his products, Smith must repeatedly confront fears that iris
information will be used to breach customer privacy.
"All we do is assure the airline or the theater that this person is the one
who has registered with them," Smith said. "We don't have the person's
address, phone number or anything else.
"The airline has some personal and financial information, but they have
that anyway to issue a ticket. Our only role is to verify someone's identity.
"Even if someone does have a copy of your retinal pattern, what could they
do with it? You don't leave your retinal patterns behind at the scene of a
crime.
"In any event, our services are strictly voluntary. If someone wants to
stand in line to buy his ticket the old-fashioned way, he can. We offer a
way to skip the line."
But fears of biometrics invading privacy rather than protecting it often
aren't assuaged by argument, however logical. Some computer scientists at
IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center believe that new technology could
help calm privacy fears.
Their idea is to introduce predefined, repeatable distortions into software
used to take fingerprints, retinal patterns, facial geometry and so on.
This would divorce a person's actual face or fingerprints from
software-generated identifiers.
A smart ID card that included an individual's specific software distortion
could be carried by a consumer to produce identification only where he
wanted to use it, said Nalini Ratha, an IBM researcher.
If something untoward happened, the customer could cancel his working
biometric ID and get a new one, Ratha said.
"With this system, information stored in one database couldn't be matched
against data in another database without your knowledge," he said.
More work must be done to turn the concept into a working system, Ratha
said, but it could offer individuals a way to regain some control over who
gets information about their identity.
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FBI nabs 'anarchist' fugitive
September 29, 2000
by The Associated Press
PORTLAND - A self-proclaimed ``green anarchist'' was arrested Wednesday in
Seattle after failing to appear before a federal grand jury investigating a
string of eco-terrorist arsons.
Josh Harper, 25, was charged with criminal contempt of court after he did not
appear before the Portland jury on May 24. He was arrested by FBI agents.
The grand jury is looking into suspected eco-terrorist acts by two
underground groups - the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front -
that have claimed responsibility for a string of fires, including the burning
of Boise Cascade's Monmouth office last Christmas.
Harper, a longtime animal rights activist from Eugene, has publicized animal
rights sabotage in a videotaped series titled ``Breaking Free.''
He was expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Seattle today but will be
transferred to Portland to face the single criminal contempt charge, said
Stephen Peifer, an assistant U.S. attorney.
``We'll be asking for detention because he's been a fugitive for four
months,'' Peifer said.
No hearing date has been set.
Federal authorities are investigating the three-year string of arsons and
break-ins that include the Boise Cascade fire and a $12 million arson at the
Vail, Colo., ski resort in 1998.
The ELF and ALF have claimed responsibility for the fires anonymously through
Portland activist Craig Rosebraugh.
Rosebraugh publicized the crimes and has been called before the grand jury
twice this year, though he maintains he does not know the identities of group
members.
Peifer said he could not discuss what, if any, questions the government would
have for Harper, or if he would be brought before the grand jury.
In May, Harper told supporters that he would not answer questions.
``My life is my own, my thoughts are my own, and what I decide to do will not
be dictated to me by judges, attorneys and their lackeys with guns,'' he
wrote in a statement released by allies in Portland.
``If they want me, let them come get me. They can drag me to the grand jury
room, but they can never make me speak.''
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Hawking says greenhouse effect threatens human race survival
The Associated Press
LONDON September 30, 2000
Stephen Hawking fears the human race may not survive another millennium.
"I am afraid the atmosphere might get hotter and hotter until it will be like
Venus with boiling sulfuric acid," the physicist told Britain's Press
Association. "I am worried about the greenhouse effect."
To ensure the survival of humans, he adds, efforts must be made to
colonize other planets. Space travel would not solve every problem, but at
least it would ensure that people don't become extinct.
"It takes too many resources to send each person into space," he said.
"But unless the human race spreads into space, I doubt it will survive the
next thousand years."
Hawking, 58, holds the Cambridge University post once held by Sir Isaac
Newton and is the author of the best-selling "A Brief History of Time."
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New iceberg breaks off Antarctic ice shelf
The Associated Press
9/29/00
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An iceberg has broken free from the Ross
Ice Shelf in the Antarctic, the National Ice Center reported
Friday.
The 345 square mile iceberg, named B-20, was found by
satellites operated by the Defense Meteorological Agency.
The exact date the berg broke free could not be determined
because of cloudiness in the area, but it is thought to have
been between Sept. 20 and 26.
The 30-by-11.5 mile iceberg is located near latitude 77
degrees, 00 minutes south; longitude 170 degrees, 42 minutes
east, in the Ross Sea, south of the Pacific Ocean.
The National Ice Center, operated by the Navy, National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration and the Coast Guard, provides worldwide sea ice
reports and forecasts.
----
National Ice Center: http://www.natice.noaa.gov
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Justices To Examine Police Power
Fri, 29 Sep 2000 USA Today (US)
For much of the past three decades, law enforcement has ruled at the Supreme
Court. The justices have given police more power to stop motorists, search
homes and put people in jail.
But there's been a modest reversal in recent years. With a court term
opening Monday, a stack of cases will determine how much this court wants to
restrain officers at a time when police are cracking down on low-level
transgressions. Law enforcement officials cite such efforts as a factor in
reducing crime rates nationwide.
Among the issues the court will decide by next summer:
Should police be able to set up roadblocks to question motorists and use
drug-sniffing dogs to check their cars?
Should officers be permitted to point a heat-detecting device at homes to
find high-intensity lights used to grow marijuana inside?
Should police be allowed to handcuff and jail drivers who fail to wear seat
belts?
"These aren't cases at the margins of the law," Harvard law professor
William Stuntz says. "They raise fundamental issues about policing,
including when police can arrest someone for a minor offense, then search
for drugs or guns."
Overall, the 2000-01 term offers a provocative slate of cases, heavy on
disputes over police power but also focused on free-speech rights,
discrimination against disabled people and recurring battles over the
breadth of Congress' authority.
The new cases pale in comparison with the emotional issues that marked the
last term: "partial birth" abortion, gay Scout leaders, prayer at high
school football games and the Miranda warning that tells suspects they may
remain silent.
Nevertheless in this election year, a spotlight remains on the court, where
the nine justices are deeply split over protections for individual rights.
With three of the justices 70 or older, these also could be the waning days
of the Rehnquist Court and could seal the legacy of these justices who have
been together for a record 6 1/2 years.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who turns 76 on Sunday, has not signaled
that he is ready to retire, but the Republican appointee might be inclined
to step down if George W. Bush wins the White House. John Paul Stevens,
80, the eldest and most liberal justice, has served a quarter-century.
Sandra Day O'Connor, a critical swing vote on the high court, turned 70 this
spring and is starting her 20th term. The departure of any of them could
sharply re-direct the court.
The new criminal disputes arise against the backdrop of recent cases that
produced surprisingly lopsided votes favoring defendants. None was more
symbolic than the ruling last term backing the Miranda requirement. The
opinion was written by Rehnquist, who with his predecessor Warren Burger
(1969-86) oversaw an era of pro-police rulings.
Several other recent rulings suggest the court has become increasingly
suspicious about some new, aggressive techniques police are using to counter
drugs and gun violence.
In one of those cases last year, the justices declared that police may not
stop and frisk someone simply because an anonymous tipster said he was
carrying a gun. The decision rejected the idea that the dangers posed by
illegal firearms should give police more latitude.
In another dispute, the court said police cannot look for drugs by randomly
squeezing the luggage of bus passengers.
A year earlier, justices spurned arguments from cities across the USA about
street crime and struck down a Chicago ordinance that prevented people
suspected of being gang members from hanging out together in public.
This term, the "How far can police go?" theme continues.
The court will hear Ferguson vs. Charleston, a South Carolina case that
examines whether a hospital, working with local police, conducted an
unconstitutional search when it tested pregnant women's urine for cocaine.
Those who tested positive were arrested. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the
4th Circuit said the practice was justified to protect fetuses and prevent
"crack babies." (See story).
The court also will hear Indianapolis vs. Edmond, a dispute over that
city's policy of setting up roadblocks so police can check for driver's
licenses, peer through car windows and lead drug-sniffing dogs around the
vehicles. When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit struck down
the policy as a violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against
unreasonable searches, it said the practice "belongs to the genre of general
programs of surveillance which invade privacy wholesale in order to discover
evidence of crime."
Hoping the court will agree, Ken Falk of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union
says, "The Fourth Amendment has stood as a barrier against the notion that
the government may seize and search innocent persons without cause in the
hopes of finding guilty ones."
But Jeffrey Sutton, an Ohio lawyer who represents local governments, says
officials have reason to take extraordinary steps. "These laws have been
passed by legislators who are properly responding to their constituents, who
are concerned about the ready availability of drugs."
An Oregon case, Kyllo vs. United States, concerns a new weapon used to
ferret out people growing marijuana. A federal appeals court spurned a
privacy complaint from a man who was caught cultivating the drug after
police, using a thermal-imaging device, detected high heat levels in his
home and then sought a warrant to search inside. The U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 9th Circuit said, "Whatever the 'star wars' capabilities this
technology may possess in the abstract, the thermal-imaging device employed
here intruded into nothing" when it scanned emissions at the house.
Another matter, Atwater vs. Lago Vista, involves a Texas woman who was
returning from soccer practice with her children when an officer stopped her
for failing to buckle up. He handcuffed her and took her to jail; the legal
question is whether the Fourth Amendment allows such a full-scale arrest for
a minor offense.
A divided federal appeals court upheld the arrest, saying it wasn't
unusually harmful. One dissenting judge said the majority turned "a blind
eye on the extreme facts of the case."
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Juvenile murders: Guns least of it
<http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/03/27/fp9s1-csm.shtml>
by Iain Murray
The murder of six-year-old Kayla Rolland, the Michigan first-grader shot by a
classmate last month (February 2000 --ed.), sparked rightful outrage about
firearms
and the killing of American children. But in the rush to reduce America's
high juvenile
homicide rates into a gun-control debate, we're missing the chilling bigger
picture of the
real and deadly risks our children face, and what it says about our society.
Kayla's murder prompted President Clinton to call for trigger locks on all
handguns.
And the American Association of Pediatricians (AAP) urged doctors to discuss
guns with all young children they help.
Both calls for action relied on statistics from a recent government study,
"Kids
and Guns." But that same report, by the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, contains chilling information that our obsession with
guns can obscure.
In other Western countries, the report tells us, the homicide rate for
children
age 4 and under is just less than 1 per 100,000. But it's quadruple that in
the
US, at 4.1 per 100,000. And for every American child 4 or younger, more than
eight others die violently by other means - blunt objects, strangulation, or,
most commonly, hands, fists, or feet. Even in the 5 to 14 age range, the
American nongun murder rate is still more than twice as high as the
international
comparison group - although the rate of murders by firearms does increase
considerably as children get older.
While the rate of child gun homicide in the US is much higher than elsewhere -
as everyone acknowledges - so is the rate of nongun murder. Even if all the
gun
homicides were taken out of the equation, America would still have an infant-
homicide rate more than 3.5 times as high as the other Western countries. This
is a staggering revelation.
The concern over gun murders - which is, of course, completely legitimate -
is blinding us to another significant social problem. In 1997, 738 children
under
age 13 were murdered in the US - just 133 by guns, according to the FBI.
America is witnessing something barbaric happening to its young children.
These rates of child homicide would be incredible were they not presented in
official government figures.
Brianna Blackmond, a 23-month-old Washington, D.C., girl who died in January
from a blow to the head shortly after being returned to her mother from a
foster home, is more typical of the young children killed in this country. But
how much press attention did that death receive outside Washington,
compared with Kayla Rolland's tragic but unusual death?
It is also important to note that the main thrust of the "Kids and Guns" study
is that the rise and subsequent fall in the murder rate among older juveniles
in the 1990s was driven by firearm murders and the consequent gun-control
measures. But this does not apply to murders of children aged 13 or younger.
The murder rate in that group was 1.8 per 100,000 in 1976 and 1.7 in 1997
(never having risen above 2.1 in the intervening 20 years). Children under
13 are being killed just about as often now as they were during the height
of the crack-fueled murder boom of the early 1990s. If anything has been
done to combat the problem, it hasn't worked.
But on the other hand, child murder is not a dispersed problem - it is tightly
clustered geographically. Eighty-five percent of US counties reported no
juvenile homicides in 1997, and only 7 percent experienced two or more. In
great swaths of the country, child murder is virtually unknown. The problem
is confined mainly to the big cities of the East and West coasts, and to the
Southwest.
Despite the attention paid to outbreaks of violence in peaceful suburbs and
schools, the overwhelming majority of child murders happens elsewhere. This
fact alone would imply that across-the-board federal solutions affecting the
entire country may be misplaced. The best use of government resources
must surely be to concentrate where the problem is greatest. And for
pediatricians nationwide to talk to all young children about guns, as the AAP
proposes, is well-intentioned, but will achieve little.
Certainly, gun murder of youths 13 to 19 is a significant problem, but the
characteristics of murder in this category are clearly quite different than in
the younger cohort. By letting ourselves believe that guns are the problem
for pre-adolescents, we are avoiding the unpalatable truth that something
is very wrong in American society. Yet we focus on exceptional cases, and
ignore the unsettling nature of the daily reality. There's a lesson here. We
may be able to reduce child-murder rates to the levels of other countries
if we concentrate on what causes those murders - and guns aren't the
biggest factor.
There may even be a domino effect; children raised in an environment
where their lives have little value may well regard the lives of others in the
same light when they are seduced by the power of the gun. But breaking
that circle, making childhood safer and saving the lives of the youngest
children may help save older children and youths in the years to come.
Perhaps the safety locks we most need are the ones that other civilized
countries place in their citizens' consciences.
Kayla Rolland was, thankfully, the exception rather than the rule. It is the
Brianna Blackmonds who really deserve the attention of the nation's doctors
and the president.
----
Iain Murray is senior research analyst at the Statistical Assessment
Service (STATS), a Washington-based nonprofit, nonpartisan think
tank dedicated to improving public understanding of scientific, social,
and quantitative research.
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Internet DNA test will name fathers
<http://www.lineone.net/express/00/10/01/news/n0420-d.html>
BY ADRIAN GRIST
AN INTERNET DNA-testing system which tells men whether or not they are a
child's biological father has been launched.
The genetic fingerprinting tests can be carried out without the partner's
knowledge, sparking concern among civil liberties groups. Already Britons
are said to be flocking to book the tests which cost just £195 and can be
completed within three days.
The website was launched by DNA Solutions, based at Montash University in
Melbourne, Australia. By sending in a hair sample of the father and child,
the company can test for "family relations" and either confirm or dismiss
whether the man is the father.
Director Vern Muir said that in the past such DNA tests could only be
achieved through blood samples which need the consent of the mother. But now
DNA Solutions is using the same methods used by police to identify criminals
such as sex offenders by using hair.
Mr Muir said: "We are not talking about happy families here. It can be very
distressing for a father if they are unsure whether a child is theirs.
"Many of the couples are split up and the welfare of the child is in the
hands of the mother. A medical procedure like a blood test needs her
consent. The plucking of a hair is not considered a medical procedure."
In Australia the company has faced a barrage of criticism on the moral
grounds that the tests, which are 99.99 per cent accurate, do not need the
mother's consent.
Mr Muir said: "There is clearly an incredible demand for this and we have
had an amazing response. I think that regarding the moral and ethical issues
we are on good grounds.
"We have to be realistic to these people's situations. It's the not knowing
which causes such a problem. We can do this simple test and the whole
dilemma is over."
One of the first tests carried out on a UK resident was booked by a
17-year-old woman, known only as Miss W, who had slept with two men and was
not sure who the father of her four month old daughter was.
After taking advice from a court she was told to verify the matter with a
blood test. But as an out-of-work single mum she could not afford the £525
cost of the procedure.
"I saw an advert for this website and sent off for the kit. I took hairs
from myself, my daughter and who I hoped was the father," she said.
Within days the skin at the base of the hairs had been tested and Miss W, of
Stevenage, Herts, received the results in the early hours of Friday after
phoning the Melbourne lab.
"It's such a massive relief and I got the answer I wanted. If it had been
anything else it would have been disastrous.
"It was very quick and simple, I can now get on with my life. I have spent
13 months of my life not knowing and now it's been sorted out in two weeks."
Mr Muir, a scientist with a degree in biochemisty, added: "Through us people
have been united with their dads and brothers after not knowing each other
for years. How can that be bad? No-one else has taken the idea of hair DNA
testing and used it commercially." He said the information obtained from the
tests was not held on a database so was not accessible to anybody else.
But last night human rights group Liberty said it was concerned that such
far-reaching procedures could be completed without the knowledge of the
mother.
A spokesman said: "Our main concern is that this test can be carried out
without the partner's knowledge. If all the parties involved know they are
being tested and can then access the information that would be okay. But we
do feel there should be some sort of regulatory body to make sure people's
civil liberties are not breached."
The website can be found at <www.dnanow.com>.
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Linked stories:
********************
=> Worldwide internet licenses to be granted by five
copyright organizations; BMI, BUMA, GEMA, PRS AND SACEM
sign bilateral agreements at Cisac Congress
<http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=13000>
********************
======================================================
"Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control."
-Jim Dodge
======================================================
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
-Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
======================================================
"It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society."
-J. Krishnamurti
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