Researchers at institutions such as Cornell University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the system on hundreds of articles published in 2001 and 2002 on topics like President Bush's use of the term "axis of evil," the handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the debate over global warming and the coup attempt against Venezuela President Hugo Chavez.

A $2.4 million grant will finance the research over three years.

American officials have long relied on newspapers and other news sources to track events and opinions here and abroad, a goal that has included the routine translation of articles from many foreign publications and news services.

The software would allow much more rapid and comprehensive monitoring of the global news media, as the Homeland Security Department and, perhaps, intelligence agencies look "to identify common patterns from numerous sources of information which might be indicative of potential threats to the nation," a department statement said.

It could take several years for such a monitoring system to be in place, said Joe Kielman, coordinator of the research effort. The monitoring would not extend to U.S. news, Kielman said.

"We want to understand the rhetoric that is being published and how intense it is, such as the difference between dislike and excoriate," he said.

Even the basic research has raised concern among journalism advocates and privacy groups, as well as representatives of the foreign news media.

"It is just creepy and Orwellian," said Lucy Dalglish, a lawyer and former editor who is executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Andrei Sitov, Washington bureau chief of the Itar-Tass news agency of Russia, said he hoped that the objective does not go beyond simply identifying threats to efforts to stifle criticism about an American president or administration.

"This is what makes your country great--the open society where people can criticize their own government," Sitov said.

The researchers, using a grant provided by a research group once affiliated with the CIA, have complied a database of hundreds of articles that is being used to train a computer to recognize, rank and interpret statements.

The software would need to be able to distinguish between statements like "this spaghetti is good" and "this spaghetti is not very good - it's excellent," said Claire T. Cardie, a professor of computer science at Cornell.

Cardie ranked the second statement as a more intense, positive opinion than the first.

The articles in the database include work from many American newspapers and news wire services, including The Miami Herald and The New York Times, as well as foreign sources like Agence France-Presse and Dawn, a newspaper in Pakistan.

One article discusses how a rabid fox bit a grazing cow in Romania, hardly a threat to the United States. Another item, an editorial in response to Bush's use in 2002 of "axis of evil" to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea, said, "The U.S. is the first nation to have developed nuclear weapons. Moreover, the U.S. is the first and only nation ever to deploy such weapons."

The approach, called natural language processing, has been under development for decades. It is widely used to summarize basic facts in a text or to create abridged versions of articles.

But interpreting and rating expressions of opinion, without making too many errors, has been much more challenging, said Cardie and Janyce M. Wiebe, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Pittsburgh. Their system would include a confidence rating for each "opinion" that it evaluates and would allow an official to refer quickly to the actual text that the computer indicates contains an intense anti-American statement.

Ultimately, the government could in a semiautomated way track a statement by specific individuals abroad or track reports by particular foreign news outlets or journalists, rating comments about American policies or officials.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, said the effort recalled the aborted 2002 push by a Defense Department agency to develop a tracking system called Total Information Awareness that was intended to detect terrorists by analyzing troves of information.

"That is really chilling," Rotenberg said. "And it seems far afield from the mission of Homeland Security."

Federal law prohibits the Homeland Security Department or other intelligence agencies from building such a database on American citizens, and no effort would be made to do that, a spokesman for the department, Christopher Kelly, said. But there would be no such restrictions on using foreign news media, Kelly said.

Kielman, the project coordinator, said questions on using the software were premature because the department was just now financing the basic research necessary to set up an operating system.

Professors Cardie and Wiebe said they understood that there were legitimate questions about the ultimate use of their software.

"There (have) to be guidelines and restrictions on the use of this kind of technology by the government," Wiebe said. "But it doesn't mean it is not useful. It can just as easily help the government understand what is going on in places around the world."

The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph ruling, judges said that they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest.

The Bush administration applauded the decision.

"We are pleased to see that it will be allowed to continue while the Court of Appeals examines the trial court's decision, with which we strongly disagree," Deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.

The program monitors international phone calls and e-mails to or from the United States involving people the government suspects have terrorist links. A secret court has been set up to grant warrants for such surveillance, but the government says it can't always wait for a court to take action.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Aug. 17 that the program was unconstitutional because it violates the rights to free speech and privacy and the separation of powers.

The Justice Department had urged the appeals court to allow it to keep the program in place while it argues its appeal, claiming that the nation faced "potential irreparable harm" and would be more vulnerable to a terrorist attack. The appeal is likely to take months.

"This program is both critical to preventing terrorist attacks and fully consistent with law," said Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in January seeking to stop the program on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say it has made it difficult for them to do their jobs because they believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets. Many said they had been forced to take expensive and time-consuming overseas trips because their contacts wouldn't speak openly on the phone or because they didn't want to violate their contacts' confidentiality.

The ACLU contends that the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set up the secret court to grant warrants for such surveillance, gave the government enough tools to monitor suspected terrorists.

"We are confident that when the 6th Circuit addresses the merits of this case, it will agree that warrantless wiretapping of Americans violates the law and is unconstitutional," Melissa Goodman, an ACLU attorney, said in a news release.

Similar lawsuits challenging the program have been filed by other groups, including in New York and San Francisco. The issue could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Video allows us to be eyewitnesses to the incidents we're being asked to make judgments on," when neighbors appear at license renewal hearings with claims of violence and disorder at taverns, Bauman told the Common Council's Licenses Committee on Tuesday.

Tavern and restaurant representatives say they understand the advantages of cameras, but they're concerned about the cost of the equipment, which could run into the thousands of dollars for each establishment.

Ed Lump, president of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association, said a small restaurant could spend $10,000 to $12,000 on security cameras.

Police Deputy Inspector Anna Ruzinski disputed that claim, saying her department priced a four-camera system at $1,200 last year. But Sally Ferguson, owner of Fhaze II, 3363 N. 27th St., said she spent nearly $7,000 three years ago on a one-camera system with a monitor and recorder, plus the cost of tapes and maintenance.

Bauman's measure calls for taverns and nightclubs to install digital video cameras that produce color images, to keep the images for at least a week and to give them to any law enforcement agency that asks for them. Cameras would be placed outside to watch the parking lot and the street, and inside to provide "a panoramic, full-frame view" of the entire premises.

The requirements would not apply to not-for-profit organizations with liquor licenses, such as churches and veterans' groups, because fights don't usually break out at those places, the legislation says. Bauman said he could support excluding restaurants and "the proverbial ma-and-pa establishments" for the same reason.

Fights, shootings and rowdy behavior are frequently cited - and often disputed - when taverns are facing license suspensions or revocations. Bauman said the videos "really would improve the quality of the evidence" at the committee's license hearings.

Convenience stores already are required to have video cameras, as is any retail establishment where police are called more than three times a year, Bauman noted.

Ruzinski said police believe cameras could be a deterrent to crime and could help police investigate crimes that do occur.

But Prentice McKinney, representing the Milwaukee Metropolitan Entertainment Association, a group of bars and nightclubs, said: "I've never known a camera to prevent crime," although he agreed they are useful in investigations.

McKinney said he has cameras at his bar, Savoy's, 2901 N. 5th St. When his customers become disorderly, he warns them that they're being recorded, but it doesn't stop them, he said.

Mayor Tom Barrett would support the concept, based on a recent study that found shootings dropped at bars targeted for extra scrutiny by police, mayoral spokeswoman Eileen Force said after the meeting.

The committee delayed action on the measure to give Bauman time to modify the legislation in response to tavern and restaurant concerns.

This new law for the courts and authorities of the United States renders those "inconvenient" Geneva Conventions, which prohibit abuse and offenses against the detained, obsolete.

The Oval Office insisted on this legislative battle. The President needed to get his "law" on the books before the upcoming mid-term elections, when his Republican party risks losing its majority in Congress.

The neoconservatives achieved their purpose. W. Bush's controversial and partisan "war against terrorism" can now depend on having a special tool to repeat the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but this time under the appearance of normality and official recognition.

These are the facts which emerge into view from this serious and shameful step adopted by the sacrosanct powers of the Union [the U.S.] As even former Secretary of State Colin Powell has observed, the image of the United States has been severely damaged by official admissions of torture. But the story doesn't stop there.

It is now more evident than ever that claims about the savageries committed against detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as being isolated acts of individuals, was a false "history." As has been said many times before, there was an underlying politics of violence that today has been legally sanctioned.

And at this point it is reasonable to ask oneself if the approval of the use of aggressive interrogation methods against prisoners, Washington has reached a moral crossroads when is says that it will not send the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to face justice in Venezuela because, according to a local judge, he could be tortured by the government of Caracas.

The government of the United States has taken an embarrassing step that the international community should not ignore and which should serve as an added incentive to the American people themselves to reject the current administration.

Now we will see what happens at the U.N. Human Rights Council which in its previous life as the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, was the scene of resistance to the powerful, when it sought to investigate and denounce the abuses against "enemy combatants" detained at the illegal American naval base in Guantanamo.

In fact, various U.N. officials have described the legislation proposed by the White House as immoral and as a violation of civil rights. Now that it has been written into the Empire's laws, the least that can be hoped for is the condemnation of this century's Nazis.

The second is the flagrant contrast between the conclusion of these sixteen spy agencies and the official doctrine of the White House, and the infinite perplexity this creates over how the central tenets of American foreign policy could have been based on mistakes of such unprecedented magnitude. Then there is the third extraordinary thing: if the conclusions of the intelligence community are exactly contrary that that being defended by the Administration of the planet's only superpower, the divorce threatens to catastrophically discredit and erode America's authority around the world.

Confronted with all this, it's possible to accept the beliefs of more-or-less crazy people - that for example, the intelligence agencies - outwardly at least, sixteen of them - serve little or no useful purpose, or that despite all the evidence, those making American imperial security policy can dispense with the activities, information or diagnoses of these agencies - and do the opposite of what they recommend.

From hence forward, the White House will radically domesticate the CIA and other agencies, transforming them into merely propagandistic appendages of its policies, drowning them in the same suicidal autism that blinded the KGB to the implosion of the Soviet empire.

But there is an alternative scenario on the level of the most celebrated conspiracy theories: the secret services appear as a kind of fifth column or domestic enemy, bent on toppling the legitimate political authorities (as we have already seen, by the way, in so many fictional movie and television story lines).

The delirious speculations are as much a part of the American imagination as are those of the recent and very impressive "conspiracy" documentary about September 11th: Loose Change, by Dylan Avery WindowsVideo shown on channel 2.

Already, the White House has taken upon itself to discredit the report of the intelligence services in the "truncated" form that was published in The New York Times as "biased." After the fact, it's always easy to mistakenly attribute the responsibility for past mistakes on the analysis and lack of political perspective of the intelligence agencies (invoking to the point of shouting the failure of the CIA and other agencies before and after September 11th).

Except that this time, the broad shoulders of the intelligence services aren't broad enough to carry the missionary adventurism of the Bush Administration. In any case, if the intelligence services endorse a report that radically puts in check the intervention in Iraq - considering it responsible for the expansion of terrorism - this cannot but provoke a deadly short-circuit in the credibility of the White House. When the most reliable measures of American public opinion show that confidence in George W. Bush has fallen to historically levels just two months before crucial elections, this revelation threatens to definitively convert Bush into that lame duck that The Economist mentioned some time ago.

If, as America's sixteen intelligence agencies have recognized, the White House's Iraqi policy has failed its main objective to halt the spread of terrorism, it is no surprise that today's climate is favorable to conspiracy theories. This is precisely the case of Loose Change, which manipulates the disturbing official inconsistencies, mysterious links and inexplicable holes of September 11th (and there is no lack if these regarding the attack on the Pentagon and the collapse of the Twin Towers) to "demonstrate" that all of this was nothing but a dark conspiracy of America against itself - as if al-Qaeda or bin Laden never existed or were virtual creations of America's sinister hidden powers.

In the mean time, after the crude fantasy of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" and the idea that that nation was a staging ground for terrorism, isn't the morbid fascination with insane conspiracies understandable? Won't they in the end be more imaginative and exciting than the carelessly formulated lies, ideological idiocy or political and military incompetence of the Bush Administration - which is so unbelievable that it looks like a conspiracy?

Through a spokesman in the sheriff's office Hines declined an interview request from the newspaper.

The irate homeowner told by The Spokesman-Review, which did not identify him at his request, that deputies dumped out drawers, went through his wallet and checkbook, seized computers, CDs, floppy disks, VHS tapes and other material and refused to clean up the mess in the raid Sept. 27.

Half a dozen sheriff's vehicles converged on the house, and after taking photographs outside Hines told officers within hearing of the neighbors, "Now let's go inside and get some porn," the owner said.

"It's like the gang that can't do it right," he said. "They shoot themselves in the foot and then they all come to make peace...

"What would you do if somebody came to your door and ripped your whole house apart, turned everything upside down and said you are a porno freak?"

Among the confiscated items were copies of "The Lion King" and "Snow White," found in a bedroom where the couple's granddaughter stays when she comes to visit, the man said.

He said Hines argued with his wife of 37 years when she insisted the voice on recording of "that filthy stuff" in the obscene calls was not that of her husband.
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He said he had hired a lawyer. He did not say whether he planned to sue but told the newspaper, "I'm not going to be treated like this and dragged around."

Hines realized his mistake Monday when he checked the accuracy of the phone number with a telephone company, sheriff's Capt. Bruce E. Mathews said. By then the target of the search - a 40-year-old man who used parts of his name to contrive aliases - was gone.

Knezovich said he plans to adopted a more structured system for checking facts in search warrants, adding that Hines probably would not be disciplined.

"I could see it if it was a blatant lack of diligence," the sheriff said, "but sometimes things like that happen. A number can get transposed."

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

Police questioned him, his family, friends and colleagues. They pored through his films, computer, and garbage. At every turn, he co-operated. They never charged him with a crime.

But when he went to Egypt to visit family he was detained for two weeks, blindfolded, shackled and kept incommunicado, missing the birth of his child.

He was also detained briefly in Greece, on a prior trip, while en route to Egypt. At that time authorities in Athens pressured him to return to Canada, where he was met by police and interrogated.

Now he is suing Ottawa for $1 million, saying officials negligently gave information to Greece and Egypt that violated his rights. He also wants a letter affirming he is not a suspect.

But Mohamed's bid to hold Ottawa to account in open court is being frustrated by Attorney-General Vic Toews's office. Citing national security, officials do not want to disclose relevant information to Mohamed, or to anyone else.

Under Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act, the government officials have asked Federal Court to hold a secret hearing to consider their request.

The Toronto Star is challenging the veil of secrecy that applies in such cases.

Federal Court Chief Justice Allan Lutfy is hearing this challenge.

But regardless of how Justice Lutfy may rule, Parliament should do its part to rectify draconian provisions in the law that make a mockery of the principle that courts must be open, and accountable.

Section 38 lets the attorney-general ask Federal Court to ban the disclosure of "potentially injurious" or "sensitive" information about Canada's foreign relations, national security or national defence.

In these cases:

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The public has no right even to know that a Section 38 application has been made. In Mohamed's case, Ottawa authorized disclosure. It did not have to. Nor is Ottawa obliged to say where or when the hearing will take place. It hasn't.

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The hearing is closed to the public, even though innocuous information may be given to the court. Ottawa can provide what's known as ex parte information to the judge alone, in secret, to protect national security. It can also provide non-sensitive information to the judge, Mohamed and his lawyer. But no party to the proceedings, including Mohamed, can tell anyone else about them.

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The media are not allowed to know anything about these hearings, let alone attend them or publish anything that goes on during the hearings.

Five years after 9/11, Parliament must use its current review of the Anti-Terrorism Act to correct this lopsided law, which improperly favours secrecy over civil rights.

Whenever Section 38 is invoked, the public must be told.

Section 38 proceedings that do not endanger security should be open to the public. There is no need for blanket secrecy.

And the media must be able to report on what is said during these proceedings.

Anything less makes a mockery of Canada's open court system, discourages accountability by the police and security services and ultimately threatens our civil rights.