Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Manufacturer Tried to Hide Results of Testing of Blood Thinner Implicated in 1,000 Deaths

By Steve Straehley | AllGov | February 9, 2014

The manufacturer of a blood-thinning drug tried to hide results of an internal study that the manufacturer feared would hurt sales of the widely-advertised medication, according to recently-unsealed court documents.

Boehringer Ingelheim, manufacturer of Pradaxa, is being sued by patients and their families, charging it failed to properly warn users about possible dangers of the drug. More than 1,000 of those using Pradaxa have died from bleeding, Katie Thomas of The New York Times reported.

Some of the papers released by Chief Judge David R. Herndon of the United States District Court in East St. Louis, Ill., indicated that a research paper would contradict the company’s claims that regular blood monitoring is not necessary while taking Pradaxa. The lack of regular monitoring is one of the main selling points of the drug over warfarin, a drug long used in the prevention of blood clots and strokes. Warfarin requires frequent blood monitoring and attention to diet.

Boehringer Ingelheim emails released by the court show concern about the effect a change in recommended monitoring would have on sales of Pradaxa. “This may not be a onetime test and could result in a more complex message (regular monitoring), and a weaker value proposition … vs. competitors,” one employee wrote.

An email from another employee expressed concern about the drug’s safety risks in older patients, and said “there may be a role” for one or two blood tests in Pradaxa patients.

The case highlights the fact that much of the research on drugs is performed by the drug makers themselves, who have a financial interest in ensuring their products are approved by regulators.

The research paper, written by Paul A. Reilly, a clinical program director at Boehringer Ingelheim, found that some patients absorb too little of the drug to prevent strokes. It also said another group absorbs so much that they are at a higher risk for bleeding. These issues could be addressed with blood monitoring to ensure that patients have the proper levels of the drug in their bloodstream. Draft versions of the paper gave optimal levels of Pradaxa in a patient’s bloodstream.

Reilly’s paper was published in the February 2014 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, but some of the conclusions about blood monitoring that appeared in the draft version aren’t in the final report.

In a statement, Boehringer Ingelheim said the unsealed documents “represent small fragments of the robust discussion and debate that is a vital component in all scientific inquiry, and in the research and development of any important medication such as Pradaxa.”

One company supervisor, Dr. Jutta Heinrich-Nols, warned that publishing Reilly’s paper could make it “extremely difficult” for the company to defend its claims that Pradaxa did not require regular blood monitoring, the Times said.

In addition, there is so far no antidote to Pradaxa’s effects. With warfarin, physicians can administer doses of Vitamin K to counteract that drug’s effects in case a patient starts hemorrhaging.

The Justice Department has previously cited the company for intentionally making “unsubstantiated claims about the efficacy” of their drug Aggrenox, which is intended to prevent subsequent strokes, or strokes due to blood clots.

The Pradaxa documents were released the same week that Physicians for Integrity in Medical Research sued the Food and Drug Administration over the heart medication roflumilast, claiming it should be pulled off the market. The drug, made by Forest Laboratories and intended to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), does more harm than good, according to the plaintiff.

To Learn More:

Study of Drug for Blood Clots Caused a Stir, Records Show (by Katie Thomas, New York Times)

New Emails in Pradaxa Case Show Concern Over Profit (by Katie Thomas, New York Times)

A Promising Drug With a Flaw (by Katie Thomas, New York Times)

Pradaxa Manufacturer Has History of Illegal Activities, Ties To Controversial Groups (by Alisha Mims, Ring of Fire)

Doctors Group Sues FDA to Withdraw Approval of Heart Drug (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

February 9, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

US focused on destabilizing Ukraine: Ex-US official

Press TV – February 8, 2014

Having long displayed a “habit” of attempting to overthrow democratic governments, the United States now seems focused on destabilizing Ukraine, says a former US official, Press TV reports.

“The control freaks in Washington think that only the decisions that Washington makes and imposes on other sovereign countries are democratic,” wrote Paul Craig Roberts, who is a former assistant secretary of the US Treasury for economic policy, in an article on Press TV’s website on Friday.

“The world has witnessed this American self-righteousness for eons as Washington overthrows one democratic government after the other and imposes its puppet,” Roberts said, adding that “for the moment, Washington is focused on destabilizing Ukraine.”

Ukraine has been seeing anti-government protests since about two months ago. The unrest began after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych refrained from signing a political and trade deal with the European Union (EU).

Clashes erupted several times between Ukrainian protesters and police forces during anti-government demonstrations. Arrests were made in the course of the protests as well.

In an effort to calm the political unrest, President Yanukovych invited all parties, including the opposition, to engage in dialog. However, the Ukrainian opposition leaders turned down his offer of negotiations.

He also offered top government positions to the opposition leaders, which they rejected. Yanukovych also pledged to change the constitution to reduce the president’s powers, following another decision to scrap an anti-protest law.

The unrest, nevertheless, continues unabated in Ukraine.

“Of all the violent protests that we have been witness to, the Ukrainian one is the most orchestrated,” Roberts said. “Ukraine has a democratically-elected government, but Washington doesn’t like it because Washington didn’t pick it.”

“Ukraine – or the western part of it – is full of Washington-funded NGOs, whose purpose is to deliver Ukraine into the clutches of the EU, where US and European banks can loot the country, as they looted, for example, Latvia,” he said, adding that, “The NGOs financed by Washington are committed to delivering Ukraine into Washington’s hands, where Ukrainians can become American serfs.”

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economic advisor Sergey Glazyev described the situation in Ukraine as an attempted coup.

“According to our information, American sources spend $20 million a week on financing the [Ukrainian] opposition and rebels, including on weapons,” Glazyev told the Ukrainian edition of Russian newspaper Kommersant.

February 8, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

US penalizes companies for doing business with Iran

Press TV – February 7, 2014

The United States has penalized nearly three dozen companies and individuals in eight countries, accusing them of evading unilateral sanctions against Iran.

The move is aimed at blunting “an atmosphere of optimism” that has resulted from an interim nuclear deal reached between Iran and six world powers late last year, the New York Times reports.

The US Treasury Department said the targeted entities operated in Turkey, Spain, Germany, Georgia, Afghanistan, Iran, Liechtenstein and the United Arab Emirates.

The announcement marks the second time the Obama administration has penalized businesses since the deal was inked on November 24 and put into effect last month.

As part of the current agreement, the West offered Tehran modest sanctions relief in return for Iran taking steps to limit its uranium enrichment activities. The deal called for negotiation of a full agreement within a year.

Many members of Congress and Israel have denounced the agreement, arguing that the easing of sanctions disproportionately favored Iran.

Washington has said it will continue to enforce existing sanctions until a more comprehensive deal is reached. “We strongly believe that sustaining sanctions pressure will be critical,” a senior US Treasury Department official said in a conference call with reporters on Thursday.

A recent visit to Iran by a French delegation of more than 100 businesspeople has greatly irritated senior US officials.

Secretary of State John Kerry called his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, on Tuesday to express concern about the business delegation.

In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Wendy Sherman, under secretary of state for political affairs and the Obama administration’s top negotiator with Iran, said Kerry and other senior US officials believe these trade visits are “not helpful.”

“Tehran is not open for business because our sanctions relief is quite temporary, quite limited and quite targeted,” Sherman said.

David Cohen, top Treasury sanctions official, also warned that companies or governments still risk heavy penalties under United Nations, US or European sanctions if they expanded trade with Iran.

The Treasury prohibits companies and individuals from carrying out financial transactions with Iran under US jurisdiction.

February 7, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Center for American Progress and the Nullify NSA Movement

By Tracy Rosenburg | CounterPunch | February 7, 2014

The prominent  Democratic website Think Progress recently took aim at the anti-NSA surveillance movement with a warning to “Beware of Libertarians Bearing Gifts”. The blog suggests bipartisan alliances between civil liberties advocates and libertarians will sink the New Deal, which some might say is already taking on a bit of water.

The direct target of authors Zack Beauchamp and Ian Millhiser is the Offnow.org coalition, a partnership anchored by the right-wing Tenth Amendment Center and the left-wing Bill of Rights Defense Committee.*

The premise of Offnow is local legislation in states, counties, and universities to make it policy to dis-invest in mass surveillance. Twelve state legislatures have introduced versions of the 4th Amendment Act (Alaska, Arizona, California, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont and Washington).  The big target is Utah, home of the huge Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, where the provision of 1.7 million gallons of water by the state every day cools the huge supercomputers.

Think Progress’s objection to turning off the utilities on the NSA emanates from a liberal nightmare of a state like Texas darkening health clinics for poor people or cutting off water supplies to voting rights attorneys.

Let me be clear. I buy the idea that nutty contingents of the Tea Party might advocate for such things. Texas’s recent foray into fetal survival within the carcass of a deceased woman is evidence to never say never. But there is one basic difference.

Mass blanket surveillance of telephone metadata, email and Internet searches without individualized warrants and probable cause, is unconstitutional. The Bill of Rights doesn’t allow it. Congress didn’t approve it. The American public didn’t know about it until a certain contractor took a trip to Hong Kong. The idea Think Progress is embracing – the rogue activities of the NSA are established government policy – isn’t true.

Even the unaccountable secret FISC court has agreed: “The Obama administration, under pressure from continued NSA leaks, declassified documents Wednesday showing the agency scooped up tens of thousands of emails and other online communications from Americans beginning in 2008 that it wasn’t allowed to target, and was told to stop by the secret court that oversees the program”.

The Dems at The Center for American Progress also seem stricken by an attack of amnesia about the long tradition of local disinvestment movements to impact American policy – by progressives.

The anti-apartheid movement advocated for disinvestment in South Africa under apartheid from both private and public sources including state universities. By 1984, 53 U.S institutions divested, by 1987, 128 including the University of California. By the end of 1989, 26 states, 22 counties and over 90 cities had taken some form of binding economic action against companies doing business in South Africa. Most of this pre-dated the 1986 Comprehensive Apartheid Act by Congress.

Over 110 American cities have declared themselves sanctuary cities that will provide limited or no local cooperation with the Secure Communities deportation program run by the Department of Homeland Security.

Vermont, the state most often described as a progressive Disneyland has developed a virtual cottage industry in defying the federal government. In just the last few years, the state has authorized hemp growing without a permit, passed a law prohibiting patent trolling not addressed by the US Patent Act, opted out of the Affordable Care Act, and has considered a GMO labeling bill, currently stalled by litigation threats from Monsanto.

If the New Deal is sinking, the most progressive state in the nation appears to be steadily poking holes in the hull of the boat.

In the latest version of “you’re with us or you’re against us”, the Center for American Progress has embraced an a-historical definition of progressivism that prioritizes not sleeping with the enemy over principled dissent against unconstitutional activities.

The last line of the Think Progress article is “Ideology matters”.

Does it really matter more than justice?

*Disclaimer: Media Alliance, my organization, recently joined the Offnow coalition.

Tracy Rosenberg is the executive director of Media Alliance (www.media-alliance.org), an Oakland CA-based democratic communications advocacy organization. Research assistance with this article was provided by Alexander Houk.

February 7, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pentagon Leads PR Campaign to Counter Critical Inspector General Reports on Afghanistan

By Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman | AllGov | February 6, 2014

Frustrated by numerous reports criticizing U.S. spending in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense has launched a public relations campaign aimed at countering the work of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). That watchdog agency is charged with overseeing the military’s $96.5 billion reconstruction program in Afghanistan.

John Sopko, the head of SIGAR, has upset military commanders by frequently reporting on million-dollar programs that haven’t panned out or failed to account for missing American tax dollars.

One recent example involved a hospital in northeastern Afghanistan costing $600,000 that lacked adequate water, sewer, electrical, and heating systems—and was vulnerable to collapsing in an earthquake, according to SIGAR.

The U.S. military countered SIGAR’s report by issuing a news release that praised the hospital and even rejected some of the critical findings.

Somehow, the military came to these conclusions even though the Army hadn’t inspected the hospital in months because the insurgency made the area too dangerous to visit.

In addition to putting out press releases, the military has crafted an in-house strategy for dealing with SIGAR’s negative reports. This plan was revealed in a slide presentation, a copy of which was obtained by USA Today, that stated the goal was to “[build] the right combination of ammunition to achieve desired effects on a specified target.”

That target was Sopko, who was mentioned in the presentation during a hunting analogy: “In the past we may have shot where we saw the duck, but now, with our plan of action—we will bag our limit of birds before Mr. Sopko wakes up to feed his dogs.”

When informed of the anti-SIGAR campaign, Sopko told the newspaper: “It’s disappointing to see that funds appropriated by Congress are being used by elements of the Department of Defense to misrepresent the work of an independent inspector general. American taxpayers would be better served if ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] spent less time writing misleading press releases and more time fixing the problems we’ve identified.”

SIGAR spokesperson Philip LaVelle shares his boss’s concerns. “Let me get this straight,” he recently said to the Los Angeles Times. “They’re complaining we’re telling the American people how their tax dollars are being spent? The public has a right to know and we have a duty to tell them — and we intend to keep doing just that.”

Since 2008, SIGAR’s investigations have resulted in 56 criminal convictions or guilty pleas, involving nearly three dozen civilians and members of the U.S. military, along with 21 Afghans.

The Pentagon’s overall public relations campaign—exercised at home and abroad—grew by 63% during a five-year period since 2004, reaching $4.7 billion in 2009, according to Defense Department budgets and other documents produced that year. The budget included the employment of 27,000 people to handle public relations, advertising and recruitment.

The military’s budget for outreach and media amounts to 1% of the total Pentagon budget, according to Fox News.

To Learn More:

The Pentagon’s PR War Against SIGAR (by Neil Gordon, Project On Government Oversight)

Military Yanks Leash of Critical Government Watchdog (by Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today)

U.S. Embassy in Kabul Defends Itself Against Blistering Fraud Reports (by David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times)

Pentagon Spending Billions on PR to Sway World Opinion (Fox News)

Harsh Inspector General Report Says 0 of 16 Afghan Agencies can be Trusted with U.S. Aid (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov)

U.S.-Led Military Unit in Afghanistan Lost $230 Million in Spare Parts, Then Spent $138 Million for More (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

U.S. Paid $6.8 Million to “Maintain” Non-Functioning Afghan Police Vehicles (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

February 6, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

St. Louis Police Officers Caught Running Possibly Politically-Motivated Background Checks On Police Board Members

By Tim Cushing | Techdirt | February 3, 2014

The problem with access to other people’s personal data is that the potential for misuse is ever present. This is inherent in any system, whether it’s the NSA’s or a local politician’s — simply because humans are humans. The solution is accountability, not layers of bureaucratic control. That’s what appears to be the focus in this story of alleged background check abuse by St. Louis County police officers, which is a good start.

Two St. Louis county police officers who were assigned to the detail of County Executive Charles Dooley have had their access to a criminal database suspended while an investigation over whether they were running unauthorized background checks, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The officers are specifically accused of running such a check on a former candidate for the police board, a body that’s theoretically supposed to supervise officers.

Internal affairs is now investigating the two officers in order to determine why it was accessed and if there was any additional abuse. County police chief Tom Fitch found himself questioning the motivations and actions of these two officers after they were inadvertently “outed” by a member of Dooley’s office.

Questions first arose in October when Dooley’s chief of staff, Garry Earls, announced to the county council that a criminal background check into former police board candidate David Spence had come back clean, County Chief Tim Fitch said.

Fitch said he had questioned how the county administration would know that information because he didn’t believe it was his officers’ place to run the checks.

Officers running background checks on their own supervisors isn’t a good idea, especially when it gives the unauthorized access the appearance of being politically motivated — and possibly ordered by a county official. (This has been denied, of course.) Simply running a check for any other reason than “criminal justice” is itself illegal. And now Fitch is trying to figure out who else these officers have “checked out” in violation of policy.

At this point, the two officers must ask a supervisor to run names for them and have no access to the REGIS database. Until further details emerge, this at least prevents misuse by the two accused of unauthorized access. Whether there’s evidence of more abuse remains to be seen. On the downside, Chief Fitch is being rather cagey with details on how much abuse has been uncovered.

Fitch would not say how many names the officers ran during their time assigned to Dooley’s detail, citing the ongoing internal investigation.

“The number (of names) isn’t important,” he said. “What’s important is why it was done and who asked them to do it.”

Understandably, some details need to be withheld during an ongoing investigation, but Fitch is a bit off when he says the total number isn’t important. Checks that complied with department policy obviously don’t matter, so it’s only the total number that fall outside compliance that anyone’s worried about. That number matters just as much as the “why.” The “who” behind it matters as well, although the accused officers still had the option to say “no” if they were indeed asked to break the rules.

While it’s refreshing to see a police chief unwilling to downplay his officers’ misconduct, the intensity must be maintained not only through this investigation, but going forward to ensure incidents like these become rarer and rarer. And if it turns out that the database was frequently misused, the consequences need to be as severe as the abuse.

February 3, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | | Leave a comment

Canada’s CSEC tracks travelers via airport Wi-Fi

Press TV – January 31, 2014

The Canadian government’s intelligence agency has spied on thousands of travelers through the wireless Internet service at a major airport, according to new revelations.

The top-secret document retrieved by US whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) tracked the wireless devices of passengers by using information gleaned from free Internet service at an unnamed major Canadian airport.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported that the data was collected from passengers’ smart-phones and laptops over a two-week period and that the devices were tracked for a week or longer afterwards.

CBS said the technology was to be shared with the so-called “Five Eyes” spy partnership, namely the US, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia.

“Classified document in question is a technical presentation between specialists exploring mathematical models built on everyday scenarios to identify and locate foreign terrorist threats,” CSEC spokesperson claimed.

Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian, however, said she was “blown away” by the revelations. She also likened the country’s spy agency to those of a “totalitarian state, not a free and open society.”

Ronald Deibert, the director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, also said the CSEC’s secret operation was almost certainly illegal.

“I can’t see any circumstance in which this would not be unlawful, under current Canadian law, under our Charter, under CSEC’s mandates,” he told CBC News.

It was also recently revealed that Canada has set up cover spying posts around the world and spied on trading partners at the request of the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Reports published in Canadian media and based on the leaks have shown that Canada allowed the NSA to conduct surveillance operations on its soil during the 2010 summits of G8 and G20.

Other reports have shown that the Canadian intelligence agency spied on communications at Brazil’s Mining and Energy Ministry, as it has mining interests in the South American country.

January 31, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Outsourcing Probation: A Lucrative and Growing Industry

By Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman | AllGov | January 29, 2014

Privatization of the criminal justice system has extended beyond prisons that are run for profit and now includes probation operators making a buck off Americans who have violated the law.

Quietly over the past four decades, private probation companies have gone into business in 40% of U.S. states, most of them in the South. Georgia alone has 34 businesses providing probation services.

These entrepreneurs have replaced county offices that used to oversee individuals given probation instead of jail time for their offenses.

But the switch from public to private probation has resulted in excessive financial costs levied on probationers, some of whom have been threatened with incarceration for not paying these companies on time.

Circuit Judge Hub Harrington called the private probation system in Harpersville, Alabama, a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket.”

Take for example Sentinel Offender Services, a $30 million enterprise operating in four states. An investigation by NBC News found that Sentinel demanded payments for fees from low-income probationers and resorted to arrest warrants to force the issue, regardless of the individuals’ financial status.

All of this despite a 1983 federal ruling that said that people on probation cannot be imprisoned for being indigent.

In Florida, private firms can add as much as 40% in surcharges on top of the debt owed by probationers. In Illinois, the add-on fees can amount to 30% of the standing debt.

The Brennan Center for Justice says that at least nine states allow companies to charge probationers excessive fees.

Former law enforcement officials control this industry—at least in Georgia—having leveraged their connections into profitable contracts. “This is completely dominated by retired state probation people and wardens of state prisons,” Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They created this industry for themselves.”

They did so after Georgia passed a law in 2000 that transferred state probation services to the counties, thereby allowing local courts to outsource those services to private companies. They are allowed to handle all probation cases other than those involving felons.

Bobby Whitworth, the former head of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, accepted payoffs in return for helping to pass that law. He was eventually imprisoned on public corruption charges for having done so.

“My problem [with private probation services] is with…the fact that people are getting rich off the poorest people in society,” Steve Bright, senior counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights, told the Journal-Constitution. “Many private probation companies don’t do anything but collect checks from people. Perhaps someone who has run a loan company would be better qualified.”

To Learn More:

Connections Matter in Ga. Private Probation Industry (by Rhonda Cook, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

‘Cash Register Justice’: Private Probation Services Face Legal Counterattack (by Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan-Seville, NBC News)

Related article

January 29, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

NSA has nothing to do with nat’l security: Analyst

Transcript

January 28, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | Leave a comment

Federal Probe Into Senator Menendez Widens To Include Help To Fugitive Bankers

By DSWright | FireDogLake | January 24, 2014

Already under investigation for trying to help a contributor who may have been defrauding Medicare, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez is reportedly facing another federal criminal probe this time focusing on his relationship with two fugitive bankers from Ecuador.

William and Roberto Isaias were sentenced in abstentia for embezzling millions from Filanbanco, a bank they ran that collapsed in Ecuador. The United States has so far refused to hand them over to Ecuador despite an Interpol international arrest warrant and recommendations from officials within the State Department to return the convicted bankers back to Ecuador.

In 2005, U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador Kristie Kenney wrote a cable to the State Department saying the Isaias brothers absconded “with $100 million” and “used their ill-gotten wealth to buy safe passage from Ecuador.”…

“The fact that the Isaias brothers continue to live a life of luxury in the U.S. while their account holders are suffering in Ecuador has been a constant concern between the U.S. And Ecuador since their flight,” said Linda Jewell, a former U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador.

Enter Senator Bob Menendez who has allegedly been advocating on the brothers’ behalf. Menendez is said to have used the power of his office to assist the Isaias brothers writing letters to the State Department and Department of Homeland Security.

While Senator Menendez was writing letters the Isaias family was giving money to his campaign and the Democratic Party.

Federal election records show relatives of the Isaias brothers who are residents donated more than $10,000 to the senator’s 2012 campaign. And records show that the family of Roberto Isaias also donated at least $100,000 to the Democratic party in 2012.

If a connection between the donations and the letters can be established Senator Menendez might once again have to face ethics charges if not criminal charges.

Menendez previously paid $58,000 to a campaign contributor as reimbursement for two round trips he took to the Dominican Republic on the contributor’s private jet. The contributor was Dr. Salomen Melgen whom Menendez had assisted in dealing with allegations of improperly billing Medicare. Melgen had contributed $33,000 to Senator Menendez and traveled with him throughout the Caribbean for “political fundraisiers.”

~~~

Backgound:

Ecuador Seizes Banking Firms

January 25, 2014 Posted by | Corruption | , , , , | Leave a comment

What President Obama’s Surveillance Speech Should Have Addressed

By Frank Pasquale · Concurring Opinions · January 21, 2014

In his recent speech on surveillance, President Obama treated the misuse of intelligence gathering as a relic of American history. It was something done in the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover, and never countenanced by recent administrations. But the accumulation of menacing stories—from fusion centers to “joint terrorism task forces” to a New York “demographics unit” targeting Muslims—is impossible to ignore. The American Civil Liberties Union has now collected instances of police surveillance and obstruction of First Amendment‐protected activity in over half the states. From Alaska (where military intelligence spied on an anti-war group) to Florida (where Quakers and anti-globalization activists were put on watchlists), protesters have been considered threats, rather than citizens exercising core constitutional rights. Political dissent is a routine target for surveillance by the FBI.

Admittedly, I am unaware of the NSA itself engaging in politically driven spying on American citizens. Charles Krauthammer says there has not been a “single case” of abuse. But the NSA is only one part of the larger story of intelligence gathering in the US, which involves over 1,000 agencies and nearly 2,000 private companies. Moreover, we have little idea of exactly how information and requests flow between agencies. Consider the Orwellian practice of “parallel construction.” Reuters has reported that the NSA gave “tips” to the Special Operations Division (SOD) of the Drug Enforcement Administration, which also shared them with the Internal Revenue Service.

The legal status of such information sharing is murky at best: the national security data is not supposed to be used for law enforcement purposes. Apparently the SOD sidestepped these niceties by re-creating criminal investigations from scratch, fabricating alternative grounds for suspecting the targets. Thus the “parallel construction” of two realities for the law enforcers: one actual, secret record of how targets were selected, and another specially crafted for consumption by courts. Two senior Drug Enforcement Administration officials defended the program and called it legal, but did not disclose their reasoning. At present, the practice looks like little more than intelligence laundering. Five senators asked the Department of Justice to assess the legality of “parallel construction;” it has yet to respond.

I have little doubt that the DEA used parallel construction in cases involving some pretty nasty characters. It must be tempting to apply “war on terror” tactics to the “war on drugs.” Nevertheless, there are serious legal and ethical concerns here. One of the American revolutionaries’ chief complaints against the British Crown was the indiscriminate use of “general warrants,” which allowed authorities to search the homes of anyone without particularized suspicion they had committed a crime. Thus the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution decrees that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” Law enforcers aren’t supposed to set up “dragnet surveillance” of every communication, or use whatever data stores are compiled by the National Security Agency, unless there is a true security threat.

Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI’s COINTELPRO program engaged in domestic covert action designed to disrupt groups engaged in the civil rights, antiwar, and communist movements. As Lawrence Rosenthal has observed, “History reflects a serious risk of abuse in investigations based on the protected speech of the targets,” and politicians at the time responded. Reviewing intelligence agency abuses from that time period, the Church Committee issued a series of damning reports in 1975-76, leading to some basic reforms. If a new Church Committee were convened, it would have to cover much of the same ground. Moreover, it would need to put in place real safeguards against politicized (or laundered) domestic intelligence gathering. Those are presently lacking. I have yet to find a case where the parties involved in any of the intelligence politicization (or laundering) were seriously punished. Nor have I seen evidence that the victims of such incidents have received just compensation for the unwarranted intrusion on their affairs.

Before we can develop better surveillance policy, we need something like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to review (and rebuke) the politicization of intelligence gathering post-9/11. Too many privacy activists have been unwilling to admit the persistence of catastrophic threats that may only be detected by spies. But the US government has been even less moored to reality, unwilling to admit that a runaway surveillance state has engaged in precisely the types of activities that the Bill of Rights is designed to prevent. To have a debate about the proper balance between liberty and security, we need to confront the many cases where misguided intelligence personnel spied on activists with neither goal in mind.

Frank Pasquale is Professor of Law at the University of Maryland. His research agenda focuses on challenges posed to information law by rapidly changing technology, particularly in the health care, internet, and finance industries. Frank accepts comments via email, at pasqresearch@gmail.com.

Related articles

January 23, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

America’s most popular prescription sleep medication linked to mass shootings

RT | January 20, 2014

A new report describing the bizarre and dangerous side effects of the sleep aid Ambien has once again raised questions about one of the United States’ most popular prescription drugs.

In a story by the Fix, Allison McCabe chronicled the numerous cases in which Ambien has caused individuals to commit unsafe, and sometimes deadly acts.

In 2009, 45-year-old Robert Stewart was convicted on eight charges of second-degree murder after he killed eight people in a nursing home. He was originally charged with first-degree murder, but by claiming his tirade was Ambien-induced he was able to have the charges lessened and sentenced to 142-179 years in prison.

In a similar case, Thomas Chester Page of South Carolina was sentenced on five counts of attempted murder despite his claims that Ambien was the cause of a shootout with officers. He received 30 years of prison on each count, to be served concurrently.

Although the Food and Drug Administration approved Ambien in 1992, its warning labels have changed significantly over the last two decades as evidence mounted documenting the drug’s ability to induce dangerous behavior.

“After taking AMBIEN, you may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you are doing,” the label currently reads. “The next morning, you may not remember that you did anything during the night… Reported activities include: driving a car (“sleep-driving”), making and eating food, talking on the phone, having sex, sleep-walking.”

In the courtroom, cases related to Ambien use have ranged from shootings to child molestation charges to car accidents. In one such case, flight attendant Julie Ann Bronson from Texas ran over three people – including an 18-month old who suffered from brain damage as a result. When Bronson woke up in jail the next morning, she could barely comprehend what she had done.

“It was surreal. It was like a bad dream,” she said in May 2012. “I did the crime but I never intended to do it. I wouldn’t hurt a flea. And if I would have hit somebody, I would have stopped and helped. We’re trained in CPR.” Bronson pleaded guilty to the felony charges, but also received lesser charges by citing Ambien as the reason for her actions.

While some drug companies work on sleep aids that do not induce the kind of unpredictable and risky behavior Ambien does, the popularity of the medication raises concern over America’s prescription drug culture. The market for sleeping pills is a billion-dollar industry, yet dangerous side effects continue to be reported.

Last year, a report by the Department of Health and Human Services highlighted about 2,200 doctors for suspicious activities such as over-prescribing drugs. More than 700 Medicare doctors were also flagged for issuing what could be seen as “extreme” and potentially harmful prescriptions.

Although the report noted that some prescriptions could have been effective, it added, “prescribing high amounts on any of these measures may indicate that a physician is prescribing drugs which are not medically necessary or that he or she has an inappropriate incentive, such as a kickback, to order certain drugs.”

Soon after that report was issued, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that roughly 18 women a day are dying in the United States due to prescription drug overdose, namely from painkillers like Vicodin and Oxycontin. With women making up 40 percent of all overdose deaths in 2010, these numbers marked a 400 percent increase compared to data from 1999.

The benefits of medication have also been placed under heavy scrutiny when it comes to other health issues, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In December 2013, RT reported that the authors of the primary study promoting medication over behavioral therapy in order to treat ADHD now have serious concerns over their original results.

“I hope it didn’t do irreparable damage,” said one of the stud’s co-authors, Dr. Lilly Hechtman of Montreal’s McGill University. “The people who pay the price in the end is the kids. That’s the biggest tragedy in all of this.”

January 22, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »