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Saturday, 8 November 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 07 Nov 2014 08:01 AM PST


Canada is adopting some of its North American neighbor’s controversial police methods and dipping its toes into the pool of facial recognition technology, with Calgary police paving the way for a full-scale automated biometric identification system.
Beginning this month, the Calgary Police Service will start taking advantage of this software to compare mugshots with videos and photographs captured from crime scenes, CBC reported on Tuesday. Instead of manually sifting through a database consisting of 300,000 mugshots, police will now be able automate that process significantly.
Once the department starts doing so, it will become the first law enforcement agency in Canada to employ facial recognition technology.
According to officials, the system works via a “complex mathematical algorithm of pattern recognition to quickly screen a database of photos for potential matches.”
Quick to comfort those concerned over civil liberties or potential surveillance, Inspector Rosemary Hawkins said the software would only be used in cases where there is an open police investigation.
“This technology will not be used to identify people walking down the street as a member of the general public,” she said to CBC. “It will be used to identify subjects involved in criminal activity under police investigation and the image searched against our mugshot database, which holds photos of people that have been processed on charges.”
The news follows expanded use of facial technology by law enforcement in the United States. In September, the FBI announced its new biometric database, the Next Generation Identification System (NGI), is fully operational. Developed over the course of three years, the NGI contains over 100 million individual records, linking a person’s fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans and facial-recognition data with personal information like their home address, age, legal status and other details.
Already, the FBI has used its software to successfully apprehend a man suspected of child sex abuse. He was on the run for 14 years before being detained in Nepal. By 2015, the NGI database is projected to feature 52 million facial recognition images.
Still, civil liberties advocates remain unconvinced that the system won’t indirectly snag data on individuals who are not suspected of committing a crime.
“From the perspective of a civil liberties advocate, the wide deployments that can identify individuals at a distance, is that this changes completely the dynamic of privacy in public,” Harley Geiger of the Center for Democracy and Technology said to Ars Technica. “In the US we have this idea of reasonable expectation of privacy which allows for some unreasonable searches. It allows for tracking at a broad scale. It’s not just something that will identify criminals or suspects, it will be used to identify people with no relation to crime or wrongdoing.”
Others, meanwhile, pointed to the fact that facial recognition software is not completely accurate.
“Facial recognition performs poorly under many of the conditions where law enforcement wants to use it, for example, trying to identify people on the street or captured on surveillance cameras,” Jennifer Lynch of Electronic Frontier Foundation told the website. “Even the FBI’s new facial recognition system, NGI, only guarantees accuracy 85 percent of the time. It is also unnecessary when compared to fingerprints, which have proved to be a highly effective form of identification.”
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Posted: 07 Nov 2014 03:49 AM PST


The United Nations’s Ebola chief has expressed hope that the deadly outbreak, which is wreaking havoc on West African countries, could be contained by 2015.
UN System Coordinator for Ebola Virus Disease David Nabarro made the remarks in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday.
Nabarro voiced optimism that “in the coming months we could certainly see a diminution, and hopefully in the next year the outbreak will come to an end.”
He described the global response and the mobilization of local communities in the three most affected West African countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea as two positive measures in the battle against Ebola.
However, he added that the situation was “still bad” and the international community had to remain on full alert until the last Ebola case was under treatment.
“So I must stress to you that we are really not saying to the world that the job is even half done or a quarter done,” stated Nabarro, adding that the response needed to be 20 times greater.
The UN official further warned that without mass global mobilization, the world would have to live with the virus forever.
On November 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a total of 13,042 cases of the deadly virus in West Africa and 4,818 deaths.
Ebola is a form of hemorrhagic fever with symptoms such as diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding.
The virus spreads through direct contact with infected blood, feces or sweat. It can be also spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.
The media hype over Ebola comes at a time when thousands of people in Africa and other parts of the world die every day from hunger and preventable diseases.
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Posted: 07 Nov 2014 03:31 AM PST

Pharmacologist reveals how press has bowed to government demand to keep Americans in the dark.
An eyebrow-raising admission at the end of a Forbes article written by pharmacologist David Kroll reveals that the media has agreed not to report on suspected Ebola cases in the United States.
In a piece entitled Liberian Traveler At Duke Hospital Shows Preliminary Negative Result For Ebola, Kroll describes attending a press conference involving Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Aldona Wos.
After revealing that “an unnamed official abruptly called the press conference to a close” when Wos was asked a difficult question about the suspected Ebola victim, Kroll then drops a bombshell.
“The Associated Press and other press outlets have agreed not to report on suspected cases of Ebola in the United States until a positive viral RNA test is completed,” he writes.
Kroll then felt the need to justify why he was talking about the suspected Ebola case at Duke Hospital, which subsequently turned out to be negative, explaining that he was, “covering tonight’s announcement of a potential Ebola case because it has been reported in my area, and at Duke University Medical Center, an institution where I hold an unpaid adjunct associate professor appointment in their Department of Medicine.”
The agreement between major media outlets and health authorities, presumably the CDC, not to report on potential Ebola cases in the United States was apparently made behind the scenes with no public discussion whatsoever. This is sure to heighten criticism of the CDC’s handling of the Ebola outbreak in the U.S., which is already under close scrutiny.
While the CDC will almost certainly claim that such an arrangement is necessary to prevent hysteria, many will see this as another example of how the mainstream press is more interested in acquiescing to government demands than keeping the American people informed.
In an interview on the Alex Jones Show last month, Doctor James Lawrenzi revealed that health authorities are covering up potential Ebola cases in the United States and disappearing patients in an effort to avoid hysteria.
With flu season fast approaching, experts have warned that the reporting of Ebola-like symptoms which are in fact influenza could overwhelm health authorities. Medical professionals have predicted that the U.S. could see over one hundred Ebola cases by the end of the year.
Last week we reported on how the government had sent 250,000 Hazmat suits to Dallas, while the CDC is also set to purchase over 1.4 million surgical gowns and nearly 10,000 body bags in response to the outbreak.
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Posted: 07 Nov 2014 03:10 AM PST


The European Union’s new foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, has slammed the Israeli regime for its new plans to continue illegal settlement expansion on the occupied Palestinian lands.
Mogherini made the remarks on Friday in a joint press conference with Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman in al-Quds (Jerusalem) during her first visit to the occupied region as the EU’s top diplomat.
The EU foreign policy chief said the Tel Aviv regime’s land grab plans are in fact an obstacle to the so-called peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.
Furthermore, Mogherini warned of a new wave of tensions in the Palestinian territories if there is no progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks, calling for the immediate resumption of the US-backed negotiations.
Mogherini’s comments come just days after the Israeli regime approved for the construction of 278 new illegal settler units in East al-Quds despite an ongoing international outcry over Tel Aviv’s expansionist policies.
The Israeli regime also approved last month plans for the construction of 1,060 new settler units in East al-Quds.
United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman has warned the Security Council over Israel’s land grab in East al-Quds, saying such policies threaten the viability of a future Palestinian state.
More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 settlements, built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East al-Quds, in 1967.
Much of the international community considers the settlements illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are thus subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.
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Posted: 07 Nov 2014 02:38 AM PST


The world has come ominously close to a nuclear war in the past and it could happen again as Russia and the West have slipped back into what seems like another Cold War, world-renowned scholar Noam Chomsky tells RT’s Sophie&Co.
Once NATO has expanded its borders all the way to reach Russia, its mission has very much changed since it was initially established, Chomsky said. Now, its aim is to take control of global energy systems rather than maintaining intergovernmental military balance.
The world has never been closer to a nuclear war that could wipe out all of its initiators, and the threat is no longer a thing of history, according to Chomsky.
“The worst-case scenario, of course, would be a nuclear war, which would be terrible. Both states that initiate it will be wiped out by the consequences. That’s the worst-case. And it’s come ominously close several times in the past, dramatically close. And it could happen again, but not planned, but just by the accidental interactions that take place that has almost happened,” Chomsky told Sophie Shevardnadze.
The overall situation of international instability was worsened by US involvement in the Middle Eastern affairs and damaging regional conflicts, Chomsky says, comparing its actions in Iraq to a hit with a “sledgehammer.”
Chomsky went on to discuss with RT the former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, and the US’ ever-expanding global spying that are having a dangerous impact on the domestic population and is inspiring other governments worldwide to do the same.
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