Al Jazeera examines the impact of America's high incarceration rate on its penal system and on poor and minority communities. There are more prisoners in the US than any other nation in the world, with the U.S. making up five percent of the world's population, but accounts for 25 percent of its prison population. In just the last three decades, the number held in U.S. federal prisons has spiked by nearly 80 percent.

"There has been in this country over the last 30 years a relentless upward climb in the incarcerated population and disturbing as the situation is with the federal prison system, that is really only the tip of the iceberg because the federal prison system is only about 10 percent of the total number of people incarcerated in this country. On any given day, we have about 2.3 million people behind bars in federal, state and local facilities."

- David Fathi, ACLU National Prison Project

The number of inmates in U.S. federal prisons has increased from about 25,000 in 1980 to 219,000 in 2012, according to a report by the US Congressional Research Service.

The report says the federal prison system was 39 percent over its capacity back in 2011...and the situation is worse for high and medium security male facilities.

High-security prisons were overcrowded by 51 percent, while medium security prisons were overcrowded by 55 percent in 2011.

A report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), states that overcrowding has contributed to worse safety and security conditions for both inmates and staff.

The overcrowded facilities have contributed to a multibillion dollar demand for private prisons. The industry claims it is helping the government save money. But others argue that for-profit prisons only increase the incentive to incarcerate more people.

Continue reading »

3,500 Pakistani Shiites flooded the streets of a southwestern city for a second day on Saturday, this time with a new protest technique: blocking the roads with around 50 coffins of relatives killed in recent explosions. The unconventional protest also marks a break with Islamic custom, which dictates that the dead be buried as soon as possible. In refusing to bury their dead, the protestors hope to make a statement to the government about its lack of protection following the twin bombings of a billiards hall on Thursday that left 86 dead. “My son went to a billiards hall to play, but now I am sitting with his body here,” said Begum Dilawar Shah. “I want to know what was the fault of my son and who killed him and why?”

WaPo:

The dead included police, rescuers and journalists who rushed there in response to the first attack on the billiards hall, which was located in a predominantly Shiite area.

Mohsina Hissaini, who was sobbing near the coffins, said one of her cousins was among those who responded to the first attack.

“Every month, our people are killed in gun attacks or with bombs,” she said. “We need security.”

On Friday, Shiites laid about 50 of their dead on the street, saying they would not bury them until the government improved security. Islamic custom dictates that the dead be buried as soon possible.

Hazara said their protest would continue until their demands were accepted.

In a move aimed at accepting the Shiite demands for security, Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf ordered authorities on Saturday to give policing powers to paramilitary forces in Quetta to improve law and order.

Many of the attacks against the Shiites in Pakistan are carried out by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant group allied with al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) acknowledged on Wednesday that House Republicans had consciously voted to reduce the funds allocated to the State Department for embassy security since winning the majority in 2010.

On Wednesday morning, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien asked the Utah Republican if he had "voted to cut the funding for embassy security."

"Absolutely," Chaffetz said. "Look we have to make priorities and choices in this country. We have…15,000 contractors in Iraq. We have more than 6,000 contractors, a private army there, for President Obama, in Baghdad. And we’re talking about can we get two dozen or so people into Libya to help protect our forces. When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices. You have to prioritize things.”

During the past two years, House Republicans have continued to deprioritize the security forces protecting State Department personnel around the world. In fiscal year 2011, lawmakers cut $128 million off of the administration's request for embassy security funding. House Republicans drained off even more funds in fiscal year 2012, cutting back on the department's request by $331 million.

Consulate personnel stationed in Benghazi had allegedly expressed concerns over their safety in the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Chaffetz and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have alleged that those concerns were ignored.

A Yemeni man was shot and killed by gunman on his way to work at the U.S. embassy in Sanaa early Thursday morning. The car carrying Qassem Aqlan, who headed an embassy security team, was shot at by masked attackers on a motorcycle. “This (assassination) operation has the fingerprints of al Qaeda which carried out similar operations before,” a source told Reuters. Assassination attempts have been frequent since Yemen’s army cleared Islamist fighters out of many towns earlier this year, while the U.S. has been high alert for its embassy staff overseas since the ambassador to Libya was killed with three others on Sept. 11 in Benghazi.

A 14-year-old suicide bomber attacked NATO headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan on Saturday, killing six civilians and wounding five, including children. No soldiers were struck. The teenage attacker was wearing a vest packed with explosives, and rode up to the building on a bike before detonating. Although the Taliban claimed initial responsibility for the attack, they say the bomber was a 28-year-old and the target was the CIA's Kabul offices. The latest attack highlights militants' abilities to strike even the most secure parts of the Afghan capital, worrying officials.

Hashmat Stanikzai, a police spokesperson, said the dead and wounded were all street sellers aged between 12 and 17.

Street children routinely gather outside NATO headquarters to peddle small trinkets and sweets, looking out for soldiers leaving or getting into the base.

Pieces of flesh and splattered blood lay on the street near the base, where small bodies were seen being lifted into ambulances, witnesses said.

"I was here when the blast occurred. I saw some wounded children on the ground. The wounded [were] transferred to emergency hospital for treatment and I heard that three of the injured children have died," said Ahmad Sameer, a witness.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) condemned the use of children. "Forcing underage youth to do their dirty work again proves the insurgency's despicable tactics," said spokesman Brigadier General Gunter Katz.

The U.S. embassy in Kabul said in a statement that using "the most impressionable and vulnerable", such as a teenager, to carry out such attacks revealed the true nature of the insurgents.

Dogs Against Romney gather in Tampa, Florida for the Republican National Convention.

The Code Pink "Vaginas" chant "Hey, Hey GOP! Women want equality!" at the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Sunday.

Part One: Fences, Fences, and More Fences from photographer Robert L. Beukema as he explores the sights and sounds of Tampa during the Republican National Convention.

Part Two: Photographer Robert L. Beukema exploring the sights and sounds of downtown Tampa during the Republican National Convention. Businesses boarded up in anticipation of protests, large heave metal fencing everywhere, and armed National Guard troops on patrol. Even the harbor is heavily patrolled by coast guard and sheriff's deputies on water patrol. It all looks like something out of a nightmare.

Part Three of Sights and Sounds from photographer Robert L. Beukema. Ho boy, wait until you get an eye and earful of a tiff between the Dogs Against Romney members, and a Romney supporter who talks the ears off of anyone who will listen to her. The mainstream media gives her time, and plenty of it, to ramble on about everything from Obama ate dog meat as a child (once), the Constitution, and something about how many slaves did you need to make one vote? She wraps her her diatribe telling people to "Look it up!" so, hopefully they will, but somewhere other than on Fox News.

This is the last video for this post, much more to come later. This is a new this morning ad from Moveon.org, showing Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan literally stepping on the middle class as they walk to the podium to accept their nomination as President and Vice President of the 1%. Ouch!

Hydraulic fracturing protesters disrupted a conference attended by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday.

During a panel discussion on clean technology, at the Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan, two protesters had slipped into the ballroom and planted themselves just tables away from Cuomo. The man and woman appeared to be attending the conference until they stood up and interrupted the discussion, unfurling an anti-fracking banner.

The governor's security detail closed in on the couple, but not before the woman "collapsed" after pretending to drink a glass of poisoned water. The man was escorted out immediately.

Paul Ryan is the mastermind behind the extreme GOP budget plan. It's a plan Mitt Romney endorses.

But what does that budget mean for America? The GOP budget plan hurts seniors, it hurts middle-class families, and it hurts students. All to pay for tax cuts for those at the top..

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: back to the failed top-down policies that crashed our economy.

Paul Ryan’s top-down budget plan is a sham

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney both support trillions in budget-busting tax cuts for millionaires that will result in tax hikes on the middle class and deep cuts in education and other investments we need to grow. Ryan’s extreme budget plan, which Mitt Romney has embraced, would make deep spending cuts now to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, which would weaken the recovery and cost the economy jobs.

According to Harvard economist Jeffrey Liebman, based on Mitt Romney’s own projections on the impact of deep spending cuts on the economy, Paul Ryan’s budget plan could cost the U.S. more than 1 million jobs.

Paul Ryan’s plan would raise taxes on the middle class and cut taxes for the wealthy

Ryan’s extreme budget plan would benefit the wealthy while raising taxes on middle-class families, slowing our economic recovery and hurting seniors and the middle class.

Deep tax giveaways for the wealthy:

Paul Ryan’s extreme budget includes a tax “reform” plan that would make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and give millionaires an additional tax cut worth over $250,000 a year. Paying for these tax cuts for the most fortunate families would require higher taxes on the middle class, gutting investments in our future, and ending Medicare as we know it.

Raise taxes on the middle class:

Just like Mitt Romney’s tax plan, middle-class families could pay thousands of dollars more a year in taxes to help fund tax cuts for millionaires. Ryan would cut or eliminate middle-class tax deductions like mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and health premiums.

Paul Ryan’s plan would gut middle-class investments

To pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest, Paul Ryan would gut investments critical to middle-class security.

This includes cutting Pell Grant scholarships for nearly 10 million students, cutting clean energy investments by 19%, and slowing scientific and medical research by eliminating tens of thousands of grants.

Paul Ryan’s plan would end Medicare as we know it

Paul Ryan’s extreme budget would end Medicare as we know it, turning it into a voucher program which would increase seniors’ health costs by $6,350 a year. Ryan has also proposed a plan that would have privatized Social Security, subjecting seniors’ retirement security to the whims of the stock market.

Paul Ryan is severely conservative

Like Mitt Romney, Ryan’s severely conservative positions are out of touch with most Americans’ values. He would take us backward on women’s health and equal rights.

Paul Ryan would take us backward on women’s health:

Ryan cosponsored a bill that could ban in-vitro fertilization, as well as many common forms of birth control, including the pill. It could also ban all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. He supported letting states prosecute women who have abortions and doctors who perform them.

Paul Ryan would take us backward on equal rights:

Ryan voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps women fight for equal pay for equal work. He voted against repealing the discriminatory policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and supports writing discrimination into the Constitution by amending it to ban gay marriage.

If this isn't enough information on Paul Ryan, and what Romney & Ryan would mean for America, let me sum it up briefly:

Any questions?

Note: No senior citizens were harmed in the making of this video.

Does Cybercrime Really Cost $1 Trillion?

by Peter Maass and Megha Rajagopalan ProPublica, Aug. 1, 2012

Gen. Keith Alexander is the director of the National Security Agency and oversees U.S. Cyber Command, which means he leads the government's effort to protect America from cyberattacks. Due to the secretive nature of his job, he maintains a relatively low profile, so when he does speak, people listen closely. On July 9, Alexander addressed a crowded room at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and though he started with a few jokes 2014 his mother said he had a face for radio, behind every general is a stunned father-in-law 2014 he soon got down to business.

Alexander warned that cyberattacks are causing "the greatest transfer of wealth in history," and he cited statistics from, among other sources, Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc., which both sell software to protect computers from hackers. Crediting Symantec, he said the theft of intellectual property costs American companies $250 billion a year. He also mentioned a McAfee estimate that the global cost of cybercrime is $1 trillion. "That's our future disappearing in front of us," he said, urging Congress to enact legislation to improve America's cyberdefenses.

These estimates have been cited on many occasions by government officials, who portray them as evidence of the threat against America. They are hardly the only cyberstatistics used by officials, but they are recurring ones that get a lot of attention. In his first major cybersecurity speech in 2009, President Obama prominently referred to McAfee's $1 trillion estimate. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the main sponsors of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 that is expected to be voted on this week, have also mentioned $1 trillion in cybercrime costs. Last week, arguing on the Senate floor in favor of putting their bill up for a vote, they both referenced the $250 billion estimate and repeated Alexander's warning about the greatest transfer of wealth in history.

A handful of media stories, blog posts and academic studies have previously expressed skepticism about these attention-getting estimates, but this has not stopped an array of government officials and politicians from continuing to publicly cite them as authoritative. Now, an examination of their origins by ProPublica has found new grounds to question the data and methods used to generate these numbers, which McAfee and Symantec say they stand behind.

One of the figures Alexander attributed to Symantec 2014 the $250 billion in annual losses from intellectual property theft 2014 was indeed mentioned in a Symantec report, but it is not a Symantec number and its source remains a mystery.

McAfee's trillion-dollar estimate is questioned even by the three independent researchers from Purdue University whom McAfee credits with analyzing the raw data from which the estimate was derived. "I was really kind of appalled when the number came out in news reports, the trillion dollars, because that was just way, way large," said Eugene Spafford, a computer science professor at Purdue.

Spafford was a key contributor to McAfee's 2009 report, "Unsecured Economies: Protecting Vital Information" (PDF). The trillion-dollar estimate was first published in a news release that McAfee issued to announce the report; the number does not appear in the report itself. A McAfee spokesman told ProPublica the estimate was an extrapolation by the company, based on data from the report. McAfee executives have mentioned the trillion-dollar figure on a number of occasions, and in 2011 McAfee published it once more in a new report, "Underground Economies: Intellectual Capital and Sensitive Corporate Data Now the Latest Cybercrime Currency" (PDF).

In addition to the three Purdue researchers who were the report's key contributors, 17 other researchers and experts were listed as contributors to the original 2009 report, though at least some of them were only interviewed by the Purdue researchers. Among them was Ross Anderson, a security engineering professor at University of Cambridge, who told ProPublica that he did not know about the $1 trillion estimate before it was announced. "I would have objected at the time had I known about it," he said. "The intellectual quality of this ($1 trillion number) is below abysmal."

The use of these estimates comes amid increased debate about cyberattacks; warnings of a digital Pearl Harbor are becoming almost routine. "A cyberattack could stop our society in its tracks," Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier this year. Bloomberg reported just last week that a group of Chinese hackers, whom U.S. intelligence agencies referred to as "Byzantine Candor," have stolen sensitive or classified information from 20 organizations, including Halliburton Inc., and a prominent Washington law firm, Wiley Rein LLP.

There is little doubt that a lot of cybercrime, cyberespionage and even acts of cyberwar are occurring, but the exact scale is unclear and the financial costs are difficult to calculate because solid data is hard to get. Relying on inaccurate or unverifiable estimates is perilous, experts say, because it can tilt the country's spending priorities and its relations with foreign nations. The costs could be worse than the most dire estimates 2014 but they could be less, too.

Computer security companies like McAfee and Symantec have stepped into the data void. Both sell anti-virus software to consumers, and McAfee also sells a range of network security products for government agencies and private companies, including operators of critical infrastructure like power plants and pipelines. Both firms conduct and publish cybercrime research, too. "Symantec is doing outstanding work on threat analysis," said Thomas Rid, a cybersecurity expert at Kings College London. "But still, of course they have a vested interest in portraying a more dangerous environment because they stand to gain for it."

The companies disagree. Sal Viveros, a McAfee public relations official who oversaw the 2009 report, said in an email to ProPublica, "We work with think tanks and universities to make sure our reports are non-biased and as accurate as possible. The goal of our papers [is] to really educate on the issues and risks facing businesses. Our customers look to us to provide them with our expert knowledge."

Symantec said its estimates are developed with standard methods used by governments and businesses to conduct consumer surveys and come from "one of the few, large, multi-country studies on cybercrime that asks consumers what forms of cybercrime they have actually experienced and what it cost them."

* * *

Continue reading »

Please Note All times are Eastern Standard Time.

Latino Vote Matters: Immigration, Power, and an Interactive Look at the Map

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 10:30am, Ballroom A

The War on Voting

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 01:30pm, Ballroom A

Winning Without a Vote: Working with Federal Agencies to Advance a Progressive Agenda

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 03:00pm, Ballroom A

Safeguarding Democracy: Innovations in Technology and Human Rights

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 10:30am, Ballroom B

Intervention, Isolation and the Future of Progressive Security Policy

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 01:30pm, Ballroom B

The Worst Immigration Law in the United States

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 03:00pm, Ballroom B

Continue reading »

This video is part of a five-part "How to Film Protests" series, which incorporates the best practices Witness has developed with over 300 partners in 80 countries who are using video for human rights documentation and to create lasting change.

From raw documentation of human rights violations in Syria to the Occupy protests and the range of police abuse and misconduct therein, citizen video is an increasingly powerful tool for human rights documentation.

Now more than ever we need to ensure that the footage that we capture as activists incorporates essential information like the exact date, time and location so it may best be used by the media, as evidence, and for advocacy. Additionally, we need to pay special attention to the unique safety and security risks that we face as filmmakers and activists, as well as risks to those we capture in our footage.

For more info, go here.