Quantifying people’s trade-offs
across liberty, privacy
and security
Neil Robinson, Dimitris Potoglou, Chong Woo Kim,
Peter Burge, Richard Warnes
Sponsored by the RAND Europe Board of Trustees
The heightened security environment in the United Kingdom today is resplendent with examples of government policy that must strike a delicate balance between strengthening security without jeopardising public liberties and personal privacy. The introduction of national identity cards and biometric passports, the expansion of the DNA database, and cross-departmental sharing of information raise a number of privacy issues. Civil liberties may be suspended by the exercise of stop and search powers by the police or detention of suspects prior to a trial. Much of the current privacy vs. security debate occurs at an emotional level with little evidence informing the argument. This report outlines the results of a stated preference discrete choice modelling study that sought to objectively understand the real privacy, liberty and security trade-offs of individuals so that policy makers can be better informed about individuals true preferences in this domain. Three real-life case studies were investigated where these factors come into play; applying for a passport; travel on the national rail network and attendance at a major public event such as the opening ceremony of the Olympics. A panel of internet users demographically weighted to the UK population were asked to choose amongst different alternatives for each of the scenarios. The data was analysed and individuals were found to be willing to pay for advanced CCTV cameras with facial recognition technology, X-Ray machines & body scanners and various forms of security personnel. Socio-demographic segments in the sample also became evident.
Read on...
This is a Rand Corporation Technical Report. Tom
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges for Prisoners
SUMMARY
Each year, hundreds of thousands of people are released from prison, many with health, substance abuse, economic and family problems that need to be addressed in order for them to become productive, law-abiding members of society.
From 2001 to 2008, staff at the Urban Institute analyzed the characteristics and experiences of prisoners returning from prison to homes in Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland and Houston. The study, Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry, aimed to enhance understanding of former prisoners and improve policies promoting their successful reentry into society.
Key Findings
- Two-thirds of prisoners reported more than weekly drug use or alcohol intoxication prior to incarceration.
- Some 80 percent of men and 90 percent of women had chronic health conditions requiring treatment or management.
- Many prisoners did not receive needed health services while incarcerated, and treatment rates were lower after release than before.
- Most recently released prisoners (68 percent of men, 58 percent of women) lacked health insurance eight to 10 months after release.
- Those with health problems of any kind were less likely to have made housing arrangements before release and reported more problems finding employment than those without such problems.
- Family members provided much economic and emotional support, and were the primary source of post-release housing.
- Eight to 10 months out, about one-third of former prisoners reported recent substance use, and by one year, one in five had been returned to prison.
The Vancouver Experiment
Does It Work?
One study of Vancouver's injection-drug users has taken harm reduction to a level even beyond Insite. In 2003, the same year that the supervised-injection site opened its doors, an epidemiologist named Martin Schecter began planning a trial that had never been conducted in North America: heroin maintenance. Would a daily course of heroin, administered in a clinical setting, release users from the destructive aspects of maintaining their addiction? Would it benefit society and allow users to stabilize their lives? Similar studies had been conducted in Europe with positive results. Switzerland alone has 38 heroin maintenance centers, and they are a fully integrated part of its national health system; Germany followed suit last year. Schecter, who has worked in Vancouver since the first signs of the AIDS epidemic in 1983, wanted to see whether such a program would make a difference in Canada.For the neighborhood's recovering addicts, the ability to escape the daily demands of supporting an addiction is often achieved with a dose of methadone. Methadone's relative benefits are well established: It is slow-acting. It greatly reduces cravings for heroin and blocks heroin's euphoric effects. When successful, methadone maintenance can give addicts their lives back. But there are high rates of relapse among long-term addicts.
Read on...
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Chapter 4 - A Ponzi Scheme of Torture
By Larry Siems
Created 02/03/2010 - 11:48
This chapter connects the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah, Jose Padilla, and Binyam Mohamed, three people who were allegedly involved in a ‘dirty bomb' plot that grew more fantastical the more the men were tortured. It traces how torture begat torture, first because bad information extracted through abusive interrogations led to more torture and more bad information, and finally because interrogations were being conducted not only, as the Bush administration has insisted, to produce new intelligence to thwart impending attacks but also to force confessions and extract information that it would use to justify its detention and torture of others.
At the center of this Chapter's “Ponzi scheme of torture” is Binyam Mohamed, a UK-based Ethiopian émigré who was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002, abused, flown to Morocco and tortured for 18 months, then flown to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan , where he was again tortured, and finally delivered, in September 2004, to Guantánamo. Once called Jose Padilla's accomplice in several diabolical terror plots and identified, with Abu Zubaydah, as the source of information about those planned attacks, Mohamed was released last year and is now living as a free man in London.
Read on...
Read on...
Rendition Victim Moves to Sue US
A Canadian man who was deported by US officials to Syria, where he was imprisoned and allegedly tortured, has appealed a court ruling preventing him from suing the US.
![[Arar was deported to Syria by US authorities where he was allegedly tortured. (Associated Press)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/arar_rendition.jpg "arar_rendition.jpg")
Arar was deported to Syria by US authorities where he was allegedly tortured. (Associated Press)
Maher Arar filed a lawsuit before the US supreme court on Monday, appealing a lower court ruling that rejected his case because it involved national security information.
Arar was deported to Syria by US authorities where he was allegedly tortured. (Associated Press)Maher Arar filed a lawsuit before the US supreme court on Monday, appealing a lower court ruling that rejected his case because it involved national security information.
Arar was arrested by US authorities while transiting through New York's JFK International Airport in 2002, on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunis.
He was detained on information shared by Canadian police that suggested he had ties to "terrorist" groups.
Charges against top cop Fantino dropped
OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino, left, and activist Gary McHale.
CAYUGA, ONT.— A criminal charge against Ontario’s top cop over allegations he tried to influence municipal officials was withdrawn Wednesday, a move that the activist who brought the private charge against provincial police Commissioner Julian Fantino vowed to fight.
Gary McHale has been pushing to have Fantino charged after the commissioner allegedly sent an email in 2007 telling the mayor and councillors in Caledonia, Ont., not to attend McHale’s rallies. McHale led a number of rallies in the community to protest what he called two-tier justice in the policing of an aboriginal land occupation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
