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Mississippi House Votes to Ban Ticket Cameras; Missouri and Maryland Protest
Mississippi state House votes 117-3 to ban red light and speed cameras. Public protest against photo ticketing grows in Maryland and Missouri.

A near-unanimous Mississippi state House of Representatives voted Wednesday to ban red light cameras and speed cameras while anti-camera citizen protest movements gathered steam in other parts of the country. Mississippi state Representative Edward Blackmon, Jr. (D-Canton) inadvertently kicked off the effort when he introduced a measure designed to give legislative approval to the use of photo enforcement so long as ticket records were not shared with insurance companies. Blackmon’s proposal was a clever way to encourage the city councils of Jackson, McComb, Natchez, Southaven and Tupelo, all of which have approved red light camera ordinances, in the guise of placing limitations on automated ticketing machines.

The state House Judiciary Committee would have none of it. The panel rewrote Blackmon’s measure to ban not just the reporting of photo tickets to insurance companies, but also the issuance a photo ticket for any offense other than a toll violation.

“A civil or criminal traffic citation may not be issued as the result of the use of automated recording equipment on state, county or municipal highways, roads and streets, and any evidence obtained from such use shall not be reported to the Department of Public Safety for any purpose, to any person or entity for the use on any credit report or to any insurance company for insurance purposes,” House Bill 1568 now states.

Blackmon was one of only three House members who voted against the revised legislation which now heads to the state Senate for its consideration.

In the neighboring state of Missouri, a group of concerned Kansas City residents gathered this weekend to protest red light cameras. The event took place at the location of the city’s first red light camera which is to be activated later this week. The citizens’ group Liberty Restoration Project insisted that red light cameras increase accidents (view studies) and urged passersby to support Senate Bill 211, a measure that would ban all photo ticketing (view details). The legislation will be considered in a state Senate hearing this week.

At the same time in Maryland, a group of citizens gathered on Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase, just over the border from Washington, DC, to protest at the site of a notorious speed camera trap. Members of the newly formed DC.CameraFraud.com pointed out that the speed cameras were located on a six-lane boulevard — not a school zone or residential neighborhood as required by state law — and that the cameras themselves were hidden behind trees and signs. The group hopes to raise awareness in the Washington, DC metropolitan area as Virginia municipalities begin to re-install red light cameras, the District adds new speed cameras and the Maryland legislature contemplates using photo radar on freeways for the first time.

Article Excerpt:

Mississippi Legislature, Regular Session 2009
HOUSE BILL NO. 1568
Version as amended and passed by the House

AN ACT TO PROHIBIT TRAFFIC CITATIONS ISSUED AS THE RESULT OF THE USE OF ELECTRONIC SPEED SENSORS OR CAMERAS FROM BEING REPORTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY OR INSURANCE COMPANIES; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI:

SECTION 1.
(1) A civil or criminal traffic citation may not be issued as the result of the use of automated recording equipment on state, county or municipal highways, roads and streets, and any evidence obtained from such use shall not be reported to the Department of Public Safety for any purpose, to any person or entity for the use on any credit report or to any insurance company for insurance purposes. For the purpose of this section, the term “automated recording equipment” means a camera or optical device designed to record images that depict the vehicle, the vehicle operator, the license plate of the vehicle and/or other images to establish evidence that the vehicle or its operator is not in compliance with a law, ordinance, order or other provision imposed by the state or a political subdivision thereof, or the payment of tolls at toll facilities.

(2) Nothing in subsection (1) of this section shall be construed to prohibit the use of automated recording equipment to enforce the payment of tolls at toll facilities, as provided under Section 65-43-73.

SECTION 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2009.

Connecticut Governor Plans to Charge Drivers $171 Million
Connecticut motorists will pay $171 million more in non-tax increases to help balance the state budget.

Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell (R) is proposing a budget that increases the financial burden on drivers by $171 million in order to close the state’s growing $850 million deficit. Rell’s plan increases license and registration fees, imposes freeway speed cameras and assesses new charges on speeding tickets. If implemented, the programs would represent a permanent and steadily increasing source of revenue for the state.

“Governor Rell has produced a two-year spending plan that does not rely on any increased taxes,” the official budget summary explained. “The governor is keenly aware that the last thing our economy needs now is more money flowing from taxpayers’ wallets into the government’s hands.”

Under the proposal, $70 million a year would flow from the wallets of drivers into the hands of a private company operating four speed cameras on Interstate 95. That company would then place $35 million into the government’s hands after accounting for the expenses of operating the fixed and mobile devices. Rell has already put pressure on the state police to meet budget targets by increasing the number of speeding citations issued. The force responded with a sixteen percent boost that brought the total number of tickets issued last year to 75,000.

As more drivers get those speeding tickets, more would qualify for the proposed “driver responsibility program” that would impose a point and citation tax of up to $2000 on ticket recipients. The same idea has succeeded in bringing over a billion dollars in revenue to Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Texas (details). Rell’s budget conservatively estimated the new revenue at $27 million plus another $32.5 million from increasing the base cost of speeding tickets. In Virginia the abuser fee concept was so unpopular that Governor Tim Kaine (D) was forced last year not only to repeal the law but also to refund the fees already collected, admitting that the program failed to improve public safety.

Rell rounded out her proposal by “updating” driver’s license and registration fees so that motorists would hand over another $72.4 million to the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

The full plan requires approval of the state legislature which last year turned down the speed camera idea when the budget deficit stood at just $165 million.

S.C. becomes focal point to track funds for gangs, narcotics

South Carolina’s political and military leaders fear that U.S. street gangs are conspiring with international terrorists, an alarming scenario they said highlights the need for a specialized unit that targets major drug runners and their bankrollers.

And they want the South Carolina National Guard to run the federally-funded pilot program.

U.S. Reps. Joe Wilson and Henry Brown, both Republicans, have asked U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to back the creation of a military unit that would bridge a perceived security gap between the international drug trade and the war on terror.

“The National Guard has the capacity and the authority to play a unique role in our nation’s counter-narcotics mission,” Wilson told The Post and Courier. “The counter-narcotics pilot program would specifically target the illicit finance generated by the narcotics industry here at home and abroad which is used to fund terrorist operations around the world.”

Proponents said a successful program in South Carolina could serve as a national model and that several factors make the state a strategic location to set up shop:

–The state boasts an abundance of major military installations and resources that already serve key national security roles, including Charleston Air Force Base and its fleet of C-17s, Charleston’s port and the Navy brig, which has housed terrorism suspects.

–Organized gangs with international ties already are operating in the state. One of these organizations, the notorious Mara Salvatrucha-13 (MS-13), has possible links to hostile groups in Afghanistan and the Middle East, according to Wilson and Brown.

–Wilson cites a new report by the Congressional Research Service on the emerging international threat posed by the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. The report states that “alarms have been sounded in some circles that international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda could exploit alien and narcotics smuggling networks controlled by these gangs to infiltrate the United States.”

–The state National Guard already is working in some counter-narcotics programs, and its citizen soldiers are accustomed to collaborating in drug investigations with state and local law enforcement.

But questions remain. Among them: How strong is the evidence linking terrorists, gangs and drug-trafficking? How would this new program square with existing federal, state and local drug enforcement efforts? And is South Carolina the best place for this mission?

The gang connection

Gang activity in South Carolina has increased steadily over the past decade as these criminal organizations have spilled from urban centers into rural and suburban nooks across the nation in search of new territory and customers.

In 2004, the state Law Enforcement Division had identified 84 groups in South Carolina that fit a general definition of a gang: an organized group of five or more people who adopt a common name and engage in crime. By 2007, that figure had ballooned to 325 identified gangs, authorities said.

The number of crimes attributed to gangs has mushroomed as well. In 2007, gangs were linked to more than 950 crimes in South Carolina, including drug trafficking. By comparison, 370 gang-related crimes were reported statewide in 2001, according to SLED.

Many of these groups are what police describe as “hybrid gangs,” small, independent groups connected by turf or friendship. But highly organized gangs with cross-border connections also are present — gangs such as MS-13, Surenos, 18th Street and the Mexican Mafia.

“The number of Hispanic gangs is drastically growing,” said Special Agent Nicole Bryan, SLED’s coordinator on gangs in the Midlands. “As the Hispanic community has grown, Hispanic gangs have increased as part of that growth.”

Across the country, MS-13 and other gangs increasingly have become involved in narcotic trafficking at the wholesale level. They’ve cultivated connections with Mexican drug cartels and other power criminal organizations to gain access to international suppliers and large- volume shipments, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center. These affiliations have increased the availability of illegal drugs and the profits flowing out of the country.

The revenue stream is huge, with traffickers employing myriad of methods to launder and smuggle drug money to foreign destinations. The drug intelligence center estimates that Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers generate and launder as much as $39 billion in wholesale profits annually, much of which is smuggled out of the United States along the Mexican border.

Over the years, South Carolina has emerged as a key distribution point in this narcotics pipeline, serving as a smuggling route for drugs from California, Florida, Georgia, New York, Texas and Mexico. South Carolina’s location along Interstates 95 and 85, between New York and Florida, makes it ideal for drug runners shipping marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin along the Eastern Seaboard, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“Project 9496″

The pilot program would target this stealthy underworld of drugs and money. The new unit is shrouded in secrecy, with scant details of its origin, funding and status. The Pentagon refers to the program as “Project 9496.”

Col. Pete Brooks, director of public affairs for the S.C. National Guard, said it’s too early to talk about the effort in detail. “We are not even out of the blocks yet. This whole new mission is at the ‘good idea’ stage and is not funded.”

But a Jan. 14 letter from Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard J. Douglas to the National Guard Bureau indicates the pilot program already is approved. The letter states that the South Carolina Counter Narco-Terrorism Pilot Program is to be run and funded separately from an existing network of states’ National Guard counter-drug units.

Brooks said the pilot program would expand the South Carolina Guard’s anti-drug unit, which employs 40 full-time employees and hires about a dozen temporary workers each summer to help destroy marijuana crops.

The program receives about $1.6 million in federal money each year in support of the drug eradication efforts of SLED and local police agencies. How the two agencies would partner under the pilot program is unclear because SLED considers it only “an idea at this point,” according to a statement the agency issued in response to questions from the newspaper. Exactly how much the program would cost also remains unclear.

The letters of support from Brown and Wilson suggest that Gov. Mark Sanford also is pushing for the new mission. But Sanford’s press secretary, Joel Sawyer, said the governor was unaware of the proposal until The Post and Courier inquired about it.

After discussing the plans with state Guard officials, however, Sanford thinks the program is “an intriguing idea,” Sawyer said.

Still, the program’s status and future remains unclear. The National Guard Bureau said federal seed money was set aside only to study the program’s feasibility. The agency couldn’t provide a figure.

Tracking the money

Efforts to choke off terrorist financing began in earnest after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with then President George W. Bush announcing two weeks later a “major thrust of our war on terrorism … a strike on the financial foundation of the global terror network.”

Within months, the U.S. government froze the assets of dozens of alleged terrorists, banks and nonprofit groups.

Investigators learned that al-Qaida financiers used everything from electronic transfers to camels to move money and fund their operations. Making matters even more challenging was the existence of the hawala system, a centuries-old money loan and transfer system that is based on the honor system among brokers across the world.

Unlike traditional banking systems, which leave trails of paper and records, hawalas typically don’t keep records of individual transactions.

But financing experts and government officials have said tracking down terrorism financiers has suffered in recent years. A report last year by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force said international efforts have had limited success and that the United States and other countries need to create new counter-terrorism techniques.

Reports by the Government Accountability Office in the past two years have said the nation needs an “integrated strategy to coordinate the delivery of counter-terrorism financing training.” A Pentagon report in 2007 called for “one over-arching organization” devoted to international terrorism financing.

John Cassara, a former CIA officer and U.S. Treasury Department agent, said the military in recent years has become more focused on narco-terrorists and their paymasters. He said that this emphasis is a natural outgrowth of the military’s efforts in Afghanistan, where most of the world’s opium is produced.

“We’ve seen over the years how the Taliban has used it to bankroll their operations,” said Cassara, author of “Hide & Seek - Intelligence, Law Enforcement and the Stalled War on Terror Finance.” “The classic line is that if you take away the money, there’s no terrorism. The military realizes this.”

But Cassara said he hasn’t seen any solid evidence showing connections between Latin American gangs and Central Asian and Middle Eastern terrorism. “Could it happen? Absolutely. Does it happen? Frankly I don’t know,” he said, adding that organized criminal gangs are “opportunists, and they will naturally reach out to organizations that can facilitate their operations.”

A recent assessment from the National Drug Intelligence Center reached a similar conclusion, saying such connections are possible but not supported by evidence. The report identified U.S. prison gangs that have spread outside the bars as having the most potential for relationships with terrorists.

While government officials know of no concrete connection between gangs selling drugs in the United States and Middle East terrorist groups, authorities have long known that terrorist organizations in South America, especially in Colombia, fuel much of their activity with drug money. And authorities say they have watched with growing concern as Nigerian criminal groups increasingly have brought drugs, some of it from the Middle East, into this country, including the Southeast.

Poland: Man Uses Speed Camera to Power Neighborhood
It took more than a year to find a man used a nearby speed camera to power two neighborhood houses in Mragowo, Poland.

A 44-year-old Polish man came up with a better use for the speed camera that had constantly flashed outside his home in Mragowo, a town north of Warsaw. The man, identified by Warminsko-Mazurska police only as Piotr W., admitted last week to burying an extension cord two feet underground to tap into the automated ticketing machine’s power supply.

Between December 2007 and January 2009, the camera powered not only the man’s home, but that of a neighbor. It took more than a year before officials noticed that the electricity bill for the police was unusually high. On January 27, an officer who was sent out to investigate found the buried cord and followed it to Piotr’s home.

Upon being confronted, Piotr W. and girlfriend Anna M. immediately confessed to taking the power. In light of their cooperation, a judge suspended a jail sentence and ordered the man to repair the damage, pay a fine of 800 Zlotych (US $225), and pay back the city for the 4300 Zlotych (US $1200) in electricity taken.

Source: IPS

NEW YORK - In what promises to be the first major test of the Barack Obama administration’s new approach to the rule of law, the Supreme Court will soon hear what could be one of the most consequential cases in U.S. history.

It will be asked to answer the question: Can a U.S. president declare a legal resident an ‘enemy combatant’ and hold him or her indefinitely without charge or trial?

The legal U.S. resident in question is Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been detained in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina since June 2003. Al-Marri is the only remaining person held in the United States as an “enemy combatant”. He is being represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The case, Al-Marri v. Spagone, is a habeas corpus action, challenging al-Marri’s indefinite detention. The defendant is Navy Commander Daniel Spagone, who runs the Navy brig in South Carolina where Al-Marri is being held by the military.

The central pre-Supreme Court question is what position the new Obama administration will take when it files its brief, currently due on Mar. 23. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments during the last week of April and is expected to hand down its ruling in June. The brief filed by the government in the lower courts during the George W. Bush administration defended the president’s authority to designate “enemy combatants” and to detain them indefinitely.

The ACLU says that the Al-Marri case “provides the Obama administration with an early and critical opportunity to repudiate the abuses of the past eight years and restore the rule of law.”

Jonathan Hafetz, ACLU’s lead attorney on the Al-Marri case, told IPS, “This is one of most extreme examples of the Bush administration’s abuse of executive power. It is a case where President Bush sought to push the outer limits of the Constitution. It is legally and morally indefensible.”

A separate case, Al-Marri v. Gates, is contesting al-Marri’s abusive treatment and conditions of confinement at the Navy brig.

Al-Marri, a Qatari national, came lawfully to the United States in September 2001with his wife and five children to pursue a master’s degree at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. He was arrested by the FBI at his home that December and subsequently indicted for credit card fraud and false identification.

Al-Marri asserted his innocence and prepared to contest the charges. But on Jun. 23, 2003, on the eve of a hearing to suppress illegally seized evidence and less than a month before trial, President Bush declared al-Marri an al Qaeda agent and designated him an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terrorism”. That same day, the military took custody of al-Marri and incarcerated him in the Navy brig, where he has been detained without charge ever since.

At stake in Al-Marri v. Spagone is whether the president can order the military to seize and detain indefinitely, without charge or trial, individuals lawfully residing in the United States, including U.S. citizens, based on government assertions that they planned to commit terrorist activities.

In 2007, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the government cannot hold individuals arrested in this country in military detention without charge.

But in July 2008, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in a narrowly divided decision that the president had legal authority to imprison al-Marri indefinitely without charge based on the facts alleged. As one judge noted in dissent, however, to accept the government’s claim of extraordinary detention power would have “disastrous consequences for the Constitution - and the country”.

The ACLU says Al-Marri’s detention represents “one of the gravest expansions of executive detention power since Sep. 11.” The United States was founded on the principle that “individuals living in this country cannot be imprisoned without charge and that civilian government must remain supreme over the military. Al-Marri’s detention represents a radical departure from that celebrated legal tradition - one that was never authorised by Congress and that violates the Constitution.”

According to the ACLU, documents recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that standard operating procedures developed for Guantánamo Bay “were secretly applied at the Navy brig in an effort to create a prison beyond the law within the United States. Today, al-Marri remains in virtual isolation at the Brig, denied even meaningful communication with his family.”

“It is clearly illegal to imprison legal residents of the United States without trial. It is also the type of false choice between our safety and our ideals that has pervaded America’s approach to fighting terrorism for the past eight years,” said the ACLU’S Hafetz. “We are confident that upon review, the Court will strike down this radical departure from our nation’s most basic values and traditions.”

Former United States Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, former FBI Director William Sessions and numerous former generals, admirals and diplomats joined the ACLU in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the president’s authority to indefinitely imprison a legal resident of the U.S. without charge or trial. These and other top military and civilian leaders have filed friend-of-the-court briefs.

“A decision upholding our government’s right to arrest and imprison anyone within its borders, without charge, will not only undercut our ability to convince dictatorial regimes to abandon similar practices, it will substantially undermine efforts to restore our international reputation and to obtain more cooperation from our allies in combating terrorism,” they said in the brief.

The second Al-Marri case, Al-Marri v. Gates, contests al-Marri’s treatment and conditions of confinement since he was declared an “enemy combatant”. During the first 16 months of his military confinement, al-Marri was held incommunicado and subjected to a range of highly coercive interrogation measures, including being held in total isolation, exposed to painful stress positions, shackled in a freezing cell for hours at a time, and threatened with violence and death.

Al-Marri is the second U.S. person to have been held as an enemy combatant within the United States. The first was José Padilla, a United States citizen. Padilla was arrested in Chicago in May 2002, and was detained as a material witness until Jun. 9 2002, when President Bush designated him an illegal enemy combatant and transferred him to a military prison, arguing that he was thereby not entitled to trial in civilian courts.

Padilla was held for three-and-a-half years as an “enemy combatant” after his arrest on suspicion of plotting a radioactive “dirty bomb” attack. That charge was dropped when his case was moved to a civilian court after pressure from civil liberties groups.

In August 2007, Padilla was found guilty by a federal jury of charges that he conspired to kill people in an overseas jihad and to fund and support overseas terrorism. He was sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison.