US federal contractors, stimulus fund recipients to have employees checked against Big Brother E-Verify system

U.S. to require contractors to use E-Verify

Starting Sept. 8, only those firms that use the online program, which checks whether employees are in the country legally and are authorized to work, will be eligible for federal contracts.

7.9.09 / Anna Gorman / LA Times

The Obama administration continued its push for a legal workforce Wednesday with an announcement that federal contractors and subcontractors would soon be required to verify that their employees are eligible to work in the U.S.

Beginning Sept. 8, the government will award contracts only to companies that enroll in E-Verify, an online program that uses federal databases to check whether employees are in the country legally and authorized to work. Businesses receiving money under the federal stimulus program also will be subjected to the rule, adopted under President George W. Bush but never implemented.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced plans to throw out a rule that would have allowed the federal government to use mismatched Social Security data to find illegal immigrants in the workplace.

The “no-match” rule had been on hold since October 2007, when a federal judge in San Francisco decided that punishing companies that didn’t clear up discrepancies between names and Social Security numbers would cause “irreparable harm to innocent workers.” Groups that filed the lawsuit against the government argued that some mistakes are just mistakes and not proof of fraud.

“The idea is to make sure that we are providing employers with a system of employee verification that is accurate, respects the laws of privacy and is truly a good and strong model to maintain a legal workforce,” said Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler.

Separately, the Senate passed an amendment Wednesday that would mandate the use of E-Verify by federal contractors and subcontractors.

Napolitano’s move comes one week after her department notified more than 650 businesses nationwide of pending audits of their employment records. The department also recently issued guidelines for immigration agents to go after employers rather than just workers.

Supporters of E-Verify said the expansion of the effort to federal contractors and subcontractors would help crack down on illegal immigrants in the workforce and could help stem the flow of migrants across the border. Critics said mandating the program for federal contractors would only slow the country’s economic recovery.

Randel Johnson, vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Wednesday that although some employers hadn’t had any problems with E-Verify, others had received inaccurate information from the government’s database.

“It should be rolled out slowly and tested rather than being applied to the employer community immediately,” he said.

The chamber filed a lawsuit in 2008 to prevent the government from implementing the contractor requirement, arguing that the president did not have the authority to mandate a voluntary program.

Other business groups praised the administration for Wednesday’s move but said more needed to be done, such as legalizing undocumented workers.

“We believe, of course, that there has to be a mechanism to verify the legal work status of employees,” said Beto Cardenas, executive counsel to Americans for Immigration Reform, a Houston-based coalition of businesses. “But we also believe that immigration reform has to be brought.”

American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Jenny Chang Newell called the decision to abandon the no-match rule “a victory for all American workers.”

The ACLU was a plaintiff in the suit that prompted the ruling in San Francisco two years ago. But Newell said she had concerns about the E-Verify requirement and its potential to cause discrimination and unlawful firings based on inaccurate databases.

“Rather than punishing American workers for errors in the government’s own databases, the administration should enforce the workplace rights of all workers,” she said.e

AIG seeking government clearance to pay bonuses

Problem-Reaction-Solution. AIG gets trashed by the media, then government has the excuse to do this. AIG is run by crooks of course, but I hope everyone can see where this is going.

 

 

AIG Seeks Clearance to Release Bonuses

 

 

7.10.09 / Liam Pleven & Deborah Solomon / Wall Street Journal

 

 

American International Group Inc. is asking the Obama administration’s new compensation czar whether it should pay previously agreed-to retention bonuses, including about $235 million pending for employees at the insurer’s controversial financial products unit, according to people familiar with the matter.

AIG asked Kenneth Feinberg to weigh in on the bonuses after the last round of multimillion dollar payments in March sparked an outpouring of public frustration amid the financial crisis. Before Mr. Feinberg was appointed, AIG had pledged to try to reduce the overall payments for this year’s performance to a few hundred employees at the financial products unit by 30%.

It had also delayed a much smaller set of payments to 40 high-ranking AIG officials that it is set to begin paying next week — payments for 2008 performance. Mr. Feinberg is expected to issue a decision on the 2008 payments although his primary job with regard to AIG will be to deal with compensation issues going forward, including whether to allow the company to pay bonuses slated for 2009.

The aim of the current negotiations with Mr. Feinberg, according to the people familiar with the matter, is to come to an agreement that lets employees keep enough of the promised bonuses to serve as an effective incentive, but reduces the payments by enough to make them more palatable to the public.

“We have been giving a lot of thought to this,” said an AIG official. “We don’t want there to be any surprises.”

The request from AIG puts Mr. Feinberg and the government in a potentially sensitive position of either having to endorse ongoing payments of whatever amount, or trying to block them and risk setting in motion employee departures that could prove costly to AIG and potentially the broader financial system.

Dealing with AIG is expected to be one of the thorniest tasks for Mr. Feinberg, who has the power to set pay for the top executives and design compensation structures for the most highly compensated 100 employees at seven firms receiving the most aid from the government.

The Obama administration was embarrassed in March after the original AIG bonuses were disclosed. The administration had been looking to rein in excessive pay, at one point proposing a salary cap for top executives.

President Barack Obama pledged to do all he could to recoup the money, but the administration concluded it couldn’t stop the payments because they were contractual obligations. A firestorm ensued, with Congress attempting to tax Wall Street bonuses.

More broadly, compensation has proved one of the most explosive issues amid the financial crisis, with companies scrambling to repay federal aid in part to avoid government scrutiny and control over their pay practices.

Any decision on AIG bonuses — and payments to employees at other firms receiving bailout money — will be scrutinized on Capitol Hill. Indeed, the administration tapped Mr. Feinberg in part to deflect some of the criticism.

The pending $235 million in retention bonuses at AIG’s financial products unit, whose woes were largely responsible for forcing AIG to the brink of bankruptcy court last year, are part of roughly $450 million in retention bonuses for that unit that AIG has previously disclosed. AIG agreed in early 2008 to make those payments, months before it received a government bailout. The first installment of those payments was made late last year, after the bailout.

The second installment came due in March, and it was the preparations to make those payments that set off the prior controversy. The next installment of payments to the financial products unit employees is not due to be paid for months. AIG has argued that it is obligated to make these payments, and that keeping employees in their jobs is crucial to avoiding additional losses on trades that the unit still has in place and is trying to wind down.

The government has said it stepped in to rescue AIG because it feared a collapse of the company could damage the broader financial system. In the bailout, the government has made up to $173 billion in aid available to AIG.

In a statement, Treasury said: “Companies will need to convince Mr. Feinberg that they have struck the right balance to discourage excessive risk taking and reward performance for their top executives. That process is just beginning now, and Mr. Feinberg has begun consulting with those firms about their compensation plans.”

NAU creeping up: Gun hunt cooperation between Mexico and US feds on the rise

They know where the cartels are really getting their supply of weapons.  This has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with merging the Mexican and American intelligence/police communities under the North American Union. Read my 3 for 1 sale for the New World Order article.

Federal agents hunt for guns, one house at a time

6.30.09 / Dane Schiller / Houston Chronicle

In front of a run-down shack in north Houston, federal agents step from a government sedan into 102-degree heat and face a critical question: How can the woman living here buy four high-end handguns in one day?

The house is worth $35,000. A screen dangles by a wall-unit air conditioner. Porch swing slats are smashed, the smattering of grass is flattened by cars and burned yellow by sun.

“I’ll do the talking on this one,” agent Tim Sloan, of South Carolina, told partner Brian Tumiel, of New York.

Success on the front lines of a government blitz on gunrunners supplying Mexican drug cartels with Houston weaponry hinges on logging heavy miles and knocking on countless doors. Dozens of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — sent here from around the country — are needed to follow what ATF acting director Kenneth Melson described as a “massive number of investigative leads.”

All told, Mexican officials in 2008 asked federal agents to trace the origins of more than 7,500 firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Most of them were traced back to Texas, California and Arizona.

Among other things, the agents are combing neighborhoods and asking people about suspicious purchases as well as seeking explanations as to how their guns ended up used in murders, kidnappings and other crimes in Mexico.

“Ever turning up the heat on cartels, our law enforcement and military partners in the government of Mexico have been working more closely with the ATF by sharing information and intelligence,” Melson said Tuesday during a firearms-trafficking summit in New Mexico.

Firearms dealers visited

The ATF recently dispatched 100 veteran agents to its Houston division, which reaches to the border.

The mission is especially challenging because, officials say, that while Houston is the number one point of origin for weapons traced back to the United States from Mexico, the government can’t compile databases on gun owners under federal law.

Agents instead review firearms dealers’ records in person.

People who are legally in the United States and have clean criminal records, but are facing economic problems are often recruited by traffickers to buy weapons on their behalf in order to shield themselves from scrutiny.

Knocks at the door of the shack that looked to be the definition of hard times went unanswered.

“I am out of here,” Sloan said a few moments later, as a pit bull lazily sauntered from the back yard. “I don’t like pit bulls walking up behind me.”

Best information source

On second thought, Sloan switched to Spanish and interviewed a neighbor.

The neighbor said the woman left a month ago after a fight with her husband or boyfriend, who still lived there with what she called “other degenerates.”

“An angry ex-girlfriend or wife is the best person in the world, the greatest source of information,” Sloan said.

The night before, the duo were in a stakeout where they watched a weapons sale.

They also combined efforts with the Drug Enforcement Administration for an aircraft to stealthily follow traffickers to the border.

On this day, agents weren’t wearing raid jackets or combat boots and weren’t armed with warrants.

Guns were hidden under civilian shirts.

Another tip took agents on a 30-minute drive from the shack to a sprawling home with a pool in the back and an American flag out front.

It turned out two handguns, of a type drug gangsters prefer, were bought by a pastor for target practice.

Some stories, they say, are hard to believe.

The lamest so far came from a police officer: He said he bought a few military-style rifles, left them in his car and — on the same night — forgot to lock a door. He couldn’t explain why he didn’t file a police report or why he visited Mexico the day after the alleged theft.

In Italy, memories of Mussolini Blackshirts churn over legalization of vigilante militia patrols

Fears over fascism as Italy revives ‘Blackshirt’ vigilantes

5.16.09 / Nick Squires / Independent.ie

Italy has sanctioned the creation of vigilante patrols for the first time since Mussolini’s notorious Blackshirt volunteer militia.

A new law gives an official stamp of approval to vigilante groups that have sprung up in several Italian cities, especially in the northern strongholds of the right wing, anti-immigrant Northern League.

The vigilantes can alert police to public order offences or suspected criminals but don’t have the power of arrest.

One group, known as the Italian National Guard, claims to have 2,000 members. It plans to dress its members in khaki shirts, black ties and black armbands bearing a red symbol that critics say resembles a swastika.

The opposition Democratic Party warned that such groups set a dangerous precedent and harked back to Italy’s fascist past.

“There was a period in Italy’s history in which security was entrusted to people who went around in shirts of the same colour and we don’t want to return to that,” its leader, Dario Franceschini, warned.

The accusation prompted an angry response from the government, which said the vigilante patrols were a legitimate means of combating crime.

“Blackshirts? Just the words disgust me,” said Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni.

The law was part of a sweeping security package passed by parliament in response to widespread concerns about crime and immigration. It makes illegal entry or residence on Italian soil an offence punishable by fines of up to €10,000.

Warning

Meanwhile, the United Nations refugee agency warned Italy yesterday that its policy of towing migrant boats back to the Libyan coast broke international conventions, but Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government vowed to continue.

Laurens Jolles, the UNHCR’s representative in Italy, met Mr Maroni to complain about the deportation of migrants intercepted at sea, which began earlier this month amid steadily warming ties with Libya.

Mr Jolles said after the meeting that such repatriations contradicted the 1951 Geneva Convention, which was applicable even in international waters.

The UNHCR says the hundreds of people deported in recent weeks included asylum seekers and it called on Italy to accept them back.

“The repatriations will go ahead, as foreseen in the agreement between Libya and Italy,” Mr Maroni said after the interview.

It’s Fight the Smears meets Big Brother — FTC pushing power to shut down websites making “false claims”

Feds To Get Power To Target Websites Making “False Claims”

New FTC guidelines would allow government to scrutinize content of websites, “patrol what bloggers say and do”

6.22.09 / Paul Joseph Watson / Propaganda Matrix

The Federal Reserve refuses to disclose where trillions of dollars in bailout money went and yet the FTC is more concerned about snooping into the financial affairs of bloggers who make a few bucks off affiliate relationships, according to new guidelines set to be introduced later this year that would give the government a foot in the door to regulate and shut down blogs for making “false claims”.

“New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers — as well as the companies that compensate them — for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest,” states an Associated Press report.

Furious that struggling families are supplementing their income by having housewives write blogs about cooking, or individuals posting political opinions and funding their operation by carrying affiliate links to Amazon books, the new FTC regulations would ensure that “Any type of blog could be scrutinized, not just ones that specialize in reviews,” according to the report.

The proviso that “any type of blog could be scrutinized” frames this assault on free speech in a wider context that just individuals making claims about products advertised on their websites.

The proposed guidelines (PDF) state that “deceptive speech is not protected by the First Amendment,” and that “The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that the government can restrict, or even ban, such speech.” Of course, the issue of whether such speech is deceptive will be decided by the government itself.

The definition of “false claims” is so loose that it could hand the feds the power to shut down any website on a whim based on the flimsiest of pretexts. The AP report notes that the new guidelines would create a system to “patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online”.

As the Cryptogon website points out, in reality this has little to do with the FTC’s concern for fair business practices and everything to do with the government getting a foot in the door for their overarching agenda to regulate and control blogs and free speech on the Internet.

“What has happened is that bloggers have blown the support columns out from underneath traditional media and the people who run the show don’t like that.”

“The fact that some of us are able to survive by maintaining blogs must have come as an incredible shock to fat bastards in boardrooms across the land. That we are not “regulated” is unthinkable in the Soviet hive mind that governs the political economy of the United States.”

This is all about creating a chilling atmosphere and preventing people from creating their own websites by establishing a mountain of red tape and bureaucracy around the currently simple process of writing and maintaining a blog.

The ultimate endgame is to mimic the Chinese Internet system of total government regulation and censorship via the implementation of a registration process whereby every blogger will be assigned a number and given permission to blog by the government. If the blogger expresses an opinion deemed unsavory by the authorities then their registration credentials will be terminated and their ability to login to their own blog will be removed.

US Defense Department exam links protest with “low-level terrorism”

What’s hillarious about this is, the US State Department contacted Twitter and asked them to stay online so Iranians could coordinate protest plans on it, effectively themselves providing material aid to low-level terrorism, in the DOD’s view!

Defense Department sees protests as terrorism

6.10.09 / Josh Richtman / Oakland Tribune

This is a sampling of political writers Josh Richman and Lisa Vorderbrueggen’s blog, The Political Blotter. Read more at www.ibabuzz.com/politics.

June 10

Antiterrorism training materials used by the Department of Defense teach that public protests should be regarded as “low-level terrorism,” according to a letter of complaint sent to the department by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

“Teaching employees that dissent on issues of public concern is something to be feared, rather than encouraged, is a dangerously counterproductive use of scarce security resources, making us less safe as a democracy,” Northern California ACLU staff attorney Ann Brick and ACLU Washington national security policy counsel Michael German wrote in the letter to Gail McGinn, acting undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness.

“DOD employees cannot accomplish their mission of protecting our nation and its values unless they understand that those values encompass the right to criticize our government through protest activities,” they wrote. “It is imperative that they are taught the difference between political, religious or social activism and terrorism.”

Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course — an annual training requirement for all DOD personnel that is fulfilled through Web-based instruction — the department asks the following: “Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?” To answer correctly, the examinee must select “protests.” The ACLU wants that changed immediately, and it wants corrective information sent to all Department of Defense employees who received the training.The ACLU letter notes that this is particularly disturbing in light of the long-term pattern of government treating lawful dissent as terrorism. In the Bay Area, my colleagues and I reported exactly this in 2003, as the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center fed local police agencies information on protests, with catastrophic results. Two years after that, it was the California National Guard.

I guess I’m surprised not only that the government hasn’t yet learned its lesson about equating the exercise of our cherished constitutional rights with terrorism, but also that it’s so incredibly obvious in doing so.

Australian bankers: Cash to be replaced by microchips within years

Cash to become extinct as chips take off

6.15.09 / Anthony Keane / The Advertizer

CASH is accelerating down the path to extinction as new technologies threaten to mark the end of loose change within a decade.

Bank and credit union bosses say cash won’t be alone, with wallets and credit cards also likely to disappear too.

They told The Advertiser’s round table forum that cash and cards will be replaced by computer chips embedded in mobile phones, watches or other portable devices.

Australian Central chief executive Peter Evers believes cash will be replaced for most transactions in five-to-seven years.

“Cash will disappear as there will be other forms of carrying cash, stored value in your phone or whatever it might be. It will transfer automatically,” he said.

“We’re very close in countries around the world. If you go in to Hong Kong or Singapore, the low-value transactions have already disappeared. You can’t go anywhere, like on public transport, without pre-purchasing a card.

“I think the Australian Payment Systems Board is very much on top of it and is trying to move down a path, but hasn’t publicly put things into place yet.”

BankSA general manager strategy and operations Chris Ward expects Australia to follow the offshore lead, with small cash transactions disappearing first.

“So you can’t go and buy a bottle of water from the deli with cash; you’ve got to go and buy it with your chip,” he said.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank state manager SA/NT John Oliver said it was easier for retailers to use electronic transactions than manual cash transactions.

Savings & Loans chief executive Greg Connor said the concept of the wallet would go.

“Whereas now we have a wallet and purse, it will be a chip in your phone or your watch or something like that as your access,” he said.

Mr Evers said credit cards were on the way out as well.

“The access to credit is still going to be there through the mobile phone, but you don’t need the card because that’s really only a means of identification,” he said.

“There could be another way of identifying, but the product, revolving credit, will still sit there.”

Digital TV switch opens electronic door to new frontier of Big Brother censors

Digital TV Switch Opens Electronic Door to Censors – and Spies?

Addressable” remote technology allows would-be “big brothers” to block channels, or programs,  from certain viewers.

• A way to control authorized viewing — or to censor and harass “targeted” persons by messing up their signal?

• Electronic surveillance built into the algorithm?

1.27.09 / Vic Livingston / Now Public

Lost amid the hype surrounding the transition to digital television is the fact that DTV technology is addressable.  That is, digital TV sets or DTV set-top converter boxes only will receive channels that have been previously scanned in;  the devices will not “address” any other channels that may be in the broadcast data stream.  But here’s what’s not widely known, and rarely discussed:

DTV technology provides an electronic means for third parties to selectively control the programming available to each set or converter box.  The most frequently cited reason is a need to regulate access to proprietary programming available by subscription only, or to prevent home recording of copyrighted material such as recently released movies.

But the technology also allows a would-be censor to block channels, or programs, from certain groups of viewers, or from the entire audience.

And, of course, DTV will be mandatory once traditional analog signals are taken down for good.  The Obama administration has asked Congress to pushed that date back to June 12 of this year out of concern that millions of American TV households wouldn’t have been ready in time for the previous DTV deadline of February 17th.  But as of this writing, the House has refused to go along, leaving the Feb. 17th deadline in place, at least for now.

The DTV technology also raises another little-known peril: the specter of what might be termed “rogue censorship” perpetrated by technically savvy video saboteurs equipped with a remote control device and the DTV address of “targeted” viewers.

And how would a “big brother” know the “address” of each set, or box?  Easy!  The DTV boxes are being subsidized by government coupons, so the government is collecting a huge database of DTV addresses.  As for buyers of high-definition or standard-definition digital sets, would-be TV censors could demand customer data under the provisions of sweeping laws such as the USA Patriot Act (unless, that is, if Congress restores civil liberties in America by scaling back the law’s draconian provisions).

Rogue government agents or private sector video vandals who dare to violate constitutionally-protected rights by using DTV technology as a tool of psychological harassment and control wouldn’t necessarily need the precise “address” in advance.  A technically sophisticated operation could decrypt the access key just by being in proximity to the set or converter box.  That’s because each set or box (or computer, for that matter) radiates an electronic field that can be accessed by hi-tech equipment in possession of spy outfits such as the National Security Agency — providing another possible gateway to remote manipulation of  DTV broadcast channels.

Tekkies long have known that DTV specs require a so-called “broadcast flag” to prevent unauthorized recording or reception of programming by unauthorized viewers.  That same built-in screening technology is what opens the door to potential censorship of broadcast TV programming.

To be more specific, DTV’s addressability features allow certain channels to be blocked;  reception can be degraded (pixelization — blocking and streaking — or a sudden “fade to black”); or, perhaps, an alternate message could be broadcast to “targeted” users, what would be a chilling echo of that old Apple Macintosh “Big Brother” commercial.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

Now here’s the really intriguing part:  Some tekkies insist that the DTV technology could be used to turn any DTV set or set-top converter box into an electronic eavesdropping “bug” — using the connection to the set’s speakers as pre-installed microphones.

http://hardtruth.navhost.com/cable.html

Electronically, turning DTV into an audio surveillance device would be a simple task.  But is that capability really built into consumer units?   If electronics industry or government insiders know, they aren’t telling.

(Anyone in the biz who wants to rat this out:  Please post here, with some hard evidence to back up the claim.)

Some spy hypothesizers speculate that pinhole video cameras may be built into sets and boxes;  while plausible, the assignation of DTV as an in-home video voyeur remains just that — speculation.

DTV addressability, however, is very real.  Victims of so-called “organized community gang-stalking” by citizen vigilantes affiliated with government-sponsored community watch, policing, and anti-terrorism groups say that malicious harassers already are randomly disrupting the DTV reception of their “targets” as a malicious method of psychological intimidation — what might be termed “video psy ops.”

That’s not merely speculation; I believe that has happened to this journalist, and to other “targets” of covert surveillance and “programs of personal destruction” created or expanded during the Bush-Cheney years.  Is it just coincidence that the DTV specs were formulated during the first five years of the Bush era?

As Special Agent Jethro Gibbs of TV’s N.C.I.S. is wont to say:  “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

(Vic Livingston is a former editor of the trade journals CableVision and TV/Radio Age.)

THE NEXUS BETWEEN PERVASIVE SURVEILLANCE AND ‘THE AMERICAN GESTAPO’:

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/gestapo-usa-govt-funded-vigilante-network-targets-terrorizes-u-s-citizens

Obama wrecking crew wants college intel agency spy training program

Actually this is also at the high school level. In my last year I witnessed a kid being recruited right in front of me by my health teacher. This is just them publicly announcing what they’ve been doing secretly already. The plan is to finish crashing the economy and then promptly steer everyone into some form of military or intel agency service, regardless of age.

Obama Administration Looks to Colleges for Future Spies

6.20.09 / Walter Pincus / Washington Post

To the list of collegiate types — nerds, jocks, Greeks — add one more: spies in training. The government is hoping they’ll be hard to spot.

The Obama administration has proposed the creation of an intelligence officer training program in colleges and universities that would function much like the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps run by the military services. The idea is to create a stream “of first- and second-generation Americans, who already have critical language and cultural knowledge, and prepare them for careers in the intelligence agencies,” according to a description sent to Congress by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair.

In recent years, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have struggled to find qualified recruits who can work the streets of the Middle East and South Asia to penetrate terrorist groups and criminal enterprises. The proposed program is an effort to cultivate and educate a new generation of career intelligence officers from ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds.

Under the proposal, part of the administration’s 2010 intelligence authorization bill, colleges and universities would apply for grants that would be used to expand or introduce courses of study to “meet the emerging needs of the intelligence community.” Those courses would include certain foreign languages, analysis and specific scientific and technical fields.

The students’ participation in the program would probably be kept secret to prevent them from being identified by foreign intelligence services, according to an official familiar with the proposal.

Students attending participating colleges and universities who agree to take the specialized courses would apply to the national intelligence director for admittance to the program, whose administrators would select individuals “competitively” for financial assistance. Much like the support provided to those in the military programs, the financial assistance could include “a monthly stipend, tuition assistance, book allowances and travel expenses,” according to the proposal. It also would involve paid summer internships at one or more intelligence agencies.

Applicants to the intelligence training program would have to pass a security background investigation, although it is unclear when they would have to do so. Students who receive a certain amount of financial assistance would be obligated to serve in an intelligence agency for the same length of time as they received their subsidy.

Students in the military programs typically participate for all four years of college, but the intelligence program would seek to recruit sophomores and juniors.

Through grants to colleges and universities, intelligence agencies have been building partnerships with academia and specific professors, some of whom in past decades served as channels for recommending applicants to the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The intelligence community already has a Centers of Academic Excellence Program that funds programs in national security studies at more than 14 colleges and universities, with a goal of having 20 participating schools by 2015. The programs receive between $500,000 and $750,000 a year.

The intelligence officer training program would build on two earlier efforts. One was a pilot program, first authorized in 2004, for as many as 400 students who took cryptologic training and agreed to work for the National Security Agency or another intelligence agency for each year they received financial assistance. That program will be replaced by the new one because cryptology is not as needed as it once was.

A second program provided financial assistance to selected intelligence community employees who agreed to study in specialized academic areas in which officials believed there were analytic deficiencies.

Named the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, after the Kansas Republican who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, over the past four years it has provided funds to some 800 students and current employees.

The director of national intelligence would make the Roberts program permanent under the new proposal and expand it beyond analysts to include personnel in acquisition, science and technology. It also could be used to help recruit employees by reimbursing them for prior education in critical areas.

Cambridge University researchers working on portable personal power consumption meter

Researchers ready personal energy monitoring devices

6.17.09 / John Walko / EE Times

LONDON — Researchers at Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory are developing a device that will record people’s daily energy consumption, including how they travel, the heating and appliances they use and also the indirect energy they use from the manufacture of food and goods that they consume.

The project is part of a wider research programme at the University called Computing for the Future of the Planet.

Dubbed the Personal Energy Meter (PEM), the research team suggests the final version could be a separate device or one embedded into a mobile phone.

“The research is in its early stages and personal energy meters will never become compulsory but the growing awareness of personal responsibility to the environment combined with the popularity of social networking and willingness to share information make the idea of PEM an achievable goal,” says Professor Andy Hopper who heads up the Computer Lab at the University of Cambridge.

The PEM is just one strand of current research into Computing for the Future of the Planet. Other areas include optimising digital infrastructures to reduce power consumption; developing computing techniques to make consistent and reliable predictions; harnessing more information to understand our changing environment and optimise the use of resources; and exploring the shift from physical to digital operations.

“We face considerable technical and practical challenges,” said Simon Hay of Cambridge University’s Computer Lab. “Our Personal Energy Meter builds on existing environmental foot-printing efforts by considering if it is possible to apportion a fair share of the energy consumed by an activity or artefact down to a personal level. We believe that it is possible to make the process virtually automatic, so that PEM users are free to go about their day normally without manually entering data.”

Hay adds the increasing use of mobile phones makes it an obvious device to host the PEM that will also minimise the energy overhead of manufacturing and using the PEM itself.

The type of techniques used to estimate energy consumed on a particular journey are said to include embedded data mining, inertial sensors and GPS.