From 'Mercenaries' to 'private security contractors': The (re)construction of armed security providers in international legal discourses

The proliferation of armed security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan has led to widespread criticism of their insufficient control through international laws and conventions. This article suggests that one reason for this omission has been the (re)construction of actors who provide armed force for profit in international legal discourses. During most of the 20th century, armed persons who participated in foreign conflicts for monetary gain were identified as 'mercenaries'. They were outlawed through international legal documents such as the United Nations (UN) Convention on Mercenarism and given restricted rights in the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions. Today, the same types of actors are increasingly defined as 'private security contractors', and new discourses and international agreements are emerging that attribute to them legality and legitimacy. The aim of this article is to examine the changing legal constructions of armed security providers since the 1970s and the consequences with respect to their control. The article argues that the (re)construction of actors who supply armed force for money in international legal discourses has been made possible by three main discursive strategies: the distinction between persons and corporations providing armed force for profit, the changing focus from the motivations of these actors to their relationship to a 'responsible command', and the shift from a concern about the actors to one about certain activities. © The Author(s) 2012

The IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number: An Operational Guide to the ITIN Program

Examines the role of the IRS's ITIN in allowing immigrants and others without Social Security identification to report their income, open savings accounts, and obtain other legal status. Includes a guide to the ITIN application process

TCG based approach for secure management of virtualized platforms: state-of-the-art

There is a strong trend shift in the favor of adopting virtualization to get business benefits. The provisioning of virtualized enterprise resources is one kind of many possible scenarios. Where virtualization promises clear advantages it also poses new security challenges which need to be addressed to gain stakeholders confidence in the dynamics of new environment. One important facet of these challenges is establishing 'Trust' which is a basic primitive for any viable business model. The Trusted computing group (TCG) offers technologies and mechanisms required to establish this trust in the target platforms. Moreover, TCG technologies enable protecting of sensitive data in rest and transit. This report explores the applicability of relevant TCG concepts to virtualize enterprise resources securely for provisioning, establish trust in the target platforms and securely manage these virtualized Trusted Platforms

Challenges and Prospects for the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Recommendations to the European Commission for the Stockholm Programme. CEPS Working Document No. 313, 16 April 2009

The upcoming Swedish presidency of the EU will be in charge of adopting the next multi-annual programme on an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), during its tenure in the second half of 2009. As the successor of the 2004 Hague Programme, it has already been informally baptised as the Stockholm Programme and will present the EU’s policy roadmap and legislative timetable over these policies for the next five years. It is therefore a critical time to reflect on the achievements and shortcomings affecting the role that the European Commission’s Directorate-General of Justice, Freedom and Security (DG JFS) has played during the last five years in light of the degree of policy convergence achieved so far. This Working Document aims at putting forward a set of policy recommendations for the DG JFS to take into consideration as it develops and consolidates its future policy strategies, while duly ensuring the legitimacy and credibility of the EU’s AFSJ within and outside Europe

The Eligibility Definition Used in the Social Security Administration’s Disability Programs Needs to be Changed

In its October 2003 report on the definition of disability used by the Social Security Administration’s (SSA’s) disability programs [i.e., Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for people with disabilities], the Social Security Advisory Board raises the issue of whether this definition is at odds with the concept of disability embodied in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and, more importantly, with the aspirations of people with disabilities to be full participants in mainstream social activities and lead fulfilling, productive lives. The Board declares that “the Nation must face up to the contradictions created by the existing definition of disability.” I wholeheartedly agree. Further, I have concluded that we have to make fundamental, conceptual changes to both how we define eligibility for economic security benefits, and how we provide those benefits, if we are ever to fulfill the promise of the ADA. To convince you of that proposition, I will begin by relating a number of facts that paint a very bleak picture – a picture of deterioration in the economic security of the population that the disability programs are intended to serve; a picture of programs that purport to provide economic security, but are themselves financially insecure and subject to cycles of expansion and cuts that undermine their purpose; a picture of programs that are facing their biggest expenditure crisis ever; and a picture of an eligibility determination process that is inefficient and inequitable -- one that rations benefits by imposing high application costs on applicants in an arbitrary fashion. I will then argue that the fundamental reason for this bleak picture is the conceptual definition of eligibility that these programs use – one rooted in a disability paradigm that social scientists, people with disabilities, and, to a substantial extent, the public have rejected as being flawed, most emphatically through the passage of the ADA. Current law requires eligibility rules to be based on the premise that disability is medically determinable. That’s wrong because, as the ADA recognizes, a person’s environment matters. I will further argue that programs relying on this eligibility definition must inevitably: reward people if they do not try to help themselves, but not if they do; push the people they serve out of society’s mainstream, fostering a culture of isolation and dependency; relegate many to a lifetime of poverty; and undermine their promise of economic security because of the periodic “reforms” that are necessary to maintain taxpayer support. I conclude by pointing out that to change the conceptual definition for program eligibility, we also must change our whole approach to providing for the economic security of people with disabilities. We need to replace our current “caretaker” approach with one that emphasizes helping people with disabilities help themselves. I will briefly describe features that such a program might require, and point out the most significant challenges we would face in making the transition