Fixing FISA for Long War: Regulating Warrantless Surveillance in the Age of Terrorism

[Excerpt] “The English poet W.H. Auden once claimed that “Peeping Toms are never praised, like novelists or bird watchers, for the keenness of their observations.” Perhaps Auden would have modified his maxim had he lived in the age of terrorism. A certain degree of government surveillance of even intimate communications is expected, encouraged, and indeed praised when the government’s efforts lead to the prevention of catastrophe. However, it is also expected that the government will minimize these intrusions, will conduct surveillance only on legitimate targets, and will follow the procedural safeguards that the representatives of the people have enacted in their name. As the Bush Administration has recently discovered, where these caveats are (or are perceived to have been) disrespected, government surveillance is perceived to degenerate into an illegitimate invasion of privacy and arbitrary abuse of power. On December 16, 2005, the New York Times revealed that, shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, the White House surreptitiously authorized the National Security Agency (“NSA”) to conduct surveillance on Americans inside the United States. This search for evidence of terrorist activity without first obtaining a court-approved warrant was in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) and in possible abrogation of the Fourth Amendment. […] In this article, assuming that the warrantless searches are necessary and that strict compliance with FISA in its current form would inhibit the collection of intelligence vital to national security, I will suggest amendments to FISA that would create a new independent body, appointed by the FISC, with the power to review the NSA’s warrantless searches and with the standing to challenge the constitutionality of individual searches before the FISC. Where an individual’s constitutional rights have been violated, the agency would be able to collect damages on his behalf and to move for an injunction on continued surveillance. I will also suggest statutory limitations restricting the admissibility of evidence gathered through warrantless surveillance in criminal prosecutions. Before I offer any suggestions for the amendment of FISA, however, I will describe in further detail the purpose and relevant provisions of the law to be amended and the deficiencies of the Administration’s legal justifications for bypassing those provisions. Because the Administration believes that the President has the inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches pursuant to his power as Commander-in-Chief, it does not believe that amendments to FISA (or even FISA itself) are necessary. Thus, in Part II of this article, I will briefly sketch the historical circumstances which led Congress to believe why it was necessary and proper to enact FISA, outline the provisions of FISA which are relevant to this article, and describe the contours of the NSA program to the extent that they have been made public. In Part III, I will suggest why the Administration’s arguments regarding the legality of the domestic surveillance program lack merit. Finally, in Part IV, I will offer suggestions for the amendment of FISA

Twisted Electromagnetic Modes and Sagnac Ring-Lasers

A new approximation scheme, designed to solve the covariant Maxwell equations inside a rotating hollow slender conducting cavity (modelling a ring-laser), is constructed. It is shown that for well-defined conditions there exist TE and TM modes with respect to the longitudinal axis of the cavity. A twisted mode spectrum is found to depend on the integrated Frenet torsion of the cavity and this in turn may affect the Sagnac beat frequency induced by a non-zero rotation of the cavity. The analysis is motivated by attempts to use ring-lasers to measure terrestrial gravito-magnetism or the Lense-Thirring effect produced by the rotation of the Earth.Comment: LaTeX 31 pages, 3 Figure

Matching face images taken on the same day or months apart : The limitations of photo ID

Summary: It is well-established that matching images of unfamiliar faces is rather error prone. However, there is an important mismatch between face matching in laboratory and realistic settings. All of the currently available face-matching databases were designed to establish the baseline level of unfamiliar face perception. Therefore, target and test images for each face identity have been taken on the same day, minimizing within-face variations. In realistic settings, on the other hand, faces do vary, even day to day. This study examined the proficiency of matching images of unfamiliar faces, which were taken on the same day or months apart. In two experiments, same-day images were matched substantially more accurately and faster than different-date photographs using the standard 1-in-10 and pairwise face-matching tasks. This suggests that experimental studies on face matching underestimate its difficulty in real-world situations. Photographs of unfamiliar faces seem to be unreliable proofs of identity, especially if the ID documents do not use very recent images of the holders

Matching face images taken on the same day or months apart : the limitations of photo ID

Peer reviewedPostprin

bNAber: database of broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies.

The discovery of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) has provided an enormous impetus to the HIV vaccine research and to entire immunology. The bNAber database at http://bNAber.org provides open, user-friendly access to detailed data on the rapidly growing list of HIV bNAbs, including neutralization profiles, sequences and three-dimensional structures (when available). It also provides an extensive list of visualization and analysis tools, such as heatmaps to analyse neutralization data as well as structure and sequence viewers to correlate bNAbs properties with structural and sequence features of individual antibodies. The goal of the bNAber database is to enable researchers in this field to easily compare and analyse available information on bNAbs thereby supporting efforts to design an effective vaccine for HIV/AIDS. The bNAber database not only provides easy access to data that currently is scattered in the Supplementary Materials sections of individual papers, but also contributes to the development of general standards of data that have to be presented with the discovery of new bNAbs and a universal mechanism of how such data can be shared

Applications of Genomics in Regulatory Food Safety Testing in Canada

Recent developments in the field of pathogen genomics herald a new paradigm for analytical food microbiology in which pathogenic bacteria will be characterized on the basis of their genetic profile rather than traditional approaches relying on phenotypic properties. The ability to identify gene markers associated with virulence, antimicrobial resistance, and other properties relevant to the identification, risk profiling, and typing of foodborne bacterial isolates will play a critical role in informing regulatory decisions and tracing sources of food contamination. Here we present several scenarios illustrating current and prospective roles for pathogen genomics in food inspection

Tolerance for distorted faces : Challenges to a configural processing account of familiar face recognition

Face recognition is widely held to rely on 'configural processing', an analysis of spatial relations between facial features. We present three experiments in which viewers were shown distorted faces, and asked to resize these to their correct shape. Based on configural theories appealing to metric distances between features, we reason that this should be an easier task for familiar than unfamiliar faces (whose subtle arrangements of features are unknown). In fact, participants were inaccurate at this task, making between 8% and 13% errors across experiments. Importantly, we observed no advantage for familiar faces: in one experiment participants were more accurate with unfamiliars, and in two experiments there was no difference. These findings were not due to general task difficulty - participants were able to resize blocks of colour to target shapes (squares) more accurately. We also found an advantage of familiarity for resizing other stimuli (brand logos). If configural processing does underlie face recognition, these results place constraints on the definition of 'configural'. Alternatively, familiar face recognition might rely on more complex criteria - based on tolerance to within-person variation rather than highly specific measurement

A case study on the impact list event sound level regulations have on sound engineering practice

Sound level management at live events in becoming increasingly common at live events in the UK, Europe and beyond. An inspection of regulations across the globe reveals a lack of standardization for sound level limits and averaging times. This case study is formed around a dataset generated on a recent tour by a well-known British musical act. The same sound engineer mixed the band throughout the tour using sound level monitoring software throughout. As the show’s configuration, engineer, musicians and running order were generally consistent day-to-day, the direct inspection of the influence of sound level limit and averaging time, as well as venue capacity and type (indoors or outdoors), is possible. The results from this study highlight both good and bad sound management practice, with key stakeholders’ experience and hearing safety in mind.N/

Plasma-based wakefield accelerators as sources of axion-like particles

We estimate the average flux density of minimally-coupled axion-like particles generated by a laser-driven plasma wakefield propagating along a constant strong magnetic field. Our calculations suggest that a terrestrial source based on this approach could generate a pulse of axion-like particles whose flux density is comparable to that of solar axion-like particles at Earth. This mechanism is optimal for axion-like particles with mass in the range of interest of contemporary experiments designed to detect dark matter using microwave cavities