PI Newswire

Human trafficking is a truly global phenomenon and a crime which affects nearly every part of the world, whether as a source, transit or destination country. According to UNODC, victims from at least 127 countries have been identified, and it is estimated that more than 2.4 million people are being exploited by criminals at any given time.

More than a decade after the adoption of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and PUnish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, most countries have criminalized most forms of human trafficking in their legislation. Nevertheless, the use of such laws to prosecute and convict traffickers remains limited. In the 2009 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, for instance, two out of every five countries covered in the report had never recorded a single conviction for trafficking offences.

An added issue behind the legal aspects of human trafficking is a lack of knowledge and understanding on the global stage. In those cases in which prosecutions have been undertaken, very little is currently known about them internationally. This often leaves open questions as to how practitioners use the respective laws and what, if any, the characteristics of successful prosecutions are.

In a bid to answer these questions, UNODC has developed a database of human trafficking case law to provide immediate, public access to officially documented instances of this crime. The database contains details on the nationalities of victims and perpetrators, trafficking routes, verdicts and other information related to prosecuted cases from around the world. As such, it provides not only statistics on the number of prosecutions and convictions, but also the real-life stories of trafficked persons as documented by the courts. The database is aimed at assisting judges, prosecutors, policymakers, media researchers and other interested parties by making available details of real cases with examples of how the respective national laws in place can be used to prosecute human trafficking. At the time of the launch of the database, more than 150 selected cases from over 30 countries and two regional courts had been uploaded, with an additional 100 cases from over a dozen states to be added in the coming months.

By creating the database, UNODC is working to increase the visibility of successful prosecutions and at the same time promote awareness of the realities of this devastating crime. Such a database of human trafficking cases enables users to take experiences and court decisions from other countries into account when dealing with human trafficking issues, consult on practices in different jurisdictions and broaden their knowledge of human trafficking crimes.

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Chicago is now posting online every crime over the past 10 years.

Starting today, more than 4.6 million crime incident reports dating to 2001 are posted online in a searchable database. It will be updated daily, providing fodder for residents to evaluate their own neighborhoods, academics to study crime and techie types to create websites or apps.

Until now, crime data was only publicly released in aggregate form on a monthly basis, with data going back 90 days on the Police Department’s Clearmap geographic data system.

The release is the latest attempt by the Emanuel administration to make city dealings more transparent, according to city officials. Chicago recently posted online the salaries of city employees, city contracts and lobbying data, with more information expected in coming months.

“It’s a whole new era of openness and transparency,” said Brett Goldstein, the city’s chief data officer and former police officer. “You determine your own analysis.”

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Lawmakers around the country are pushing for online registries, like those used for sex offenders, to track the whereabouts of people convicted of a wide variety of crimes, from arson and drunken driving to methamphetamine manufacturing and animal abuse.

State senators in Illinois are considering a law to create the nation’s first registry for first-degree murderers. In Maine, legislators are debating an online registry of drunken drivers. And proposals to register animal abusers have been put forward in several states; one such registry, in Suffolk County on Long Island, will become operational next week.

Under a canine version of Megan’s Law, Virginia even registers dangerous dogs, including Elvis, a cat-killing collie in Roanoke whose bad acts are among those listed on the state’s database.

Advocates for online registries, many of them searchable by the public, argue that people have a right to know about potentially dangerous offenders in their midst and that the benefit of alerting parents, neighbors and others in a community outweighs any privacy concerns.

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The crime wasn’t very spectacular, but it was remarkable: the 2,000th crime the state’s DNA database solved.

The suspect is more of a nuisance than a hardened criminal.

“His name is synonymous with trouble,” Capt. Chris Tatum of the Waycross Police Department said of the suspect who was identified Thursday. “He is being sought.”

Though the crime — robbery — does not qualify as one of the most egregious, the criminal has the distinction of being No. 2,000.

“As the size of the DNA database increases, we expect and hope that this trend will continue,” said Vernon Keenan, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which maintains the database that is primarily supported by federal funds.

There are more than 214,000 “profiles,” or samples, in the database. Most of the samples were collected from known criminals and almost 9,800 is evidence collected at crime scenes.

In the case of the Waycross robber, he had given a swab while he was in the local jail for violating probation.

Tatum said investigators had their suspicions but “he had somewhat of an alibi” so they couldn’t charge him. “He had been staying at a friend’s house because he was on the run for a probation violation,” Tatum said.

While Tatum didn’t want to provide the suspect’s name until he has been arrested, he was willing to share details of the 2008 robbery of a pizza restaurant.

“I think he was just trying to raise money to get more dope or to pay his probation off,” Tatum said. “He was out of work and he couldn’t get a legitimate job.”

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Numerous internet sites have sprung up in recent years promising cheap or instant background checks that deliver criminal information on anyone. These sites utilize a so-called “National Criminal database” and vendors of such databases typically claim to have compiled million records from every state so users can know if someone is a criminal at the click of a button. These databases appear to offer employers an instant criminal check at a very low price.

Although a multi-state records database can be a powerful tool when used by a qualified employment screening firm as part of an overall background check, anyone who thinks they are getting a real criminal check can be in for a rude awaking when they discover that such searches are far from the real thing. Applicants with criminal records can easily be missed, and people without reportable records can be incorrectly identified as criminals, both results carrying negative financial and legal implications for employers.

Anyone using these databases, especially for employment purposes, needs to understand the limitations and legal exposure associated with using them. If they don’t, employers may find themselves embroiled in litigation. Here are just some of the issues:

* Multi-jurisdictional database are NOT official FBI database searches. FBI records are only available to certain employers or industries where Congress or a state has granted access. Searches offered by web sites are drawn from government data that is commercially available or has been made public.
* So-called national criminal searches are a research tool only and are not a substitute for a hands-on search at the county level under any circumstances (or the functional equivalent of a county level search). The best use for these databases is to indicate additional places for a background firm to search in case a record is found in a jurisdiction that was not searched at the county court level.
* In addition, many states have very limited database information that is available to employers. Examples of states where such databases may have very limited value are California and New York. Texas is another state where database information can be wildly inaccurate.
* Databases in each state are compiled from a number of sources. There are a number of reasons that database information may not be accurate or complete. Because of the nature of databases, the appearance of a person’s name on a database is not an indication the person is criminal any more than the absence of a name shows he/she is not a criminal. In other words, these databases can contain results that are a “false positive,” or a “false negative.” Any lack of a match is not the same as a person being “cleared.”

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We’ve all seen and obsessively referenced Minority Report, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian future, where the public is tracked everywhere they go, from shopping malls to work to mass transit to the privacy of their own homes. The technology is here. I’ve seen it myself. It’s seen me, too, and scanned my irises.

Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls “the most secure city in the world.” In a partnership with Leon — one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million — GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live — not to mention marketers.

“In the future, whether it’s entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris,” says Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers. Before coming to GRI, Carter headed a think tank partnership between Bank of America, Harvard, and MIT. “Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years,” he says.

Leon is the first step. To implement the system, the city is creating a database of irises. Criminals will automatically be enrolled, their irises scanned once convicted. Law-abiding citizens will have the option to opt-in.

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It was with a note of triumph that Gov. David A. Paterson, standing with lawmakers, civil libertarians and others, signed a bill last week halting the New York Police Department’s policy of keeping a computer database of people stopped by officers on the street but found to have done nothing wrong.

But as the new law’s fine print became clear, a question emerged: How would the legislation be enforced? The bill failed to include any explicit mechanism for ensuring that the police put an end to the practice, like the appointment of a monitor with auditing powers. It also lacked any penalty provisions for failing to comply with it.

None of the omissions proved fatal to the bill. But officials in the governor’s office said that had they been offered a chance to develop the language of the bill themselves, it might have been drafted differently.

One administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said the bill left the issue of its enforcement too ambiguous.

Proponents of the bill, and some law enforcement analysts, say putting teeth into the law would have been unnecessary and extraordinary. The measure’s main architects — a constitutional lawyer and a retired police captain who are both Democratic state lawmakers from Brooklyn — said creating a monitoring entity was never seriously contemplated.

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Figuring out exactly who’s cashing in on the post-9/11 boom in secret programs just got a whole lot easier.

U.S. spy agencies, the State Department and the White House had a collective panic attack Friday over a new Washington Post exposé on the intelligence-industrial complex. Reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin let it drop Monday morning.

It includes a searchable database cataloging what an estimated 854,000 employees and legions of contractors are apparently up to. Users can now to see just how much money these government agencies are spending and where those top secret contractors are located.

Check out the Post’s nine-page list of agencies and contractors involved in air and satellite observations, for instance. No wonder it scares the crap out of official Washington: It’s bound to provoke all sorts of questions — both from taxpayers wondering where their money goes and from U.S. adversaries looking to penetrate America’s spy complex.

But this piece is about much more than dollars. It’s about what used to be called the Garrison State — the impact on society of a praetorian class of war-focused elites. Priest and Arkin call it “Top Secret America,” and it’s so big and grown so fast, that it’s replicated the problem of disconnection within the intelligence agencies that facilitated America’s vulnerability to a terrorist attack.

With too many analysts and too many capabilities documenting too much, with too few filters in place to sort out the useful stuff or discover hidden connections, the information overload has become its own information blackout. “We consequently can’t effectively assess whether it is making us more safe,” a retired Army three-star general who recently assessed the system tells the reporters.

The Post — whose editorial page has been notably receptive to the growth of the security state over the years — explains in an editorial comment that it ran its constellation of websites by security officials to ensure that it wasn’t jeopardizing national security. In one instance, the editors deleted certain unspecified specific “data points” the project initially disclosed.

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On July 13, arguments were heard before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals challenging California’s Prop. 69. Under that law, anyone arrested for a felony can have a sample of DNA taken and it will be added to a state database, whether or not they are ever convicted of the felony.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the lead plaintiff in the case, Elizabeth Haskell of Oakland, was arrested in March 2009 at an anti-war rally in San Francisco on suspicion of forcibly trying to free another protester. She was eventually released without charges. Haskell gave her DNA to police after being told she would be charged with another crime and held in jail if she refused.

Haskell’s attorney from the ACLU, Michael Risher, argued to the court that this kind of identification was an unconstitutional invasion of privacy because DNA sampling is much more invasive and tells much more about a person than a fingerprint. “I shake hands when I meet people,” Risher said. “I don’t let them put things in my mouth.”

On the other side of the argument was the question of whether a sample of DNA is so very different than a fingerprint after all. The Chronicle reports Judge Milan Smith said DNA testing, taken with a swab from the inner cheek, is no more intrusive than fingerprinting and is “a really good way of identifying people.” He wondered if Risher was asking government officials to be “Luddites (who) can’t use modern technology.”

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A new software tool has been developed to extract potentially crucial digital evidence from one of the most widely used computer and mobile phone database formats.

The team of researchers at CCL-Forensics have developed and coded “EPILOG” which aids in the retrieval of deleted data in SQLite databases, for use in criminal investigations.

SQLite is used extensively in mobile phone and smartphone operating systems (including the Apple iPhone) and in a significant number of web browsers and can contain deleted data which is not visible to the end user. EPILOG can recover and present this in a forensically sound manner to enhance a range of prosecution cases from indecent images to activity on a range of mobile phones.

Mark Larson, Forensics Manager at CCL-Forensics says: “Standard forensics tools can only extract SQLite databases from exhibits, and will do nothing to help you interpret their contents. EPILOG can work with both live and deleted databases, and recover both live and deleted data from them.

“This means the amount of potential evidence extracted from a computer or mobile phone is significantly increased, and so is the chance of identifying relevant evidence.

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Federal immigration officials now have the ability to identify potentially deportable foreign nationals booked into Florida county jails on suspicion of crimes.

Michael W. Meade, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office director in Miami, announced Tuesday that booking centers in all 67 Florida counties are now linked to ICE’s biometric databases for quicker identification of immigration records.

Meade’s disclosure marks an expansion in Florida of ICE’s Secure Communities initiative, a controversial program the agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security deems vital to its efforts to quickly identify foreign nationals who have been convicted or charged.

“This capability means local law enforcement and ICE are automatically alerted when potentially deportable criminal aliens come into state and local custody,” Meade told a news conference at ICE’s office in Doral.

Immigrant-rights activists expressed concern.

“If this program were really targeting hardened criminals and making us safer, as ICE claims, I imagine most everyone would support it,” said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, long a critic of Secure Communities.

“People arrested for any reason, including traffic violations and loitering, are caught in ICE’s net — including U.S. citizens.”

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New York lawmakers have proposed an expansion of the state’s DNA law requiring police to take samples from those charged with serious felonies.

The proposed bill would help to expand the state’s DNA database, ultimately aiming to close thousands of unsolved cases, give justice to grieving families and put felons behind bars, the Albany Times Union reports.

Specifically, DNA collection would be required for anyone arrested for any one of 67 felony crimes, including assault, murder, manslaughter, rape, sexual abuse, or 18 specified misdemeanors.

In addition, anyone who had their DNA samples collected but is not convicted of a crime, can request the removal of their sample from the state database.

As previously discussed, 21 other states around the country have an ”at arrest” DNA law.

In Ohio, a new DNA law on the books aims to protect the innocent from wrongful convictions and put the real criminals behind bars.

Gov. Ted Strickland signed Senate Bill 77 into law, setting new statewide standards requiring DNA samples to be taken from anyone arrested for a felony.

Experts have called Ohio’s new DNA law a model for improving the criminal justice system.

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