Minority report? London police using facial recognition technology to track down rioters

LONDON (AP) — Facial recognition technology being considered for London's 2012 Games is getting a workout in the wake of Britain's riots, a senior police chief told The Associated Press, with officers feeding photographs of suspects through Scotland Yard's newly updated face-matching program.

Chief Constable Andy Trotter of the British Transport Police said Thursday the sophisticated software was being used to help find those suspected of being involved in the worst unrest London has seen in a generation.

But he cautioned that facial recognition makes up only a fraction of the police force's efforts, saying tips have mostly come from traditional sources, such as still images captured from closed circuit cameras, pictures gathered by officers, footage shot by police helicopters or images snapped by members of the public. One department was driving around a large video screen displaying images of suspects.

"There's a mass of evidence out there," Trotter said in a telephone interview. "The public are so enraged that people who wouldn't normally come forward are helping us — especially when they see their neighbors are coming back with brand new TVs."

Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged Thursday that police were overwhelmed by rioting that began over the weekend in London and spread across the country over four days. Mobs of youths looted stores, set buildings aflame and attacked police officers and other people — a chaotic and humbling scene for a city a year away from hosting the Olympic Games.

At an emergency session of Parliament summoned to discuss the riots, Cameron said authorities were considering new powers, including allowing police to order thugs to remove masks or hoods, evicting troublemakers from subsidized housing and temporarily disabling cell phone instant messaging services. He said the 16,000 police deployed on London's streets to deter rioters and reassure residents would remain through the weekend.

A press officer with Scotland Yard — who also spoke anonymously, in line with force policy — confirmed that facial recognition technology was at the police's disposal, although he gave few other details. He said that generally the technology would only be used to help identify those suspected of serious crimes, such as assault, and that in most cases disseminating photographs to the general public remains a far cheaper and more effective way of finding suspects.

The facial-recognition technology used by police treats the human face like a grid, measuring the distance between a person's nose, eyes, lips and other features. It has recently been upgraded, according to an article published last year in Scotland Yard's bimonthly magazine, "The Job."

The March 2010 article said that the new program has been shown to work far better than older versions of the technology, with one expert quoted as saying that it had shown promise in identifying people from high-quality, face-on shots taken off of surveillance photographs, mobile phones, passports or the Internet.

A law enforcement official told the AP that to use the technology "you have to have a good picture of a suspect and it is only useful if you have something to match it against. In other words, the suspect already has to have a previous criminal record."

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss ongoing investigations.

In another effort to identify suspects, police have released two dozen photos and videos to the picture-sharing website Flickr, where they've already gathered more than 400,000 hits. Some of those photographs have also been published by Britain's brash tabloid press. The Sun recently plastered them across its front page, along with a headline urging readers to report looters to the police.

The photographs on Flickr are mainly grainy images pulled from cameras, which may not be of much use to face-matching software. But detectives are already scanning the Web for pictures of high-quality photographs of rioters' faces, according to photojournalist Guilherme Zauith, who witnessed some of the disturbances in London and later posted images of clashes to the Internet.

Zauith said he was recently contacted by a London detective "saying that they saw my photos online and if I could send it to them to help to identify the people."

"They were looking for all kind of photographs showing faces," he said. Zauith, a 30-year-old Brazilian national, said he turned the photos over to the detective.

The West Midlands police were trying another approach: driving a van equipped with a large screen displaying 50 images of suspects through Birmingham.

Police said the "Digi-Van" will stop at key locations around the city to give shoppers and commuters a good look at the photographs in hopes they can help identify suspects.

Facial recognition technology is already widely employed by free-to-use websites such as Facebook and Google Inc.'s Picasa photo-sharing program.

Such programs have been of increasing interest to authorities as well. A person with the Olympic planning committee, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of security preparations, said that facial recognition software was being considered for use as a security measure during the Olympic Games.

Meanwhile, detectives are employing a host of other tactics to take aim at the rioters. Police departments across the country have made arrests linked to riot threats and boasts posted to social networking sites.

Trotter said that while investigations had been helped by looters "who publicize their actions on things like Facebook," a lot of arrests have come the old-fashioned way, through officers simply spotting suspects they'd seen before.

"It's not just the face that is recognizable," Trotter said. "It's been in the way they walk, or the clothes they're wearing or even tattoos."

Foreclosures in US rise in August to new record levels

US foreclosure activity rose in August from the previous month, and banks and lenders took ownership from homeowners at a record pace, according to a new report released Thursday.
Bank repossessions, often the final step in the foreclosure process after a home fails to sell at auction, increased about 2 percent from the month before to 95,364, a record high. At the same the number of properties that received default notices—the first step in the foreclosure process—decreased 1 percent from a month ago and fell 30 percent from a year ago, a sign that lenders are focusing on their backlog of foreclosure inventory before tackling new distressed loans, according to foreclosure listing website RealtyTrac, which released the report.

Overall, foreclosure fillings rose 4.18 percent in August from the previous month, and were down 5.48 percent from a year ago. In all, 338,836 properties were in the foreclosure process. One in 381 U.S. households received a foreclosure notice in August. (Foreclosure notices are defined as a default notice, auction sale notice or bank repossession.)

Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy (Institutions of American Democracy)

Census: 1 in 7 Americans Live in Poverty

In the second year of a brutal recession, the ranks of the American poor soared to their highest level in half a century and millions more are barely avoiding falling below the poverty line, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.
About 44 million Americans - one in seven - lived last year in homes in which the income was below the poverty level, which is about $22,000 for a family of four. That is the largest number of people since the census began tracking poverty 51 years ago.
The snapshot captured by the census for 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency, shows an America in the throes of economic upheaval.
Since 2007, the year before the recession kicked into gear, the country has almost 4 million fewer wage-earners. There are more children growing up poor. And for the first time since the government began tracking health insurance in 1987, the number of people who have health coverage declined, as people lost jobs with health benefits or employers stopped offering it.
With midterm elections less than two months away, the statistics bare the reality fueling much of the anger toward Washington.
In the Washington region, Virginia's poverty rate rose the most, to 10.5 percent from 8.6 percent. Maryland's edged up half a percentage point to 9 percent. The District's rate was the highest, but it declined from 18 percent to 17 percent.
Although the recession's impact was broad-based, there were disparities among groups. The official poverty rate increased for all races and ethnicities except Asians, who continued to have the highest median household income. More working-age adults lived in poverty, while the number of poor people 65 or older fell, largely as a result of increases in Social Security payments.
More than 51 million Americans lack health insurance, the census reported, and a greater-than-ever percentage of those who do have insurance are getting it from the government.
Scholars, nonprofit groups that work with the poor and President Obama all expressed concern about the gloomy picture.
Obama said the numbers could have been much worse were it not for government assistance.
"Because of the Recovery Act and many other programs providing tax relief and income support to a majority of working families - and especially those most in need - millions of Americans were kept out of poverty last year," he said in a statement.
Many conservatives, however, laid the blame on government programs that don't work.
"We're spending more money fighting poverty than ever before, yet poverty is up," said Michael D. Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "Clearly, we're doing something wrong."
Along with a rise in the number of people living in poverty, the census reported a decrease in the number of people who are living just above poverty level, suggesting that many of those just slightly above poverty slipped over the edge in the previous year.
Food banks and shelters around the country say they are seeing former donors asking for help.
Dale City resident Jamie Imler is one. She used to give money to charity and make quilts for homeless shelters. But since she began treatment for breast cancer last year, she has been too weak to work at either of the two jobs she held, one in a restaurant and one for a recruitment agency. Her income has dropped from $2,000 a month to less than $700 - not enough to cover her rent - and she has been coming for the past six months to a food pantry in Prince William County called Action Through Service.
"Things were good," she said. "I was a single mom, raised my son and needed food stamps."
"And now I'm here," she added.
While the number of the country's poorest people is higher than in any other recorded period, the rate is not without precedent. The last time it was this high was 1994. And in the early 1960s, it was over 20 percent.
Despite the jump in poverty, median income did not go down for those who still had jobs. Men working full time saw their median earnings rise 2 percent, to $47,000, while the median wage of women rose about the same amount, to a little over $36,000.
The median household income declined a little, to just under $50,000. But household income is down 4.2 percent since the recession began and 5 percent from its peak of more than $52,000 in 1999. Black households fared particularly poorly, as incomes dropped 4.4 percent compared with 1.6 percent for white households.
"We always have a situation where some population groups have higher poverty rates than others," said Margaret Simms, who directs the Low Income Working Families Project at the Urban Institute. "During recessions, we see who bears the brunt in hard times in the kinds of numbers we see today."
The statistics have quickly become fodder for a debate on the proper role of government in combating economic downturns.
"It's a strong indication that there is not enough focus on growth and investment in job production," said Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio state treasurer who is a fellow at the Family Research Council.
Ron Haskins, a head of the Brookings Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, said government programs do not have enough money to make up for the decline among private and employer-provided health care. "Is the government going to pick it up?" he said. "That means bigger government, bigger expenses, more taxes."
This summer, a proposal to extend jobless benefits to the long-term unemployed came under attack by Republicans, who objected to more spending that would add to the soaring deficit. The measure eventually passed.
Some of those who have struggled to find work are making their way to Good Shepherd Alliance, a food pantry in Loudoun County, which is one of the country's wealthiest jurisdictions.
Vickie Koth, executive director, said she has grown accustomed to hearing clients say, almost as if dazed by their dizzying descent, that they used to volunteer at nonprofits like hers. The downturn will end some day, she noted, and hard times should be remembered.
"A lot of the community is really seeing this issue for the first time," she said. ". . . Once this turns around, I hope that people will remember what we went through so that our communities will be more open to serving those around us who are in need."

John Stewart of "The Daily Show" and Stephen Colbert of "The Colbert Report" to hold political rallies in washington

(CNN) -- Two Comedy Central funnymen are apparently entering into the partisan political fray with rallies of their own in the nation's capital.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have set October 30 as the date for their respective rallies.
On Thursday night's airing of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," the comedian announced plans for a "Rally to Restore Sanity."
"See you October 30 on the National Mall to spread the timeless message, 'Take it down a notch for America,' " he said.
Stewart dubbed the event a "clarion call for rationality."
"A million moderate march, where we take to the streets to send a message to our leaders and our national media that says, 'We are here! We ... are only here until 6 though, because we have a sitter,'" he said.
On "The Colbert Report," which airs immediately after Stewart's show, Colbert fired back with plans for his "March to Keep Fear Alive."
"Now is not the time to take it down a notch. Now is the time for all good men to freak out for freedom," Colbert said.
Stewart said on his Thursday show that he had reserved a spot on the National Mall.
"The forms have been filled out, the checks have been written," he said.
Stewart and Colbert have submitted one application for a permit for the Washington Monument grounds on October 30, National Park Service spokesman Bill Line confirmed Friday.
"A permit is not finalized yet, and they are still working through a resolution as for any event," Line added.
Stewart is known more for commentaries on his 30-minute show than publicity stunts. But Colbert has engaged the public several times outside his show's New York studio, filing papers to run for president in South Carolina and shaving his head while taping his show in Iraq to show support for troops.
In a nonscientific online poll after the death last year of Walter Cronkite, Time magazine named Stewart "America's most trusted newscaster." Stewart captured 44 percent of that vote, with NBC's Brian Williams finishing a distant second at 29 percent.
See the poll results here
Actual scientific polling in 2007 by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found Stewart tied for fourth place as viewers' favorite news person, ranking alongside Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams and CNN's Anderson Cooper, and just behind Katie Couric, Charles Gibson and Bill O'Reilly.
See the Pew poll results here
In a separate Pew survey, 16 percent of Americans said they regularly watched "The Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report." Those numbers are comparable to some major news programs. For instance, 17 percent said they regularly watched Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," and 14 percent watched PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" regularly.
See the full survey results
The announcements come less than three weeks after conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck hosted a much-publicized "Restoring Honor" rally on the National Mall, urging large crowds to "turn back to God" and return America to the values on which it was founded.
That event drew criticism for its timing and location -- on the 47th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered in the same place.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson told CNN at the time that Beck was mimicking King and "humiliating the tradition." And other civil rights activists gathered nearby with the Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network in a "Reclaim the Dream" rally.
Stewart first publicly floated the idea of a counter-rally in a profile in the September 12 edition of New York magazine.
"Maybe we would do a 'March of the Reasonable,' on a date of no particular significance," Stewart says in the article.
Read the New York magazine profile
The website logos and icons created for the Colbert and Stewart rallies mimic Beck's, using identical typography and similar stylized images.
"We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard," the website for the "Rally to Restore Sanity" says.
The "March to Keep Fear Alive" site takes a more alarmist approach: "Never forget -- 'Reason' is just one letter away from 'Treason.' Coincidence? Reasonable people would say it is, but America can't afford to take that chance."

The propoganda works: Low risker's demand swine flu vaccine

LOS ANGELES – It was bound to happen: Some people who aren't at high risk for swine flu complications got the much-in-demand vaccine.

Sometimes they were healthy adults or senior citizens instead of kids, pregnant women and people with health problems.

Before Los Angeles County health officials stepped up screening at their flu clinics, Natalie Thompson sailed through the long line and got the vaccine along with her 8-year-old son, even though she's not in one of the priority groups.

"If I can get it, I'm not gonna say no," said Thompson, 35, of Hollywood Hills.

Another mom, Katy Radparvar, didn't say no either.

"Our doctor doesn't have it yet," said the 41-year-old woman who was vaccinated along with her three children at a public health vaccination site in suburban Encino last week.

Public health officials don't want to be vaccine police. Many don't turn anyone away who wants the vaccine, though some locations are tougher than others.

"For many this is a frustrating process and we really sympathize with those who show up at a clinic and can't get vaccinated," said Los Angeles County public health director Dr. Jonathan Fielding.

Across the country, thousands have waited in line and many have been turned away, as manufacturers have trickled out the slow-to-produce vaccine. Things are improving, and now about 25 million doses are available, the government says.

Aware of scant supplies up front, Santa Barbara County clinics administered their 4,400 shots to pregnant women only. San Diego County is only immunizing those on the priority list, but is taking the word of residents.

Nevada is using the honor system with vaccinations offered on a first-come, first-served basis to those who identify themselves as at-risk for the H1N1 virus.

"We really are hoping people go on the honor system and let us immunize people in the priority groups," Southern Nevada Health District spokeswoman Stephanie Bethel said. "I think, for the most part, it's working."

In Oregon, Portland metro area officials say pregnant women and children are moved to the front of the lines and inoculated before the general public.

"We assertively asked those who were not in the priority group to move to the end of the line, so when we ran out of vaccine, those people who were left were those who were not at risk," said health officer Dr. Gary Oxman. "And people have responded well to it."

The vaccine shortfall prompted Wisconsin state health officials this week to remind local health agencies "to strongly encourage" announcements about the limited vaccine supply and the focus on vaccinating high-risk groups first.

Robert M. Pestronk, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, said local health departments are doing the best they can under challenging conditions.

"Despite those best efforts, it doesn't surprise me that people who are not in high priority groups are appearing at clinics for vaccination," he said. "It's difficult to restrict vaccine simply to the priority groups."

One of the doctors who helped draw up guidelines for vaccine priority groups also isn't surprised at how things are unfolding.

The government's vaccine advisory panel "did not expect vaccine police to be set up around the country," said Dr. William Schaffner, a flu specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who is on the panel.

If vaccine demand is low in some locations, it makes sense for non-priority groups to get it instead of wasting the supply.

"I don't consider it a problem," said Schaffner. "I consider it more of a problem if vaccine is left unused."

That's what happened in the 2004-05 flu season when there was a shortage of seasonal flu vaccine. Many older healthy people refused to get the shot so that those who had health problems would have access to vaccine.

"One of the things that was learned was to be careful about turning people away because we might end up with a lot of vaccine at the end of the year," said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention But right now, there aren't many vaccine leftovers to be found. Every morning, Anne Jenkins of Shreveport, La., makes a round of calls to ask doctors and health clinics if they have the injectable swine flu vaccine. She is 23 weeks pregnant.

After seeing four elderly women requesting swine flu vaccine — to no avail — at a local military treatment facility she thought to herself, "you're not on the list."

Though local officials tell Jenkins the vaccine won't be available until mid-November, she's ready to compete for her dose when it arrives.

"You feel the animal instinct come out," she said.

Was clinton duped? Some say he met with a Kim Jong-Ill look alike

Seoul, South Korea – Will the real Kim Jong-il please stand up?

A number of analysts here are convinced that not all the photos being released of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, are really photos of Kim Jong-il.

Instead, they say, a look-alike has been standing in for him on some of the 122 trips he's reportedly made this year to the countryside, factories, cultural events, military units, and all sorts of other venues.

Some observers say the North Korean leader is too ill to make all these appearances. One Japanese analyst claims President Clinton didn't meet with Kim Jong-il in August – he met with a Mr. Kim double.

The evidence of Kim stand-ins is far from verified, but several North Korean refugees here say that Kim has not one but several look-alikes playing his role.

Still, it's logical that for security reasons, Kim has one or more stand-ins, as did former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the US invasion in 2003. One argument is that Kim has no time for all those trips outside Pyongyang while his health remains uncertain and he's preparing his youngest son to take over as early as next year.

Ha Tae-young, president of Open Radio for North Korea, which broadcasts two hours a day via shortwave into North Korea, cites the word of one recent North Korean defector.

"He says he knows a girl whose father is the actor for Kim Jong-il," says Mr. Ha. "Recently Kim Jong-il loses fat. He's very skinny these days. The defector says, If Kim Jong-il looks skinny, the actor can do the same thing."

Some turn resemblance into acting career
Here in South Korea, there's a booming business in Kim Jong-il look-alikes. Dozens of people in recent years have portrayed Kim Jong-il in television comedy shows, nightclub routines, and serious movies and dramas.

After the inter-Korean summit of June 2000, in which Kim Jong-il received South Korea President Kim Dae-jung in Pyongyang, the South Korean government discouraged such satires for fear of upsetting reconciliation with the North.

Still, from time to time South Koreans delight in appearing on TV flaunting the curly-haired bouffant hairstyle, platform shoes, and protruding stomach for which the Dear Leader was known before he disappeared from view for months after reportedly suffering a stroke in August 2008.

The wave of public appearances reported by the North Korean propaganda machine since then to show he's in good health convinces some analysts that North Korean actors are portraying the Dear Leader, too – but in dead seriousness.

"That's possible," says Choi Jin-wook, senior fellow and specialist on North Korea at the Korea Institute of National Unification. "These dictators always need look-alikes for security reasons. Kim Jong-il is giving 'on-the-spot guidance' too often for his health."

Mr. Choi also says that North Korean photo editors are likely pasting in old pictures of Kim from previous times when he was in good health.

Did Clinton meet with look-alike?
No one here, however, is ready to go as far as Japanese writer Toshimitsu Shigemura, who has written two books and numerous articles claiming that Kim has been seriously ill for the past decade and may even have died.

Mr. Shigemura says that if the real Kim, looking wan and weak, appeared before the Supreme People's Assembly several days after North Korea fired a long-range missile on April 5, then it must have been a look-alike who hosted former US President Bill Clinton in August.

"They were totally different people," says Mr. Shigemura, a former correspondent for Mainichi Shimbun, a major Japanese newspaper, who now teaches international relations at Waseda University in Tokyo. "In August, he looked very healthy."

Shigemura suspects that a skilled actor delivered the lines to Mr. Clinton during their three-hour, 17-minute meeting, which ended with Mr. Clinton flying back to the US with two journalists who had been held for 140 days.

Shigemura is equally convinced that an actor played Kim in recent meetings with China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, and the head of Hyundai Asan, the South Korean company responsible for developing special economic and tourist complexes in North Korea.

After the June 2000 summit, says Shigemura, Kim "was bedridden with diabetes" and "cannot walk by himself." He cites the names of three Japanese who claim to have met his look-alikes, including one who was told flatly, "I am a double."

One of them, a magician named Princess Tenko, Shigemura describes as a "close friend" of Kim, saw him more than once in visits to Pyongyang.

Fully self-possessed
Some analysts here, however, have trouble with Shigemura's analysis.

"There have been such rumors," says Kim Tae-woo, a veteran North Korea specialist at the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses. "Dictators usually do that, but we don't know whether this is real or fake."

The North Korean leader's preoccupation these days, he says, is arranging the succession of his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, still in his late 20s.

Ryoo Kihl-jae, professor at the University of North Korean Studies, is dubious about such reports. Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek, appears to be the most powerful figure after the Dear Leader, he says, "but his authority stems from Kim Jong-il" and two or three generals are vying for control.

For now, says Mr. Ryoo, Kim is "living well," and the reports of a double standing in for him are "just imagination."