■
New security devices show all
Hand-held version
could find a gun from
60 feet away.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)—The next
generation of weapons detectors is
deadly accurate, able to look through
clothes to find guns, explosives and
even syringes and drug vials that can
be tucked into rolls of fat.
About the size of a voting booth, a
machine manufactured by Nicolet
Imaging Systems of San Diego goes
beyond metal detectors to show any
solid object. It is being tested at North
Carolina’s Central Prison and the fed
eral courthouse in Los Angeles.
Capt. Marshall Hudson, a correc
tions officer, said the $100,000 ma
chine is capable of showing shin bones
near the skin and even a person’s pri
vate parts on the “uncloak mode.” The
device uses very low-level X-rays, he
said.
While police groups are intrigued,
civil libertarians are concerned be
cause the same technology is being
developed by other manufacturers into
a hand-held model, which will enable I
police to detect a weapon hidden un
der someone’s clothing up to 60 feet
away.
“It becomes a question of how in
trusive they are,” said Mark
Kappelhoff, legislative counsel for the
American Civil Liberties Union.
But officials who represent police
officers disagreed.
“Anything that enhances public
safety and officer safety, we’re for,”
said Jim Pasco, executive director of
the Fraternal Order of Police, the
nation’s largest police group.
Social security information online;
privacy is in danger, critics say
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — The
financial status of millions of Ameri
cans is now available on the Internet
by looking up Social Security records.
The development worries critics
who say privacy rights are being sac
rificed.
The Social Security Administra
tion went online a month ago, mak
ing it easier for taxpayers to look up
their records. But the system also al
lows easy snooping.
“As soon as crooks start exploit
ing this service to get other people’s
information, Social Security is going
to have a real problem on its hands,”
said Evan Hendricks, chairman of the
U.S. Privacy Council in Washington.
Social Security officials said the
dangers are minimal. “We have con
fidence that in the huge majority of
cases, the people requesting these
things are the right people,” said John
Sabo, head of electronic services in the
Social Security Administration.
The agency said the new system
can save millions of dollars that it
costs to mail financial reports to tax
payers who request the information
about themselves.
Beth Givens, manager of the Pri
vacy Rights Clearinghouse in San
Diego, said it is easy to abuse the sys
tem by obtaining the Social Security
numbers of others and using them to
gain online access to the records.
There are varous types of poten
tial abuse: potential employers could
get the salary history of job applicants;
co-workers could determine how
much fellow employees make; land
lords could use the information to de
termine whether someone can afford
an apartment.
“It would be a tremendous asset to
people who know how to obtain this
information,” said Paddy Calabrese,
owner of a Seattle detective agency.
“If somebody calls me up and says they
want to know somebody’s income, I
just pop into this thing. I charge them
$2,000 and it costs me nothing.”
Matt Haney/DN
Thief hot for a cop gets more than a date
JERUSALEM — Answering a call on a mobile phone he had just
stolen in a break-in, a gullible thief succumbed to the seductive voice
on the line and unknowingly made a date with the law.
Police First Sgt. Major Yardena Rahamim said she initially called
the suspect after the break-in in Haifa on Saturday just to “get an idea
of who he was.”
“In the course of ad-libbing I realized he was friendly, so I sponta
neously pretended I was a lonely girl from a conservative village who
wanted to go out. I realized he was hot for me so I arranged a meeting
and he fell for it,” she said.
Dressed in plainclothes, Rahamim met the man, who approached
her enthusiastically, smelling strongly of after-shave. But his amorous
mood was soon dampened when the date turned into an arrest.
The suspect, a 22-year-old Israeli who was not identified, had driven
to the rendezvous in a car stolen in the break-in, along with the phone.
Rahamim said thousands of dollars worth of stolen property were in
the car.
Ointm selects
Atlanta activist as
AIDS policy head
WASHINGTON (AP)—President
Clinton Monday selected the former
director of an Atlanta AIDS organi
zation to be his AIDS adviser, saying
the nation must continue to strive for
a cure for the deadly virus.
Clinton chose Sandy Thurman as
head of the Office of AIDS Policy, call
ing her a person “who tells it like it
is. She speaks the truth unvarnished.
She won’t hold back in this office. She
is passionate. She is committed. She
is difficult to say no to.”
He continued: “America has not
beaten AIDS yet, but we’ve gotten
closer.”
In a brief Roosevelt Room cer
emony, Thurman told Clinton, “The
epidemic is not over and we must not
— will not—rest until HIV is eradi
cated.
“This is not an epidemic of a few,”
she said. “This is an epidemic of us
all.”
Thurman is a longtime AIDS ac
tivist and member of the president^
AIDS advisory panel. She served as
executive director of AID Atlanta from
1988 to 1993 and as director of a task
force on child survival and develop
ment for The Carter Center from 1993
to 1996.
Thurman is also director of citi
zen exchanges at the United States
Information Agency.
The Human Rights Campaign, a
gay and lesbian advocacy group, com
mended the selection, calling
Thurman “a solid choice to take the
Office of National AIDS policy to the
next level.”
But ACT UP, a radical gay
activist’s group, called Thurman a
“Democratic Party insider” who is the
latest in a series of “ineffective, no-*
name bureaucrats” to be named AIDS
adviser by Clinton.
Nafl»n/Wor1d
Teen-ager shot, killed in confrontation with police
NEW YORK — A 16-year-old boy was fatally shot in the back
after he threatened two officers with a machete, police said Monday.
An autopsy showed that a bullet entered Kevin Cedeno’s back and
exited his front lower torso. Cedeno, the father of a 5-month-old son,
was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Officers Anthony Pellegrini, 25, and Mike Garcia, 36, answered a
911 call early Sunday. Pellegrini fired a single shot after the teen-ager
“threatened officers with a machete,” said police spokesman Detective
Mark Patterson.
Police Commissioner Howard Safir said Cedeno was shot in the
back, but it was too early to say whether Pellegrini acted properly. Po
lice have said the officer feared for his life. He was not suspended.
Cedeno was on probation for an armed robbery and had prior ar
rests as a juvenile, Patterson said.
The shooting, which was being investigated by the police
department’s Internal Affairs Division, happened in the same Wash
ington Heights neighborhood that in 1992 erupted into several nights
of arson and violence after an officer shot a reputed drug dealer.
I
i
Soldier pleads guilty to improper sex charges
ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — A former drill in
structor pleaded guilty Monday to having sex, in violation of Army
rules, with 11 trainees, but denied charges he raped eight women un
der his command.
Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, 32, said he had sex with subordinates
in his office, his hone and at a hotel on another military base. In most
cases, he said, the sex was initiated either by the woman or by both
partners.
“She would come to my office and we would engage in conversa
tion and one thing would just lead to another, sir,” he told a military
judge, describing one encounter.
The 13-year enlisted man pleaded guilty to a total of 16 counts
alleging he had sex or otherwise engaged in inproper conduct toward
a subordinate at the Ordnance Center and School at Aberdeen Proving
Ground.
Each of the charges carries up to two years in prison and dishonor
able discharge.
Simpson is one of 11 instructors charged with sexual misconduct at
Aberdeen Proving Ground, about 30 miles northeast of Baltimore. The
scandal led to an investigation into sexual misconduct at U.S. military
bases worldwide.
Astronauts work by flashlight on returning shuttle
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Forced to fly on only two-thirds
power, space shuttle Columbia’s astronauts squeezed in as many ex
periments as possible Monday, working by flashlight before closing
their lab for an early return to Earth.
The seven astronauts might have been able to fly the entire 16-day
science mission if NASA had halted the countdown Friday and re
placed a faulty electric generator that had been giving unusual voltage
readings hours before liftoff.
That generator slowly lost voltage in orbit — a situation that can
cause an explosion — and forced NASA to cut short the $500 million
plus mission.
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i Editors: Bryce Glenn
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