Homeless in Arizona

Will Humble Director of Arizona Department of Health Services is a drug war tyrant who is trying to prevent people from using medical marijuana and trying to flush Prop 203, which is Arizona's medical marijuana law down the toilet.

From this article it sounds like Will Humble and the tyrants at Arizona Department of Health Services are doing everything they can to prevent people from legally using medical marijuana.

The cops and prosecutors tell us they would rather let 100 guilty people get away then have one innocent person be sent to prison.

Sadly it seems to be exactly the opposite of that and for every 100 innocent people that are railroaded by the cops and falsely sent to prison 1 guilty person gets away. And of course that statement is based on the large number of cases where DNA is proving innocent people were railroaded by the cops and sent to death row for crimes they didn't commit. They often spend 10, 20 or 30 years in prison before DNA tests prove they are innocent. A little over a month ago on September 28, 2012, Damon Thibodeaux, a Louisiana death row inmate, was the 300th prisoner free from prison because DNA test proved he was framed for murder.

I suspect the same is true with Will Humble crack team of marijuana haters in the Arizona Department of Health Services. They would rather prevent 100 people who are legally allowed to use medical marijuana from using it, if it means they can prevent one person who isn't legally allowed to use marijuana from getting a prescription.

One interesting question for a lawsuit would be to ask does Will Humbles team of doctor goons review all the other prescriptions written by doctors for narcotics to see that the doctors are not writing invalid prescriptions.

I suspect that Will Humble and Jan Brewer are singling out people with marijuana prescriptions or recommendations as they are called.

Arizona health officials want to strengthen the controversial medical-marijuana program to crack down on physicians who improperly recommend marijuana, train physicians who write most certifications and make it easier to revoke patient cards if health officials suspect wrongdoing.

Health officials also want to study how effective marijuana is in treating debilitating conditions, such as cancer, and examine whether marijuana affects opiate dependency, impacts vehicle-traffic injuries and impacts pregnancy outcomes and breastfeeding. Such studies would require changes to the law, which restricts the scope of information state health officials can obtain from physicians and patients. [And of course the politicians are NOT allowed to make any changes to the law because of a prior voter initiative which was passed after the politicians passed a law revoking Arizona's first medical marijuana law. So the question is why is Will Humble wasting our tax dollars doing these studies?]

The recommendations are contained in the state’s inaugural report of the medical-marijuana program, approved by voters in 2010 to allow people with certain debilitating medical conditions, to use marijuana. They must obtain a recommendation from a physician and register with the state, which issues identification cards to qualified patients and caregivers.

The new report covers April 2011 through June and includes for the first time, in a comprehensive format, a detailed breakdown of the types of physicians that are recommending medical marijuana.

During that time period, the Department of Health Services received 41,476 applications — both renewals and new submissions — and approved about 98 percent. Because of the report’s time frame of more than a year, some cardholders may have been counted twice in that number —when they initially applied and when they renewed their annual card.

There were 29,804 total active cardholders reported, which included 28,977 qualifying patients and 827 caregivers.

Most patients cited one medical condition while less than a quarter reported two or more conditions. About 70 percent of patients cited “severe and chronic pain” as their only medical condition.

The report states that 475 physicians recommended marijuana for the 28,977 patients. Ten of those physicians certified nearly half of all patients.

Eighty naturopaths, who combine traditional medicine and natural medical approaches to treat patients, certified 18,057 patients while 332 medical doctors certified 8,574 patients. Sixty-one osteopaths certified 2,329 patients and two homeopaths certified 17 patients.

State Department of Health Services Director Will Humble said he was disappointed that so few physicians were writing so many marijuana recommendations.

“I had hoped that we wouldn’t have this tight concentration of specialties who are writing these,” he said.

Humble said the numbers raise concerns that patients are seeking recommendations from “certification mills” instead of primary-care doctors who are generally more well-versed about individual patients’ medical histories. He said medical doctors may be less willing to write marijuana certifications because they didn’t study marijuana as a treatment in medical school. [And of course medical schools don't teach doctors how and when to prescribe marijuana because it's still and illegal drug per Federal law, so we have a Catch 22 here. And I suspect Will Humble hopes that that Catch 22 can be used prevent doctors from writing medical marijuana prescriptions]

Humble said the figures bolstered his belief that state health officials should develop intense training for high-volume certifiers, along with licensing medical boards to ensure physicians are not breaking the law. He also wants to be able to more quickly identify physicians who are improperly recommending pot.

Humble also wants to explore the idea of temporarily suspending patients’ cards if officials suspect wrongdoing and want to investigate. [So Will Humble wants patients to be assumed guilty till they prove their innocence. That's typical of government tyrants!] Currently, cards remain active until a final decision is made, “thus, providing immunity to potential misuse” of the law, the report says.

His agency will soon spend more than $1.2 million to, in part, weed out physicians who improperly recommend marijuana to patients as well as to help train marijuana-dispensary staff, hire private accountants or auditors to examine dispensary financial statements and hire private attorneys to assist the department with legal issues arising from the program. [Wow, it seems like Will Humble is doing everything possible to flush Prop 203 which is Arizona's medical marijuana law down the toilet]

The ADHS will also continue to fund a $200,000 contract with the University of Arizona College of Public Health to, in part, review published research about the effectiveness of marijuana in treating medical conditions.

Humble believes the expenses will help the state keep the medical-marijuana program as “medical” as possible.

Will Humble's report on medical marijuana

Iran, Saying Aircraft Trespassed, Confirms Drone Shooting Episode

TEHRAN — Iran’s defense minister on Friday confirmed that Iranian warplanes had fired shots at an American drone last week but said they had taken the action after the unmanned aircraft had entered Iranian airspace.

The assertions by the defense minister, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, were the first acknowledgment from Iran that the episode had happened. He spoke less than 24 hours after the Pentagon first disclosed the shooting, involving two Iranian jet fighters and the American aircraft, a Predator surveillance drone based in Kuwait, during what American officials described as a routine surveillance mission on Nov. 1 in international airspace over the Persian Gulf.

It was the first time that Iranian aircraft have been known to fire at an American drone, one of the many ways that the United States has sought to monitor developments in Iran over more than three decades of estrangement between the two countries. The United States said it had protested the shooting via the United States interests section at the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, and had warned the Iranians that the drone flights would continue.

The American officials said the Predator had been flying 16 nautical miles off the Iranian coast. General Vahidi did not specify where the episode took place, but his assertion that it was in Iranian airspace presented a possible new complication to quiet diplomatic efforts by both countries to engage in direct talks following President Obama’s re-election.

General Vahidi’s version of events also differed with the Pentagon version in another way: He said the two Iranian planes, which the Pentagon had identified as Russian-made Su-25 jets known as Frogfoots, belonged to the Iranian Air Force. The Americans had said the two planes were under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose activities are routinely more aggressive than the conventional Air Force.

General Vahidi, whose account was reported by the Iranian Labor News Agency and other media outlets, said that last week an unidentified plane had entered Iranian airspace over its waters in the Persian Gulf. He said the intruder had been “forced to escape,” after action by Iran’s air force.

It is unclear why Iranian officials had kept the episode a secret. It also is unclear, from the Iranian account, whether the warplanes had sought to down the drone and missed, or had fired warning shots to chase it away.

A lawmaker, Mohammad Saleh Jokar, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran’s parliament, also said the American aircraft had trespassed.

“Early last week, a U.S. drone which had violated Iran’s airspace received a decisive response by the armed forces that were stationed in the region,” he said in a Friday interview with the Young Journalist Club, an Iranian semiofficial news agency.

Mr. Jokar said the drone had been on a spying mission. “The U.S. drone entered our country’s airspace with an aim to gather information because there is no other justification,” he said.

The Predator’s sensor technology is so sophisticated that it could have monitored activities in Iran from the distance cited by the Pentagon officials in their account.

The Iranian firing on the aircraft had been completely legal, Mr. Jokar said. “Any violation against Iran’s airspace, territorial waters and land will receive a strong response by the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.

Earlier on Friday, Iranian state television ran “breaking news” banners during regular programming saying that the country will confront any foreign aircraft violating its airspace. But there was no specific reference to the Predator drone.

“Iran pledges ‘firm response to any air, ground and sea aggression’ ” and “Iran says will confront any foreign aircraft violating its airspace,” one news item on a ticker read. A presenter for state television’s English language channel Press TV said that Iran was making this statement “in the face of threats of military action, from Israel mainly.”

Two commanders also gave interviews on Friday stressing Iran’s right to defend itself. “Defenders of the Islamic Republic of Iran will give a decisive response to any air, land and naval attacks,” the deputy commander of Iran’s armed forces, Massoud Jazayeri, told the Fars News Agency, which is headed by a former officer of the Revolutionary Guards.

“If any foreign flying objects enter our country’s airspace, the armed forces will confront them,” he said.

Another officer, the commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Air Defense Base, told the state Islamic Republic News Agency his forces are capable of countering “all threats.”

CIA director Petraeus resigns over extramarital affair

David Petraeus, the retired four-star general renowned for taking charge of the military campaigns in Iraq and then Afghanistan, abruptly resigned Friday as director of the CIA, admitting to an extramarital affair.

The affair was discovered during an FBI investigation, according to officials briefed on the developments. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter. It was unclear what the FBI was investigating or when it became aware of the affair.

Petraeus’ resignation shocked Washington’s intelligence and political communities. It was a sudden end to the public career of the best-known general of the post 9/11 wars, a man sometimes mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate. His service was effusively praised Friday in statements from lawmakers of both parties.

Petraeus, who turned 60 on Wednesday, told CIA employees in a statement that he had met with President Barack Obama at the White House on Thursday and asked to be allowed to resign. On Friday, the president accepted.

Petraeus told his staffers he was guilty of “extremely poor judgment” in the affair. “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours.”

He has been married for 38 years to Holly Petraeus, whom he met when he was a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. She was the daughter of the academy superintendent. They have two children, and their son led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan.

Obama said in a statement that the retired general had provided “extraordinary service to the United States for decades” and had given a lifetime of service that “made our country safer and stronger.” Obama called him “one of the outstanding general officers of his generation.”

The president said that CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell would serve as acting director. Morell was the key CIA aide in the White House to President George W. Bush during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

“I am completely confident that the CIA will continue to thrive and carry out its essential mission,” Obama said.

The resignation comes at a sensitive time. The administration and the CIA have struggled to defend security and intelligence lapses before the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others. It was an issue during the presidential campaign that ended with Obama’s re-election Tuesday.

The CIA has come under intense scrutiny for providing the White House and other administration officials with talking points that led them to say the Benghazi attack was a result of a film protest, not a militant terror attack. It has become clear that the CIA was aware the attack was distinct from the film protests roiling across other parts of the Muslim world.

Morell rather than Petraeus now is expected to testify at closed congressional briefings next week on the Sept. 11 attacks on the consulate in Benghazi.

For the director of the CIA, being engaged in an extramarital affair is considered a serious breach of security and a counterintelligence threat. If a foreign government had learned of the affair, the reasoning goes, Petraeus or the person with whom he was involved could have been blackmailed or otherwise compromised. Military justice considers conduct such as an extramarital affair to be possible grounds for court martial.

Failure to resign also could create the perception for the rank-and-file that such behavior is acceptable.

At FBI headquarters, spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment on the information that the affair had been discovered in the course of an investigation by the bureau.

Holly Petraeus is known for her work helping military families. She joined the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to set up an office dedicated to helping service members with financial issues.

Though Obama made no direct mention of Petraeus’ reason for resigning, he offered his thoughts and prayers to the general and his wife, saying that Holly Petraeus had “done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time.”

Paula Broadwell, mistress of four-star general David Petraeus???

Petraeus, who became CIA director in September 2011, was known as a shrewd thinker and hard-charging competitor. His management style was recently lauded in a Newsweek article by Paula Broadwell, co-author of the biography, “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.”

The article listed Petraeus’ “rules for living.” No. 5 was: “We all make mistakes. The key is to recognize them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear view mirrors — drive on and avoid making them again.”

Petraeus told his CIA employees that he treasured his work with them “and I will always regret the circumstances that brought that work with you to an end.”

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said Petraeus’ departure represented “the loss of one of our nation’s most respected public servants. From his long, illustrious Army career to his leadership at the helm of CIA, Dave has redefined what it means to serve and sacrifice for one’s country.”

CIA Director Jim Woolsey left over the discovery of a KGB mole and director John Deutch left after the revelation that he had kept classified information on his home computer.

Before Obama brought Petraeus to the CIA, he was credited with salvaging the U.S. war in Iraq.

“His inspirational leadership and his genius were directly responsible - after years of failure - for the success of the surge in Iraq,” said Sen. John McCain, the Republican who ran unsuccessfully for president against Obama in 2008.

President George W. Bush sent Petraeus to Iraq in February 2007, at the peak of sectarian violence, to turn things around as head of U.S. forces. He oversaw an influx of 30,000 U.S. troops and moved troops out of big bases so they could work more closely with Iraqi forces scattered throughout Baghdad.

Petraeus’ success was credited with paving the way for the eventual U.S. withdrawal.

After Iraq, Bush made Petraeus commander of U.S. Central Command, overseeing all U.S. military operations in the greater Middle East, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was relieved of duty in June 2010 for comments in a magazine story, Obama asked Petraeus to take over in Kabul and the general quickly agreed.

In the months that followed, Petraeus helped lead the push to add more U.S. troops to that war and dramatically boost the effort to train Afghan soldiers and police.

House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King, a Republican, said he regretted Petraeus’ resignation, calling him “one of America’s most outstanding and distinguished military leaders and a true American patriot.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein also regretted the resignation but gave Morell high marks, too.

Morell had served as deputy director since May 2010, after holding a number of top roles, including director for the agency’s analytical arm, which helps feed intelligence into the president’s daily brief. He also worked as an aide to former CIA director George Tenet.

“I wish President Obama had not accepted this resignation,” Feinstein said of Petraeus, “but I understand and respect the decision.”

Petraeus hoped affair would stay secret

Petraeus hoped affair would stay secret and he could keep his job as CIA director

FBI agents searched the home of the woman at the center of the scandal involving former CIA director David H. Petraeus on Monday evening, carrying away boxes and bags of material and taking photographs inside her home in Charlotte.

A senior law enforcement official said the agents were searching for any classified or sensitive documents that may have been in the possession of Paula Broadwell, a former military officer and Petraeus biographer whose extramarital affair with him led to his resignation Friday.

Local television stations showed agents carrying boxes out of the two-story brick house Broadwell shares with her husband, a radiologist, and two young sons. Agents also appeared to be taking photographs inside the house.

Broadwell has not been seen at the home or commented since the news of Petraeus’s resignation broke Friday. On Monday, she hired a prominent Washington defense lawyer, Robert F. Muse.

The search was the latest chapter in the story of Petraeus’s fall from grace. It came on the same day that two longtime military aides to Petraeus said that he did not intend to resign until it became clear that his extramarital affair with Broadwell would become public after the first phase of the FBI investigation of his e-mail accounts.

While investigating complaints from a woman in Tampa that Broadwell had sent her threatening e-mails last summer, the FBI discovered explicit e-mail exchanges between Petraeus and Broadwell that exposed their affair. The investigation also raised questions about whether Broadwell may have possessed classified material, and the search Monday night was related to that, the senior law enforcement official said.

“I don’t think it’s a game changer,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on an ongoing investigation. “It was done to resolve things with a greater level of confidence.”

In a farewell letter last week to CIA staff members, Petraeus described his affair with Broadwell as behavior that is “unacceptable both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours.” The statement and others from his allies in the days that followed created an impression that he had stepped down of his own volition, and out of a sense of moral obligation.

But some of his closest advisers who served with him during his last command in Iraq said Monday that Petraeus planned to stay in the job even after he acknowledged the affair to the FBI, hoping the episode would never become public. He resigned last week after being told to do so by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. on the day President Obama was reelected.

“Obviously, he knew about the relationship for months, he knew about the affair, he was in it, so yes, he was not going to resign,” said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel and Petraeus’s executive officer during the Iraq “surge,” who spoke Monday with the former general for about half an hour. “But once he knew it was going to go public, he thought that resigning was the right thing to do. There is no way it would have remained private.”

Steven Boylan, who served as Petraeus’s public affairs officer during that same period in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, said the retired four-star general “felt he had to [resign] once he knew it would be made public. He didn’t feel he could lead the organization with this being out there.”

A more detailed timeline of the events that upended the career of one of the nation’s most accomplished military officers emerged from interviews with former Petraeus advisers, people close to Broadwell, law enforcement officials, and people close to Petraeus family friend Jill Kelley, who received harassing e-mails from Broadwell.

The new information shows that Petraeus told Broadwell this summer to stop sending the harassing e-mails after Kelley told him about them. Law enforcement officials said the e-mails indicated that Broadwell was jealous of Kelley’s friendship with Petraeus. His warning came about the same time Petraeus ended the affair with Broadwell.

The intrigue grew early Tuesday when the Pentagon announced it was investigating between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of “potentially inappropriate” e-mails between Kelley and Gen. John R. Allen, who succeeded Petraeus as the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

A senior defense official told reporters traveling to Australia with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that the Pentagon was still reviewing the e-mails and declined to comment on the nature of the relationship between Allen and Kelley.

In an interview Monday, Kelley’s brother said his sister, a volunteer military liaison in Tampa who is friends with Petraeus and his wife of 38 years, Holly, had no idea that her complaint to the FBI would lead to the end of Petraeus’s career. There are still unanswered questions about the sequence of events. Over the weekend, Kelley hired Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell and Broadwell hired Muse. Both lawyers have declined to comment.

Although Petraeus has left his post and his biography has been removed from the CIA Web site, congressional leaders continued Monday to demand that he be prepared to testify in a hearing this week on the events surrounding the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Petraeus met Broadwell in 2006 at Harvard, where she was a graduate student writing a dissertation on leadership. They began corresponding, and when he moved to Tampa in 2009 as head of the U.S. Central Command, she became a frequent visitor.

At the same time, Petraeus and his wife became friends with Kelley and her husband, Scott. They attended parties with the Kelleys, and Jill Kelley spent time at the military base as a volunteer. Petraeus’s posting was cut short when Obama tapped him in June 2010 to become commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan after Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was forced to resign.

Broadwell, a West Point graduate like Petraeus who had spent more than a decade as an Army officer before leaving, visited him several times for extended stays. She had decided to turn her dissertation into a biography of the general, which was published this year as “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.”

Several of Petraeus’s aides said they were surprised — and concerned — by how much access the general granted Broadwell during her visits. But Mansoor and others say the affair began only after Petraeus left the military in mid-2011 to become CIA director.

“It began as a mentor-mentee relationship,” Mansoor said. “At some point, it morphed into a more personal relationship. But the physical aspects of the relationship happened a couple months after he got to the agency.”

Beyond the military, the two shared an interest in fitness and the study of leadership. When they were apart, e-mail served as their communication method of choice, with hundreds of messages passing between them through various and sometimes anonymous accounts.

By late spring of this year, however, the relationship appeared headed for trouble.

In Tampa, Kelley began receiving a series of what she described to a friend as bizarre e-mails from an anonymous account. They did not specifically cite Kelley’s connection to Petraeus but warned that her advances toward him would have to stop or she would be exposed. Associates of Petraeus and Kelley have said they have been nothing more than social friends.

“They attended events together. They spend Christmas at each other’s homes,” Boylan said. “There was nothing untoward. No affair-like thing between them. They were strictly friends.”

Kelley was alarmed enough by the e-mails that in June she told a friend who worked as an FBI agent in Tampa about them. The agent took her concerns to the bureau, where investigators traced the messages to Broadwell.

In examining her e-mail account, investigators found messages from Petraeus of a highly personal nature. The FBI suspected the communications were being sent by someone who had hacked into the CIA director’s personal account.

The mistake apparently came in part from steps Petraeus and Broadwell took to conceal their relationship. According to the Associated Press, instead of sending e-mails to each other’s accounts, the two composed the messages and then left them in a “draft” folder where they could be accessed with a shared user name and password. The method, often used by terrorists, makes it harder to trace e-mail traffic. But in this case, it may also have fueled law enforcement concerns that a hacker was accessing the accounts.

The FBI informed Kelley that Broadwell was the sender and Kelley said she did not know her, according to a person close to Kelley.

At some point this summer, Kelley told Petraeus about the e-mails and named Broadwell as the person who had sent them. Apparently in response, the CIA director sent e-mails to Broadwell telling her to stop the harassment, two law enforcement officials said.

Mansoor, who during his last tour in Iraq spent 15 months in a bedroom adjacent to Petraeus’s, said the affair ended four months ago. That roughly coincides with the time Petraeus discovered that Broadwell was sending the e-mails to Kelley, although Mansoor would not say who ended the relationship.

“This is someone who spent his entire career in the military, and he is used to having people around him who have shared bonds and experience,” Mansoor said. “He had that with her, and she made herself available to him.”

When confronted by FBI agents about the e-mails, Broadwell, 40, acknowledged the affair and turned over her computer. Petraeus, 60, also acknowledged the relationship in his interview with the FBI.

Kelley’s brother said that his sister dined and shopped regularly with Holly Petraeus, and that she had no idea her complaint would eventually reveal an extramarital affair. David Khawam, a lawyer in New Jersey, said his sister called him Sunday and told him to turn on the news, which featured her role in the unfolding investigation.

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Khawam said his sister told him. “I’m the victim here. But it still feels awful.”

In late summer, the FBI informed senior Justice Department officials about the case. A department spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler, declined to say when Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was informed.

After reviewing the investigation, federal prosecutors decided there was no evidence that warranted charges against Broadwell or Petraeus. The senior law enforcement official said Monday night that the case remains open.

Broadwell was interviewed the week of Oct. 21, and Petraeus was interviewed on Oct. 29. During his interview, he was told that he would not be charged and the FBI did not suggest that he resign, law enforcement officials said.

What remains unclear is why, after it was decided that criminal charges would not be filed, the FBI informed Clapper about the investigation. Another question is why the notification was made on Election Day about a case the Justice Department had declined to pursue weeks earlier.

At some point during the summer, the Tampa FBI agent whom Kelley had first approached for help was taken off the investigation. Frustrated and concerned that an inquiry into what he thought may be a possible national security breach had not progressed, he got in touch with the office of Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.). Reichert passed the information on to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

“I was contacted by an F.B.I. employee concerned that sensitive, classified information may have been compromised and made certain Director Mueller was aware of these serious allegations and the potential risk to our national security,” Cantor said in a statement.

Cantor contacted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III on Oct. 31, and a week later Clapper told Petraeus he needed to resign.

“I don’t know if it would have taken this course without Cantor,” a person close to the inquiry said.

Karen DeYoung, Carol D. Leonnig, Julie Tate and Greg Miller contributed to this report.

Top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Is Linked to Petraeus Scandal

PERTH, Australia — Gen. John R. Allen, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has become ensnared in the scandal over an extramarital affair acknowledged by David H. Petraeus, a former general. General Allen is being investigated for what a senior defense official said early Tuesday was “inappropriate communication” with Jill Kelley, a woman in Tampa, Fla., who was seen by Mr. Petraeus’s lover as a rival for his attentions.

In a statement released to reporters on his plane en route to Australia early Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that the F.B.I. on Sunday had referred “a matter involving” General Allen to the Pentagon.

Mr. Panetta turned the matter over to the Pentagon’s inspector general to conduct an investigation into what a defense official said were 20,000 to 30,000 pages of documents, many of them e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley, who is married and has children.

A senior law enforcement official in Washington said on Tuesday that F.B.I. investigators, looking into Ms. Kelley’s complaint about anonymous e-mails she had received, examined all of her e-mails as a routine step.

“When you get involved in a cybercase like this, you have to look at everything,” the official said, suggesting that Ms. Kelley may not have considered that possibility when she filed the complaint. “The real question is why someone decided to open this can of worms.”

The official would not describe the content of the e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley or say specifically why F.B.I. officials decided to pass them on to the Defense Department. “Generally, the nature of the e-mails warranted providing them to D.O.D.,” he said.

The defense official on Mr. Panetta’s plane said that General Allen, who is also married, told Pentagon officials he had done nothing wrong. Neither he nor Ms. Kelley could be reached for comment early Tuesday. Mr. Panetta’s statement praised General Allen for his leadership in Afghanistan and said that “he is entitled to due process in this matter.”

But the Pentagon inspector general’s investigation opens up what could be a widening scandal into two of the most prominent generals of their generation: Mr. Petraeus, who was the top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan before he retired from the military and became director of the C.I.A., only to resign on Friday because of the affair, and General Allen, who also served in Iraq and now commands 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan.

Although General Allen will remain the commander in Afghanistan, Mr. Panetta said that he had asked President Obama to delay the general’s nomination to be the commander of American forces in Europe and the supreme allied commander of NATO, two positions he was to move into after what was expected to be easy confirmation by the Senate. Mr. Panetta said in his statement that Mr. Obama agreed with his request.

Gen. Joseph A. Dunford, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps who was nominated last month by Mr. Obama to succeed General Allen in Afghanistan, will proceed as planned with his confirmation hearing. In his statement, Mr. Panetta urged the Senate to act promptly on his nomination.

The National Security Council spokesman, Tommy Vietor, said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Obama also believes that the Senate should swiftly confirm General Dunford.

The defense official said that the e-mails between Ms. Kelley and General Allen spanned the years 2010 to 2012. The official could not explain why there were so many pages of e-mails and did not specify their content. The official said he could not explain how the e-mails between Ms. Kelley and General Allen were related to the e-mails between Mr. Petraeus and his lover, Paula Broadwell, and e-mails between Ms. Broadwell and Ms. Kelley.

In what is known so far, Ms. Kelley went to the F.B.I. last summer after she was disturbed by harassing e-mails. The F.B.I. began an investigation and learned that the e-mails were from Ms. Broadwell. In the course of looking into Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails, the F.B.I. discovered e-mails between Ms. Broadwell and Mr. Petraeus that indicated that they were having an extramarital affair. Ms. Broadwell, officials say, saw Ms. Kelley as a rival for her affections with Mr. Petraeus.

The defense official said he did not know how General Allen and Ms. Kelley knew each other. General Allen has been in Afghanistan as the top American commander since July 2011, although before that he lived in Tampa as the deputy commander for Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East.

The defense official said that the Pentagon had received the 20,000 to 30,000 pages of documents from the F.B.I. and was currently reviewing them.

The defense official said that at 5 p.m. Washington time on Sunday, Mr. Panetta was informed by the Pentagon’s general counsel that the F.B.I. had the thousands of pages of e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley. Mr. Panetta was at the time on his plane en route from San Francisco to Honolulu, his first stop on a weeklong trip to the Pacific and Asia. Mr. Panetta notified the White House and then the leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.

General Allen is now in Washington for what was to be his confirmation hearing as commander in Europe. That hearing, the official said, will now be delayed.

After arriving in Perth Mr. Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia for a United States-Australian security and diplomatic conference. Asked by a reporter while pausing for photos with Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Gillard if General Allen could remain an effective commander while under investigation, Mr. Panetta said nothing.

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also in Perth for the defense meetings and had no comment on the investigation of General Allen. “I do know him well and I can’t say,” General Dempsey said of General Allen late on Tuesday after returning from an official dinner with the Australian officials, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Panetta.

Concern Grows Over Top Military Officers’ Ethics

WASHINGTON — Along with a steady diet of books on leadership and management, the reading list at military “charm schools” that groom officers for ascending to general or admiral includes an essay, “The Bathsheba Syndrome: The Ethical Failure of Successful Leaders,” that recalls the moral failure of the Old Testament’s King David, who ordered a soldier on a mission of certain death — solely for the chance to take his wife, Bathsheba.

Despite the warnings, a worrisomely large number of senior officers have been investigated and even fired for poor judgment, malfeasance and sexual improprieties or sexual violence — and that is just in the last year.

Gen. William Ward of the Army, known as Kip, the first officer to open the new Africa Command, came under scrutiny for allegations of misusing tens of thousands of government dollars for travel and lodging.

Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, a former deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan, is confronting the military equivalent of a grand jury to decide whether he should stand trial for adultery, sexual misconduct and forcible sodomy, stemming from relationships with five women.

James H. Johnson III, a former commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, was expelled from the Army, fined and reduced in rank to lieutenant colonel from colonel after being convicted of bigamy and fraud stemming from an improper relationship with an Iraqi woman and business dealings with her family.

The Air Force is struggling to recover from a scandal at its basic training center at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, where six male instructors were charged with crimes including rape and adultery after female recruits told of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

In the Navy, Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette was relieved of command of the Stennis aircraft carrier strike group — remarkably while the task force was deployed in the Middle East. Officials said that the move was ordered after “inappropriate leadership judgment.” No other details were given.

While there is no evidence that David H. Petraeus had an extramarital affair while serving as one of the nation’s most celebrated generals, his resignation last week as director of the Central Intelligence Agency — a job President Obama said he could take only if he left the Army — was a sobering reminder of the kind of inappropriate behavior that has cast a shadow over the military’s highest ranks.

Those concerns were only heightened on Tuesday when it was revealed that Gen. John R. Allen, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, is under investigation for what a senior defense official said was “inappropriate communication” with Jill Kelley, the woman in Tampa, Fla., who was seen as a rival for Mr. Petraeus’s attentions by Paula Broadwell, who had an extramarital affair with Mr. Petraeus.

The episodes have prompted concern that something may be broken, or at least fractured, across the military’s culture of leadership. Some wonder whether its top officers have forgotten the lessons of Bathsheba: The crown of command should not be worn with arrogance, and while rank has its privileges, remember that infallibility and entitlement are not among them.

David S. Maxwell, a retired Army colonel now serving as associate director for security studies at Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, said that the instances of failed or flawed leadership “are tragic and serious,” but that he doubts there are more today, on a relative scale, than in the past.

Mr. Maxwell noted that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, both wartime presidents, fired many more generals than Presidents George W. Bush or Obama. “These general and flag officers are humans,” he said. “Faced with stress, and a very complex combat environment, people make mistakes. These incidents do not represent the vast majority of our senior leaders.”

Like the troops, wartime commanders are separated from family for long periods, and the weight of responsibility — in a business where the metric of failure is a body bag, not the bottom line — bears heavily.

Still, with drivers and staff, private quarters and guaranteed hot meals, the lifestyle of the top echelon of commanders on the battlefield offers a significant buffer from the hourly rigors of frontline combat endured by the troops. So explanations differ for the lapses.

Paul V. Kane, a Marine Corps Reserve gunnery sergeant who is an Iraq veteran and former fellow of Harvard University’s International Security Program, believes the military is not the only institution facing a problem. “The country is suffering a crisis of leadership — in politics, in business and in the church, as well as in the military,” he said. “We have lots of leaders, but we have a national deficit in true leadership.”

He acknowledged that the post-9/11 stress on the military, from enlisted personnel to commanders, has fractured the very souls of people in uniform. “When you pull people out of family life, repeatedly, over the course of a decade, you are going to fray their most basic relationships with spouses, with children, with their own personal code,” Mr. Kane said.

Other national security experts warn that a decade of conflict shouldered by an all-volunteer force has separated those in uniform — about 1 percent of society — from the rest of the citizenry. Such a “military apart” is not healthy for the nation because the fighting force may begin to believe it operates under rules that are different from those the rest of civilian society follows, and perhaps with a separate set of benefits, as well.

“Our military is holding itself to a higher standard than the rest of American society,” said Kori N. Schake, an associate professor at West Point who has held senior policy positions at the Departments of State and Defense.

“That is beautiful and noble,” she added. “But it’s also disconcerting. Sometimes military people talk about being a Praetorian Guard at our national bacchanal. That’s actually quite dangerous for them to consider themselves different and better.”

In extreme cases, say some military officers and Pentagon officials, the result of this “military apart” is that commanders may come to view their sacrifice as earning them the right to disregard rules of conduct.

They note that if anything positive emerges from an era of increased scrutiny of misbehavior, it will be an invigorated effort to hold the officer corps to account for the way troops are led in combat, for the way the treasury is spent, for the way military leaders wear the mask of command.

And they warn that the problem may get worse before it gets better. While most of the more notable improprieties have been alleged against officers of the ground forces, the Navy, which has not been the fulcrum of the wars of the last decade, is also showing strain. A study by the Navy Times found more than 20 commanding officers were fired this year for inappropriate behavior and misconduct.

“The Navy’s time in the stress tester is coming,” said Peter D. Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University. “The number of ships is dropping. The number of tours will increase. Reliance on the Navy instead of the Army to back up foreign policy will become greater over the next decade than the last. If the Navy is cracking under a past decade of strain, what will it mean for the Navy when it is in the hot seat?”

Constitution allows Congress to police poachers in Africa????

I bet the Supreme Court will say the interstate commerce clause, which they routinely use to justify all the other unconstitutional acts of Congress.

US to increase anti-poaching efforts as elephants, rhinos die in jaw-dropping numbers

NAIROBI, Kenya — Alarmed that rebel militias could be profiting from a sharp increase in the poaching of elephants and rhinos, the U.S. plans to step up efforts to build a global coalition to combat the illegal wildlife trade, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says.

Speaking before animal activists and several international ambassadors, Clinton told a crowd in Washington on Thursday that poachers are using helicopters, night vision goggles and automatic weapons to hunt down wildlife. She wants world leaders to increase their focus on combating the problem and said that she and President Barack Obama will speak to Asian leaders about it next week at the East Asia Summit.

“Some of you might be wondering why a Secretary of State is keynoting an event about wildlife trafficking and conservation,” Clinton said on Thursday, before answering her own question: “Over the past few years wildlife trafficking has become more organized, more lucrative, more widespread and more dangerous than ever before.”

Elephants across Africa are being slaughtered by the thousands for their ivory tusks, which are shipped to Asia, particularly China, and made into ivory trinkets. In Tanzania alone, 10,000 elephants a year are said to be killed by poachers.

Rhino horns are in great demand globally, particularly in Southeast Asia, ground up for use as alleged aphrodisiacs and in traditional medicines or turned into decorative dagger handles.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the founder of Save the Elephants, said Clinton’s speech “signifies the will of the United States to tackle the scourge of wildlife poaching and elevates the issue internationally. Now it remains to share awareness with the Chinese and for the U.S. and China to exert joint leadership to lower the demand for ivory before it is too late.”

Yao Ming, the oversized basketball star from China, visited Kenya in August to raise awareness in China about the animal deaths required to supply ivory to China’s middle class. He is taking part in a film called “The End of the Wild.”

Clinton said the U.S. will reach out to leaders around the world to forge a consensus on wildlife protection. The U.S. also plans to launch initiatives and expand and strengthen enforcement of wildlife laws. She noted with regret that the U.S. is the second-largest destination market for illegally trafficked wildlife.

Elsewhere on Friday, a South African court sentenced a Thai national to 40 years for selling rhino horns. Chumlong Lemtongthai pleaded guilty to paying prostitutes who posed as hunters to harvest rhino horns, which were then sold on Asia’s traditional medicine market, according to the South African Press Association. At least 458 of South Africa’s endangered rhinos have been illegally killed this year — a record number.

Associated Press reporter Carley Petesch in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

Murder charges dropped because cops didn't honor 5th Amendment rights

When ever I am stopped by the police I always tell them I am taking the 5th and refusing to answer their questions.

I have never met a cop that said "Yes sir, we will honor your 5th Amendment right and cease questioning you".

Instead the cops have always lied and told me I didn't have any 5th Amendment rights until I am "arrested" and continued to question e. Of course when I refuse to answer their questions they always make up threats that if I don't flush my Fifth Amendment rights down the toilet they will do some real nasty things to me.

So the fact that the San Mateo pigs refused to honor this guys request for a lawyer isn't surprising to me at all.

If this guy is guilty and walks, you can blame it on the corrupt San Mateo piggies who refused to honor his 5th Amendment rights!!

Police ignored San Mateo murder suspect's requests for attorney, judge and experts say

REDWOOD CITY -- A judge's dismissal of murder charges against a man believed to have gunned down an East Palo Alto activist, according to legal experts, was a tough call that revealed some troubling police tactics.

However, it's highly likely prosecutors will either appeal the decision or again file charges against Gregory Elarms, 60, of Pittsburg, in the killing of David Lewis, 54. District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe's office is expected to announce its decision at a Tuesday court hearing on the case, which stems from the June 2010 shooting in a parking lot behind Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo.

The turbulence in the case started last Tuesday when San Mateo Superior Court Judge Stephen Hall threw out the murder charge during pretrial motions. Because police ignored or brushed off Elarms' repeated requests for a lawyer and attempts to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights, the judge ruled that Elarms' confession to the killing was not admissible evidence.

Several experts from Santa Clara University Law School said Hall's decision was a close call.

Normally police have to inform suspects of their rights to remain silent and an attorney -- better known as Miranda rights -- when they are taken into custody. But for Elarms that moment is vague. He is the one who contacted police Dec. 18, 2010, and told them he had information about the killing. Elarms then asked San Mateo detectives, who told him he was not under arrest, to pick him up so they could protect him.

It was only after Elarms confessed to the killing, after hours of police questioning, that he was read his rights.

Santa Clara Law professor Gerald Uelmen said Miranda rights apply to people in police custody, and Elarms was apparently free to go. Yet police completely ignored his requests for a lawyer or changed the subject when he brought it up. At one point Elarms said he needed "legal advice" but Lt. David Peruzzaro and Sgt. Rick Decker responded by saying they had been working the case hard for the past six months.

"Really ignoring his statements, as if they were never made, is not appropriate," Uelmen said. "They were playing games with this guy."

Prosecutors say police legally collected the confession and added they have additional evidence against Elarms. Chief Deputy District Attorney Karen Guidotti said Elarms' son testified before a San Mateo County grand jury that his father confessed the killing to him. That evidence alone, she said, should allow the case to proceed.

Prosecutors have also argued that Elarms guided the contact with police. Elarms called police, said he had information about Lewis' killing and stated his life was in danger. He wanted police to protect him from "would-be conspirators and assassins," Hall wrote. Elarms was later committed to Napa State Hospital for months because of mental competency issues, though doctors decided in the spring he was well enough for trial.

Lewis was shot once in the abdomen as he walked from his parked car toward the mall entrance on the evening of June 9, 2010. As Lewis lay dying, Officer Steve Robinson recorded him saying his killer was named "Greg." The pressure to solve the slaying, which occurred in the relatively safe Peninsula city, was intense. Though Lewis was a former junkie and stickup man, he later cofounded a revolutionary drug treatment center in East Palo Alto called Free at Last.

Obama signs secret directive to help thwart cyberattacks

President Obama has signed a secret directive that effectively enables the military to act more aggressively to thwart cyberattacks on the nation’s web of government and private computer networks.

Presidential Policy Directive 20 establishes a broad and strict set of standards to guide the operations of federal agencies in confronting threats in cyberspace, according to several U.S. officials who have seen the classified document and are not authorized to speak on the record. The president signed it in mid-October.

The new directive is the most extensive White House effort to date to wrestle with what constitutes an “offensive” and a “defensive” action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism, where an attack can be launched in milliseconds by unknown assailants utilizing a circuitous route. For the first time, the directive explicitly makes a distinction between network defense and cyber operations to guide officials charged with making often rapid decisions when confronted with threats.

The policy also lays out a process to vet any operations outside government and defense networks and ensure that U.S. citizens’ and foreign allies’ data and privacy are protected and international laws of war are followed.

“What it does, really for the first time, is it explicitly talks about how we will use cyber operations,” a senior administration official said. “Network defense is what you’re doing inside your own networks. . . . Cyber operations is stuff outside that space, and recognizing that you could be doing that for what might be called defensive purposes.”

The new policy, which updates a 2004 presidential directive, is part of a wider push by the Obama administration to confront the growing cyberthreat, which officials warn may overtake terrorism as the most significant threat to the country.

“It should enable people to arrive at more effective decisions,” said a second senior administration official. “In that sense, it’s an enormous step forward.”

Legislation to protect private networks from attack by setting security standards and promoting voluntary information sharing is pending on the Hill, and the White House is also is drafting an executive order along those lines.

James A. Lewis, a cyber expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, welcomed the new directive as bolstering the government’s capability to defend against “destructive scenarios,” such as those that Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta recently outlined in a speech on cybersecurity.

“It’s clear we’re not going to be a bystander anymore to cyber attacks,” said Lewis.

The Pentagon now is expected to finalize new rules of engagement that would guide commanders when and how the military can go outside government networks to prevent a cyberattack that could cause significant destruction or casualties.

The presidential directive attempts to settle years of debate among government agencies about who is authorized to take what sorts of actions in cyberspace and with what level of permission.

An example of a defensive cyber operation that once would have been considered an offensive act, for instance, might include stopping a computer attack by severing the link between an overseas server and a targeted domestic computer.

“That was seen as something that was aggressive,” said one defense official, “particularly by some at the State Department” who often are wary of actions that might infringe on other countries’ sovereignty and undermine U.S. advocacy of Internet freedom. Intelligence agencies are wary of operations that may inhibit intelligence collection. The Pentagon, meanwhile, has defined cyberspace as another military domain — joining air, land, sea and space — and wants flexibility to operate in that realm.

But cyber operations, the officials stressed, are not an isolated tool. Rather, they are an integral part of the coordinated national security effort that includes diplomatic, economic and traditional military measures.

Offensive cyber actions, outside of war zones, would still require a higher level of scrutiny from relevant agencies and generally White House permission.

The effort to grapple with these questions dates back to the 1990s but has intensified as cyber tools and weapons become ever more sophisticated.

One of those tools was Stuxnet, a computer virus jointly developed by the United States and Israel that damaged nearly 1,000 centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear plant in 2010. If an adversary should turn a similar virus against U.S. computer systems, whether public or private, the government needs to be ready to preempt or respond, officials have said.

Since the creation of the military’s Cyber Command in 2010, its head, Gen. Keith Alexander, has forcefully argued that his hundreds of cyberwarriors at Fort Meade should be given greater latitude to stop or prevent attacks. One such cyber-ops tactic could be tricking malware by sending it “sleep” commands.

Alexander has put a particularly high priority on defending the nation’s private sector computer systems that control critical functions such as making trains run, electricity flow and water pure.

But repeated efforts by officials to ensure Cyber Command has that flexibility have met with resistance — sometimes from within the Pentagon itself — over concerns that enabling the military to move too freely outside its own networks could pose unacceptable risks. A major concern has always been concern that an action may have a harmful unintended consequence, such as shutting down a hospital generator.

Officials say they expect the directive will spur more nuanced debate over how to respond to cyber incidents. That might include a cyberattack that wipes data from tens of thousands of computers in a major industrial company, disrupting business operations, but doesn’t blow up a plant or kill people.

The new policy makes clear that the government will turn first to law enforcement or traditional network defense techniques before asking military cyber units for help or pursuing other alternatives, senior administration officials said.

“We always want to be taking the least action necessary to mitigate the threat,” said one of the senior administration officials. “We don’t want to have more consequences than we intend.”

Software allows cops to search for your face with surveillance cameras

Retailers can use FaceFirst surveillance software to quickly identify potential shoplifters. But such technology raises privacy concerns.

By the time Joe Rosenkrantz took his seat in his company's conference room, a video camera had already handled the introductions.

An image of Rosenkrantz taken as he walked toward his chair instantly popped up on a nearby TV screen.

"FaceFirst has found a possible match," the caption read. "Joe Rosenkrantz, Founder and CEO."

The process took less than a second, a demonstration of a capability that developer FaceFirst says could transform facial-recognition technology into an everyday security tool.

It addresses one of the key drawbacks in the current generation of video surveillance systems. Such identification technology has been limited to airports and casinos, where security officials have to wait several minutes for the software to identify terrorists or card counters.

But the technology is too expensive for most businesses and too slow to alert store owners or building owners about shoplifters or unwelcome visitors.

"It doesn't do me any good if I'm able to look at a face with a camera and five minutes later, there's a match," said Paul Benne, a security consultant who has recommended that his clients use FaceFirst in high-security areas. "By then, the person's gone."

FaceFirst hopes to leverage the speed of its software to gain military contracts, Chairman Peter Wollons said. But the company's main target is retailers. The software can be installed in almost any high-definition video camera, making it easy for stores to identify potential shoplifters — as well as big spenders.

And that is worrying privacy advocates. Although it isn't much different from retailers pulling personal shopping information from credit cards, the added feature of having a face instantly attached to that data is worrisome, said Jennifer Lynch, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"I see no reason for retail to know everything about us," Lynch said. "People who show their face in public aren't thinking about how their image is being stored or connected with other data."

FaceFirst's technology marks a dramatic advancement for an industry that 10 years ago seemed like it would never make the transition from science fiction to real life. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, officials in Tampa, Fla., and at Boston's Logan International Airport installed cameras designed to identify criminals. Within a year, both had scrapped their systems.

It took five more years before facial-recognition technology was reliable enough to be used for security measures, but such systems have been mainly limited to law enforcement and government use. More than 70% of biometrics spending comes from law enforcement, the military and the government.

This year, the industry is projected to gross an estimated $6.58 billion, according to data from IGB, a biometrics analysis company. But that amount is expected to grow to $9.37 billion by 2014 as the technology becomes more affordable, faster and adaptable for nongovernmental uses.

FaceFirst founder Rosenkrantz started developing biometric technology as a way to remember a friend who was on one of the hijacked planes in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Several of the terrorists were later identified in an airport surveillance video.

"I couldn't stop thinking about ways this could have been avoided," Rosenkrantz said. "I realized that with the right technology, we could have saved lives."

He tinkered with existing algorithms and operating systems for more than two years in his Calabasas garage before founding FaceFirst. The company is a subsidiary of Camarillo military contractor Airborne Biometrics Group Inc. Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, an $18-billion investment company in Los Angeles, has invested in the development of the FaceFirst technology.

The company's success depends on the wide availability and decreasing prices of computer processors, Rosenkrantz said.

The software program takes a number of steps in less than a second to make an identification, starting with a freeze-frame of the live video feed. The software zooms in on the face, using the distance between the eyes as a guide.

Then an algorithm encodes the face based on distinct patterns and textures. The software cross-references that information with a database of similarly encoded images, which it can comb through at a rate of 1 million comparisons a second.

The database could include Homeland Security's terrorist watch list or a proprietary file generated by the user. When the system finds a match, it sends an alert to desktop computers and mobile devices.

National chains are particularly interested in using the technology, said Wollons, FaceFirst's chairman, because it helps them identify shoplifters. The retail industry lost an estimated $34.5 billion to shoplifting last year.

Other clients include security and surveillance companies, with whom FaceFirst has signed nondisclosure agreements, Wollons said. But inside FaceFirst's conference room, a row of baseball caps shows the agencies he's talked to: LAPD, U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Navy, Department of Defense.

Last year FaceFirst installed cameras at the Panama City, Panama, airport that tap into FBI and Interpol databases to identify suspected murderers and drug dealers. A law enforcement agency in San Diego now issues hand-held devices with cameras that use FaceFirst to match suspects against a database shared among 51 federal, state and local law agencies.

In addition, FaceFirst has signed a deal with Samsung that will make it the official provider of facial-recognition services on Samsung's surveillance cameras.

But as business grows, so do questions over how companies deal with biometric information and privacy concerns.

Privacy laws are the same for facial-recognition cameras as normal surveillance cameras, said Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. People have a reasonable expectation of privacy in places that aren't open to the public, such as bathrooms, hotel rooms and their own homes. Anywhere else is fair game.

The Federal Trade Commission issued guidelines last month telling companies to be more transparent about how they collect and store information. No such guidelines exist for law enforcement agencies.

FaceFirst doesn't provide the "watch list" databases. Its system only stores information about people when they register as a match.

At a Senate privacy hearing this summer, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said he was worried that law enforcement would be able to use new technology — like the facial-recognition binoculars that the Justice Department is developing — to identify protesters and suppress free speech.

"You don't need a warrant to use this technology on someone," Franken said. "You might not even need to have a reasonable suspicion that they're involved in a crime."

Benne, the security consultant, often doesn't tell his clients that he's using FaceFirst technology because they don't always want to know. The level of sophistication is hard for people to swallow, he said.

"Bad things will happen, and the public will cry out for more to be done," Benne said. "A lot of it may not be very palatable right now, but as perpetrators try to do more things in more ways, we have to be prepared."

E-mail: Horne allies weighed tracking rival donors

And remember Tom Horne is the jerk who asked Jan Brewer to flush Prop 203 down the toilet so he could continue sending pot smokers to prison.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne violates campaign finance laws and gets into a hit an run accident

Shortly after Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne was elected to office, campaign volunteers who later became his employees discussed tracking state employees who contributed to his Democratic opponent, new records say.

On Nov. 22, 2010, Charles “Chuck” Johnson, now an assistant attorney general, e-mailed Horne confidante Carmen Chenal and three other women about creating a spreadsheet of employees who donated to Felecia Rotellini’s campaign.

The document was contained in a new batch of investigative records the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office released Wednesday to The Arizona Republic.

The records stem from the agency’s joint investigation with the FBI into allegations that Horne illegally coordinated with an independent expenditure committee run by his political ally and current employee Kathleen Winn during the 2010 election.

Separately, Horne has disputed statements his former human-resources adviser Susan Schmaltz made to the FBI that Horne was preoccupied with the political loyalties of his employees.

Schmaltz told investigators that Horne kept lists of employees’ political affiliations and campaign contributions to Rotellini and that he directed staff to hire some supporters.

But Johnson’s e-mail suggests some of those closest to Horne were intent on tracking employees’ political affiliations. Horne was not copied on the e-mail.

“Can you do a spread sheet of each State employee who contributed to Felecia’s campaign? I can do it manually (either cut & paste or original typing), but just wondered if you could do it electronically, faster, more detailed, & more reliable. By date, amount (in kind or dollars), name & position would be helpful.

“This is very confidential stuff. We don’t want anyone to get the misimpression that such contributions will get a person fired, but it is just one management tool to be utilized in determining who may have divided loyalties in light of Felecia’s announcement that she’ll be running against Tom in 2014 & actively campaigning for something/someone in 2012.”

It is unclear whether the spreadsheet was ever created and, if it was, by whom. In a statement, Horne said he never “possessed any list of employee party affiliation.” He stated that employees did not face retaliation because of their contributions to Rotellini and that “many” employees who supported her have been promoted, adding that names of campaign contributors are public record.

Johnson worked for former Attorney General Terry Goddard but was fired for reasons not disclosed to the public. Johnson helped Horne in his effort to become attorney general, and Horne hired him. Copied on the e-mail were Chenal; Linnea Heap, the attorney-general employee whose car Horne was driving during a March 27 fender bender; Special Agent Lauren Buhrow; and project specialist Mila Makal.

The other records released Wednesday largely focused on personal e-mails to and from campaign workers regarding the 2010 election, as well as opposition research against Rotellini.

Both Rotellini and Horne last week told The Republic that they are considering running for attorney general in 2014.

But they may have competition from Goddard, who confirmed to The Republic on Wednesday that he, too, is considering a potential return to the state prosecutor’s office.

Border Patrol under scrutiny for deadly force

NOGALES, Ariz. — A pair of Mexican drug smugglers in camouflage pants, bundles of marijuana strapped to their backs, scaled a 25 foot-high fence in the middle of the night, slipped quietly into the United States and dashed into the darkness.

U.S. Border Patrol agents and local police gave chase on foot — from bushes to behind homes, then back to the fence.

The conflict escalated. Authorities say they were being pelted with rocks. An agent responded by aiming a gun into Mexico and firing multiple shots at the assailant, killing a 16-year-old boy whose family says was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Oct. 10 shooting has prompted renewed outcry over the Border Patrol’s use-of-force policies and angered human rights activists and Mexican officials who believe the incident has become part of a disturbing trend along the border — gunning down rock-throwers rather than using non-lethal weapons.

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General has launched a probe of the agency’s policies, the first such broad look at the tactics of an organization with 18,500 agents deployed to the Southwest region alone. The Mexican government has pleaded with the U.S. to change its ways. And the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has questioned the excessive use of force by Border Patrol.

At least 16 people have been killed by agents along the Mexico border since 2010, eight in cases where federal authorities said they were being attacked with rocks, said Vicki Gaubeca, director of the ACLU’s Regional Center for Border Rights in Las Cruces, N.M.

The Border Patrol says sometimes lethal force is necessary: Its agents were assaulted with rocks 249 times in the 2012 fiscal year, causing injuries ranging from minor abrasions to major head contusions.

It is a common occurrence along the border for rocks to be thrown from Mexico at agents in the U.S. by people trying to distract them from making arrests or merely to harass them — particularly in areas that are heavily trafficked by drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.

Still, Gaubeca balks at what she and others deem the unequal “use of force to use a bullet against a rock.”

“There has not been a single death of a Border Patrol agent caused by a rock,” she said. “Why aren’t they doing something to protect their agents, like giving them helmets and shields?”

The Border Patrol has declined to discuss its use of lethal force policy, but notes agents may protect themselves and their colleagues when their lives are threatened, and rocks are considered deadly weapons.

Kent Lundgren, chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, recalled a time in the 1970s when he was hit in the head while patrolling the border near El Paso, Texas.

“It put me on my knees,” Lundgren said. “Had that rock caught me in the temple, it would have been lethal, I have no doubt.”

It is extremely rare for U.S. border authorities to face criminal charges for deaths or injuries to migrants. In April, federal prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to pursue charges against a Border Patrol agent in the 2010 shooting death of a 15-year-old Mexican in Texas.

In 2008, a case was dismissed against a Border Patrol agent facing a murder charge after two mistrials. Witnesses testified the agent shot a man without provocation but defense attorneys contended the Mexican migrant tried to hit the agent with a rock.

Mexican families have filed multiple wrongful death lawsuits, and the U.S. government, while admitting no wrongdoing, has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars. Last year, the family of the illegal immigrant killed by the agent whose murder case was dismissed reached an $850,000 settlement. The agent remains employed by Border Patrol.

Even the Mexican government has asked for a change in policy, to no avail, though Border Patrol points out that Mexico has put up no barriers in its country and does little to stop the rock throwers.

“We have insisted to the United States government by multiple channels and at all levels that it is indispensable they revise and adjust Border Patrol’s standard operating procedures,” Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said in a written statement.

Elsewhere around the world, lethal force is often a last resort in such cases. Israeli police, for instance, typically use rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas to disperse rock-throwers.

“There is no such crowd incident that will occur where the Israeli police will use live fire unless it’s a critical situation where warning shots have to be fired in the air,” said Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Border Patrol agents since 2002 have been provided weapons that can launch pepper-spray projectiles up to 250 feet away. The agency did not provide statistics on how many times they have been used, but officials are quick to note agents along the U.S.-Mexico border operate in vastly different scenarios than authorities in other countries.

They often patrol wide swaths of desert alone — unlike protest situations elsewhere where authorities gather en masse clad in riot gear.

Experts say there’s little that can be done to stop the violence, given the delicacies of the diplomacy and the fact that no international law specifically covers such instances.

“Ultimately, the politics of the wider U.S.-Mexico relationship are going to play a much bigger role than the law,” said Kal Raustiala, professor of law and director of the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA. “The interests are just too high on both sides to let outrage from Mexico, which is totally understandable, determine the outcome here.”

Officials at the Border Patrol’s training academy in Artesia, N.M., refused comment on all questions about rock-throwing and use of force.

At the sprawling 220-acre desert compound, prospective agents spend at least 59 days at the academy, learning everything from immigration law to off-road driving, defense tactics and marksmanship.

“We’re going to teach them … the mechanics of the weapon that they’re going to use, the weapons systems, make them good marksmen, put them in scenarios where they have to make that judgment, shoot or not shoot,” said the training academy’s Assistant Chief Patrol Agent James Cox.

In the latest scenario, the two smugglers were attempting to climb the fence back into Mexico, while Border Patrol agents and Nogales Police Department officers ordered them down.

“Don’t worry, they can’t hurt us up here!” one suspect yelled to the other. Then came the rocks.

The police officers took cover, but a Border Patrol agent opened fire through the fence on Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was shot at least seven times, according to Mexican authorities. A Mexican official with direct knowledge of the investigation said the teenager was shot in the back. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the case.

The Border Patrol has revealed little information as probes unfold on both sides of the fence that separates Nogales, Ariz., from Nogales, Sonora. The FBI is investigating, as is standard with all Border Patrol shootings, and the agency won’t comment “out of respect for the investigative process,” said U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Michael Friel.

Marco Gonzalez lives in Nogales, Ariz., just across the road from the border fence. He called police to report seeing suspicious men in dark clothes running through his neighborhood.

He didn’t see the shooting, but he heard the gunshots. His kids thought they were fireworks.

“It affects me a lot,” Gonzalez said in Spanish. “Nothing like this has happened since I’ve lived here. It causes a lot of fear.”

The teen’s mother claims her son was just walking past the area a few blocks from home and got caught in the crossfire. None of the training, political maneuvering or diplomatic tip-toeing matters to her. She just wants her boy back. She just wants answers.

“Put yourself in my place,” Araceli Rodriguez told the Nogales International. “A child is what you most love in life. It’s what you get up in the morning for, what you work for. They took away a piece of my heart.”

Associated Press writer Brady McCombs contributed to this report from Phoenix. Josef Federman contributed from Israel.

Panetta orders Pentagon investigation of legal, ethical issues among military leaders

BANGKOK — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has ordered the Pentagon to find out why so many generals and admirals have become embroiled in legal and ethical problems, a trend exacerbated by recent investigations of two of the military’s best-known commanders.

The Pentagon disclosed Panetta’s directive on Thursday after he arrived in Thailand as part of a visit to Asia. But aides insisted that he had been considering the review for some time and that it was not prompted by revelations that the FBI has been investigating former CIA director David H. Petraeus, a retired Army general, and Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

“I will emphasize very strongly that the secretary was going to embark on this course long before the matters that have come to light over the past week,” Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters traveling with Panetta here.

The military has been scandalized by several other recent criminal and administrative probes into top officers, an exceedingly high number for a profession that prides itself on honor and probity.

The deputy commander of the storied 82nd Airborne Division was relieved in May in Afghanistan and is now facing criminal charges that he sexually assaulted or engaged in adultery with five women. Last month, the commander of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf was relieved for “inappropriate leadership judgment” and is under investigation by the Navy’s inspector general.

On Tuesday, Panetta demoted the former four-star commander of the military’s Africa Command and ordered him to repay $82,000 for taking lavish or unauthorized trips with his wife.

Another inspector general probe this fall castigated the three-star commander of the Missile Defense Agency for creating a toxic work environment, describing his style as “management by blowtorch and pliers.”

Panetta has said little in public about each of the cases and hasn’t fired any commanders since taking charge at the Pentagon in July 2011. In contrast, his predecessor, Robert M. Gates, was quick to sack generals and admirals for what he deemed poor performance or a lack of accountability.

In the past, Panetta has said he is tough on commanders when necessary, but usually takes action behind closed doors.

“He hasn’t had to fire anyone at the military rank Gates did because no one at those ranks has done something to warrant it on his watch,” said a senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon chief’s leadership style.

At a press conference Thursday in Bangkok, Panetta said he wanted the American public to understand that the vast majority of generals and admirals serve with honor and integrity. “One thing I do demand,” he added, “is that those who seek to protect this country operate by the highest ethical standards.”

Panetta did not mention his order, which the Pentagon announced a few hours later. Aides said Panetta signed it on Wednesday.

The order directs Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to oversee a review of “ethical culture” in the military. The Pentagon said an interim report is due Dec. 1 , and that Panetta will share the results with President Obama.

According to the directive, Panetta said he expects “senior officers and civilian executives to exercise sound judgment in their stewardship of government resources and in their personal conduct.” He added: “An action may be legally permissible but neither advisable nor wise.”

Also Thursday, Panetta said he had no evidence that any other military brass might be entangled in the scandal involving Allen and Petraeus.

“I am not aware of any others that could be involved in this issue at the present time,” Panetta said at his news conference. “I’m sure we’ll have to await and see what additional factors are brought to our attention.”

Panetta has directed the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate “potentially inappropriate” behavior on the part of Allen after learning that the general and a Tampa socialite had sent each other thousands of e-mails over a three-year period.

Pentagon officials have been vague about the content of the e-mails or the nature of the relationship.

On Thursday, Panetta would not answer directly when a reporter asked if the e-mails were sexually explicit.

“What I don’t want to do is to try to characterize those communications because I don’t want to do anything that would impact on their ability to conduct an objective review of what was contained in those e-mails,” he said.

The Pentagon has said that Allen, who is married, has denied any wrongdoing. Allen’s associates have said that he did not have an affair with the woman, 37-year-old Jill Kelley, who with her husband frequently entertained high-ranking military officials from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

One senior defense official has described the e-mails as “flirtatious,” but other defense officials said the tone and sheer scope of the communications warranted further scrutiny.

The FBI has collected between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of documents, most of them e-mails, that Allen and Kelley sent to each other.

The Pentagon has allowed Allen to remain as commander of the Afghan war while the investigation proceeds.

Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that he asked Allen earlier in the week if the investigation was too much of a distraction for him to remain an effective commander. Allen, he said, replied that he could handle it.

“I asked him if he thought in the context of this additional stress in his life if he would be affected by it, and he assured me that he was ready, willing and able to continue in command, and I absolutely have confidence in his ability to do that,” Dempsey said in an interview Thursday with the American Forces Press Service, the Defense Department’s in-house news agency.

Allen was previously slated to leave his post in Afghanistan early next year and take over as NATO’s supreme allied commander of forces in Europe. Obama nominated him for that job last month, but the Pentagon has asked the Senate to postpone his confirmation hearing until the e-mail investigation is completed.

Dempsey seemed to acknowledge that the probe could take months, raising doubts about whether Allen could take the new job even if he is cleared of wrongdoing.

“I wouldn’t want him to miss that opportunity unless there is reason for that to happen,” Dempsey said. “I don’t see that at this point, but I see this investigation and how long it could take affecting that.”

The e-mails began in 2010, when Allen was the second-ranking military leader in the U.S. Central Command, and continued after he became commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan in July 2011.

Kelley also was friends with Petraeus, who had been Allen’s boss at Central Command, which is based in Tampa. Law enforcement officials have said that Petraeus’s mistress apparently became jealous of their closeness and sent anonymous e-mails to Kelley, trying to keep the two apart. That ultimately led to the FBI’s involvement and Petraeus’s resignation last week.

With pot legal, police worry about road safety

Sadly, I suspect the states that legalize marijuana will go for raising revenue, rather then keeping the public safe from stoned drivers and set a ridiculously low DUI standard for people that smoke marijuana.

When drunk driving first became a crime in the early 1900's most states set the standard at .15, and at that level I certainly am too drunk to operate anything. For me that is about 5 beers on an empty stomach. And I am real drunk after drinking 5 beers.

Next most states lowered the limit to .10 at the request of the Federal government that gave them bribes. At .10 it takes me 3 beers to get legally drunk on an empty stomach. With 3 beers I consider myself to be slightly drunk. I have a little buzz, but I am not smashed out of my mind.

Last most states again lowered the limit to .08 again a result of the Federal government giving them money or bribes. With that standard I am legally drunk after having 2 beers. I serious doubt that my driving is impaired after having two beers, although I suspect if I was tested my reaction times might be a bit lower. But my reaction times would be lower if I had a headache, and I don't think it is right for the government to arrest me for DUI because I have a headache.

Currently the DUI standards for people in Arizona who use illegal drugs are also draconian and all about raising revenue and have absolutely nothing to do with safety. In Arizona if they find any measurable trace of any illegal drug in your body you are consider DUI or DWI.

However Arizona's medical marijuana law is pretty reasonable and doesn't assume you are guilt of DUI or DWI just because you have marijuana in your body. It says:

"A REGISTERED QUALIFYING PATIENT SHALL NOT BE CONSIDERED TO BE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF MARIJUANA SOLELY BECAUSE OF THE PRESENCE OF METABOLITES OR COMPONENTS OF MARIJUANA THAT APPEAR IN INSUFFICIENT CONCENTRATION TO CAUSE IMPAIRMENT"

Of course Prop 203 was written by real live human beings who think people should be allowed to smoke marijuana, not government bureaucrats who have a vested interest in jailing people and stealing their money when they catch them smoking pot.

DENVER — It’s settled. Pot, at least certain amounts of it, will soon be legal under state laws in Washington and Colorado. Now, officials in both states are trying to figure out how to keep stoned drivers off the road.

Colorado’s measure doesn’t make any changes to the state’s driving-under-the-influence laws, leaving lawmakers and police to worry about its effect on road safety.

“We’re going to have more impaired drivers,” warned John Jackson, police chief in the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village.

Washington’s law does change driving under the influence provisions by setting a new blood-test limit for marijuana — a limit police are training to enforce, and which some lawyers are already gearing up to challenge.

“We’ve had decades of studies and experience with alcohol,” said Washington State Patrol spokesman Dan Coon. [That is true, but the alcohol standard has been set artificially low to raise revenue, rather then keep drunk people off of the road. The current standard is in most states is .08, but when DUI was first invented in the early 1900's the standard was .15 which is much more realistic] “Marijuana is new, so it’s going to take some time to figure out how the courts and prosecutors are going to handle it. But the key is impairment: We will arrest drivers who drive impaired, whether it be drugs or alcohol.”

Drugged driving is illegal, and nothing in the measures that Washington and Colorado voters passed this month to tax and regulate the sale of pot for recreational use by adults over 21 changes that. But law enforcement officials wonder about whether the ability to buy or possess marijuana legally will bring about an increase of marijuana users on the roads.

Statistics gathered for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that in 2009, a third of fatally injured drivers with known drug test results were positive for drugs other than alcohol. Among randomly stopped weekend nighttime drivers in 2007, more than 16 percent were positive for drugs. [And those test are very misleading. A person who smoke regularly can test positive for marijuana literally a month after they last used it. On the other hand a person who doesn't use marijuana on a regular basis will only test positive for a few days after the last time they smoked pot. A person who smoke pot will only be impaired for 4 or 5 hours while they will test positive for marijuana for days or months.]

Marijuana can cause dizziness and slowed reaction time, and drivers are more likely to drift and swerve while they’re high.

Marijuana legalization activists agree people shouldn’t smoke and drive. But setting a standard comparable to blood-alcohol limits has sparked intense disagreement, said Betty Aldworth, outreach director for Colorado’s Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol.

Most convictions for drugged driving currently are based on police observations, followed later by a blood test.

“There is not yet a consensus about the standard rate for THC impairment,” Aldworth said, referring to the psychoactive chemical in marijuana.

Unlike portable breath tests for alcohol, there’s no easily available way to determine whether someone is impaired from recent pot use.

There are different types of tests for marijuana. Many workplaces test for an inactive THC metabolite that can be stored in body fat and remain detectable weeks after use. But tests for current impairment measure for active THC in the blood, and those levels typically drop within hours.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says peak THC concentrations are reached during the act of smoking, and within three hours, they generally fall to less than 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood — the same standard in Washington’s law, one supporters describe as roughly equivalent to the .08 limit for alcohol. [And sadly that .08 alcohol limit is more about raising revenue for the government then about safety. When DUI was first invented the legal limit was .15 in most states, and over the years has been lowered to .08 in most states at the request of the Feds who gave and still give states that lowered the limit money]

Two other states — Ohio and the medical marijuana state of Nevada — have a limit of 2 nanograms of THC per milliliter. Pennsylvania’s health department has a 5-nanogram guideline that can be introduced in driving violation cases, and a dozen states, including Illinois, Arizona, and Rhode Island, have zero-tolerance policies. [But for Arizona medical marijuana patients there is no set standard. Cops have to prove they are DUI with other means]

In Washington, police still have to observe signs of impaired driving before pulling someone over, Coon said. The blood would be drawn by a medical professional, and tests above 5 nanograms would automatically subject the driver to a DUI conviction.

Supporters of Washington’s measure said they included the standard to allay fears that legalization could prompt a drugged-driving epidemic, but critics call it arbitrarily strict. They insist that medical patients who regularly use cannabis would likely fail even if they weren’t impaired.

They also worry about the law’s zero-tolerance policy for those under 21. College students who wind up convicted even if they weren’t impaired could lose college loans, they argue.

USO center now open at Sky Harbor Airport’s Terminal 4

The government isn't allowed to give special treatment to any group of people under those clauses in the Arizona Constitution.

Traveling military members and their families now have a sprawling new space to call “home away from home” at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

With fanfare and emotion, the United Service Organization, a national non-profit that provides services to troops, opened its 3,000-square-foot center Thursday in Sky Harbor’s Terminal 4.

The space is about three times larger than the old USO center in Terminal 2, which it replaces. Active military members and their families can use the new space to use free wireless Internet, make domestic phone calls, eat snacks and play video games. There also is a movie room, children’s play area and storage space for luggage.

More than the amenities, though, is the sense of belonging that USO officials hope the center will provide for troops passing through Sky Harbor, the sixth-busiest airport in the country.

Officials estimate the new USO center at Sky Harbor will serve 1,500 troops and military family members per month. The one in Terminal 2 saw about 500 visitors a month.

“We just try to make them feel at home,” said Lorri Wick, an Apache Junction teacher who began volunteering at the USO center six years ago after her son joined the Marines.

She witnessed family reunions, tearful goodbyes, grown soldiers perched on tiny chairs playing Sony PlayStation as they slogged through long layovers.

Wick also noticed patterns over the years. For one, she said, children of military families always seemed to pick up after themselves.

“When they leave the kids’ room, it is just as clean and organized as when they went in,” she said.

There are about 160 USO centers at airports across the country, and most are volunteer-run. Two paid workers and more than 200 volunteers will staff the Phoenix center, USO spokeswoman Angela Sok said.

Maj. Gen. Hugo Salazar, who attended Thursday’s opening, said the USO network has become indispensable to his travel routine.

“I travel quite a bit, and every time I travel, I always go and find a USO,” Salazar said. There, he exchanges books and talks with fellow soldiers.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said it was equally important that millions of travelers would see the center — located in “prime real estate” that Sky Harbor donated to USO — as they passed through the airport. Home to Southwest Airlines and US Airways, Terminal 4 sees about 80 percent of the airport’s 45 million visitors each year.

“Imagine, a retailer would kill for this space, wouldn’t they?” said Stanton, as he motioned to escalators that run directly through the center. “For supporting our veterans ... we want to be the Number 1 city in this country.”

Sky Harbor’s old USO center in Terminal 2 will close by the end of the week. The new USO center will be open daily from 8a.m. to 8 p.m.

Susan Rice not so bright - Remember Sarah Palin

Sen. John McCain is quoted as saying Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is "not qualified" to become secretary of State. He also made some reference to her being "not so bright."

Has the esteemed senator forgotten that he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? Need the senator be reminded that those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks?

Of course there is a big difference here. McCain picked Sarah Palin to help him get the vote of men who vote with their middle leg, not their brains.

So in that sense Sarah Palin had all the ~~tools~~ looks she needed to get the job done.

Woman with child drives onto Sky Harbor Airport runway

By Chris Cole The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Nov 16, 2012 8:13 AM

A woman with a child in her car drove a car out onto a runway at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport late Thursday night, authorities said.

The driver rammed her 1997 Saturn into an airport gate and drove onto an active runway about 10 p.m., according to the Phoenix Police Department.

Phoenix police responded quickly by stopping the car and taking the woman into custody, police said.

Airport operations were shut down for a couple minutes, but flights didn’t experience delays or any danger because of the driver’s actions, said Deborah Ostreicher, Deputy Aviation Director for Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

All security procedures were followed exactly as they should have been, Ostricher said.

Testilying is a job requirement for cops???

By D.S. Woodfill, Bob Ortega and Melissa Blasius The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team

The Glendale Police Department is denying a 30-year veteran officer racially profiled a news producer as the Spanish-language Univision Network reported.

The network stood by its news segment that aired on the nationally televised show Primer Impacto on Monday. It was intended to illustrate if there were police officers in the Valley who were engaging in racial profiling.

The news piece interviewed several Hispanic residents who said profiling is a fact of life for them.

Police in September began enforcing a portion of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, which requires officers engaged in a lawful stop, detention or arrest shall, when practicable, ask about a person’s legal status when reasonable suspicion exists that the person is in the U.S. illegally.

Andrea Sambuccetti, the reporter in the segment, told viewers that she put one of her producers in a beat-up red sedan and sent him out onto the streets to see if he would be pulled over.

Sambuccetti said during her narration, which was in Spanish, that the producer had a clean driving record and the car’s registration was up to date.

According to the broadcast, about a minute into videotaping on Oct.30, the decoy car was pulled over by a Glendale police officer after stopping at a stop sign at 59th and Glendale avenues.

“We have all the papers in order, and the evidence that we haven’t committed any traffic violation is recorded on our cameras,” Sambuccetti told viewers.

Sambuccetti and a camera operator confronted the officer and asked him the reason for the traffic stop.

The officer, who Glendale police said was Jamie Nowatzki, told Sambuccetti he pulled the driver over because he sat at the stop sign for an extended period of time and was impeding other vehicles from passing through the intersection, which a written statement from the department repeated.

“From Officer Nowatzki’s vantage point, he clearly observed a red sedan at a stop sign for an unreasonable amount of time, causing two cars to drive into the opposing lane to get around the vehicle,” the statement said.

It went on to say he was impeding traffic “for several minutes” and that other drivers were blocked, including one who honked his horn. Nowatzki issued a warning and let the driver go.

Police officials said the news footage that appeared on TV “appeared to be heavily edited and did not show the entire incident, including the amount of time the red sedan impeded traffic.”

Pilar Campos, an executive producer of Primer Impacto, said he reviewed raw footage of the video and the vehicle was only stopped at the stop sign for a couple of seconds.

Police officials said they stand behind Nowatzki and the segment was “misleading, inflammatory, and apparently intends to portray the Glendale Police Department in a negative light by suggesting we engage in racial profiling.”

Our government masters lied about Libya attack??

WASHINGTON — Former CIA Director David Petraeus told lawmakers on Friday he believed all along that the deadly Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya was a terrorist attack, a congressman said, as the former general faced Congress for the first time since he resigned over an extramarital affair.

Republican Rep. Peter King told reporters that Petraeus focused his remarks during the closed-door hearing on the Libya attack, which killed the U.S. ambassador. Republicans have claimed that the White House misled the public on what led to the violence by blaming it at first on protests over an anti-Muslim film produced in the U.S.

Lawmakers said Petraeus told them that CIA talking points written after the attack in Benghazi referred to it as a terrorist attack. But Petraeus said the reference was removed by other federal agencies that made changes to the CIA’s draft.

The retired four-star Army general, once one of the country’s most respected military leaders, entered the Capitol through a network of underground hallways, away from photographers and television cameras. CIA directors typically walk through the building’s front door.

Petraeus is under investigation by the CIA for possible wrongdoing in his extramarital affair, though that wasn’t the subject of Friday’s hearings.

Petraeus made no comment on the affair to lawmakers, but he was asked if it would have any impact on his testimony and he said no, King said. King said Petraeus didn’t seem affected by the week’s developments.

As for the attack, “He was definitely fully aware of what was going on,” King said.

Five days after the attack, the Obama administration sent U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on the Sunday news shows to describe it as a spontaneous protest over the anti-Muslim video. Rice relied on initial intelligence that proved incorrect, and she’s now under attack by some Republican senators who vow to block her if she’s nominated as secretary of state when Hillary Rodham Clinton steps down.

Lawmakers have been interviewing top intelligence and national security officials in trying to determine what the intelligence community knew before, during and after the attack. They viewed security video from the consulate and surveillance footage by an unarmed CIA Predator drone that showed events in real time.

Petraeus was appearing before the House Intelligence Committee and its Senate counterpart.

“Director Petraeus went to Tripoli and interviewed many of the people involved,” said Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein.

As for Petraeus testifying shortly after his resignation amid a sex scandal, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said, “He’s a tough individual, and I am sure he will handle it to the best of his ability.”

Petraeus has acknowledged an affair with a woman later identified as his biographer, the married Paula Broadwell. The resignation of the former U.S. commander in both Iraq and Afghanistan stunned Washington, which once had buzzed with talk about a possible run for president in his future.

The FBI began investigating the matter last summer but didn’t notify the White House or Congress until after the Nov. 6 election.

In the course of investigating the Petraeus affair, the FBI uncovered suggestive emails between Afghanistan war chief Gen. John Allen and Florida socialite Jill Kelley, both of them married. President Barack Obama has put Allen’s promotion nomination on hold.

Top national security officials were on Capitol Hill on Thursday to grapple with fallout from the sex scandal as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asked service chiefs to review ethics training for military officers.

Lawmakers went forward with a hearing on the nomination of Gen. Joseph Dunford to replace Allen in Afghanistan. But with Allen’s own future uncertain, they put off consideration of his promotion to U.S. European Command chief and NATO supreme allied commander. Allen had initially been scheduled to testify.

Leading administration officials, meanwhile, met privately with lawmakers for a third straight day to explain how the Petraeus investigation was handled and explore its national security implications. Among those appearing before the House Intelligence Committee were Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Acting CIA Director Michael Morell.

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the committee’s top Democrat, said after the hearing that he was satisfied that the FBI had behaved properly in not notifying the White House or lawmakers about the inquiry sooner, in keeping with rules set up to prevent interference in criminal investigations.

The CIA on Thursday opened an exploratory investigation into Petraeus’ conduct. The inquiry “doesn’t presuppose any particular outcome,” said CIA spokesman Preston Golson.

Petraeus, in his first media interview since he resigned, told CNN that he had never given classified information to Broadwell. The general’s biographer also has said she didn’t receive such material from Petraeus.

But the FBI found a substantial number of classified documents on Broadwell’s computer and in her home, according to a law enforcement official, and is investigating how she got them. That official spoke only on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. The Army has suspended her security clearance.

Evidence (as it slowly dribbles out) demonstrates that an awful lot of the confusion over the Sept. 11 attacks on Americans at Benghazi, Libya, began with the Obama administration. And over the months since the attacks resulting in the murders of four Americans, the administration has done very little to clear things up.

Closed-door meetings by congressional intelligence committees are not helping. From Republicans and Democrats, we get conflicting accounts of what was said. This is a sure-fire recipe to promote skepticism and conspiracy theories. Americans need a lot more candor. A lot more transparency.

Let us see the videos. Let us hear the phone calls. Let us hear from the key figures, read the contemporaneous accounts. Whether this is done through a select committee or open hearings of the intelligence committees doesn't matter. Just make it all available.

Only then can we clear up the questions. Were warnings ignored? Were precautions taken? Why was the response to the attack so inadequate? Did the White House intentionally seek to cast the attacks as something they were not to mislead Americans?

On Friday, former CIA Director David Petraeus reportedly told lawmakers in a closed meeting that the Benghazi "talking points" recited by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on the Sunday-morning talk shows differed substantially from the information his agency provided the White House.

Rice declared, repeatedly and emphatically, on Sept. 16, that the best information available from intelligence sources was that public outrage spurred by an anti-Muslim video prompted demonstrations that led to the violence.

According to Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., Petraeus told lawmakers he knew almost immediately the attacks were planned and conducted by Ansar al Sharia, a terrorist group sympathetic to al-Qaida.

The CIA provided the White House with analysis indicating Ansar al Sharia's involvement, Petraeus reportedly said. But by the time Rice showed up on the talk shows, those "talking points" had evolved into something else.

Let us not fool ourselves about what has brought us to this point. It isn't a tawdry sex scandal. And it certainly isn't the fault of Sen. John McCain, who is keeping his eye on the essential fact that four Americans are dead and our leaders contradict themselves about how and why they died.

Obama and his aides have aggressively thickened the fog of acrimony these past months regarding events in Benghazi. Regarding what the White House knew the night of the attacks and in the immediate aftermath, Obama has been far, far less than helpful.

Death toll in Afghanistan - 2025

As of Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2012, at least 2,025 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count.

The AP count is three more than the Defense Department’s tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EDT.

At least 1,686 military service members have died in Afghanistan as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.

Outside of Afghanistan, the department reports at least 118 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, 11 were the result of hostile action.

The AP count of total OEF casualties outside of Afghanistan is four more than the department’s tally.

Since the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, 17,939 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department.

—Staff Sgt. Kenneth W. Bennett, 26, of Glendora, Calif., died Nov. 10, in Sperwan Gar, Afghanistan, from injuries sustained when he encountered an improvised explosive device during combat operations; assigned to the 53rd Ordnance Company (EOD), 3rd Ordnance Battalion (EOD), Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

—Capt. James D. Nehl, 37, of Gardiner, Ore., died Nov. 9, in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, from small arms fire while on patrol during combat operations; assigned to 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.

—Spc. Daniel L. Carlson, 21, of Running Springs, Calif., died Nov. 9, in Kandahar province, Afghanistan; assigned to 3rd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, Wheeler Army Airfield, Hawaii.

FBI investigation reveals bureau’s comprehensive access to electronic communications

The police that are spying on you probably read this email before you did!!!!

Remember if you are doing something illegal you certainly should not be talking about it in an email or posting it on the internet where federal, state, county, and local city cops watch our every move.

You can encrypt your emails with something like PGP, but I suspect if you piss the Feds off enough they are willing to spend big bucks to get the folks at the NSA to decrypt your messages.

And last but not least your telephone isn't that safe either. The police routinely illegally listen to our phone calls without the required "search warrants".

Remember any time you use a cell phone you are also using a radio transmitter and EVERYTHING you say is broadcast onto the airwaves for anybody to listen to.

FBI investigation of Broadwell reveals bureau’s comprehensive access to electronic communications

The FBI started its case in June with a collection of five e-mails, a few hundred kilobytes of data at most.

By the time the probe exploded into public view earlier this month, the FBI was sitting on a mountain of data containing the private communications — and intimate secrets — of a CIA director and a U.S. war commander. What the bureau didn’t have — and apparently still doesn’t — is evidence of a crime.

How that happened and what it means for privacy and national security are questions that have induced shudders in Washington and a queasy new understanding of the FBI’s comprehensive access to the digital trails left by even top officials.

FBI and Justice Department officials have vigorously defended their handling of the case. “What we did was conduct the investigation the way we normally conduct a criminal investigation,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Thursday. “We follow the facts.”

But in this case, the trail cut across a seemingly vast territory with no clear indication of the boundaries, if any, that the FBI imposed on itself. The thrust of the investigation changed direction repeatedly and expanded dramatically in scope.

A criminal inquiry into e-mail harassment morphed into a national security probe of whether CIA Director David H. Petraeus and the secrets he guarded were at risk. After uncovering an extramarital affair, investigators shifted to the question of whether Petraeus was guilty of a security breach.

When none of those paths bore results, investigators settled on the single target they are scrutinizing now: Paula Broadwell, the retired general’s biographer and mistress, and what she was doing with a cache of classified but apparently inconsequential files.

On Capitol Hill, the case has drawn references to the era of J. Edgar Hoover, the founding director of the FBI, who was notorious for digging up dirt on Washington’s elite long before the invention of e-mail and the Internet.

“The expansive data that is available electronically now means that when you’re looking for one thing, the chances of finding a whole host of other things is exponentially greater,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House intelligence committee and a former federal prosecutor.

In this case, Schiff said, the probe may have caused more harm than it uncovered. “It’s very possible that the most significant damage done to national security was the loss of General Petraeus himself,” Schiff said.

The investigation’s profile has called attention to what legal and privacy experts say are the difficulties of applying constraints meant for gathering physical evidence to online detective work.

Law enforcement officers conducting a legal search have always been able to pursue evidence of other crimes sitting in “plain view.” Investigators with a warrant to search a house for drugs can seize evidence of another crime, such as bombmaking. But the warrant does not allow them to barge into the house next door.

But what are the comparable boundaries online? Does a warrant to search an e-mail account expose the communications of anyone who exchanged messages with the target? [Warrants, who needs stinking warrants. We will just do an illegal search and laugh when the illegal search causes you to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers to get it throw out. Remember the police are criminals who routinely break the law in an effort to put other criminals in jail. If cops didn't routinely commit perjury they wouldn't have a slang word for it which is testilying!!!]

Similarly, FBI agents monitoring wiretaps have always been obligated to put down their headphones when the conversation is clearly not about a criminal enterprise. [Do you really think an FBI agent is going to put down the headphones and miss out on all that potentially incriminating dirt???] It’s known as minimization, a process followed by intelligence and law enforcement agencies to protect the privacy of innocent people.

“It’s harder to do with e-mails, because unlike a phone, you can’t just turn it off once you figure out the conversation didn’t relate to what you’re investigating,” said Michael DuBose, a former chief of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section who now handles cyber-investigations for Kroll Advisory Solutions.

Some federal prosecutors have sought to establish a “wall” whereby one set of agents conducts a first review of material, disclosing to the investigating agents only what is relevant. But Michael Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor who consults on electronic surveillance issues, said he thinks “that’s the exception rather than the rule.” [I suspect this is more about convincing juries that the FBI didn't do something illegal, and I doubt if it stops the cops from doing anything illegal.]

It’s unclear whether the FBI made any attempt to minimize its intrusion into the e-mails exchanged by Broadwell and Petraeus, both of whom are married, that provided a gaping view into their adulterous relationship.

Many details surrounding the case remain unclear. The FBI declined to respond to a list of questions submitted by The Washington Post on its handling of personal information in the course of the Petraeus investigation. The bureau also declined to discuss even the broad guidelines for safeguarding the privacy of ordinary citizens whose e-mails might surface in similarly inadvertent fashion.

The scope of the issue is considerable, because the exploding use of e-mail has created a new and potent investigative resource for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement demands for e-mail and other electronic communications from providers such as Google, Comcast and Yahoo are so routine that the companies employ teams of analysts to sort through thousands of requests a month. Very few are turned down. [Remember what I said about NEVER using email to talk about anything you do that illegal. The article just said the FBI routinely gets Google and Yahoo to help them spy on you!!!!]

Although the Petraeus-Broadwell investigation ensnared high-ranking officials and had potential national security implications, the way the FBI assembled evidence in the case was not extraordinary, according to several experts.

The probe was triggered when a Florida socialite with ties to Petraeus and Gen. John R. Allen, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, went to the FBI in June with menacing e-mails from an anonymous sender. [Even if you use an anonymous email the cops will almost certainly get the IP address that the email was sent from which probably will point to you!!!!]

Schiff and others have questioned why the FBI even initiated the case. Law enforcement officials have explained that they were concerned because the earliest e-mails indicated that the sender had access to details of the personal schedules of Petraeus and Allen.

The FBI’s first pile of data came from Jill Kelley, who got to know Petraeus and Allen when she worked as an unofficial social liaison at the military base in Tampa where both men were assigned.

In early summer, Kelley received several anonymous e-mails warning her to stay away from Allen and Petraeus. Kelley was alarmed and turned over her computer to the FBI; she may also have allowed access to her e-mail accounts.

The e-mails were eventually traced to Broadwell, who thought that Kelley was a threat to her relationship with Petraeus, law enforcement officials said. But the trail to Broadwell was convoluted.

Broadwell reportedly tried to cover her tracks by using as many as four anonymous e-mail accounts and sending the messages from computers in business centers at hotels where she was staying while on a nationwide tour promoting her biography of Petraeus. According to some accounts, the FBI traced the e-mails to those hotels, then examined registries for names of guests who were checked in at the time. [See they can hunt down anonymous emails based on the IP address that sent them]

The recent sex scandal that's rocked the armed forces and the CIA has highlighted an often-unseen problem in military families: Marital infidelity. Anthony Mason and Rebecca Jarvis speak with two Army wives to understand if infidelity is the military's dirty little secret.

Once Broadwell was identified, FBI agents would have gone to Internet service providers with warrants for access to her accounts. Experts said companies typically comply by sending discs that contain a sender’s entire collection of accounts, enabling the FBI to search the inbox, draft messages and even deleted correspondence not yet fully erased.

“You’re asking them for e-mails relevant to the investigation, but as a practical matter, they let you look at everything,” said a former federal prosecutor who, like many interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition on anonymity because the FBI inquiry is continuing.

FBI agents can then roam through every corner of the account as if it were their own. [Which is why you should NEVER post illegal stuff on the internet!!!!!!]

The capability to scour e-mail accounts has expanded the bureau’s investigative power dramatically, even in crimes previously seen as difficult to prosecute. For example, officials said, the ability to reconstruct communications between reporters and their sources helps explain why the Obama administration has been able to bring more leak prosecutions than all of its predecessors combined.

E-mail searches vary in scope and technique, from scanning contents for key words “to literally going through and opening every file and looking at what it says,” a former Justice Department official said.

Law enforcement officials said the FBI never sought access to Allen’s computer or accounts. It’s unclear whether it did so with Petraeus. But through Kelley and Broadwell, the bureau had amassed an enormous amount of data on the two men — including sexually explicit e-mails between Petraeus and Broadwell and questionable communications between Allen and Kelley.

Petraeus and Broadwell had tried to conceal their communications by typing drafts of messages, hitting “save” but not “send,” and then sharing passwords that provided access to the drafts. But experts said that ruse would have posed no obstacle for the FBI, because agents had full access to the e-mail accounts.

As they pore over data, FBI agents are not supposed to search for key words unrelated to the warrant under which the data were obtained. But if they are simply reading through document after document, they can pursue new leads that surface.

“Most times, if you found evidence of a second crime, you would stop and go back and get a second warrant” to avoid a courtroom fight over admissibility of evidence, a former prosecutor said. But in practical terms, there is no limit on the number of investigations that access to an e-mail account may spawn.

There is nothing illegal about the Petraeus-Broadwell affair under federal law. Were it not for Petraeus’s prominent position, the probe might have ended with no consequence. But because of his job — and the concern that intelligence officers caught in compromising positions could be susceptible to blackmail — the probe wasn’t shut down.

“If this had all started involving someone who was not the director of the CIA . . . they would have ignored it,” said David Sobel, senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group. “A bell went off because of who it was.”

That consideration triggered a cascade of additional quandaries for the Justice Department, including whether and when to notify Congress and the White House. The FBI finally did so on election night, Nov. 6, when Deputy Director Sean Joyce called Petraeus’s boss, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr.

President Obama said last week that there was “no evidence at this point, from what I’ve seen, that classified information was disclosed that in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security.”

But the data assembled on Allen and Petraeus continue to reverberate. The FBI turned over its stockpile of material on Allen — said to contain as many as 30,000 pages of e-mail transcripts — to the Defense Department, prompting the Pentagon inspector general to start an investigation.

The CIA has also launched an inspector general investigation into Petraeus and his 14-month tenure at the agency, seeking to determine, among other things, whether he used the perks of the position to enable his affair with Broadwell.

If it follows its own protocols, the FBI will hold on to the data for decades. Former officials said the bureau retains records for 20 years for closed criminal investigations, and 30 years for closed national security probes.

Data Doctors: Are my emails private from government agencies?

The answer is - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Q: What is Metadata? And after the scandal of General Petraeus, are our emails private from government agencies? - Jeremy

A: E-mail has always been one of the least secure methods of transmitting data electronically and this recent scandal shows that even being tech-savvy isn’t much help.

When an e-mail message is created and sent, the message passes through a number of mail servers (think of them as post offices for snail mail) and a record of where the message came from and where it went (via IP addresses) is also created by virtually every device that handles the message.

Since most messages are sent in plain text, it’s technically possible for anyone or any system to read your message anywhere along the way (which is why e-mail encryption is important for sensitive messages). The reality is that most companies have very strict systems in place to keep just anyone from accessing those messages, but the opportunity still exists. [That is BS - Any person with computer administrative powers can read your emails. This is typically a "root" user in the UNIX or Linux worlds. But email administrators without "root" powers can also read your emails]

The information about the message, a.k.a. the ‘metadata’ is how the scandal was exposed. If we continue the snail mail analogy, the post office stamps mail to help route it and DNA or fingerprints on the outside of an envelope can be used to help track down the sender of the mail without ever opening the mail. [Again he is oversimplifying things. This so called 'metadata' is part of the email. It's at the very beginning of each email, and if you can read it, you can also read the email.]

Petraeus, the Director of the CIA, knew that sending and receiving e-mail from an anonymous account wouldn’t be safe, so he used a method commonly used by terrorists and teenagers: create draft messages, but never send them.

If two people have the username and password for the same account, they can create messages for each other that don’t leave the usual trails described above. They save them as draft copies so the other can log in and read the draft, then respond in-kind without ever sending a traceable message. [Well that is almost right. When the message is created, edited or read it does travel over the internet and someone that is monitoring your internet traffic could read it]

Had this been the only communication from the involved parties, they would likely never have been discovered but as usual, human error exposed the affair.

The jealous mistress sent harassing e-mails from an anonymous account to another woman she thought was being flirtatious, which is a criminal violation and began the unravelling of the affair.

The government can’t read your private messages without some level of due process, except in rare situations, but the process is what so many privacy advocates are concerned about. [That is in theory. In reality the FBI and Homeland security police are just as crooked as the criminals they hunt and they routinely illegally read people email, and after they discover a crime they will commit perjury and make up a lame excuse to get the search warrant they were supposed to have before they read your emails]

The current laws were created when electronic storage was expensive and we all tended to use one device and delete things to save space. Today, storage is cheap and we use a plethora of devices that in turn create more records that we tend to keep for much longer periods.

Under current laws, any e-mail that is 6 months old or older can be requested if a criminal prosecutor signs the request. If the message is less than 6 months old, a court order from a judge is required. [But that won't stop a crooked cop from illegally reading your data]

In either case, something that the courts recognize as probable cause has to trigger the request when it comes to the averages citizen. If someone suspected that Petraeus was having an affair, that wouldn’t have been enough to allow the FBI to start requesting access to his personal e-mail accounts.

His mistress’ harassing emails which violated part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is what opened to door and eventually lead to the exposure of the affair to the world.

The lessons to be learned from this scandal are that e-mail has never been or will never be a secure way to communicate with others, if you want to make it more difficult for the government to access your messages, make sure you delete them before they are 6 months old and no matter how secure you think you are, all it takes is one simple human error (or jealous mistress) to render your ‘security system’ useless. [While that might be "technically" right, it is wrong in reality. Just because YOU logically delete one of your emails doesn't mean it is physically deleted from the server that keeps your message. And even if you logically delete a message, but it still physically exists on a server the police can read it. The same is true with files on your personal computer. While you may logically delete a file, it frequently continues to exist on your computer and if it does exist the police can still read it.]

[The bottom line is if you have something that you want to remain private DON'T put it on the internet where 2 billion people might be able to read it.]