Surveillance

RE MICHAEL Smerconish's op-ed "Again, Eavesdropping Makes Sense": There is real "debate" over electronic surveillance, FISA or NSA, because virtually everyone supports spying in some instances, with safeguards. What sparked a debate over surveillance was when the Bush administration authorized warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens without any FISA oversight or accountability. The idea that the government should never, in any circumstance, be allowed to track communications is insane.

Mayor Goode yesterday announced new guidelines requiring police for the first time to get permission from a civilian authority before conducting surveillance to gather intelligence on political organizations. Stefan Presser, legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said no other city in the country required civilian review of police surveillance. The new policy was outlined by Goode in a letter to a coalition of protest groups that have sued the city over police surveillance during the Constitution bicentennial celebration.

Iranian diplomats may have carried out "hostile reconnaissance" of sites in New York as many as six times, a warning sign that the city might be targeted for terrorist attack, according to a police official. The incidents took place between 2002 and 2010 and involved videotaping or photographing landmarks, rail service and bridges, said Mitchell Silber, director of the city police department's intelligence analysis unit, in testimony before a U.S. House panel Wednesday. Hezbollah, a militant group allied with Iran that has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, also has ties to the New York region, he said.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales had a hard time peddling what he was selling to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. Maybe he had better luck at the closed Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday. Then again, the Bush administration's approach to defending its warrantless eavesdropping has been to declare that it's legal because the President says it's legal, period. On Monday, Gonzales offered the judiciary panel chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) another unsatisfying explanation of why the administration did an end run around the law, the courts and Congress to initiate new forms of surveillance of overseas calls and e-mail involving American citizens.

Government prosecutors yesterday defended hiding microphones in Common Pleas Court Judge Kenneth S. Harris' chambers and robing room and on his telephone, saying the surveillance was vital to the investigation that led to his indictment. "The government cautiously used a valid investigative tool . . . to investigate serious crimes involving a member of the state judiciary," prosecutors Gary S. Glazer and Pamela L. Donleavy said in court documents. "The essence of the government's case is that the defendant conducted his judicial office through a pattern of bribery and extortion.

Fearing possible terrorism at the Turin Olympics, Italian authorities are conducting surveillance on "numerous" people through telephone wiretaps and other intelligence operations, an Italian security official said yesterday. Luigi Rinella, the Italian police's liaison with the U.S. government, said those under surveillance included suspected Islamic militants, but he stressed that anti-globalization protesters and anarchists could also make trouble during the Feb. 10-26 Games.

LIKE thousands of Philadelphians, I mourn the death of Faheem Thomas-Childs. I too am the father of a 10-year old-son, and Faheem's horrific death is every parent's worst nightmare. As someone who thinks seriously about public policy, I've asked myself one question: What can we do to better protect our children going to and from school? My solution is simple. It's time for Philadelphia to look seriously at video surveillance of safe corridors for our children. No one is more sensitive to the civil-liberties implications of this suggestion than I. But the state of domestic terrorism that some communities face is considerable; I believe a critical mass exists to examine new solutions to protect our children.

Almost a year ago, Donza Harmon of Westfield Acres apartments was ironing her clothes when she heard the first bursts of automatic weapons. A gun battle between rival gang members lasted more than an hour. The combatants used Uzis and other automatic weapons in the shootout, which shattered windows and sent children and adults scurrying. Yesterday, the Camden Housing Authority unveiled a $62,000 state-of-the-art camera surveillance system designed to prevent such outbreaks in Harmon's complex in the future.

The balding, 60-something man shown in a Christmas week security camera video is well-dressed in a dark suit and an open-collared shirt - but he appears to be lost or confused. The video - which Newark, Del., police say captures prominent defense expert John "Jack" Wheeler III two days before he was murdered and thrown into a trash dumpster - shows him wandering a couple of times up and down the office corridor of a downtown Wilmington parking garage. It shows Wheeler stopping at one point to speak with the office attendant; later he is seen in a second hallway, walking past a bank of ATM machines and onto a parking level.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Monday that it has no control over how the New York Police Department spends millions of dollars in White House grants that helped pay for NYPD programs that put entire American Muslim neighborhoods under surveillance. In New York, the police commissioner said he wouldn't apologize. The White House has no opinion about how the grant money was spent, spokesman Jay Carney said. The Associated Press reported Monday that the White House money has paid for the cars that plainclothes NYPD officers used to conduct surveillance on Muslim neighborhoods and paid for computers that stored even innocuous information about Muslim college students, mosque sermons, and social events.

Donte Johnson had been in police custody for just a few hours when he started talking, a Philadelphia homicide detective told jurors Friday. Before investigators collected a DNA sample from him, the 18-year-old from North Philadelphia confessed to raping and strangling Sabina Rose O'Donnell in a lot on the edge of Northern Liberties. When detectives showed him a photo of a man on a bike — an image taken from surveillance footage near the crime scene on June 2, 2010, when O'Donnell was slain — Johnson said: "That's me. " He then wrote "Me" under the image, Philadelphia Detective Thorsten Lucke said.

Iranian diplomats may have carried out "hostile reconnaissance" of sites in New York as many as six times, a warning sign that the city might be targeted for terrorist attack, according to a police official. The incidents took place between 2002 and 2010 and involved videotaping or photographing landmarks, rail service and bridges, said Mitchell Silber, director of the city police department's intelligence analysis unit, in testimony before a U.S. House panel Wednesday. Hezbollah, a militant group allied with Iran that has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, also has ties to the New York region, he said.

NYPD's Kelly defends program NEW YORK - New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly on Thursday challenged city council members who want to create an inspector general to regulate the department's surveillance of Muslims, saying his department needs no additional oversight. In sometimes-heated exchanges with council members at a budget hearing, Kelly defended his department's counterterrorism surveillance program as well as another crime-fighting policy: the stopping, questioning and frisking of people on the street.

Police have released surveillance photos of two men sought in the $50,000 gunpoint robbery of a man they met on the pretense of buying his car in North Philadelphia. The stickup occurred Jan. 21, when the victim went to meet the pair on the 3500 block of Smedley Street in the Tioga section to sell his car. While one man held a gun on the victim, the other took $50,000 in cash, jewelry and an iPad from him, police said. Police did not say why the victim was carrying that much cash.

TRENTON - Dozens of groups, including some that are faith-based and others that are student-led, have sent a letter asking New Jersey's attorney general to investigate the New York Police Department's monitoring of Muslims in Newark and other cities. The call for an immediate investigation, sent Tuesday by 36 groups, mirrors requests made last week in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and elsewhere. The Association of Muslim American Lawyers, Islamic Information Center, and New Jersey Peace Action are among the groups that signed the letter.

NEW YORK - An interstate feud escalated Friday when a New York congressman berated New Jersey Gov. Christie for "trying to score cheap political points" instead of saving lives when he complained that the New York Police Department's monitoring of Muslims across the state line was arrogant and secretive. Rep. Peter King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said Christie crossed a line when he mocked Police Commissioner Ray Kelly as "all-knowing, all-seeing," and said the NYPD's intelligence operation in Newark may have been "born out of arrogance.

TRENTON - New York City's Police Department is facing mounting criticism of its secret surveillance of Muslims across the Northeast, with ACLU chapters and other groups demanding an investigation and Gov. Christie accusing the NYPD of arrogantly acting as if "their jurisdiction is the world. " The intelligence-gathering was detailed recently in a series of Associated Press stories that reported that police monitored mosques and Muslims around the metropolitan area and kept tabs on Muslim student groups at the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, and other schools in Upstate New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Monday that it has no control over how the New York Police Department spends millions of dollars in White House grants that helped pay for NYPD programs that put entire American Muslim neighborhoods under surveillance. In New York, the police commissioner said he wouldn't apologize. The White House has no opinion about how the grant money was spent, spokesman Jay Carney said. The Associated Press reported Monday that the White House money has paid for the cars that plainclothes NYPD officers used to conduct surveillance on Muslim neighborhoods and paid for computers that stored even innocuous information about Muslim college students, mosque sermons, and social events.

These days, when Philadelphia police officers respond to robberies and shootings, they might learn that video surveillance from the scene has already been pulled from cameras in the area. Officers in neighborhoods known for car thefts, meanwhile, might be handed an automatic license-plate reader that can scan thousands of vehicles within a few hours. And in the future, the half hour it might take to conduct database searches for criminal records and other information could be cut to 30 seconds.

Worried the "Camden Camera" surveillance system might violate the rights of innocent visitors to the city's drug-plagued neighborhoods? Talk to Laura Sánchez. "Twenty years ago, I would have been on the civil liberties side, but now I think the [surveillance] is absolutely wonderful," says Sánchez, the special-projects coordinator for Camden's Area Health Education Center. Beginning this week, notices will be mailed to owners of vehicles caught by the city's Eye in the Sky network.