Kronologis Masalah PT Menara Karsa Waluya (developer Di Loggia and Menara Antapani)

I am the owner of the Menara Antapani Apartment Tower C , now with the new name Di Loggia...

For new customer, you should read and research more so the bad experience I have will not happen to you. I helped you with some info about PT Menara Karsa Waluya , the developer of Di Loggia or Menara Antapani Apartment

Ini kronologis masalah apartemen yang aku beli beberapa tahun lalu. Kesel.....Semoga penyeleainnya cepat...

Wasekjen PAN Mulai Disidang

by Ahmad Yunus - detikNews Kamis, 09/06/2005 18:35 WIB

Bandung - Wakil Sekjen PAN Priyono Juniarsanto yang kesandung kasus pidana mulai disidang di Pengadilan Negeri Bandung. Dia didakwa melakukan penipuan sebesar Rp 4,5 miliar atas pembangunan apartemen di Bandung. Dalam sidang yang digelar di PN Bandung, Jl. RE Martadinata, Kamis (9/6/2005), Priyono hadir dengan mengenakan kemeja putih bergaris. Ia memakai sepatu sandal. Sidang dipimpin Majelis Hakim ketua Herman Hutapea, dengan anggota Nurzaman dan Wuryanto. Saat dakwaan dibacakan JPU Rorogo Zega, Priyono tampak tenang sambil sesekali memegang kepalanya. Priyono ditahan Kejari Bandung di Rutan Kebon Waru sejak 23 Mei 2005. Dari pembacaan surat dakwaan tersebut, Priyono, komisaris PT Menara Karsa Waluya beserta Mochamad Sutomo, Direktur PT. Menara Karsa Waluya, 43 tahun, pada tanggal 23 Desember 2004 didakwa telah menggunakan nama palsu dan kata-kata bohong untuk mengadakan perjanjian utang di depan kantor Notaris Gina Riswara Koswara. Keduanya telah mengadakan perjanjian pemborongan dengan Sarwono Adji, Direktur Utama PT. Mahanaim Pilar Utama. Dalam perjanjian itu disebutkan, PT Mahanaim Pilar Utama akan melaksanakan pekerjaan pengadaan dan pemasangan struktur, arsitektur, mekanikal dan elektrikal pada areal kerja menara B-Apartemen Menara Antapani sebanyak 110 unit, di Jalan Pratista Timur VIII no 36 Bandung. Nilai borongan proyek itu sebesar Rp 4,5 miliar. Dalam perjanjian tersebut, pembayaran tunai akan dijamin oleh PT Menara Karsa Waluya berupa Bank garansi yang akan dikeluarkan dalam jangka waktu 30 hari terhitung dari penandatanganan Surat Perjanjian Pemborongan. Namun, surat jaminan Bank Garansi tersebut ternyata tak diserahkan PT Menara Karsa Waluya kepada PT Mahanaim Pilar Utama setelah pengerjaan proyek apartemen itu selesai. "Padahal PT Mahanaim Pilar Utama sudah punya niat baik, pekerjaannya selesai," kata Rorogo dalam dakwaannya. Menurut dia, setelah surat jaminan Bank Garansi itu tak kunjung tiba, PT Mahanaim Pilar Utama telah mengirimkan surat peringatan sebanyak 3 kali. Karena tak ditanggapi terus, akhirnya pemborong PT Mahanaim Pilar Utama menghentikan pembangunan dalam kondisi 70,67 persen. Atas dasar itu, PT. Mahanaim Pilar Utama mengajukan gugatan kepada PT Menara Karsa Waluya ke Pengadilan Negeri Bandung tanggal 14 Desember 2004 dengan menetapkan sita jaminan berupa tanah dan bangunan apartemen tersebut. Menanggapi pembacaan surat dakwaan tersebut, kuasa hukum PT Menara karsa Waluya atas nama Priyono Juniarsanto dan Mochamad Sutomo menilai gugatan dari PT Mahanaim Pilar Utama tidak beralasan. Menurut dia, permasalahan ini murni kasus perdata. "Ini murni kasus perdata. Pada gugatan perdata sebelumnya, klien kita menang. Sekarang sedang dalam proses. Putusannya dari Pengadilan Negeri Bandung, kok," ungkap pengacara PT. Menara karsa Waluya, Herman Kadir. Menurut dia, Pengadilan Negeri Bandung juga hanya mengakui bahwa pekerjaan pembangunan oleh PT Mahanaim Pilar Utama hanya 46 persen. "Kita juga mengajukan kepada majelis hakim agar mengabulkan status tahanan luar kepada klien kami. Dia dijamin kok, tidak akan lari," ungkapnya. Ia juga menilai kasus ini bernuansa politis. Alasannya, salahsatu kliennnya, Priyono Juniarsanto menjabat sebagai wakil sekjen PAN. Rencananya pada hari Kamis, tanggal 16 Juni 2005, akan digelar persidangan berikutnya dengan pembacaan eksepsi atau keberatan terhadap surat dakwaan tersebut.

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dk

Menara Antapani, Di Loggia, Apartemen Buah Batu Park, PT Menara Karsa Mandiri, PT Menara Karsa Waluya

I just googled some info of  Menara Antapani, Di Loggia, Apartemen Buah Batu Park, PT Menara Karsa Mandiri, PT Menara Karsa Waluya. I am the owner of one of the apartment unit in Tower C (Jalan Pratista Timur VIII No. 36 Bandung 40291)

 I bought it few years ago with my own money. I just read terrible story about PT Menara Karsa Mandiri and I think this company is the same with  PT Menara Karsa Waluya. 

 I found both of the company are related  to each other. Also, the company has not been responsible with their projects which has disadvantaged me and many other owners. 

Yeah, I have been a victim too. I am now waiting for the offer that Menara Karsa Waluya staff (Pak Dadang) told to  me yesterday.  I went there with my colleague yesterday (8 January 2014), I signed a document saying that I agree to upgrade the Menara Antapani or now with the new name " Di Loggia". 

The guy told me that the Menara Antapani is now under management and he understand of the owner psyche after all those trouble the company has done.

I still feel upset with the management coz I have spent a lot of money to buy that apartment. And Menara Karsa Waluya has not fulfilled its promise.  The project is still unfinished....and now, I will still wait and see...before taking further action regarding my property in the C Tower..

Btw, if any of you read my post, please contact me. I want to know your story too regarding Menara Antapani or Di Loggia

I got this info from kompasiana.com

also another good post here from kaskus http://www.kaskus.co.id/thread/5097b3eeeb74b4bf73000117/pemilik-buahbatu-park-apartemen-masuk/1

Info Proses PKPU dan Kepailitan Buah Batu Park di Pengadilan Niaga jakarta

REP | 07 April 2013 | 05:35 Dibaca: 757    Komentar: 0    Perkembangan perkara Buahbatu Park Apartemen, hasil sidang di Pengadilan Niaga atas proses PKPU dan Kepailitan, untuk melindungi hak konsumen bagi semua pemilik harap mendaftarkan.

Proses PKPU dapat dimaknai sebagai proses memaksa developer untuk melakukan musyawarah dengan para krediturnya dalam hal ini konsumen, kontraktor, perbankan dan pihak-pihak lain yang terlibat dalam transaksi untuk memperoleh jalan damai.
Seperti diketahui selama ini PT Menara Karsa Mandiri (MKM) selaku pihak developer Buahbatu Park telah abai dan cedera terhadap banyak janji seperti waktu serta terima, penyerahan akta jual beli, pembayaran sewa menyewa asrama mahasiswa ITT Telkom,  pembangunan fasilitas, pembayaran kontraktor  dan beragam janji-janji yang tidak dipenuhi.
Proses PKPU ini telah berjalan sejak 17 Maret 2013 dan PT MKM sementara diambil kepengurusannya oleh tim pengurus / kurator yang ditunjuk oleh Pengadilan.
Pada tgl 19 Maret keadaan ini diumumkan secara luas melalui media cetak nasional untuk mengundang seluruh pihak yang terlibat agar secara aktif mengajukan bukti-bukti transaksi dan ajuan keberatan atas kerugian-kerugian yang dialami.
Hingga saat ini baru terkumpul 42 konsumen dari 700an konsumen karena pihak MKM disinyalir menghambat arus penyebaran informasi.
Pada sidang ke dua pada tanggal 5 April 2013 di Pengadilan Niaga Jakarta, diputuskan bahwa penyerahan copy bukti-bukti transaksi dari pihak-pihak yang terkait dapat diperpanjang hingga 12 April 2013, dan akan melalui pra verifikasi tanggal 17 April 2013 dan pada tanggal 18 April akan verifikasi di pengadilan yg hrs dihadiri langsung atau dikuasakan pada kuasa hukum, pada hari tsb juga akan diperdengarkan proposal dari MKM dan keputusan final akan dilakukan pada tanggal 22 April, apakah proposal MKM diterima, dan jika tidak diterima akan dipailitkan.
Karena, proses PKPU ini akan berakibat pada seluruh pihak yang terkait, untuk itu diharapkan seluruh pihak yang terlibat dapat  menghubungi pihak pengurus yang ditunjuk Pengadilan yakni Lucas Law Firm melalui sdr. Hade 081510076121 untuk mendapatkan informasi yg lebih rinci.

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dk

Can we sue Twitter ?

 http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/consumertech/australian-sues-twitter-over-hate-blog-report/498662
An Australian man is suing Twitter for defamation after he was wrongly named as the author of a hate blog, a report said Friday.

A lawyer for Melbourne man Joshua Meggitt served a legal notice on the US-based Twitter Inc on Thursday, the Sydney Morning Herald said.

The action arose after Australian writer and TV personality Marieke Hardy wrongly accused Meggitt of being the author of a hate blog about her to her more than 60,000 followers on the micro-blogging site in November.

“I name and shame my ‘anonymous’ internet bully. Liberating business! Join me,” Hardy tweeted, posting a link to her blog in which she mistakenly named Meggitt as being behind the articles.

Hardy subsequently apologised to Meggitt on her blog and reportedly paid him Aus$13,000 (US$14,016) in damages as part of a confidential out-of-court settlement.

But because Hardy’s tweet had appeared on Twitter’s homepage, and was copied by some of her followers and other users during a worldwide campaign against online abuse, Meggitt’s lawyer Stuart Gibson is pursuing the site, the Herald said.

“Twitter are a publisher, and at law anyone involved in the publication can be sued,” Gibson told the newspaper.

“We’re suing for the re-tweets and the original tweet -- and many of the re-tweets and comments are far worse.”

Twitter itself, not individual users, were being sued for damages, he said.

The case is expected to test whether Twitter, which allows users to publish their thoughts in 140 characters or less, can be sued for defamation in Australia.

Twitter, which was championed as a tool of free expression during the Arab Spring for its uncensored comments, in January announced it could block tweets on a country-by-country basis if legally required to do so.

Agence France-Presse

trafficking

Canberra Woman Charged With Human Trafficking, Debt Bondage And Prostitution | Gov Monitor

A 42-year-old woman will face ACT Magistrates Court this morning, after being charged by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

The woman has been charged with offences including possessing a slave, debt bondage and operating an illegal brothel.

It will be alleged in court that the woman brought sex workers to Australia to work in exploitative conditions in Canberra.

Officers from the AFP’s Transnational Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Teams (TSETT) executed a search warrant on 14 October 2009 in the Canberra suburb of Kambah.

The woman was arrested and charged with the following offences:

* Possessing a slave, contrary to section 270.3(1)(a) of the Criminal Code 1995 (Cth)

* Debt Bondage, contrary to section 271.8(1) of the Criminal Code 1995 (Cth)

* Attempting to pervert the course of justice, contrary to section 43 of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth)

* Two counts of allowing a non-citizen to work in breach of a visa condition, contrary to section 245AC of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth)

* Allowing an unlawful non-citizen to work, contrary to section 245AB of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth)

* Operating a brothel other than in a prescribed location, contrary to section 18 of the Prostitution Act (ACT)

The woman was granted conditional bail to appear at the ACT Magistrates Court today (18 November 2009).

A 55-year-old Preston man has also been served with a summons in connection with this matter and is due to appear in ACT Magistrates Court today.

The TSETT were established to investigate Commonwealth offences relating to trafficking in persons for sexual or labour exploitation.

Where a potential victim is identified, the AFP responds immediately to remove identified trafficking victims from harm, and to initiate victim support arrangements in line with the whole-of-government strategy to combat trafficking.

Australia is recognised as a destination country for such activities, though current data suggests the number of victims in Australia is low with 141 victims provided with support on the program since 2004.

By its very nature, this crime type involves people who are reluctant to come forward due to shame, threats or fear.

Police urge anyone with information they believe may be related to people trafficking or sexual servitude to contact the AFP on 1800 813 784 (free call).

The maximum penalty for these offences is 25 years imprisonment.

Topics: AFP, Australia, Australian Federal Police, Canberra, debt bondage, Governance, human trafficking, illegal brothel, Kambah, labour exploitation, prostitution, sex crimes, sex workers, sexual exploitation, slave, Transnational Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Teams, TSETT

Sotomayor

Opinio Juris » Blog Archive » Not a Transnationalist. Some (Really) Early Thoughts on Judge Sotomayor

Not a Transnationalist. Some (Really) Early Thoughts on Judge Sotomayor

by Julian Ku

As a judge in the New York federal courts over the past 15 years, both at the district and appellate level, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has had a fair number of cases involving the application of international law. She has never ruled on an Alien Tort Statute case, but my very quick scan suggests that, whatever else her critics can say, her judicial record does not suggest she will be a particularly “transnationalist” justice.

Closet Sovereigntist?

United States v. Ni Fa Yi, 951 F. Supp. 42 (S.D.N.Y. 1997), involved a defendant’s challenge to his prosecution under the Hostage Taking Act, and the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages. While ruling for the government, Judge Sotomayor went out of her way to reject the government’s argument that the fact that the criminal statute was enacted to implement treaty obligations should automatically satisfy judicial scrutiny of the statute’s constitutionality. ”The Court agrees with defendant, however, that this begs the question: “[N]o agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or on any branch of Government, which is free from the constraints of the Constitution.” (Citing Reid v. Covert, 353 1, 16 (1957)).

Deferential to Executive Foreign Affairs Power?

European Commission v. RJR Nabisco, 355 F.3d 123 (2d Cir. 2004) involved an attempt by the European Commission to bring a RICO action in U.S. courts against tobacco companies for lost tax revenues. Invoking the common law “revenue rule”, Judge Sotomayor barred the action on the grounds that the suit essentially requires US courts to enforce European tax laws. In barring the action, though, she did leave open the possibility of executive intervention in the litigation as a mechanism to lift the bar imposed by the revenue rule. Interestingly, this was also part of the theory for the Supreme Court’s eventual decision to relax the revenue in another context, in an opinion by Justice Thomas. And it was the lack of intervention by the executive that led her to continue to bar the suit, even after the Supreme Court had remanded her earlier decision.

Staying Neutral on the Relationship Between International law and the Supremacy Clause

In Beharry v. Ashcroft, 339 F.3d 51 (2d Cir 2003), Judge Sotomayor went out of her way to avoid opining on a lower court decision (by Judge Jack Weinstein) that casually gave customary international law the same status as federal legislation under the Supremacy Clause. In reversing the lower court on statutory grounds, Judge Sotomayor offered this gentle non-opinion: “Nothing in our decision to reverse on other grounds the judgment of the district court should be seen as an endorsement of the district court’s holding that interpretation of the INA in this case is influenced or controlled by international law.”

Similarly, in Center for Reproductive Law v. Bush, 304 F 3d. 183 (2d Cir. 2002), in rejecting a lawsuit challenging the ban on funding for overseas abortions under constitutional and customary international law, Judge Sotomayor disposed of the customary international law argument in a single footnote: “As plaintiffs’ claims based on customary international law are substantively indistinguishable from their First Amendment claims, they are dismissed on the same ground. We express no view as to whether those claims are otherwise viable.”

The War on Drugs

A Brief History of The War on Drugs - TIME

It's a war without a clear enemy. Anything waged against a shapeless, intangible noun can never truly be won — President Clinton's drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey said as much in 1996. And yet, within the past 40 years, the U.S. government has spent over $2.5 trillion dollars fighting the War on Drugs. Despite the ad campaigns, increased incarceration rates and a crackdown on smuggling, the number of illicit drug users in America has risen over the years and now sits at 19.9 million Americans. And a large portion of their supply makes its way into the country through Mexico.

The U.S. International Narcotics Control Strategy reports that 90% of cocaine, for example, reaches the United States through its southern border. Drug-related violence in Mexico has gotten so bad that it is now spilling over into states such as Arizona, which has suffered a rash of kidnappings and ransoms. (Arizona's 370-mile border with Mexico serves as the gateway for nearly half of all smuggled marijuana.) Texas' request for National Guard protection from Mexican drug crime prompted Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to declare last week that the Mexican government had lost control of its own territory. President Felipe Calderón responded by pointing out that his nation shared a border with "the biggest consumer of drugs in the world and the largest supplier of weapons in the world." In an attempt to partly smooth over any feathers ruffled by the Blair-Calderón spat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will travel to Mexico on Mar. 25 and 26. (See pictures of Mexico's drug wars.)

Although the U.S. government has battled drugs for decades — President Eisenhower assembled a 5-member Cabinet committee to "stamp out narcotic addiction" in 1954 — the term "War on Drugs" was not widely used until President Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973 to announce "an all-out global war on the drug menace." While reports of widespread heroin use among soldiers in Vietnam sparked an intense outcry, but by 1975 attention had turned to Colombia's cocaine industry. When Colombian authorities seized 600 kilos of cocaine hidden in everything from shoeboxes to a dog cage containing a live dog, drug traffickers retaliated by killing 40 people in one weekend. Nicknamed the "Medellin Massacre" after the city at the center of Colombia's drug trade, the murders ignited years of raids, kidnappings, and assassinations (a 1985 Medellin cartel "hit list" even included names of U.S. businessmen, embassy members and journalists).

During a 1984 appearance at an Oakland, Calif. school, then-First Lady Nancy Reagan was asked by 10-year-old Angel Wiltz what to do if someone offered her drugs. "Just say no," replied Reagan. Within a year, 5,000 "Just Say No" clubs had formed around the country, with Soleli Moon Frye, (Punky Brewster) as honorary chairperson. The Los Angeles Police Department's 1983 Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) school lecture program, grew into a national phenomenon that, by 2003, cost $230 million and involved 50,000 police officers. Partnership for a Drug-Free America launched a similarly memorable campaign in 1987 with an abrasive television ad featuring a hot skillet, a raw egg, and the phrase, "This is your brain on drugs."

Catchy slogans are no match for chemical addictions, however, and study after study showed that programs such as D.A.R.E. — no matter how beloved — produced negligent results. And while the Bush administration's 2002 goal of reducing all illegal drug use by 25% led to unprecedented numbers of marijuana-related arrests, pot use only declined 6% (and the use of other drugs actually increased). Drug trends tend to wax and wane, and a dip in the use of one type of drug might lead to a rise in another, causing officials to play a never ending game of narcotic whack-a-mole.

As far as Mexican attempts to halt trafficking, a newly elected President Felipe Calderón declared open season on drug cartels just days after being sworn into office in 2006 when he sent 6,500 troops to quash a rash of execution-style killings between two rival drug gangs. The following year, Calderón's public security minister Genaro Garcia Luna removed 284 federal police commissioners — all suspected of corruption — and replaced them with a hand-selected group of officers who successfully arrested several drug kingpins. The gangs have responded with what seems to be an endless stream of violence; 5,300 people were killed in drug-related crimes in 2008 and over 1,000 have already died this year. (Read "Mexico's Cocaine Capital.")

In 2008, President Bush signed the Mérida Initiative, which would provide $1.4 billion to Mexico and other countries over three years to help combat drug smuggling and violence. So far, only $456 million has been approved and President Obama has not yet said whether he plans to follow through on the remaining billion dollars. But money or no money, the drugs keep coming, and they keep coming fast.

Read why Bolivia quit the war on drugs

why legalizing marijuana makes sense

Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense - TIME

For the past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp. In this case, I mean the high-minded part literally. And so, a deal: give us drugs, after a certain age — say, 80 — all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver's licenses. (I mean, can you imagine how terrifying a nation of decrepit, solipsistic 90-year-old boomers behind the wheel would be?) We'll let you proceed with your lives — much of which will be spent paying for our retirement, in any case — without having to hear us complain about our every ache and reflux. We'll be too busy exploring altered states of consciousness. I even have a slogan for the campaign: "Tune in, turn on, drop dead."

A fantasy, I suppose. But, beneath the furious roil of the economic crisis, a national conversation has quietly begun about the irrationality of our drug laws. It is going on in state legislatures, like New York's, where the draconian Rockefeller drug laws are up for review; in other states, from California to Massachusetts, various forms of marijuana decriminalization are being enacted. And it has reached the floor of Congress, where Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter have proposed a major prison-reform package, which would directly address drug-sentencing policy. (See pictures of stoner cinema.)

There are also more puckish signs of a zeitgeist shift. A few weeks ago, the White House decided to stage a forum in which the President would answer questions submitted by the public; 92,000 people responded — and most of them seemed obsessed with the legalization of marijuana. The two most popular questions about "green jobs and energy," for example, were about pot. The President dismissed the outpouring — appropriately, I guess — as online ballot-stuffing and dismissed the legalization question with a simple: "No." (Read "Can Marijuana Help Rescue California's Economy?")

This was a rare instance of Barack Obama reacting reflexively, without attempting to think creatively, about a serious policy question. He was, in fact, taking the traditional path of least resistance: an unexpected answer on marijuana would have launched a tabloid firestorm, diverting attention from the budget fight and all those bailouts. In fact, the default fate of any politician who publicly considers the legalization of marijuana is to be cast into the outer darkness. Such a person is assumed to be stoned all the time, unworthy of being taken seriously. Such a person would be lacerated by the assorted boozehounds and pill poppers of talk radio. The hypocrisy inherent in the American conversation about stimulants is staggering.

But there are big issues here, issues of economy and simple justice, especially on the sentencing side. As Webb pointed out in a cover story in Parade magazine, the U.S. is, by far, the most "criminal" country in the world, with 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all drug arrests are marijuana-related. That is an awful lot of money, most of it nonfederal, that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure — or simply returned to the public. (See the top 10 ballot measures.)

At the same time, there is an enormous potential windfall in the taxation of marijuana. It is estimated that pot is the largest cash crop in California, with annual revenues approaching $14 billion. A 10% pot tax would yield $1.4 billion in California alone. And that's probably a fraction of the revenues that would be available — and of the economic impact, with thousands of new jobs in agriculture, packaging, marketing and advertising. A veritable marijuana economic-stimulus package! (Read "Is Pot Good For You?")

So why not do it? There are serious moral arguments, both secular and religious. There are those who believe — with some good reason — that the accretion of legalized vices is debilitating, that we are a less virtuous society since gambling spilled out from Las Vegas to "riverboats" and state lotteries across the country. There is a medical argument, though not a very convincing one: alcohol is more dangerous in a variety of ways, including the tendency of some drunks to get violent. One could argue that the abuse of McDonald's has a greater potential health-care cost than the abuse of marijuana. (Although it's true that with legalization, those two might not be unrelated.) Obviously, marijuana can be abused. But the costs of criminalization have proved to be enormous, perhaps unsustainable. Would legalization be any worse?

In any case, the drug-reform discussion comes just at the right moment. We boomers are getting older every day. You're not going to want us on the highways. Make us your best offer.

decriminalization of marijuana?

Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? - TIME

Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)


Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

See the world's most influential people in the 2009 TIME 100.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.

"I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn't having much influence on our drug consumption," says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Kleiman does not consider Portugal a realistic model for the U.S., however, because of differences in size and culture between the two countries.

But there is a movement afoot in the U.S., in the legislatures of New York State, California and Massachusetts, to reconsider our overly punitive drug laws. Recently, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter proposed that Congress create a national commission, not unlike Portugal's, to deal with prison reform and overhaul drug-sentencing policy. As Webb noted, the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners.

At the Cato Institute in early April, Greenwald contended that a major problem with most American drug policy debate is that it's based on "speculation and fear mongering," rather than empirical evidence on the effects of more lenient drug policies. In Portugal, the effect was to neutralize what had become the country's number one public health problem, he says.

"The impact in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization," says Joao Castel-Branco Goulao, Portugual's "drug czar" and president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, adding that police are now able to re-focus on tracking much higher level dealers and larger quantities of drugs.

Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that "it's fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise." However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics — which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place — may account for the declines in heroin use and deaths.

The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate."

See pictures of Culiacan, the home of Mexico's drug-trafficking industry.

EXONERATED : $31 PER HOUR IN PRISON

$3.25m payout to Andrew Mallard for wrongful jailing | National News | News.com.au

$3.25m payout to Andrew Mallard for wrongful jailing

By staff writers

The Sunday Times

A WEST Australian man has expressed his "extreme disappointment" at being awarded $3.25m compensation for more than 12 years in jail following his wrongful conviction for murder.

.Andrew Mallard was convicted of the 1994 murder of Mosman Park jeweller Pamela Lawrence.

PerthNow reports that WA Attorney General Christian Porter today announced that the Government had settled with Mr Mallard after lengthy negotiations.

Mr Mallard said he was "extremely disappointed" with the figure.

"I will be conferring with my lawyers," Mr Mallard told Fairfax.

Labor MP John Quigley, a close friend of Mr Mallard who fought for his release from prison, said $7.5 million was being sought following independent legal advice Mr Mallard had received.


"One thing I can say with absolute confidence about this offer - Premier Barnett and Christian Porter wouldn't accept this in return for 12 years jail and the destruction of their life," Mr Quigley said.

"Why should Andrew's life be valued at a lesser rate than Colin Barnett's or Christian Porter's?

"In fact this sum equates to approximately to what Colin Barnett will get from the parliamentary super scheme when he retires."

Initially, he had asked for $10 million in compensation for the 12 years he spent behind bars for a crime he didn't commit - the 1994 murder of Mosman Park jeweller Pamela Lawrence.

Mr Quigley said Attorney-General Christian Porter had indicated he was preparing to offer a multimillion-dollar ex-gratia payout to Mr Mallard.

He said the police and some individual officers would be sued if Mr Mallard was short-changed.

Mr Quigley said Mr Mallard endured emotional and physical trauma during his time in prison.

"Andrew, because he wouldn't admit his guilt in prison, was shipped off to a psychiatric hospital and injected with drugs principally because he refused to admit his guilt,'' he said.


Scott of Hobart Posted at 8:16pm today

    In the UK, people who have been wrongly incarcerated have room and board costs deducted from any compensation payment they may be awarded.. This happened only a few weeks ago, when Sean Hodgson was released after 27 years in prison. His lawyers estimate 100,000 pounds as a figure. Google it if you think it can't be true!

Cory of Perth Posted at 8:14pm today

    Wow this is really much much less than I expected. Although they have said that he can continue civil action in a court of law, and that this is sort of a pre-payment. So if he is awarded more in the court he would get (Amount Awarded - 3.25M). PS for those of you who say $300k is a lot of money for a "job" every year, most of us don't work 24 hours a day, 365 days a week, for 12 years in any job! It works out to LESS THAN $31 PER HOUR IN PRISON!

Beyond the Reach of God

Overcoming Bias: Beyond the Reach of God

Followup to: The Magnitude of His Own Folly

Today's post is a tad gloomier than usual, as I measure such things. It deals with a thought experiment I invented to smash my own optimism, after I realized that optimism had misled me. Those readers sympathetic to arguments like, "It's important to keep our biases because they help us stay happy," should consider not reading. (Unless they have something to protect, including their own life.)

So! Looking back on the magnitude of my own folly, I realized that at the root of it had been a disbelief in the Future's vulnerability - a reluctance to accept that things could really turn out wrong. Not as the result of any explicit propositional verbal belief. More like something inside that persisted in believing, even in the face of adversity, that everything would be all right in the end.

Some would account this a virtue (zettai daijobu da yo), and others would say that it's a thing necessary for mental health.

But we don't live in that world. We live in the world beyond the reach of God.

It's been a long, long time since I believed in God. Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family, I can recall the last remembered time I asked God for something, though I don't remember how old I was. I was putting in some request on behalf of the next-door-neighboring boy, I forget what exactly - something along the lines of, "I hope things turn out all right for him," or maybe "I hope he becomes Jewish."

I remember what it was like to have some higher authority to appeal to, to take care of things I couldn't handle myself. I didn't think of it as "warm", because I had no alternative to compare it to. I just took it for granted.

Still I recall, though only from distant childhood, what it's like to live in the conceptually impossible possible world where God exists. Really exists, in the way that children and rationalists take all their beliefs at face value.

In the world where God exists, does God intervene to optimize everything? Regardless of what rabbis assert about the fundamental nature of reality, the take-it-seriously operational answer to this question is obviously "No". You can't ask God to bring you a lemonade from the refrigerator instead of getting one yourself. When I believed in God after the serious fashion of a child, so very long ago, I didn't believe that.

Postulating that particular divine inaction doesn't provoke a full-blown theological crisis. If you said to me, "I have constructed a benevolent superintelligent nanotech-user", and I said "Give me a banana," and no banana appeared, this would not yet disprove your statement. Human parents don't always do everything their children ask. There are some decent fun-theoretic arguments - I even believe them myself - against the idea that the best kind of help you can offer someone, is to always immediately give them everything they want. I don't think that eudaimonia is formulating goals and having them instantly fulfilled; I don't want to become a simple wanting-thing that never has to plan or act or think.

So it's not necessarily an attempt to avoid falsification, to say that God does not grant all prayers. Even a Friendly AI might not respond to every request.

But clearly, there exists some threshold of horror awful enough that God will intervene. I remember that being true, when I believed after the fashion of a child.

The God who does not intervene at all, no matter how bad things get - that's an obvious attempt to avoid falsification, to protect a belief-in-belief. Sufficiently young children don't have the deep-down knowledge that God doesn't really exist. They really expect to see a dragon in their garage. They have no reason to imagine a loving God who never acts. Where exactly is the boundary of sufficient awfulness? Even a child can imagine arguing over the precise threshold. But of course God will draw the line somewhere. Few indeed are the loving parents who, desiring their child to grow up strong and self-reliant, would let their toddler be run over by a car.

The obvious example of a horror so great that God cannot tolerate it, is death - true death, mind-annihilation. I don't think that even Buddhism allows that. So long as there is a God in the classic sense - full-blown, ontologically fundamental, the God - we can rest assured that no sufficiently awful event will ever, ever happen. There is no soul anywhere that need fear true annihilation; God will prevent it.

What if you build your own simulated universe? The classic example of a simulated universe is Conway's Game of Life. I do urge you to investigate Life if you've never played it - it's important for comprehending the notion of "physical law". Conway's Life has been proven Turing-complete, so it would be possible to build a sentient being in the Life universe, albeit it might be rather fragile and awkward. Other cellular automata would make it simpler.

Could you, by creating a simulated universe, escape the reach of God? Could you simulate a Game of Life containing sentient entities, and torture the beings therein? But if God is watching everywhere, then trying to build an unfair Life just results in the God stepping in to modify your computer's transistors. If the physics you set up in your computer program calls for a sentient Life-entity to be endlessly tortured for no particular reason, the God will intervene. God being omnipresent, there is no refuge anywhere for true horror: Life is fair.

But suppose that instead you ask the question:

Given such-and-such initial conditions, and given such-and-such cellular automaton rules, what would be the mathematical result?

Not even God can modify the answer to this question, unless you believe that God can implement logical impossibilities. Even as a very young child, I don't remember believing that. (And why would you need to believe it, if God can modify anything that actually exists?)

What does Life look like, in this imaginary world where every step follows only from its immediate predecessor? Where things only ever happen, or don't happen, because of the cellular automaton rules? Where the initial conditions and rules don't describe any God that checks over each state? What does it look like, the world beyond the reach of God?

That world wouldn't be fair. If the initial state contained the seeds of something that could self-replicate, natural selection might or might not take place, and complex life might or might not evolve, and that life might or might not become sentient, with no God to guide the evolution. That world might evolve the equivalent of conscious cows, or conscious dolphins, that lacked hands to improve their condition; maybe they would be eaten by conscious wolves who never thought that they were doing wrong, or cared.

If in a vast plethora of worlds, something like humans evolved, then they would suffer from diseases - not to teach them any lessons, but only because viruses happened to evolve as well, under the cellular automaton rules.

If the people of that world are happy, or unhappy, the causes of their happiness or unhappiness may have nothing to do with good or bad choices they made. Nothing to do with free will or lessons learned. In the what-if world where every step follows only from the cellular automaton rules, the equivalent of Genghis Khan can murder a million people, and laugh, and be rich, and never be punished, and live his life much happier than the average. Who prevents it? God would prevent it from ever actually happening, of course; He would at the very least visit some shade of gloom in the Khan's heart. But in the mathematical answer to the question What if? there is no God in the axioms. So if the cellular automaton rules say that the Khan is happy, that, simply, is the whole and only answer to the what-if question. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent it.

And if the Khan tortures people horribly to death over the course of days, for his own amusement perhaps? They will call out for help, perhaps imagining a God. And if you really wrote that cellular automaton, God would intervene in your program, of course. But in the what-if question, what the cellular automaton would do under the mathematical rules, there isn't any God in the system. Since the physical laws contain no specification of a utility function - in particular, no prohibition against torture - then the victims will be saved only if the right cells happen to be 0 or 1. And it's not likely that anyone will defy the Khan; if they did, someone would strike them with a sword, and the sword would disrupt their organs and they would die, and that would be the end of that. So the victims die, screaming, and no one helps them; that is the answer to the what-if question.

Could the victims be completely innocent? Why not, in the what-if world? If you look at the rules for Conway's Game of Life (which is Turing-complete, so we can embed arbitrary computable physics in there), then the rules are really very simple. Cells with three living neighbors stay alive; cells with two neighbors stay the same, all other cells die. There isn't anything in there about only innocent people not being horribly tortured for indefinite periods.

Is this world starting to sound familiar?

Belief in a fair universe often manifests in more subtle ways than thinking that horrors should be outright prohibited: Would the twentieth century have gone differently, if Klara Pölzl and Alois Hitler had made love one hour earlier, and a different sperm fertilized the egg, on the night that Adolf Hitler was conceived?

For so many lives and so much loss to turn on a single event, seems disproportionate. The Divine Plan ought to make more sense than that. You can believe in a Divine Plan without believing in God - Karl Marx surely did. You shouldn't have millions of lives depending on a casual choice, an hour's timing, the speed of a microscopic flagellum. It ought not to be allowed. It's too disproportionate. Therefore, if Adolf Hitler had been able to go to high school and become an architect, there would have been someone else to take his role, and World War II would have happened the same as before.

But in the world beyond the reach of God, there isn't any clause in the physical axioms which says "things have to make sense" or "big effects need big causes" or "history runs on reasons too important to be so fragile". There is no God to impose that order, which is so severely violated by having the lives and deaths of millions depend on one small molecular event.

The point of the thought experiment is to lay out the God-universe and the Nature-universe side by side, so that we can recognize what kind of thinking belongs to the God-universe. Many who are atheists, still think as if certain things are not allowed. They would lay out arguments for why World War II was inevitable and would have happened in more or less the same way, even if Hitler had become an architect. But in sober historical fact, this is an unreasonable belief; I chose the example of World War II because from my reading, it seems that events were mostly driven by Hitler's personality, often in defiance of his generals and advisors. There is no particular empirical justification that I happen to have heard of, for doubting this. The main reason to doubt would be refusal to accept that the universe could make so little sense - that horrible things could happen so lightly, for no more reason than a roll of the dice.

But why not? What prohibits it?

In the God-universe, God prohibits it. To recognize this is to recognize that we don't live in that universe. We live in the what-if universe beyond the reach of God, driven by the mathematical laws and nothing else. Whatever physics says will happen, will happen. Absolutely anything, good or bad, will happen. And there is nothing in the laws of physics to lift this rule even for the really extreme cases, where you might expect Nature to be a little more reasonable.

Reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, listening to him describe the disbelief that he and others felt upon discovering the full scope of Nazi atrocities, I thought of what a strange thing it was, to read all that, and know, already, that there wasn't a single protection against it. To just read through the whole book and accept it; horrified, but not at all disbelieving, because I'd already understood what kind of world I lived in.

Once upon a time, I believed that the extinction of humanity was not allowed. And others who call themselves rationalists, may yet have things they trust. They might be called "positive-sum games", or "democracy", or "technology", but they are sacred. The mark of this sacredness is that the trustworthy thing can't lead to anything really bad; or they can't be permanently defaced, at least not without a compensatory silver lining. In that sense they can be trusted, even if a few bad things happen here and there.

The unfolding history of Earth can't ever turn from its positive-sum trend to a negative-sum trend; that is not allowed. Democracies - modern liberal democracies, anyway - won't ever legalize torture. Technology has done so much good up until now, that there can't possibly be a Black Swan technology that breaks the trend and does more harm than all the good up until this point.

There are all sorts of clever arguments why such things can't possibly happen. But the source of these arguments is a much deeper belief that such things are not allowed. Yet who prohibits? Who prevents it from happening? If you can't visualize at least one lawful universe where physics say that such dreadful things happen - and so they do happen, there being nowhere to appeal the verdict - then you aren't yet ready to argue probabilities.

Could it really be that sentient beings have died absolutely for thousands or millions of years, with no soul and no afterlife - and not as part of any grand plan of Nature - not to teach any great lesson about the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life - not even to teach any profound lesson about what is impossible - so that a trick as simple and stupid-sounding as vitrifying people in liquid nitrogen can save them from total annihilation - and a 10-second rejection of the silly idea can destroy someone's soul? Can it be that a computer programmer who signs a few papers and buys a life-insurance policy continues into the far future, while Einstein rots in a grave? We can be sure of one thing: God wouldn't allow it. Anything that ridiculous and disproportionate would be ruled out. It would make a mockery of the Divine Plan - a mockery of the strong reasons why things must be the way they are.

You can have secular rationalizations for things being not allowed. So it helps to imagine that there is a God, benevolent as you understand goodness - a God who enforces throughout Reality a minimum of fairness and justice - whose plans make sense and depend proportionally on people's choices - who will never permit absolute horror - who does not always intervene, but who at least prohibits universes wrenched completely off their track... to imagine all this, but also imagine that you, yourself, live in a what-if world of pure mathematics - a world beyond the reach of God, an utterly unprotected world where anything at all can happen.

If there's any reader still reading this, who thinks that being happy counts for more than anything in life, then maybe they shouldn't spend much time pondering the unprotectedness of their existence. Maybe think of it just long enough to sign up themselves and their family for cryonics, and/or write a check to an existential-risk-mitigation agency now and then. And wear a seatbelt and get health insurance and all those other dreary necessary things that can destroy your life if you miss that one step... but aside from that, if you want to be happy, meditating on the fragility of life isn't going to help.

But this post was written for those who have something to protect.

What can a twelfth-century peasant do to save themselves from annihilation? Nothing. Nature's little challenges aren't always fair. When you run into a challenge that's too difficult, you suffer the penalty; when you run into a lethal penalty, you die. That's how it is for people, and it isn't any different for planets. Someone who wants to dance the deadly dance with Nature, does need to understand what they're up against: Absolute, utter, exceptionless neutrality.

Knowing this won't always save you. It wouldn't save a twelfth-century peasant, even if they knew. If you think that a rationalist who fully understands the mess they're in, must surely be able to find a way out - then you trust rationality, enough said.

Some commenter is bound to castigate me for putting too dark a tone on all this, and in response they will list out all the reasons why it's lovely to live in a neutral universe. Life is allowed to be a little dark, after all; but not darker than a certain point, unless there's a silver lining.

Still, because I don't want to create needless despair, I will say a few hopeful words at this point:

If humanity's future unfolds in the right way, we might be able to make our future light cone fair(er). We can't modify fundamental physics, but on a higher level of organization we could build some guardrails and put down some padding; organize the particles into a pattern that does some internal checks against catastrophe. There's a lot of stuff out there that we can't touch - but it may help to consider everything that isn't in our future light cone, as being part of the "generalized past". As if it had all already happened. There's at least the prospect of defeating neutrality, in the only future we can touch - the only world that it accomplishes something to care about.

Someday, maybe, immature minds will reliably be sheltered. Even if children go through the equivalent of not getting a lollipop, or even burning a finger, they won't ever be run over by cars.

And the adults wouldn't be in so much danger. A superintelligence - a mind that could think a trillion thoughts without a misstep - would not be intimidated by a challenge where death is the price of a single failure. The raw universe wouldn't seem so harsh, would be only another problem to be solved.

The problem is that building an adult is itself an adult challenge. That's what I finally realized, years ago.

If there is a fair(er) universe, we have to get there starting from this world - the neutral world, the world of hard concrete with no padding, the world where challenges are not calibrated to your skills.

Not every child needs to stare Nature in the eyes. Buckling a seatbelt, or writing a check, is not that complicated or deadly. I don't say that every rationalist should meditate on neutrality. I don't say that every rationalist should think all these unpleasant thoughts. But anyone who plans on confronting an uncalibrated challenge of instant death, must not avoid them.

What does a child need to do - what rules should they follow, how should they behave - to solve an adult problem?

Posted by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Politics isn't about Policy

Overcoming Bias: Politics isn't about Policy

Politics isn't about Policy

Food isn't about Nutrition
Clothes aren't about Comfort
Bedrooms aren't about Sleep
Marriage isn't about Romance
Talk isn't about Info
Laughter isn't about Jokes
Charity isn't about Helping
Church isn't about God
Art isn't about Insight
Medicine isn't about Health
Consulting isn't about Advice
School isn't about Learning
Research isn't about Progress
Politics isn't about Policy

The above summarizes much of my contrarian world view. (What else should go on this list?) When I say "X is not about Y," I mean that while Y is the function commonly said to drive most X behavior, in fact some other function Z drives X behavior more. I won't support all these claims here; for today, let's just talk politics.

High school students are easily engaged to elect class presidents, even though they have little idea what if any policies a class president might influence. Instead such elections are usually described as "popularity contests." That is, theses elections are about which school social factions are to have higher social status. If a jock wins, jocks have higher status. If your girlfriend's brother wins, you have higher status, etc. And the fact that you have a vote says that others should take you into account when forming coalitions - you are somebody.

Civics teachers talk as if politics is about policy, that politics is our system for choosing policies to deal with common problems. But as Tyler Cowen suggests, real politics seems to be more about who will be our leaders, and what coalitions will rise or fall in status as a result. Election media coverage focuses on characterizing the candidates themselves - their personalities, styles, friends, beliefs, etc. You might say this is because character is a cheap clue to the policies candidates would adopt, but I don't buy it.

The obvious interpretation seems more believable - as with high school class presidents, we care about policies mainly as clues to candidate character and affiliations. And to the extend we consider policies not tied to particular candidates, we mainly care about how policies will effect which kinds of people will be respected how much.

For example, we want nationalized medicine so poor sick folks will feel cared for, military actions so foreigners will treat us with respect, business deregulation as a sign of respect for hardworking businessfolk, official gay marriage as a sign we accept gays, and so on.

This perspective explains why voters tend to prefer proportional representation, why many refuse to vote for any candidate when none have earned their respect, and why so few are interested in institutional reforms that would plausibly give more informed policies. (I'm speaking on such reform at a Trinity College symposium Monday afternoon.)

In each case where X is commonly said to be about Y, but is really X is more about Z, many are well aware of this but say we are better off pretending X is about Y. You may be called a cynic to say so, but if honesty is important to you, join me in calling a spade a spade.

SKYPE has admitted politically sensitive text messages were archived by its partner in China.

Skype admits privacy breach by Chinese partner | NEWS.com.au

Skype admits privacy breach by Chinese partner

by Chris Lefkow in Washington October 03, 2008 02:50pm


SKYPE has admitted politically sensitive text messages were archived by its partner in China.

Skype, the online text message and voice service owned by auction giant eBay, said it had been unaware that the internet chat of users in China was being stored on computer servers by Chinese mobile firm TOM Online.

Citizen Lab, a group of computer security experts at the University of Toronto, revealed this week that TOM Online was spying on TOM-Skype users in China and collecting messages with specific keywords.

Citizen Lab said the messages, with words such as "Tibet," "Communist Party" or "democracy," contained internet addresses, usernames and other information which could make the senders and recipients easily identifiable.
'Censorship does exist'

Skype president Josh Silverman said in a statement that TOM Online "just like any other communications company in China, has established procedures to meet local laws and regulations.

"These regulations include the requirement to monitor and block instant messages containing certain words deemed 'offensive' by the Chinese authorities," Mr Silverman said.

"It is common knowledge that censorship does exist in China and that the Chinese government has been monitoring communications in and out of the country for many years," he said.

He recalled that in April 2006, Skype admitted that TOM Online "operated a text filter that blocked certain words in chat messages" and unsuitable messages were to be "discarded and not displayed or transmitted anywhere."

"It was our understanding that it was not TOM's protocol to upload and store chat messages with certain keywords, and we are now inquiring with TOM to find out why the protocol changed," he said.

"We are currently addressing the wider issue of the uploading and storage of certain messages with TOM," Mr Silverman said, stressing that the millions of people around the world using standard Skype software were unaffected.

"Skype-to-Skype communications are, and always have been, completely secure and private," he said.
Insecure information

In a 16-page report, Citizen Lab said "TOM-Skype is censoring and logging text chat messages that contain specific, sensitive keywords and may be engaged in more targeted surveillance.

"These logged messages contain keywords relating to sensitive topics such as Taiwan independence, the Falun Gong, and political opposition to the Communist Party of China," it said.

"These text messages, along with millions of records containing personal information, are stored on insecure publicly accessible web servers," Citizen Lab added.

The researchers said they gained access to eight TOM-Skype servers.

"With just one username it is possible to identify all the users that have sent messages to or received messages from the original user," they said.

The Citizen Lab team said there was no evidence the captured data had been used by the Chinese authorities.

But they asked: "To what extent do TOM Online and Skype cooperate with the Chinese government in monitoring the communications of activists and dissidents as well as ordinary citizens?

"What is clear is that TOM-Skype is engaging in extensive surveillance with seemingly little regard for the security and privacy of Skype users."
Surveillance state

The monitoring by TOM-Skype is not the first time concerns have been raised about surveillance and censorship in China, most recently during the Beijing Olympics.

China exercises strict control over the internet, blocking sites linked to Chinese dissidents, the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, the Tibetan government-in-exile and those with information on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

A number of US companies, including giants Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Yahoo, have been hauled before the US Congress in recent years and accused of complicity in building what has been called the "Great Firewall of China."

Yahoo in particular came in for heavy criticism after it provided Chinese authorities with information about the email account of a Chinese journalist, Shi Tao, sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2005 for divulging state secrets.

Yahoo defended its actions on the grounds that it had to comply with China's laws in order to operate there.

The Citizen Lab report, "Breaching Trust," was published this week on the Information Warfare Monitor website, a joint project between Citizen Lab and the security think-tank SecDev Group.

Is this stalking law the most ridiculous ever?

Is this stalking law the most ridiculous ever? | The Daily Telegraph

EXCLUSIVE by Gemma Jones

September 25, 2008 12:00am

A 15-YEAR-OLD girl who was stalked by a stranger had her identity revealed by police who were forced to hand it over to the pervert when he was granted bail.

The teenager told friends she feared for her life in the incident on Tuesday, which is one of a staggering spate of attempted child abductions around Sydney in recent weeks.

The young woman's alleged attacker, a 27-year-old man from Greystanes, had no idea who she was. But within hours of his arrest at Rooty Hill, in Sydney's west, he was free on police bail and had her name handed to him on a charge sheet. Now, only a bail condition ordering the man to stay away from the distressed girl is protecting her.

Police said their hands were tied as they were following laws designed to speed the passage of criminals through court. (Vote in our poll, and tell us what you think below).

Victims groups say the extraordinary system is making thousands of victims of random crimes vulnerable to their attackers as they wait for their case to come up in court.

Police too slow to act on abductions

Howard Brown from the Victims of Crime Assistance League said: "I know exactly how she would feel, she would be wanting to dig herself into a hole where she feels completely safe, now she is going to be scared for her life." Carol Ronken from Bravehearts said: "That is putting that child so at risk, I am appalled, it is horrific."