Snowden facing charges
under World War I law


Former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden is now living in exile in Russia, fearful that if he returns to the United States he’ll be arrested on espionage charges.
 
The irony is that the charges against Snowden, who was a computer expert at the high-tech National Security Agency, come from a law that dates back to before most Americans could listen to the radio, much less watch TV or surf the Web.
 
The U.S. Justice Department’s charges against Snowden include theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person. The last two charges stem from the Espionage Act of 1917, passed during World War I.
 
Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University in Washington, is an expert on the Espionage Act.
 
“It was passed as a way of trying to prevent individuals who are privy to what the statute calls ‘information relating to the national defense,’ what we now understand to be classified information, from disclosing it, from sharing it, from posting it, from moving it – even from holding on to it if they are not authorized to hold on to it,” Vladeck said.
 
The Espionage Act, says Vladeck, has always been the principal tool the U.S. government uses to prosecute not only spies, but also those who leak classified information without authorization. In recent years, the Obama administration has especially active in using the law against leakers.
 
“There have actually been now about a dozen prosecutions of national security leakers under the Espionage Act,” he said. “And those prosecutions have raised a host of questions – the most difficult of which is if it’s a crime for someone like Snowden to distribute this information, isn’t it also potentially a crime for The Guardian, The New York Times – you and me – to distribute this information once you receive it?
 
“That’s the very dangerous line that most folks worry about when it comes to the Espionage Act,” Vladeck added.
 
Another legal expert who worries about the use of the nearly century-old law these days is Aziz Huq, a constitutional law and national security specialist at the University of Chicago. Huq says the Espionage Act is a very long and complicated law with a dozen or so provisions that can be interpreted in various ways.
 
Snowden worked as a contractor with the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, just north of Washington D.C.

“One of my favorite examples of the breadth of the Espionage Act is that it’s arguable that every time someone reads a newspaper article that contains details of the documents that Snowden has released, they are committing a violation of the Espionage Act,” Huq said.
 
This is so, he explains, “because the Espionage Act can be read to include the receipt of information that you reasonably know was once classified and has never been declassified. So that’s how broad the Espionage Act goes.”
 
Vladeck says the Espionage Act also presents another difficulty for the modern day defendant – it doesn’t contain what has come to be known in later decades as the intent requirement.
 
“The government doesn’t have to show that someone who violates the Espionage Act meant to harm the United States or meant to help a foreign power or had some kind of bad faith motive,” Vladeck said. “All the government has to show is that the defendant knew or should have known that the information, if it got out, would harm the United States or would help a foreign power.”
 
And that has made a government prosecutor’s job fairly easy in espionage cases, he said.
 
Since it first took office in early 2009, the Obama administration has prosecuted seven cases against leakers, about half of all those brought under the Espionage Act. Vladeck says the idea is send a warning to prospective whistleblowers.
 
“That’s the government’s hope,” said Vladeck. “The government would not be so aggressively and so zealously pursuing these cases if it didn’t believe that one of the effects of these prosecutions would be to deter future whistleblowers.”


Mars Society asks students
to help plan its flyby mission


The U.S.-based Mars Society called on university students around the world to help advance plans for a manned mission to the planet during the 16th Annual International Mars Society Convention in the U.S. state of Colorado.
 
It has been about six months since the non-profit Inspiration Mars Foundation, founded by space tourist and multi- millionaire Dennis Tito, proposed launching a manned mission toward Mars in five years. The plan calls for one man and one woman to fly within 160 kilometers of Mars and return to Earth.   

While the crew is slated to be American, the process of getting to Mars is an international endeavor.

The president of the Mars Society, Robert Zubrin, announced a competition that calls on teams of students around the world to design a two-person Mars flyby mission that could be launched in 2018.

Designs will be judged on their cost, quality, simplicity and ability to launch in five years. The U.S. space agency, NASA, the Mars Society and Inspiration Mars will choose the judges.

Zubrin said both the contest and a Mars flyby have the power to spur innovation.

"We need to mobilize the talent of the world in support of this mission," said Zubrin. "Inspiration Mars, in part, was set up to inspire people and show how the challenge of humans to Mars could inspire a new generation to want to develop their minds to become scientists, engineers, technological entrepreneurs and researchers."

A Mars Society press release says the design competition is open to university engineering students worldwide. While teams can include alumni, professors and others, the bulk of the teams must be made up of students. Finalists would present their ideas at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

Zubrin notes that he is not part of Inspiration Mars, but he considers its mission to be bold yet realistic with enough resources to succeed.


Implementation of Obamacare
on the agenda in Washington


After a week-long vacation, U.S. President Barack Obama will focus on proposals to strengthen the still-recovering American economy.  The agenda includes implementation of his signature and politically polarizing initiative to reform the nation’s health care system.

The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare as some call it, expands federal health care programs for the needy and encourages Americans of all income groups to purchase private health care insurance.

“If you do not have insurance, beginning on October 1st, private plans will actually compete for your business.  You can comparison shop in an online marketplace, just like you would for cell phone plans or plane tickets.  You may be eligible for new tax credits to help you afford the plan that’s right for you.  And if you are in the up to half of all Americans who have been sick or have a preexisting condition, this law means that beginning January 1st, insurance companies have to cover you," he said.

Health-care spending accounts for one-seventh of U.S. economic activity, and is projected to increase to one-fifth in coming years.  The cost has a direct bearing on America’s economic and fiscal well being.  Enacted in 2010, the Affordable Care Act aims to control costs and expand access to health care.  The effort is a colossal failure, according to Republican lawmakers like Tim Griffin and Todd Young.

“Republicans will continue to do everything we can to protect all Americans from the president's top-down, one-size-fits-all, Washington-knows-best approach to health care that is driving up costs and hurting our economy," said Griffin.

Young added, “The sooner we can delay, dismantle, and repeal the president's health-care law, the sooner we can get people back to work and focus on expanding opportunity for everyone.”

The president accuses Republicans of putting partisanship ahead of Americans’ health-care needs. “A lot of Republicans seem to believe that if they can gum up the works and make this law fail, they will somehow be sticking it to me.  But they would just be sticking it to you.  Your health insurance is not something to play politics with.  Our economy is not something to play politics with," he said.

The success or failure of Obamacare could shape the president’s legacy long after he leaves office.

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Voyager in interstellar space
or maybe not, astronomers say


Eleven billion miles and 36 years after its launch, some researchers say the Voyager 1 spacecraft has finally left our solar system and entered interstellar space.

Researchers at the University of Maryland who made the claim realize it’s a controversial view, but they say their model indicates the spacecraft left the solar system over a year ago on July 27, 2012, to be exact.

Voyager is truly beginning its travels through the Milky Way, said University of Maryland research scientist Marc Swisdak, lead author of a new paper published online this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The U.S. space agency, NASA, which operates Voyager, has recently published papers saying Voyager 1 is still in a zone influenced by the Sun called the heliopause, something the Maryland researchers call a fuzzily defined transition zone that is both of unknown structure and location.

The controversy lies over the importance in the shift of the magnetic field as the probe passes out of the Sun’s influence compared to the level of solar particles and galactic particles measured by the spacecraft.

Swisdak says looking at the magnetic field difference — as NASA is doing — may be the wrong indicator. He says that while you might expect a shift in the magnetic field once outside the solar system, “there’s no reason to think the magnetic fields should have anything to do with one another.”

“What we’re arguing is that a lack of shift is consistent with going outside the solar system,” he said.

Swisdak says that while magnetic data should not be ignored, the particle data is more compelling.

According to Swisdak’s research, there were successive dips in the solar particles with a corresponding increase in galactic electrons and protons. Researchers say that last summer, the solar particle counts disappeared and only galactic particles remained.

The magnetic data is consistent with leaving the solar system, he said.

Swisdak argues that the NASA’s heliopause is not a surface neatly separating outside and inside.  His research concludes rather that it’s “both porous to certain particles and layered with complex magnetic structure.”

At the edges of the heliopause, Swisdak’s research showed that there is a complex set of nested magnetic islands that he says, “spontaneously arise in a magnetic field due to a fundamental instability.”

Within these magnetic islands, drops in solar particle counts and surges in galactic particle counts can occur even without changes in the magnetic fields.

Swisdak calls the longevity of Voyager impressive considering that is computers are less powerful than the average smart phone or pocket calculator.

Talking about the controversy over whether or not the space probe has left the solar system, Swisdak says that on one level, it’s important because Voyager 1 is providing humanity’s first measurements outside the cocoon of the sun.

On a scientific level, he says “a lot of astronomy is done on an indirect basis.”

“This gives us our first measurements of what it’s like out there,” he said.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1’s primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn.  The probe discovered active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io and showed the intricacies of Saturn’s rings.

Voyager is also well-known for carrying greetings from Earth on a gold plated phonograph record containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

Voyager 1 continues to send back data and has enough power to keep operating until 2020. But given its vast distance, that data takes almost 18 hours to get back to Earth.


Digital trade and barriers
outlined in new U.S. report


A new U.S. government report Thursday highlighted both the growing importance of digital trade to the United States and a long list of trade barriers that American Internet and other online companies face around the world.
 
“The increase in digital trade is having a significant impact on the U.S. and global economy,” the U.S. International Trade Commission said in the first of two reports on the issue requested by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus at the urging of Sen. Ron Wyden, both Democrats.
 
“This report shows that the digital economy represents an American trade advantage but it also identified barriers that are stifling further growth,” Wyden said.
 
As U.S. trade negotiators pursue free trade agreements in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, “it is important that these barriers are addressed so that U.S. digital trade can reach its full potential as a driving force behind the U.S. economy,” the Oregon senator said.
 
The study comes as the United States is pushing in trade talks to open new markets for leading U.S. internet companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, which have already helped make the United States the world's largest exporter of digital services.
 
That has become more complicated after revelations that the National Security Agency was mining personal data from top U.S. internet companies including under a secret program named Prism.
 
The Washington-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation this month estimated U.S. cloud computing providers could lose $21.5 billion to $35.0 billion in revenue over the next three years if foreign customers decide the risk of storing data with a U.S. company outweighed the benefits.
 
The German government responded this week to concerns raised by the Prism surveillance program by agreeing on initial plans to boost European technology companies and make them a more favorable alternative to U.S. peers.
 
In its report, the Trade Commission acknowledged the difficulty of estimating digital trade because of the lack of a standard definition and shortcomings in available data.
 
But U.S. exports of digitally-enabled services, one measure of digital trade, totaled $356.1 billion in 2011, a 26 percent increase from $282.1 billion in 2007, covering areas such as financial services, retail services, professional services, healthcare, logistics and education, the commission said.
 
Europe, with its strong Internet infrastructure, is the most important digital trading partner for the United States and is also an important destination for U.S. digital trade-related foreign direct investment, the commission said.
 
One impediment to increased trade are foreign government  policies that compel digital companies to use local data servers, technology and inputs or that provide procurement preferences for local firms, the report said.
 
Many localization requirements are justified on data privacy grounds, and it is often challenging to determine whether they are imposed for that purpose or to favor the country's domestic firms, said the commission.

Different approaches to data privacy protection can also be an obstacle to trade, an issue that U.S. firms hope to address in talks with the 27-nation European Union on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership pact.
 
In another area, U.S. music, book, software and movie companies view digital piracy of copyrighted material as their biggest obstacle to increased online exports, while internet intermediaries such as Google and Facebook are more concerned about foreign laws that could hold them liable for the actions of users on their networks.
 
In one instance, “the Italian government brought a criminal case against several Google executives for a video posted by a YouTube user that showed the bullying of a disabled student, despite the fact that Google had a notice and take-down system in place that resulted in the prompt removal of the video from the site,” the commission said.
 
U.S. digital companies complain that censorship in countries including China, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia also hurts their business operations, as do restrictive immigration policies and complicated customs procedures, the report said.


Presumed leader of cartel
is captured in México


Mexican authorities have captured a key leader of the Gulf Cartel drug smuggling organization who has been wanted in the United States since 2008.
 
The man, Mario Ramírez Trevino, was arrested Saturday near the border with Texas.
 
The U.S. State Department had offered a $5 million reward for Ramírez Trevino.
 
Also Saturday, at least 23 bodies have been found in western Mexico where local vigilante groups are battling drug cartels for control.
 
Mexican law enforcement officials said nine men, their hands bound and shot, were found Saturday in Michoacan state where local residents have been fighting the Knights Templar drug cartel.
 
In neighboring Guerrero state, another 14 bodies were found.
 
None of the victims has been identified and no one has claimed responsibility for the violence.
 
The government of President Enrique Peña Nieto has deployed thousands of troops in the troubled area in an effort to curb the drug-related violence.


Soft drinks are linked
 to disruptive children


Americans buy more soft drinks per capita than people in any other country. These drinks are consumed by individuals of all ages, including very young children. Although soft drink consumption is associated with aggression, depression, and suicidal thoughts in adolescents, the relationship had not been evaluated in younger children. A new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics finds that aggression, attention problems, and withdrawal behavior are all associated with soft drink consumption in young children.

Shakira Suglia and colleagues from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, University of Vermont, and Harvard School of Public Health assessed approximately 3,000 5-year-old children enrolled in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a prospective birth cohort that follows mother-child pairs from 20 large U.S. cities. Mothers reported their child’s soft drink consumption and completed a checklist based on their child’s behavior during the previous two months. The researchers found that 43 percent of the children consumed at least one serving of soft drinks per day, and 4 percent consumed four or more.

Aggression, withdrawal, and attention problems were associated with soda consumption. Even after adjusting for sociodemographic factors, maternal depression, intimate partner violence, and paternal incarceration, any soft drink consumption was associated with increased aggressive behavior. Children who drank four or more soft drinks per day were more than twice as likely to destroy things belonging to others, get into fights, and physically attack people. They also had increased attention problems and withdrawal behavior compared with those who did not consume soft drinks.

According to Suglia, “We found that the child’s aggressive behavior score increased with every increase in soft drinks servings per day.” Although this study cannot identify the exact nature of the association between soft drink consumption and problem behaviors, limiting or eliminating a child’s soft drink consumption may reduce behavioral problems.





Spinal fluid test can find
markers for future Alzheimer's


A study published last week reported the identification of what may be the earliest known biomarker associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease . The results suggest that this novel potential biomarker is present in cerebral spinal fluid at least a decade before signs of dementia manifest.

"If our initial findings can be replicated by other laboratories, the results will change the way we currently think about the causes of Alzheimer's disease," said Ramon Trullas, research professor at the CSIC Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona and lead author of the study that was published in Annals of Neurology. "This discovery may enable us to search for more effective treatments that can be administered during the preclinical stage."

Alzheimer's disease affects more than five million Americans and is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. At present, the only way to accurately diagnose the disease is by post-mortem neuropathological analysis. The relationship of currently known biomarkers with the cause of the disease is unclear, making it nearly impossible to diagnose preclinical stages of the disease with any real certainty.

The CSIC researchers demonstrated that a decrease in the content of mitochondrial DNA in spinal fluid may be a preclinical indicator for Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, there may be a directly causative relationship. The hypothesis is that decreased DNA levels reflect the diminished ability of mitochondria to power the brain's neurons, triggering their death.

The decrease in the concentration of DNA precedes the appearance of well-known biochemical Alzheimer's biomarkers, suggesting that the pathophysiological process of Alzheimer's disease starts earlier than previously thought and that mitochondrial DNA depletion may be one of the earliest predictors for the disease.




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