Living-Today: Issues of modern living

BRAVE NEW WORLD?

A Democratic policy group says domestic terrorism can best be fought by using more information technology -- including computer chips embedded in driver's licenses and more data-sharing between law enforcement agencies.

The Progressive Policy Institute released two reports, "Using Technology to Detect and Prevent Terrorism" and "The State and Local Role in Homeland Defense." Both call for using modern computer systems and other technologies.

Robert Atkinson, the institute's vice president and co-author of the "Using Technology" report, said incomplete identification systems and database use thwarted many opportunities police agencies had to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.

"If we had had advanced IT tools in place, ... it is almost certain that some of the terrorists would have been detained, and possibly some of the plots would have been foiled," he said in prepared remarks. "We need a coordinated plan that utilizes technology to modernize our law enforcement, security and identification systems."

Shane Ham -- a senior PPI analyst and Atkinson's co-author -- said the FBI's National Crime Information Center database is a step in the right direction for information sharing, but its focus on serious crimes needs to be broadened to help police identify possible terrorists. Police on the street should receive handheld computers for wireless access to the improved databases, he said.

The Atkinson-Ham report also recommends the government adopt technology applications that include "smart" ID cards, based on state-issued driver's licenses with embedded computer chips for holding fingerprints, other identification methods and additional information; digital surveillance methods, along the lines of the FBI's e-mail and keystroke capturing programs, subject to obtaining proper warrants and other controls; and face-recognition technology to spot known terrorists and criminals at high-interest events such as the 2002 Winter Olympics.

-- What do you think?

(Thanks to UPI Science Writer Scott R. Burnell)

SATELLITE IMAGES

In what may be the clearest indication yet that the war in Afghanistan is coming to an end, scores of extremely clear images snapped by a commercial satellites but locked up by the Defense Department in October will be available for sale Monday.

Space Imaging -- the company that operates the IKONOS satellite -- will release all but a few of the overhead images of Afghanistan, according to Mark Brender, the company's director of Washington operations.

The images from the IKONOS satellite are full color with one-meter resolution, five times better than those available previously. The satellite can produce a one-meter resolution image of the same spot every three days and a 2.5-meter resolution image of the same spot every day.

Space Imaging launched IKONOS in September 1999, with a license that granted the U.S. government the right to "shutter control" -- that is to legally prohibit Space Imaging from acquiring or distributing imagery in an area of military operations. Rather than invoking the shutter control power -- and possibly inciting censorship charges and legal battles with news organizations -- the Defense Department National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) signed an exclusive commercial deal with Space Imaging on Oct. 7, the first day the United States conducted air strikes on Afghanistan.

Brender says the images could be valuable to private organizations planning the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

WATER

A report funded by the United Nations warns of unprecedented threats to the world's dwindling sources of fresh water -- including massive loss of wetlands, growing contamination with waste and global warming -- that have lethal consequences.

Already, 250 million cases of water-related diseases are reported each year, and as many as 27,000 people die every day from such illnesses as cholera, malaria, dengue fever and dysentery.

"Across the globe, the world's scarce fresh water is being threatened as never before. Growing populations, increasing water pollution and the wild card of climate change all point to an upcoming crisis," said lead author Peter Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, an independent, non-profit research center in Oakland, Calif. "To make matters worse, the traditional methods long used to ensure our supply of water -- dams, reservoirs and pipelines -- are actually adding to our woes," he added.

Gleick is the author of "The World's Water" (Island Press), member of the National Academy of Sciences Water Science and Technology Board and academician of the International Water Academy of Oslo, Norway.

Without a global commitment to a new "water ethic," Earth's lifeblood -- crucial to humans' health and prosperity and to nature's fragile balance and dynamics -- may be sucked dry, according to the detailed document commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program in Nairobi, Kenya, and published earlier this month.

"Water is crucial for so much of what we care about: health of people and our ecosystems, the production of food and energy, the dynamics of our atmosphere, and more," Ashbindu Singh, regional coordinator of the UNEP Division of Early Warning and Assessment-North America in Sioux Falls, S.D., told UPI.

"The impacts of water-related diseases on the world's children and the coming risks of climate change are especially threatening. Changing weather patterns may dump too much water into barren areas and leave our massive networks of dams and reservoirs with only drops. We've got to prepare for tomorrow today," Gleick said.

Solutions lie in increasing efficiency rather than building more dams and reservoirs, the report's authors said.

"Improving the efficiency of our water systems, taking real steps to stem global warming and opening the policy debate over water to new voices can all help turn the tide," Gleick said.

CHINESE TRAINING

Three hundred highly ranked Chinese government officials will be attending training sessions at Harvard University over the next five years, according to the South China Morning Post.

Harvard signed an agreement last Friday to train 60 Chinese officials a year at its well-known John F. Kennedy School of Government. According to China's state-run media, "Officials taking part in the program should at least be university graduates, be under the age of 45 and should have had no less than two years' work experience." It added that officials must have worked in local government at least at the rank of mayor or in central government as department chiefs or higher and must have been in their present positions for a minimum of two years.

"The trainees will first be given six weeks' training in China organized by the three institutions involved in the Harvard program. After that, they will be sent to Harvard University to learn the latest theories in public administration and working methods," said the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Chinese officials first began training at Harvard in the early 1990s but this new arrangement accepts the largest number of students by the American university from one country.