Saddam Hussein Captured; U.N. Agrees to Examine How Internet Is Governed; Phoenix Schools Installing Face Scanning Technology; Canada Creates New Ministry to Handle Security Threats, Disasters

Saddam Hussein Captured

Saddam Hussein was captured Saturday, Dec. 13, at 8:30 local time outside of Tikrit. According to a story in todaysWashington Post, the clues that led to Hussein’s capture emerged three weeks ago, officials said, when intelligence analysts and Special Operations forces shifted the focus of their hunt from Hussein’s innermost circle to the more distant relatives and tribal allies who they suspected had been sheltering the deposed president. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new strategy led to the capture in Baghdad on Friday of a relative from Hussein’s Tikriti clan. Under interrogation, the man contributed a vital, though still undisclosed, clue to Hussein’s whereabouts. According to coverage by the BBC News Online, U.S. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld said that Saddam Hussein was being accorded the privileges of a prisoner-of-war under the Geneva Convention although America was “not defining him as such”. Although the soldiers who captured him have revealed that he asked to “negotiate” when they found him hiding in a dugout, Rumsfeld has said, “He has not been co-operative in terms of talking or anything like that.”U.N. Agrees to Examine How Internet Is GovernedInternatonal Herald Tribune story in todays New York Times, delegates at the four-day United Nations conference on the Internet, which ended Friday, agreed that a U.N. working group should be set up to examine whether to introduce more international oversight of the Internet’s semiformal administrative bodies. The leader of the United States’ delegation, David Gross, said the conference outcome meant that private sector interests would not lose their stake in how the Internet is governed, although they would have to make more room at the table for other stakeholders.

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Phoenix Schools Installing Face Scanning TechnologyThe Boston Globe today, the cameras are linked to state and national databases held at the sheriff’s office of sex offenders, missing children, and alleged abductors. Civil libertarians raised red flags about the idea, pointing to potential privacy violations. Also, biometrics experts say facial recognition programs are far from foolproof.

Face scanning technology designed to recognize registered sex offenders and missing children has been installed in a Phoenix school in a pilot project that some law enforcement and education officials hope to expand. According to an AP story in

Canada Creates New Ministry to Handle Security Threats, DisastersToronto Daily Star, Canadas federal government has created an overarching public security ministry to help Canada deal with everything from terrorist threats to natural disasters. Cabinet veteran Anne McLellan assumes the helm of the new Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness portfolio, which combines agencies under the wing of the Solicitor General with bodies responsible for borders, emergency preparedness and crime prevention.

According to a story in the