The high court ruling was a defeat for the Obama administration, which had argued that a warrant was not required to use global positioning system devices to monitor a vehicle on public streets.

The justices unanimously agreed with a precedent-setting ruling by a U.S. appeals court that the police must procure a warrant before using a GPS device for an extended period of time to covertly follow a suspect.

The high court ruled that placement of a device on a vehicle and using it to monitor the vehicle’s movements was prohibited by U.S. constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures of evidence.

There are no precise figures on how often police in the United States use GPS tracking in criminal investigations. But the Obama administration told the court last year it was used rarely by federal law enforcement officials.

The American Civil Liberties Union rights group praised the ruling as an important victory for privacy. “While this case turned on the fact that the government physically placed a GPS device on the defendant’s car, the implications are much broader,” Steven Shapiro of the ACLU said.

“A majority of the court acknowledged that advancing technology, like cell phone tracking, gives the government unprecedented ability to collect, store, and analyze an enormous amount of information about our private lives,” he said.

The Americas Post - Now Big Brother can see right through your clothes. Photo Credit: NYPD

It’s not just in the airport anymore.  The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is working in collaboration with the United States Department of Defense to control illegal firearms by deploying technology to detect concealed weapons carried by people walking down the street.

Using infrared rays, the system scans a “form of radiation emitted from the body” on a person carrying a gun on the city’s streets, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced Tuesday at a State of the NYPD event.

Known as terahertz imaging detection, the technology functions on the basis that the rays cannot pass through metal, thereby creating a digital outline of any metal weapon gun people may be hiding.   It is reported to be capable of measuring energy radiating off a body from up to 16 feet away.

Kelly told attendees that the scanner would be used only when reasonable suspicious circumstances called for it and could decrease the frequency of stop-and-search incidents on the street.  The news, however, has raised concerns about privacy.

“It’s worrisome. It implicates privacy, the right to walk down the street without being subjected to a virtual pat-down by the Police Department when you’re doing nothing wrong,” the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Donna Lieberman told CBS New York.

According to NY Post reports, the scanners would be mounted on NYPD vans, with the rays aiming at people on the street.

The Americas Post - Al-Saadi Gadhafi wanted to go Al Puerto Vallarta. Photo Credit: AP

Mexican authorities said Wednesday that a surviving son of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and three other relatives planned to enter Mexico under false names and hide at a Pacific coast resort.

The plan to smuggle in al-Saadi Gadhafi allegedly involved two Mexicans, a Canadian and a Danish suspect, all of whom have been arrested according to Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire.

The plot was discovered by Mexican intelligence agents in September as al-Saadi fled Libya shortly after his father’s downfall.  He never made it as far as Mexico, ending up in the Western African country of Niger where he currently resides.

The plotters allegedly flew to Mexico, opened bank accounts and bought safe houses in several parts of the country, including one just outside Puerto Vallarta.

“The great economic resources which this criminal organization has, or had, allowed them to contract private flights,” Poire told a news conference.

Poire named Canadian Cynthia Vanier as the group’s ringleader.  He said she had been picked up on Nov. 10 and is now under house arrest with three other suspects on suspicion of document falsification, human smuggling and organized crime.

Poire said Vanier “was the direct contact with the Gadhafi family and the leader of the group, and presumably was the person in charge of the finances of the operation.”

The plot also allegedly depended on a Mexican woman living in the United States, who Poire said obtained the falsified Mexican identity documents.

A Danish man acted as “the logistic liaison” for the plan, Poire said.  He said the alleged conspirators also traveled to Kosovo “and several Middle Eastern countries.”

The Mexican officials made no mention of Moammar Gadhafi himself being involved in the plan, and Poire did not say which relatives may have planned to accompany the son to Mexico. The elder Gadhafi fell from power in late August and was killed in Libya on Oct. 20.

Poire said that false documents were issued in the names of “Daniel Bejar Hanan, Amira Sayed Nader, Moah Bejar Sayed and Sofia Bejar Sayed.”  The Gadhafi name does not appear anywhere in the documents.

The Americas Post - The new club is open but the US and Canada are not invited.

A newly formed Latin American and Caribbean organization has issued statements in support of Argentina’s claim to sovereignty over the British-ruled Falkland Islands and against U.S. sanctions on Cuba at the end of its first two-day summit.

However, the 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC, declined to engage in stronger anti-Western rhetoric as some had feared at a meeting hosted by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.  Instead, its 22 final declarations spoke in general terms of the need to combat global ills like price speculation, drugs, terrorism, nuclear arms and cruelty to migrants.

“I don’t think we’re exaggerating if we call it a historic day,” said Chavez, 57.  ”United in our differences, we must demand respect,” he told the assembly. “No more interference; we’ve had enough.”

For Chavez the summit achieved two goals: setting up a regional body without the United States, and allowing him to showcase his recovery from cancer treatment.  He and other left-wing leaders like Raul Castro of Cuba, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador say the hemisphere-wide Organization of American States (OAS)  is a tool of Washington.

Conservative-led nations like Colombia, Chile and Mexico were able to keep CELAC from appearing overly radical however, with relatively mild final declarations  and next year’s meeting set for Santiago, Chile.  And the communiques over the Falklands – or Malvinas islands as they are known in Argentina – and the U.S. embargo on Cuba were already standard positions within the region.

The final declaration backed Argentina’s “legitimate rights” and urged Britain to resume negotiations.

“The Argentine government has shown a permanently constructive attitude and willingness to reach, via negotiations, a peaceful and definitive solution to this anachronistic, colonial situation on American soil”, it stated.

On Cuba, CELAC, whose countries total almost 600 million in population and  about $6 trillion in GDP, urged Washington to respect U.N. votes and lift trade sanctions in place for decades against the communist government.

Chavez, who survived cancer surgery in June, presided over lengthy sessions and speeches, frequently intervening to add his own anecdotes and opinions.

He plans to run for re-election in 2012, and his opponents used the summit to mount some protests in an attempt to embarrass him in front of his Latin American counterparts.  Activists beat pots and pans around the city on Saturday night in a traditional “cacerolazo” demonstration. Some banners were also briefly unfurled over roads saying “Welcome to Crime City” – before police removed them.

The Americas Post - There's a new sheriff on the streets of Tegucigalpa. Photo Credit: Xinhua

The Honduran legislature decided this week to deploy the army against Mexican drug cartels, hoping to put the brake on growing violence in the most murderous country on the planet.

Lawmakers voted by an overwhelming majority to follow the model used by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who launched a military campaign against powerful drug gangs after taking office in 2006.

Following that decision, over 45,000 people have been killed in Mexican drug violence.   On a per capita basis, however, the small nation of Honduras is leading every other country in the world in homicides, with 82 murders per 100,000 people last year according to the United Nations.   Some 20 people are killed there on a daily basis.

Officials blame most of the murders on cartels, smuggling South American cocaine through Central America to consumers in the United States.  Honduras also suffers from violent youth street gangs that extort local businesses with death threats.

“This legislation will allow the armed forces to take on policing roles to confront organized crime and drug traffickers operating across the country,” congressman Oswaldo Ramos said.

Some human rights activists say the military is not trained to deal with civilian crimes and have accused Mexican soldiers of torture and disappearances in the drug war.  Those concerns are taken seriously in Honduras, where the military overthrew leftist President Manuel Zelaya in a 2009 coup.

“We have serious doubts about the implications of sending the army to do policework,” said leftist congressman Sergio Castellanos. “They are not prepared to deal with civilians and this will only strengthen their position in society after the coup,” he said.

Recent polls have shown that the move does have popular backing and that people feel safer with soldiers patrolling the streets.

The Americas Post - Netzai Sandoval is going all the way to the top. Photo Credit: Reuters

Mexican activists have filed a war-crimes complaint against President Felipe Calderón at the International Criminal Court, claiming some  470 cases of human rights violations by the army or police in their war on that nation’s drug cartels.

Attorney Netzai Sandoval said that Mexican drug lords have also committed crimes against humanity in the conflict, which has cost 35,000 to 40,000 lives since late 2006.  The complaint filed at the court in the Netherlands on Friday also names Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Calderón’s administration denies the charges, saying it’s an elected, democratic government combating crime with established mechanisms to protect human rights.  Mexico’s Interior Department issued a statement saying “the public safety policy that has been implemented by no means constitutes an international crime.”  It claimed the government’s actions “are aimed at stopping criminal organizations and protecting all citizens.”

“The Mexican government is not at war, and there is no generalized or systematic attack against civilians, nor any government policy in that direction,” said the statement.

Violence in Mexico is increasing between competing cartels as well as between the cartels and the Mexican government. The two leading groups, the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel, are now engaged in an all-out war to control major cities including Veracruz and Guadalajara.

Yuri Fedotov, Executive Director of UNODC, Director Gral of U.N. Office in Vienna and Under Secretary Gral of the United Nations.

Addressing today the Security Council in New York, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNODC Mr. Yury Fedotov today called for coordinated and concerted efforts to address the threat of transnational organized crime.

Mr. Fedotov said to the Security Council that transnational organized crime TOC and drug trafficking are undermining security in many regions and evolving into major threats to political and social stability, the rule of law, human rights and economic development..

Giving more details about the particular threat to security posed by drugs, Mr. Fedotov noted..READ MORE HERE

The Americas Post - Dilma Rousseff wants the whole world to see Brazil's dirty laundry.

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff on Friday approved the formation of a Truth Commission to investigate human rights abuses committed during and prior to that nation’s military dictatorship, which ran from 1964 to 1985.

The creation of the seven member commission is the strongest step yet taken by the Brazilian government to resolve the many incidents of violence and torture during their dictatorship, in spite of not having authority to prosecute those responsible.

That catch is frustrating for human rights activists, who want to see Brazilian soldiers on trial like their counterparts in Chile and Argentina.

“Today we honor the generations of Brazilians who died, not by a process of vengeance, but by a process of reconstructing the truth and memory”, said Rousseff.  The former left wing activist, who was tortured by the military herself, spoke at a ceremony in the presidential palace.

“The truth about our past is fundamental to ensure that these deeds staining our history can never be repeated”, she added.

With a two-year mandate, the commission will be able subpoena witnesses to investigate abuses committed by the government as well as by the opposition.  That process is limited, however, by the 1979 amnesty law, approved by the dictatorship, that protects alleged torturers from trial.

Unlike its neighbors in the region, until now Brazil has avoided a formal discussion of crimes and human rights abuses perpetrated during its military dictatorship, and has never jailed a member of the military for those.

“This development shows Brazil’s commitment to deal with human rights in their country, just like the rest of the world”, said UN Human Rights commissioner Navi Pilley in a statement for the press.

Around 500 Brazilians were killed or disappeared during their military dictatorship, while many others were tortured.  Most victims were left-wing activists.

Rousseff also signed a Freedom of Information law guaranteeing the public free access to government documents.  That law allows sensitive information to be kept secret for 25 years, renewable to 50 years, but prohibits the concealment of any document related to human rights.

The Americas Post - Colombian President Santos has pulled the plug on an intelligence agency. Photo credit: Reuters

On Monday Colombia shut down a controversial intelligence center for surveillance and illegal interception of communications to magistrates, journalists and politicians who opposed the administration of ex-president Alvaro Uribe.

President Juan Manuel Santos said that responsibilities of the Administrative Security Department  (ASD) will be taken over by other agencies like the Ministry of Foreign Relations, the Ministry of the Interior, the Justice Dept and the National Police.

“This is not a transformation, this is not reform”, said president Santos.  ”In the case of the ASD, it’s a liquidation.  The ASD is closed.”

The Colombian leader said that 92% of the 6,000 ASD staff members will be transferred to other agencies while the rest continue with the process of shutting down the agency.

Santos took the step using special powers authorized by the Colombian congress to modernize the state, under which he re-established the Ministries of Justice and Labor.

Illegal surveillance by the ASD resulted in one of the most serious scandals faced by the Uribe administration during that president’s second term.  Uribe led the nation of 46 million from 2002 to 2010.

The Americas Post - Mexican journalists want some justice and security.

With 70 journalists murdered there since 2000, Mexico is the fifth most dangerous country in the world for that profession, according to a joint assessment published Monday by the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

The report said that in 13 journalists have been killed already during 2011 in Mexico.  While motives are not always clear, bloody drug cartels have taken most of the credit for journalist slayings there, many of which feature their trademark decapitations.

Frank La Rue, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s investigator on freedom of expression, did not specify which four countries are more dangerous, but other press groups have judged Mexico in third place, behind only Pakistan and Iraq. The Central American nation of Honduras has also recently suffered an increase in journalist killings.

In addition to the 70 killed since 2000, Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights also lists 13 journalists as disappeared.

OAS representative Catalina Botero called on Mexico’s government to implement a plan to protect journalists, but Mexico’s Assistant Foreign Relations Secretary Felipe de Jesus Zamora said the government has already taken steps to do so.

Roberto Rock, editorial director for Mexico’s El Universal newspaper, said the protection decree announced by the Mexican government in 2010 has had little effect.

“This mechanism doesn’t have the necessary guidelines to even know how it will work,” Rock said.

Official Mexican figures show at least 35,000  killed since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched his war on drug cartels. Other sources, including local media, report the number as closer to 40,000.  The federal government has not released updated numbers since December 2010.