Survey of law officers finds majority doesn't agree with Obama's gun control plan

Published April 09, 2013

FoxNews.com

An overwhelming majority of law enforcement officers says a federal ban on assault weapons would not reduce the risk of violent crime, according to a recently released national survey of active duty and retired officers.

The survey conducted by PoliceOne.com found that 85 percent of officers think the passage of the Obama administration’s gun control legislation either would have no effect or would have a negative effect on their safety.

More than 80 percent of respondents said they supported arming school teachers and administrators with guns. And more than 28 percent of officers say they think having “more permissive” concealed carry policies for civilians would help most in preventing large-scale shootings in public.

The survey, which polled 15,000 law enforcement professionals at all ranks, was conducted online March 4-13. Survey questions were composed and compiled by PoliceOne staff and the Pretorian Group, PoliceOne’s parent company.

“The American people, and particularly the members of law enforcement, want politicians in Washington to stop pursuing a failed political agenda and get to work fixing our broken mental health system, improving school security and getting criminals off the streets,” said Chris Cox, head of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action following the results of the PoliceOne survey.

The results of the survey, released Monday, come as President Obama tries to keep the political momentum for gun control measures going. Last week, he traveled to Colorado and Connecticut – two states that have seen some of the country’s worst mass shootings and responded by passing tough state gun laws. During his multistate swing, Obama repeatedly called on Congress to step up its efforts for universal background checks for gun buyers and limits on large-capacity ammunition magazines.

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Mike Rice doesn't speak for me

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  Jan. 17, 2013: In this file photo, Rutgers head coach Mike Rice reacts to a play during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against South Florida in Piscataway, N.J.AP

Basketball is a sport of full of passion and raw emotion. I should know, I’ve been around it all my life. I grew up a stone’s throw off Tobacco Road in North Carolina. In college, I spent time as a student manager at a NCAA Division I school. And now I have the privilege of coaching high school basketball in Texas.

This passion and emotion is a key factor in what makes the sport so great. Don’t believe me? Turn on your TV any weekend in March. There you’ll see more than your fair share of buzzer beaters, upsets, Cinderella slippers and feel-good stories that could fill a dozen future Disney films.

But unfortunately, we were all reminded this week that the same passion and emotion can have just the same negative impact on a coach, team and school.

On Tuesday, ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” introduced us all to video footage of then Rutgers men’s basketball head coach Mike Rice firing everything at his players from basketballs to obscenities and anti-gay slurs.

I saw these offenses myself for the first time courtesy of a video clip on a friend’s Facebook wall. Immediately, my mind began doing its best to define the images I was seeing. Inexcusable. Undefendable. Horrifying. Head-scratching.

Then I discovered the kicker. These images weren’t filmed at Rutgers practices that took place this month, or even this year.

When I found out these tapes were first made available to the Rutgers athletic department in November of last year, I couldn’t believe that Rice had been allowed to keep his job.

I was floored. How could an institution of higher education deem these actions as OK? Especially a school with a self-proclaimed “rich history of more then 240 years.”

The fact that Coach Rice (or any Rutgers employee for that matter) would be allowed to keep their job after actions like those astounds me. How could anyone in position of leading young people be allowed to continue to do so after such behavior?

Not only do his actions violate the trust a coach should have with his players, but it also falls well short of the basic ideal of human decency.

To be perfectly clear, I don’t know Coach Rice. I’ve never met him. The high school gym I coach in is 1,742 miles away from the campus of Rutgers in Newark, N.J.  

But what I do know is that both he and I are given the same opportunities as coaches. It’s an opportunity that he and I share with tens of thousands of coaches across the country -- all the way from junior high through high school and college.

It’s an opportunity to play various roles in the lives of our athletes. As coaches we are called to be teachers, counselors, skill developers, motivators, disciplinarians and so much more.

We are given the opportunity to lead our players in such a way that when they leave our program, they are better men (or women) than when we first met them. We are given the task of preparing them to have a great and lasting impact on the world around them.

As Coach John Wooden once put it, we as coaches are tasked with helping players understand that "what you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player."

And while Coach Rice’s poor judgment may lead to trust issues among the general public towards those in my profession, I am very proud to say that I know his actions are the exception, and not the rule, for those of us in the coaching fraternity.

What happened within the men’s basketball program at Rutgers is unacceptable. Even Coach Rice himself has admitted it. And I don’t think anyone would disagree.

But understand this -- the world of high school and college athletics is full of coaches who are not only winning games on the court, but they’re building winners in everyday life with the players they coach. I’ve been around them. I’ve seen them do it.

Let’s focus less on the lives of coaches like Mike Rice and more on the ones of those like John Wooden. That’s what the game of basketball is truly about.

Matt McLeod is the boy’s basketball coach at Faith Family Church in Fort Worth, Texas. 

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HP develops 3D for mobile devices that doesn't require use of glasses

Published March 20, 2013

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES –  Researchers at Hewlett-Packard Co. have developed a way to put glasses-free 3-D video on mobile devices with a viewing angle so wide that viewers can see an object more fully just by tilting the screen.

Glasses-free 3-D is not unique. Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s 3DS handheld allows video game play in 3-D without glasses, but it requires players to look straight into the screen with their noses centered.

HP's researchers have found a way to make images viewable in 3-D from angles up to 45 degrees from center in any direction --up, down, side-to-side or diagonally. That means viewers can see a person's face with one ear blocked from view, but reveal the ear by swiveling the screen.

The company's findings will be published in the scientific journal, Nature, on Thursday.

The scientists used nanotechnology to etch multiple circles with tiny grooves into a glass layer of the display.

The grooves bend light in a way that allows for 64 different points of view. By moving the screen, people will perceive two of those points of view at any one time, one with their left eye and one with their right. As a result, the image will appear in 3-D.

David Fattal, the lead author of the paper, said the effect is "much like you'd see in the movie 'Star Wars' with the hologram of Princess Leia."

He acknowledged the effect wouldn't be identical to a hologram, however, since the images won't pop as far out of the screen as Leia's projection did in the movie.

The technology isn't exactly coming to a movie theater near you any time soon. While moving images can be created using computer animation, any live video capture would require an array of 64 cameras all pointed at an object, Fattal said.

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Indicted journalist's lawyer says prank doesn't merit prison

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  This screengrab taken on March 14, 2013 shows the Twitter account of Matthew Keys. At the top of the page is a retweet of a story detailing Keys' indictment.

SAN FRANCISCO –  U.S. prosecutors say a journalist conspired with the hacking group Anonymous to cause an online security breach that should be punished by decades in prison. But online supporters of Matthew Keys say he was just taking part in a prank that briefly altered the Los Angeles Times' website and shouldn't be treated so harshly.

The case against Keys, 26, lays bare sharp divisions about what constitutes Internet crime and how far governments should go to stop it.

"Congress wants harsh penalties doled out for these crimes because they don't want people defacing websites, but there has to be a way that we can bring the law into harmony with the realities of how people use technology today," said Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Keys, now a deputy social media editor for Reuters, was charged Thursday with conspiring with Anonymous to alter a Times news story in late 2010.

The federal indictment accuses Keys of giving hackers the information they needed to access the computer system of Times' parent company, Tribune Co. Tribune also owns a California television station Keys had been fired from months earlier.

An attorney for Keys said he is not guilty, and that the government is overreaching in its zeal to prosecute Internet pranks.

"No one was hurt, there were no lasting injuries, no one's identify was stolen, lives weren't ruined," Jay Leiderman said Friday. "Mr. Keys was no different than any other embedded journalist. The story he was going after was inside this chat room, and he went there."

Keys didn't return a phone call seeking comment.

"I'm okay," he tweeted Friday in response to a journalism colleague wondering how he was doing.

Keys was suspended with pay late Thursday, said Reuters spokesman David Girardin, who did not elaborate. A spokesman for Tribune Co. declined to comment.

According to the indictment, a hacker identified only as "Sharpie" used information Keys supplied in an Internet chat room and altered a headline on a December 2010 Times story to read "Pressure builds in House to elect CHIPPY 1337." The reference was to another hacking group credited with defacing the website of video game publisher Eidos in 2011.

Keys is charged with one count each of conspiracy to transmit information to damage a protected computer, as well as transmitting and attempting to transmit that information. If convicted, prosecutors say he faces a combined 25 years prison and a $500,000 fine if sentenced to the maximum for each count.

However, first-time offenders with no criminal history will typically spend much less time in prison than the maximum sentence, said Mary Fan, a former federal prosecutor who specializes in criminal law and procedure at the University of Washington School of Law.

Keys' arraignment is scheduled for April 12.

Anonymous and its offshoot, Lulz Security, have been linked to a number of high-profile computer attacks and crimes, including many that were meant to embarrass governments, federal agencies and corporate giants. They have been connected to attacks that took data from FBI partner organization InfraGard, and they've jammed websites of the CIA and the Public Broadcasting Service.

Keys' indictment comes after recent hacks into the computer systems of two other U.S. media companies that own The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both newspapers reported in February that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers, likely to monitor media coverage the Chinese government deems important.

The hacking crimes Keys is charged with come from the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was enacted in the 1980s.

Federal prosecutors use the act to go after a wide range of Internet crimes, but the law may not reflect how our behavior online has changed over the last three decades, Fan said.

"Some might say if you take someone's property or break into a private place without permission, we don't get upset about prosecutions, so why would we be upset about these prosecutions if the trespass happened online?" Fan said. "Others might say is what happened in this case really even a problem? It's kind of a culture clash."

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