2A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, April 17, 2006 NATION/WORLD NYPD flips on surveillance cameras to fight crime, terror * Privacy advocates cry foul over thousands of cameras placed throughout New York City NEW YORK (AP) - Along a gritty stretch of street in Brooklyn, police this month quietly launched an ambitious plan to combat street crime and terrorism.k hga But instead of cops on the beat, wireless video cameras peer down from lamp posts about 30 feet above the sidewalk., They were the first installment of a program to place 500 cameras throughout the city at a cost of $9 million. Government. - i ,. l Hundreds of additional cameras could follow if the citsyngprjt receives $81.5 million in federal grants it has requested to safeguard Lower Manhattan and parts of midtown with a surveillance ring of steelamodeled after security mea- sures in London's financial district. Officials of the New York Police Department - which considers itself at the forefront of counterterrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - claim the money would be aghns abssliercilpoln advyers. well-spent, especially since the revelations that al-Qaida memberstonce cased the New York Stock Exchange and other financial institutions. We have e ery reason to believe New York remains in the cross-hairs, so we have to do what it takes to protect the city," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last fi n week at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of . Government .. f.....aedfs. aw rstadse. Y.kCyP....pr .n ...ssid rr s dd. The city already has about 1,000 cameras in the sub- ways, with 2,100 scheduled to be in place by 2008. An additional 3,100 cameras monitor city housing projects. ;..r' .. .. New York's approach isn't unique. Chicago spent .4,k *4-m*444~ 45 roughly $5 million on a 2,000-camera system. Home- ,4*445/ land Security officials in Washington plan to spend $9.8 ~ ~ ~ 45.~ million for surveillance cameras and sensors on a rail ' line near the Capitol. And Philadelphia has increasingly relied on video surveillance. Privacy advocates say the NYPD's camera plan needs more study and safeguards to preserve privacy and guard against abuses like racial profiling and voyeurism. The department "is installing cameras first and ask- ing questions later," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Police officials insist that law-abiding New Yorkers have nothing to fear because the cameras will be restricted to public areas. The police commissioner recently estab- AP PHOTO lished a panel of four corporate defense lawyers to advise New York City Police Department wireless video recorders are pictured attached to a lamp post on the the department on surveillance policies, corner of Knickerbocker Ave and Starr St. last Thursday in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Lawmakers don' t fill out owntax% returns 0 _ ..., \ 51 NEWS IN BRIEF 3 .ZI 1' LIIL -i (HEADLINES FROM AROIIND THE WORID ISM m-. ' _ _ I 11LL LL1 ! iV ' iV1Y1L"1\V 1 VL 11 1' YYz il\L I--? VATICAN CITY Pope calls for diplomacy in nuclear crises In his first Easter message as pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI yesterday urged nations to use diplomacy to defuse nuclear crises - a clear reference to worries over Iran - and prayed that Palestinians would one day have their own state along- side Israel. On Christianity's most joyous day - which happened to fall on Benedict's own 79th birthday - the pontiff also prayed for Iraq's relentless violence to cease. From the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, Benedict reflected on the globe's troubled regions shortly after he celebrated Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square, which was packed with 100,000 pilgrims and tourists on a breezy, hazy day. "Today, even in this modern age marked by anxiety and uncertainty, we relive the event of the Resurrection, which changed the face of our life and changed the history of humanity," Benedict said in the traditional papal "Urbi et Orbi" message - Latin for "to the city and to the world." BAGHDAD Parliament session canceled as talks stall Efforts to form a unity government suffered a new setback yesterday as Iraqi leaders postponed a parliament session after failing to agree on a prime minister. Bombs targeted Shiites near a mosque and on a bus as attacks nationwide killed at least 35 people. Four more Marines were reported killed in fighting west of Baghdad as the U.S. death toll for this month rose to 47 - compared with 31 for all of March. U.S. officials believe the best way to stem the violence is for the Iraqis to estab- lish a government comprising Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, paving the way for the United States to start withdrawing its 133,000 troops. But progress has stalled over Sunni and Kurdish opposition to the Shiite choice of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to head the new government. With al-Jaafari refusing to step aside, acting speaker Adnan Pachachi called a parliament session for today, hoping the full legislature could agree on a new leadership after the politicians failed. WASHINGTON Army dispute stalls testing of body armor A dispute over testing is stalling the Army's plans to move ahead with buying a new high-tech body armor now off-limits to soldiers. The stalemate is the latest development in a complex disagreement over the quality of the protective gear, known as Dragon Skin, that is made by Pinnacle Armor of Fresno, Calif. The fight over body armor has spread beyond the Pentagon and rever- berated throughout the country as families try to buy the best protection possible for loved ones serving overseas. Murray Neal, Pinnacle's chief executive officer, said Friday he will not send the Army 30 vests to test next month, as planned, unless the Army agrees to his testing requirements. KATMANDU, Nepal Pro-democracy protesters clash with police The Nepalese capital ran low on fresh food and fuel yesterday because of a general strike that shut down the city, and thousands of angry pro-democracy demonstrators clashed with police firing rubber bullets. The emboldened opposition urged Nepalis to stop paying taxes to the government of King Gyanendra, who responded by further banning protests on the capital's outskirts. Sunday's pro-democracy rallies across the Himalayan kingdom attracted tens of thousands of people and were the biggest since opponents of Gyanendra's royal dictatorship began their campaign of protests and a nationwide strike that has cut off Nepal's cities for 11 days. - Compiled from Daily wire reports CORRECTONS An editorial on page 4 of April 5's Daily about wind power in Michigan (Great mills, great times) should not have descibed the city of Ann Arbor as a community that has not acted on its discussions to purchase more renewable energy. The Notable Quotable in Friday's Daily was incorrectly attributed to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) It was actually an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal editorial.. Please report any error in the Daily to corrections@michigandaily.com. 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com 0 6 6 Even members of tax law committees often rely on professionals to file returns with the IRS WASHINGTON (AP) - When it comes to their own tax returns, many members of Congress who specialize in writing tax laws turn to professional preparers rather than completing the paperwork them- selves. "It's onerous and everybody knows it," said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) Three of the four top lawmakers on the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees, which are in charge of writing tax laws, pay a professional to file their annu- al tax returns with the Internal Rev- enue Service. The exception is the Ways and Means chairman, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) The former college pro- fessor said he has prepared his own return "forever" and that he waits until close to the deadline to file. Monday is the filing deadline for most people. "There's no reason for me to pay Uncle Sam - pay, you heard that - until I have to," he said. How about one of the tax writers who could become chairman after Thomas retires at year's end? "Absolutely not," said Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.) "I'm not an accountant. I'm a lawyer." According to IRS statistics, that makes these members of Congress much like the public. More than 60 percent of taxpayers turn to a paid professional to prepare their returns. The number typically increases a little each year. Some lawmakers have more complicated financial lives than the average taxpayer, making their returns more complicated. Some said they had a professional do the job to guarantee the return's accu- racy. David Keating, senior counselor at the National Taxpayers Union, said lawmakers should at least try to complete their own returns. Members of tax-writing commit- tees should have to spend 20 hours working on their tax returns before giving up and handing the job to a professional, he suggested. "If they're going to sit on a tax- writing committee, it certainly makes a lot of sense for them at least to attempt to do their own tax return," Keating said. "And when they scream out 'Torture!' to their tax preparer, at least they'd have a better view." A few do dive in on their own. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said he does them "just so I can go through the process." Then he asks an accountant to check for mistakes. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) usu- ally prepares his own taxes using computer software. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) does his tax return and his children's. Rep. Kevin Brady's wife, a former banker, prepares the tax returns for the Texas Republican's family. Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.) does not do his own returns, but he agreed it might be a good idea to try. "I think it is important that we operate in the real world," he said. These lawmakers have offered ideas to simplify the tax system, but none has gotten close to enactment. Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.) dis- likes the tax system so much that he wants to scrap individual tax filing and the Internal Revenue Service. He would trade the income tax sys- tem for a consumption tax. A less drastic change is advocated by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) He did not prepare his real tax returns, but he was able to prepare a hypotheti- cal tax return in 30 minutes based on his proposed simplified tax sys- tem. "This last fact is truly revolution- ary because no one can remember the last time a member of the tax- writing Senate Finance Committee actually completed their own tax return," he said. q I[v DoNN M. 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