Archive for January, 2013

Indicted Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom launched a new file-sharing website that promises users greater privacy and defies the U.S. prosecutors who accuse him of facilitating massive online piracy.

The colorful entrepreneur unveiled the “Mega” site ahead of a lavish gala and news conference at his New Zealand mansion on Sunday night, the anniversary of his arrest on racketeering charges related to his now-shuttered Megaupload file-sharing site. The site Dotcom started in 2005 was one of the most popular sites on the Web until U.S. prosecutors shut it down and accused him and several company officials of facilitating millions of illegal downloads.

In Dotcom’s typical grandiose style, the launch party featured a tongue-in-cheek re-enactment of the dramatic raid on his home a year earlier, when New Zealand police swooped down in helicopters onto the mansion grounds and nabbed him in a safe room where he was hiding.

“Mega is going to be huge, and nothing will stop Mega — whoo!” a gleeful Dotcom bellowed from a giant stage set up in his yard, seconds before a helicopter roared overhead and faux police agents rappelled down the side of his mansion.

Dotcom eventually ordered everyone to “stop this madness!” before breaking out into a dance alongside miniskirt-clad “guards” as music boomed.

Bravado aside, interest in the site was certainly high. Dotcom said half a million users registered for Mega in its first 14 hours.

U.S. authorities are trying to extradite the German-born Internet tycoon from New Zealand, where he is free on bail. Prosecutors say Dotcom made tens of millions of dollars while filmmakers and songwriters lost around $500 million in copyright revenue.

U.S. prosecutors declined to comment on the new site, referring only to a court document that cites several promises Dotcom made while seeking bail that he would not — and could not — start a Megaupload-style business until the criminal case was resolved.

“I can assure the Court that I have no intention and there is no risk of my reactivating the Megaupload.com website or establishing a similar Internet-based business during the period until the resolution of the extradition proceedings,” Dotcom said in a Feb. 15, 2012, affidavit.

Dotcom argues that he can’t be held responsible for copyright infringement committed by others and insists Megaupload complied with copyrights by removing links to pirated material when asked.

“Our company and assets were taken away from us without a hearing,” Dotcom said. “The privacy of our users was intruded on, communications were taken offline and free speech was attacked. Let me be clear to those who use copyright law as a weapon to drown innovation and stifle competition: You will be left on the side of the road of history.”

Mega, like Megaupload, allows users to store and share large files. It offers 50 gigabytes of free storage, much more than similar sites such as Dropbox and Google Drive, and features a drag-and-drop upload tool.

The key difference is an encryption and decryption feature for data transfers that Dotcom says will protect him from the legal drama that has entangled Megaupload and threatened to put him behind bars.

The decryption keys for uploaded files are held by the users, not Mega, which means the company can’t see what’s in the files being shared. Dotcom argues that Mega — which bills itself as “the privacy company” — therefore can’t be held liable for content it cannot see.

“What he’s trying to do is give himself a second-string argument: ‘Even if I was wrong before, this one’s all right because how can I control something if I don’t know that it’s there?’” said Sydney attorney Charles Alexander, who specializes in intellectual property law. “I can understand the argument; whether it would be successful or not is another matter.”

To Dotcom, the concept is very simple.

“If someone sends something illegal in an envelope through your postal service,” he says, “you don’t shut down the post office.”

The Motion Picture Association of America, which filed complaints about alleged copyright infringement by Megaupload, was not impressed.

“We are still reviewing how this new project will operate, but we do know that Kim Dotcom has built his career and his fortune on stealing creative works,” the MPAA said in a statement. “We’ll reserve final judgment until we have a chance to take a closer look, but given Kim Dotcom’s history of damaging the consumer experience by pushing stolen, illegitimate content into the marketplace, count us as skeptical.”

Still, as much as Dotcom’s new venture might enrage prosecutors and entertainment executives, it shouldn’t have any impact on the Megaupload case.

“All it might do is annoy them enough to say, ‘We’re going to redouble our efforts in prosecuting them’,” said Alexander, the attorney. “But I don’t think it makes any practical difference to the outcome.”

Dotcom denied the new site was designed to provoke authorities, but got in plenty of digs at their expense, saying that their campaign to shutter
Megaupload simply forced him to create a new and improved site.

“Sometimes good things come out of terrible events,” Dotcom said. “For example, if it wasn’t for a giant comet hitting earth, we would still be surrounded by angry dinosaurs — hungry, too. If it wasn’t for that iceberg, we wouldn’t have a great Titanic movie which makes me cry every time I see it. And if it wasn’t for the raid, we wouldn’t have Mega.”

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Gun advocates — some with rifles slung across shoulders or pistols holstered at the hip — have rallied peacefully in state capitals nationwide against President Barack Obama’s sweeping federal gun-control proposals.

Summoned via social media for the “Guns Across America” event, participants gathered Saturday for protests large and small against stricter limits sought on firearms. Only a few dozen turned out in South Dakota and a few hundred in Boise, Idaho. Some 2,000 turned out in New York and large crowds also rallied in Connecticut, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Washington state.

The rallies came on a day in which accidental shootings at gun shows in North Carolina, Indiana and Ohio left five people hurt. The wounded included two bystanders hit by shotgun pellets after a 12-gauge shotgun discharged at a show in Raleigh, N.C., as the owner unzipped its case for a law officer to check at a security entrance, authorities said. A retired deputy there also suffered a slight hand injury.

About 800 people gathered for the “Guns Across America” event in Austin, Texas, as speakers took to the microphone under a giant Texas flag stamped with one word: “Independent.”

“The thing that so angers me, and I think so angers you, is that this president is using children as a human shield to advance a very liberal agenda that will do nothing to protect them,” said state Rep. Steve Toth, referencing last month’s elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn.

Obama recently announced the gun-control proposals in the wake of a Connecticut elementary school shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six educators last month.

Toth, a first-term Republican lawmaker from The Woodlands outside Houston, has introduced legislation to ban within Texas any future federal limits on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, though such a measure would violate the U.S. Constitution.

In Arizona, Oregon and Utah, some came with holstered handguns or rifles on their backs.

One man in Phoenix dressed as a Revolutionary War Minuteman, completing his outfit with an antique long rifle and a sign reading: “Tyrants Beware – 1776.”

“We’re out here because this country has some very wise founding fathers and they knew they were being oppressed when they were a British colony,” said another man at the Phoenix rally, Eric Cashman. “Had they not had their firearms … to stand up against the British, we’d still be a British colony.”

Rallies at statehouses nationwide were organized by Eric Reed, an airline captain from the Houston area who in November started a group called “More Gun Control (equals) More Crime.” Its Facebook page has been “liked” by more than 17,000 people.

At the New York state Capitol in Albany, about 2,000 people turned out for a chilly rally, where they chanted “We the People,” ”USA,” and “Freedom.” Many carried American flags and “Don’t Tread On Me” banners. The event took place four days after Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the nation’s toughest assault weapon and magazine restrictions.

In Connecticut, where task forces created by the Legislature and Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy are considering changes to gun laws, police said about 1,000 people showed up on the Capitol grounds. One demonstrator at the rally in Maine, Joe Getchell of Pittsfield, said every law-abiding citizen has a right to bear arms.

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The Transportation Security Administration confirms that it is getting rid of airport body scanners that produce a naked image of travelers.

Right now the TSA uses two types of scanners. One makes a generic image showing where agents should look for an object on the traveler’s body. Those scanners are staying.

The other kind of scanner uses X-rays. They raised privacy concerns because they show metal objects on the traveler’s body _ along with every other detail, too. Congress has mandated that those scanners be changed or removed by June.

TSA says the X-ray scanners will be gone by June. It says the company that makes them, Rapiscan, was not able to come up with a software fix to make the scanners comply with the Congressional mandate.

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A South Side alderman is asking for City Council hearings on an unorthodox gun control measure that would allow for GPS tracking of firearms.

WBBM Newsradio Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports Ald. Willie Cochran (20th), a former police officer, has suggested that global positioning system chips be embedded in new guns, and retrofitted on existing firearms, so they could be located if they go missing.

“Just like if your car gets stolen, OnStar can tell you where your car is. If your gun gets stolen, and you report it, we should be able to find that gun,” he said.

Cochran has introduced a resolution asking the Committee on Public Safety to hold hearings to receive testimony on the matter. A Massachusetts state senator from Boston has been pushing a similar measure in that state.

Cochran acknowledged it might be expensive to install GPS chips on current and future firearms, but not as expensive as the cost of gun violence to society.

“Let’s measure what it costs in hospital costs, lost wages, deaths,” he said.

As for the privacy of gun owners who could be tracked with the GPS chips in their guns, Cochran said, “safety is … a much more important issue than is privacy.”

“It is extremely important that we look past this privacy issue, at this point, and understand how important it is for us to address the issue of safety,” he added.

The mayor wasn’t commenting on Cochran’s proposal.

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The Colorado movie theater where a shocking gun rampage in July killed 12 people and wounded 58 others reopened Thursday despite criticism from the families of some of the victims.

A night of remembrance was held at the Aurora Century 16 cinema complex in the theater next to the one where James Holmes, a 25-year-old former doctoral student in neuroscience, is alleged to have carried out the terrifying shooting spree.

In an effort to offer support, elected officials and community members joined victims and their relatives at the ceremony, which was followed by a screening of “The Hobbit.” They also acknowledged that the decision to reopen the movie theater remained controversial.

Earlier this month, the relatives of nine people killed in the attack said the invitation to the remembrance event was “disgusting” and “wholly offensive to the memory of our loved ones.”

They criticized the timing of the invitation, two days after Christmas, and called it a publicity ploy by Cinemark USA, which runs the movie theater.

“Our family members will never be on this Earth with us again and a movie ticket and some token words from people who didn’t care enough to reach out to us, nor respond when we reached out to them to talk, is appalling,” the family members wrote in a letter to the theater chain’s management that they shared with CNN.

Local officials, though, described the re-opening Thursday as a positive step for the community.

Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan said it was “part of the recovery process,” and that he had attended the event because he could not “allow the shooter in any way, shape, or form to win.”

“We heard overwhelming support from the people of Aurora to reopen it and restore its place as a valued part of our community,” Hogan said. “Many still suffer or grieve, and we will continue to support all of them in whatever way we can for as long as they need it.”

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper echoed Hogan’s sentiments.

“Everyone heals, some slower, some in different ways, some wanted this theater to reopen, some didn’t,” Hickenlooper said. “For many here tonight, this is the path to healing and part of that process. For everyone here, I think I speak for the entire state that we remain here for you, for the entire community of Aurora. Colorado is with you.”

Some of the victims of the shooting who attended the event said they drew strength from it.

“I feel like I’m a different person for coming, and that brings about some healing,” said Marcus Weaver, who was shot in the arm in the attack. “And just like with my arm, it’s going to take some time to heal.”

Tim Warner, the chief executive officer of Cinemark, which is facing lawsuits from several victims’ families and survivors, praised the city for its resilience and thanked the first responders who assisted the victims.

“Recovery is an ongoing process, and we are glad to be with you tonight to acknowledge how far we have to come and how far we have yet to go,” he said.

Cinemark has switched the way it identifies the different theaters at the Aurora Century 16 from numbers to letters. Theater 9, where the shooting happened, is now officially known as Theater I.

The remembrance ceremony, which started and finished with a prayer, took place as courts deal with the consequences of the attack.

Holmes is awaiting formal arraignment for 166 charges — including murder, attempted murder and weapons offenses — related to the July 20 rampage, which took place during a screening of “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.”

And 14 people have recently filed legal documents indicating they are planning to sue Dr. Lynne Fenton, the psychiatrist who treated Holmes, and the University of Colorado Denver, where she worked, for negligence.

Jacque Montgomery, a university spokeswoman, said university officials are aware of the pending lawsuits.

“We understand that there is pain and frustration amongst the families of the deceased and victims of this terrible crime, and we have great sympathy for them,” Montgomery said in a statement. “We do believe, as well, that the facts will speak for themselves as the legal process moves forward.”

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Facebook unveils social search tools for users

Facebook has announced a major addition to its social network – a smart search engine it has called graph search.

The feature allows users to make “natural” searches of content shared by their friends.

Search terms could include phrases such as “friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter”.

Founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg insisted it was not a web search, and therefore not a direct challenge to Google.

However, it was integrating Microsoft’s Bing search engine for situations when graph search itself could not find answers.

Mr Zuckerberg said he “did not expect” people to start flocking to Facebook to do web search.

“That isn’t the intent,” he said. “But in the event you can’t find what you’re looking for, it’s really nice to have this.”

Finding folks

Earlier speculation had suggested that the world’s biggest social network was about to make a long-anticipated foray into Google’s search territory.

“We’re not indexing the web,” explained Mr Zuckerberg at an event at Facebook’s headquarters in California.

“We’re indexing our map of the graph – the graph is really big and its constantly changing.”

In Facebook’s terms, the social graph is the name given to the collective pool of information shared between friends that are connected via the site.

It includes things such as photos, status updates, location data as well as the things they have “liked”.

Until now, Facebook’s search had been highly criticised for being limited and ineffective.

The company’s revamped search was demonstrated to be significantly more powerful. In one demo, Facebook developer Tom Stocky showed a search for queries such as “friends of friends who are single in San Francisco”.

The same technology could be used for recruitment, he suggested, using graph search to find people who fit criteria for certain jobs – as well as mutual connections.

Such queries are a key function of LinkedIn, the current dominant network for establishing professional connections.

“We look at Facebook as a big social database,” said Mr Zuckerberg, adding that social search was Facebook’s “third pillar” and stood beside the news feed and timeline as the foundational elements of the social network.

Perhaps mindful of privacy concerns highlighted by recent misfires on policies for its other services such as Instagram, Facebook stressed that it had put limits on the search system.

“On graph search, you can only see content that people have shared with you,” developer Lars Rasmussen, who was previously the co-founder of Google Maps, told reporters.

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New York Has Gun Deal, With Focus on Mental Ills

Gov.Andrew M. Cuomo and lawmakers agreed on Monday to a broad package of changes to gun laws that would expand the state’s ban on assault weapons and would include new measures to keep guns away from people with mental illnesses.

The state Senate, controlled by a coalition of Republicans and a handful of Democrats, approved the legislative package just after 11 p.m. by a lopsided vote of 43 to 18. The Assembly, where Democrats who have been strongly supportive of gun control have an overwhelming majority, planned to vote on the measure Tuesday.

Approval of the legislation would make New York the first state to act in response to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., last month.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, had pressed lawmakers to move quickly in response to Newtown, saying, “the people of this state are crying out for help.” And the Legislature proceeded with unusual haste: Monday was the first full day of this year’s legislative session.

“We don’t need another tragedy to point out the problems in the system,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference.

“Enough people have lost their lives,” he added. “Let’s act.”

The expanded ban on assault weapons would broaden the definition of such weapons, banning semiautomatic pistols and rifles with detachable magazines and one military-style feature, as well as semiautomatic shotguns with one military-style feature. New Yorkers who already own such guns could keep them but would be required to register them with the state.

“The message out there is so clear after Newtown,” said the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat from Manhattan. “To basically eradicate assault weapons from our streets in New York as quickly as possible is something the people of this state want.”

In an acknowledgment that many people have suggested that part of the solution to gun violence is a better government response to mental illness, the legislation includes not only new restrictions on gun ownership, but also efforts to limit access to guns by the mentally ill.

The most significant new proposal would require mental health professionals to report to local mental health officials when they believe that patients are likely to harm themselves or others. Law enforcement would then be authorized to confiscate any firearm owned by a dangerous patient; therapists would not be sanctioned for a failure to report such patients if they acted “in good faith.”

“People who have mental health issues should not have guns,” Mr. Cuomo told reporters. “They could hurt themselves, they could hurt other people.”

But such a requirement “represents a major change in the presumption of confidentiality that has been inherent in mental health treatment,” said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, the director of the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, who said the Legislature should hold hearings on possible consequences of the proposal.

“The prospect of being reported to the local authorities, even if they do not have weapons, may be enough to discourage patients with suicidal or homicidal thoughts from seeking treatment or from being honest about their impulses,” he said.

The legislation would extend and expand Kendra’s Law, which empowers judges to order mentally ill patients to receive outpatient treatment.

And it would require gun owners to keep weapons inaccessible in homes where a resident has been involuntarily committed, convicted of a crime or is the subject of an order of protection.

The legislative package, which Mr. Cuomo said he believed would be “the most comprehensive package in the nation,” would ban any gun magazine that can hold over 7 rounds of ammunition — the current limit is 10 rounds. It would also require background checks of ammunition buyers and automated alerts to law enforcement of high-volume purchases.

The legislation would increase penalties for multiple crimes committed with guns, would require background checks for most private gun sales, and create a statewide gun-registration database.

Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, the leader of an independent faction of Democrats who have allied with the Republicans to control the Senate, said the measure met the goals of many lawmakers.

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Newtown residents are divided on what to do with the school building where 26 people were killed, with some favoring demolition and construction of a memorial and others encouraging renovations.

Many passionately gave their opinions at an emotional public meeting Sunday about the fate of Sandy Hook Elementary.

“I have two children who had everything taken from them,” said Audrey Bart, whose children attend the school but weren’t injured in the shooting. “The Sandy Hook Elementary School is their school. It is not the world’s school. It is not Newtown’s school. We cannot pretend it never happened, but I am not prepared to ask my children to run and hide. You can’t take away their school.”

But fellow Sandy Hook parent Stephanie Carson said she can’t imagine ever sending her son back to the building.

“I know there are children who were there who want to go back,” Carson said. “But the reality is, I’ve been to the new school where the kids are now, and we have to be so careful just walking through the halls. They are still so scared.”

The meeting at Newtown High School drew about 200 people. A second meeting is set for Friday. Town officials also are planning private meetings with the victims’ families to get their input.

Police say Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 first-graders and six adults in the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook. They say he killed his mother at the home they shared in Newtown before opening fire with a semiautomatic rifle at the school and killing himself as police arrived.

Although opinions were mixed at the Sunday meeting, most agreed that the Sandy Hook children and teachers should stay together. They’ve been moved to a school building about seven miles away in a neighboring town that has been renamed Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Mergim Bajraliu, a senior at Newtown High School, attended Sandy Hook, and his sister is a fourth-grader there. He said the school should stay as it is, and a memorial for the victims should be built there.

“We have our best childhood memories at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and I don’t believe that one psychopath – who I refuse to name – should get away with taking away any more than he did on Dec 14,” he said.

Last week, residents around town expressed similar opinions about the school’s future.

“I’m very torn,” said Laurie Badick, of Newtown, whose children attended the school several years ago. “Sandy Hook school meant the world to us before this happened. … I have my memories in my brain and in my heart, so the actual building, I think the victims need to decide what to do with that.”

Susan Gibney, who lives in Sandy Hook, said she purposely doesn’t drive by the school because it’s too disturbing. She has three children in high school, but they didn’t attend Sandy Hook Elementary School. She believes the building should be torn down.

“I wouldn’t want to have to send my kids back to that school,” said Gibney, 50. “I just don’t see how the kids could get over what happened there.”

Fran Bresson, a retired police officer who attended Sandy Hook Elementary School in the 1950s, wants the school to reopen, but he thinks the hallways and classrooms where staff and students were killed should be demolished.

“To tear it down completely would be like saying to evil, `You’ve won,’” the 63-year-old Southbury resident said.

Residents of towns where mass shootings occurred have grappled with the same dilemma. Some have renovated, some have demolished.

Columbine High School, where two student gunmen killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher, reopened several months afterward. Crews removed the library, where most of the victims died, and replaced it with an atrium.

On an island in Norway where 69 people – more than half of them teenagers attending summer camp – were killed by a gunman in 2011, extensive remodeling is planned. The main building, a cafeteria where 13 of the victims died, will be torn down.

Virginia Tech converted a classroom building where a student gunman killed 30 people in 2007 into a peace studies and violence prevention center.

An Amish community in Pennsylvania tore down the West Nickel Mines Amish School and built a new school a few hundred yards away after a gunman killed five girls there in 2006.

Newtown First Selectwoman E. Patricia Llodra said that in addition to the community meetings, the town is planning private gatherings with the victims’ families to talk about the school’s future. She said the aim is to finalize a plan by March.

“I think we have to start that conversation now,” Llodra said. “It will take many, many months to do any kind of school project. We have very big decisions ahead of us. The goal is to bring our students home as soon as we can.”

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President Obama plans to push Congress to move quickly in the coming months on an ambitious overhaul of the immigration system that would include a path to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, senior administration officials and lawmakers said last week.

Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats will propose the changes in one comprehensive bill, the officials said, resisting efforts by some Republicans to break the overhaul into smaller pieces — separately addressing young illegal immigrants, migrant farmworkers or highly skilled foreigners — which might be easier for reluctant members of their party to accept.

The president and Democrats will also oppose measures that do not allow immigrants who gain legal status to become American citizens one day, the officials said.

Even while Mr. Obama has been focused on fiscal negotiations and gun control, overhauling immigration remains a priority for him this year, White House officials said. Top officials there have been quietly working on a broad proposal. Mr. Obama and lawmakers from both parties believe that the early months of his second term offer the best prospects for passing substantial legislation on the issue.

Mr. Obama is expected to lay out his plan in the coming weeks, perhaps in his State of the Union address early next month, administration officials said. The White House will argue that its solution for illegal immigrants is not an amnesty, as many critics insist, because it would include fines, the payment of back taxes and other hurdles for illegal immigrants who would obtain legal status, the officials said.

The president’s plan would also impose nationwide verification of legal status for all newly hired workers; add visas to relieve backlogs and allow highly skilled immigrants to stay; and create some form of guest-worker program to bring in low-wage immigrants in the future.

A bipartisan group of senators has also been meeting to write a comprehensive bill, with the goal of introducing legislation as early as March and holding a vote in the Senate before August. As a sign of the keen interest in starting action on immigration, White House officials and Democratic leaders in the Senate have been negotiating over which of them will first introduce a bill, Senate aides said.

“This is so important now to both parties that neither the fiscal cliff nor guns will get in the way,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democrat who is a leader of the bipartisan discussions.

A similar attempt at bipartisan legislation early in Mr. Obama’s first term collapsed amid political divisions fueled by surging public wrath over illegal immigration in many states. But both supporters and opponents say conditions are significantly different now.

Memories of the results of the November election are still fresh here. Latinos, the nation’s fastest-growing electorate, turned out in record numbers and cast 71 percent of their ballots for Mr. Obama. Many Latinos said they were put off by Republicans’ harsh language and policies against illegal immigrants.

After the election, a host of Republicans, starting with Speaker John A. Boehner, said it was time for the party to find a more positive, practical approach to immigration. Many party leaders say electoral demographics are compelling them to move beyond policies based only on tough enforcement.

Supporters of comprehensive changes say that the elections were nothing less than a mandate in their favor, and that they are still optimistic that Mr. Obama is prepared to lead the fight.

“Republicans must demonstrate a reasoned approach to start to rebuild their relationship with Latino voters,” said Clarissa Martinez de Castro, the director of immigration policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino organization. “Democrats must demonstrate they can deliver on a promise.”

Since the election, Mr. Obama has repeatedly pledged to act on immigration this year. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, he again referred to the urgency of fixing the immigration system, saying it was one of the “difficult missions” the country must take on.

Parallel to the White House effort, Mr. Schumer and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, have been meeting with a group of at least four other colleagues to write a bill. Republicans who have participated include John McCain of Arizona, who has supported comprehensive legislation in the past; Jeff Flake, also of Arizona, who is newly elected to the Senate; and Mike Lee of Utah. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida participated in one meeting last month.

Democrats in the meetings include Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat; Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado.

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Recapping CES 2013: Tiny wearable tech hits big

When you think of CES, chances are it’s images of massive HDTVs that first come to mind. This year, however, technology on a tiny scale made a big impact. This new product category we call wearable tech consists of gadgets small enough to be clipped, pinned, or looped around your body and worn constantly.

The smartwatch

If you thought that the smartwatch died with the demise of Microsoft’s SPOT devices over a decade ago, you’re in for a rude awakening. With the recent rise of the smartphone, the need for the wealth of information these devices provide access to at a glance has never been greater.

Of course some would argue that linking your watch to your cell phone just because you can is a waste of time, or at least a luxury bound to add unnecessary complication to your life. I say different. If an intelligent timepiece isn’t noticeably large or indeed even has an attractive, stylish design, that’s a gadget I want to take a look at.

A great example of a watch like this is the Pebble. Shown for the first time at CES 2013, the Pebble was born out of a Kickstarter project. Sleek, thin, and colorful, the $150 Pebble syncs with both Android and iOS handsets to showcase e-mail and social-networking updates. Its e-ink style LCD displays caller ID too, supports multiple watch faces, and is readable in direct sunlight.

Further evidence of the Pebble’s smarts is that you can configure custom alerts pushed from the cloud or commanded through a Bluetooth-connected smartphone. I also like how the Pebble boasts lots of slick gear such as an accelerometer and ambient light sensor, which hopefully developers will take advantage of by creating killer apps.

Now, sometimes you need a device that satisfies your inner secret agent, and that’s where the Martian Passport comes in. At $299, this gizmo certainly isn’t cheap. Still, the Passport can do things James Bond would be impressed by. A regular watch, though with premium 1960s aesthetics, the Passport links to phones via Bluetooth. A small OLED screen displays caller ID, other alerts, and settings. Use the watch to conduct calls by speaking through its microphone and listening to its speaker. You can also issue voice commands to the watch that iPhone’s Siri and Android Google can understand. Now that’s what I call neato spy tech.

Fitness tech

I observed another trend at CES, the increasing number of personal fitness gadgets. Products like this aren’t exactly new but this year the category seemed to really gather steam. For example Fitbit announced a new tracker, called the Fitbit Flex, which is squarely aimed at the Nike FuelBand and Jawbone Up. A wristband-style gadget, the Flex connects to iPhones and Android handsets to share stats such as the number of steps you take and the quality and duration of your sleep. In the same vein, startup company Basis Science finally disclosed plans to bring its Basis Band health tracker to market. A digital watch and oh so much more, the Basis Band relies on IR, motion, and sweat sensors to paint a complete picture of your healthy (or unhealthy) activities.

Outlook

While not many exciting new smartphones debuted at this year’s CES, a groundswell of mobile accessories has emerged, all taking advantage of the growing computing and networking power of today’s cellular handsets. Some of these products, from the new Fitbit Flex to the Basis Band, promise to harness the cloud to present and analyze data. Others, like the Pebble and Martian Passport, are just plain whizbang cool. I can’t wait for these devices to hit the market.

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