As a Channel 11 news crew looks on, Copwatch member Diane Bossom informs residents of their Miranda rights.
photo courtesy of Houston Copwatch

Police organizations have internal affairs divisions that deal with illegal police activity. For Houston resident Ernesto Aguilar, that is not good enough. Since September, Aguilar, 33, and other volunteers from Houston Copwatch have been monitoring police activity in and around the greater Houston area.

Houston Copwatch is the newest chapter of Copwatch, a nonviolent, national grassroots citizen's organization against police brutality. The organization's objective is to observe the activities of police on the streets with video cameras, notebooks, tape recorders and still cameras to prevent abuse of power and misconduct.

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Big brother watches electronic transactions
by Sandra Tragesser
UHCLIDIAN STAFF

President Bush signed the Homeland Security Act Nov. 25. Hidden within the legislation is language that allows the government to collect public and private electronic transactions of all Americans into a centralized database.

The goal of the Total Information Awareness program, run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is to design an integrated computer system that would monitor financial transactions, medical records, credit card purchases and other personal information to thwart would-be terrorists.

"Total Information Awareness is an experimental prototype that will attempt to search vast quantities of data to determine links and patterns indicative of terrorist activities," said Edward Aldridge, under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. "If TIA proves useful, it will then be turned over to the intelligence, counterintelligence and law enforcement communities as a tool to help them in their battle against domestic terrorism."

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