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Hi Arka: SantaCon is an annual pub crawl in which people dressed in Santa Claus costumes or as other Christmas characters parade in several cities around the world.A December 2014 cover story in the Village Voice recounted how SantaCon had evolved from "joyful performance art" that originated in San Francisco to a "reviled bar crawl" of drunken brawling, vandalism, public urination and disorder in New York City and elsewhere, resulting in fierce community resistance and disavowals from the originators of the event.Origins[edit]In San Francisco, 2014SantaCon began in San Francisco in 1994, inspired by a Mother Jones article on the Danish activist theatre group Solvognen. In 1974, Solvognen gathered dozens of "Santas" in Copenhagen to hand out items from the shelves of a department store to customers as “presents” before they were arrested.Staged as street theater by a local prankster group, the Cacophony Society — which had grown out of the earlier Suicide Club — the aim was to make fun of Christmas and the rampant consumerism associated with the holiday. Originally called Santarchy and influenced by the Surrealist movement, Discordianism, and other subversive art currents, it was not intended to be a recurrent event. SantaCon came to Portland in 1996 to Seattle in 1997, and to Los Angeles and New York in 1998, when a "young San Franciscan strapped on a fake white beard, donned a $12 red suit, and led 200 Santas as they went caroling up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan," to the delight of passersby. It has since evolved and spread to 44 countries around the world, with varying versions and interpretations. Events for 2013 were scheduled in 300 cities, including New York City, London, Vancouver, Belfast, and Moscow. The New York SantaCon is the largest, with an estimated 30,000 people participating in 2012. Other events were much smaller and more subdued, with 30 participating in Spokane, Washington. The event has also been variously known as Santarchy, Santa Rampage, the Red Menace, and Santapalooza. SantaCon venues New York City in New York City, 2011.In New York City, by far the largest SantaCon venue, the event has been criticized for widespread drunkenness and sporadic violence. At a 2011 community board meeting in lower Manhattan, residents complained that their neighborhood had been "terrorized" by SantaCon participants. In an article on the 2011 SantaCon, Gothamist called SantaCon an "annual drunken shitshow" that "has steadily devolved from cleverly subversive to barely tolerable to 'time to lock yourself in your apartment for the day.' " The New York Daily News reported in 2017 that the event "endures an annual backlash from New Yorkers repulsed by the sight of Santas vomiting or urinating in the street in years past." During the New York City SantaCon in 2012, participants "left a trail of trouble" through Hell's Kitchen, midtown Manhattan, the East Village, and Williamsburg. Residents complained revelers vomited and urinated in the street and fought with each other. One source of tension with residents was that most of the revelers come to the event from outside the city.[17][18]Official organizers in 2013 described it as “a nonsensical Santa Claus convention that happens once a year for absolutely no reason”,[19]saying on their website that $60,000 was raised that year for New York charities, and that participants donated about 6,850 pounds of canned food to City Harvest.[3][15]That year, The New York Times described the event as "a daylong bar crawl that begins with good cheer and, for many, inevitably ends in a blurry, booze-soaked haze."[6]Drunken behavior in 2013 disrupted parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn,[18][20][21][22][23]and led to calls for the event to be ended and for participant misbehavior to be curbed. The event is monitored and supported by the New York City Police Department.[6][9][14][24][25]But community opposition has increased, as SantaCon evolved into what The Village Voice described as "a day-long spectacle of public inebriation somewhere between a low-rent Mardi Gras and a drunken fraternity party."[3]Revelers in New York City in 2008An op-ed in The New York Times on the eve of the 2013 SantaCon criticized it for "sexism, drunkenness, xenophobia, homophobia and enough incidents of public vomiting and urination to fill an infinite dunk tank," and said it "contributes absolutely zero value – cultural, artistic, aesthetic, diversionary, culinary or political – to its host neighborhood. Quite simply, SantaCon is a parasite."[9]Business Insider called the 2013 event a "dreaded annual event where frat house expats" wreak havoc on the city "dressed as the jolly holiday icon."[26]A NYPD lieutenant in Hell's Kitchen sent an open letter to local taverns in 2013 which said, “Having thousands of intoxicated partygoers roam the streets urinating, littering, vomiting and vandalizing will not be tolerated in our neighborhood.” On the Lower East Side of Manhattan, residents posted notices telling SantaCon participants to stay away, saying “Alcohol Soaked Father Christmas-themed flash mob not welcome here. Take your body fluids and public intoxication elsewhere.”[6][19]The Los Angeles Times reported that "some see [SantaCon] as a way for people who live in the suburbs to come to the city and ruin the weekend."[18]Prior to the 2013 SantaCon, city authorities demanded advance notice of the route of the pub crawl.[27]The event was diverted from the Lower East Side and Midtown Manhattan because of complaints by residents, but went through East Village and parts of Brooklyn as originally planned.[28][29]During the 2013 SantaCon in New York City, the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad and New Jersey Transit banned alcohol consumption on their trains for 24 hours.[6]The 2013 SantaCon was more subdued than previous ones not only due to the alcohol ban on trains, but also an increased police presence, poor weather, and advance coordination with authorities.[30]Merchant sign, New York's East Village, November 2015A SantaCon organizer said that the group was "very aware of the backlash" and has sought to curb participant misconduct by the use of "helper elves" along the SantaCon route.[6]There were no arrests at the 2013 SantaCon in New York City, and far fewer summonses issued. A beefed-up police presence and poor weather were credited with the decrease. Complaints of crowds and public drunkenness continued,[30]and "the Santas would more or less take over all of the East Village — visiting bars that had no affiliation with SantaCon whatsoever, angering patrons of those establishments who had no interest in being caught up in the debauchery."[3]In 2014, community leaders in Bushwick, Brooklyn, banded together to block SantaCon when organizers announced their intent to move the event to that neighborhood. Rafael Espinal, Jr., the city councilman representing Bushwick, urged bars to refrain from participating in the event.[31]A "boycott SantaCon" website was launched by other opponents, and bars said that they would refuse entry to SantaCon participants.[3][32]The New York City Parks Department refused to issue a permit for use of a local park, leading organizers to cancel plans to have SantaCon in Bushwick.[33]After the withdrawal from Bushwick, and opposition from the community board representing the Lower East Side[34]and Hell's Kitchen,[33]the 2014 event was rescheduled for December 13 for 32 bars in Midtown Manhattan.[35]Event organizers hired Norman Siegel, a civil rights attorney, to defend their rights to express themselves "within the parameters of the First Amendment."[34]The 2014 SantaCon coincided with demonstrations in Manhattan against police brutality sparked by the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases.[36]Police arrested 5 participants and handed out 100 summonses during the 2015 SantaCon, which took place on December 12. The summonses were for offenses that included carrying an open container, disorderly conduct, and public urination. One participant was arrested for assault, one for possession of a weapon, and three with drug possession.[37]2016In anticipation of the 2016 SantaCon, scheduled for December 10, Metro-North Railroad banned alcohol on trains and stations.[38]The event was scheduled to take place in Midtown Manhattan, the East Village, and the Flatiron District.[39]A hundred summonses were handed out by police but there were no arrests. The New York Daily News reported that the pub crawl left "a trail of vomit and destruction throughout the East Village" and that one bar was robbed and vandalized by SantaCon participants.[40]The 2017 New York City SantaCon took place on December 9.[5]A stepped-up police presence and 24-hour liquor ban on Long Island Rail Road trains curbed disorder. Police reported one arrest.

http://english.gov.cn/archive/publications/2016/04/14/content_281475327578479.htmThe State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China published a report titled “Human Rights Record of the United States in 2015” on April 14.Following is the full text of the report:Human Rights Record of the United States in 2015State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of ChinaApril 2016ForewordOn April 13 local time, the State Department of the United States released its country reports on human rights practices. It made comments on the human rights situation in many countries once again while being tight-lipped about its own terrible human rights record and showing not a bit of intention to reflect on it. In 2015, the United States saw no improvement in its existent human rights issues, but reported numerous new problems. Since the U.S. government refuses to hold up a mirror to look at itself, it has to be done with other people’s help.The following facts about the U.S. human rights situation in 2015 are supported by irrefutable records.-- The use of guns was out of control in the United States, which severely threatened citizens’ right of life. The frequent occurrence of shooting incidents was the deepest impression left to the world concerning the United States in 2015. There were a total of 51,675 gun violence incidents in the United States in 2015 as of December 28, leaving 13,136 killed and 26,493 injured.-- Citizens’ personal security could not be guaranteed with the excessive use of violence by police. Police shot dead 965 people last year as of December 24, and the abuse of power by the police did not result in discipline. “Justice for Freddie” protests were staged in Baltimore, demonstrators in Chicago took to the street to demand justice in the death of Laquan MacDonald, and protesters in Minneapolis camped outside a police precinct after Jamar Clark was shot dead by police.-- The prison system in the United States was plagued by corruption and severely violated inmates’ human rights. The guards in a prison in Florida scalded a mentally-ill inmate Darren Rainey to death in hot shower. The guards in Lowell Correctional Institution, the nation’s largest women’s prison, pressured hundreds of female inmates to barter sex for basic necessities and a shield from abuse, and 57 inmates have died in this prison over the past 10 years.-- Money politics and clan politics were prevailing and the political rights of the citizens were not safeguarded effectively. Companies and individuals were able to donate an unlimited size to super Political Action Committees (super PACs) to influence the presidential election. In this way, corporations could use money to sway politics and reap tremendous returns. There were comments that the political system of the United States had been subverted to be a tool that provided returns to major political donors. Family pedigree had become a primary factor for U.S. politics, with a few families and behind-the-scenes interest groups influencing the election using funds. The popular will was abducted by factionalism in the United States, because the interests involved in election made it unable for the Democratic Party and the Republican Party to coordinate on and work out policies that were in line with the popular will.-- The lingering problems in U.S. society posed challenges for the country to fulfill its duty of safeguarding the economic and social rights of U.S. citizens. In 2014, there were 46.7 million people in poverty in the United States. Every year, at least 48.1 million people were classed as “food insecure.” In 2015, more than 560,000 people nationwide were homeless. Seventy-nine percent of Americans believed it was more common for people to fall out of the middle class than rise up to it. There were still 33 million people in the United States with no healthcare insurance, and 44 million private-sector workers, about 40 percent of the total, did not have access to paid sick leaves.-- Racial conflict was severe in the United States, with race relations at their worst in nearly two decades. Sixty-one percent of Americans characterized race relations in the United States as “bad.” Law enforcement and justice fields were heavily affected by racial discrimination, with 88 percent of African-Americans believing they were treated unfairly by police, and 68 percent of African-Americans believing the American criminal justice system was racially biased. Whites had 12 times the wealth of blacks and nearly 10 times more than Hispanics. It was said that the American dream remained out of reach for many African-American and Hispanic families.-- The situation for American women was deteriorating and children were living in worrisome environment. In 2014, women in the United States were paid 79 cents for every dollar paid to men. The percentage of women in poverty increased from 12.1 percent to 14.5 percent over the past decade. The United Nations’ International Labor Organization said that the United States was the only industrialized nation with no overall law for cash benefits provided to women during maternity leave. A total of 23 percent of undergraduate women said they were victims of non-consensual sexual contact. There were at least two school shootings a month in 2015 and almost two children were killed every week in unintentional shootings. About a quarter of the teenagers above 15 years old who died of injuries in the United States were killed in gun-related incidents. About 17.4 million children under the age of 18 were being raised without a father and 45 percent lived below the poverty line. About one fifth of all U.S. children lived in food-insecure households.-- The United States still brazenly and brutally violated human rights in other countries, treating citizens from other countries like dirt. Air strikes launched by the United States in Iraq and Syria killed thousands of civilians. The United States also conducted drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen indiscriminately, causing hundreds of civilian deaths. On October 3, 2015, the U.S. military bombed a hospital operated by “Doctors Without Borders” in the city of Kunduz in Afghanistan, in which 42 people were killed. Defying international condemnation, the United States still did not close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, which had been running for 14 years and still locked up nearly 100 people who had been under arbitrary detention for years without trial.I. Wanton Infringement on Civil RightsCivil rights were wantonly infringed upon in the United States in 2015 with rampant gun-related crimes, excessive use of force by police, severe corruption in prisons and frequent occurrence of illegal eavesdropping on personal information.Citizen’s life and property security were threatened by violent crimes. According to the report “Crime in the United States” released by the FBI in 2015, an estimated 1,165,383 violent crimes occurred nationwide in 2014, of which 14,249 were murders, 84,041 were rapes, 325,802 robberies and 741,291 aggravated assaults. Nationwide, there were an estimated 8,277,829 property crimes, with the victims of such crimes suffering losses calculated at an estimated 14.3 billion U.S. dollars. The statistics showed the estimated rate of violent crime was 365.5 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants, and the property crime rate was 2,596.1 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants (Welcome to FBI.gov). Many cities in the United States saw large jumps in crime during the first half of 2015: the murder rate rose 48 percent and 59 percent compared to the same period of the previous year in Baltimore and St. Louis, respectively, said an article carried by the Economist website on December 1, 2015 (www.economist.com, December 1, 2015). James Howell of the U.S. National Gang Center pointed out that in the past five years the United States had seen an 8 percent increase in the number of gangs, an 11 percent increase in members and a 23 percent increase in gang-related homicides (http://www.usnews.com, March 6, 2015).Citizen’s right of life could not be guaranteed with the rampant use of guns. Statistics showed that there were more than 300 million guns in the United States which had a population of more than 300 million. Over the past decade, more than 4 million U.S. citizens became victims of assaults, robberies and other gun-related crimes. According to a toll report by the Gun Violence Archive, there were a total of 51,675 gun violence incidents in the United States last year as of December 28, including 329 mass shootings. Altogether 13,136 were killed and 26,493 injured (Gun Violence Archive, December 28, 2015). According to the report “Crime in the United States” released by the FBI in 2015, firearms were used in 67.9 percent of the nation’s murders, 40.3 percent of robberies, and 22.5 percent of aggravated assaults in 2014 (Welcome to FBI.gov).Excessive use of violence by police gravely violated human rights. Excessive use of violence by police during law enforcement had resulted in a large number of civilian casualties. Police shot dead 965 people last year as of December 24, according to data posted on The Washington Post website (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, December 24, 2015). Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man, died while in police custody in Baltimore. His death, reportedly a result of violence by the police, sparked “Justice for Freddie” protests (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, December 22, 2015). Outraged that it took too long to charge a Chicago police officer in African-American Laquan MacDonald’s shooting death, demonstrators took to the street to demand justice in his death. The police officer had a history of 20 complaints before he gunned down the 17-year-old, but none resulted in discipline (CNN - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News, November 26, 2015). According to a report by the NBC News on November 19, 2015, protesters camped outside a police precinct in Minneapolis after African-American Jamar Clark, 24, was shot dead when he was already under police control. The demonstrations turned violent later (NBC TV Network - Shows, Episodes, Schedule, November 19, 2015).The government infringed on citizens’ privacy by illegally eavesdropping personal information. According to a report carried by the website of The Washington Post on December 1, 2015, the FBI used special authority to compel Internet firms to hand over user information, including full browsing histories, without court approvals (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, December 1, 2015). According to a report released by the Pew Research Center on May 29, 2015, a majority of Americans opposed the government collecting bulk data on its citizens, two-thirds believed there weren’t adequate limits on what types of data could be collected, 61 percent said they had become less confident that the programs were serving the public interests, 54 percent of Americans disapproved of the U.S. government’s collection of telephone and Internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts, and 74 percent said they should not give up privacy and freedom for the sake of safety. Most said it was important to control who could get their information (93 percent), as well as what information about them was collected (90 percent) (Nonpartisan, non-advocacy public opinion polling and demographic research, May 29, 2015).Prison guards wantonly trampled on prisoners’ human rights. According to a serial report on the website of the Miami Herald in December 2015, Lowell Correctional Institution, the nation’s largest women’s prison, was haunted by corruption, torment and sex abuse. The guards took hundreds of female inmates as whores and pressured them to barter sex for basic necessities, a shield from abuse or awards. In the past 10 years 57 inmates died in the prison, not accounting those who make it to hospital (South Florida Breaking News, Sports & Crime, December 12, 13 and 16, 2015). The Washington Post reported on its website on May 13, 2015 that a guard in the Fairfax County jail killed a mentally ill woman, Natasha McKenna, with a Taser stun gun (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, May 13, 2015). The Fox News reported on its website on April 9, 2015 that guards in a prison in Florida was accused of abusing and even killing inmates. In one case, a mentally-ill inmate Darren Rainey was forced to take a shower for two hours with the water reportedly rigged to a scalding 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Despite his calls for help, no one came. He reportedly died after his skin was partially burned off his body (http://www.foxnews.com, April 9, 2015).II. Political Rights Not SafeguardedIn 2015, money politics and clan politics went from bad to worse in the nation where voters found it hard to express their real volition and there was discrimination against belief in political life. In addition, citizens’ right to information was further suppressed. Unsurprisingly, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said that “the U.S. is no longer a democracy” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com, August 3, 2015).Money politics revealed the hypocrisy in democracy. Although the laws of the United States put a lid on the size of individual donations to presidential candidates, there is no limit for such contributions to super PACs by individuals and corporations. The USA Today reported on April 10, 2015 that the allies of at least 11 White House hopefuls had launched committees to raise unlimited money to back their campaigns (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, April 10, 2015). The presidential candidates and the super PACs raised about $ 380 million in only half a year. More than 60 donations were worth more than 1 million U.S. dollars each, accounting for about one third of the total contributions. Half of the amount came from those who donated more than $100,000 and the combined fund of the top 67 donors was more than three times that of 508,000 donors with least contributions (http://www.aol.com, August 1; http://www.politico.com, August 1). According to a report of the Zerohedge, between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America’s most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. What they gave paled compared to what those same corporations got: $4.4 trillion in federal business and support. Put that in context, the sum represented two thirds of what individual taxpayers paid into the federal treasury. For every dollar spent on influencing politics, the nation’s most politically active corporations received 760 U.S. dollars from the government (http://www.zerohedge.com, March 16, 2015). Jimmy Carter said that with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president, the U.S. political system was subverted to be a payoff to major contributors (http://www.huffingtonpost.com, August 3, 2015). The role money played in politics was also indicated in the U.S. President’s State of the Union Address for 2016, which said a handful of families and hidden interests were exercising influence on elections via their funds.Clan politics was driving U.S. government elections. Among the candidates for the 2016 presidential election, more than one candidate was obviously related to clan politics. The New York Times concluded through big data analysis that advantages from father generation played a role in politics obviously. The chance for the son of a U.S. president to become president was 1.4 million times higher than his peers. Meanwhile the chance for a governor’s son to be elected governor was 6,000 times higher than ordinary people. In addition, the chance for the son of a senator to be a senator like his father was also 8,500 times higher than ordinary U.S. men (http://www.nytimes.com, March 22, 2015). The Washington Post reported on January 16, 2015 that since the beginning of the Republic, 8.7 percent of its members of Congress were closely related to someone who had served in the body. The report continued to point out that a smell of heirship could be detected in the U.S. presidential election since the possible slate of candidates would include the son of a governor and presidential candidate, the son of a congressman and presidential candidate, the wife of a president and the brother of a president, son of a president and grandson of a senator (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, January 16, 2015).Discrimination against beliefs led to unfairness in political life. Not believing in God could be the biggest disadvantage while running for a post in public office. It was difficult for those who were not Christians to win elections and for those who did not have a religious belief, the chance to win elections was slimmer. In a May 2014 Pew Research survey, atheism was the most disqualifying factor for a potential presidential candidate, according to a report posted on the website of The Washington Post on September 22, 2015. More than half of those surveyed said they would be less likely to vote for someone who did not believe in God. And another Pew poll in July 2014 found that of all religion-related groups, atheists and Muslims were viewed the most negatively by Americans (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, September 22, 2015).Citizens’ electoral rights were further limited. According to an article on the website of the U.S. News and World Report on August 4, 2015, since 2010, a total of 21 states had adopted new laws to limit the exercise of suffrage. Some states shortened the time for early voting, while others limited the number of documents identifying one as a lawful voter. A total of 14 states will carry out fresh measures to limit the exercise of suffrage for the first time in 2016 presidential election. The voting rights were hit by the vicious competition between the two parties. One Democratic candidate accused GOP presidential candidates of having “systematically and deliberately” tried to keep millions of Americans from voting so as to win the election (http://www.usnews.com, August 4, 2015). A USA Today report, which was published on its website on March 20, 2015, said the nation had its lowest midterm-election voter turnout in 2014 since the early 1940s. The average turnout across the United States was 37 percent, with a low of 28.8 percent recorded in Indiana (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, March 20, 2015).It was difficult for voters to express their real will. The Christian Science Monitor carried a report on its website on December 13, 2015 that the two-party system forced the voters to take side. Most voters cast ballots for a party not because they supported the party but out of fear and worry over the other one (http://www.csmonitor.com, December 13, 2015). It was said in the U.S. President’s State of the Union Address for 2016 that the practice of drawing congressional districts led to the situation where “politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around.” It went on to say that “the rancor and suspicion between parties has gotten worse instead of better.”Citizens’ right to information was hampered by the government. According to a report by The Associated Press on March 13, 2015, authorities were undermining the laws that were supposed to guarantee citizens’ right to information and the systems created to give citizens information about their government. In addition, it was getting harder to use public records to hold government officials accountable (http://www.ap.org, March 13, 2015). An article on the website of the CNN reported on February 13, 2015 that journalists and news supervision authorities had continually slammed the current U.S. administration as one of the least transparent. At least 15 journalists were arrested in Ferguson protests (CNN - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News, February 13, 2015).III. Economic and Social Rights under ChallengeIn 2015, no substantial progress concerning the economic and social rights of U.S. citizens were made. Workers carried out mass strikes to claim their rights at work. Food-insecure and homeless populations remained huge. Many U.S. people suffered from poor health.The rights of laborers at work were not effectively protected. On October 6, 2015, Al Jazeera America reported that about 40 percent of private-sector workers, or 44 million people in America, did not have access to paid sick leave. Large scale strikes in many industries were reported. In February 2015, workers at nine oil refineries in California, Texas, Kentucky and Washington states carried out strikes, protesting onerous overtime, unsafe staffing levels and dangerous conditions (http://america.aljazeera.com, February 2, October 6, 2015). In April, the same year, fast food workers walked off the job in 230 cities, staging a strike aimed at a minimum wage of 15 U.S. dollars. In November, they walked out in hundreds of cities for the same reason. About 2,000 workers at seven major U.S. airports went on strike in November to protest low wages (http://thinkprogress.org, April 15, 2015; USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, November 10, November 19, 2015).There was huge income gap between the rich and the poor. In the United States, 3.1 percent of income earned annually went to the poorest 20 percent of people, while 51.4 percent was earned by the richest 20 percent (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, October 10, 2015). Official data showed that 46.7 million people were living in poverty in 2014. (http://www.census.gov). In Delaware, the percentage of people living below the federal poverty line in 2014 was 12.5 percent, creeping up from 11.7 percent in 2013. Nearly a quarter of residents of Wilmington, Delaware lived below the poverty line. The poverty rate for children was around 20 percent. U.S. people were pessimistic about the prospects of social and economic instability. Seventy-nine percent of Americans believed it was more common for people to fall out of the middle class than rise up to it (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, June 9, November 23, 2015).There was a large food-insecure population in the United States. According to a report published on the Guardian website on November 26, 2015, government statistics suggested that between 2008 and 2014 at least 48.1 million people a year were classed as “food insecure”, including 19.2 percent of all households with children, meaning they could not always afford to eat balanced meals (http://www.theguardian.com, November 26, 2015). The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that each year, 48 million people suffered from a foodborne illness, resulting in 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths (http://www.pewtrusts.org, December 4, 2015). Approximately one fifth of all U.S. children lived in food-insecure households, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (http://america.aljazeera.com, October 8, 2015).Hundreds of thousands of U.S. people were homeless. A report published on the USA Today website on June 9, 2015 said housing prices had skyrocketed in the United States in recent years, while income levels remained stagnant. Fifty-five percent of Americans had made more financial sacrifice to afford their housing. According to a report by the National Association of Realtors, the gap between rental costs and household income had been widening to unsustainable levels (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, June 9, July 31, 2015). A study by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that more than 560,000 people were homeless in the United States as of November 18, 2015. About one fourth of them were children under the age of 18 (http://www.hud.gov). In New York City, there were 59,568 homeless people, including 14,361 homeless families with 23,858 homeless children, sleeping each night in municipal shelters in October 2015, 86 percent higher than the number in 2005. People living on streets had no access to toilets or showers (http://www.pewtrusts.org, November 11, 2015). In recent years, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland and the state of Hawaii have all recently declared emergencies over the rise of homelessness (http://www.presstv.ir, November 20, 2015).Human right to health of U.S. people was not fully protected. According to a report of the Institute for Policy Innovation released on September 18, 2015, there were still 33 million people in the United States uninsured, although U.S. Congress had passed the healthcare reform bill in 2010, promising to establish a universal healthcare system (http://www.ipi.org, September 18, 2015). The United States was reported to have the worst medical care system and the highest number of infant mortalities out of 11 developed countries (http://borgenproject.org, August 23, 2015). There were more than 6,200 places nationwide with a shortage of primary care physicians (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, December 12, 2015). Today, more than 1.2 million people in the United States were HIV-positive. About one in eight of those infected were unaware of their status (CNN - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News, December 9, 2015). There was a significant difference between the health conditions of the rich and the poor. According to an AFP report on October 14, 2015, in Brooklyn’s poorest neighborhood of Brownsville, New York City, nearly 40 percent of its citizens lived below the federal poverty level. Brownsville suffered more than twice the rates of new HIV diagnoses in New York City. Its people died 11 years earlier than those living around Manhattan’s financial district. (AFP, October 14, 2015).Case fatality rate due to drug overdose set new record high. According to a CDC report, drug overdose was the leading cause of diseases in the United States. The death rate from drug overdose more than doubled from 6.0 per 100,000 population in 1999 to 13.8 in 2013. More than 47,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2014, an increase of 3,018 from 2013. Heroin poses the biggest issue among all forms of drug overdose. In 2013, deaths from heroin-related overdose exceeded 8,200, nearly quadrupling that of 2002. In 2014, the number surged to 10,574. Increasing number of young people and females took heroin. Compared with figures in the period from 2002 to 2004, the number of young heroin addicts aged between 18 and 25 in 2011-2013 period increased by 109 percent, while female users doubled (http://www.cdc.gov, October 16, December 29, 2015; http://www.usnews.com, December 18, 2015).IV. Racial Discrimination Worse Than EverIn 2015, racial relations in the United States kept deteriorating. Law enforcement and justice fields were heavily influenced by racial discrimination, and race-based hate crimes occurred occasionally. Anti-Muslim remarks caused a great clamor, and minority races were unable to change their vulnerable status in economic and social lives.Americans’ view of race relations was at a two-decade low. A poll jointly released by the CBS News and The New York Times on May 4, 2015 showed that 61 percent of Americans characterized race relations in the United States as “bad,” including a majority of white and black respondents. The figure was the highest since 1992 (http://newyork.cbslocal.com, May 4, 2015). A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll in December 2015 showed that only 34 percent of Americans believe race relations in the United States were fairly good or very good, down from a high of 77 percent in January 2009 (http://blogs.wsj.com, December 16, 2015). A survey released in November 2015 by the Public Religion Research Institute in the United States showed that 35 percent of Americans believed racial tensions were a major concern in their own communities, jumping 18 percentage points from 2012 (public http://religion.org, November 17, 2015). Figures released in August 2015 by Pew Research Center showed that 50 percent of Americans said that racism was a big problem in the U.S. society; 60 percent Americans said the country needed to continue making changes to achieve racial equality, up 14 percentage points from a year ago (http://www.people-press.org, August 5, 2015).Cases of African-Americans being killed by police occurred repeatedly. On November 15, 2015, the 24-year-old African-American Jamar Clark was shot dead by white police officers. The fatal shooting occurred when two police officers were trying to arrest him. Witnesses said that Clark was handcuffed when he was shot in the head. The civil rights organization “Black Lives Matter” organized protests in multiple cities across the country. In a Facebook post, Black Lives Matter activists noted “the era of white supremacist terrorism against people of color across the U.S.,” (http://www.theatlantic.com, November 18, 2015; http://www.mprnews.org, November 20, 2015; http://www.huffingtonpost.com, November 24, 2015) On April 12, 2015, as 25-year-old African-American Freddie Gray was being arrested, police handcuffed him and had knees on his back and his head. Gray was dragged and thrown into the back of a police van with his face down. Gray requested medical attention while being transported in the van but the request was denied. Gray lapsed into a coma following the journey on April 12 and died a week later in a hospital. He died of a severe spinal cord injury. The incident sparked large-scale protests in Baltimore. The protests turned violent on April 27, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard. It was the second time in six months that a state called out the National Guard to enforce order after a white police officer killed a black teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson in 2014. The New York Times said that Gray had become the nation’s latest symbol of police brutality in an April 28 story. (CNN - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News, April 29, 2015; http://www.bbc.com, May 5, 2015; http://baltimore.cbslocal.com, April 27, 2015; http://www.nytimes.com, April 27 and 28, 2015) According to The Washington Post website, police fatally shot 965 people in 2015 as of December 24, 2015, including 36 unarmed African-Americans (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, December 24, 2015). The CBS News-New York Times poll released on May 4, 2015 showed that 79 percent of African-Americans believed police were more likely to use deadly force against a black person than against a white person, and black respondents were more likely than white respondents to believe their local police made them feel anxious rather than safe (http://newyork.cbslocal.com, May 4, 2015). According to a poll released by the National Bar Association in the United States, 88 percent of blacks believed black people were treated unfairly by police, compared with 59 percent of whites who shared that view (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, September 9, 2015).Racial discrimination in the criminal justice system was severe. A Gallup survey in 2015 showed that 68 percent of African-Americans believed the American criminal justice system was racially biased, while 37 percent of whites said the same (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, June 18, 2015). According to a survey released by the Public Religion Research Institute, 51 percent of Americans disagreed that blacks and other minorities received equal treatment as whites in the criminal justice system, and 78 percent of black Americans disagreed that blacks and other minorities received equal treatment to whites in the criminal justice system (http://publicreligion.org, May 7, 2015). Prosecutors intentionally struck black people from juries in trials of black defendants. In the South, the practice for prosecutors to strike jurors based on race remained common (http://www.newyorker.com, June 5, 2015).Race-related hate crimes occurred occasionally. Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, shot dead three Muslim students near the University of North Carolina on February 10, 2015. Hicks had frequently posted messages critical of various religions on the Internet (http://indianexpress.com, June 5, 2015). On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man, opened fire and killed nine people, including a pastor, at an African-American church in Charleston in South Carolina. According to witnesses, Roof told the victims, “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country, and you have to go (http://www.cbsnews.com, June 17, 2015; http://www.bbc.com, June 19, 2015).”Anti-Muslim remarks caused a great clamor. The Guardian reported on November 19, 2015 that a Republican presidential candidate made public comments, saying that he would consider warrantless searches of Muslims and increased surveillance of mosques, and that he would not rule out tracking Muslim Americans in a database or giving them “a special form of identification that noted their religion (http://www.theguardian.com, November 19, 2015).” On December 7, the presidential candidate made a statement calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States (The Economist - World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance, December 8, 2015).” In recent years, Americans’ view on Islam became more and more negative. According to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, 56 percent of Americans said that the values of Islam were “at odds” with America’s values and way of life, and 76 percent of Republicans were especially likely to have the same opinion (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, November 17, 2015). The Human Rights Committee remained concerned about the practice of racial profiling and surveillance by law enforcement officials targeting certain ethnic minorities, notably Muslims (http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org).Minority races were in a dire situation. According to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rates in November 2015 were 4.3 percent for whites, 9.4 percent for blacks and 6.4 percent for Hispanics. The unemployment rate for blacks more than doubled that for whites, and the figure for Hispanics was 50 percent higher than that for whites (http://www.bls.gov). The unemployment rate for black college graduates was roughly equal to the rate for white Americans with associate degrees (http://huffingtonpost.com, December 18, 2015). A third of Iowa’s black households earned less than 20,000 U.S. dollars annually, compared with 8 percent of white households. More than one fifth of white households in Iowa earned 100,000 U.S. dollars or more in a year, but only eight percent of black households did (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, October 31, 2015). Approximately 57 percent of New York City homeless shelter residents were African-American, 31 percent were Latino, 8 percent were white (http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org, March 18, 2015). According to a CNN report on February 18, 2015, financial inequality was pervading the country and it was getting worse. Whites had 12 times the wealth of blacks and nearly 10 times more than Hispanics. “The American dream remains out of reach for many African-American and Hispanic families.” (http://money.cnn.com, February 18, 2015) The documentary Seeking Asylum by African-American Darnell Walker triggered heated responses after debuting online, chronicling the plight of black Americans who no longer felt safe in the United States due to rampant police brutality and were looking to settle elsewhere. Miles Marshall Lewis, who moved to France in 2004 from the United States, published his book “No Country for Black Men” in 2014, a response to the wave of police killings targeting blacks (http://www.thedailybeast.com, November 11, 2015).V. Missing Rights for Women and ChildrenRights of women and children were grossly violated in the United States in 2015. Women were facing serious workplace discrimination, domestic violence and sexual violation and children were under the threats of arms, abuse, poverty and police violence.Women were facing worsening situation of inferior social status. On December 11, 2015, the United Nations Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice delivered a statement after a mission to the United States and pointed out the missing rights and protections such as universal paid maternity leave, accessible reproductive healthcare and equal opportunity in standing for political election for the country’s women. In the United States, women fell behind international standards as regards their public and political representation, their economic and social rights and their health and safety protections. Women’s average representation in state legislatures was 24.9 percent. This rate placed the country at only the 72nd in global ranking. The gender wage gap was 21 percent. The percentage of women in poverty increased over the past decade, from 12.1 percent to 14.5 percent, with a higher rate of poverty than men. Poor and immigrant women faced severe barriers in accessing sexual and reproductive health services. Women faced fatal consequences of lack of gun control, in particular in cases of domestic violence. The statement also expressed concerns over violence against women in detention as well as the alarming high rates of violence against Native-American women (http://www.ohchr.org, December 11, 2015).Women were suffering workplace discrimination. A report released by the U.S. Census Bureau in September 2015 revealed that women in the U.S. were paid 79 cents for every dollar paid to men in 2014, amounting to a yearly wage gap of 10,762 U.S. dollars between full-time working men and women (http://www.census.gov). The United Nations’ International Labour Organization said in 2014 that out of the 185 countries and territories with available data, the United States was the only industrialized nation with no overall law for cash benefits provided to women during maternity leave (http://abcnews.go.com, May 6, 2015). A report at the website of the Los Angeles Times on May 6, 2015 said that white men had a 42 percent advantage over white women when it came to being promoted to the executive level in U.S. tech companies, but that paled in comparison to the 260 percent advantage they had to Asian women (http://www.latimes.com, May 6, 2015).Women fell victim to various forms of sex harassments and sex assaults. A survey released by the Association of American Universities in September 2015 indicated that 23 percent of undergraduate women said they were victims of non-consensual sexual contact and that 20 percent of students said sexual assault and misconduct was very or extremely problematic on their own campus (http://www.latimes.com, September 21, 2015; Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, September 1/September 21, 2015). According to a report at the USA Today website on August 17, 2015, a total of 37 percent of women said they had experienced some kind of online harassment. A total of 54 percent of Hispanics and 51 percent of African Americans said they had experienced online harassment. Also, women were more likely to be targets of serious cases in which they were stalked and sexually harassed (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, August 17, 2015). Another article at the USA Today website on December 11, 2015 reported that Daniel Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City police officer, was convicted of sexually assaulting women he preyed upon in a low-income neighborhood he patrolled. He was convicted of 18 counts connected to eight women, all of whom were black (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, December 11, 2015).Children were under the threats of guns. According to statistics from the Gun Violence Archive website, as of December 28, 2015, gun-related incidents that year left 682 children under the age of 11 and 2,640 children aged between 12 and 17 killed or injured (Gun Violence Archive, December 28, 2015). The RT America reported at its website on October 10, 2015 that the number of U.S. school shootings that year climbed to 52. There were at least two school shootings a month in 2015 (http://www.rt.com, October 10, 2015). A report at the website of the USA Today on January 21, 2015 said that almost two children were killed every week in unintentional shootings, and nearly two thirds of these unintended deaths took place in a home or vehicle that belonged to the victim’s family (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, January 22, 2015). More than a quarter of the teenagers -- 15 years old and up -- who died of injuries in the United States were killed in gun-related incidents, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (http://www.theatlantic.com, January 12, 2015).Poor health and living conditions for children. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the rate of newborns with syphilis jumped 38 percent between 2012 and 2014 to its highest level in more than a decade (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, November 12, 2015). A survey said that one in five drug abusers in some treatment programs in the United States received their first taste of these illegal substances from their parents, usually before the age of 18 (http://abcnews.go.com, August 24, 2015). According to U.S. Census Bureau, about 17.4 million children under the age of 18 were being raised without a father and 45 percent lived below the poverty line (http://singlemotherguide.com, June 1, 2015). About 6 percent of New York City’s African-American population under 18 years old and nearly 3 percent Latino children utilized New York City shelters because of homelessness (http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org, March 19, 2015). The USA Today website reported on August 15, 2015 that 47 percent of rural Hispanic babies were born poor, compared to 41 percent of Hispanic babies in urban areas. Hispanics babies born in rural enclaves were more likely to be impoverished and it was harder for them to receive help from federal and state programs, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. “These babies are starting behind the starting line.” (USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com, August 15, 2015)Children were suffering abuse. A report at the website of The Washington Post on January 1, 2015 said that among the young children killed in the D.C. region, the majority was killed by a parent or guardian (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, January 1, 2015). The Miami Herald website on March 10, 2015 reported that one in three girls and one in five boys would become a victim of child sexual abuse in Florida before they turned 18. Such experience would have serious negative impact on their future lives. On average, each victim of child sexual abuse would lose 250,000 U.S. dollars in earnings throughout his or her lifetime because of the abuse. Fifty percent of victims had below-average grades (South Florida Breaking News, Sports & Crime, March 10, 2015).African-American children fell victim to police violence. The CNN website on June 10, 2015 reported that a video went viral online showing violence by a white police officer of the Police Department in McKinney, Texas, against a 14-year-old African-American girl. The officer, called to a community swimming pool party after complaints, cursed at several black teenagers and yanked the girl wearing only a bikini to the ground. He also pointed his gun at the teenagers. The white witness who shot the video said there was no doubt race was a factor in how police responded. This incident triggered some public protests (CNN - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News, June 10, 2015). On October 26, 2015, a video that showed Ben Fields, a white school resource officer at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina, manhandling an African-American school girl drew intense criticism. The officer grabbed the girl, who used her cell phone during class, by the neck, flipped her over and dragged her across the floor. Fields in 2013 was named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit that claimed he “unfairly and recklessly targets African-American students.” The U.S. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People criticized that such violence “doesn’t affect white students”. Victoria Middleton, the executive director for the South Carolina branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that regardless of the reason for the officer’s actions, such egregious use of force - against young people who were sitting in their classrooms - was outrageous. “School should be a place to learn and grow, not a place to be brutalized.” (http://abcnews.go.com, October 28, 2015)VI. Gross Violations of Human Rights in Other CountriesIn 2015, the United States continued to trample on human rights in other countries, causing tremendous civilian casualties. Its overseas monitoring projects infringed on the privacy of citizens of other countries while torture scandals at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp continued. Up to date, the United States has not ratified some core human rights conventions of the United Nations and voted against some important human rights resolutions.Air strikes caused a large number of civilian casualties. According to Airwars, a project aimed at tracking air strikes in the Middle East, the United States had repeatedly organized coalition forces to launch air strikes against military forces in Iraq and Syria since August 8, 2014. As of December 6, 2015, the United States launched 3,965 air strikes in Iraq and 2,823 in Syria, causing an estimated number of civilian deaths between 1,695 and 2,239 (http://www.airwars.org). The Syrian government called U.S.-led coalition air strikes an “act of aggression” (http://www.independent.co.uk, December 7, 2015). On October 3, 2015, a hospital run by aid group “Doctors Without Borders” in the city of Kunduz in Afghanistan was under a bombing that continued for half an hour. Many patients who were unable to move were killed on site, while some staff of the aid group were shot at from the air while fleeing the hospital. A total of 42 people were killed in the air strike, with some bodies charred beyond recognition (http://www.sputniknews.com, December 12, 2015; http://www.abcnews.go.com, October 5, 2015).A frequent use of drones claimed many innocent lives. According to an October 15, 2015 report run by Daily Mail website, when carrying out drone assassinations, the U.S. military used “phone data alone” -- a limited way of guaranteeing a kill. During Operation Haymaker, a campaign in northeastern Afghanistan which ran between January 2012 and February 2013, some 219 people were killed by drones but just 35 were the intended targets. During another five-month stretch of the operation, a staggering 90 percent of those killed were not the intended target. Despite this all the deaths were labeled EKIA, or “enemy killed in action.” (http://www.dailymail.co.uk, October 15, 2015). A report posted on April 24, 2015 by The Washington Post on its website said a study, which documented 415 strikes in Pakistan and Yemen since the September 11, 2001 attacks, put the total number of killed civilians between 423 and 962 (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, April 24, 2015). The abuse of drone strikes not only drew widespread criticism from international community, but also incurred strong doubt from U.S. scholars. The Washington Post posted an article on March 20, 2015, introducing to its readers two books on drones - Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins, by Andrew Cockburn, and A Theory of the Drones, by Gregoire Chamayou. Cockburn sees America’s killer drone policy as “the culmination of a historical pattern of lies, deception and greed in the deployment of lethal military force around the world” and as “a continuation of previous U.S. assassination policy.” Failing miserably to achieve the country’s stated goal of enhanced security, the policy simultaneously undermined the democratic process, Cockburn writes, noting that “assassination by robot is bound to inspire rather than curtail extremism.” According to Chamayou and Cockburn, killer drone exposes the trend toward a new -- and “inhumane form of warfare.” “With drone warfare, there is no victory, just perpetual elimination.” (Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines, March 20, 2015).Abuse of cruel torture trampled on human rights. A report by the U.S. Senate on the study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation program found that the CIA’s use of brutal interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, long-term solitary confinement, slamming prisoners’ heads into walls, lashing and death threat, were in serious violation of U.S. law (http://www.intelligence.senate.gov). While according to some witnesses, the CIA torture went far beyond the Senate report had disclosed. Majid Khan, a Guantánamo Bay detainee-turned government cooperating witness, said interrogators poured ice water on his genitals, twice videotaped him naked and repeatedly touched his “private parts”. At one point, Khan said, his feet and lower legs were placed in tall boot-like metal cuffs that dug into his flesh and immobilized his legs. The guards also stripped him naked, hung him from a wooden beam for three days and provided him with water but no food. All the above torture details that Khan had undergone were not included in the Senate report (http://www.theguardian.com, June 2, 2015). On January 11, 2016, human rights experts, including the UN special rapporteurs on torture Juan E. Mendez; on human rights and counterterrorism, Ben Emmerson; on independence of the judiciary, Monica Pinto; Chair-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Seong-Phil Hong; and the director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights under the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Michael Georg Link, together called on the U.S. Government to promptly close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, 14 years after the detention center became operational. The experts recalled in the letter that close to 100 detainees still languished in Guantánamo after years of arbitrary detention without trial (http://www.un.org, January 11, 2016).The United States spied on leaders from other countries. The BBC reported on April 30, 2015 that the U.S. National Security Agency, by working with other secret services, has long monitored on European leaders (http://www.bbc.com, April 30, 2015). The Independent reported on June 24, 2015 that the United States had bugged the phones of three French presidents and many other senior French officials, for which a French government spokesman said was “unacceptable” (http://www.independent.co.uk, June 24, 2015). Facing criticism from its allies, the U.S. government continued to monitor some leaders in the name of “national security purpose” (http://www.theguardian.com, December 30, 2015).Though the United States repeatedly vowed to defend “human rights,” it still has not ratified core human rights conventions of the UN, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women; the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The United States is the only country that is yet to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United States also takes an uncooperative attitude towards international human rights issues. It often kept stalling or turned a deaf ear to criticisms leveled by the UN Human Rights Council special sessions and High Commissioners for Human Rights. On September 28, 2015 when the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution related to development right, the United States, as always, voted against it (http://www.un.org).

Undercover secret service Agent characters and able to perform successfully, has to do mainly in his belives that his actions activities us based on morale justifiable reasons to undertake missions in order to protect life of his fellow citizens against evils.Related terms:Charles A. Sennewald, Curtis Baillie, in Effective Security Management (Sixth Edition), 2016ExampleConsider a case in which the Security department contracts for the placement of an undercover agent in a warehouse for the purpose of gathering information on possible internal theft. The undercover agent’s primary employer is a contract service firm. The agent receives a salary from them as well as a regular paycheck, like every other warehouse employee, from the company that owns the warehouse. For a period of time some useful intelligence is obtained, but after a while the undercover agent becomes personally involved with other warehouse employees and the reports become valueless. Even though the agent wishes to remain employed in the warehouse, services can be terminated forthwith without violating the agent’s rights to job security, because the real (and primary) employer is the firm that sent the agent to the warehouse and is still paying the undercover salary (although it may be less than the warehouse salary).If, on the other hand, the Security department hires an applicant directly into the warehouse to serve as an undercover agent, that person would be entitled to some job protection and could not be summarily removed from the job. The use of contractual services has some very definite advantages.ect Behind the Keyboard, 2013Undercover and Informant OperationsUndercover operations in cybercrime investigations obviously will include use of electronic communication. Undercover (UC) agents email, text, and chat with suspects online to communicate. This can be in the form of the UC assuming the identity of a child to investigate child molestation cases or perhaps the UC will assume an identity of a high-tech criminal to investigate a hacker. Either method can require face-to-face interaction between the UC and criminal suspect. This interaction and investigative method will apply similarly to civil investigations.A great example of a successful undercover operation began in 1999 with the Internet Service Provider (ISP), Speakeasy Network, in Seattle, Washington. The Speakeasy Network was hacked from Russian IP addresses. The suspects contacted Speakeasy, identified themselves, and offered to not disclose Speakeasy’s flaws if Speakeasy would pay or hire them. The hackers also claimed to now possess thousands of passwords and credit card numbers from Speakeasy customers. These hackers, Alexey Ivanov and Vasily Gorshkov, continued to hack and extort businesses in this manner.The FBI conducted an intensive undercover operation, in which both Ivanov and Gorhkov agreed to enter the United States to discuss their hacking skills with FBI undercover agents. Through audio and video recorded conversations, keyloggers, sniffers, search warrants, undercover business fronts, and even setting up an undercover computer network for them to hack into, both were convicted on federal felony counts of computer fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy.All undercover operations carry an inherent risk to personal safety. As an investigative method, it also carries a need for intensive resources and skilled UC operators. The effectiveness of a successful undercover operation cannot be overstated. A benefit to being able to speak openly to a suspect while assuming the role of a criminal or conspirator allows for intelligence to be gathered exponentially faster than physical surveillance. Confessions made to an undercover are just as valid as a confession made to a uniformed officer. Future suspect activities, something not easily obtainable otherwise, can be spoken directly to the UC to which future operations can be planned.Less extreme undercover activities can be conducted requiring no more than a phone call. If a specific time and place has been identified as a source of criminal activity, a simple phone call to the suspect will place the suspect at the location at a given time. The phone call need be no more than false pretenses in which the suspect is identified by voice or name. The phone call may not definitely place the suspect at a keyboard; however, tying the suspect to the location by voice is a strong indication. For criminal activity in progress, such as a victim receiving harassing emails from a previously identified location through an IP address trace, a call can be made while the activity is occurring to identify the suspect by voice.If a suspect email address has been identified, emails can be sent to the suspect with a tracking code that obtains the local IP address of the suspect, and then sends the date and time of the email being accessed along with the IP address of the suspect computer. These tracking codes are invisible to most users and email programs, but pose risk of compromise should the code be identified by the suspect through a warning from anti-virus software.Undercover operations coupled with surveillance may also be necessary in order to obtain evidence not able to be obtained otherwise. If a suspect obscures his IP address through any means, without having physical access to the system used in crimes, close contact with the suspect may be required. This contact could be in the form of befriending the suspect in hopes of having information disclosed to the UC. Even only if the manner of hiding the IP address was disclosed, investigative methods to counter the IP address hiding method could be conducted.Informant operations pose the same risks to safety and compromise of the investigation with the added danger of informants being untrained. Informants havevaried reasons for cooperating with law enforcement and not every reason is trustworthy. In many cases, informants are developed from cases, in which the arrested suspects agree to cooperate in consideration for lesser charges. Such was the case of Hector Xavier Monsegur, in June 2011, when he was arrested by the FBI. Monsegur agreed to work for the FBI as an informant, and in doing so, helped the FBI successfully investigate multiple hackers as conspirators. Although Monsegur did agree to cooperate, he also pleaded guilty to a multitude of computer crime charges.Probably the biggest benefit to using informants in a cybercrime investigation is being able to take advantage of this past history and contacts with other cybercriminals. Their reputations may be known and few, if any associates would suspect their long-time partner-in-crime to be working for law enforcement. Undercover officers enter without a history or known accomplices, unless an informant is used to vouch for the undercover officer.Dario Forte, Andrea de Donno, in Handbook of Digital Forensics and Investigation, 2010Investigations of Mobile SystemsInvestigations used to be carried out exclusively by people. In the pure spirit of investigation, you started from information obtained through an undercover agent followed by operations involving trailing suspects and intercepting ordinary mail. Without the help of technological systems, these investigations tended to last much longer than their more modern counterparts.Today, the initiation of an investigation may involve, in addition to verbal information, an anomalous bank record, an image from a surveillance camera, or of course highly visible crimes such as theft or murder.The first phase of the investigation involves interviewing people who may have relevant information and continues with monitoring the means of communication of suspects or others associated in some way with the case. In addition to the traditional telephone, there are other monitoring points such as electronic mailboxes, places visited by the suspect, Telepass accounts (devices used for automatic highway toll payment), credit card accounts, and other financial operations.Nowadays, investigations are supported by software that is customized to meet different requirements. The investigator enters all the data available on a subject into the interception system and the server performs a thorough analysis, generating a series of connections via the mobile devices involved, the calls made or received, and so on, providing criminal police with a well-defined scheme on which to focus the investigation, and suggesting new hypotheses or avenues that might otherwise be hard to identify. Obviously, thanks to the support of the NSP, the data can be supplemented with historical information or other missing data such as other mobile devices connected to a given BTS on a given date and time. Data can also be provided for public payphones, which are often used to coordinate crimes. Again, thanks to a connection with the NSP, it is possible to obtain a historical record of telephone calls made and the location of the payphone with respect to other mobile devices. The same sort of record may also be obtained for highway travel using Telepass (conventional name for automatic wireless toll payment), including average speed and stops.Having historical data of various kinds relating to an investigation accessible in a database can greatly assist the initial examination of a newly acquired mobile device. By extracting all telephone numbers in the phonebook of a mobile device seized during a search and entering names and numbers into the electronic system, digital investigators perform powerful analysis even in the initial phases of the investigation thanks to cross-referencing capabilities. For instance, investigative tools support advanced entity and relation searches, including the nicknames from phonebooks to locate additional related activities. In addition, some investigative tools enable digital investigators to perform traffic analysis, including georeferenced data and diagram generation as shown in Figure 10.2.Figure 10.2. Cellular telephone tracking software, showing the relative movements of two mobile devices over a given period of time.It is thus very important to have investigation software that can quickly import data online (secure and confidential connection with the MC) or from optical media, and that offers flexibility in subsequent processing.Charles A. Sennewald, Curtis Baillie, in Effective Security Management (Sixth Edition), 2016Coordinate with Security on Major or Important InvestigationsThere are occasions when a criminal case would be impossible to conclude successfully without the cooperative effort of both the private and public sectors. A dramatic example of such a case occurred in Los Angeles. Investigators for a chain of department stores learned that a large number of employees and nonemployees were working together in a concerted effort to remove merchandise from the department store’s warehouse. Most of the participants were identified, videos were taken of some of the theft activity, and an undercover agent was successfully placed in the midst of the group by the Security department to provide a flow of intelligence. The department store then went to the local authorities (in this particular case, the District Attorney’s office) for assistance.In a coordinated effort, the following actions occurred. A small electrical supply and service store was obtained about two miles from the warehouse. It was wired for voice recordings. A panel truck equipped with a 16-mm motion picture camera (before the sophisticated video cameras we have today) was parked behind the store. Two investigators from the District Attorney’s office posed as owners of the store and one manned the camera vehicle. Department store investigators secretly marked the kind of merchandise the undercover agent had indicated would be stolen the next day. Through the undercover agent, word was passed to the thieves that there was a new “fence” in the area (the electrical supply store). The department store provided the money to buy the goods. In a short time, regular trips were made to the back door of the “fence,” and investigators were buying stolen merchandise marked by other investigators the night before. The transactions were visually and audibly recorded by the hidden camera.A grand total of 27 culprits were either indicted and arrested, arrested and referred to juvenile authorities, or, in those cases in which a public offense could not be established, discharged from the company.A case of this complexity and magnitude could not have been resolved so successfully had it not been for the cooperation between private security and law enforcement. Criminal investigations provide frequent opportunities for this effective interaction.In Hiding Behind the Keyboard, 2016The Intended AudienceLaw enforcement officers, criminal investigators, and civil investigators are the intended audience simply because they usually confront covert communications in their positions. In actuality, many of these professionals may not even be aware of the covert communications that are already occurring in their investigations. When you do not know what you do not know, you will almost always miss critical evidence and information.Throughout this book, both these terms “suspects” and “targets” are used for the persons involved in covert communications you wish to investigate. The term target is used not as a political or tactical point other than a “target” being the subject of your investigation. A target can be a terrorist, criminal, or corporate spy for whom you want to uncover covert communications.As a practical matter, every person fitting within this intended audience should be well-versed in technology as it relates to communication. The criminals and terrorists of today exploit every means to communicate covertly and anonymously, and most involve technology. To delay learning the methods being used is to delay effectively investigating your targets.NoteHiding Behind the KeyboardJust because your targets use complex methods of covert communication does not mean you cannot use the same methods! Witnesses, informants, agents, undercover officers, and other persons should use secure communications to protect their identities and the information exchanged.Duration of Relevance for This GuideSimilar to Placing the Suspect Behind the Keyboard, this book has been written as a guide to outlast technology advances. Although technology changes constantly by employing the principles in this guide, you should be able to transfer what becomes old technology to the latest technology. It is mastering concepts and principles that are most important in becoming a great investigator.As for the technical information in the book, similar to other technologies, what is possible today may not be possible tomorrow and conversely, what is impossible today may be possible in the future. Simply some things get harder, and other things get easier. Either way, you are reading a book with tools to deal with both situations.Read full chapterView PDFChristopher Burgess, Richard Power, in Secrets Stolen, Fortunes Lost, 2008IntroductionAs the Haephrati case discussed in Chapter 1 illustrates, the theft of trade secrets and other intellectual property has expanded beyond classic industrial age espionage (largely focused on the turning of insiders) to include information age espionage (e.g., hacking into networks or using targeted malware). And it is also true, as has been previously noted, that the severity of the insider threat is often disproportionately emphasized in relation to the severity of the outsider threat.Nevertheless, much illegal activity, particularly in the arenas of economic espionage and trade secret theft, is still predicated on, or instigated by, insiders of one kind or another. Furthermore, this is true regardless of whether the criminal behavior is cyber-based or grounded in the physical world.Four stories from the United States, Korea, and Canada (all of which broke within a period of several weeks in 2006) underscore both the threat from inside, and its diverse manifestations:“The U.S. attorney in Detroit … announced charges of stealing trade secrets against three former employees of an auto supplier, saying economic espionage stabs at the heart of the Michigan economy and is a growing priority among his federal prosecutors. The former employees of Metaldyne Corp., arraigned in U.S. District Court after a 64-count grand jury indictment was unsealed, are accused of stealing the Plymouth, Mich., company’s trade secrets and sharing them with Chinese competitors. They each face up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 if convicted. Metaldyne, which has 45 plants in 14 countries, makes a wide range of auto parts for engines, drive trains and chassis systems. The company has annual sales of $2 billion and about 6,500 employees.” (Trade-secret theft charged in Detroit, Baltimore Sun, 7-6-06)“US authorities last night charged three people with a cloak-and-dagger scheme to sell secrets from Coca-Cola to soft drink archrival PepsiCo, which helped in the investigation …. The offer of ‘confidential’ information from Coca-Cola sparked an FBI investigation with an undercover agent offering $US1.5 million dollars in cash. The investigation was launched after PepsiCo turned over to its cola rival a letter in May from a person identifying himself as ‘Dirk,’ who claimed to be employed at a high level with Coca-Cola and offered ‘very detailed and confidential information,’ a US Justice Department statement said. According to authorities, an FBIundercover agent met on June 16 with Dimson, who was posing as ‘Dirk’ at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. Dimson gave the agent ‘a brown Armani Exchange bag containing one manila envelope with documents marked ‘highly confidential’ and one glass bottle with a white label containing a liquid product sample,’ the statement said.” (FBI lays charges on Coke secrets, The Australian, 7-6-06)“About a half of Korea’s top technology firms have suffered from leaks in industrial know-how one way or another over the past three years, although the companies have increased preventive measures, a report showed. According to the report released the Korea Industrial Technology Association on Monday, 11 of 20 Korean firms that had invested the most in research & development have suffered financial damage due to technology leaks in the past three years. When taking into account smaller firms, 20.9 percent out of 459 firms said that they suffered from industrial espionage cases during the period. The rate is 6.4 percentage points higher than three years ago, meaning that firms have become more vulnerable to technology theft …. As Roh pointed out, about 65 percent of the reported cases were found to involve employees from former companies. Only 18 percent and 16 percent of the cases involved current employees and subcontractors of the firms, respectively… The survey was done on 459 firms with in-house R&D departments.” (Cho Jin-seo, Half of Top Tech Firms Suffer Leaks, Korea Times, 6-19-06)“Intelligence files reportedly suggest that an estimated 1,000 Chinese agents and informants operate in Canada. Many of them are visiting students, scientists and business people, told to steal cutting-edge technology. An example being touted as copied technology is China’s Redberry—an imitation of the Blackberry portable e-mail device, created by Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion Ltd …. Juneau-Katsuya said the former Liberal government knew of the espionage, but were too afraid to act. ‘We didn’t want to piss off or annoy the Chinese,’ said Juneau-Katsuya, who headed the agency’s Asian desk. ‘(They’re) too much of an important market.’ However, he argued that industrial espionage affects Canada’s employment levels. ‘For every $1 million that we lose in intellectual property or business, we lose about 1,000 jobs in Canada,’ he said.” (Robert Fife, Government “concerned” about Chinese espionage, Catch Up On Full Episodes For Free News, 4-14-06)Without a robust, twenty-first century Personnel Security program, it won’t matter how much or how well you invest in Information Security, or how fool-proof and high-tech your Physical Security has become, because the perpetrators that will take advantage of your weak or nonexisting Personnel Security program will already be inside both your physical and cyber perimeters.In this chapter, we will highlight some of the most important aspects of what should be in your enterprise’s Personnel Security program, including an overall checklist of the top 20 controls mapped to ISO, and guidelines for background checks (Figure 10.1 illustrates the “hit ratio”—the information discrepancies uncovered during background screening), data, termination procedures, and a travel security program.Figure 10.1. Background Checks Reveal Vital Insights That Offer a Subtle Return on Investment—They Mitigate Risk and Limit LossesView chapterPurchase bookMarius-Christian Frunza, in Introduction to the Theories and Varieties of Modern Crime in Financial Markets, 20163.1 Focus on DerivativesThe role of derivatives is less studied and less well known in the money-laundering process. A basic laundering mechanism is the execution through a brokerage house of a long and short position on the same asset (buying and selling the same future contract or buying a call option and a put option or buying and selling a vanilla swap). The broker will pay the client for the position ending up in the money with clean money and will cancel in his records the out of the money transaction to avoid any audit trail. Technically only the transaction fee and the broker’s margin are costs for the client dealing with illegal funds, but in this way they manage to obtain proof of origin for the funds.Bank of Credit and Commerce International— The First Money LaunderingBackgroundFounded in 1972 by the Pakistani banker Agha Hasan Abedi, and having Bank of America as the main shareholder, BCCI became at one time the biggest private bank in the world. Incorporated in Luxembourg BCCI operated from London and Karachi. From the 1980s the bank became a main platform for global money laundering and was under scrutiny from many regulators and law enforcers.Derivatives and money launderingA well-known example is that of the Bank of Credit and Commerce Internationala and its derivatives arm Capcom led by Syed Ziauddin Ali Akbar, who explained the above scheme to undercover Agent Robert Mazur from US customs in 1988. Agent Mazur testified how Akbar used pairs of long short trades that was called “mirror image” trading to launder huge sums of money. Mirror image trading involved two accounts controlled by the same person and the bank was buying contracts for one account while selling an equal number from another account. Since both accounts are controlled by the same individual any profit or loss is effectively netted. One main advantage of this strategy is that being a zero-sum game it can pass under the radar of auditors among many millions of dollars worth of legitimate transactions, thereby making it untraceable.bTriviaUntil its fall in 1991, the BCCI served many dictators and criminal groups including the ex-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the Medelin Cartels. The CIA also held accounts with the bank to fund the Afghan resistance against the Soviet army, the forerunner of modern Talibans.The mirror trading scheme was also favored by a regulation concerning bunched orders of derivatives, which are orders entered by an account manager that are executed as a block and allocated after execution to customers so the trades may be cleared and for post trade allocation. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulation 1.35(a1) allowed a derivatives broker to not identify his client’s trade allocations during a trading session. The broker could do this in the post trade without specific rules. This specific regulation allowed all types of misconduct in the derivative world including money laundering.The regulation in the United States changed in 2012 when the CFTC imposed new rules on time limits for bunched orders, requiring that bunched orders be allocated as soon as practicable after execution, but also providing absolute deadlines by which allocation must occur. For trades that are cleared, allocation must occur sufficiently before the end of the day the order is executed to identify the ultimate customer for each trade. Account managers are forbidden from giving any account or group of accounts consistently favorable or unfavorable treatment relative to other accounts, in order to reduce the risk of mirror trades.If the cleared derivatives market requires strict monitoring of its participants, the OTC derivatives market offers more maneuver for launderers.3.1.1 OTC DerivativesOTC derivatives are bilateral agreements between two counterparties, that are not traded or executed on an exchange. In some cases, OTC deals can be registered via an exchange without the margin mechanism. Compared to the listed derivatives which are standardized, the OTC products are tailored depending on the needs of the two counterparties. The warning signals in these type of transactions are in the following situations:•The features of the OTC derivative are very different from the cleared versions. A swap with a premium at initiation is generally not a sign of confidence. The Goldman’s Sachs swap offer to the Greek treasury is one example of a derivative used as for malpractice. But in reality this type of instrument can hide other fund exchanges in a laundering scheme.•There is no economic basis for explaining that derivative. As an example a small retail enterprise based in Wales with all costs and revenues indexed in GBP, enter in an OTC Forex forward on YEN/CAD. In these cases, the OTC derivative can justify a one-time payment or flow. Not being marked to market regularly the settlement can occur whenever a fund needs to be transferred.•The valuation of the derivative is sophisticated and uses models which are based on traders’ opinions (Level 3 assets). An example can be a Swiss trading company entering in an OTC accumulator option2 on chrome prices with a Russian metal exporter. As the chrome market is illiquid with not many derivatives listed, the pricing of such a product is almost impossible. This ambiguity can be used to justify a fund transfer between the two firms, part of a laundering scam.Figure 1 shows a simple example of money laundering using OTC derivatives. A criminal group owning a company seeded with illegal funds makes an investment with a specialized firm. This firm does not need to be a financial company, and could easily be a trading house or an importer exporter. The investment firms purchase in OTC exotic derivative products from offshore firms. Sporadic settlements based on “mark to model” (“mark to mob”) justify a fund transfer to the offshore firm. The offshore firm has the same OTC derivative back to back with another counterparty controlled by the crime group, but with a clean record. The same “mark to mob” valuation justifies the transfer of funds to the counterparty resulting in clean funds. The very same scheme is used currently by firms to reduce their tax bills in countries with high taxation rates.Welcomehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/user/login?returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedirect.com%2Ftopics%2Fcomputer-science%2Fundercover-agentFigure 1. Money-laundering OTC derivatives: Placement: A criminal group owning a company seeded with illegal funds makes an investment with a specialized firm. This firm does not need to be a financial company, and could easily be a trading house or an importer exporter. The investment firms purchase OTC exotic derivative products from offshore firms.Layering: Sporadic settlements based on “mark to model” (“mark to mob”) justify a fund transfer to the offshore firm. The offshore firm has the same OTC derivative back to back with another counterparty controlled by the crime group, but with a clean record.Insertion: The same “mark to mob” valuation justifies the transfer of funds to the counterparty resulting in clean funds.View chapterPurchase bookPolice, Sociology ofPolice as a formal institution of social control, organized within the framework of the nation state, emerged during the course of the eighteenth and …https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0080430767020040H.-J. Albrecht, D. Nogala, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 20012 Determining the SubjectAt first glance and seen from the surface it seems rather trivial to determine who and what constitutes ‘the police.’ One would expect that the police as a public institution is represented by (sworn) officers, i.e., representatives of the state and its government, who are (often) specially trained professionals and are invested with certain powers (like the authority to search or arrest a person). Usually this ‘apparent’ kind of police will appear in public as officers on the beat, a crew in a patrol car, behind a desk in a police station, or as plain-clothes detectives, doing investigations in the field. This is the common and popular image (in the Western world) of what police actually are, transmitted by the media and supported by occasional ordinary encounters. From time to time this picture is widened by the appearance of riot police in full gear, underlining the state's authorization and capability of using legitimately physical force against disobedient citizens or rioting crowds.When one looks again at who and what constitutes police, the semblance becomes more complicated: on the level of involved actors it becomes apparent that a good portion of the workforce employed by police consists of civilian staff, like secretaries or the clerks in the forensic laboratories; some sworn officers, such as staff who are responsible for conducting statistical analysis of criminal incidents or running a computer program for matching data, are rarely out in the field, while certain field officers, like undercover agents or specialists in charge of surveillance of telecommunication, often do not act openly as police. Furthermore there are other state agents who, having similar powers of investigation or intervention, perform certain functions of policing, but are not seen or labeled as ‘police.’ One might think here of custom officers, secret agents, public health inspectors, or prison guards. Still others appear in a policelike guise but are clearly not officers (at least lacking their full powers): city wardens, commercial guards and patrols, hired investigators, vigilante organizations like the ‘Guardian Angels,’ bodyguards, stewards in a football stadium, or bouncers.As professionals trained to use force legitimately in the name of the state's power, police share this somewhat exclusive right with the military and other law enforcement officials (prison, customs). But on the level of routine work processes, this distinguishing feature is a rather rare event compared to the overall picture of police duties. Instead, research has shown that a considerable part of the modern police workload is not at all focused on crime control and investigation of criminal cases, but consists of responding to general emergency calls, mediating conflicts, regulating motor vehicle traffic, and communication with other institutions or agencies like social services, insurance companies, etc.Although it might be clear from a commonsense point of view, what ‘police’ actually are—basically that formal institution which is vested with the powers and resources to respond to criminal acts or public order disturbances and calls itself ‘police’—the subject in question gets more diverse, the more we see it from a perspective of a peculiar organized social activity rather than as a matter of institutionalism. Thus a true ‘sociology of policing’ would cover a wider area and embrace more organizations than the initial ‘police studies.’But even from an institutional approach one has to speak of ‘the police’ either from a very abstract level or from a single case point of view only. Besides the common similarities in terms of historical developments, organizational models, practical strategies and tactics, and legal accountabilities, every country's police system has its own particularities and unique arrangement of forces.It should not be overlooked that police as a subject of sociological interest is linked in many ways with other social systems, all of them carrying their own, often overlapping, bodies of literature: as an instrument of executive governance ‘the police’ can be seen as a segment of the sociology of the state. Its quality of being an important part of the criminal justice system and its more or less explicit legal bindings does make it a component of the sociology of law. Last but not least, on the level of empirical studies there are clear ties to the field of organizational sociology.View chapterPurchase bookCopyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. or its licensors or contributors. ScienceDirect ® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V.