ALONG HIGHWAY 369, Brazil — It was the middle of the night when an officer waved the busload of smugglers off the highway at a checkpoint in Paraná state. A military policeman in a crisp khaki uniform and bullet-proof vest boarded the bus and began shining his flashlight at faces and overhead bins. Two men were ordered off the bus to unload their cargo from the compartment below. Soon, however, they were back to take a hurried cash collection. After a sufficient number of wallets were opened and relieved of bills, the bus was waved on. The passengers breathed a [...]
During the past week, representatives of civil liberty groups and the U.S. government have feuded over how many people were on the watch list of individuals suspected of being potential terrorists. The American Civil Liberties Union held a recent news conference to publicize their calculation that the database now includes more than 1 million names, whereas homeland security officials claimed that “only” 400,000 people were included. Caroline Fredrickson, the ACLU’s Washington legislative director, called the growth in the size of the terrorist watch list “unfair to travelers, unfair to law-abiding Americans and unfair to the security screeners who have to [...]
MEXICO CITY — The now-infamous June 20 nightclub raid was supposed to be a crowning moment, a public relations coup, for Mexico City’s newest police force. Police vans waited nearby, ready to haul off up to hundreds of offenders — drug users, drug dealers, minors drinking booze, and club staff taking kickbacks to ignore these crimes. Even some members of the media were given front row seats to watch the cops from Unipol — the recently launched cooperative unit comprised of beat cops and investigative police — send its team up the stairs of the dingy antro, as such clubs [...]
