Cyber Threats: System Failures & Living in Denial

By Greg Guma

In August 2010, when Foreign Policy posted an article citing credible research and directly warned oil companies worldwide that their offshore oil rigs were highly vulnerable to hacking, few people took notice.

     “Computer commands can derail a train or cause a gas pipeline to burst,” warned former Bush administration counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke a few years later in Cyber War, his book on the topic. The reaction: mainly silence. Until recently, such scenarios seemed more like movie plots than foreign policy concerns, and the threat looked more domestic than foreign. 

     In early 2009, for instance, a 28-year-old contractor in California was charged in federal court with almost disabling an offshore rig. Prosecutors said the contractor, who was allegedly angry about not being hired full time, had hacked into the computerized network of an oil-rig off the coast, specifically the controls that detect leaks. He caused damage, but fortunately not a leak.

     After the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico the Christian Science Monitor reported that at least three US oil companies had been targets in a series of cyber attacks. The culprit was most likely someone or some group in China, and the incidents, largely un-reported for several years, had involved Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. But the companies apparently didn’t realize how serious their problem was until the FBI alerted them.

     At the time, federal officials said that proprietary information – email passwords, messages, and information linked to executives – had been flowing out to computers overseas. Chinese government involvement could not be confirmed, but some data did end up on a computer in China. One oil company security staffer privately coined the term “China virus.”
     Still, the companies generally preferred not to comment, or even admit that the attacks had happened. But the Monitor persisted, interviewing insiders, officials and cyber attack experts, and ultimately confirmed the details. Their overall conclusion was that cyber-burglars, using spyware that is almost undetectable, pose a serious and potentially dangerous threat to private industry.
     According to Clarke, many nations conduct Internet espionage and sometimes even cyber attacks. China has been aggressive at times, but so have Russia and North Korea. Spying on defense agencies and diplomats has been one major focus; strategically important businesses and even national governments have also been targeted.

     In 2011, when I first published an article on the problem, Google claimed that it had evidence of at least 20 companies that had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, logic bombs were being infiltrated into the US electric power grid. If so, they could operate like time bombs. Now it looks likely that Russia was the actual culprit, or had the same idea.
     On oil rigs, the advent of robot-controlled platforms has made a cyber attack possible with a computer anywhere in the world. Control of a rig could be accomplished by hacking into the "integrated operations" that link onshore computer networks to offshore ones. Until 2018 few experts would speculate publicly that this may already have happened. But there has been confirmation of computer viruses causing personnel injuries and production losses on North Sea platforms for several years.
     One problem is that even though newer rigs have cutting-edge robotics technology, the software that controls their basic functions can still be old school. Many rely on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software, which was created in an era when "open source" was more important than security.
     "It's underappreciated how vulnerable some of these systems are," warned Jeff Vail, a former counterterrorism and intelligence analyst with the US Interior Department who talked with Greg Grant, author of the Foreign Policy article. "It is possible, if you really understood them, to cause catastrophic damage by causing safety systems to fail."
     The name of the article, by the way, was “The New Threat to Oil Supplies – Hackers.” It sounds a lot like “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US.”
     To be fair, the US government’s failure to address private-sector vulnerability to cyber attacks goes back decades. Until recently, however, Congress and various administrations hesitated to challenge the status quo. Given the vulnerability of crucial infrastructure and much of the private sector, surprisingly little was done to prepare for what sounds inevitable.
     The US Cyber Command has attempted to protect federal infrastructure, while various branches of the military have developed their own offensive capabilities. But not even the Department of Homeland Security is officially responsible for protecting the private sector.  Legal and privacy issues get in the way of having the government directly monitor the Internet or business operations for evidence of potential cyber attacks. As you might expect, many businesses are wary of the regulations that might accompany government help.
     Though cyber attacks have clearly happened, many leave no obvious trace. As Clarke explained, corporations tend to believe that the “millions of dollars they have spent on computer security systems means they have successfully protected their company’s secrets.” Unfortunately, they are wrong. Intrusion detection and prevention systems sometimes fail.
     As it stands, no single federal agency is responsible for defending the banking system, power grids and oil rigs from attacks. The prevailing logic is that businesses should handle their own security. Yet their experts readily admit that they wouldn’t know what to do if an attack came from another nation, and assume that defense in such a case would be the government’s job.That’s capitalist thinking for you, private interests but socialized costs.
     In 2011, a US Senate bill sponsored by Democrat Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe sought to change that, but became another victim of DC gridlock. It would have required the president to work with the private sector on a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, created a joint public-private advisory board, and led to a Senate-confirmed national security adviser position. Rockefeller said the goal was “unprecedented information sharing between government and the private sector.”
     James Fallows has argued that the US suffers from “a conspiracy of secrecy about the scale of cyber risk.” His point was that many companies simply won’t admit how easily they can be infiltrated. As a result, changes in the law, the regulatory environment, or personal habits that could increase safety are not seriously discussed.  
      But sooner or later, Fallows concluded, “the cyber equivalent of 9/11 will occur.” That prediction is bad enough. But then he adds, “if the real 9/11 is a model, we will understandably, but destructively, overreact.” 
      So we’ve also got that to look forward to.

Crimes of the Surveillance State: A Victim’s Story

By Greg Guma

"I was totally unprepared for today's bombshell revelations describing the NSA's efforts to defeat encryption,” wrote Professor Matthew Green on Sept. 5. “Not only does the worst possible hypothetical I discussed appear to be true, but it's true on a scale I couldn't even imagine."

Widely circulated online Green’s words reflected the betrayal felt by other scientists and academicians who have often worked in secret with the government. In response, however, the acting dean of the engineering school at Johns Hopkins asked him to take the post down and stop using the NSA logo as clip art. He also warned that if Green resisted or continued he would need a lawyer.

William A. Pierce, 1961

In covering this story, The UK Guardian concluded that if America's system of research universities “becomes captive to government and handmaiden to the surveillance state, that would be an economic and cultural crime of monstrous proportions.” Unfortunately, the crime was committed long ago.

Green’s story reminds me of a professor I met decades ago – William Pierce, a gifted mathematician, a former university professor with a Harvard Ph.D., and valedictorian of the University of Vermont’s 1943 graduating class. He was 57-years-old when we met in 1978 and was no long working at a university. But he’d attended a local talk about intelligence community abuses and claimed he had an even more explosive story to tell.

Even before the Internet it was easy to verify some details, particularly his academic credentials and past employment. William Augustus Pierce had indeed been an academic star. Born in Lyndonville in 1921, he’d received the highest academic grades as an undergraduate at UVM since John Dewey.

In 1950, attracted by “an excellent group of research scholars,” Pierce joined the Math Department at Syracuse University. But the City of Syracuse “was then a hotbed of anti-Communist activity,” he told me, “and the University was under considerable pressure to do something about ‘them reds on the faculty’ – especially the Jewish reds in the Math Department.”

A few months after he arrived, Dr. Donald Kibbey, then acting Math Department chair, fired two members of the Syracuse faculty for alleged activities in “controversial” political groups. Several other mathematicians submitted their resignations in solidarity, and one colleague, Prof. Paul Rosenbloom, warned Pierce that he “was terribly wrong to stay at Syracuse.”

More than 25 years later, he still chided himself for not listening and seeking a teaching post elsewhere, as some colleagues were doing. “I was certainly untrue to myself,” he admitted. “It was the worst mistake I have ever made. 

“At Harvard and Syracuse I was considered a left-winger,” Pierce acknowledged. “The label resulted partly from my membership in peace groups and opposition to the Cold War, but it was primarily my criticism of FBI investigations and security procedure in areas of human learning. There was some trouble, for instance, when I described Russian advances in certain fields of mathematics and science, and then urged that Americans wage a more effective, peaceable competition with the Soviet Union.”

“Listen buddy,” a colleague snapped in response, “”if you don’t like your Uncle Sammy, get the hell back to Russia.”

Pierce felt that security clearances were out of place in the academic community and didn’t hesitate to publicly say so. In April 1953, for example, he spoke out about a Presidential Executive Order establishing new security requirements for government employment that included a “loyalty” standard. To him it looked like a form of profiling, another tool of the notorious McCarthy era blacklist.

Earlier that year Prof. William Martin, head of the Syracuse Math department in the 1940s and then chair at M.I.T., had been called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Once a member of the Communist Party, he buckled under questioning and named others who he claimed had once joined the party.

“My Syracuse colleague Professor Abe Gelbart, Dean of Science and Technology at Yeshiva University in New York, was on the list,” Pierce said. “FBI agents moved into Gelbart’s situation and questioned him at length. They even asked him about his associations with me, and said they had observed us drinking in local restaurants.”

That summer Pierce nevertheless went to Los Angeles to consult for the National Security Agency (NSA) at UCLA. “I had a temporary, low-level clearance for work on S.C.A.M.P. and I suppose a security check was initiated.” S.C.A.M.P. was the acronym for the Southern California Applied Mathematics Project, a top secret operation conducted on behalf of the Defense Department. The official purpose was research on numerical analysis, but those involved focused mainly on cryptology.

It was a summer of suspicion and unsettling Cold War developments. On June 19, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted for the alleged theft of atomic bomb secrets. “Your country is sick with fear,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in response. A month later Fidel Castro led an attack on the Moncada barracks in Cuba, an early attempt to overthrow the Batista dictatorship. At his trial, the future Cuban leader proclaimed, “History will absolve me.”

A day after the Moncada attack, on July 27, an armistice ended the Korean War. More than 50,000 American had been killed in what had been designated a “police action,” at least 100,000 were wounded, and about 8,000 were still missing. Less than a month later, Mohammed Mossadegh, the elected Prime Minister of Iran, was overthrown. Few people knew it, but the coup had been orchestrated by the CIA.

While Bill Pierce was in L.A. he noticed headlines about Abe Gelbart’s HUAC appearance. On television Sen. Joseph McCarthy complained that his colleague was receiving a Fulbright Fellowship “even after taking the Fifth Amendment 47 times.” He also noticed reports that McCarthy was “setting out for California on another Alger Hiss case.”

Shortly after returning to Syracuse, Pierce’s government-funded research was abruptly cancelled.

One reason may have been Pierce claim that advanced technology was being used to control subversive activities. Directional bugging devices “were snooping and spying on undesirables,” he said. “Psychological harassment was being widely adopted.”

Most of what he said was hard to dispute. The development of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union, plus the memory of Pearl Harbor, had indeed made intelligence activities a high national priority. “You have to remember, people were desperate about the so-called Communist threat,” Pierce noted. “Some of them, although sincere and well-meaning, had a paranoid idea about domestic security that was being encouraged by ambitious opportunists. Vigilante extremism, faked investigations and security procedures sprang up across the country.”

A bit harder to accept at the time was his claim that “organized sociology” and “applied psychology” were being mobilized to manipulate reputations, attack the mental reliability of government critics, and conduct systematic psychological harassment. “There were fearsome new ways to attack the mental health, the very sanity, of their victims,” he said ominously.

Given that context, his theory was that he'd attracted the attention of some extreme anti-Communists at Syracuse. But it was “impractical to call me before HUAC or file judicial charges,” he concluded, “and so instead, they used underhanded psychological harassment to isolate me from the academic community.”

In 1955, when his troubles began, and in 1964, when he first committed his experiences to paper, he had no solid proof that mind control projects were being pursued by the federal government. But once the surviving MKULTRA documents were declassified in 1977 – most of them were destroyed before they could be reviewed by Congress -- his descriptions and speculation began to look uncannily close to the experiments being pursued at the exact same time by the CIA.

Even prior to MKULTRA, considerable research had been done by the government on amnesia, hypnotic couriers and efforts to create a Manchurian Candidate – a label commonly used after the release of a 1963 conspiracy thriller with that title. The CIA’s goal was to develop “brainwashing” techniques and program subjects with a hypnotically implanted trigger, thus turning them into secret agents who wouldn’t remember what they had done. In scientific terms, the objective was to deliberately and experimentally create dissociative identity disorders, with associated amnesia barriers, and use this technique in both simulated and actual covert operations.

MKULTRA was officially launched by the Central Intelligence Agency on April 3, 1953, and continued for a decade until it was rolled into another project, MKSEARCH, in 1964. That ran for another eight years, until CIA Director Richard Helms ordered most of the MK documents shredded in June 1972. Despite this, and redactions to most documents that survived, they revealed that there had been hundreds of separate “sub-projects.”

In an August 1963 “Report of Inspection of MKULTRA,” Deputy CIA Director Marshall Carter acknowledged a problem: “Research in the manipulation of human behavior is considered by many authorities in medicine and related fields to be professionally unethical, therefore the reputations of professional participants in the MKULTRA program are on occasion in jeopardy.” Beyond that, “the testing of MKULTRA products places the rights and interests of U.S. citizens in jeopardy.” As a result, the paper trail was being kept to a bare minimum, operational control was delegated to the Technical Services Division (TSD), and the entire project was exempted from audit.

During the preceding decade the “avenues to the control of human behavior” had expanded to include “radiation, electro-shock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices and materials.” 

Under a heading titled “Advanced testing of MKULTRA materials,” the 1963 CIA report asserted the “firm doctrine in TSD that testing of materials under accepted scientific procedure fails to disclose the full pattern of reactions and attributions that may occur in operational situations.” It added that TSD had “initiated a program for covert testing of materials on unwitting U.S, citizens in 1955,” the same year Pierce said that his own harassment began.

The ultimate test for any drug, device or technique, argued the report, was “application to unwitting subjects in normal life settings. It was noted earlier that the capabilities of MKULTRA substances to produce disabling or discrediting effects or to increase the effectiveness of interrogation of hostile subjects cannot be established solely through testing on volunteer populations.”

To keep the loop small and secure, “certain cleared and witting individuals in the Bureau of Narcotics” provided various drugs for testing on those “deemed desirable and feasible.” Some of the most “feasible” subjects were informers and criminals. But as the report added, “the effectiveness of the substances on individuals at all social levels, high and low, native American and foreign, is of great significance and testing has been performed on a variety of individuals within these categories.” After several tests the “subject has become ill for hours or days, including hospitalization in at least one case.”

By this time, Pierce was no longer at Syracuse. After a year at West Virginia University, he had moved to Stillwater to teach at Oklahoma State University in September, 1962. But he was still writing letters to prominent people and newspapers about “right-wing extremism” and “security procedures.”

In mid-October, he was removed from his teaching duties and ordered by the university administration to undergo a psychological examination. According to Pierce, extremists were trying to discredit him. But a few students, along with the manager of a local coffee shop, told President Oliver Willham that Pierce was the one creating the disturbances. Word rapidly spread across campus that he was “psycho.” It was precisely the type of harassment and discrediting tactics described in the MKULTRA documents.

In a letter written by Pierce and published in the Oklahoma City Times on Oct.19, 1962 the focus was the arrest and hospitalization of Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, whose fiery rhetoric had recently helped to spark a violent riot on the University of Mississippi campus. On September 30, after hundreds of people were wounded and two were killed, Walker was arrested on charges including sedition and insurrection.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered Walker held in a mental institution for 90 days of psychiatric examination. But that decision was challenged by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who argued that psychiatry shouldn’t be a political tool, as well as by the American Civil Liberties Union. After five days Kennedy backed down and Walker was released.

Pierce didn’t agree with Walker’s politics but did identify with his situation. “Admittedly, Walker’s extreme views on ‘liberals’ and his alleged defiance of the government (including alleged incitement to violence) suggest mental unbalance; but the presumptions of enforced mental tests and/or treatment should cause us grave concern,” he wrote. “It is only a short step from psychiatric tests for rioters to psychiatric tests for victims of crime and political persecution. A favorite technique of the latter is clever misuse of the ‘psychopath’ label; and, even worse, revolutionary devices of psychological warfare and brainwashing capable of crippling almost any human being, and in such a manner that the victim’s factual description of the attack sounds like mental illness.”

A few days after this letter was published a police officer and sheriff’s deputy showed up at Pierce’s apartment with a warrant for his arrest, apparently at the instigation of OSU President Willham. Although Sheriff Charlie Fowler had never met Pierce, the detention order claimed that Fowler had “personal knowledge” that he was violent and showed the potential to injure himself or others.

A week later, he was involuntarily committed and, without knowing it, placed in the care of Dr. Louis J. West, one of the CIA’s influential MKULTRA doctors.

Ever since Pierce shared his story I have been assembling the missing pieces. Before he died we wrote to many federal agencies, requesting any records they had about him under the Freedom of Information Act. All of them claimed that no such records existed. Yet just last week, as Matthew Green was dealing with his NSA problem, I conducted another online search and found some correspondence between Pierce and the CIA.

Dated August 1, 1960 and addressed to him at the Syracuse Math Department, it included this statement: “Mr. Dulles (CIA Director at the time) asked me to acknowledge and thank you for your letter of 9 July 1960 enclosing a message to Dr. Glennan of NASA and Mr. D.H. Lewis. The thoughtfulness in bringing our attention to your proposal is indeed appreciated.”

And what was the proposal? Electronic mental telepathy, Pierce called it. “Though the technical requirements have already been met, the process and application are new,” he wrote. It was basically a fishing expedition, an attempt to discover whether his suspicions were true. In a letter to NASA, he pointed to the work being done at the Aviation Medicine School in Texas, where tiny transmitters were being used for research, as well as cybernetic work underway to assist with space exploration, and “extensive use of various voice analyzers and signal separators.”

Every agency we wrote, including NASA, NSA and CIA, denied ever hearing from Pierce or knowing anything about him. Yet he apparently did get their attention.  

Greg Guma’s new novel, Dons of Time, which looks at the dangers of the surveillance state, will be released in October by Fomite Press. More of William Pierce's story will be released in coming months.

REBEL NEWS, 4/5/2013: Obama's Secret Trade Deal

Maverick Media’s Rebel News airs 9-10 a.m. (more or less) on Fridays on WOMM (105.9-FM/LP – The Radiator and live streaming). THIS WEEK: Obama’s secret deal, Labor amnesia, Fukushima fallout, America’s love affair with conspiracies, an attention deficit epidemic, guns in schools , college majors and unemployment, jails gone wild (shocking video from Maine!),  and local updates.  Here are highlights:

TOP STORY: Obama’s Secret Trade Deal

Out of public view the Obama administration is negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a US-led free trade deal with several Pacific Rim countries. Six hundred US corporate advisers have had input, but so far the text hasn’t been shared with the public or media.

     The level of secrecy is unprecedented. During discussions paramilitary teams guard the premises, helicopters loom overhead, and there’s a near-total media blackout on the subject. US Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the congressional committee with jurisdiction over TPP agreement, was denied access to the negotiation texts.

     In a floor statement to Congress Wyden said, “The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of US corporations — like Halliburton, Chevron, Comcast and the Motion Picture Association of America — are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.”

     The deal would give multinational corporations unprecedented rights to demand taxpayer compensation for policies they think will undermine their expected future profits -- straight from the treasuries of participating nations. It would push Big Pharma’s agenda in the developing world -- longer monopoly controls on drugs, drastically limiting access to affordable generic meds that people need. The TPP would undermine food safety by limiting labeling and forcing countries like the US to import food that fails to meet its national safety standards,  and ban Buy America or Buy Local preferences.

     The proposed legislation on intellectual property will have enormous impacts, including Internet termination for households, businesses, and organizations as an accepted penalty for copyright infringement. Nations who sign on to the deal would essentially submit themselves to oppressive IP restrictions designed by Hollywood, severely limiting their ability to digitally exchange information on sites like YouTube, where streaming videos are considered copyrightable.

     “Broader copyright and intellectual property rights demands by the US would lock up the Internet, stifle research and increase education costs, by extending existing generous copyright from 70 years to 120 years, and even making it a criminal offense to temporarily store files on a computer without authorization. The US, a net exporter of digital information, would be the only party to benefit from this,” said Patricia Ranald, convener of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network. 

ARMAGEDDON UPDATE

Reuters reports that the United States will soon send a missile defense system to Guam to defend it from North Korea. The U.S. military is adjusting to what Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has called a "real and clear danger" from Pyongyang. 

LABOR AMNESIA

Rediscovering the legacy

Automation and globalization continue to create massive labor displacement as corporations advance their interest while attempting to restrict the rights of workers. Labor’s fall from grace is a case of collective amnesia. The true, largely ignored history of the labor movement tells a different story... Revisiting May Day & the First Red Scare.  (Radio drama segment)

The Fukushima Effect 

Thyroid problems for US kids

Some bad news from Common Dreams -- Infants on the West Coast are showing increased incidents of thyroid abnormalities and researchers attribute it to radiation released after the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. According to a new study published in the Open Journal of Pediatrics, children born in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington between one week and 16 weeks after the meltdown began are 28 percent more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism.

     The abnormalities result from a build up of radioactive iodine in the thyroid and can result in stunted growth, lowered intelligence, deafness, and neurological abnormalities—although some can be treated if detected early. Because their bodies are more vulnerable and their cells grow faster than adults', infants are the proverbial 'canary in the coal mine' for injurious environmental effects.

     Earlier this year, the Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey found that more than 40 percent of the Japanese children studied showed evidence of thyroid abnormalities.

CONSPIRACY NATION

America Speaks: One quarter say Obama is the Anti-Christ

They aren’ t absolutely sure, but about a fourth of all Americans suspect that the President just might be the anti-christ. Of course, more than a third also believe that global warming is a hoax and more than half suspect that a secretive global elite is trying to set up a New World Order.

     The survey, conducted by Public Policy Polling, asked a sample of voters about a number of conspiracy theories, phrasing the questions in eye-catching language. The study revealed that 13% of respondents thought Obama was "the antichrist", while another 13% were "not sure" – just open to the possibility that he might be. Some 73% were able to say unequivocally that they didn’t think Obama was "the antichrist".

     The survey also showed that 37% of Americans thought that global warming was a hoax, while 12% were not sure and a slim majority – 51% – agreed with the overwhelming majority view of the scientific establishment and thought that it wasn’t. It indicates that 28% of people believed in a sinister global New World Order conspiracy which is aimed at ruling the whole world through authoritarian government. Another 25% were "not sure," and only – 46% – thought such a theory wasn’t true.

     Some theories were dismissed by large majorities. For example, only 7% said the moon landing was faked, 14% believed in Bigfoot, and 4% accepted that "shape-shifting alien reptilian people control our world by taking on human form." 5% believed that Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a double so the Beatles could continue their careers. Just 11% believe that the US government knowingly allowed the terror attacks of 11 September 2001 to take place. 

Head Games

One in five boys has ADHD

From Alternet  ...The number of young people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has increased remarkably over the past decade, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rise, reported in the New York Times, has led some to say that it is due to parent pressure on doctors and a loose definition of the disorder. The data says an estimated 6.4 million children aged 4 to 17 have received the diagnosis, a 16 percent increase from 2007 and a 53 percent rise over the last decade.

    The data says an estimated 6.4 million children aged 4 to 17 have received the diagnosis, a 16 percent increase from 2007 and a 53 percent rise over the last decade. Two-thirds of those diagnosed take meds like Ritalin and Adderall, which can lead to anxiety, addiction and potentially psychosis. Nearly one in five high school boys and 11 percent of all school-age children have ADHD, the data indicates.

     One Harvard professor of medicine said, “There’s a tremendous push where if the kid’s behavior is thought to be quote-unquote abnormal — if they’re not sitting quietly at their desk — that’s pathological, instead of just childhood.”

EDUCATION

Indiana could be first state to require guns in schools 

The NRA released its long-awaited "National School Shield Report" last week.  It’s a lengthy document that recommends schools arm and train staff members to carry guns. A few hours earlier, Indiana's House Education Committee advanced a similar measure -- but one that takes the NRA's logic even further. The NRA's "model" legislation would lift restrictions on guns in schools and require training for school employees who carry guns. But the Indiana proposal would make the state the first to require all public schools to have an armed person with a loaded weapon in the building during school hours.

     But the Indiana proposal would make the state the first to require all public schools to have an armed person with a loaded weapon in the building during school hours.  After receiving a yet-to-be-determined training course, any school employee -- a teacher, principal, or janitor -- could become the school's guard, called "school protection officers." The amendment doesn't specify which firearms the "officers" must hold or whether the guns should be visible or concealed.

     The amendment's sponsor, Rep. Jim Lucas (R), thinks mass shootings like the one in Newtown could be prevented by more firearms. "The way they are right now, school is a gun-free zone. Tragically we see the tragic consequences of gun-free zones, defenseless zones like the Colorado theater, Columbine, and Virginia Tech," Lucas told The Huffington Post Wednesday. "We have to work to overcome the stigma that firearms are a bad thing."

     According to Marc Egan, a lobbyist for the National Education Association, 27 states are now considering various laws that would arm people in schools. "This is not the right approach," he said. "Parents do not want to see their kids' schools turned into fortresses."

RELATED NEWS: A new report finds a clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws. The 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have an aggregate level of gun violence that is more than twice as high - 104 percent higher, in fact - than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.

  

POST-COLLEGE DEPRESSION

From CBS News… Here are the college majors with the highest unemployment rates. Top marks go to number 1. Clinical psychology, with 19.5% unemployment... 2. Miscellaneous fine arts 16.2%... 3. US history 15.1%... 4. Library science 15.0%... 5. a tie between Military technologies and educational psychology 10.9%.

     The rest of the list isn’t good news for prospective psychologists and those interested in the arts. But there are a few surprises: 6. Architecture 10.6%; 7. Industrial & organizational psychology 10.4%; 8. Miscellaneous psychology 10.3%; 9. Linguistics & comparative literature 10.2%; 10. (tie) Visual & performing arts; engineering & industrial management 9.2%.

     11. Engineering & industrial management 9.2%  (what’s up with this?) ;12. Social psychology 8.8%; 13. International business 8.5%; 14. Humanities 8.4%; 15. General social sciences 8.2%; 16. Commercial art & graphic design 8.1%; 17. Studio art 8.0%; 18. Pre-law & legal studies 7.9%; 19.  (tie) Materials engineering and materials science and composition & speech 7.7%; 20. Liberal arts 7.6%.

     21. (another tie) Fine arts and genetics 7.4%; 22. (tie) Film video & photography arts and cosmetology services & culinary arts 7.3%; 23. Philosophy & religious studies and neuroscience (tie) 7.2%; 24. Biochemical sciences 7.1%; 25. (tie) Journalism and sociology 7.0%.

VIDEO SHOCKER: JAILS GONE WILD

Maine provides the latest example of corrections staff abusing restraints and pepper spray, at times with deadly results. Other examples include: Nick Christie died in 2006 after being pepper sprayed twelve times and spending six hours naked in a restraint chair. As in Maine, guards placed a spit hood over him, ensuring he would breathe the liquid as long as he wore it. The case was ruled a homicide. 

     In Arizona, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio discontinued the use of restraint chairs in 2006 after three wrongful death lawsuits. And Jesse Lee Williams, Jr. was restrained when guards sprayed an entire can of pepper spray into a hood before putting it over his mouth as part of a savage beating. He died two days later.

     And now Paul Schlosser, a former military medic who was receiving treatment in a Maine prison for bipolar disorder and depression. In the video, Schlosser is in a restraint chair while his face is coated at close range with pepper spray from a canister intended for use on large crowds from a distance of 20 feet. Schlosser chokes and fights for breath.