Wikileaks Was Launched With Documents Intercepted From Tor | Threat Level | Wired.com: "Wikileaks Was Launched With Documents Intercepted From Tor
* By Kim Zetter Email Author
* June 1, 2010 |
* 4:28 pm |
* Categories: Breaches, Hacks and Cracks, privacy
*
Wikileaks, the controversial whistleblowing site that exposes secrets of governments and corporations, bootstrapped itself with a cache of documents obtained through an internet eavesdropping operation by one of its activists, according to a new profile of the organization’s founder.
The activist siphoned more than a million documents as they traveled across the internet through Tor, also known as “The Onion Router,” a sophisticated privacy tool that lets users navigate and send documents through the internet anonymously.
The siphoned documents, supposedly stolen by Chinese hackers or spies who were using the Tor network to transmit the data, were the basis for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s assertion in 2006 that his organization had already “received over one million documents from 13 countries” before his site was launched, according to the article in The New Yorker.
Only a small portion of those intercepted documents were ever posted on Wikileaks, but the new report is the first indication that some of the data and documents on WikiLeaks did not come from sources who intended for the documents to be seen or posted. It also explains an enduring mystery of Wikileaks’ launch: how the organization was able to amass a collection of secret documents before its website was open for business.
Tor is a sophisticated privacy tool endorsed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other civil liberties groups as a method for whistleblowers and human rights workers to communicate with journalists, among other uses. In its search for government and corporate secrets traveling through the Tor network, it’s conceivable that WikiLeaks may have also vacuumed up sensitive information from human rights workers who did not want their data seen by outsiders.
The interception may have legal implications, depending on what country the activist was based in. In the United States, the surreptitious interception of electronic communication is generally a violation of federal law, but the statute includes a broad exception for service providers who monitor their own networks for legitimate maintenance or security reasons. “The statutory language is broad enough that it might cover this and provide a defense,” says former U.S. federal prosecutor Mark Rasch.
The New Yorker article did not indicate whether WikiLeaks continues to intercept data from the Tor network. Assange did not immediately return a call for comment from Threat Level.
WikiLeaks uses a modified version of the Tor network for its own operations, moving document submissions through it to keep them private. WikiLeaks computers also reportedly feed “hundreds of thousands of fake submissions through these tunnels, obscuring the real documents,” according to The New Yorker.
The intercepted data was gathered from Tor sometime before or around December 2006, when Assange and fellow activists needed a substantial number of documents in their repository in order to be taken seriously as a viable tool for whistleblowers and others.
The solution came from one of the activists associated with the organization who owned and operated a server that was being used in the Tor anonymizing network. Tor works by using servers donated by volunteers around the world to bounce traffic around, en route to its destination. Traffic is encrypted through most of that route, and routed over a random path each time a person uses it.
Under Tor’s architecture, administrators at the entry point can identify the user’s IP address, but can’t read the content of the user’s correspondence or know its final destination. Each node in the network thereafter only knows the node from which it received the traffic, and it peels off a layer of encryption to reveal the next node to which it must forward the connection.
By necessity, however, the last node through which traffic passes has to decrypt the communication before delivering it to its final destination. Someone operating that exit node can therefore read the traffic passing through this server.
According to The New Yorker, “millions of secret transmissions passed through” the node the WikiLeaks activist operated — believed to be an exit node. The data included sensitive information of foreign governments.
The activist believed the data was being siphoned from computers around the world by hackers who appeared to be in China and who were using the Tor network to transmit the stolen data. The activist began recording the data as it passed through his node, and this became the basis for the trove of data Wikileaks said it had “received.”
The first document WikiLeaks posted at its launch was a “secret decision” signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Somali rebel leader for the Islamic Courts Union. The document, which called for hiring hit men to execute government officials, had been siphoned from the Tor network.
Assange and the others were uncertain of its authenticity, but they thought that readers, using Wikipedia-like features of the site, would help analyze it. They published the decision with a lengthy commentary, which asked, “Is it a bold manifesto by a flamboyant Islamic militant with links to Bin Laden? Or is it a clever smear by US intelligence, designed to discredit the Union, fracture Somali alliances and manipulate China?”
The document’s authenticity was never determined, and news about Wikileaks quickly superseded the leak itself.
Since then, the site has published numerous sensitive documents related to the U.S. military, foreign governments and corporations. Wikileaks made headlines in April when it published a classified U.S. Army video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in an Iraqi neighborhood. The raid killed at least 18 people — including two Reuters employees — and injured two children.
WikiLeaks, whose website is hosted primarily through a Swedish Internet service provider called PRQ.se, never reveals the sources of its documents, and in the case of the Apache video, Assange has said only that it came from someone who was angry about the military’s frequent use of the term “collateral damage.”
The New Yorker doesn’t identify the WikiLeaks activist who was the source for the documents siphoned from Tor, but the description of how the documents were obtained is similar to how a Swedish computer security consultant named Dan Egerstad intercepted government data from five Tor exit nodes he set up in 2007 — months after Wikileaks launched — in Sweden, Asia, the United States and elsewhere.
Egerstad told Threat Level in August 2007 that he was able to read thousands of private e-mail messages sent by foreign embassies and human rights groups around the world by turning portions of the Tor internet-anonymity service into his own private listening post. The intercepted data included user names and passwords for e-mail accounts of government workers, as well as correspondence belonging to the Indian ambassador to China, various politicians in Hong Kong, workers in the Dalai Lama’s liaison office and several human rights groups in Hong Kong.
Egerstad, who says he has no association with WikiLeaks and was not the source for the intercepted Tor documents the site received, told Threat Level at the time that he believed hackers were using the Tor network to transmit data stolen from government computers and that he was able to view the data as it passed through his node unencrypted.
Egerstad was never able to determine the identity of the hackers behind the data he intercepted, but it’s believed that he may have stumbled across the so-called Ghost Net network — an electronic spy network that had infiltrated the computers of government offices, NGOs and activist groups in more than 100 countries since at least the spring of 2007.
The Ghost Net network was exposed by other researchers last year who discovered that hackers — believed by some to be based in China — were surreptitiously stealing documents and eavesdropping on electronic correspondence on more than 1,200 computers at embassies, foreign ministries, news media outlets and nongovernmental organizations based primarily in South and Southeast Asia.
It’s not known if the data the WikiLeaks activist siphoned was data stolen by the Ghost Net hackers.
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Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Smokescreen demo: a Flash player in JavaScript
Smokescreen demo: a Flash player in JavaScript: "Smokescreen demo: a Flash player in JavaScript. Chris Smoak’s Smokescreen, “a Flash player written in JavaScript”, is an incredible piece of work. It runs entirely in the browser, reads in SWF binaries, unzips them (in native JS), extracts images and embedded audio and turns them in to base64 encoded data:uris, then stitches the vector graphics back together as animated SVG. Open up the Chrome Web Inspector while the demo is running and you can see the SVG changing in real time. Smokescreen even implements its own ActionScript bytecode interpreter. It’s stated intention is to allow Flash banner ads to execute on the iPad and iPhone, but there are plenty of other interesting applications (such as news site infographics). The company behind it have announced plans to open source it in the near future. My one concern is performance—the library is 175 KB and over 8,000 lines of JavaScript which might cause problems on low powered mobile devices.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Slashdot Hardware Story | iRobot Demonstrates New Weaponized Robot
Slashdot Hardware Story | iRobot Demonstrates New Weaponized Robot: "'According to this IEEE story, iRobot and the US military have released video showing a weaponized version of iRobot's Warrior robot. In the video, the Warrior is seen firing a weapon system called the APOBS (Anti-Personnel Obstacle Breaching System), a grenade-filled line propelled by a rocket and stabilized by a drogue parachute. This system is used to clear minefields and obstructed roads. The video shows soldiers deploying a Warrior with the APOBS mounted on its back. The robot fires the device, which lands along a dirt road, exploding after a few seconds. A voice is then heard, 'Road clear; proceed forward.''
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14 | Danger Room | Wired.com
Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14 | Danger Room | Wired.com: "Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14
* By Noah Shachtman Email Author
* October 18, 2007 |
* 9:00 am |
* Categories: Weapons and Ammo
*
35mmfiring
We’re not used to thinking of them this way. But many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic — picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger. Most of the time. Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own. The South African National Defence Force 'is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday.'
SA National Defence Force spokesman brigadier general Kwena Mangope says the cause of the malfunction is not yet known…
Media reports say the shooting exercise, using live ammunition, took place at the SA Army’s Combat Training Centre, at Lohatlha, in the Northern Cape, as part of an annual force preparation endeavour.
Mangope told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have,' he said. 'It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers.' [More details here -- ed.]
Other reports have suggested a computer error might have been to blame. Defence pundit Helmoed-Römer Heitman told the Weekend Argus that if “the cause lay in computer error, the reason for the tragedy might never be found.'
The anti-aircraft weapon, an Oerlikon GDF-005, is designed to use passive and active radar, as well as laser target designators range finders, to lock on to 'high-speed, low-flying aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and cruise missiles.' In 'automatic mode,'
the weapon feeds targeting data from the fire control unit straight to the pair of
35mm guns, and reloads on its own when its emptied its magazine.
Electronics engineer and defence company CEO
Richard Young says he can’t believe the incident was purely a mechanical fault. He says his company, C2I2, in the mid 1990s, was involved in two air defence artillery upgrade programmes, dubbed Projects Catchy and Dart.
During the shooting trials at Armscor’s Alkantpan shooting range, “I
personally saw a gun go out of control several times,” Young says.
“They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging.
The weapon eventually knocked the pol[e]s down.”
According to The Star, 'a female artillery officer risked her life… in a desperate bid ' to save members of her battery from the gun.'
But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position.
By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.
ALSO:
* Roomba-Maker unveils Kill-Bot
* New Armed Robot Groomed for War
* Armed Robots Pushed to Police
* Armed Robots Go Into Action
* Cops Demand Drones
* First Armed Robots on Patrol in Iraq
* Unmanned 'Surge': 3000 More Robots for War
* Taser-Armed ‘Bot Ready to Zap Pathetic Humans
* Top War Tech #5: Talon Robots
* More Robot Grunts Ready for Duty
* Israel’s Killer ‘Bot: Safe Enough for War?
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
* By Noah Shachtman Email Author
* October 18, 2007 |
* 9:00 am |
* Categories: Weapons and Ammo
*
35mmfiring
We’re not used to thinking of them this way. But many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic — picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger. Most of the time. Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own. The South African National Defence Force 'is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday.'
SA National Defence Force spokesman brigadier general Kwena Mangope says the cause of the malfunction is not yet known…
Media reports say the shooting exercise, using live ammunition, took place at the SA Army’s Combat Training Centre, at Lohatlha, in the Northern Cape, as part of an annual force preparation endeavour.
Mangope told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have,' he said. 'It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers.' [More details here -- ed.]
Other reports have suggested a computer error might have been to blame. Defence pundit Helmoed-Römer Heitman told the Weekend Argus that if “the cause lay in computer error, the reason for the tragedy might never be found.'
The anti-aircraft weapon, an Oerlikon GDF-005, is designed to use passive and active radar, as well as laser target designators range finders, to lock on to 'high-speed, low-flying aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and cruise missiles.' In 'automatic mode,'
the weapon feeds targeting data from the fire control unit straight to the pair of
35mm guns, and reloads on its own when its emptied its magazine.
Electronics engineer and defence company CEO
Richard Young says he can’t believe the incident was purely a mechanical fault. He says his company, C2I2, in the mid 1990s, was involved in two air defence artillery upgrade programmes, dubbed Projects Catchy and Dart.
During the shooting trials at Armscor’s Alkantpan shooting range, “I
personally saw a gun go out of control several times,” Young says.
“They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging.
The weapon eventually knocked the pol[e]s down.”
According to The Star, 'a female artillery officer risked her life… in a desperate bid ' to save members of her battery from the gun.'
But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position.
By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.
ALSO:
* Roomba-Maker unveils Kill-Bot
* New Armed Robot Groomed for War
* Armed Robots Pushed to Police
* Armed Robots Go Into Action
* Cops Demand Drones
* First Armed Robots on Patrol in Iraq
* Unmanned 'Surge': 3000 More Robots for War
* Taser-Armed ‘Bot Ready to Zap Pathetic Humans
* Top War Tech #5: Talon Robots
* More Robot Grunts Ready for Duty
* Israel’s Killer ‘Bot: Safe Enough for War?
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Mark Zuckerberg: An Entrepreneur’s Perspective
Mark Zuckerberg: An Entrepreneur’s Perspective: "Mark Zuckerberg: An Entrepreneur’s Perspective
Post image for Mark Zuckerberg: An Entrepreneur’s Perspective
by Hunter Beaumont | May 31, 2010, 11:20pm EST
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Preface
Well first of all I just wanted to take a second and let you all know about a new Blog Post Mini-Series we’ll be doing here at The Roach Post. We’re planning on putting a few of the best and brightest innovators of our day in the spotlight as we explain what they’ve done and what we like about them. You’ll see names like Chris Sacca, Dave McClure, this post’s Mark Zuckerberg, and others. We’ve done our homework on these individuals, and you’re the ones that’ll benefit from it. As a disclaimer: we do not plan to focus on these individual’s artistic preferences, spending habits, or celebrity girlfriends (for that type of editorial, please refer yourself to TMZ.com, or OMG.com ). Instead, we will introduce each of these business-world rock stars, explain a little about them, and tell you why we think you should pay attention to them. Stick around for a bit, you might learn something!
Mark Zuckerberg: CEO and Founder of Facebook
To begin, I would like to throw out a number that is probably way too big to understand: 570 Billion. Yeah, that’s right: 570 Billion. That’s the number of pages Facebook.com users viewed last year, according to Google’s List of the 1000 Most Visited Websites. 570 Billion unique page views equates to about 100 pages per human being per year, or the equivalent of every person on this planet looking at one Facebook page every four days. Those are pretty serious numbers.
570 Million page views also happened to be enough to launch Mark Zuckerberg into the #158 spot on the 2009 Forbes 400, making him a 25 year old bachelor worth about $2 Billion. Not quite as much as 570 Billion, but also not too bad for only six years work. Mark is an incredibly fortunate individual. He was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time, and he had the initiative to take a risk and start a company that changed the world. That’s the reason I look at Mark Zuckerberg as an entrepreneurial hero: he saw his chance and ran with it, and in so doing, he rekindled hope in the American dream.
But wait, isn’t everyone angry at Mark Zuckerberg right now? Isn’t he stealing all our personal information? Doesn’t he have a website with a Privacy Policy longer than the Constitution of the United States? I understand these concerns. There has recently been a lot of heated debate about Privacy and what exactly Facebook has rights to. While I understand that this is a serious debate, I have but one suggestion: If you don’t like Facebook, don’t join it! I’d like to remind you that Facebook is both completely free and voluntary. If you don’t like the Privacy Policy, delete your account. Enough people doing that is bound to draw some of Mark’s attention. Anyway, I’m straying from my point.
Six years ago a college student named Mark created a completely free service that is now the most viewed website on the internet. Mark’s company employs only a few hundred people, but has over 400 Million members. Mark has changed the world as we know it. He’s helped friends and family stay more connected all over the world, and he’s created an immense Net Positive Benefit to society. I feel that he’s created an even more enourmous benefit to entrepreneurs in the form of hope. Mark has reminded us just how powerful a good idea is. He has also reminded us of how scalable internet companies can be. His success motivates many of us to action. My challenge to every entrepreneur reading this article is to learn a lesson from Mark Zuckerberg. It isn’t every day that a company goes from zero to 400 Million users in six years. I invite you all to gain from Mark’s successes. Check out his Wikipedia page. Google him. Read his Op-Ed in the Washington Post concerning Facebook’s Privacy Policy. Do anything you can to learn about him and from him. I bet there’s something in his story that can motivate you to take a risk and reap your due reward.
May we all have the success we’ve always dreamed of,
Hunter Beaumont
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Post image for Mark Zuckerberg: An Entrepreneur’s Perspective
by Hunter Beaumont | May 31, 2010, 11:20pm EST
Digg this Buzz this Share on Facebook Post to Twitter
Preface
Well first of all I just wanted to take a second and let you all know about a new Blog Post Mini-Series we’ll be doing here at The Roach Post. We’re planning on putting a few of the best and brightest innovators of our day in the spotlight as we explain what they’ve done and what we like about them. You’ll see names like Chris Sacca, Dave McClure, this post’s Mark Zuckerberg, and others. We’ve done our homework on these individuals, and you’re the ones that’ll benefit from it. As a disclaimer: we do not plan to focus on these individual’s artistic preferences, spending habits, or celebrity girlfriends (for that type of editorial, please refer yourself to TMZ.com, or OMG.com ). Instead, we will introduce each of these business-world rock stars, explain a little about them, and tell you why we think you should pay attention to them. Stick around for a bit, you might learn something!
Mark Zuckerberg: CEO and Founder of Facebook
To begin, I would like to throw out a number that is probably way too big to understand: 570 Billion. Yeah, that’s right: 570 Billion. That’s the number of pages Facebook.com users viewed last year, according to Google’s List of the 1000 Most Visited Websites. 570 Billion unique page views equates to about 100 pages per human being per year, or the equivalent of every person on this planet looking at one Facebook page every four days. Those are pretty serious numbers.
570 Million page views also happened to be enough to launch Mark Zuckerberg into the #158 spot on the 2009 Forbes 400, making him a 25 year old bachelor worth about $2 Billion. Not quite as much as 570 Billion, but also not too bad for only six years work. Mark is an incredibly fortunate individual. He was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time, and he had the initiative to take a risk and start a company that changed the world. That’s the reason I look at Mark Zuckerberg as an entrepreneurial hero: he saw his chance and ran with it, and in so doing, he rekindled hope in the American dream.
But wait, isn’t everyone angry at Mark Zuckerberg right now? Isn’t he stealing all our personal information? Doesn’t he have a website with a Privacy Policy longer than the Constitution of the United States? I understand these concerns. There has recently been a lot of heated debate about Privacy and what exactly Facebook has rights to. While I understand that this is a serious debate, I have but one suggestion: If you don’t like Facebook, don’t join it! I’d like to remind you that Facebook is both completely free and voluntary. If you don’t like the Privacy Policy, delete your account. Enough people doing that is bound to draw some of Mark’s attention. Anyway, I’m straying from my point.
Six years ago a college student named Mark created a completely free service that is now the most viewed website on the internet. Mark’s company employs only a few hundred people, but has over 400 Million members. Mark has changed the world as we know it. He’s helped friends and family stay more connected all over the world, and he’s created an immense Net Positive Benefit to society. I feel that he’s created an even more enourmous benefit to entrepreneurs in the form of hope. Mark has reminded us just how powerful a good idea is. He has also reminded us of how scalable internet companies can be. His success motivates many of us to action. My challenge to every entrepreneur reading this article is to learn a lesson from Mark Zuckerberg. It isn’t every day that a company goes from zero to 400 Million users in six years. I invite you all to gain from Mark’s successes. Check out his Wikipedia page. Google him. Read his Op-Ed in the Washington Post concerning Facebook’s Privacy Policy. Do anything you can to learn about him and from him. I bet there’s something in his story that can motivate you to take a risk and reap your due reward.
May we all have the success we’ve always dreamed of,
Hunter Beaumont
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Abortion Physicians Face Barriers : Ms Magazine Blog
Abortion Physicians Face Barriers : Ms Magazine Blog: "Abortion Physicians Face Barriers
June 1, 2010 by Carol King · 3 Comments
Many people graduate from medical residency programs ready to start rewarding careers in obstetrics and gynecology with the best intentions. They’re prepared to provide patients with total reproductive health care, which includes abortions. But their idealism is soon crushed by the medical establishment’s significant opposition to abortion.
It came as a surprise to Lori Freedman, Ph.D., Research Associate at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). As lead author of the study “Obstacles to the Integration of Abortion into Obstetrics and Gynecology Practice,” Freedman conducted in-depth interviews with 18 doctors who had planned to offer abortions after graduating from their residency programs five to 10 years earlier. Only three were in fact doing so.
Freedman and her co-authors didn’t expect to find so many physicians who ran up against “significant professional barriers” when they expressed an interest in providing abortions. She expected to find “more of the focus on fear of violence and controversy, maybe some moral dilemmas” for those who weren’t providing abortions, but she discovered something else:
Many assume that young physicians give up abortion practice because they are afraid of violence or ignorant of the history of illegal abortion and deaths associated with it. I don’t believe that is really the problem. The physicians I spoke with were quite aware of the history and the importance of safe and compassionate abortion care for women.
The barriers are formal and informal; some are explicit before hiring and some surface after hiring. Some of the new hires are gently advised, “We’re not going to be doing that.” Others receive specific warnings. One doctor in the study was threatened in an interview by the outgoing senior partner.
He leaned across the desk and said, “If I ever find out you did elective abortions any time in your professional life, you’ll never practice medicine in [this state] again. Do you understand that?”
A few of the doctors who tried to moonlight as abortion providers soon found out that was also prohibited.
New physicians have little power and professional support, so their ability to change the status quo is nil. Freedman and her co-authors believe that providing training in contract negotiation and conflict management may help these doctors continue to provide abortions as they transition from residency programs to practice. Young doctors can also benefit from ongoing contact with pro-choice colleagues and community members.
Freedman hopes that the study will help improve abortion care simply by revealing the impediments faced by potential providers:
Much effort has gone to motivating individual medical students and residents to provide abortion, which is imperative. However, this study shows that individual-level motivation can only take them so far. They need support and they need information about obstacles they may face in practice before they get there, so they can choose their jobs accordingly. And I hope that the study will cause some larger organizations, private practice groups and hospitals to take a look at what kinds of barriers to abortion care they are perpetuating.”
We need to dismantle those barriers. Why should any doctor be prohibited from providing a legal medical procedure? It’s not an option if it’s not available.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
June 1, 2010 by Carol King · 3 Comments
Many people graduate from medical residency programs ready to start rewarding careers in obstetrics and gynecology with the best intentions. They’re prepared to provide patients with total reproductive health care, which includes abortions. But their idealism is soon crushed by the medical establishment’s significant opposition to abortion.
It came as a surprise to Lori Freedman, Ph.D., Research Associate at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). As lead author of the study “Obstacles to the Integration of Abortion into Obstetrics and Gynecology Practice,” Freedman conducted in-depth interviews with 18 doctors who had planned to offer abortions after graduating from their residency programs five to 10 years earlier. Only three were in fact doing so.
Freedman and her co-authors didn’t expect to find so many physicians who ran up against “significant professional barriers” when they expressed an interest in providing abortions. She expected to find “more of the focus on fear of violence and controversy, maybe some moral dilemmas” for those who weren’t providing abortions, but she discovered something else:
Many assume that young physicians give up abortion practice because they are afraid of violence or ignorant of the history of illegal abortion and deaths associated with it. I don’t believe that is really the problem. The physicians I spoke with were quite aware of the history and the importance of safe and compassionate abortion care for women.
The barriers are formal and informal; some are explicit before hiring and some surface after hiring. Some of the new hires are gently advised, “We’re not going to be doing that.” Others receive specific warnings. One doctor in the study was threatened in an interview by the outgoing senior partner.
He leaned across the desk and said, “If I ever find out you did elective abortions any time in your professional life, you’ll never practice medicine in [this state] again. Do you understand that?”
A few of the doctors who tried to moonlight as abortion providers soon found out that was also prohibited.
New physicians have little power and professional support, so their ability to change the status quo is nil. Freedman and her co-authors believe that providing training in contract negotiation and conflict management may help these doctors continue to provide abortions as they transition from residency programs to practice. Young doctors can also benefit from ongoing contact with pro-choice colleagues and community members.
Freedman hopes that the study will help improve abortion care simply by revealing the impediments faced by potential providers:
Much effort has gone to motivating individual medical students and residents to provide abortion, which is imperative. However, this study shows that individual-level motivation can only take them so far. They need support and they need information about obstacles they may face in practice before they get there, so they can choose their jobs accordingly. And I hope that the study will cause some larger organizations, private practice groups and hospitals to take a look at what kinds of barriers to abortion care they are perpetuating.”
We need to dismantle those barriers. Why should any doctor be prohibited from providing a legal medical procedure? It’s not an option if it’s not available.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Happiness May Come With Age, Study Says - NYTimes.com
Happiness May Come With Age, Study Says - NYTimes.com: "Happiness May Come With Age, Study Says
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: May 31, 2010
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It is inevitable. The muscles weaken. Hearing and vision fade. We get wrinkled and stooped. We can’t run, or even walk, as fast as we used to. We have aches and pains in parts of our bodies we never even noticed before. We get old.
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It sounds miserable, but apparently it is not. A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.
“It could be that there are environmental changes,” said Arthur A. Stone, the lead author of a new study based on the survey, “or it could be psychological changes about the way we view the world, or it could even be biological — for example brain chemistry or endocrine changes.”
The telephone survey, carried out in 2008, covered more than 340,000 people nationwide, ages 18 to 85, asking various questions about age and sex, current events, personal finances, health and other matters.
The survey also asked about “global well-being” by having each person rank overall life satisfaction on a 10-point scale, an assessment many people may make from time to time, if not in a strictly formalized way.
Finally, there were six yes-or-no questions: Did you experience the following feelings during a large part of the day yesterday: enjoyment, happiness, stress, worry, anger, sadness. The answers, the researchers say, reveal “hedonic well-being,” a person’s immediate experience of those psychological states, unencumbered by revised memories or subjective judgments that the query about general life satisfaction might have evoked.
The results, published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were good news for old people, and for those who are getting old. On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.
In measuring immediate well-being — yesterday’s emotional state — the researchers found that stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s.
Other experts were impressed with the work. Andrew J. Oswald, a professor of psychology at Warwick Business School in England, who has published several studies on human happiness, called the findings important and, in some ways, heartening. “It’s a very encouraging fact that we can expect to be happier in our early 80s than we were in our 20s,” he said. “And it’s not being driven predominantly by things that happen in life. It’s something very deep and quite human that seems to be driving this.”
Dr. Stone, who is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, said that the findings raised questions that needed more study. “These results say there are distinctive patterns here,” he said, “and it’s worth some research effort to try to figure out what’s going on. Why at age 50 does something seem to start to change?”
The study was not designed to figure out which factors make people happy, and the poll’s health questions were not specific enough to draw any conclusions about the effect of disease or disability on happiness in old age. But the researchers did look at four possibilities: the sex of the interviewee, whether the person had a partner, whether there were children at home and employment status. “These are four reasonable candidates,” Dr. Stone said, “but they don’t make much difference.”
For people under 50 who may sometimes feel gloomy, there may be consolation here. The view seems a bit bleak right now, but look at the bright side: you are getting old.
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By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: May 31, 2010
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It is inevitable. The muscles weaken. Hearing and vision fade. We get wrinkled and stooped. We can’t run, or even walk, as fast as we used to. We have aches and pains in parts of our bodies we never even noticed before. We get old.
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It sounds miserable, but apparently it is not. A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.
“It could be that there are environmental changes,” said Arthur A. Stone, the lead author of a new study based on the survey, “or it could be psychological changes about the way we view the world, or it could even be biological — for example brain chemistry or endocrine changes.”
The telephone survey, carried out in 2008, covered more than 340,000 people nationwide, ages 18 to 85, asking various questions about age and sex, current events, personal finances, health and other matters.
The survey also asked about “global well-being” by having each person rank overall life satisfaction on a 10-point scale, an assessment many people may make from time to time, if not in a strictly formalized way.
Finally, there were six yes-or-no questions: Did you experience the following feelings during a large part of the day yesterday: enjoyment, happiness, stress, worry, anger, sadness. The answers, the researchers say, reveal “hedonic well-being,” a person’s immediate experience of those psychological states, unencumbered by revised memories or subjective judgments that the query about general life satisfaction might have evoked.
The results, published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were good news for old people, and for those who are getting old. On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18.
In measuring immediate well-being — yesterday’s emotional state — the researchers found that stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s.
Other experts were impressed with the work. Andrew J. Oswald, a professor of psychology at Warwick Business School in England, who has published several studies on human happiness, called the findings important and, in some ways, heartening. “It’s a very encouraging fact that we can expect to be happier in our early 80s than we were in our 20s,” he said. “And it’s not being driven predominantly by things that happen in life. It’s something very deep and quite human that seems to be driving this.”
Dr. Stone, who is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, said that the findings raised questions that needed more study. “These results say there are distinctive patterns here,” he said, “and it’s worth some research effort to try to figure out what’s going on. Why at age 50 does something seem to start to change?”
The study was not designed to figure out which factors make people happy, and the poll’s health questions were not specific enough to draw any conclusions about the effect of disease or disability on happiness in old age. But the researchers did look at four possibilities: the sex of the interviewee, whether the person had a partner, whether there were children at home and employment status. “These are four reasonable candidates,” Dr. Stone said, “but they don’t make much difference.”
For people under 50 who may sometimes feel gloomy, there may be consolation here. The view seems a bit bleak right now, but look at the bright side: you are getting old.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
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