tele-justice India Style

The Government of India has taken nation-wide project to connect jails and district courts across the country via a tele-justice or video conferencing system. With the help of tele-justice, the accused can now be present in a court through a video link, established on ISDN lines, between the prison and the court.

Indian States like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Bihar have already introduced tele-justice. In Maharashtra, more than 40 jails in and around Mumbai are connected to district level courts through video conferencing. The government is planning to connect 300 jails 2,000 courts through video-conferencing. Polycom, a global player in unified collaborative communications, is to deploy video conferencing equipment across various judiciaries and prisons in India. Andhra Pradesh was one of the first Indian states to introduce these electronic trails, connecting 15 district courts with prisons and installing 31 video endpoints. The tele-conferencing systems allow judges, legal professionals, court officials, inmates and witnesses to seamlessly communicate face-to-face in real-time. Video-conferencing also help to connect more than one courtroom during a trial, and enables the use of more than one application. The system provides a simple user interface, which allows non-technical users such as judges and court staff, to easily operate and maintain the judicial video conferencing system.

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e-mail explaining that the sender was hired and already paid by someone to kill them

Fairfax County Police said officers have received several complaints of extortion attempts over the last few months. The e-mails are a scam, police said.
In many cases, a person opens an e-mail explaining that the sender was hired and already paid by someone to kill them. The e-mail further states that the person could pay a fee to spare their life. The sender requests an e-mail reply to discuss the money transfer.Police say recipients should not reply to these e-mails. The investigation into these e-mails revealed they are not legitimate, but instead a ploy to obtain financial or personal information. Giving this type of information could lead to identity theft. Police are urging anyone who receives this type of e-mail to report them to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at www.ic3.gov. The IC3 is a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.

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computer engineer Fouad Mourtada accused of posing as a member of the Moroccan royal family on the social networking Web site

A computer engineer accused of posing as a member of the Moroccan royal family on the social networking Web site, Facebook, has been sentenced to three years in prison. A court in Casablanca imposed the sentence on Fouad Mourtada, 26, on Friday, the state news agency said.
Mourtada was charged with stealing the identity of Prince Moulay Rachid, the younger brother of the Moroccan king, and of forging computer documents.
Lawyers for Mourtada, who said he created the profile as "a joke, a gag," said they would appeal the sentence.
Since Mourtada's arrest this month, bloggers in Morocco and across Europe have rallied behind him. At least seven fake profiles for the prince popped up on Facebook.
In a Web site that his family started, www.helpfouad.com, Mourtada is quoted as saying the following to relatives who visited him in jail: "I never thought that by creating a profile of his Highness Prince Moulay Rachid I am harming him in any way.
"I, as a matter of fact, did not send any message from that account to anyone. It was just a joke, a gag. ... I am not an evil doer; my ambition in the life was simply to have a stable job and a normal life."
Facebook, like Myspace.com, is a social networking site that allows users to create personal profiles. They can then connect with one another, upload photos and share links. The Web site boasts more than 60 million active users.
There are fake profiles galore on Facebook, with dozens for U.S. President George W. Bush and a handful for Mother Teresa.
In addition to the prison sentence, the court fined Mourtada 10,000 Dirhams ($1,304), Maghreb Arabe Presse reported.

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copycat killer targeting prostitutes in Edmonton

copycat killer targeting prostitutes in Edmonton. It's one way to explain the discovery Thursday of another slain prostitute in Strathcona County, a top serial killer expert told Sun Media. It came just days after the start of the Thomas Svekla murder trial. Charged with the second-degree murder of local prostitutes Theresa Innes and Rachel Quinney, Svekla told police he found Quinney's body near Fort Saskatchewan in 2004, not far from where cops found Innes's body in Svekla's sister's garage in 2006. Jack Levin, one of the foremost experts on serial killers and author and co-director of the Brudnick Center on Conflict and Violence at Northeastern University in Massachusetts, said the case of the most recent victim, Brianna Torvalson, is intriguing. Unlike most of the other 15 women found slain around the city in recent years, her body was left where it could be found quickly. Levin said that's a hallmark of a copycat killer in search of their own 15 minutes of fame. "I wouldn't be surprised to find more than one serial killer (working around Edmonton), but it's somewhat more likely that this is a copycat phenomenon, especially with (Torvalson's) killing coming so early in the (Svekla) trial.
"It's the ideal time to strike, when people are thinking about (slain prostitutes). The attraction is this element of irony, where the alleged killer is being tried yet new killings are being committed on the streets. "It's almost a taunting of law enforcement," he said. University of Alberta criminologist Kevin Haggerty said the publicity could encourage killers to use Strathcona County as a body dump. "Once an area gets a reputation as a safe dumping ground I don't think it's unusual that a new body should be found there. "Southeast Edmonton and Strathcona County have a reputation as a private place to take prostitutes. Continuing reputations like that generate their own outcomes." Haggerty expects police will continue to be overwhelmed by prostitute killings in Canada until laws governing the practice are changed. "What creates the problem is the law itself, which pushes it out into unsafe areas." Meanwhile, Torvalson's parents and sister issued a brief media statement yesterday saying she was a "loving, caring, beautiful, irreplaceable soul ... who struggled with many demons and a drug addiction that drew her to street life. "Brianna's murder has created a hole in all her family's life that can never be filled ..." the statement continues.
The family said they hope her death "serves as a reminder to all parents to never miss an opportunity to let their children know that they are loved and to never give up on those that are struggling." The statement did not include the names of the family members. Torvalson's former roommate, Patrick Wight, said he lost contact with her after she became "heavily involved with drugs."
"I would hear about her periodically, and every time worse than the last ... even her family had not heard from her in some time," he said.
"I knew her as a bright young girl with a (promising) future. It is a tragic ending that didn't need to be."

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