Megan Meier was one of untold numbers of underaged teenagers who have joined MySpace. The tragedy of her suicide, and the stunning sequence of events that brought it about, force us to confront the potential dangers that minors face when venturing online. Megan Meier’s suicide has been reported in a detailed article, published in the St. Charles Journal. Here is an excerpt:

“Megan had a lifelong struggle with weight and self-esteem,” Tina says. “And now she finally had a boy who she thought really thought she was pretty.”

It did seem odd, Tina says, that Josh never asked for Megan’s phone number. And when Megan asked for his, she says, Josh said he didn’t have a cell and his mother did not yet have a landline.

And then on Sunday, Oct. 15, 2006, Megan received a puzzling and disturbing message from Josh. Tina recalls that it said: “I don’t know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I’ve heard that you are not very nice to your friends.”

Frantic, Megan shot back: “What are you talking about?”

SHADOWY CYBERSPACE

Tina Meier was wary of the cyber-world of MySpace and its 70 million users. People are not always who they say they are.

Tina knew firsthand. Megan and the girl down the block, the former friend, once had created a fake MySpace account, using the photo of a good-looking girl as a way to talk to boys online, Tina says. When Tina found out, she ended Megan’s access.

MySpace has rules. A lot of them. There are nine pages of terms and conditions. The long list of prohibited content includes sexual material. And users must be at least 14.

“Are you joking?” Tina asks. “There are fifth-grade girls who have MySpace accounts.”

As for sexual content, Tina says, most parents have no clue how much there is. And Megan wasn’t 14 when she opened her account. To join, you are asked your age but there is no check. The accounts are free.

As Megan’s 14th birthday approached, she pleaded for her mom to give her another chance on MySpace, and Tina relented.

She told Megan she would be all over this account, monitoring it. Megan didn’t always make good choices because of her ADD, Tina says. And this time, Megan’s page would be set to private and only Mom and Dad would have the password.

You can read the entire article here.

The man whom police at Vancouver International Airport tasered to death on October 14 has been identified, but the circumstances and the exact cause of his death are still unknown:

A man who died at Vancouver International Airport minutes after being zapped with an RCMP stun gun was in the process of immigrating to live with his family in British Columbia.

Instead 40-year-old Robert Dziekanski, of Pieszyce, Poland, died early Sunday morning, minutes after being zapped with two jolts of electricity from a Taser stun gun.

The death has refocused attention on the use of the weapon by police in Canada.

Vancouver lawyer Cameron Ward represented the family of a man who died after being Tasered while in Vancouver police custody and he believes the weapons are overused.

“The police are frequently using them on people who are not armed and who may be in medical or emotional distress.”

Assistant deputy chief coroner Jeff Dolan said an autopsy found no trauma, disease or any other obvious cause of death for Dziekanski. He will have to see if toxicology or microscopic examination can determine why the man died.

RCMP said after Dziekanski’s death that he was in a state of excited delirium when they encountered him, that he was yelling, throwing things, banging on the windows and sweating heavily.

The use of the term excited delirium irritates Ward. “I think it’s premature and misleading to assert that excited delirium, so called, was in any way involved,” he said.

Cell phone image of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport

CBC News interviewed eyewitness Sima Ashrafinia who captured the incident on her cell phone camera:

Sima Ashrafinia, who recorded the incident at the airport on her cellphone, told CBC News that RCMP officers stunned Dziekanski four times and handcuffed him after he fell on the floor.

“The third and fourth ones were at the same time,” she alleges. “The officer at his right and the officer at his left, they Tasered him at the same time and he fell down on his right.

“As he fell down, four or five officers gathered around him and handcuffed him while he was on the floor.”

She is also interviewed this CTV report which features some of the footage she shot of the taser incident.

The Globe and Mail reports that the taser death of a man at Vancouver International Airport on Sunday, October 14, has become the impetus for an examination of the use of tasers by police in Canada:

Another taser-related death in Canada has set off a call for national standards on when and how the weapons are used.

Emile Therien, past president of the Canada Safety Council, says no one knows how many times a day officers in Canada use the conducted energy weapons.

Mr. Therien, who took part in a RCMP-National Research Council review of tasers, says police now simply accept the manufacturer’s recommendations but there are no Canadian standards.

He says every time an officer brings out a gun it must be reported, but there’s no such requirement for tasers.

[...]

In the latest death Sunday, RCMP at the Vancouver International Airport tried to subdue a man who police said had been acting erratically, yelling, pounding on windows and throwing computer equipment.

Mr. Therien says as many as 16 people have died in the last four and a half years after they were tasered by police officers.

This news report discusses these safety issues and concerns regarding taser use in Canada.

In a separate article, The Globe and Mail interviewed a woman who witnessed the taser death at Vancouver Airport:

A witness to the death of a man tasered by police at the Vancouver airport after acting erratically says she is full of pity for the stranger because he appeared unable to communicate with anyone during the melee that led to his death.

“I put myself in his shoes,” said Sima Ashrafina, who was at the airport to pick up her husband. “I can’t speak English. I am arrived in the wrong country, or for some reason I am so drunk, I am so medicated, or I am so drugged.

“For any reason, I lose my mind and then I start shouting and that’s what happens. It was a lack of communication.”

[...]

Ms. Ashrafina, who recorded images of the incident on her cellphone camera, also disputes key aspects of the RCMP account, such as the number of officers on the scene and the number of times the unidentified man was tasered.

RCMP spokesman Sergeant Pierre Lemaitre said three officers were on the scene and that the man was pulsed twice. Ms. Ashrafina said she saw five officers and heard four pulses. “Four of them. I am pretty sure,” she said.

Sgt. Lemaitre yesterday said he was confident in his account of the situation, but that he was waiting for an update on the case from investigators.

The rest of the article details these conflicting accounts of what took place.

An unidentified man died after being tasered by police at the Vancouver International Airport in British Columbia, Canada, on Sunday, October 14:

Police say the incident involved a man in his 40s who had disembarked from an international flight and was waiting for his luggage at about 1:30 a.m.

He began screaming in an Eastern European language and throwing chairs around, said RCMP spokesman Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre. RCMP officers stationed in the terminal building were called to deal with the situation after airport security failed to calm the man down, Lemaitre said.

“He grabbed a computer off a desk, he was pounding on the desk, he was sweating profusely,” said Lemaitre in an interview.

Three policeman tried to speak to him, telling him to calm down, he said. When the man refused, officers used a Taser, which discharges 50,000 volts of electricity.

“The three officers tried to physically hold him down,” said Lemaitre of what occurred after the Taser was used.

More details are revealed in this video report.

The Globe and Mail makes note of the ongoing controversy of the use of tasering which has caused several deaths in Canada:

Vancouver lawyer Cameron Ward, who has been following the issue closely for several years, said the gun, which generates a 50,000-volt electrical charge, was introduced in Canada without any independent safety testing. Sixteen people have died in Canada and almost 300 in North America in recent years after they were stunned by a taser, Mr. Ward said.

North American police and manufacturers would have the public believe that tasers are not responsible for any deaths, “but that is simply not true,” he said. “I’m not convinced these devices are safe. I feel their use should be discontinued until there has been independent testing done of them.”

Patti Gillman, whose brother, Robert Bagnell, died after being tasered by Vancouver police, said police often resort to using tasers without knowing what the outcome will be. “When a guy is going berserk, that seems to be when the taser is at its deadliest,” Ms. Gillman.

“Every time they use it, they are playing Russian roulette,” she added. “I do not know the answer in those cases. But it is definitely not a taser.”

Following so soon after Carol Anne Gotbaum’s tragic airport death on September 28 at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, this incident is all the more disturbing. Not only are there concerns about the use of tasers in specific, but about the means and methods by which security is implemented in airports in general; the public must not be endangered by such mishandled and excessive security.

For more on this issue,Privacy Maven recommends EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) website on air travel privacy. They quote from Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas’ decision in: Kent v. Dulles (1958).

The right to travel is a part of the “liberty” of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment … Freedom of movement across frontiers in either direction, and inside frontiers as well, was a part of our heritage. Travel abroad, like travel within the country, may be necessary for a livelihood. It may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values. “Our nation,” wrote Chafee, “has thrived on the principle that, outside areas of plainly harmful conduct, every American is left to shape his own life as he thinks best, do what he pleases, go where he pleases.”

These are very timely words.

The last few days have brought more and more troubling details regarding Carol Anne Gotbaum’s tragic death at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Her husband, Noah Gotbaum’s eulogy, released to CNN, summarizes much of what went wrong:

“If the airline or the police authorities had treated Carol with some modicum of sensitivity and grace, or one single person at that airport had put an arm around her shoulder, sat her down and given her some protection, she might still be with us today,” Noah Gotbaum said at her funeral Sunday in New York.

This CNN report analyzes the timeline of unfolding events.

Yesterday, we learned more about how much police had erred, even after her death, in not revealing the truth to her husband when he contact them by phone. Audiotapes of those phone calls have now been released:

* Gotbaum: “My wife is at the airport, and she is in a very, very fragile mental state.”

* Operator: “Okay, hang on the phone one second, okay?”

The emergency dispatcher at Phoenix Airport called a lieutenant at the Phoenix Police Department.

* Operator: “Hey, I’ve got Noah Gotbaum, the subject’s husband, on the line.

* Lt. Gehlbach: “Okay?”

* Operator: “Okay, you gonna talk to him?”

* Lt. Gehlbach: “You know, I want somebody who’s professional to be talking to ‘em. Not just blow it to ‘em over the phone because I don’t know how he’ll react.”

Then the operator got back on the line with Noah Gotbaum.

* Gotbaum: “Can you tell me what’s happened? Do you have any idea?”

* Operator: “We don’t have any information.”

* Gotbaum: “You don’t have any information. You haven’t heard a thing?”

* Operator: “No.”

But that wasn’t true. In three phone conversations spanning 90 minutes, operators and police officials withheld the truth: That Carol Anne Gotbaum had been restrained by cops at an airport gate, put in a holding room and found dead.

Eventually, Noah Gotbaum got a family friend in Arizona and got him to rush to the airport to find out what was going on. It was that friend, sitting in a room with police, who informed him his wife was dead.

CBS 2 HD spoke by phone to the Gotbaum family’s attorney, Michael Manning.

“It is difficult for us to understand why somebody didn’t have the courage and decency to simply tell him we have some tragic news for you,” Manning said,

Some experts question their handling of the matter.

“Sometimes you see police departments that are not prepared to deal with these unusual circumstances and end up making blunders,” Professor Eugene O’Donnell said.

Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, discusses the lack of compassion and sensitivity which Noah Gotbaum spoke of in his eulogy:

Perhaps witness reports will eventually show that some such care was shown to Carol. But none have emerged thus far and, frankly, there’s every reason to assume the worst. For we all know what air travel is like today. For passengers, it’s one petty insult and indignity after the other.
And that’s when things go without incident.

In the past, when faced with the frustrations of air travel, passengers had, if not the right, then some ability to fight back. If, say, you were seated on a trans-continental flight 10 rows away from your four-year-old, you could raise the issue, and if you were ignored (as you often were), you could kick up a fuss and pretty much embarrass someone into setting things right.

Now that’s all over. You voice a complaint and they threaten to call security. This is enraging for anyone, under any circumstances.

Imagine what it would do to you if you were already depressed, even suicidal. Imagine some bit of typically maddening airline officiousness happening to you on a day when you were already feeling embarrassed and ashamed. You were all alone – half a continent away from your husband and children, and the friends who were supposed to meet you hadn’t shown up. Imagine, under these circumstances, that you got to your gate one minute late. You learned that your seat had been given away. A man then offered you his seat on the next flight out, but the gate agents wouldn’t let you take it, because to do so, they said, would be a “security breach.”

“I’m not a terrorist,” Carol Gotbaum screamed. She was, she said, just “a pathetic, depressed mother.”

That is the tragedy. In the aftermath of 9/11, we need the safety measures to prevent future terrorist attacks, but at times like this, it becomes clear that such safety and security measures have gone too far and have become counterproductive, which is a profound understatement in the tragic case of Carol Anne Gotbaum’s airport death.

Today marks the debut of a new version of the controversial “backscatter” body scan, to be used as part of airport security measures in Phoenix. As USA Today reports:

Travelers at the city’s Sky Harbor International Airport will receive body scans from a machine the Transportation Security Administration is testing to see if it can be used throughout the USA. The millimeter-wave machine uses similar technology to a controversial X-ray scanner, called backscatter, that the TSA delayed for several years because of privacy concerns.

The new machine, which resembles a large phone booth, bounces harmless radio waves off travelers as they stand inside for several seconds with their arms raised. It produces black-and-white computer images that clearly show the outlines of people’s undergarments.

Like its backscatter predecessor, the new machine raises privacy concerns. American Civil Liberties Union privacy expert Barry Steinhardt said the test could pave the way for the machines to be used in arenas and schools. “It’s conditioning Americans to the use of these invasive technologies,” he said.

The machine being tested in Phoenix blurs passengers’ faces completely and instantly deletes the images. Screeners view the images from a remote room where cellphones are barred to ensure photos aren’t taken.

The predecessor, “backscatter” X-ray technology had also been in use at the Phoenix airport and its debut in February of this year was similarly controversial. It was used in spite of potential health risks:

While security agency officials say the machines, known as SmartCheck, pose no health hazards, some experts disagree. The machine, manufactured by American Science and Engineering Inc. of Billerica, Mass., generates about as much radiation as a passenger would get flying for about two minutes at about 30,000 feet, or in technical terms, fewer than 10 microRem per scan, according to security agency and company officials. The machine is already being used in some prisons, by United States customs and at Heathrow Airport in London.

Dr. Albert J. Fornace Jr., an expert in molecular oncology at Georgetown University Medical Center, said such a low dose was inconsequential, even for pregnant women.

“Obviously, no radiation is even better than even a very low level,” Dr. Fornace said. “But this is trivial.”

But David J. Brenner, a professor of radiation oncology at Columbia University, said that even though the risk for any individual was extremely low, he would still avoid it.

“The question is, Do you want to add to your already existing risk?” Professor Brenner said, recommending that pregnant women and young children, in particular, avoid the device. “There are other technologies around that can probably do the job just as well without the extra radiation.”

Health risks of the new technology are unknown. What is undeniable is that the images are graphic. Privacy Maven will not publish any of these images, but a Google image search reveals numerous examples of the invasiveness of the technology.

It is still a mystery how and why airline passenger, Carol Anne Gotbaum died in custody:

In the aftermath of Carol Anne Gotbaum’s death in police custody at the airport here, her family has hired a high-powered Phoenix lawyer who has gone after police wrongdoing in the past, a nationally renowned forensic pathologist and a former journalist turned private investigator, all of whom are helping in an attack on the official police account of the events leading to the death of a woman who married into the powerful New York family.

Yesterday as Mrs. Gotbaum’s husband, Noah, came here to collect his wife’s body from a mortuary, the family’s attorney, Michael C. Manning, stayed on the attack, contradicting pivotal points in the police’s version of last Friday’s incident, including new details about an account by a witness who he says claimed that Mrs. Gotbaum may have been unconscious before she even got to a police holding area.

“She was listless, unconscious to nearly unconscious,” Mr. Manning said, recalling what he was told by an airline employee whose name he was still withholding but planned to eventually release to the police. Once the employee is ready to be identified, Manning said: “I want Phoenix police to interview this witness. This is important.”

Today, the surveillance video showing her arrest was released:

Police said in a Wednesday statement they did attempt to calm an irate Gotbaum before arresting her. And they said they had no idea of her “personal issues,” including that she was on her way to check into an alcohol treatment center.

Police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill told reporters Thursday there were indications that alcohol may have played a role in the incident, although toxicology tests administered during the autopsy would determine that. Results of such tests typically take several weeks.

Gotbaum, who was flying through Phoenix on her way to Tucson, became angry when she was denied access to her flight and argued with a gate attendant, police said.

The surveillance video is the silent witness of her struggle.



Annie Jacobson, author of Terror in the Skies: Why 9/11 Could Happen Again, writes about the stress that passengers feel when traveling due to increased airport security and speculates as to whether it could have been a contributing factor in Gotbaum’s tragic death:

So, how did Gotbaum die? Since there’s no toxicology report yet, it’s too early to say. But while readers all over the web, and specifically at USAToday.com, speculate that Gotbaum was killed by an aggressive airport police force indicative of America-the-police-state, I’d argue that the results of a recent experiment conducted at Heathrow Airport is a more practical place to begin.

Last July, neuropsychologist Dr. David Lewis monitored passengers’ heart rates as they went through airport check-in and security procedures at England’s busiest airport. Dr. Lewis concluded that some passengers experienced such intense stress levels—before they got on the plane—that their heart rates exceed levels “recorded by Formula 1 drivers, free-fall parachutists, and victims of knife-point muggings.”

Dr. Lewis’ conclusion? Airport passengers are under so much psychological stress as they anticipate flying, they could be at risk of death. “The conditions at Heathrow Airport and the stress levels that passengers are routinely subject to poses a very grave danger to the health of travelers at the airport,” Lewis said. The doctor also monitored passengers as they flew from Amsterdam to London and discovered that fliers’ heart rates and blood pressure exceeded those of “riot policemen confronting a stone throwing mob.”