Starting Points

May 29, 2010

Iranian artists, musicians give voice to opposition amid censorship

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 29, 2010; A10

TEHRAN -- Nearly a year after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed election victory led to wide-scale protests and a fierce government crackdown, members of Iran's thriving and internationally acclaimed cultural scene have emerged as a driving force for the opposition.

Filmmakers, singers and rappers are, in their own way, pushing for social and political changes, and many are paying the price of speaking out against a government that brooks little dissent. In response to films, songs and paintings inspired by the largest grass-roots opposition movement the country has seen since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the government has arrested artists and markedly increased censorship.

Although some artists have left the country to escape restrictions, others remain in Iran and have turned their work into tools of activism. But the protest message has to be subtle or indirect, and even then the work is often produced secretly, using legal loopholes or underground distribution networks to evade the notice of authorities.

When world-renowned director Jafar Panahi decided to make a film about a family caught in the turmoil after last June's election, he did not ask for permission from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Instead, the filmmaker turned his apartment into a film studio, with his wife cooking for the crew and friends playing the leading characters.

In March, security forces raided the home and arrested Panahi, the cast and his family.

"According to the law, nobody needs permits to film in their own house," he said in an interview. "But the government does not obey its own rules." Panahi was held for nearly three months; top directors such as Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami called for his release. State media reported that he had been making an "illegal movie."

On Tuesday, Panahi was released on $200,000 bail, pending the start of his trial.

"They arrest individuals to set an example to others," Panahi said Wednesday as his apartment slowly filled with guests, including actors and writers who gave him a hero's welcome. "My interrogators accused me of working for foreign intelligence agencies and said I was trying to make a movie highlighting problems in Iran. But I believe the rights and demands of millions who demonstrated have been ignored. I want to give them a voice."

He isn't the only one. The latest song by popular underground rapper Hich Kas, "Nobody," has become an instant hit, often blasting from cars on Tehran's busy streets. Hich Kas sings:

Good days will come when we do not kill each other

Do not look badly upon each other

A day we are friends and hug each other like in our school days

The song might sound conciliatory, but it ends with sounds of strife from the protests. Hich Kas, whose real name is Soroush Lashkari, left Iran before the song was distributed through the Internet and street peddlers. He is now touring in Dubai and Malaysia, where many Iranians live.

Within Iran, the opposition movement has lost steam in recent months as the government has used increasingly forceful methods, including executions, to discourage protesters from taking to the streets. Government supporters now confidently proclaim that the opposition movement is dead. But there are still signs of discontent from those who believe Ahmadinejad's supporters rigged an election that should have been won by opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

On Tuesday evening, 3,500 fans cheered, clapped and gave victory signs -- a popular opposition symbol -- when pop singer Alireza Assar sang a famous tune about corruption and dishonesty.

"People shouted 'Mousavi,' and almost everybody gave the 'V' sign," a witness said. "There would be immense cheering when the lyrics discussed corruption. Everybody interpreted the song as being against the government."

In a recent interview with Australian television, Iran's top performer of traditional songs, Mohammad Reza Shajarian, criticized Ahmadinejad for referring to the anti-government demonstrators as "dust and weeds."

"I announce that I am the voice of these dust and weeds," Shajarian said. "This voice always was and is for dust and weeds, and I do not let your radio and TV broadcast my voice."

His comments were widely repeated by foreign-based Farsi-language stations. Shajarian has said he will return to Iran within days.

Music, books, poetry and films filled with metaphors and irony played a significant role in the collapse of the Western-backed shah's government during the 1979 revolution. Books by the author Sadegh Hedayat were banned then because of their political content; during the annual Tehran book fair this month, his books and those of six other popular writers and poets -- some of whom died long ago -- were declared illegal by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

Government officials say censorship efforts will continue. "I promise that within a couple of years, our cinema will be mostly making appropriate films. We will try to enforce restrictions so that we can get rid of problematic films in the future," said Mohammad Javad Shamaghdari, the deputy minister, according to the semiofficial Web site Khabaronline.ir.

But filmmakers such as Panahi say they don't intend to bend to the government's will. "In the end, they want artists like me to leave, but I will never go," Panahi said. "This is my land. I will remain here and make independent movies and support what is just."

What sites such as Facebook and Google know and whom they tell

Image via Wikipedia

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 29, 2010; A01

When Disa Powell's husband and brother were badly burned in an electrical explosion while conducting maintenance at a Wal-Mart store and the family sued, the defense went after something she never expected: her online life.

Through a subpoena seeking information about the men's injuries, Wal-Mart was able to gain full access to her Facebook and MySpace social-networking accounts -- every public and private message, contact and photo for the previous 2 1/2 years.

There were the pictures of Powell's newborn baby lying in a hospital bed after heart surgery (Label: "The hardest day of Mommy and Daddy's life"). The messages detailing problems with her pregnancy ("I got a bladder infection, which has moved to my kidneys"). And the messages dissing on friends ("Brad is a big fat BABY, and can't do anything by himself. The whole issue is that he's lazy").

"I was livid," said Powell, 35, a former hospital administrator who a few years ago moved from Maryland's Eastern Shore back to her home town in Oklahoma. "I felt like I had been seriously violated."

The case, which was settled out of court in January, offers a window into an issue that in recent weeks has riled members of Congress, consumer advocacy groups and tens of thousands of account holders: what your social-networking sites know about you and whom they share it with.

Many online service providers over the past few years have been building huge dossiers with minute details of each user's online activities -- a practice that isn't usually mentioned in privacy policies. Some companies anonymize the data, while others do not. Some store detailed data for a month, while others keep it for years.

At the same time, the ease with which outsiders can access the data is increasing, as corporations, insurance companies and parties in divorces or employment disputes make widespread use of subpoenas.

David Hersh, the attorney who represented the Powells and Disa's brother Joel Ledbetter, said such subpoenas have become standard practice in litigation and are "meant to discover information that would be embarrassing or might be used adversely even if it has nothing to do with the claim."

Companies own the data

Because your account information is stored on a company's servers, on the "cloud" that is the Internet rather than on your personal laptop, the company owns it, not you. While accessing your laptop may require a difficult-to-obtain search warrant, getting certain data on Facebook, MySpace, Meetup, LinkedIn and other social-networking sites' servers may require only a simple subpoena.

"The law in this area is really outdated. It's pre-'www,' " Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said of the 1986 act that was designed to introduce privacy controls to electronic communications. "Back then nobody could even figure out whether an e-mail was more like a letter or a phone call."

Efforts to give consumers more control over their private information have accelerated in Washington over the past month, in the wake of a furor over privacy policy changes at Facebook in particular. (Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald E. Graham is on the board of directors at Facebook.) Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg tried to quell the outcry this week by making it easier for users to control how they share data.

On Friday, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Facebook and Google to demand that they cooperate with congressional investigators looking into privacy practices. Google has drawn scrutiny for accessing information including e-mails and surfing from open WiFi networks while photographing streets for its mapping service.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has called on the Federal Trade Commission to provide guidelines for use of private information and prohibit access without user permission. The ACLU is part of a coalition of advocacy groups and tech companies that is pushing for a major overhaul of the 1986 act.

Meanwhile, software developers are working on a way to prohibit access using technology. Four New York University students recently made headlines for a project they call Diaspora that they say will allow users to keep control over their social-networking information. The group was seeking $10,000 for its startup but has raised $190,000 since the Facebook controversy broke out in late April.

In the 15 years since the World Wide Web brought the Internet to the masses, the most successful companies have been those that collect information about users and use it to sell things. Google, for instance, has confirmed that it keeps track of search queries sent from a particular IP address. (A spokesman said the company anonymizes IP addresses associated with search queries after nine months and cookies after 18 months.)

Extensive data collection

Companies are loath to talk about what information they track, but internal compliance manuals for law enforcement for Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft reviewed by The Washington Post show that their data collection is much more extensive than users might believe based on what they themselves can access.

For example: Microsoft tracks the Xbox LIVE start and end dates and times for game-playing and notes the game played, such as "SW: Jedi Academy." Yahoo keeps chat and instant messenger logs for 45 to 60 days and notes the time/date and IP address for when content is added or deleted to someone's profile or to its Flickr photo service.

Facebook's data collection is among the most detailed.

For every user id, Facebook keeps a log of the IP address that accessed the account, the date and time, and what exactly the user did -- clicking on an advertisement, looking at someone else's profile, posting a photo or sending a message to a friend, etc.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes declined to comment on specific data-gathering and retention policies but said the privacy policy makes clear that the company may disclose information pursuant to subpoenas, court orders or other requests.

However, Noyes said, "We scrutinize every single information request; require a detailed description of why the request is being made; and, if it is deemed appropriate, share only the minimum amount of information."

Facebook says in its compliance manual that it generally retains information about activity by IP address for 90 days, but in the Ledbetter-Powell case it's clear that other information, such as her private messages to and from friends, had been kept since her account was opened in 2007.

Eben Moglen, a Columbia University law professor and director of Software Freedom Law Center, calls Facebook "one big database of hundreds of millions of people containing the kind of information far beyond what the secret police in 20th-century totalitarian regimes had."

The company knows which social contacts are closest to you and can guess your moods, he said. And if you're obsessively checking another person's profile at the same time he or she is doing the same with yours, Moglen claims, "Facebook can even tell you're going to have an affair before you do."

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Most Guantanamo detainees low-level fighters, task force report says

Image via Wikipedia

By Peter Finn
Saturday, May 29, 2010; A03

About 10 percent of the 240 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when President Obama took office were "leaders, operatives and facilitators involved in plots against the United States," but the majority were low-level fighters, according to a previously undisclosed government report. About 5 percent of the detainees could not be categorized at all.

The final report by the Guantanamo Review Task Force recommends that 126 of the detainees be transferred either to their homes or to a third country; that 36 be prosecuted in either federal court or a military commission; and that 48 be held indefinitely under the laws of war. A group of 30 Yemenis was approved for release if security conditions in their home country improve.

The report was completed in January but sent to select committees on Capitol Hill just this week. The administration sat on the report in the wake of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day because there was little public or congressional appetite for further discussion of its plan to close the military detention center.

The figures are in line with previous estimates, but the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, could have important political implications. There is deepening bipartisan congressional opposition to the closure of Guantanamo, and the administration is attempting to show that it has conducted a rigorous review process and been attentive to security risks.

It remains unclear whether the administration can gain enough support on Capitol Hill to move forward with its plan to buy a state prison in Illinois to replace Guantanamo, where 181 detainees remain. Key House and Senate committees introduced language this month into defense bills that would bar funding for any such facility in the United States.

According to the task force report, more than 60 career professionals -- including intelligence analysts, law enforcement agents and prosecutors -- compiled files on each detainee. The files included capture information, interview reports, record searches by the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency, and Guantanamo Bay files on behavior, disciplinary infractions and mental health.

Before the review, there was no single repository of information for each detainee. The task force determined that there "were more than a thousand pieces of potentially relevant physical evidence (including electronic media) seized during raids in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks that had not yet been systematically catalogued."

Apart from the 10 percent implicated in plots against the United States, a group of about 20 percent of detainees had significant roles with al-Qaeda or associated groups. Fewer than 10 percent were Taliban leaders or members of groups opposed to the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan.

The task force's recommendations were reviewed and largely approved by senior officials from six agencies, including the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. If there was disagreement among senior officials, cases went to agency heads.

"These weren't all easy calls," said a government official involved in the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "But in the end, these were unanimous decisions among all six agencies."

The decision to hold 48 detainees without trial remains the most controversial part of the review process for key parts of Obama's constituency, including human rights activists. The task force said prosecution was not feasible for some detainees because the focus at the time of their capture was the "gathering of intelligence," not evidence. But these detainees still posed "a high level of threat."

The report says that obstacles to prosecution "typically did not stem from concerns over protecting sensitive sources or methods from disclosure, or concerns that evidence against the detainee was tainted."

The report says those recommended for indefinite detention had significant roles in al-Qaeda or the Taliban and advanced training or expertise. It notes that "some detainees designated for detention have, while at Guantanamo, expressly stated or otherwise exhibited an intent to reengage in extremist activity upon release."

For a handful of detainees cleared for transfer, there was scant evidence of any involvement with terrorist groups, the report says. Most were low-level fighters affiliated with al-Qaeda or other groups in Afghanistan.

"It is important to emphasize that a decision to approve a detainee for transfer does not reflect a decision that a detainee poses no threat or no risk of recidivism," the report says. "The review participants nonetheless considered those detainees appropriate candidates for transfer from a threat perspective, in light of their limited skills, minor organizational roles, or other factors."

Of the of 779 detainees held at Guantanamo since it opened in January 2002, about 70 percent, or 530, were released by the Bush administration. It had cleared 59 more for release by the time Obama took office.

Since January 2009, the Obama administration has resettled 33 detainees in third countries, repatriated 24 and sent two to Italy for prosecution. Of the remaining detainees cleared for release, 28 are Yemeni, 17 are candidates for repatriation and 22, including five Uighurs from China, have been approved for resettlement in third countries.

In a letter this month, seven Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee asked James L. Jones, the president's national security adviser, to recommend to Obama "an immediate prohibition on the transfer of any detainee out of Guantanamo Bay, and a halt to any action related to the closure of the facility."

Jones replied to the letter this week, saying that "Guantanamo has compromised our standing in the world, undermined our core values, and diminished our moral authority." He said that the Pentagon spends $150 million a year for detention operations at Guantanamo and that costs at a possible facility in Thomson, Ill., would be $70 million to $80 million.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

North Korea Exporting Nuke Technology to Burma: UN Experts

Image by Rennett Stowe via Flickr

By EDITH M. LEDERER/ AP WRITER

Friday, May 28, 2010

UNITED NATIONS — North Korea is exporting nuclear and ballistic missile technology and using multiple intermediaries, shell companies and overseas criminal networks to circumvent U.N. sanctions, U.N. experts said in a report obtained by The Associated Press.

The seven-member panel monitoring the implementation of sanctions against North Korea said its research indicates that Pyongyang is involved in banned nuclear and ballistic activities in Iran, Syria and Burma. It called for further study of these suspected activities and urged all countries to try to prevent them.

The 47-page report, obtained late Thursday by AP, and a lengthy annex document, details sanctions violations reported by U.N. member states, including four cases involving arms exports and two seizures of luxury goods by Italy — two yachts and high-end recording and video equipment. The report also details the broad range of techniques that North Korea is using to try to evade sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council after its two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

Council diplomats discussed the report by the experts from Britain, Japan, the United States, France, South Korea, Russia and China at a closed-door meeting on Thursday.

Its release happened to coincide with heightened tensions between North Korea and South Korea over the March sinking of a South Korean navy ship which killed 46 sailors. The council is waiting for South Korea to decide what action it wants the U.N.'s most powerful body to take in response to the sinking, which a multinational investigation determined was caused by a North Korean torpedo.

The panel of experts said there is general agreement that the U.N. embargoes on nuclear and ballistic missile related items and technology, on arms exports and imports except light weapons, and on luxury goods, are having an impact.

But it said the list of eight entities and five individuals currently subject to an asset freeze and travel ban seriously understates those known to be engaged in banned activities and called for additional names to be added. It noted that North Korea moved quickly to have other companies take over activities of the eight banned entities.

The experts said an analysis of the four North Korean attempts to illegally export arms revealed that Pyongyang used "a number of masking techniques" to avoid sanctions. They include providing false descriptions and mislabeling of the contents of shipping containers, falsifying the manifest and information about the origin and destination of the goods, "and use of multiple layers of intermediaries, shell companies, and financial institutions," the panel said.

It noted that a chartered jet intercepted in Thailand in December carrying 35 tons of conventional weapons including surface-to-air missiles from North Korea was owned by a company in the United Arab Emirates, registered in Georgia, leased to a shell company registered in New Zealand and then chartered to another shell company registered in Hong Kong — which may have been an attempt to mask its destination.

North Korea is also concealing arms exports by shipping components in kits for assembly overseas, the experts said.

As one example, the panel said it learned after North Korean military equipment was seized at Durban harbor in South Africa that scores of technicians from the North had gone to the Republic of Congo, where the equipment was to have been assembled.

The experts called for "extra vigilance" at the first overseas port handling North Korean cargo and close monitoring of airplanes flying from the North, saying Pyongyang is believed to use air cargo "to handle high valued and sensitive arms exports."

While North Korea maintains a wide network of trade offices which do legitimate business as well as most of the country's illicit trade and covert acquisitions, the panel said Pyongyang "has also established links with overseas criminal networks to carry out these activities, including the transportation and distribution of illicit and smuggled cargoes."

This may also include goods related to weapons of mass destruction and arms, it added.

Under council resolutions, all countries are required to submit reports on what they are doing to implement sanctions but as of April 30 the panel said it had still not heard from 112 of the 192 U.N. member states — including 51 in Africa, 28 in Asia, and 25 in Latin America and the Caribbean.

While no country reported on nuclear or ballistic missile-related imports or exports from North Korea since the second sanctions resolution was adopted last June, the panel said it reviewed several U.S. and French government assessments, reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency, research papers and media reports indicating Pyongyang's continuing involvement in such activities.
These reports indicate North Korea "has continued to provide missiles, components, and technology to certain countries including Iran and Syria ... (and) has provided assistance for a nuclear program in Syria, including the design and construction of a thermal reactor at Dair Alzour," the panel said.

Syria denied the allegations in a letter to the IAEA, but the U.N. nuclear agency is still trying to obtain reports on the site and its activities, the panel said.

The experts said they are also looking into "suspicious activity in Burma," including activities of Namchongang Trading, one of the companies subject to U.N. sanctions, and reports that Japan in June 2009 arrested three individuals for attempting to illegally export a magnetometer — which measures magnetic fields — to Burma via Malaysia allegedly under the direction of a company known to be associated with illicit procurement for North Korea's nuclear and military programs. The company was not identified.

May 28, 2010

Southeast-Asia Tweetstream List Now Open on Twitter

Image via Wikipedia

by John MacDougall

Twitter allows any account holder to create public or private 'lists' on his or her page. On Twitter, a 'list' is an automatically refreshing stream of tweets in real time. While there are many types of people using Twitter for many different purposes, one large easily identifiable group consists of people and organizations who specialize in providing current content.

I've taken advantage of all these Twitter feature to create on my page there six (6) lists, each reflecting one of the six content areas on which Starting Points research blog focuses. All six are set to public. One list, southeast-asia, is ready-to-view, and should be accessible to all (logged-in 'twerps') with one click on its name here. For persons interested in Southeast Asia, t's a vastly more stimulating experience to read these tweets than anything one can find on places like Yahoo Groups, the whole of Facebook, or even Google News and Google Blog Search.

Worth a visit. One click. :-)

My Tweet Stream Today about Internet Resources

Image by ~Prescott via Flickr

JohnAMacDougall

#Google #Buzz Adds #Reshare #Option: http://bit.ly/9GpOD2 via @addthis #gmail #social #networking 1 minute ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

Why #Facebook's #privacy war is not over - CNN.com: http://bit.ly/a9N32i via @addthis #internet #twitter - Lucid essay. 5 minutes ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

Hands-On: #Roku's New #Netflix #Interface [PICS]: http://bit.ly/cIGJFD via @addthis #movies #streaming #video #internet 10 minutes ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

Top Places To Get #Free and #Legal #Music: http://bit.ly/bQGZSK via @addthis #sites #blogs #internet 15 minutes ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

Create #Playlists from #Music Blogs with #ExtensionFM: http://bit.ly/czHfWr via @addthis #google #chrome #browser 17 minutes ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

Reputation Management and #Social #Media | #Pew #Research Center's #Internet & #American Life Project: http://bit.ly/bffSHj via @addthis 35 minutes ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

Drill (Down), Baby, Drill: #Facebook’s #New “Simple” #Privacy #Settings Pretty Complex: http://selnd.com/d4SNRv via @addthis - Grade: D. 37 minutes ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

#iGoogle: http://www.google.com/ig via @addthis #personal #homepage -- for everything Googlesque. about 1 hour ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

Welcome to #Google #Wave: https://wave.google.com/wave/ via @addthis #social #professional #networking about 1 hour ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

Official Google #Blog: Happy 1st birthday, #Google #Wave!: http://bit.ly/d0V3dd via @addthis #social #networking about 1 hour ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

#Local #Twitter #People #Search, #Twellowhood: http://www.twellow.com/twellowhood/ via @addthis #internet about 1 hour ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

#Twitter #Yellow #Pages - #Twellow: http://www.twellow.com/ via @addthis #internet about 1 hour ago via web
- Delete
dollarmaker7

@JohnAMacDougall Saw your tweet about traffic. This review of Miracle Traffic Bot just might interest you. http://bit.ly/bKLRSc?=njg5 about 2 hours ago via web in reply to JohnAMacDougall
- Reply
- Retweet
JohnAMacDougall

List and Links for #Top #1000 #Sites in #Users - http://bit.ly/9fylrc via @addthis #internet #google #research about 2 hours ago via web
- Delete
JohnAMacDougall

Starting Points: #Google Names #Facebook Most Visited Site: http://bit.ly/bXHLzj via @addthis #internet #traffic #list #top #1000 #sites about 2 hours ago via web

Google Names Facebook Most Visited Site

Image via CrunchBase

Daniel Ionescu, PC World

May 28, 2010 9:29 am

Google has publicly released a list of the top 1000 websites in the world, raking the Facebook social networking site as the leading Web property by unique users.

According to Google's AdPlanner stats, Facebook scores more than 540 million unique visitors per month, reaching a sizeable chunk of 35.2 percent of the Internet population.

Facebook not only has the most unique visitors in Google's stats, but also the most page views per month, a whopping 570 billion views, ahead of other properties like Craigslist (#49) with 14 billion views.

The AdPlanner list does not contain any figures for most of Google's own properties, like YouTube, Gmail, News, or Search, but gives an interesting insight into which top Websites do not serve advertising.

Wikipedia (#4) and Mozilla (#10) are the only two Websites in Google's top 10 not to display advertising. A noteworthy entry on the 18th spot in the AdPlanner rankings is Twitter (#18), with 98 million unique visitors per month, which doesn't serve ads.

Destinations portals such as Yahoo.com (#2), MSN.com (#5), Baidu (#8), Sina.com.cn (#11) and 163.com (#15) are also high on the list, probably due to the fact that many people use these sites as their home page.

Search engines also occupy several top places in the AdPlanner list (excluding Google's own Search). Live.com (#2) has over 370 million uniques per month, Bing.com (#13) with 110 million, and Ask.com (#20) with 88 million.

Blogging is also high on Google's list, with Blogspot (Blogger) situated in the 7th place with 230 million uniques, and WordPress.com in the 12th spot with 120 million uniques.

Several news sources made it into the top 100 as well: Cnet.com ranks as #35, BBC.co.uk on #43, CNN.com at #64, and NYTimes.com on #83.

Other entries worth noting among Google's top 1000 websites are Microsoft.com (#6), Adobe.com (#14), Amazon.com (#22), eBay.com (#24), Apple.com (#27) and Hotmail.com (#30).

Arizona Law Is Stoking Unease Among Latinos

Image via Wikipedia

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

PHOENIX — When Gov. Jan Brewer signed Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law, giving police departments broad power to make immigration checks, she sought to allay concerns from Hispanic citizens and legal residents that they would be singled out for scrutiny.

“We have to trust our law enforcement,” Ms. Brewer said. “It’s simple reality. Police officers are going to be respectful. They understand what their jobs are. They’ve taken an oath, and racial profiling isn’t legal.”

Those words ring hollow to many Latinos, including Jesus Ruiz, 25, a college student in Mesa, Ariz., who, like many Latinos here, believes that all too often the police view them suspiciously and single them out for what they consider questionable stops or harassment.

In one stop in 2004, Mr. Ruiz said, an officer pulled him over for speeding 10 miles over the limit and went on to question him on where he was going to school and whether he lived with his parents, and finally asked for his Social Security number.

“I was thinking, is he supposed to be asking me for that and all these questions for a speeding ticket?” said Mr. Ruiz, who spray painted himself white and wrote on his body, “Am I reasonably suspicious?” at a recent protest against the new law, which goes into effect in late July.

But it is not just young people.

Judge Jose Padilla of Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, says that twice since he became a judge in 2006, the police have pulled him over, alleging minor traffic infractions. Even though Judge Padilla, 60, did not disclose his occupation, he ended up not receiving a ticket. He said his complaints to the police department led to sensitivity training for the officers.

Judge Padilla believes the stops were based on his Hispanic ancestry and the fact that his 1988 pickup truck has large wheels and resembles a low rider, a customized car popular in Mexican-American culture but also favored by some street gangs.

Image via Wikipedia

“This has been lifelong, these stops,” he said, “and it is not just me.”

Now, Latinos and several police chiefs say they worry that the law, which requires the police, “when practicable” and if they have reasonable suspicion, to check the immigration status of people they stop, detain or arrest for another reason, will widen a chasm of trust that they have struggled to close.

Those concerns have reached the Justice Department, which is considering challenging the law in court, out of a concern, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on ABC’s “This Week,” that “we could potentially get on a slippery slope where people will be picked on because of how they look as opposed to what they have done.”

Though President Obama again criticized the law at a news conference Thursday, a majority of Americans support it, according to a CBS News poll released Tuesday. But recent surveys suggest a split along ethnic lines, with a majority of Latinos opposed to it. An Associated Press-Univision poll released May 13 showed nearly two-thirds of Hispanics opposed the Arizona law, compared with just 20 percent of non-Hispanics (45 percent favored it and 30 percent were neutral).

Antonio Bustamante, a veteran civil rights lawyer here who is helping organize protests against the law, explained by saying, “The majority in the country has not experienced being profiled so they don’t perceive it as an issue, just like they don’t accept discrimination in the country because they have not been discriminated against.”

Roberto Villaseñor, the chief of police in Tucson, said in a recent conference call with reporters that his city “is divided about this issue,” and he worries that immigrants will not report crimes or turn in criminals out of fear, justified or not, they will end up deported.

The law, Chief Villaseñor said, will instill “a level of mistrust” particularly in immigrant communities and break down years of efforts to combat the perception that the police collaborate with immigration agents.

Already, he said, there are anecdotal reports that some police departments in the state are asking people for their papers. He said his department had received a picture of a patrol car near a Border Patrol vehicle, as if proximity proved that officers were already collaborating to carry out the law.

Tensions between law enforcement and some Latinos have deep roots but have been aggravated by a spate of recent incidents and lawsuits.

A study conducted as part of the settlement of a racial profiling suit brought against the Arizona State Police found that over a one-year period ending in 2007, blacks and Hispanics were two and a half times more likely than whites to be searched by highway patrol officers even though the rate of seizure of contraband among whites was higher than for Hispanics and about the same as for blacks.

Memories also burn strong here of the so-called Chandler roundup, where the police in that Phoenix suburb worked with immigration agents to arrest more than 400 illegal immigrants — stopping scores of Latino citizens and legal residents to check their papers, in the process. The city settled a subsequent lawsuit for $500,000.

Today, a federal lawsuit and a Justice Department investigation continue against Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, who has been criticized for using stops for traffic offenses in a series of “crime suppression operations” to check people’s immigration status throughout metropolitan Phoenix.

It remains unclear what criteria the police will use in deciding what is a reasonable suspicion a person they stop is an illegal immigrant.

The new state law says the police cannot use race, color or ethnicity “except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.”

Some civil rights lawyers find that clause worrisome.

They note that federal courts and the Arizona Supreme Court have upheld the right of federal agents enforcing immigration law to consider someone’s ethnicity, especially at or near the border, when deciding to question someone suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

A training manual as part of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program known as 287(g), which deputizes specially trained state and local police as immigration officers, lists a number of factors that can be used to make an immigration query, including “Does the subject have a thick foreign accent or appear not to speak English?” and “Does the subject’s appearance look like it is ‘out of place’ or as though the subject has just traveled?” and “Is the area known for its attraction to illegal aliens?”

Federal officials said the manual was being revised to clarify the criteria and emphasize that several other factors must be considered.

David Salgado, a Phoenix police officer who has filed one of five lawsuits to block the law, said it would be impossible not to take race or ethnicity into account to develop reasonable suspicion, given the proximity to the border and region’s large Hispanic population.

Officer Salgado said the fact that officers can check immigration status only after a stop for another reason is essentially meaningless because “you drive two or three blocks down the street I will find something to pull you over for — going over the double line, forgetting to signal for a lane change, it’s not hard.”

Nina Perales, a lawyer with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which also has sued, said non-Hispanic illegal immigrants would get a free pass.

“How does law enforcement form a reasonable suspicion that a white person is an alien absent a flat-out admission they are?” Ms. Perales asked.

Still, many Arizonans who support the law believe racial profiling concerns are overblown or a smokescreen to hide a belief that borders should be wide open.

“The police will do the right thing. The majority of them do,” said Sunday Schwein, a retired nurse in Payson, Ariz. “I really doubt they will pick people out just because of their race.”

Under an executive order signed by Ms. Brewer, the state’s police training board is developing a training course designed to guide officers in developing reasonable suspicion that somebody is an illegal immigrant.

A letter from the board to the governor last week indicated the training, in the form of a DVD with handouts for every officer in the state, would reflect that given to federal immigration officers as well as the state’s Department of Public Safety.

While several police chiefs oppose the law, groups representing rank-and-file officers support it and play down the concerns about racial profiling.

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, a union representing police officers that supports the law, said some factors that might provoke reasonable suspicion include someone not carrying identification or using fake identification or possessing foreign identification without a visa.

But many Latinos remain unconvinced.