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6B – Daily News – Tuesday, October 19, 2010 Judge: inclined to nix delay of gay troops order RIVERSIDE (AP) — A fed- eral judge said on Monday that she is inclined to deny a govern- ment request to delay her order that immediately stopped the military from enforcing its ban on openly gay service members. U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips said she would review the arguments from Justice Department lawyers and issue a ruling as early as Monday, or by Tuesday. If she rejects the request, the Justice Department officials say they would appeal to what experts say are likely to be friendlier venues: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco and, ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court. ‘‘The farther the decision gets from the presentation of evidence in the trial court, the more likely it is that courts will assume the military must have some critically important inter- est at stake,’’ said Diane Mazur, a law professor who opposes the policy. The military has promised to abide by the injunction against the ‘‘don’t ask, don’t tell’’ poli- cy as long as her order remained in place. Government attorneys had asked Phillips for the temporari- ly halt while they appealed, say- ing that forcing an abrupt change of policy could damage troop morale as they fought two wars. The judge declared the policy unconstitutional on Sept. 9, say- ing it violated due process rights, freedom of speech and the right to petition the govern- ment for redress of grievances guaranteed by the First Amend- ment. Phillips said the policy does- n’t help military readiness and instead has a ‘‘direct and delete- rious effect’’ on the armed ser- vices by hurting recruiting and requiring the discharge of ser- vice members with critical skills and training. At the time, she asked both sides to give her input about an injunction and, on Monday, called the government request ‘‘untimely.’’ She said the Justice Department had plenty of opportunity to modify her injunction before she ordered it on Oct. 12. Phillips also said the govern- ment did not present evidence at the trial to show how her order would cause irreparable harm to troops. Justice Department attorney Paul Freeborne told her the gov- ernment had no reason to respond until her order came down. He said her nationwide injunction was unrealistic. ‘‘You’re requiring the Department of Justice to imple- ment a massive policy change, a policy change that may be reversed upon appeal,’’ Free- borne told her. Richard Socarides, a former Clinton White House adviser on gay rights, said he does not expect Phillips to grant the request. ‘‘She seems to have lost her patience with the government’s position and I think that’s reflected in her ruling up until now,’’ Socarides said. ‘‘But they will probably go to the appellate court or Supreme Court and you’ll see in a couple of days that this order has been stayed.’’ The Log Cabin Republicans, the gay rights group, filed the lawsuit in 2004 to stop the ban’s enforcement. The group says more than 13,500 service mem- bers have been fired under the Clinton administration-era poli- cy. Under the 1993 law, the mili- tary cannot inquire into service members’ sexual orientation and punish them for it as long as they keep it to themselves. Pres- ident Barack Obama has said he wants the law repealed in Con- gress. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican, and Chair- man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, the mili- tary’s top uniformed officer, both say they support lifting the ban. But Gates and Mullen also have warned that they would prefer to move slowly. Gates has ordered a sweeping study due Dec. 1 that includes a survey of troops and their fami- lies. The president agreed to the Pentagon study but also worked with Democrats to write a bill that would have lifted the ban, pending completion of the Defense Department review and certification from the military that troop morale wouldn’t suf- fer. That legislation passed the House but was blocked in the Senate by Republicans. Gay rights activists worry that expected Republican gains in the midterm elections next month could make it even more difficult to overturn the policy in Congress. Facebook says apps transmitted user information NEW YORK (AP) — The latest Facebook privacy fiasco shows that the world’s largest online social hub is having a hard time putting this thorny issue behind it even as it continues to attract users and become indispen- sible to many of them. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that sever- al popular Facebook appli- cations have been transmit- ting users’ personal identify- ing information to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies. Face- book said it is working to fix the problem, and was quick to point out that the leaks were not intentional, but a consequence of basic Web mechanisms. “In most cases, develop- ers did not intend to pass this information, but did so because of the technical details of how browsers work,” said Mike Vernal, a Facebook engineer, in a blog post Monday. In a statement, Facebook said there is “no evidence that any personal informa- tion was misused or even collected as a result of this issue.” Even so, some privacy advocates said it’s problem- atic that the information was TEHAMA ESTATES PROVIDES: Active Senior Citizens A Retirement Community for the ◆ Independent Living ◆ Private Apartments ◆ Three Nutritious Meals Daily ◆ 24 Hour Secure Environment ◆ House Keeping Services ◆ Warm & Friendly Staff ◆ Recreational Programs ◆ Scheduled Transportation ◆ Private & Formal Dining Rooms EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY 750 David Avenue, Red Bluff • 527-9193 http://www.lesschwab.com BUY 3 http://www.lesschwab.com LT TRUCK / SUV TIRES • PASSENGER TIRE PER PER GET ONE FREE! ✓ MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ✓ AGGRESSIVE WET TRACTION ✓ MODERN DESIGN OPEN COUNTRY A/T Free MOUNTING, AIR CHECKS, FLAT REPAIR, ROTATIONS & ROAD HAZARD. 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At issue are user IDs, the unique identifier tied to every person on Facebook. These IDs can be used to find users’ names, gender and any information they’ve made visible to “everyone” on the Internet through their privacy settings. “It’s their entire friends’ lists, their likes, their bio- graphical information,” Rotenberg said. “Facebook gets access to it and now it’s leaking out to advertisers.” The Journal said these IDs could be included in what’s known as “referrers.” That is what websites send to other sites to tell them where the user came from. Normally, these wouldn’t tell the sites who these users are. But that becomes possi- ble when the referers include a person’s social network ID. In one case, these IDs were then embedded in a “cookie,” which tracks users as they navigate the Web, by an online data collection company, the Journal said. That meant that Facebook users’ names and browsing habits could be linked up. 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But that’s not the problem, said Peter Eckers- ley, senior staff technologist for the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Founda- tion. “The problem is that ad companies can know who you are at all,” he said. Eckersley said the “refer- er” problem isn’t new, nor is it necessarily limited to Facebook. The Journal did not mention other social net- works such as MySpace, which is owned by News Corp., like the Journal. “We urgently need inves- tigations to determine how many other social networks may be suffering from this type of data leak,” he said. MySpace did not have a comment. Some, such as media critic Jeff Jarvis, came to Facebook’s defense. He called the Journal report an overreaction because the user information was already publicly available. “The White Pages reveal I use the phone. So?” Jarvis wrote on Twitter. 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