IIE: 235,000 Chinese students in the US in 2012-2013

From Open Doors 2013: Data Highlight:
• Total number of international students: 819,644, a 7% growth over the prior year;
• International students represent 3.7% of total U.S. higher ed students body; the corresponding numbers for uk(19%), Australia (27%)
• 235,597 Chinese student enrollments in 2012/13 academic year, a 21% increase over the prior year;
• Popular fields of study for Chinese students: Business (28.7%), Engineering (19.6%), Computer Science (11.2%), * 2012 data
• Top countries: China (29%), India (12%), South Korea (9%), represent 49% of the total international students population;
• Department of Commerce said international students contributed more than $24 billion to the U.S. economy in a year;
• Top hosting universities: USC (9,840), UIUC (9,804), Purdue (9,509), NYU (9,362), Columbia (8,797);
• Top sources of funding: personal (63.6%), US Colleges (20.7%), Foreign Government (7.1%)

Note: 2012 data for State of Maryland:
• Foreign students 13,969 (No. 16);
• Top hosting universities: UMCP (3,924), JHU (2,923), Montgomery College (1,787), UMBC (1,017), Towson (802)

No Privacy Expectation Up In the Cloud

William Steven Albaugh, a deacon of St. Joseph's Church in Fullerton, MD was arrested for processing of child pronography.

Verizon detected the offensive files when Albaugh uploaded them to 'the cloud' (Verizon Online Backup and Sharing Account), and notified authorities. Albaugh admitted to collecting child pronography since the 1970s.

The Congress passed PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008, which mandate ISP reporting its customer on browsing or storage of child pronography. The Act contains an exit clause, that the ISP would not be held liable if they did not scan customer activities. A modern ISP has many motivations to scan customer data. In this case, Verizon used technology provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to find matches between customer data and digital patterns of known child pronography material.

In the last six months of 2012, the NCMEC had received 113,009 reports of child pronography from ISPs.

via arstechnica, the software provided to ISPs compare user data with a database maintained by the NCMEC with about 16,000 images of 'worst of worst' case. This database contains only known victims confirmed by LEA. Both MD5 (file properties) and Microsoft PhotoDNA (biometric information) hashing comparisons are performed in a scan. The NCMEC maintains another database which contains millions of offending images. The division is designed to dispute 4th Amendment claims.

However, many courts see files uploaded to the cloud invokes a Third Party Doctrine, which nullifies expectations of privacy under Fourth Amendment.

Gubernatorial Candidate Flexes Muscles to High School Student

A youth basketball team coach was suspended by one week for inappropriate post-game altercation with a referee.

According to Frederick News-Post, while the 17 year-old referee was changing shoes after the game, Coach Young walked to him, and hovered over him for a moment, before started blaming calls made by the referee during the game. Young exploded when the young referee told him to 'get off my face'.

Young told the newspaper, "I'm old school, and when someone disrespects me, I let my feelings be known."

A reader drumdigger1976 commented, 'Blaine is ...... a talented politician like Sarah Palin in that he knows how to fire up an ignorant crowd, but he has no real ideas and, more importantly, no real moral fiber. This is shown through his decisions to engage with prostitutes, drink heavily, gamble heavily, curse at minors, throw his political weight around, etc. I really have no idea why anyone would vote for someone with such a clear lack of decency and zero moral compass.'

Blain Young recently kicked off his campaign for the Maryland Governor with a initial fund of $447,000. Young is the current County Commissioner for Frederick County, after a short stint at the State delegate. Young's father was the mayor of Frederick City, and now a State Senator. Young's wife is the alderman of Frederick City.

When the story was first broke out by the newspaper, Young played victim, until the kid's mother came out to tell what had happened. Now Young 'decided' to call the kid to apologize. Not far from where Young stands, there was the 'Macaca' moment, which stumbled George Allen's presidential bid.

Law Makers Asked University Not to Sue Interest Groups

Students participating the environmental law clinic at the University of Maryland were told to stop working on two cases against local poultry industry brought up by environmental groups. It was part of the curriculum of the law school to have law students working on real cases.

Senator Tomas M Middleton, a Democrat, said, "What I'm hoping is they'll have some sensitivity......Farming and agriculture on the Eastern Shores seems to be under attack." Along with 34 other senators, a measure will block $250,000 if the University does not comply. A similar measure in the House will take away $500,000. About 30% of the University's budget comes from the State.

Two cases were at stake. One regards direct drainage into the Pocomoke River; the other regards a poultry company whose way of controlling a large number of farms.

History could argue that, sometimes, a 'corrupted' legislature serves the society better as a 'Chinese style' rubber stamp.

Talking About Economy Service

A Frederick Maryland lady was sentenced to 15 months in jail for money laundering. Madam Delcid runs a prostitution ring in three brothels in Maryland and Virginia. According to her plea agreement, Adriana Delcid charges $30 per client, and her girls would receive $15, or half of the $30, for each assignment.

One of the crimes Delcid had admitted in the plea was failing to ask for legal working status of some alien prostitutes.

Running a business is never easy. Although Delcid made over $340,000 in the 29 months prior to her arrest in May 2008, she would have to pay rent and utilities at the brothels, pay her mortgage, make the payment on the vehicle used to transport the prostitutes, pay sex workers and brothel managers, purchase supplies, and open two businesses in Florida.

source: DoJ

Cultural Shock

Many Chinese immigrants and visitors told us they did not have any cultural shock when they stepped on the ground of US of A for the first time. Because of the free flowing of information and the tremendous interest Chinese always have on American culture, they would probably have learned everything about US before they board their flight. Actually, since most travel booklets tend to exaggerate the cultural differences to show off the depth and broadness of the book, readers were often disappointed when they did not enjoy the cultural shock they had expected. Human beings are always interesting to observe.

They are many myths about the US of A among Chinese immigrants. Chinese parents are especially puzzled on how to raise their kids in an acceptable and responsible way. There is a Chinese saying that you harsher you discipline your child, the better he will grows up into. What are they going to do in the US where spanking their own kids is a crime?

American kids are not different than Chinese kids, and among a small sampling (more than a dozen though), all American parents admitted they hit their kids as a punishment when they did not obey rules. Furthermore, even school teachers could hit a naughty kid, in some states.

Another myth is you can't share a drink with your kids. There is no law on a legal age to drink or to smoke. Having a drink with Dad in a local bar was one of top childhood memory a child could have. What would life be without being able to drink with your Dad?

Well, it turned out it's legal in most places to have a drink with your minor kids. Serving alcohol to your neighbor's kids may be different though, depends on where you live. Lanora Lucas, a Frederick Maryland resident was cleared for furnishing alcohol to a minor after her lawyer showed she did not have a chimerical license. Two kids, one 13 and one 16 were hospitalized with alcohol poisoning in a party held by Ms. Lucas. In other words, watch out for minors when you are a commercial dealer.

Police State

While the Chinese government pushed the largest commercial banks, the Big Four, to the market, the US government invested $250 Billion in the first phase into private banks and counted on share bonus in a long run. You never know which turn is the world going to make in the next day.

Thanks for efforts of the ACLU, it was revealed that numerous Maryland residents had been mistakenly targeted as terrorists, and had been under State police surveillance since 2005. In wake of the exposure of the case, the Police just announced that they would destroy the files however they would not allow the people to keep a copy of their file, nor would they be able to review their file with a lawyer.

Four residents of the Frederick county was among the targeted group, because their nonviolent opposition to the expansion of the Ft. Detrick Biodefense Facility. Ft Detrick is a Maryland National Guard base, but shared by several agents, including the National Cancer Institute and the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC). The under construction National Interagency Biodefense Campus would include the highest toxic labs of Army, the USAG, FBI, and CDC. Because Ft. Detrick had a range of materiel processing problem in its history, the local community is wary of the expansion, and a grass root movement is mobilized to advocate for more scrutiny in the plan.

One of the four residents was Schmidt Kissin, a Poland immigrant who fled her homeland on a Fulbright scholarship opportunity after being jailed by then Polish communism government for political activity.

The extend of the surveillance is not known at the time of writing. The Maryland State Police agreed to expunge the record from one of their own databases. However, the record is believed to live in other government databases. For example, according to a report by former Attorney General Steven Sachs, some of the records were also listed in a Federal drug trafficking program. European Union laws prohibit cross referencing of public databases, for the exact reason to prevent false information from propagating. There's no such law in the US.

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