Fading Fast
Overcome by penalties and turnovers, the Trojans are humiliated at home by the streaking Wildcats. USC falls out of the Top 25just two weeks after being ranked as high as No. S/12
S I \ C I! 10	12
Student newspaper of the University of Southern California
MONDAY
October 9, 2000
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vol. CXXXXI, no, 29
www.usc.edu/dt
DPS cracks down on trespassers
Crime: Officers have made more than 80 arrests in the past 10 months; efforts to prevent thefts on campus
By NADA EL SAWY
Assistant City Editor
The Department of Public Safety has instituted a crackdown on members of the non-USC community trespassing on campus.
“The observation that there apparently has been an increase in trespassing arrests is correct," said DPS Chief Steve Ward.
Since Dec. 1, DPS has made a total of 273 arrests. Of those, 84 arrests were for trespassing — approximately 31 percent Sixty-seven of the 84 trespass arrests, approximately 80 percent, were of juveniles.
DPS has made a deliberate effort La bc-jnote. stringent on trespassing violations since April of this year. Ward said. There are several reasons for this crackdown, including the dramatic increase in prowling-type situations and thefts, he said.
“It’s a very significant concern for my department and for the university at large," he said.
Ward said that the main reason for this attention is the connection between trespassing and the increasing number of thefts the university has experienced in recent months.
“A lot of the young people who come here (from outside of USC) commit crimes," he said.
Although these are not the majority of visitors, Ward expressed the cautious attitude that DPS can prevent the thefts that do occur.
“We wouldn’t be meeting our obligation to the students and the faculty and the staff if we didn’t draw the line somewhere,” he said.
One example of an incident that called for increased action took place during the Democratic National
Convention in August A youth came onto campus and committed four armed robberies. He went into science labs, holding people up with what DPS later discovered was a toy gun, until he was finally caught
“We really began to put a full-court press on the juveniles," Ward said. “That’s what led to this extraordinary number of citations for trespassing.”
In most cases, DPS officers warn the suspect three times prior to arrest, and document each warning, Ward said. In the incident Tuesday that was photographed in Wednesday’s Daily Trojan, the suspect had been given multiple warnings, he said.
This was an uncommon case, he added, as most people leave the campus without resistance or even an exchange of words.
Most trespassing cases are “citation and release," rather than arrests, he said. However, circumstances in which suspects’ actions look clearly suspicious can warrant an arrest.
“The officer or witness has to be able to describe behavior to suggest that the person is looking for an opportunity maybe to commit a crime,” Ward said.
“We can’t simply say to someone
—	unless they’re clearly in violation of a law — that we’re going to arrest you for trespassing,” he said.
Ward gave several examples of what “prowling" behavior would be, including going from floor to floor in a building and looking in all of the offices, going up and down a bicycle rack and looking at the tires or going through a parking structure and looking through the car windows.
The legal term, prowling, is also called “shopping" by officers.
In the last few months, sites where suspects were arrested for “shopping" include outside of Webb Tower, the bike racks outside of Parkside Apartments, inside Booth Rehearsal Hall and Parking Structure A.
I	see Crime, page 3 I
DPS
Procedure
When determining if an individual is trespassing on campus:
1. Officers screen the field and examine the individual’s behavior.
2.	Depending on the
individual's behavior and privacy expectations, a first offense arrest may be ! warranted (i.e. seeking access in residence halls or locked buildings).
3.	Individuals are usually given three warnings of trespassing
before an arrest.
4.	If identity cannot be
established with an ID, there is reason to detain suspect longer.
From Department of Public Safety Chief Steve Ward
Beating the Bruins
Michael Buckner I Daily Troian
Teamwork. The women’s volleyball team defeated No. 14 UCLA Friday, 15-11, 15-11, 8-15 and 15-11. Their 13th win overall, and seventh in the Pacific 10 Conference, the Women of Troy maintained their No. 1. spot before a crowd of more than 1,000. See Sports / 12
Technology firm plays cat-and-mouse game with scanners
Internet: CueCats, which scan barcodes into computers, incite controversy over the privacy of its users
By RACHELLE RADPOUR
Contributing YVnttr
Hundreds of thousands of catshaped, mouse-sized scanners have been showing up in the hands of computer users nationwide, including USC students who subscribe to major technology magazines, in an attempt by an Internet company to make product web sites more accessible to consumers and provide more marketing information to retailers.
In an age fixated on high-tech gadgets and digital advancement, the handheld scanners, called CueCats, allow consumers to scan barcodes
from products and magazine advertisements into their computers. The bar codes take users directly to the product web sites, said a spokesperson for Digital Convergence, which began marketing the "Cats” more than a month ago.
The "Cat," however, does not appear poised to replace the more traditional mouse. While some say it is both an innovative tool for informed consumers and an interesting diversion to the mass of mail that accumulates in mailboxes everyday, many users and potential users don't see the point of the legless creatures.
“I would get that thing that reads
the barcodes, be excited about it and use it for a while, but I would probably disregard it because it serves no practical purpose," says Danielle Ahlberg, an undeclared freshman.
Reynalda Servin, a network operations specialist at the university Computer Center, said the Cat could serve at least one purpose: helping web-illiterate computer users get where they want to go — assuming they want to go to product web sites.
"1 haven't used it, but I’ve seen it advertised on television. It looks like something that would be useful to someone that that doesn’t know how to use the web,” Servin said.
Jeff Dubyn, a senior majoring in business administration, said the company's marketing scheme will fail if consumers do not catch on quickly.
"Digital Convergence may be banking on the possibility that their proprietorship ‘CueCat’ technology becomes a wide-spread standard in the marketplace,” Dubyn said. “Once this has been achieved, they can focus on generating revenues.”
The Cat connects to the serial port in the back of a computer, where the keyboard normally goes, and has an extra port connector on the wire so that the keyboard can still connect and operate normally.
The Cat comes with its own software and requires users’ personal information in exchange for an authorization code to activate. This gathering of personal information and a recent security breach have promulgated controversy over the product The security breach came a few
weeks after Digital Convergence began distributing the Cat and left its new members’ names and addresses vulnerable to unsolicited e-mail. The company responded quickly, however, and resolved the problem, compensating the consumers that were affected by the breach, the spokesperson said.
However, hackers have found ways of reverse-engineering the product to make it perform other functions, such as cataloging and indexing personal compact discs or books, according to a report on Laweekly.com.
More than 2 million Cats have been distributed since its launch. About 600,000 have been installed, and there have been about 5.5 million scanner swipes to date, which averages out to about 12 swipes per day per person, the spokesperson said.