Instagram tests new limits in user privacy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Instagram, which spurred suspicions this week that it would sell user photos after revising its terms of service, has sparked renewed debate about how much control over personal data users must give up to live and participate in a world steeped in social media.

In forcefully establishing a new set of usage terms, Instagram, the massively popular photo-sharing service owned by Facebook Inc, has claimed some rights that have been practically unheard of among its prominent social media peers, legal experts and consumer advocates say.

Users who decline to accept Instagram’s new privacy policy have one month to delete their accounts, or they will be bound by the new terms. Another clause appears to waive the rights of minors on the service. And in the wake of a class-action settlement involving Facebook and privacy issues, Instagram has added terms to shield itself from similar litigation.

All told, the revised terms reflect a new, draconian grip over user rights, experts say.

“This is all uncharted territory,” said Jay Edelson, a partner at the Chicago law firm Edelson McGuire. “If Instagram is to encourage as many lawsuits as possible and as much backlash as possible then they succeeded.”

Instagram’s new policies, which go into effect January 16, lay the groundwork for the company to begin generating advertising revenue by giving marketers the right to display profile pictures and other personal information such as who users follow in advertisements.

The new terms, which allow an advertiser to pay Instagram “to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata)” without compensation, triggered an outburst of complaints on the Web on Tuesday from users upset that Instagram would make money from their uploaded content.

The uproar prompted a lengthy blog post from the company to “clarify” the changes, with CEO Kevin Systrom saying the company had no current plans to incorporate photos taken by users into ads.

Instagram declined comment beyond its blog post, which failed to appease critics including National Geographic, which suspended new posts to Instagram. “We are very concerned with the direction of the proposed new terms of service and if they remain as presented we may close our account,” said National Geographic, an early Instagram adopter.

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

Consumer advocates said Facebook was using Instagram’s aggressive new terms to push the boundaries of how social media sites can make money while its own hands were tied by recent agreements with regulators and class action plaintiffs.

Under the terms of a 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook is required to get user consent before personal information is shared beyond their privacy settings. A preliminary class action lawsuit settlement with Facebook allows users to opt-out of being included in the “sponsored stories” ads that use their personal information.

Under Instagram’s new terms, users who want to opt-out must simply quit using the service.

“Instagram has given people a pretty stark choice: Take it or leave, and if you leave it you’ve got to leave the service,” said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Internet user right’s group.

What’s more, he said, if a user initially agrees to the new terms but then has a change of mind, their information could still be used for commercial purposes.

In a post on its official blog on Tuesday, Instagram did not address another controversial provision that states that if a child under the age of 18 uses the service, then it is implied that his or her parent has tacitly agreed to Instagram’s terms.

“The notion is that minors can’t be bound to a contract. And that also means they can’t be bound to a provision that says they agree to waive the rights,” said the EFF’s Opsahl.

BLOCKING CLASS ACTION SUITS

While Facebook continues to be bogged in its own class action suit, Instagram took preventive steps to avoid a similar legal morass.

Its new terms of service require users with a legal complaint to enter arbitration, rather than take the company to court. It prohibits users from joining a class action lawsuit unless they mail a written “opt-out” statement to Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park within 30 days of joining Instagram.

That provision is not included in terms of service for other leading social media companies like Twitter, Google, YouTube or even Facebook itself, and it immunizes Instagram from many forms of legal liability, said Michael Rustad, a professor at Suffolk University Law School.

Rustad, who has studied the terms of services for 157 social media services, said just 10 contained provisions prohibiting class action lawsuits.

The clause effectively cripples users who want to legally challenge the company because lawyers will not likely represent an individual plaintiff, Rustad argued.

“No lawyers will take these cases,” Rustad said. “In consumer arbitration cases, everything is stacked against the consumer. It’s a pretense, it’s a legal fiction, that there are remedies.”

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends. Facebook acquired Instagram in September for $ 715 million.

Instagram’s take-it-or-leave-it policy pushes the envelope for how social networking companies treat user privacy issues, said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“I think Facebook is probably using Instagram to see how far it can press this advertising model,” said Rotenberg. “If they can keep a lot of users, then all those users have agreed to have their images as part of advertising.”

(Additional reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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Cassadee Pope wins Season 3 of 'The Voice'

NEW YORK (AP) — Cassadee Pope, who was country singer Blake Shelton's protege on the third season of NBC's "The Voice," has won the show's competition.

The 23-year-old singer is stepping out into a solo career after performing with a band called Hey Monday. Her victory over Scottish native Terry McDermott and long-bearded Nicholas David was announced at the end of a two-hour show Tuesday.

"The Voice" has grown into a hit for NBC and was the key factor in the network's surprising success this fall.

The show's status was affirmed by the stream of hitmakers who performed on the finale. They included Rihanna, Bruno Mars, the Killers, Smokey Robinson and Peter Frampton.

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Church Officials Call on Filipinos to Campaign Against Birth Control Law

MANILA — After losing a battle to stop the passage of a contentious birth control law, Roman Catholic Church officials on Tuesday dug in and instructed their millions of followers to campaign against the measure in communities, schools and homes.

“Let us intensify the moral spiritual education of our youth and children so that they can stand strong against the threats to their moral fiber,” Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in a statement. “Let us use all the means within our reach to safeguard the health of expectant mothers in our communities.”

The Philippine Congress passed legislation on Monday to help the country’s poorest women gain access to birth control. Each chamber of the national legislature passed its own version of the measure, and minor differences between the two must be reconciled before the measure goes to President Benigno S. Aquino III for his signature.

The measure had been stalled for more than a decade because of determined opposition from the church in this overwhelmingly Catholic country.

Birth control is legal and widely available in the Philippines for people who can afford it, particularly those living in cities. But condoms, birth control pills and other forms of contraception are sometimes kept out of community health centers and clinics by local government and Catholic Church officials.

The measure passed on Monday would stock government health centers, including those in remote areas, with free or subsidized birth control options for the poor. It would also require sex education in public schools and family-planning training for community health officers.

Archbishop Villegas, the vice president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, on Tuesday encouraged Catholics to resist the measure by disseminating information about natural family planning methods and warning people about “the hazardous effects of contraceptive pills on the health of women.”

“Let us conduct our own sex education of our children insuring that sex is always understood as a gift of God,” Archbishop Villegas stated. “Sex must never be taught separate from God and isolated from marriage.”

Bishop Gabriel V. Reyes, chairman of the conference’s Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, said after the vote Monday that “we need to explain to our fellow believers that they ought to refuse contraceptives even when they are being offered these.”

The Philippines has one of the highest birthrates in Asia, but backers of the legislation, including the Aquino administration, have said repeatedly that its purpose is not to limit population growth. Rather, they say, the bill is meant to offer poor families the same reproductive health options that wealthier people in the country enjoy.

Though lacking the numbers needed to defeat the legislation, lawmakers who opposed the measure sought to delay the vote. In one instance, an opposition senator proposed 35 amendments just before a vote was to take place.

Often the debate took bizarre turns, as when a congressman claimed that the birth control measure was a plot by the Philippine Communist Party to take over the government.

In another instance, a male senator requested removal of the phrase “satisfying sex” from a passage in the bill that referred to “safe and satisfying sex.” Several female senators opposed its removal, and the amendment was debated live on television while social media networks crackled with sarcastic commentary. “I am a Filipina,” Senator Miriam Santiago said in response to the amendment. “I am also a married woman, and I insist whoever is married to me should give me safe and satisfying sex, period.”

During a vote on the measure in the House of Representatives, the boxer and congressman Manny Pacquiao linked the birth control measure to his having been knocked unconscious on Dec. 8 by Juan Manuel Marquez during their W.B.O. world welterweight fight in Las Vegas.

“Some thought I was dead,” Mr. Pacquiao said in a speech explaining his vote against the measure. “What happened in Vegas strengthened my already firm belief in the sanctity of life.” He added: “Manny Pacquiao is pro-life. Manny Pacquiao votes no.”

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Instagram draws ire over new user rules

SAN FRANCISCO — When it comes to policy changes, Instagram could have used a filter of its own.

Its usually devoted users threatened to delete their accounts en masse Tuesday if the popular photo-sharing app did not roll back new terms of service that appeared to give the company ownership of their images. Instagram users — about 100 million now — snap the photos on their smartphones, apply digital filters to enhance the photos and then instantly share them with friends.

"Dear @Instagram, why did you think we'd just be OK with your new terms? They are NOT COOL. Signed, The Entire Internet," Jason Pollock, a Los Angeles filmmaker and social media consultant, wrote on Twitter.

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom tried to calm the uproar and reassure users in a blog post Tuesday afternoon.

"Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos," he wrote. "We respect that your photos are your photos. Period."

Instagram's new terms of service announced Monday included a clause stating that Instagram had the right to turn images into advertisements without any approval from or compensation for users starting Jan. 16. — part of Facebook's drive to make money from the service it bought this year for $715 million in cash and stock.

That angered amateur and professional photographers alike — even Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's wedding photographer.

"Pro or not if a company wants to use your photos for advertising they need to TELL you and PAY you," Noah Kalina said on Twitter.

The effort to make money from Instagram users struck a nerve. According to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, nearly half of Internet users post photos and videos online that they have created themselves.

Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Instagram quickly realized it had "overplayed its hand." But its mea culpa blog post still contains plenty of loopholes, he said.

"They say they don't have any plans to put your photos in an advertisement, but nevertheless that is the permission they were seeking," Opsahl said. "We will have to see what the language of the terms of service looks like after they revise it."

Jeff Lawrence, a 29-year-old DJ, graphic designer and photographer from Seattle, said he'll decide if he's dumping Instagram after he sees what the company plans to do in black and white.

"Thankfully we are all Internet savvy enough to know that people can say one thing and do another," said Lawrence, an avid Instagram user. "I am going to wait and see if Instagram takes this criticism to heart and changes the terms of service."

The backlash underscored the rising tensions between users of free social media services and the companies that are trying to profit from them. More users are asking for more control over how these companies handle their information.

Clayton Cubitt, 40, a photographer and filmmaker from Brooklyn, N.Y., quickly dubbed the new terms of service a "suicide note" from Instagram.

He urged his fellow Instagram users to revolt against the current policies at social media companies that he described as "you have a free place to post content and in exchange the company sucks the soul out of your life."

"They look at users as a herd to milk," Cubitt said.

His rants may have angered Zuckerberg, but Zuckerberg's sister Arielle Zuckerberg publicly "liked" Cubitt's Instagram snapshot of the most controversial part of Instagram's terms of service.

It's unclear if the Instagram backlash will cause lasting damage to the service.

Hacker collective Anonymous had urged its more than 780,000 Twitter followers to ditch Instagram with the hashtag #BoycottInstagram and posted screen shots from followers who had. The servers of Instaport.me, which helps users download their photos from Instagram, were overloaded Tuesday as Instagram users deleted their accounts and switched to other options such as Hipstamatic and Twitter's new photo service that has filters similar to Instagram. Yahoo said it has seen "strong interest" in its new Flickr app for iPhones.

Many Instagram users said they would give Instagram the benefit of the doubt — for now.

"I am going to rage about it, and get people to rage about it, until we change their policy," Pollock, 31, said in an interview. "There is just something so personal and beautiful about Instagram. Hopefully they don't completely ruin it."

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

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Adam Lanza's family had kept a watchful eye on him

STAMFORD, Conn. — When the parents of Adam Lanza divorced, the settlement left Nancy Lanza with $24,150 a month in alimony payments and able to live a comfortable life and care for her troubled son.

Nancy Lanza, 52, was her son's first victim Friday, shot to death in the spacious home they shared, authorities said. Adam, 20, then took his mother's car to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he shot his way into the building and opened fire, killing 20 children and six adults before turning a gun on himself.

New details emerged Monday about how Adam Lanza's family and the staff at his high school kept a watchful eye over the reserved boy, who seemed to spend much of his time in solitude after finishing high school.

PHOTOS: Sandy Hook shootings

Friends of the family said he suffered from Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. As early as age 10, Adam Lanza was taking medication, according to his former baby sitter, Ryan Kraft, now an aerospace engineer in Hermosa Beach.

"I know there was something administered. I'm not sure what," he said. There were never any signs that Lanza was dangerous, he said. "There were no red flags that would say something like this would happen."

Nancy Lanza cautioned Kraft to never let him out of his sight, even briefly. "The instructions were to always supervise him visually," he said.

FULL COVERAGE: Sandy Hook shootings

That echoed recollections from others who said Nancy Lanza was a constant presence in her son's life. "She truly cared for both of her sons deeply," said Amanda d'Ambrose, 23, whose brother befriended Adam Lanza in high school. "I just want the world to know what a beautiful soul that she is."

John Wlasuk, who played Babe Ruth baseball with Lanza as a youth, said the boy's mother was "always at the games, always really involved with her kids."

Wlasuk said he sometimes went to the Lanza house with his father, a plumber, who told him of the room in the basement where Lanza spent a lot of time playing video games. As Wlasuk's father described it, the room had posters of military weaponry, and Lanza would be playing violent video games such as "Call of Duty."

"I wouldn't say it was a shrine to the military or anything, a couple of posters with a bed and a desk and a computer," he said.

Richard Novia, who formerly advised the Newtown High School tech club that was one of Lanza's few social outlets, said Lanza had been placed in a special program for students who were considered at risk of being bullied — though he had no recollection of Lanza being harassed.

Novia said he was told that Lanza had a medical condition that hindered his ability to feel pain, so that if he cut himself or stubbed his toe, he might not even know he was hurt and could continue to harm himself.

When Lanza was in elementary school, his mother fretted about his schooling.

"She was concerned mainly that Adam wasn't fitting in well in his classroom," said Wendy Wipprecht, whose son had also been diagnosed with a form of autism. She said Nancy Lanza considered moving her son to a private Catholic school, or home schooling him, but did not join sessions of any of the local autism parents' support groups that Wipprecht attended.

"She may have decided that there wasn't a support group that would fit," Wipprecht said. "Who knows. She may have been overwhelmed."

There is no mention of Adam Lanza's emotional troubles or any domestic strife in his parents' divorce papers. Last week, Ryan Lanza told investigators that the divorce could have had an effect on his younger brother.

Peter and Nancy Lanza married in 1981 in New Hampshire. She sued her husband for divorce in 2008, citing irreconcilable differences.

In their 2009 settlement, Nancy and Peter Lanza agreed to joint custody of Adam, then 17, who would live with his mother but have regular visits from his father. In addition to the alimony, Peter Lanza would cover the children's medical insurance.

Court records show that Nancy Lanza was due to receive $289,800 in alimony in 2012, or $24,150 each month. Peter Lanza, an executive at General Electric who was earning an annual salary of about $445,000 in 2009, also would pay for both their sons' college and graduate school educations and for a car for Adam.

The street where Nancy Lanza and her son lived was reopened by police Monday. The borders of the grassy, tree-lined hill it sits on are still cordoned off with yellow police tape.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

molly-hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

kim.murphy@latimes.com

Bengali and Hennessy-Fiske reported from Newtown, Conn., and Murphy from Seattle.

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How to turn an old Kindle Fire into a Nexus 7 with Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean [video]

Title Post: How to turn an old Kindle Fire into a Nexus 7 with Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean [video]
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'The Hobbit' tops box office with record $84.6M

NEW YORK (AP) — Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" led the box office over the weekend with $84.6 million, a record-setting opening better than the three previous "Lord of the Rings" films.

The 3-D Middle Earth epic, the first of three planned films adapted from J.R.R. Tolkien's novel, was the biggest December opening ever, surpassing Will Smith's "I Am Legend," which opened with $77.2 million in 2007.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey," Warner Bros., $84,617,303, 4,045 locations, $20,919 average, $84,617,303, one week.

2. "Rise of the Guardians," Paramount, $7,143,445, 3,387 locations, $2,109 average, $71,085,268, four weeks.

3. "Lincoln," Disney, $7,033,132, 2,285 locations, $3,078 average, $107,687,319, six weeks.

4. "Skyfall," Sony, $6,555,732, 2,924 locations, $2,242 average, $271,921,795, six weeks.

5. "Life of Pi," Fox, $5,413,066, 2,548 locations, $2,124 average, $69,572,472, four weeks.

6. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2," Summit, $5,136,074, 3,042 locations, $1,688 average, $276,826,143, five weeks.

7. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $3,216,043, 2,249 locations, $1,430 average, $168,721,592, seven weeks.

8. "Playing For Keeps," FilmDistrict, $3,146,443, 2,840 locations, $1,108 average, $10,737,535, two weeks.

9. "Red Dawn," FilmDistrict, $2,408,882, 2,250 locations, $1,071 average, $40,904,305, four weeks.

10. "Silver Linings Playbook," Weinstein Co., $2,109,274, 371 locations, $5,685 average, $16,979,323, five weeks.

11. "Flight," Paramount, $1,910,666, 1,823 locations, $1,048 average, $89,418,704, seven weeks.

12. "Argo," Warner Bros., $1,170,175, 667 locations, $1,754 average, $104,955,079, 10 weeks.

13. "Hitchcock," Fox Searchlight, $1,107,659, 561 locations, $1,974 average, $3,071,871, four weeks.

14. "Anna Karenina," Focus, $1,022,214, 409 locations, $2,499 average, $8,380,517, five weeks.

15. "Killing Them Softly," Weinstein Co., $1,008,127, 1,427 locations, $706 average, $14,140,432, three weeks.

16. "The Collection," LD Entertainment, $529,158, 621 locations, $852 average, $6,520,794, three weeks.

17. "Hyde Park On Hudson," Focus, $292,796, 36 locations, $8,133 average, $404,816, two weeks.

18. "Taken 2," Fox, $288,772, 339 locations, $852 average, $138,132,493, 11 weeks.

19. "Pitch Perfect," Universal, $245,680, 332 locations, $740 average, $63,869,423, 12 weeks.

20. "Talaash," Reliance Big Pictures, $168,828, 113 locations, $1,494 average, $2,706,375, three weeks.

___

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Recipes for Health: Not-Too-Sweet Wok-Popped Coconut Kettle Corn

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Not-too-sweet coconut kettle corn.

I’m usually not a big fan of sweet kettle corn, but I wanted to make a moderately sweet version because some people love it and it is nice to be able to offer a sweet snack for the holidays. I realized after testing this recipe that I do like kettle corn if it isn’t too sweet. The trick to not burning the sugar when you make kettle corn is to add the sugar off the heat at the end of popping. The wok will be hot enough to caramelize it.

2 tablespoons coconut oil

6 tablespoons popcorn

2 tablespoons raw brown sugar

Kosher salt to taste

1. Place the coconut oil in a 14-inch lidded wok over medium heat. When the coconut oil melts add a few kernels of popcorn and cover. When you hear a kernel pop, quickly lift the lid and pour in all of the popcorn. Cover, turn the heat to medium-low, and cook, shaking the wok constantly, until you no longer hear the kernels popping against the lid. Turn off the heat, uncover and add the sugar and salt. Cover again and shake the wok vigorously for 30 seconds to a minute. Transfer the popcorn to a bowl, and if there is any caramelized sugar on the bottom of the wok scrape it out. Stir or toss the popcorn to distribute the caramelized bits throughout, and serve.

Yield: About 12 cups popcorn

Advance preparation: This is good for a few hours but it will probably disappear more quickly than that.

Nutritional information per cup: 59 calories; 3 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 0 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 8 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 1 milligram sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

 

​Up Next: Granola

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Firearms makers' stock hurt by Connecticut school shooting

California Treasurer Bill Lockyer may order two giant state pension funds to strip their portfolios of any investments in gun makers after the shooting rampage at an elementary school in Connecticut.

He has asked that both the California State Teachers' Retirement System and the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the nation's two biggest pension funds, provide an accounting of all such holdings. Lockyer is particularly concerned about investments in the makers of certain military-style assault weapons, which are banned in the state.

"The bottom line is neither PERS nor STRS should have any investments in the makers of guns that are illegal in California, especially when those guns have been used to kill 20 innocent children and six innocent adults," Lockyer said.

The request comes after CalSTRS said it would review its investment in Cerberus Capital Management, a private-equity giant that owns the maker of Bushmaster Firearms International. The company makes the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, the weapon used in last week's Connecticut school shootings.

Like Bushmaster, many other firearms brands — including Browning, Winchester, Colt and Beretta — are privately owned. Big institutional investors like pension funds might indirectly own pieces of these companies with investments in money managers or hedge funds.

The possibility of big public pension funds dumping the stock of gun and ammunition makers was also felt on Wall Street.

Investors also sold off shares of publicly traded firearms makers amid speculation the government will enact tougher new gun restrictions after the elementary school shooting.

Smith & Wesson Holding Corp., considered the largest handgun manufacturer in the U.S., led the decline. Its shares tumbled 48 cents, or 5.2%, to $8.65 a share Monday after slumping more than 4% following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday.

Sturm Ruger & Co., another firearms maker, slid $1.57, or 3.5%, to $44 a share Monday after diving more than 4% Friday. Ammunition company Olin Corp., however, rose 10 cents, or 0.5% to $21.54 a share.

"Every time one of these tragic events occurs, there's certainly a flurry of discussion over whether or not the government may tighten gun-control legislation," said Rommel Dionisio, a Wedbush Securities analyst in New York. Last week's slayings may be viewed differently because of "the use of what can be considered an assault rifle and certainly the number of children, and the fact that it was very young children."

President Obama "intends to get the ball rolling," said Dionisio, who rates Smith & Wesson stock neutral. Already, several senators are pledging to bring tough new gun control initiatives to Congress.

Until Friday's assault, the gun industry was riding an upswing. As manufacturers rolled out new innovations, sales of firearms have enjoyed double-digit growth since 2006, according to Benchmark Research. Since 2009, Sturm Ruger stock has soared more than 600%.

In the last four years, Smith & Wesson's share price has tripled. Its second-quarter revenue surged 48% this year. The company also reported seeing more female gun enthusiasts and a Black Friday boost.

In a note to investors this month, analysts from Cowen & Co. said they expect "very solid near-term gun demand," citing holiday season incentives to buy firearms and uncertainty over the "fiscal cliff."

But investors are now taking a more pessimistic look at the firearms market as politicians advocate stiffer weapons-related rules.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) promised to introduce legislation at the start of next year's congressional session. On Monday, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called for tighter gun laws.

In a speech in Newtown, Conn., where the shooting occurred, Obama said he would use "whatever power" he has to prevent future massacres after previously taking a more ambiguous stance on the topic.

Some local security companies said they are already getting more calls from school districts that want more protection.

At American Force Private Security Inc. in San Bernardino, operations manager Sam Gal said he has received three calls requesting security guards at local schools. In the past, such calls have come in once every three months, he said.

"Everyone's afraid because of what happened in Connecticut," he said.

Skittish school districts have also called USA Alarms Systems in Monrovia, said Chief Executive George Gunning. The company's sales representatives are also reaching out to existing customers to offer upgrades.

"I think they're looking to improve security systems and make sure they are up to par," he said. "There's no sense waiting for something to happen."

tiffany.hsu@latimes.com

marc.lifsher@latimes.com

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

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A collection that identifies California as a world apart

PALO ALTO — Something was unusual about the 1663 map of the Western Hemisphere.

Yes, much of the North and South American coasts followed contours geographers would recognize today. And in California, Santa Catalina, Santa Barbara and Point Reyes were clearly marked. But wait! What was that body of water marked Mare Vermiglio, or Red Sea, separating California from the mainland? And why was California a big carrot-shaped island?

That geographic oddity caught the attention of Glen McLaughlin, an American businessman who was browsing through antique maps at a shop in London in 1971. He bought it — and began pursuing a quirky and expensive passion that would lead him to devote an entire room in his San Jose-area home to what is believed to be the largest private collection of such maps.

"It was not a very pretty map, but it had the concept that California was a very different place, a special place," McLaughlin recalled about that first purchase.

Four decades later, his collection of 800 maps, all showing California as an island, is making a splash in academia. And to both California lovers and haters, it promotes the sentiment that the state, even if not a physical island, remains a cultural and political one.

McLaughlin recently turned his collection over to Stanford University's Branner earth sciences library in an arrangement that was part sale, part donation. It is thought to be worth $2.1 million.

An Oklahoman who found a new home and success as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, McLaughlin became intrigued with 17th and 18th century depictions of California as a mysterious island of riches and, he said, "hope for the future."

From early exploration to Gold Rush days to the current high-tech era, California has been a kind of island of freedom and innovation, he said. "There is enormous tolerance for different points of view. So inventors, who might be called kooks or nuts someplace else were embraced here and encouraged," said McLaughlin, a hearty 77. It is, he added, "the grandest place on Earth."

The maps and an online repository are expected to enrich scholars' knowledge of the first California experiences by European explorers. Spurred in part by imaginary descriptions in an early 16th century novel, Spanish travelers originally searched for an island supposedly populated by cannibalistic Amazons with plentiful jewels and gold. It took two more centuries to refute that and other island theories.

The collection shows "layer upon layer of history," said Julie Sweetkind-Singer, a Stanford map librarian. "It shows the perceptions of the times and the idea of exploration and finding new worlds." In their day, the maps excited people the way images from the Hubble Space Telescope do today, she added.

Among the first to study the maps intensively will be author and geography expert Rebecca Solnit, whose 2010 book, "Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas," mapped that city for such things as Native American place names, contemporary murders and coffeehouses. She soon will start a six-month fellowship at Stanford with the goal of writing a book based on the McLaughlin collection.

Although the maps are technically wrong, their symbolism remains powerful, she said.

"California is not an island and doesn't have an east coast and no Vermilion Sea. But it is so separate from other parts of the United States, economically, culturally and even spatially," Solnit said. With mountains and deserts isolating California, and its agriculture, high-tech and entertainment industries so well developed, "who's to say we are not this magical, amazing place?"

The maps, she added, "show this weird kind of dance between imagination and desire on the one hand and exploration and fact on the other."

McLaughlin said he has cartography in his DNA. His great-grandfather was a surveyor, his father once won a school contest in drawing maps, and McLaughlin himself was an Air Force pilot trained in navigation. He fell in love with Northern California when stationed there in the late 1950s and returned as a civilian to its high-tech and finance industries. Among other positions, he was a co-founder of Greater Bay Bancorp, a large bank that was acquired by Wells Fargo.

Not a golfer or one for the party circuit, he fell into his map habit as quiet relief from the financial minutiae of his work and the stress of dealing with the computer world's "bits and bytes."

It also gave him entree to the rarefied world of scholars and collectors, where the mistaken island images, like misprinted postage stamps, "always draw more attention than the run of the mill," said McLaughlin, an unexcitable man who recounts his map acquisitions like a retired professor recalling good students of the past.

The growing size of his collection sometimes exasperated his wife, Ellen. At first he stored them under a bed, but that made them difficult to protect from the family cat. He then acquired architects' cases and eventually moved them to a dedicated study in a 10-room house in Saratoga. With part-time helpers, he produced well-regarded essays and catalogs on his collection and UC Berkeley's.

Recently, he and his wife moved to a smaller home nearby, pared their possessions and arranged the transfer to Stanford. The collection is expected to move across campus in 2014 to a center that will be created at the university's main Green Library; the space will be named after David Rumsey, a real estate developer who is donating his immense collection of 18th and 19th century Western Hemisphere maps and atlases.

McLaughlin's maps, carefully stored in Mylar sleeves or framed behind glass, display beautiful curiosities. His first, in English and Latin, shows sea monsters and galleons in the oceans. A 1656 French one gives "Californie Isle" a foot-like northern coast with five peninsula toes. A 1670 Dutch version shows angels on top and below a bare-chested Native American chief with snakes and bars of gold.

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