Friday, April 1, 2011

Spanish speaking US citizen detained on claims of false ID in Denver

Lawsuit claims DPD officers committed racial profiling 
c/o Denver Daily News

[Jose] Sanchez was visiting his girlfriend in July 2010 when he stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and talked in Spanish with an acquaintance. Police officers approached Sanchez and “demanded that Mr. Sanchez identify himself” and provide an ID, according to the ACLU. When Sanchez said the ID was in the apartment and he could go get it, police officers instead went inside without getting the consent of Sanchez’ girlfriend, who was in the shower, says the ACLU.

Police located Sanchez’ photo ID in a backpack and declared it was a fake, accused Sanchez of having multiple pieces of fake ID, arrested him and took him to jail, according to the ACLU. However, the ACLU claims that the officers could have quickly checked the validity of the card with Homeland Security. [BTC - I'm flagging down this sentence. DHS, a federal agency, should not be the authoritative fallback position in local police affairs. Nor should any citizen bear instant burden of proof of identity in an aggravated police situation without probable cause of wrongdoing.  I don't know if this author is putting words in the mouth of the ACLU or if the local chapter mistakenly believes DHS is somehow a higher authority than dealing with their local PD for routine police work. This sentence lends airs of guilty-until-proven innocent.  We do not have to answer to federal powers when we walk outside our doors for non-criminal mundane reasons. It doesn't resonate "typical" of the ACLU.  Regardless, the Denver PD clearly invoked police might-is-right towards the spanish speaker or someone simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.]

“The Denver Police Department has authorized its officers to enforce an ordinance that prohibits the carrying of false identification. But the department has failed to train its officers to recognize valid government-issued photo ID cards,” Silverstein said in a statement. “That’s a set-up for more false arrests and illegal detentions like this one and a recipe for the continuing deterioration of police-community relations.”

DPD Spokesman Sonny Jackson said police received a complaint about the Sanchez incident last summer. An investigation was started, but the person complaining did not cooperate with the investigation so both internal affairs and the Office of the Independent Monitor declined the case, according to Jackson.  :::MORE HERE:::

"Scaled-back Big Brother bill still pushes TX license plate readers, GPS tracking w/o warrants".. c/o Grits for Breakfast

Help Florida root out Big Data amendment for licenses, in SB 1150

State sneaks RFID into license regulations in Transport bill, SB 1150
c/o Liberty Underground [CORRECTION: There is no mention of RFID in the amendment.]

UPDATE 2:50PM EDT - Floridians Against Real ID claim concerns over RFID are founded due to broad topology language in Sen. Flores amendment. "RFID does not change the width of the license," says Paul Henry, Executive Director of  Floridians Against Real ID, whose efforts are to rule out chances Florida licenses will become Real ID compliant.  Florida's current license regulations favor Real ID, which may include RFID.

BTC-  The SB 1150 amendment reads as follows:
Page 1 of 2 3/30/2011
322.145 Electronic authentication of licenses.—
(1) Any driver’s license issued on or after July 1, 2012, must contain a means of electronic authentication, which conforms to a recognized standard for such authentication, such as public key infrastructure, symmetric key algorithms, security tokens, mediametrics, or biometrics. Electronic authentication capabilities must not interfere with or change the driver’s license format or topology.
It reads as if it were an online authentication structure like NSTIC, but applied to a drivers license. Maybe because that's the idea, to provide a voluntary online authentication option to drivers licenses.
(2) The department shall provide, at the applicant’s option and at the time a license is issued, a security token that can be electronically authenticated through a personal computer. The token must also conform to one of the standards provided subsection (1).
Could this be a new legislative campaign to bring licenses into the digital infrastructure, so identity grabs can go to one stop swapping?   What is not clear is whether the authentication systems will be secure, who has access to the information, where license data lands after authentication and all of the same old pesky big database queries.  [Not that this has anything to do with this Florida amendment possibly being hatched in concept at the NY Big Data conference... Of course, we can't prove that!]  All the same "who governs data" is becoming the new question, rather than who owns data.  Let's just pray it isn't IBM.

ACTION TO FOLLOW c/o Floridians Against Real ID

"Please call or email the amendment's sponsor, Sen. Anitere Flores (R-Miami), who is the Republican "Whip" at 850-487-5130 (Tallahassee) or 305-270-6550 (Miami). Her email address is flores.anitere.web@flsenate.gov . 
Please ask every one you know to call or email on this important subject.
Tell her it is unacceptable to add RFID chips or any electronic devices to our Florida driver's licenses, especially through the backdoor via an amendment. The "party of small government" is growing the government with bills such as these, which will bring additional costs and less liberty. RFID chips can be easily read and hacked."
Thank you,
Paul Henry, Executive Director -Floridians Against REAL ID


Thursday, March 31, 2011

Oversight Committee Releases Report on Interference by DHS Political Appointees in FOIA Requests

Reasons why Real ID is not a federal fiscal priority

BTC Commentary - There are reasons why there is a bloodless, unenthusiastic delivery amid the Congress when it comes to the enactment and furtherance of Real ID related matters in 2011. DHS, consumed by the new ability to electronically X-Ray search everything in sight, held their nose as they kicked implementation down the road to 2013.  Is it possible that the smell of the "dead" law is now so repellant that even the neo-con sympathetic, Sen. Joe Lieberman, has raised concerns toward the problem of legal cadaver management?

It might be beneficial to dust off one or two of the aged arguments surrounding Real ID's effectiveness to improve domestic national security. It is resoundingly unconvincing that "failure" to implement Real ID regulations will put Americans at risk to spontaneously combust in fiery acts of sheer domestic TERROR, as Senator Grassley has complained.

It might be a good idea to put yourself in the shoes of a government agency who doesn't yet have a national operating budget to continue through the rest of 2011.  DHS, like every other federal agency or program, will be making hard decisions like, which shoestrings to go without.

GHETTO FABULOUS GOVERNMENT

Arianna Huffington, a naturalized citizen and immgrant to the United States, has not been shy in pointing out the great problems of America's nosedive into 3rd world status.  She points to the excesses of financial mismanagement and underrepresentation of domestic financial interests by the US Congress'.

Our government is considering, in a matter of weeks, a temporary shut down.  It may result in a sober and humiliating moment of silence for our leaders to reconsider the indebted future they are handing off to their children and grandchildren.  They might find they will not escape a form of instant karma, where they lose temporary power and the efficacy of their jobs.  The may feel the damaging pains of purposelessness experienced by whordes of America's underemployed.  The lights may go down for a few days. The aides/interns, whose education debt vastly outspends their hourly wage earnings, might play frisbee and chase squirrels on the Captiol Hill lawns.  Free recreational diversion is more positive than thinking about how to recover from shortages to pay their car note or college loans.  Seething fiscal conservatives may continue to flash the $40 million daily bill Americans get to intervene in the Libyan revolution.  A government shutdown might be a great way to concretely inform Congress that the American people are broke.  [If we don't get paid, no one else gets paid either.]

Middle Eastern and North African interventions to date don't help the majority of Americans pay bills.

An intervention simply holds up a flashy powerful veneer. Who are we fooling?  The joke should go, how many 1st world nations does it really take to unscrew a North African dictator from his regimen?  Is that really any of our business, when we should be exiting Iraq and Afghanistan? Our idle occupying forces are now killing civillians for sport. We have truly lost our way!

It further amazes that an increase of US humanitarian aid has not really been mentioned as prolifically towards the cause of Japan's disaster stricken state.  It boggles the mind why other nations are not yet on the scene to assist in staving off the volatile nuclear reactors.  We provided war ships.  Where is our nuclear crisis management?  The world is filled with resources for war; yet a much more far reaching problem of nuclear wastewater fallout into the seafood chain is not so much a priority?  I guess the world will just have to eat it!  Our humanitarian focus is really plied more on unwilling Libyans, from a much less willing American public who were ignored in due process.

We've been reduced to a ghetto fabulous gunmetal facade against a failing economic structure; where JP Morgan and Citibank owns most of the debt and China owns us and employs their own.



The prospects for Real ID truly pale in competition of the list of immediate federal fiscal priorities.

EQUAL TIME: Aviation Security: Policy Responses to Address Terrorism Threats c/o Heritage.org

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

NSTIC: "Federated authentication" and US Economics

c/o Schneier on Security 
"There has been much academic discussion of federated authentication, and quite some political manoeuvring about ‘e-ID’. The grand vision, which has been around for years in various forms but was recently articulated in the US National Strategy for Trustworthy Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), is that a single logon should work everywhere [1]. You should be able to use your identity provider of choice to log on anywhere; so you might use your driver’s license to log on to Gmail, or use your Facebook logon to file your tax return. More restricted versions include the vision of governments of places like Estonia and Germany (and until May 2010 the UK) that a government-issued identity card should serve as a universal logon. Yet few systems have been fielded at any scale."
:::MORE HERE::: 

Monday, March 28, 2011

ACTION ALERT: Repeal the Real ID Act, keep it on Congress' radar!

BTC - As States continue to oppose the Real ID Act, it's important to point out there are lesser cited consequences in allowing it to continue. The law's threat to privacy and civil liberty remain the dominant point of dissent; but there are human and environmental tolls mounting every day due to the law. The Real ID Act continues as one more way to push the otherwise sovereign tribal identities of American Indians into US federal compliance. Immigration case law decisions continue to build precedent on court decisions involved with the Real ID Act.  Immigrants facing political or religious persecution in their native countries have been refused humanitarian sanctuary in the United States according to some of the Real ID related rulings.  Elderly citizens are found to be losing ground over proof of identity and  citizenship. Of course, no one living on the border has forgotten about the big fence continuing through private properties or obstructing wildlife migrations.

You can expect more problems and unintended consequences attached to the Real ID Act going forward today, as it remains law.

You have even more reasons to ask for the repeal of a law passed as an appropriations afterthought in late 2004.   The Real ID Act and it's long term consequences to American life remain.

Contact your congressional leaders directly here.

[Thanks to Downsize D.C., here is an example of what you can say in your letter! Add any additional concerns of your own.]
I am pleased Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano extended the deadline for states to implement REAL ID from this May to January, 2013. If she hadn't done this, people in states that haven't implemented REAL ID could have been denied the right to board an airplane.


But the Secretary can't repeal REAL ID. Congress can, and should.


The REAL ID Act . . .

  • Forces innocent American citizens to carry an "internal passport" or National ID card in the form of a standardized state driver's license . . .
  • Their personal information is barcoded and put in a central database; 
  • Which makes them MORE vulnerable to identity theft.



REAL ID also violates fundamental liberties. It will be needed not only to board an airplane or enter federal buildings, it could also be required to earn a living, and even to purchase firearms or prescription drugs!


In states that have implemented REAL ID, innocent citizens are forced into longer and multiple visits to the DMV, and to track down records and documents to "prove" their identity.


And states are forced to spend money they don't have to comply with it. No wonder two dozen states have chosen to "nullify" REAL ID.


The REAL ID Act is a phony piece of legislation that exploited anti-Moslem and anti-Mexican sentiment. But it can't prevent either terrorism or illegal immigration! The only people it regulates are innocent Americans.


America is better than that.


Show us that YOU'RE better than that. Repeal REAL ID and replace it with nothing.

END LETTER
If  you're not certain how to approach your Congressional leader yet, try this.

If you're ready to go ahead, punch in your zipcode here to find your representatives.

REDUX: "Big Data to Drive a Surveillance Society"

BTC - IBM is that nasty guy at the Info Bar who slips something into your beverage while you are distracted and then takes full advantage before you come to.  Guys like that believe, inherently, you want your non-consensual compromise as badly as they do.
"It [BIG DATA] will change our existing notions of privacy. A surveillance society is not only inevitable, it's worse. It's irresistible," said Jeff Jonas, a distinguished engineer with IBM. Jonas spoke to a packed house of several hundred people Wednesday at the Structure Big Data 2011 conference here.
:::MORE HERE:::

How predictable!  IBM, Verichip wundersponsor, can't help but love systemic numerical processing of people's information for cash!  Ahem ... excepting the deep privacy argument that information surveillance doesn't really happen- or even start- with bonafide informed consent, simply distracted consent.  Between TIME's coverage of the great data heist of 2011 and the Wall Street Journal's "What They Know" columns; Washington has been successfully cornered on the massive problem of unaccountable data brokerages and the information surveillance of millions of people.

Let's not forget what we are up against; an entire unchecked industry who -for lack of limits- has grown not only entitled, by years of unchecked precedent, but also super-rich.   A simple protest in NYC is not fixing this...

Here is second life for news that matters.
"WHAT THEY KNOW @alleyinsider: Color isn't about photo sharing. It's about data mining. Founder Bill Nguyen explains. http://read.bi/f3WU6k"
Browser Beware: Washington Weighs Online Consumer Privacy

Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You

Big Data to revolutionize Healthcare according to ONC 

Europe and U.S. converging on Internet privacy

Are 95% of People Investigated Under New FBI Guidelines Innocent, but Entered into Database?

"DC Metro to install more CCTV"