Texas' Department of Public Safety is at the center of a drivers license rule tug of war between what's really not-quite-law in the State of Texas and Governor Rick Perry's office. In recent months, more federal money became available in the form of FEMA grants to comply with the Real ID Act of 2005. DPS would certainly like to have the $171.2 million. However, it is unfortunate for them, and all of us, that Texas would have to pass legislation to comply with Real ID regulations in order to receive the federal funding. While the Austin Statesman spins that Texas does not resist a Real ID; attempts to push Real ID forward are being made without the Texas legislative process, allowing for public input.
Texas had such a fight on their hands last session that everything that touched Real ID as proposed law DIED. There were no survivors. It was a draw. Alas - this continuing fight intensifies.
The driving force behind the new push for Real ID rulemaking at DPS in Texas is, none other than, the Texas Governor's Office. Rick Perry is trying to get the job done before the '09 Texas legislative session and possibly before Bush leaves the Oval Office. Texas State lawmakers may be battling a bad example in the White House; one of delegating too much power to appointed officials (DPS Chair Allan Pollunsky) and thus abusing executive privilege.
REAL ID AS IMMIGRATION REFORM
Some herald the new vertical license issued by DPS as adequate means to quell dominance fears associated with border clashes. Let it be said here that immigration enforcement has always been a federal matter. Until you talk to the locals who are forced into the enforcement role, with or without proper credential. The substandard, slack-wristed way the U.S. enforces any type of immigration is the elephant sitting in the living room.
Big business pays the enforcers to look the other way. Even when big business is out of sight, enforcement at our borders is still spotty at best. When officials finally turn over and committ to enforce the immigration law they have - it's to create an ineffectual scary scenario, making an example of immigrants who are here on risky business.It's either not much at all or way over the top. There are huge imbalances to compensate for on the part of the U.S. government.
There are infinitely better, more effective ways for people to both work and travel here in the U.S. They are making some gains and work is going into it - but Real ID isn't immigration policy. It's a band-aid and a lollipop to those who want immigration reform and huge government contracts to anchor a surveillance state for the Pentagon.
USE & RELEVANCE
Real ID regulations call for technologies that don't secure anyone's identity, yet manage to create a record of everything you use them for. From there, everything you do is the government's business. Literally - they will make a big stack of money from the information they glean from studying the human animal migration patterns and your buying habits. The machinery to catalouge and account for all of this human behavior makes someone rich. Thus continues the expanding legacy of governance as The Corporations see fit (with or without ethics). Real Id regulations as enforced by DHS is big bad government business as usual.
Technology services don't actually have to be competent. They just have to make money. Biometrics have a lousy operations track record for security. They fail frequently. Which means there will be frequent pay-out in employment contracts to fix the broken biometrics. Radio frequency ID as secured identity technologies have failed miserably, as well. If you know your U.S. government technologies contracts policy, the electronics don't have to function reliably. You just have to successfully sell it to the Pentagon. The Pentagon will write a check for anything because they aren't paying for it - you are.
Apparently they didn't get the memo: we're broke. That means no money for Real ID programs or super spy telecomm outerspace sattelite mapping of wretches escaping the scene of disaster. Sorry National Applications Office... you may be out of business soon and your engineers will have to go back to swimming in the commercial waters, with or without insurance. Buh-bye!
DHS is still spending like they've got it - taking loans from (The Fed?) author/benefactors of fake money -consideration- manufactured from thin air to be repaid by the United Slaves of America. Since when do We the People work to pay off the debt of Public Servants? Since there has been a Federal Reserve.
So we know where the money to pay for Real ID programs comes from. The terrible question now is: do we put up with it?
I think not. There are too many people in Texas who would observe the national trend of turning down Real ID as a mandate for their state. We don't have to spit in anyone's eye. We just have to stand on our feet behind the legislators who understand their personal loss for choosing to go against the U.S. constitution, privacy and the security of their own identity.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
WHTI WATCH: Mandated Biometrics & RFID
WHTI + RFID = Enhanced Driver's Licenses
Watch this 20/20 report on the dangers you may face in compliance with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZaQFilWXgE
Driving Your Liberties Away: Biometrics and “Enhanced” Drivers Licenses
Dissident Voice
LIFE WITH WHTI : The U.K.'s bout with the surveillance state
If you don't think it can happen in a Westernized country? Watch the lifestyles of "world citizens" living in the uber modern metro in London. This does not have to be your life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og7sZbF6ezw
Watch this 20/20 report on the dangers you may face in compliance with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZaQFilWXgE
Dissident Voice
by Christopher Parsons / November 15th, 2008
Privacy advocates across Canada have been struggling to prevent the Ontario provincial government from passing legislation that will see radio identifiers and biometric data inserted into future Ontarian drivers licenses. In spite of their efforts to raise the government’s awareness of the privacy dangers accompanying the proposed licenses, it appears as though their work may been in vain: Bill 85 is now in its final reading, and is widely expected to be passed on November 17th, or shortly thereafter, when the reading continues.
Ontario, and the rest of Canada, is being forced into including radio and biometric features in future drivers licenses by the United States government. As a consequence of the U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), all Canadians and Americans who cross into the U.S. at a land border with just a driver license will be required to present an Enhanced Drivers License (EDL) as of June 1, 2009. While the radio ‘feature’ is disturbing in its own right, insofar as it emits a unique identifier whenever brought into range of a reader, I want to focus on the biometric features of these cards, why they raise human rights and civil liberties concerns, and the risk of function creep associated with the biometric facets of EDLs.
WHTI-Mandated Biometrics
The EDLs that Canadians and Americans will need to enter the U.S. include a picture of a driver’s face that can be analyzed against an American-Canadian facial database. To enroll in the database, individuals must first have their images captured, after which the computer system converts the image to a biometric template that is stored in a shared American-Canadian database. Next, the biometric template is used to authenticate a person’s identity, ensuring that the biometric data that is provided recalls the precise template for the individual in question. Finally, and arguably the most concerning, the system performs an identification process, where the biometric data is compared to all of the records held in the database. This final stage allows for mass analysis of images in the database against incomplete facial templates, such as those derived from security cameras.
The WHTI-mandated biometrics are intended to guarantee the identity of individuals at the border while providing an extra level of difficulty in creating illegal identity documents. In theory, because these licenses crosscheck between the image provided, and the one entered into the government database, it is less likely that phony IDs can be used to cross the Canadian-American border. Beyond this security feature, the American and Canadian governments argue that placing these biometrics in identity documents will enable airports to process travelers more efficiently because of the redundancy in evaluating a person’s identity. The WHTI mandates are publicly stated as securing America while providing convenience to Americans and Canadians alike.
Current Issues with the Proposed Biometrics
Several issues arise when citizens provide their biometric information to central government agencies. To begin, there is the matter that biometric authentication relies on a statistical pattern recognition technology. We do not live in Jack Bauer’s nightmare world of 24, where computers accurately and easily identify faces against government databases; in the real world there is a likelihood that images will be misidentified. Such misidentifications can lead to an inability to move internationally, and given the ‘ease’ of removing oneself from the American and Canadian ‘no-fly’ lists it is likely that any immobility imposed by mistaken biometric associations will be long-term conditions. Inviting the possibility of such immobility is an affront to Canada’s commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which mandates that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country” — the biometrics, as proposed, may deny Americans who have come to visit Canada from reentering their own nation, or prevent Canadians from enjoying their right of international movement. Regardless of America’s hesitance to sign the Declaration, Canada and her governments should attend to their obligations and resist the licensing changes on behalf of both Americans and Canadians.
In addition, there are concerns that the biometric proposals would fly in the face of privacy protections offered by Ontario’s Privacy and Information Commissioner, Dr. Ann Cavoukian. In her open letter to the Hon. D. Tsubouchi on April 5, 2001 she warned that, “…there must be no ability to compare biometric images from one data with biometric images from other databases or reproductions of the biometric not obtained from the individual.” Her caution was offered during a time that the Ontario government was considering issuing smart cards, and it still echoes today: people must be aware of all uses of their biometric data and consent to its use. In the case of Ontario, the government has been silent on the possibility of American authorities using the biometric information provided by the drivers license database for purposes beyond border screenings.
Finally, we live in a world where identity theft is becoming more sophisticated, more harmful, and more common. Were a person to successfully enroll in the biometric-program associated with the drivers license using another person’s identity, then the thief would have effectively stolen another person’s face for the purposes of computer-algorithm authentication. In a situation like this, how do we adjudicate when the correct person uses a license? The danger of ‘losing’ biometric information places innocent citizen at substantial risk of being accused of actions they are not responsible for. Research groups have demonstrated that there are substantial costs that follow from having one’s identity stolen, with costs reaching as high as thousands of dollars. How much will these costs skyrocket when biometric data is included in the information that thieves steal?
Function Creep
In the case of the American-mandated drivers licenses, there is a considerable worry of function creep that could ensue after they are distributed to the public. Interpol has recently announced that they want to begin using a facial recognition database to catch suspects by using a facial recognition system at borders, and various law enforcement agencies in Canada and the United States have similarly expressed an interest in this mode of discovering and identifying suspects. Imagine how much safer society might be; by using a massive government-sponsored facial database it would be far easier to identify dangerous elements in society!
While this might, initially, sound like a positive thing there are (at least) two associated dangers with this kind of function creep. First, any such use of the biometric data for these purposes would exceed the intent that the data was collected for — citizens should always be notified, and be required to give their consent, when their biometric data might be used for either private or public purposes. Second, and perhaps of even greater concern, biometric analyses are not wholly accurate. Accuracy rates plummet when less than ideal images are used in facial comparisons — the images taken from a security camera, for example, provide poor templates to search against the database. Searching the drivers license database with poor templates would risk implicating a great number of people as ‘suspects’ in a crime, based on poorly constructed computer-algorithms. The prospect of being a suspect on the basis of a computer foul-up is a less than heartening thought to the innocent.
Voltaire famously wrote, “It is better to risk saving a guilty man than condemn an innocent one.” We should heed his sound advice, and rethink the deployment of identity cards that will almost inevitably condemn the innocent to hardships in our governments’ incessant drives to ‘secure’ the societies that they govern from the guilty.
Christopher Parsons is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria researching ubiquitous digital surveillance, and is a member of the New Transparency Project.
Privacy advocates across Canada have been struggling to prevent the Ontario provincial government from passing legislation that will see radio identifiers and biometric data inserted into future Ontarian drivers licenses. In spite of their efforts to raise the government’s awareness of the privacy dangers accompanying the proposed licenses, it appears as though their work may been in vain: Bill 85 is now in its final reading, and is widely expected to be passed on November 17th, or shortly thereafter, when the reading continues.
Ontario, and the rest of Canada, is being forced into including radio and biometric features in future drivers licenses by the United States government. As a consequence of the U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), all Canadians and Americans who cross into the U.S. at a land border with just a driver license will be required to present an Enhanced Drivers License (EDL) as of June 1, 2009. While the radio ‘feature’ is disturbing in its own right, insofar as it emits a unique identifier whenever brought into range of a reader, I want to focus on the biometric features of these cards, why they raise human rights and civil liberties concerns, and the risk of function creep associated with the biometric facets of EDLs.
WHTI-Mandated Biometrics
The EDLs that Canadians and Americans will need to enter the U.S. include a picture of a driver’s face that can be analyzed against an American-Canadian facial database. To enroll in the database, individuals must first have their images captured, after which the computer system converts the image to a biometric template that is stored in a shared American-Canadian database. Next, the biometric template is used to authenticate a person’s identity, ensuring that the biometric data that is provided recalls the precise template for the individual in question. Finally, and arguably the most concerning, the system performs an identification process, where the biometric data is compared to all of the records held in the database. This final stage allows for mass analysis of images in the database against incomplete facial templates, such as those derived from security cameras.
The WHTI-mandated biometrics are intended to guarantee the identity of individuals at the border while providing an extra level of difficulty in creating illegal identity documents. In theory, because these licenses crosscheck between the image provided, and the one entered into the government database, it is less likely that phony IDs can be used to cross the Canadian-American border. Beyond this security feature, the American and Canadian governments argue that placing these biometrics in identity documents will enable airports to process travelers more efficiently because of the redundancy in evaluating a person’s identity. The WHTI mandates are publicly stated as securing America while providing convenience to Americans and Canadians alike.
Current Issues with the Proposed Biometrics
Several issues arise when citizens provide their biometric information to central government agencies. To begin, there is the matter that biometric authentication relies on a statistical pattern recognition technology. We do not live in Jack Bauer’s nightmare world of 24, where computers accurately and easily identify faces against government databases; in the real world there is a likelihood that images will be misidentified. Such misidentifications can lead to an inability to move internationally, and given the ‘ease’ of removing oneself from the American and Canadian ‘no-fly’ lists it is likely that any immobility imposed by mistaken biometric associations will be long-term conditions. Inviting the possibility of such immobility is an affront to Canada’s commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which mandates that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country” — the biometrics, as proposed, may deny Americans who have come to visit Canada from reentering their own nation, or prevent Canadians from enjoying their right of international movement. Regardless of America’s hesitance to sign the Declaration, Canada and her governments should attend to their obligations and resist the licensing changes on behalf of both Americans and Canadians.
In addition, there are concerns that the biometric proposals would fly in the face of privacy protections offered by Ontario’s Privacy and Information Commissioner, Dr. Ann Cavoukian. In her open letter to the Hon. D. Tsubouchi on April 5, 2001 she warned that, “…there must be no ability to compare biometric images from one data with biometric images from other databases or reproductions of the biometric not obtained from the individual.” Her caution was offered during a time that the Ontario government was considering issuing smart cards, and it still echoes today: people must be aware of all uses of their biometric data and consent to its use. In the case of Ontario, the government has been silent on the possibility of American authorities using the biometric information provided by the drivers license database for purposes beyond border screenings.
Finally, we live in a world where identity theft is becoming more sophisticated, more harmful, and more common. Were a person to successfully enroll in the biometric-program associated with the drivers license using another person’s identity, then the thief would have effectively stolen another person’s face for the purposes of computer-algorithm authentication. In a situation like this, how do we adjudicate when the correct person uses a license? The danger of ‘losing’ biometric information places innocent citizen at substantial risk of being accused of actions they are not responsible for. Research groups have demonstrated that there are substantial costs that follow from having one’s identity stolen, with costs reaching as high as thousands of dollars. How much will these costs skyrocket when biometric data is included in the information that thieves steal?
Function Creep
In the case of the American-mandated drivers licenses, there is a considerable worry of function creep that could ensue after they are distributed to the public. Interpol has recently announced that they want to begin using a facial recognition database to catch suspects by using a facial recognition system at borders, and various law enforcement agencies in Canada and the United States have similarly expressed an interest in this mode of discovering and identifying suspects. Imagine how much safer society might be; by using a massive government-sponsored facial database it would be far easier to identify dangerous elements in society!
While this might, initially, sound like a positive thing there are (at least) two associated dangers with this kind of function creep. First, any such use of the biometric data for these purposes would exceed the intent that the data was collected for — citizens should always be notified, and be required to give their consent, when their biometric data might be used for either private or public purposes. Second, and perhaps of even greater concern, biometric analyses are not wholly accurate. Accuracy rates plummet when less than ideal images are used in facial comparisons — the images taken from a security camera, for example, provide poor templates to search against the database. Searching the drivers license database with poor templates would risk implicating a great number of people as ‘suspects’ in a crime, based on poorly constructed computer-algorithms. The prospect of being a suspect on the basis of a computer foul-up is a less than heartening thought to the innocent.
Voltaire famously wrote, “It is better to risk saving a guilty man than condemn an innocent one.” We should heed his sound advice, and rethink the deployment of identity cards that will almost inevitably condemn the innocent to hardships in our governments’ incessant drives to ‘secure’ the societies that they govern from the guilty.
Christopher Parsons is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria researching ubiquitous digital surveillance, and is a member of the New Transparency Project.
Read other articles by Christopher.
This article was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 7:00am and is filed under Civil Liberties, Privacy, Science/Tech, Security.
This article was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 7:00am and is filed under Civil Liberties, Privacy, Science/Tech, Security.
LIFE WITH WHTI : The U.K.'s bout with the surveillance state
If you don't think it can happen in a Westernized country? Watch the lifestyles of "world citizens" living in the uber modern metro in London. This does not have to be your life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og7sZbF6ezw
Monday, November 17, 2008
DIGEST: Cabinet Appointments, RFID News
RFID-based System Tracked Victims of Hurricanes Gustav, Ike
RFIDNews.com
The state of Texas employed EPC Gen 2 tags, GPS and bar-coding to monitor the process of evacuating individuals—particular the elderly, sick or disabled—who lacked access to transportation during the storms.
Nov. 12, 2008—Living through a hurricane is a traumatic, emotionally taxing experience for anyone—especially those who lack the means to flee from its path. This became glaringly obvious as the world watched and read about the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. And it was one of the main drivers behind an emergency program spearheaded in 2006 by Texas Governor Rick Perry.
The system employs a combination of RFID, GPS and bar-code technology, and was designed to simplify and automate the evacuation process of elderly, sick, disabled or able-bodied individuals or families who have no access to transportation during an emergency (see An RFID Port in a Storm). This summer, the system was deployed to help the state's Division of Emergency Management evacuate 34,800 residents during Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.
Democrats Move Cautiously on DHS Appointment
The state of Texas employed EPC Gen 2 tags, GPS and bar-coding to monitor the process of evacuating individuals—particular the elderly, sick or disabled—who lacked access to transportation during the storms.
Nov. 12, 2008—Living through a hurricane is a traumatic, emotionally taxing experience for anyone—especially those who lack the means to flee from its path. This became glaringly obvious as the world watched and read about the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. And it was one of the main drivers behind an emergency program spearheaded in 2006 by Texas Governor Rick Perry.
The system employs a combination of RFID, GPS and bar-code technology, and was designed to simplify and automate the evacuation process of elderly, sick, disabled or able-bodied individuals or families who have no access to transportation during an emergency (see An RFID Port in a Storm). This summer, the system was deployed to help the state's Division of Emergency Management evacuate 34,800 residents during Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.
Democrats Move Cautiously on DHS Appointment
WashingtonPost.com
Obama has vowed to appoint a national cyber adviser to report directly to the president, strengthen a White House privacy and civil liberties board, and allow about 60,000 Transportation Security Administration screeners to form a union, which President Bush stopped by issuing veto threats in 2002 and 2007.
Obama will be pressed to weigh in by March 1 on a business-led fight in Congress to kill or scale back E-Verify, an electronic system that DHS wants companies to use to confirm the validity of work documents submitted by new hires.
The department has invested heavily in big-ticket research projects -- such as developing a surveillance-based "virtual" fence to control the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, next-generation radiation detection and X-ray cargo screening equipment to be used at U.S. and foreign ports, and biological weapons detection systems to stand watch over U.S. cities. But the initiatives have yet to deliver on their promise, and DHS must decide whether to fork out billions more to continue or to deploy them.
Not since the Eisenhower Administration took over the Department of Defense or the Reagan Administration assumed leadership of the Department of Energy have the stewards of our nation's security . . . been wholly or mostly replaced for the first time," analysts David Heyman and James Jay Carafano wrote in a September report, "Homeland Security 3.0," that noted the turmoil, distraction and delay caused by repeated reorganizations since the department's creation in 2003.
Obama has vowed to appoint a national cyber adviser to report directly to the president, strengthen a White House privacy and civil liberties board, and allow about 60,000 Transportation Security Administration screeners to form a union, which President Bush stopped by issuing veto threats in 2002 and 2007.
Obama will be pressed to weigh in by March 1 on a business-led fight in Congress to kill or scale back E-Verify, an electronic system that DHS wants companies to use to confirm the validity of work documents submitted by new hires.
The department has invested heavily in big-ticket research projects -- such as developing a surveillance-based "virtual" fence to control the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, next-generation radiation detection and X-ray cargo screening equipment to be used at U.S. and foreign ports, and biological weapons detection systems to stand watch over U.S. cities. But the initiatives have yet to deliver on their promise, and DHS must decide whether to fork out billions more to continue or to deploy them.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Texas Capitol Intelligence Consultant Contracted by DPS
The Department of Public Safety contracted research firm Deloitte & Touche to move forward "intelligence driven ...protective counter-surveillance on the Governor’s protection detail, the Lieutenant Governor, visiting dignitaries, the State Capital and Governor’s Mansion," as reported in Scott Henson's blog, Grits for Breakfast.
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/11/consultant-recommends-dps-create.html
DPS research contracts with Deloitte & Touche were mentioned last during the DPS hearing in surmising budgetary costs for implementing Real ID accounts and moving forward with continental U.S. inspections of licenses with consideration of citizenship.
DPS reorganization and budgets based on federal license regulations were part of the analysis propelling studies & reports generated by Deloitte and Touche.
DPS research contracts with Deloitte & Touche were mentioned last during the DPS hearing in surmising budgetary costs for implementing Real ID accounts and moving forward with continental U.S. inspections of licenses with consideration of citizenship.
DPS reorganization and budgets based on federal license regulations were part of the analysis propelling studies & reports generated by Deloitte and Touche.
http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/texas/big_changes_possible_for_dps
The report calls for rebuilding DPS from top to bottom. A spokesperson said we should not expect changes overnight. "Some of the things that the study recommends are going to require legislative action, some of them are going to require additional financial resources," said Mange.
SUNSET COMMISSION & DPS
DPS as a state agency is still under review for changes and improvements based on the oversight by Texas's Sunset Commission.
Read the Sunset Commission's review of the DPS here:
http://www.sunset.state.tx.us/81streports/dps/dps_dec.pdf
The report calls for rebuilding DPS from top to bottom. A spokesperson said we should not expect changes overnight. "Some of the things that the study recommends are going to require legislative action, some of them are going to require additional financial resources," said Mange.
SUNSET COMMISSION & DPS
DPS as a state agency is still under review for changes and improvements based on the oversight by Texas's Sunset Commission.
Read the Sunset Commission's review of the DPS here:
http://www.sunset.state.tx.us/81streports/dps/dps_dec.pdf
Monday, November 10, 2008
REPORT CARD: Professor Dennis Loo Grades Obama
Can we really say of Barack Obama, "Don't believe the hype,"?
He hasn't had much of an opportunity to make a America better or worse as the new POTUS elect.
For salt, what does Obama really have to pick from but the incumbent residuals whose performance has been a little better than complete garbage during the last eight years? Dignified public servants? How about corporate patsys : spineless, irresponsible, shortsighted, lazy cretins with a bloated sense of both entitlement and import to the people they have failed to serve but whose paychecks they cash anyway. They are the reason I don't want Obama's job.
For salt, what does Obama really have to pick from but the incumbent residuals whose performance has been a little better than complete garbage during the last eight years? Dignified public servants? How about corporate patsys : spineless, irresponsible, shortsighted, lazy cretins with a bloated sense of both entitlement and import to the people they have failed to serve but whose paychecks they cash anyway. They are the reason I don't want Obama's job.
It's a sitcom; what Dilbert would look like if he had both money and power.
So I defer to someone very responsible -Dennis Loo, World Can't Wait herald and author of Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush & Cheney. Who can we trust except those who have absolutely NO TOLERANCE WHATSOEVER for civil liberties backslides? There are those who have developed an acutely sensitive attennae to America's political performers - such as Dennis Loo.
Author Dennis Loo, Ph.D. is a Professor of Sociology at Cal Poly Pomona. He graduated with honors from Harvard in Government and received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz in Sociology. He has been a journalist, including as a Photo Editor at the Harvard Crimson and an Associate Editor at the Hawaii Observer. His research and writings revolve mostly around polling and public policymaking, with an emphasis on the roles of media, public officials and social movements.
So I defer to someone very responsible -Dennis Loo, World Can't Wait herald and author of Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush & Cheney. Who can we trust except those who have absolutely NO TOLERANCE WHATSOEVER for civil liberties backslides? There are those who have developed an acutely sensitive attennae to America's political performers - such as Dennis Loo.
Author Dennis Loo, Ph.D. is a Professor of Sociology at Cal Poly Pomona. He graduated with honors from Harvard in Government and received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz in Sociology. He has been a journalist, including as a Photo Editor at the Harvard Crimson and an Associate Editor at the Hawaii Observer. His research and writings revolve mostly around polling and public policymaking, with an emphasis on the roles of media, public officials and social movements.
Professor Loo cuts Obama & cabinet potentates NO SLACK in this report on Obama.
"Civil liberties -Granted... what I fear the most is what is actually happening now that the election is over. DHS is staffing up and spending our tax dollars like crazy without relative checks and balances. Is Obama going to stand up to the spoiled and irrelevant military class docking their bids on American soil? Or is he just going to get paid, shut up and "do his job" like the last guy?
He supports the war on drugs.
He supports the crack-cocaine sentence disparity.
He supports Real ID.
He supports the PATRIOT Act.
He supports the death penalty.
He opposes lowering the drinking age to 18.
He supported amnesty for telecoms engaged in illegal spying on Americans."
TO BE CONTINUED...
Saturday, November 8, 2008
OBAMA, DHS Flight Lists, & Repeal of Real ID
Civil liberties groups like the ACLU & The Electronic Frontier Foundation are lining up to present their priorities for the incoming Obama administration.
Among EFF's Declarations :
"Scale back the use of National Security Letters to gag and acquire data from online service providers. The REAL ID Act, with its requirement that Americans carry a national ID card, has been rejected by many U.S. states and should be federally repealed. Large-scale government data collection and data-mining projects like Automated Targeting System (ATS) should be reduced or eliminated. Invasive border-searches of electronic devices should be stopped."President Bush, produced an environment so damaging to civil liberties, you would have to be comatose not to notice the before-&-after levels of public monitoring and movement infringements. Although, we did achieve a victory in the restoration of habeas corpus.
The DHS are seeking additional staffing ramping up to a new deadline for Secure Flight in January. {January? Isn't that when our new hero is sworn in?} The tax-cash for this moved forward without oversight from the GAO- Government Accountability Office.
AIMING TO KILL FLIES WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER: What have we done?
As part of my blogging editorial responsibilities here at BeatTheChip, I bear the burden of truth. Here is my interpretation of the US government implementing public surveillance.
They are watching us. OK- so why are they REALLY watching us?
Not necessarily because we are doing anything wrong, but due to their collective paranoia over blowback from those they have wronged- which now includes the American people. After witnessing the RNC mass arrest of non-violent protestors, including 42 accredited journalists, they might be a lot edgy over their lack of popularity. Vicious cycle - the more excessive force they use, they know there will be retaliation. They are aware of how they would react if they were on the receiving end of their treatment. So why drive the repression of rights for the common man with illegal, immoral and universally inhuman practices detrimental to peace and prosperity? They are losing their grip on their own place in the human race.
All soldiers develop a level of dehumanizing logic that makes absolutely no sense, so they can execute adroit orders to maim, kill, posion and do bad things to otherwise innocent people. That is how they make their living.
My thought here to rise above this, is recognition of American Heritage. As a nation, we reap what we sow. We have been blithely aware, so much more swept up in the toilet of distractions laid in front of us, to ignore our bad behavior in less fortunate nations we have victimized. I think of Grenada - a nation who refused us bananas or sugar and paid with blood.
How dumb are we if didn't think the persistent lack of conscience would eventually become a continental U.S. problem? Since when are we too good to reign in our own government?
The executive "dream team" who renamed The Department of Domestic Security to Homeland Security, according to a Nazi playbook needs to know who opposes the excesses of spying, invasion of privacy and pilfering of boundaries. They need to know who to shut up.
One of these days we are going to interview an average telecomm investigator as an employee, just to find our where their head is at. They're still Americans - maybe just stuck for a paycheck, two kids and alimony, a mortgage. Who are these people? America's gestapo reprobates or just suckered into a "secure" lifestyle where surveillance just a way to pay the bills.
A STORY FROM MY PERSONAL HISTORY: Your tax dollars at work
My father worked for a special warfare test division on a base in the Republic of Panama during the Noriega regime. We lived in "the Green Zone". A zone occupied by military personnell living and working peacibly in Panama. What I now know about the CIA, Noriega, the Iran Contra scandal and Panama's role in the whole scenario has made me both sadder and wiser.
Nonetheless, as a dependent child I was in a good place to observe and learn what the day-to-day looks like when you are in an aggrivated state of police monitoring. I rode a skateboard. I was a kid and kids have to go outside and play - threat or no threat.
I walked outside of my home one day to find a fully munitioned humvee with a singular military policeman on-duty parked next to our driveway. He was toting a rifle. No big deal. I had seen servicemen with guns frequently enough it really wasn't intimidating. However, they never were camped outside of my house with no notice. It seemed a little out of place.
I resumed skateboard practice. It was quiet, nothing going on, except that were in an escalated Personnell Movement Limitation (PML) Charlie - excessive rioting and unrest among Panamanians and where U.S. defense personnell were more active. The trouble was, we had been in PML Charlie for 6 weeks and nothing was really going on in the streets. We went to school with Panamanians and other kids whose parents were international diplomats. Honestly, everyone was a little weary of what we call today "fear mongering"- with nothing actually going on. It was restrictive and excessive. That tends to bug bored kids, whose job really is to find their way around overarching administrators.
As I started in skateboarding, the MP stationed outside of my house began to tell me not to skateboard in front of my house. His reason? I was crossing over the "green zone into the orange zone". I looked at him and explained that nothing was going on. I looked around me illustrating there were no cars on the street - literally, NOTHING was happening. I kept skateboarding and he looked the other way, because it was as rediculous as I had indicated - and he knew it. I persisted with this action for 10 -12 minutes then I got bored and went back in the house looking for something else to do.
We all have better things to do with our lifetime, but when you live on a base or in a military civilization you are swimming in an irrational amount of protocols, rules, and orders. There's not a whole lot you can do "right", otherwise someone loses their usefulness.
There is a limit to the useful purpose of military personnel. To this day, I wonder how much taxpayer money was spent to have that humvee, armed to the teeth, stationed outside our house complete with one MP staff seargant with not much to do.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
WIRED: ES&S Voting Machines Can Elect For You
WATCH OUT:
ES&S Voting Machines Can Be Maliciously Calibrated to Favor Specific Candidates
"If one candidate has a check box in one place and a different candidate has it in a different place, you can set it up so that if you press on one candidate it gets recorded for another candidate," said Matt Blaze, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who led one of three teams that co-wrote the report (.pdf) last year. "But if you press on the other candidate, it gets recorded correctly for that candidate. You can make it work perfectly normally in most of the screen, but have it behave the way you want in small parts of it."
If you have any problems voting on any machines you can visit VoteRescue.org .
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