Big Brother
Ronald Bailey
Reason Magazine
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:16 EDT
© Reason Magazine
Earlier this week, the
New York Times ran a
provocative op/ed by Yale law student Michael Seringhaus in which he advocated that the DNA profiles of every American be kept in a central forensic database. The goal of such a database is to help the police fight crime by better enabling them to find perpetrators who leave DNA traces at the scenes of their misdeeds.
Current forensic DNA databases generally contain DNA profiles from convicts, but many states and the feds are now also including DNA profiles from arrestees.
Seringhaus thinks the current system is unfair because the databases are racially skewed. He also notes that the practice of familial searches which partial DNA matches can point to family members of people who already have their DNA on file, putting a criminal's family members under a cloud of suspicion although they have not been arrested nor convicted of any crime. Seringhaus is right when he notes that the DNA profiles can be used only for identification and does not reveal other genetic information provided that the DNA samples are destroyed once the profiles are digitally encoded. So what does he think are the advantages of a universal DNA database?
Radley Balko
Reason Magazine
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:08 EDT
Allegedly "disgruntled" man has his guns seized, and "voluntarily" surrenders to two SWAT teams and dozens of police officers for a crime that hadn't been committed
To hear them tell it, the five police agencies
who apprehended 39-year-old Oregonian David Pyles early on the morning of March 8 thwarted another
lone wolf mass murderer. The police "were able to successfully take a potentially volatile male subject into protective custody for a mental evaluation," announced
a press release put out by the Medford, Oregon, police department. The subject had recently been placed on administrative leave from his job, was "very disgruntled," and had recently purchased several firearms. "Local Law Enforcement agencies were extremely concerned that the subject was planning retaliation against his employers," the release said. Fortunately, Pyles "voluntarily" turned himself over to police custody, and the legally purchased firearms "were seized for safekeeping."
Kitty Donaldson, Jon Menon, Eddie Buckle and Andrew Atkinson
Business Week
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:59 EDT
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government may ask U.K. banks and supermarkets to subsidize its national identity-card program, paying for documents for poorer customers to attract business.
Home Office minister Meg Hillier said companies might offer to buy the 30-pound ($46) cards for people who wouldn't pay for them otherwise. She named Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc, both part state-owned, as candidates.
"I am keen to hear from business," she said in an interview in London late yesterday. "Banks do give incentives to people to open bank accounts. If they are doing that for some clients, would they think of doing that for other groups? Over a lifetime they do make money out of people."
Lewis Page
The Register
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:04 EDT
Hobbit Huddled-mass detectors cop an axeing
Plans to erect a chain of tall towers topped by all-seeing eyes along the US southern border - for the purpose of detecting inbound huddled masses, rather than troublesome hobbits - have perhaps been torpedoed at last, according to reports.
Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano announced on Tuesday that $50m of economic stimulus cash will be shifted out of the Secure Borders Initiative SBInet programme and into other areas.
"Not only do we have an obligation to secure our borders, we have a responsibility to do so in the most cost-effective way possible," Napolitano said. "The system of sensors and cameras along the Southwest border known as SBInet has been plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines."
Tim Jones
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:47 EDT
Here's a movie pitch: One lone telecommunications technician, going about his ordinary daily work in San Francisco, begins to realize things aren't quite what they seem. There's a "secret room" downstairs, and ordinary employees aren't allowed to enter it. Coworkers - almost casually! - remark that a government spy agency is involved, that similar facilities are being built across the country, that some of them are stamped with the government's ominous eye-and-pyramid "Total Information Awareness" logo.
Soon, the plot thickens. Mundane technical procedures produce startling revelations. He stumbles on a document that suggests the room contains a supercomputer designed to data-mine phone calls and Internet traffic. And, indeed, he soon realizes that the room is sucking up copies of electronic communications from millions of random Americans.
All this in the early 2000s, when "the political atmosphere in the country after 9/11 had a witchhunt feel to it, and even modest criticism of the administration was getting painted as disloyalty or worse."
Press Association
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:56 EDT
A musician has spoken of his shock at being removed from a train for "behaving suspiciously" by writing a list of songs which included the band name The Killers.
Tom Shaw was travelling on a South West Trains when he began writing a list of song titles which his band The Magic Mushrooms would play at a forthcoming gig.
But the 25-year-old was approached by two security staff employed by the train company and asked to leave the train at Fareham railway station.
Comment: Hystericized societies which cannot tell the difference between a non-event and a real threat are quite ready for full-blown totalitarianism.
BBC News
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:50 EDT
Legislation to tackle internet piracy, including bans for illegal file-sharers, has been passed by the Lords.
The Digital Economy Bill is now expected to be rushed through the Commons before the general election.
Peers had earlier rejected a bid by ministers to include wide-ranging powers over future online piracy law.
But despite criticism, the government said it was still committed to giving courts the power to block websites which are infringing copyright.
The bill, put forward by Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, has been welcomed by the music industry because it includes plans to suspend the internet accounts of people who persistently download material illegally.
Kate Loveys
The Mail Online
Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:45 EDT
© Mail Online
'Threatening': Lloyd Berks with the offending T-shirt, which he was forced to cover up after airport staff initially asked him to turn it inside out
A father on a family holiday was told to hide his T-shirt because airport security staff claimed the slogan it bore was an incitement to terrorism.
Lloyd Berks arrived at Gatwick Airport wearing a trendy white Levi Strauss T-shirt sporting the phrase 'Freedom or Death' in turquoise lettering.
Beneath the slogan is a picture of a skeleton dressed in armour.
The Gothic imagery is common on the high street and has been used by designers such as Alexander McQueen and artist Damien Hirst.
But security officers decided it was 'threatening' and told the father of two, who was travelling with his partner and two young children, to turn the T-shirt inside out.
Tom Burghardt
Global Research
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:35 EDT
© unknown
A truism perhaps, but before resorting to brute force and open repression to halt the "barbarians at the gates," that would be
us, the masters of declining empires (and the chattering classes who polish their boots) regale us with tales of "democracy on the march," "hope" and other banalities before the mailed fist comes crashing down.
Putting it another way, as the late, great Situationist malcontent, Guy Debord did decades ago in his relentless call for revolt,
The Society of the Spectacle:
"The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender 'lonely crowds.' With ever-increasing concreteness the spectacle recreates its own presuppositions."
And when those "presuppositions" reproduce ever-more wretched clichés promulgated by true believers or rank opportunists, take your pick, market "democracy," the "freedom to choose" (the length of one's chains), or even quaint notions of national "sovereignty" (a sure fire way to get, and keep, the masses at each others' throats!) we're left with a fraud, a gigantic swindle, a "postmodern" refinement of tried and true methods that would do Orwell proud!
Jeremy Pelofsky
Reuters
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:26 EDT
Hundreds of U.S. air travelers have lodged complaints over use of full-body security scanners in the past year, charging they violate personal privacy and may be harmful to their health, documents released on Tuesday showed.
The United States began testing the devices in a pilot program after the September 11, 2001, attacks, but the pace of use has increased since a passenger with a bomb hidden in his underwear tried to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day.
The scanners, 44 of which are in use at 21 airports, are aimed at detecting explosives or other potentially dangerous items hidden on travelers, but they can produce detailed images of the body. Operators currently work in a separate room and privacy filters blur the images that they view.
Comment: "Polling shows most air travelers -- nearly 80 percent -- approve of the use of advanced imaging technology to screen airline passengers."
Seems an unrealistically high percentage of travelers who enjoy being bombarded with DNA-destroying rays.
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