Our Awful Situation

Archive for the ‘Privacy Rights’ Category

Senate Housing Bill Requires eBay, Amazon, Google, and All Credit Card Companies to Report Transactions to the Government

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 22nd, 2008

What? They’re not already doing this:

Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd’s 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America’s small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill’s managers without debate this week, would require the nation’s payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.

Safe deposit boxes aren’t safe

Posted by patriot on June 13th, 2008

So much for safe safe deposit boxes…

Police searching safety deposit boxes believed to have been used by Britain’s master criminals have found up to £14 million in cash.
…
Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s specialist crime directorate raided seven addresses on Monday as part of Operation Rize. It was the first swoop of its kind against criminals using this type of secure storage to hide their ill-gotten gains.

Detectives believe some of the UK’s top villains used the company to hide the proceeds from almost every type of crime. Police said they have been inundated with phone calls from concerned box owners as they try and sort legitimate property from criminal proceeds.

More than 7,000 safety deposit boxes of all shapes and sizes, rented for as little as £100 a year, were seized during the operation.

Cell phone users tracked

Posted by patriot on June 4th, 2008

They might be watching you, too:

Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.

The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.

It also yielded somewhat surprising results that reveal how little people move around in their daily lives. Nearly three-quarters of those studied mainly stayed within a 20-mile-wide circle for half a year.

The scientists would not disclose where the study was done, only describing the location as an industrialized nation.

Researchers used cell phone towers to track individuals’ locations whenever they made or received phone calls and text messages over six months.

Fingerprints to be required for business?

Posted by patriot on May 30th, 2008

I wonder how much of any proposed bill our elected reps actually read…

Yet earlier this week, a measure creating a federal fingerprint registry totally unrelated to national security passed a U.S. Senate committee almost without notice. The legislation would require thousands of individuals working even tangentially in the mortgage and real estate industries — and not suspected of anything — to send their prints to the feds. The database and fingerprint mandates were tucked into housing and foreclosure assistance bills that on Tuesday passed the Senate Banking Committee by a vote of 19-2.

The measure the committee passed states that “an indvidual may not engage in the business of a loan originator without first … obtaining a unique identifier.” To obtain this “identifier,” an individual is requiredto “furnish” to the newly created Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry “information concerning the applicant’s identity, including fingerprints for submission” to the FBI and other government agencies.

Feds to Collect Millions of DNA Profiles Yearly, Stay Out if You Can

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 13th, 2008

Sorry, I know I’ve used this line before but its a “brave new world”, ur…maybe its 1984…or Minority Report…

The feds will soon be collecting about one million DNA samples a year under a new program that lets federal agents collect cheek swabs from citizens merely arrested for any federal crime or from any non-citizen detained by federal agents — including visitors to the country who have visas.

The intent is build a massive database of DNA samples (.pdf) that police can use to catch rapists and murderers, but even the innocent should fear being in the database, due to the vagaries of how cold case DNA searches can easily pinpoint an innocent person.

Thanks to an amendment in the Violence Against Women Act of 2005 that was sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), the feds now have the authority to immediately take DNA from any arrestee or ‘detained’ non-citizen and immediately upload it to the FBI’s CODIS database. That database is currently fed by federal law enforcement agencies and all 50 states, a few of which collect and upload DNA samples from people arrested, but not convicted of a crime.

National DNA database gets kickstart from feds

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 2nd, 2008

Its a brave new world:

With virtually no fanfare, President Bush signed into law a plan ordering the government to take no more than six months to set up a “national contingency plan” to screen newborns’ DNA in case of a “public health emergency.”

The new law requires that the results of the program – including “information … research, and data on newborn screening” – shall be assembled by a “central clearinghouse” and made available on the Internet.

According to congressional records, S.1858, sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was approved in the Senate Dec. 13, in the House April 8 and signed by Bush April 24.

“Soon, under this bill, the DNA of all citizens will be housed in government genomic biobanks and considered governmental property for government research,” said Twila Brase, president of the Citizens’ Council on Health Care. “The DNA taken at birth from every citizen is essentially owned by the government, and every citizen becomes a potential subject of government-sponsored genetic research.”

Travelers beware

Posted by patriot on April 29th, 2008

As one who will soon be traveling overseas, this news disturbs me:

Following in the wake of February’s news that customs agents were seizing electronics and making copies of all the files on cell phones and laptop hard drives, a federal appeals court has ruled on the legality of such searches. The result: Yeah, customs can do whatever it wants to your computer when you come across the border, without a warrant, and without cause.

The ruling extends to all electronics: In addition to laptops, feds can seize phone records and even digital pictures on your camera as they hunt for evidence. The ruling was unanimous among the three appellate judges.

Polygamist sect hearing in Texas descends into farce

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 18th, 2008

You could have seen this coming from a mile away:

A court hearing to decide the fate of the 416 children swept up in a raid on a West Texas polygamist sect descended into farce Thursday, with hundreds of lawyers in two packed buildings shouting objections and the judge struggling to maintain order.

The case - clearly one of the biggest, most convoluted child-custody hearings in U.S. history - presented an extraordinary spectacle: big-city lawyers in suits and mothers in 19th-century, pioneer-style dresses, all packed into a courtroom and a nearby auditorium connected by video.

At issue was an attempt by the state of Texas to strip the parents of custody and place the children in foster homes because of evidence they were being physically and sexually abused by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon splinter group suspected of forcing underage girls into marriage with older men.

As many feared, the proceedings turned into something of a circus - and a painfully slow one.

Administration Set to Use New Spy Program in U.S

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 14th, 2008

Are you “warm on it”?

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation’s most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea’s legal authority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department’s new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities — such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.

“There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans,” Chertoff wrote to Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.

“I think we’ve fully addressed anybody’s concerns,” Chertoff added in remarks last week to bloggers. “I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it.”

New anti-terror weapon: Hand-held lie detector

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 9th, 2008

Hey, Sarg, red means what again?

First Afghanistan and then someday your neighborhood (but only if you’re Lucky). Via MSNBC:

The Pentagon will issue hand-held lie detectors this month to U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan, pushing to the battlefront a century-old debate over the accuracy of the polygraph.

The Defense Department says the portable device isn’t perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. “We’re not promising perfection — we’ve been very careful in that,” said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. “What we are promising is that, if it’s properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.”

But the lead author of a national study of the polygraph says that American military men and women will be put at risk by an untested technology. “I don’t understand how anybody could think that this is ready for deployment,” said statistics professor Stephen E. Fienberg, who headed a 2003 study by the National Academy of Sciences that found insufficient scientific evidence to support using polygraphs for national security. “Sending these instruments into the field in Iraq and Afghanistan without serious scientific assessment, and for use by untrained personnel, is a mockery of what we advocated in our report.”

Where do you even begin with all the Orwellian jokes?

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