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Airport Monitoring of Travellers via Blackberry
glhturbo writes "According to this article in Mass. High Tech, Massachusetts State Police stationed at Logan Airport will soon have access (via Blackberry handhelds) to "7 billion records" containing information on "nearly 98 percent of the U.S. population, including, for example, a person's prior residence and with whom he or she lived, criminal information, court filings, vehicles owned, and even restricted government data." The database is from a Massachusetts company, LocatePlus, started by a former policeman who was "on the waiting list for the FBI". Seems like a good tool, but major potential for abuse, and hopefully no false identifications."
Instead of just pulling celebrities out of the waiting line to check them, airport security gaurds can find out where they live!
It'll be really nice to know that there are going to be tons of these little handheld devices with access to these huge dossiers on the whole population.
If this is wireless I can see someone stealing one of these little suckers, getting the encryption code, and getting access to tons of info they shouldn't have. I could be wrong...just a speculation that made my eyes bigger for a second while reading this.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
This is a neat little database, but I have to wonder what the quality of the database is. If it's like other databases, it's sorely out of date. Can't be an easy job to keep tabs on 98% of the population.
And I also wonder about the false positive rate. Extensive databases might just show up how connected we are. Just like studies that show that a huge number of us are related to the Queen of England through some tenuous tie, if we dug deep enough I bet we could find links between millions of average Joes and people who are terrorists. Insignificant links, but how does the database know that? It comes down to the judgement of the officer, and his training. And any security system that shows a false positive rate is weakened by that. False negatives are much less damaging to security.
I get a picture in my head from the movie "A Beautiful Mind" where John Nash is in his shed, putting pictures and strings on the wall, showing all the relationships between them. Except, these relationships are going to be in a database, and will be taken seriously just because a computer said so.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
There are many things I'd give for the sake of convenience... but this is going a bit too far. I'll take my privacy, thank you very much. Who exactly is going to be able to view this information? And how far does this "restricted government data" extend? It's one thing when it's a trained government officer making sure I'm not toting a shoe bomb. It's another thing when the steward has access to all my records.
... I should get to know the same information about the people "screening" me.
Speak truth to power.
Why would terrorists do the "airline" approach anyway? They know how more secure it is than ever before and they probably have a different plan now. And even if they do that approach, I don't think they will only rely on shaving their beards.
Sounds like a great idea, but I'm just waiting for one to get "lost" and then end up in the hands of some jackass that shouldn't have it.
Imagine what kind of damage could you do with access to that information.
Heh, the popular and yet beautiful shouldn't have a problem bring bombs and etc on planes now, yeah?
What happens if one of these are compromised? Does some thief suddenly have access to " restricted government data" on most of the population?
Once the government lists them on ebay in 3 years after "forgetting" to erase the access to the database. This sounds like a case of too much important info in the hands of too many incompetent people.
How strong is the encryption used? I'd seriously question both the encryption and the key distribution in a scheme like this. There's plenty of room for mischef.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Eh? Is it 1984 or 2004? These days I just can't tell.
I was going to comment on the increasing lack of openness in the 'States, but it's looks to falling on dead (or perhaps ears in love with being sold the sweet stench of mass broadcasted self defeat). At best, this kind of action could be seen as an interesting experiment in social organization, however, I think it's more the case that inevitably the one way forward seems so right because it's the only way that's permitted (overtly or not). What are the chances that the right way forward appeals to the 16 year old male demographic. Embrace the homogeny. Stick that in your database and mine it.
I remember the goverment making profiles of people who where doing war protests and the like. Will this information be included in the profile? I also seem to recall an incident where a protester was flagged at harrased at an airport.
I think the editor misspelled "incredibly
fucking evil".
That's why I stopped flying.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I trust 99.9% of cops. But not ALL of them. Here, we're putting a VERY powerful tool into the hands of any state police officer.
The question is, do they need instant, portable, unrestricted access to such a tool? And the answer is, no, they do not.
This is the equivalent of giving everyone who needs to use your computer access to the root account.
paintball
Ahh, now we'll get to see how hackproof Blackberries really are.
Look out, Research In Motion! Lawsuits off the starboard bow!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
With all of that data being sent to these things, it could be a treasure trove for identity theft if you could just set up a monitoring/logging device in the airport.
Seems as if they already have access to that information via a laptop in their autos, and now it is just an easier way of getting access to it. As a frequent traveller, it doesnt really bother me. Big brother keeps expanding anyway, especially with the *gasp* Patriot Act...
GroupShares Inc. - A Free Online Trading Community
-------
artlu.net
The truck driver is driving 100 pounds of TNT in a delivery crate right into the airport unchecked. What pisses me off most about this loss of privacy, how your personal information including your underwear size and what are the last 3 videos you rented are - is that for all that work, and all that money spent on technology, they don't do shit to actually secure the place. You think you can drive a truck up to an El Al airliner in Tel Aviv unchecked? Not unless you want a .50cal Barrett round in the chest from 5000 meters away before you get anywhere NEAR the airliner.
Read Marcus Ranum's book, the "Myth of Homeland Security." Yay, we paid for a bunch of blackberries that will get lost or stolen and some tech firm pocketed good change with a fat ass Oracle project. Yay.
You, the passenger, aren't one damn bit safer. Tell yourself that while you watch the truck load the pretzels and soda pop out the window while the guys are looking in your toiletry bag at your toothbrush and blackberrying to see if you ever lived in Hoboken, NJ.
Lastly, you know why the terrorists picked Logan to board? As CNN and others reported in the weeks that followed 9/11 - Logan's security was known to be the worst on the eastern seaboard.
I also worked in the insurance industry. We also had the screen actors guild account - for everywhere but CA. My coworkers and me would look up movie stars and gawk at their personal info - most of it just said something like "Joe Berstein talent, NY,NY" or something like that - but the point is ---WE WERE SNOOPING.
I have no excuse nor reason - we were star struck.
My Point Personal information will be abused somehow!
I saw this demonstrated on a Pocket PC about a year ago. I'm pretty sure it works through the normal cell network. They can pull up all your information based on your name, license plate, driver's license number, etc. I thought it was just for Mass. residents but I could be wrong. Doesn't seem any worse than "running your numbers" through a dispatcher, it just takes less time so it makes the police more efficient.
Wouldn't it be easier to just create your own system, that would be both cost effective and safer because only you would know how it works, blackberry also holds problems because it can do more than just security checks..what happens when guards are chatting rather then security checks... While I applaud their efforts(MY IDEA TWO-THREE YEARS AGO), I must question their delivery system.
For The Best Jazz/Hip-hop fusion > COlD DUCK
Like, I won't arrest you if you pay me 10k.... Or I won't tell your wife you've been living in an apartment in Florida with an unmarried woman...
The potential for abuse is just enormous.
However, this kind of capability is not going to go away. What we need is a structure in place that will ensure that no abuses take place. It's a cliche, but we need a monitor of the monitors...
Here's another one (but appropriate): who will monitor the monitors of the monitors?
No mention of what kind of security they're using for this. Wouldn't it just suck if any random hacker could crack into this wireless network and...use your imagination, mine's burned out.
What kind of security are Blackberries capable of? I hope it's not a telnet affair...These are the abuses that we need to protect ourselves against!! And then some!!!
Yeah, yeah. ... from the radio ... from the TV ... from Slashdot.
The world sucks.
But somedays you just get tired of hearing about it
I think I'll just ignore this and go back to my life of quiet desperation.
In the end that response has the same effect as getting all hot and bothered about it, and bitching on an Internet forum.
...so, like 97%?
Don't forget folks, it's not only the Republicans who are itching to strip your rights away. Massachusetts is about as Democratic as you can get and they're in on it too.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
"Airport Monitoring of Travellers via Blackberry". No, actually. Sorry to be pedantic, but this is LEOs with access to a database via a Blackberry. Okay, it makes things a little more accessible....but it's hardly Blackberry's on the lose!
-psy
My father has a blackberry from work that he has been quite pleased with, aside from the fact that now he has no excuse for not keeping up with e-mail.
Blackberries serve as data relays; although they can store a fair number of emails or other text based information, information about over two hudunred million people is a bit out of the question for these little gadgets, so for that reason, as well as security concerns, they likely retrieve data on a subjecct and then discard it after a while.
They will also most likely be programmed to only work within a certain radius of the base server(s), and each has its own id and could be located it lost or stolen. If someone steals one it is more likely to wind up in a pawn shop than in the hands of a dastardly spammer or identity thief.
Of course, bored or mischievious officers are likely to pull up records on anyone that catches their eye rather than suspicous or otherwise investigation-worthy targets. With the numerous checkpoints and ever present security it would not be difficult to get social security numberes from people with a simple "Airport Security, Ma'am".
It should be interesting to see how this pans out. While it certainly does have some merit, I am glad it is not being rolled out at an airport that I might actually need to use.
This is why we need term limits in the congress. The Senators and Representatives currently in office have no idea. They are too old to understand how outdated they are. They live in a world that does not exist any longer. How stupid was their spam legislation. A gov't official has all info on you on a blackberry. What if we had all info on the gov't official on ours.
M-W on `seperate` yields:
The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search box to the right.
Suggestions for seperate:
1. separate
2. suppurate
3. separates
4. sparest
5. sceptered
6. scepters
7. Sparta
8. spurted
9. Spartan
10. spurtle
>
Come on people, y'all can do better!
-- Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
When I can find out Bill G's home address, Dick Cheney's driver's licence number, George's arrest record, and Ken Lay's bank balance - then I'll say it's fair.
Anyone who says this is not ripe for abuse is a shareholder.
works fine in 1.7
K Man
nearly 98 percent of the U.S. population
This is great. As long as the terrorist population in the USA is more than 2%, some of them are guaranteed to be caught. If 4% of the population are terrorists, and they all pass through that airport, half of them will be caught! Your tax dollars at work...
I's rather be killed by a terrorist have my liberties taken away!
Someone once said it best - Give me liberty or give me death!
Don't you get the sinking feeling that the terrorists have scored a victory here; the whole war against terror is supposedly to defend the freedom that we enjoy in our wonderful democracies. Yet here we are with yet another example of civil liberties being infringed (finger printing virtually all non-americans upon entry to the country is another good example). I realise something has to be done, and maybe this was the way it was heading anyway, but, nevertheless, it doesn't feel good to be witnessing it. You Americans have the priviledge to vote in the most powerful guy on earth. The rest of the world hopes you vote wisely this coming election....
Unless those queries are fractions of a penny, wouldn't it be cheaper in the long term for the state to setup some type of non-profit or holding company and just buy out LocatePlus? Ha! i just RTFA and they said "between $1 and $7 per click. At what point does HomeLand Security decide that these businesses are critical to National Security & co-opt them?
p.s. the article does say "restricted government data" i.e. not public records.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I wonder how long before someone leaves their's in the bathroom (like the skymarshal who left her gun in the bathroom) and it gets sold. This would make a great burglar's tool to find out who to rob while they are on a plane trip.
So what's the point of the census?
According to this article in Mass. High Tech, Massachusetts State Police stationed at Logan Airport will soon have access (via Blackberry handhelds) to "7 billion records" containing information on "nearly 98 percent of the U.S. population
Nice to hear so much being spent on a system which wouldn't have had any information on the 9/11 hijackers. And another thing which will get me earmarked for special treatment as a non-US citizen living here.
I can't believe how often something that was a press release turned news story actually makes the front page of /.
hopefully no false identifications
"Hope is not a plan."
Boston is also "randomly" searching its subway passengers. The Supreme Court ruled this month that Americans must give their name to police who ask, even without cause, or be arrested. Freedom's just another word for something left to lose.
--
make install -not war
From their site:
"Introducing LP-Police Unlimited Flat Rate
LP-Police's unlimited low monthly rate of only $74.99 is unmatched by any other database available today! This database is restricted to use by Government and Law Enforcement only. LP-Police is an extensive database that includes searchable and cross-referenced public information on approximately 98% of the United States adult population. Subscribers to LP-Police are given unlimited access to the following searches: Telephone/Mobile/Cellular information, Address Information, Motor Vehicle Registration, Online Criminal and Sexual Offender information, Corporations and UCC and Real Estate Property."
Have a good day!
Tomas
Makes me seriously want to live off the grid. I do not feel any more secure knowing some hack has information on 98% of the U.S. population on a glorified palm pilot, what if this device "walks away"? All that info in the wrong hands (ACTUAL BADGUYS, id thieves, spammers, etc) is scary. I hate the fact that when 19 foreign citizens do some bad shit, 300 million legal Americans have to pay for the incompetance of our government to stop it. It is a classic kneejerk reaction, the current administration has eroded 200 years of balanced liberty and security in 4 years, that has to be some kind of record. I feel less safe, and downright ashamed of our preemptive attacks and feeble attempts at nation building. The way the little guy has taken it in the ass in these past 4 years is astounding. Where to begin? The overtime ripoff, outsourcing, tax cuts for the rich, PATRIOT act, PATRIOT II, TIA, DMCA, "show me your papers", and that is just the beginning. I would vote for Nader if I thought he could actually win, so I will vote for Kerry instead. Mr. Kerry has actually come out with stances on issues, most of which I agree with. I was worried he was not going to have any discernible viewpoint on anything for a second.
I hate sigs.
Firefox 1.7 seems to be aligning it out of the window, to the bottom right : and attempts to download a plugin from Netscape.
You'd use a device pretending to be a blackberry with access to the information.
paintball
You notice that there's no "opt out" anywhere on the locateplus.com website.
At least some other database companies, such as lexis-nexis.com will let you at least opt out.
I wonder how long before these private databases are mandated to respond to "opt out" requests.
Moore wants more security right...but wait he wants less hassles in airports...but wait its the US's fault for 9/11 but wait no it was only Bush's fault and we need better security at airports...
What exactly is Moore's potition again??
stendec@gmail.com
I'm perfectly confident that all of these Mass. 'security measures' are being given a hefty push by our incumbent Republican governor.
Like the one that is going to shut down I93 for about 10 miles in each direction during the convention. It's not like I128 isn't already a parking lot during rush hour, even without the current road construction on it.
Or the idea of shutting South Station, one of the busiest stops in Boston's T Network.
I'm going to be well out of Boston for this convention. Vacation time.
There are dangers in relying on electronic information. Particularly when it is used without any exercise of common sense.
Note: I'm merely throwing out a hypothetical, this is not necessarily my belief. Just a discussion point.
On Slashdot, it is commonly argued and agreed upon that "security thru obscurity" is a falacy and the best way to get yourself into trouble. Obscure facts and details are eventually discovered and exploited. It is better to have all source and algorithms out in the open, have everyone pick at it, find the holes and patch them.
Compare this to the commonly held belief in keeping all personal information "secret". If someone tries hard enough, they can pretty much discover any information about yourself. Private detectives, for example, specialize in "hacking" personal information (arrest record, who you are sleeping with). Would it not be better to "open source" your life and deal with the consequences? Your SSN and Credit Card numbers should be secured with something better than mere obscurity, for example. If you are cheating on your spouse you would assume you are going to be caught and be able to deal with the consequences. With everything out in the open we don't have to worry about blackmail and dirty tricks and you better know people's character and motivations. Kinda like looking inside a program's source and seeing the flaws.
Note, these are NOT my opinions, just things that went through my head at 10pm.
Brian Ellenberger
The current BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) allows you, as an admin to send a "poison pill" which will wipe the device automatically. They also have local passwords and an autolock feature set from the server. The device also wipes itself after 10 attempts with the wrong password.
.-=Wit is educated insolence=-. -Aristotle
Wow... talk about a backlash. I'm sitting in an airport doing /. on one of these (normal blackberry) right now. These things are great little tools. Aside from email/phone/web, you can run Java and C++ apps on them and do all sorts of custom apps. Unlike my ipaq with a wireless card, this thing is almost always connected to the net for days without charge. Slow, but fast enough to do a secure lookup. This type of thing sounds like the perfect 'car computer' for bicycle cops. Silly to not use off the shelf kit like this.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
So, what if the data is wrong? I'd say the results would be worse than identity theft or a simple bad credit report.
With ID theft, bad data gets attached to you and affects your ability to find jobs, get loans, rent housing, etc. But, it only affects you (perhaps also a spouse). You can get your data and try to fix it. Takes 200 hours and never quite finishes, but you have rights and the credit agencies have duties.
With this system, bad data will affect you and your ability to travel. The government has admitted that it has no responsibility to fix bad data in government files. So, you'll have few to zero chances to fix it. And the best part is bad data about you will creep out to taint anyone you've associated with. If you look bad, then so do your old roommates. And your new business partners. And whoever you call regularly. So now grandma will get a free breast cancer screening whenever she flies (mmmmm. Wand searches).
From my favorite essay written by a precog on privacy post 9/11( the former Canadian privacy czar's excellent essay), as I commented here in this thread on airlines gave away your privacy (and it definitely applies to those of us in the US, he's warning Canadians not to do what the US was doing already):
"[gives example of Canada wanting to collect data, US style]... This is unprecedented. The Government of Canada has absolutely no business creating a massive database of personal information about all law-abiding Canadians that is collected without our consent from third parties, not to provide us with any service but simply to have it available to use against us if it ever becomes expedient to do so. Compiling dossiers on the private activities of all law-abiding citizens is the sort of t
A: This service has zero info that you shouldn't have. It's all public records, the scary part of this service is that they seem to have most of the nation's public records about individuals assembled in an easy-to-query form.
The fact that info is public record does NOT mean that it's OK to assemble it with OTHER information that is ALSO public record and make the result - or even the original public records - available at electronic speed.
One of the big objections to the creation of the Social Security System was that the SS# would serve as a universal identifier, making it easier to assemble dossiers of individuals from diverse public records. This almost killed the program - which was eventually passed on the promise (among others) that the nubmer would NEVER EVER EVER be used in that way.
Remember that this was before WWII, which means before computers and even xerography. ("copying" was, at best, thermofax, blueprint, or photography.) AND in the midst of the "Great Depression", with its starving masses of people (including the elderly) who had just gone bankrupt and lost their homes, farms, and businesses in a pre "welfare" system environment.
Can you IMAGINE how concerned they were to consider blocking the creation of the SS system JUST to prevent the hand-construction and misuse of manual dossiers composed of public information?
The US classified information rules DO classify the JUXTIPOSITION of certain publicly available unclassified information - whenever this juxtaposition hints at something that IS sensitive. This happens in nuclear physics, radio, and several other fields. Why should individuals be any less protected from combining public information in a way that stips more of their privacy than the individual records standing alone?
= = = =
Databases run in their private time by policemen or retired policemen were, back in the '70s, a dodge to get around new laws banning ilicit governmental record keeping. These laws were passed after the government's investigative agencies at all levels (FBI, Military Intelligence, State/County/City police) went 'WAY out of bounds on domestic surveilance and so-called "dirty tricks" against people suspected of participating in the civil rights and anti(vietnam)war movement. (See COINTELPRO for an example.)
They were SUPPOSED to destroy the ill-gotten info. But instead some of them absconded with it and set up for-profit companies to maintain it and sell access back to the very police departments that weren't supposed to have it. This let the departments continue to use it and CLAIM that they didn't have it.
So this one is run by a former policeman, eh? Any bets on whether it's a modern continuation of one of those ilicit databases?
= = = =
Dylan said you had to pay to keep from going through these things twice. Well we DID pay and we're STILL going through them again! B-(
B: Since this company charges by the query, too many queries from a device will likely cause that device quickly be deauthorized by whomever's paying the bill.
Aren't we talking about the Federal Government's Homeland Security boondoggle department? Somehow I doubt that breaking the US budget is an issue.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
you said
Massachusetts State Police
when you meant
Massachusetts Police State
Democrat In Name Only.
The democratic party is quickly becoming very close to the republican party... Pretty much the only thing I see different between them is (1) Less cussing by the Democrats and (2) Less fakey righteous religion stuff.
In 1987 I founded a company in Orlando, FL that did most of this.
:-)
1987 was before the public was aware of the Internet, so it wasn't as prevalent. But, using CompuServe's packet switching network, we had access to most of the nation's public records: auto, plane & boat registration; worker's comp records; driver's licenses; arrest records; court filings; etc.
We also had access to the "top half" of a credit report. The major credit bureaus make a fortune selling the non-credit related info they have: names, addresses, employment history, etc. Federal law *prohibited* most law enforcement agencies from directly accessing this data.
For three years *we* made a small fortune reselling this info to several police/sheriff departments.
This experience taught me three things:
1. Gather all that information and even if a bunch of it is out of date or invalid, you can put together a VERY accurate picture of someone's life.
2. Many LEOs were quite loose with information they were not supposed to access or share. By this I mean cops sitting in parking lots running every tag, DL and NCIC reports on every driver. I also received full information requests on cop girlfriends, ex-wives, etc.
They are also more than willing to discretely share things like DL photos, NCIC records, etc. with people who give them data.
Hell, at one time I found full info on an escaped murderer who had been hiding for 10 years. His wife once applied for a Sears credit card using his real SSN. THAT led to a California DL photo that confirmed it was him; auto tag in Nevada with an almost-current address; and a forwarding address from a gas company that owed him a refund - bingo.
$5,000 reward, certificate of appreciation from 3 law enforcement agencies, and the knowledge that 98% of all $100 bills in circulation have enough drug residue on them to hit a drug dog. So, while taking that stack of $100s to the bank, I had a personal contact in the US Marshall's Office if I got stopped.
Oh, yeah, #3. The most important.
How to hide in today's society if I really want to.
chill
- These tools/extended rights will be abused.
- They won't help to prevent terrorist attacks.
How many terrorists are US citizens? Even if they previously they student visas, etc, terrorist groups just have to stay out of the US until right before the attack. There will be no records on them, and hence this does nothing to prevent them from pursuing their actions.But now there is this huge pool easily accessible information out there, just waiting to be used for other purposes.
Anyway, IMHO there will never be an attack like 9/11 again, because on 9/11 the terrorists relied on the will and hope of the passengers to stay alive. Now, if a plane is hijacked the passengers will have to assume that they will die, hence it will be impossible to control them (what would you threadten them with?) That's what happened to the 4th plane on 9/11 when people on the plane learned about the other attacks via cellphone.
Thankfully this very personal information will be floating about in a very secure wireless environment where there will be no technically proficient people hanging around for hours with nothing to do with their laptops...
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
I read that title and said to myself, "They've gone too far! They can't get away with tracking my Blackberry as it moves through the airport!"
Not that the REAL story isn't as worrying.
404 Error:
I have one of these devices (I'm a cop), although I do not live in Mass, and it uses a different provider for the information. All of the information is based on collection from three sources: public records, driving records, and criminal history. The public records are fairly accurate, but they are not perfect. The driving and criminal records are more accurate, and reflect the same information that I can collect when running a vehicle tag or a driver's license. That's the key. I need to know who I am searching for in order to get the information. I can't just put in a name, for example, with no other information (such as a date of birth, SSN, city of birth, etc.) and expect to receive any information. It just doesn't work that way. Is it dangerous? Depends on your stance towards records queries, I suppose. I can get all of this information without the Blackberry, but it is more convenient when I'm on foot interacting with a crowd to have the device. Push come to shove, however, and I'll take you back to the patrol car to get the information. It works for both of us, in a sense. I don't have to go back to the car to get the info, and you don't have to waste the time coming with me. Something else to consider: I am required by law (at least in my state) to protect the information that I gather on a person. The law is so protective that I can be held responsible if someone else HEARS the information on my radio, including the person I am checking! This would undoubtedly extend to my control over the Blackberry. If I lost it, I would be in a great deal of civil liability. That doesn't prevent someone from using the device illegally, granted, but it is something to consider none the less.
the long awaited blackOPSberry?
You should get more sleep. ;)
I just went through the demo on the LocatePlus site (yes, I did RTFA) and found that when you do a search on a person you can get back name, address, phone number, age, date of birth, social security number, possible relatives, driver's info, property info, neighbors, and legal actions.
Many people have already discussed the security issues associated with this project (losing the Blackberry, etc.), not to mention the high probability of false positives, idle snooping on the part of the police, but what a tempting little package for identity thieves.
And I think I already know what a "suspicious person" looks like based on past cases (hint: suspicious people are rarely white).
This is a bad idea all the way around.
Those of you in the 2%, raise your hand! Pay no attention to the man with the video recorder in the back of the room
Slashdot sucks
Yet I bet that their "120,000" number is about as good as my own analysis above- sounds very precise, but not at all accurate... But since those HTQ people are now defined- and who wants to waste data- they're going to show up in the gov't databases. And then their roommates and co-workers are going to get flagged as medium TQ people. And then their roommates get to be medium-low TQ people. And so on and so on... If you're lucky you'll only be a LLML TQ, but no one gets to be 100% free of the taint.
Even though that original 120k number doesn't pass the sniff test. Sure, ".04%" seems like a small number, but that equals one in 2500 people. Is 1/2500 people in the US a terrorist? That'd be 1 terrorist per 10 airplane flights, or several terrorists per major sporting event, or 400 terrorists in Silicon Valley (plus the 30 laid off who've moved back home). Unless they're all fantastically incompetent, the US should have several terror events per day.
[Pause to answer knock on door....]
Oh, never mind, we are crawling with terrorists, like the Peace Fresno anti-war group with their monthly streetside protest. Forgot that civil disobedience is now terrorism. Unless its lawful civil disobedience, of course. I'm just going to go back to my Orrin Hatch CD now.
I also wonder about the security of the blackberries, how easily can they be jammed/or at least intercepted and read.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Sorry to break your happy "interesting" ramble, but DMCA was passed in 1998 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA), under Clinton, and do you really think that "outsourcing" began just 4 years ago and not on the peak of the .com boom?
I would have to conclude that you are just a TROLL, really.
Paul B.
Because no terrorist will ever be stupid enough to use such a service.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Who are these trained government authorizedified individuals anyway? Thugs maybe, with badges; you ppl have seen too much Andy Griffith.
With everything out in the open we don't have to worry about blackmail and dirty tricks and you better know people's character and motivations. Kinda like looking inside a program's source and seeing the flaws.
;-) ) you do have to make a decision if you open it up or not.
;-)
The major difference is that what happens in your life really should matter only to you, your wife (if any, and she really cares) and maybe family and friends, and you can as well expect people to leave you alone. If you write a program which matters only to a handful of people it does not really maatter if you GPL it or not.
OTOH if you write a useful tool which is interesting to many and people can learn from how it works and make it work better for them OR improve it and make it work better for others (the subtle difference between Free and OSS movements, BTW
But then, again, people might want to start an "Open Spouse" movement --- wait, some have already started!
Paul B.
Which brings us, again, to the question: "Is the universal and effective law enforcement desirable?" If, suddenly, there was a method for the police to promptly find and arrest everyone they needed, would it be a good thing to have (even if we ignore the potential abuse problems)?
Before you say: "Yes!" -- consider the fact, that the US' Founding Fathers were, most certainly, breaking the law(s) of the British Empire and committed treason...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So...if you have a kid, that kid is screwed. Or even better, if you know the first name of the mother (of whomever's identity your trying to steal), you can then easily find HER maiden.
What a great system. No potential for abuse. Nope none. Because only law enforcement, private detectives and COMPANIES (not specified) can get access to this info.
-Ian
The current BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) allows you, as an admin to send a "poison pill" which will wipe the device automatically. They also have local passwords and an autolock feature set from the server. The device also wipes itself after 10 attempts with the wrong password.
.-=Wit is educated insolence=-. -Aristotle
Washington state has a very cool Address Confidentiality Program that is designed to protect domestic violence/rape victims from people who have access to gov't DB's.
It's kinda like a lightweight Witness Protection Program.
Hurray! Big brother can now watch over us in the airports more adequately. Not only can they watch over you and find out where you live/lived who you associate with etc. etc... but now you are also prone to anyone who happens to "find" one of these blackberries that goes unaccounted for!
No I didn't RTFA where do you think we are. But I do work for the government, and know that this is about as smart as the DMV record lookup thing that was supposed to be real wonderful... Too bad no one told Rebecca Shaeffer about the love of big brother.
The authorities are talking about explosives-sniffing dogs. Start from there, and there's a right way to do this.
*If* the dogs aren't trained to sniff for anything else, *if* nobody starts a search except for a good reason (bulging coat in summer, dog going crazy, etc.), and *if* a stubborn citizenry successfully fights mission creep then this seems like a tolerable (if expensive) security measure.
Is that campaign ad true? Check it at factcheck.org
Big deal - someone looks up my residence or phone number - so what?
If that's the price we have to pay for just marginally better security, so be it!
Another thing - if they have records on 98% of the U.S. population and if there's 10,000 abuses a year, that means each person has about 3,000,000,000/10,000 = one in 300K chance to get "abused". So fscking what?
What dreamworld do you live in?
Here's another one (but appropriate): who will monitor the monitors of the monitors?
hmmm...infinite regress away from liberty
i say we have no monitors at all, no government goons snooping through my private affairs, no corrupt bureaucrats going on fishing expeditions through my life. sound like a solution? it sounds a hell of a lot better than an endless web of "monitors" (read: "police state")
it was only a matter of time. All of the "services" that LocatePlus offers are matters of public record, which means that by the law you, I, or any jackass Orwellian fascist w/ a frutrated Big Brother complex ( *ahem* Jon Latorella - that's you bub! ) can access them and do whatever the hell he wants with them.
If you want an example of how available these records are now, check out Adams County Records. I've used them before to see if charges had been filed on friends, etc. So it's not hard to get, especially in the "digital" age.
What is scary is the fact that our society ( and our judicial branch in particular - which should be motivated by an evolving sense of ethics and morality, which, well, DOESN'T SEEM TO BE FUCKING EVOLVING to cope with our changing world ) doesn't seem to be able to prevent these abuses. Because a private citizen ( or a government agency, for that matter, but they have a lot of liabilities under the law that private citizens don't, that limit their abuses ) compiling a database from public records ( which aren't always accurate ) and then selling it to government agencies ( which is now probably excused for their mistakes due to the fact they were using "someone else's system" ) is most definitely an abuse. It's the basest whoring of public information that I can possibly think of.
Which beggars another question : if we were as intelligent and moral as we suppose, why haven't we done the following :
1) rather than releasing records freely, release them under a public license, similar to the GPL. Since they would have to be copyrighted to be released under a license, why not copyright each citizen's information to that person, and their relatives owning their copyright when they die? Yeah, it sounds sick in a way - you're copyrighted, dude ! - but it would prevent commercial and governmental abuses like this. Your information is copyrighted to yourself, freely available under the Citizen's General Public License or some such shit, and any sentencing, divorce, etc., is an addendum to the copyrighted work - namely YOU. And you have to authorize any use of your records which involves commercial profit.
2) Made laws disallowing the use of public records for direct commercial gain.
3) Passed laws that required private and public agencies furnishing public or private information to other agencies to be be directly culpable for all misuse, negative repurcussions, etc., that result from any inaccurate or outdated information that they provide. This one rings home with me particularly strongly tonight, since I just found out that 2 medical bills that I paid over a year ago still show up on my credit as unpaid debts. There's no accountability there, even though I've badgered these bastards before to update their records.
Yeah, making laws doesn't always solve a problem, but making the right ones will. Stop telling people who they can fuck, how they can get high, stop giving money to religious "charities", stop supporting people that are unwilling to work but still willing to reproduce, legislating the RIAA's paranoid crusade about whether I can copy a fucking DVD or not, and start making some laws that pull that metaphorical boot off of our face. Because I only see it getting worse. And this is the really goddamn scary part kids :
I see it getting a whole worse before it gets any better.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
If I ever had mod points I'd mod this up. This is almost poetry in it's high level of ranting. Wow. I can almost hear this being shouted out at an open mike night in a coffee house...very intense.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
Ok, so they pull this info out of the air? I wonder if it is encrypted, and if not, how hard would it be to sniff that traffic and use what you find to get access to all those records yourself?
Regardless of whether it's encrypted or not, having that type of information accessible on a wireless network is ASKING for trouble. All it takes is one guy to snag a misplaced Blackberry. I feel so much more safe and secure now!
-R
It's even more disturbing that these people will have access to my ex-girlfriend in college that I haven't spoken to in 10 years.
I'm sure a lot of folks have accessed MY ex-girlfriend. In fact, that is why we broke up.
As for the Boston bag search, it's Ironic that the city that most hated the British colonial repression is now at the forfront of undoing our civil rights. I susspect, however, that if a case ever goes to the Supreme Court, it will be overturned on 4th Amendment basis.
Apple has never claimed not to be evil, they're just very stylish about it.
I have only read about these a few times, but everyone who rants about how you can opt-out or expunge data from public dbs don't realize that any and every kind of restrictive rules are why Police Officers Associations create their own private databases and where do you think all the data comes from that they put in them. It is like if the bank tellers association had a database that their "members" could enter and query data including SSN's, account balances, check payees and amounts taking any and all data they wanted to from their workplace. People would certainly howl if such a thing existed. Yet since people don't know about these and they are kept quiet and out of public view.
Private Police db example
One guy for example found himself stopped and searched because the fact that he had applied for a Concealed Carry Permit and ended up in a private police db.
Talk about the lawless wild West, who is going to control the data is these databases?
The magical shroud of technology. . .affecting the truth, your rights, your money, your life:
From the article: "For security reasons, Coffey would not go into detail about how effective the wireless devices have been. He would disclose only that the device is another tool tied to the overall Logan Airport security plan. "In a nutshell, some of our anti-terrorist and security tactics are visible to the public and some are not, but this (device) will allow us to find exactly who is traveling through the airport.""
I, for one, am glad I don't know about the effectiveness! I would like to know even less! I think government entities should continue to hide and obfuscate the technology they use to make my life better! I've got more important things to worry about than how technology may be eroding my rights. The less I know, the better!
Okay, enough sarcasm. Jeez-o-pete! The first thing the public should know is the effectiveness of a security tool! And 98%? What does that number mean? If they know who you are, are we somehow safer? If they can't figure out who you are, are we in danger? How much of this uses federal funds?
Check out the caedefensefund.org
The other two percent are the problem. The 98% who can be easily found are not the ones who snuck into the country on a forged passport and are currently going to terrorist school by night and airplane flying school by day. This does help in another way, though - if they find you in it, then you're innocent.
I really do not understand this. A fair percentage of violent criminals have no prior record before they commit their offenses. I am sure the same goes for terrorists. You have a student over here learning and then he is told to do a suicide mission or release some nerve gas. No one is really watching this fine upstanding person under 30, bright, personable.
I mean, none of the 911 terrorists were being investigated and all had current papers to be here legally.
Click here or here.
Even if a court rules that you were within your rights to refuse to give your name, you'll get arrested, do some jail time, and have the burden of proof to be freed. The "mistaken" arresting cop will have done nothing but "waste" their time dealing with a harmless citizen, rather than face an actual criminal with a gun for a while. The Supremes also ruled this month that the President can lock up people he doesn't like, without evidence, without charges. Although you're theoretically entitled to a lawyer, you'll have to go to court (without a lawyer) to get one. These are the people who elected our President.
--
make install -not war
Vote for whom you really want, even garanteed losers. Don't think it doesn't count. All the professional politico hacks look at ALL the numbers of their oppositions, of those WHO VOTE. It really does send a statement. They do adjust public approaches AS NECCESSARY. The opposition that only carries signs and riots, that's easy to ignore. Not so those who vote. And over time it does build up. Even the Republicans used to be a lot weaker in many parts of this country, the South, say, but they are organized to know to VOTE anyway, it builds up; show creditibility by being creditible, politically. If all the disaffected in this country would actually vote their disaffectation, it would shock people how large the numbers would be. Then, people could start figuring out what they really want and work toward it in the long haul. It's a long term process, not just one lost election. Ever contrary vote against the winners has to scare them, for its potential to grow.
Just because you're going to "lose", and you know it, that's no reason not to vote.
You don't vote against the madness? That's just what they want.
so my vote is most likely worthless
wrong wrong wrong
In OSS, espousing "anti-obscurity" means "supporting transparency of the *mechanism* for protecting the data".
It doesn't mean "supporting transparency of the *data*".
Your logic implies that it would be ok for security policies to allow anyone to have read-only access to our bank statements, health records, etc.
College students might have their "permanent" (home) address for taxes, one or more local addresses per year for school (and voting), and perhaps also a POBox. If they have a credit history, it won't necessarily keep up with their moving around. So from the point of view of BigBroBrand database, they'll look dreadful.
The unemployed also might use more than one address that shows up in the database (renting a POBox to appear like a local when applying for jobs, or using a friend's address).
All to say I'm not happy that they're using data on "how good are you at moving small green pieces of paper around?" gathered by private companies to guess "how risky is it for us to give you more green pieces of paper?" as a proxy for "how established are you in a neighborhood?" to let the government guess "how risky is it for us to let you travel around?" (...On the whole its those private companies being handed planet-sized bundles of green pieces of paper to continue tracking you that are happy: they themselves don't get tracked, much.)
"This experience taught me three things . . . #3. The most important, how to hide in today's society if I really want to"
ok, I'll bite: how?
(btw, fwiw IANAT, just a US-born citizen who's feeling increasingly alienated and driven to becoming an ex-pat, for the same principles for which I've left or declined employment rather than be continuously monitored.)
I'm already willing to avoid surveilled public transport, use only cash, no library card or Blockbuster account, etc.
Tell us some things (about hiding) which might not occur to the typically-bright slash-dotter.
"Well which one is it?"
said the guy to the machine.
"The better we know you,
the better we can serve you",
said the robot to his human,
as he unplugged the television
from the wall socket.
...does not make it true (293m). It always facinates me how many Americans don't know the population of their own country. Or perhaps the CIA is just hiding the other 300m people ;-)
What's next, we'll hire Osama Bin Laden to be an air traffic controller?
It's just for law enforcement now, but I'm sure large companies could eventually gain access to it.
My employer with the ability to track my hotmail/ip across the various places I've been on the intarweb (with faster and larger databases it's not _that_ inconceivable), seeing some of the rabid things I've said about them (all of which I meant in the best possible light, sir), deciding to invoke the "up to and including termination" clause in every company e-mail, paper, fax, stapler, lunch I receive from them...
Maybe that's a little doomsday-ish, but how about just accessing it to check on potential hirees? Chuck there never made any unpatriotic remarks/admire Nazi uniforms (really though, I think everyone can agree they were snappy dressers) or talk about anything we don't like on the internet. Hire Chuck and red flag Rebel_Princess' application for future use, oh and enter it into the database as flagged, she'll have to pimp herself out to pay rent... that's what the little bitch gets for not tossing my salad to get this job.
LOL !!
You haven't known many cops, have you ?
By the way, cops exist to preserve the existing power structure,
not to keep the average person safe.
Speaking from long experience, I hate the sons of bitches.
If the revolution ever comes, I'll be on the other side.
Their stock is trading at a whopping $.39 per share. And the best part? It's OTC! "Over the counter" stocks are unregulated, and so ridiculously abused for scams that I've never heard a single investment guide of any repute (including, and especially, The Motley Fool) say anything except to run like hell away from them. I'm curious to see if this company really can do what it claims, given this shady bit of data...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I won't believe in the effectiveness of these programs without more evidence that they actually do anything. I can't remember much beyond a shoe bomb offhand.
I am not sure what training and indoctrination police officers go through about use of personal information. If this information must be used I'd rather have a trained individual from outside whose butt is on the line if the info is found to be misused.
Why not log all DB queries and force the user to provide an explanation of the need for the info?
Oh my god, I have terrorist connections!
You are confusing the security of the information and the actual information being secured. The credit card number, SSN, whatever, are what you want to protect. The method of doing so can be open, and therefore protected, but whats the point of any protection if you just leave the information open for any and all to see?
Its would be like the difference between open-sourcing your security methods (public/private keys, physical access security, whatever) and actually just letting anyone and everyone waltz into your data center unchecked and do whatever the hell they please. Im all for open sourcing, but doing away with any and all security I wont agree with. I dont trust people that much.
That's why you give the person holding the device a bit of cash to have a coffee break while you get the dirt you need.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
The problem with these databases is not that they have too much information, but rather that they have far too little. We need some way to populate these data stores with vital info about Groucho Marx, Karl Marx, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, George Bush, Martin Luther, Wiliam the Conqueror, etc. Instead of stealing information, hackers and virus writers should be injecting information by the gigabyte. Perhaps the best way to protect our privacy is to surround it with mountains of nonsense. Plus, I own stock in a couple storage companies, so the more data there is (real or fictional), the more hardware my companies sell ...
All you have to do is turn off wireless capabilities (the little airplane icon).
Now you have the device memory and possibly the crypto keys, maybe even password info that is left over in memory space.
A good security design is still possible with these devices, but it is harder.
If you turn off the wireless capabilities the device cannot be wiped in this fashion.
That said Blackberries generally are light on the memory - they wouldn't have peoples records on them, just info to access a server. If you were stealing the device you'd steal it for its keys and what ever biometric/password/whatever info might be left sitting in memory. So you'd need to copy this info to another client device before you could start stealing data.
See here.
The Census Bureu's Take on it is:
See here.
The problem that I see with these things is that the database is maintained by cross-linking private data of likely dubious validity so we have know way of knowing if the false positives/negatives are even within reasonable bounds. Remember what heppened in florida when many african-american voters were mistakenly "scrubbed" from the rolls and denied their rights to vote? What guarantee do we have that "bad data" (as the peole in florida assert) or deliberate falsification (as others have charged) will prevent otherwise innocent people from flying.
But, more importantly, the article makes no mention of controls, not only ensuring that a connected device is not stolen but that the data will not be misused by some guards who are seeking to stop all muslims. The potential for abuse in both forming the databases and in using them is frightening. Suppose the number of african-american men, or chinese people, or muslims who are stopped at the gates goies up even a little, who will be keeping an eye on that and keeping the airport honest? The Airport itself?
Lest we forget, the reason that the FBI doesn't have a database on 98% of Americans including past locations, etc is that, up until now, being innocent of a crime meant that you were entitled to some measure of privacy, and, that the goal was to curb abuses of police power not aid and abet them.
As mentioned, I too dislike the high probability of invaid or misleading information. But mostly I fear the ability of your average cop to understand the importance and usefulness of said information. But, I suppose, if you don't want it on public record... don't do it!
Linux Forum
Why doesn't someone start a free online database of cops? Department, rank, name, experiences, home address, credit report, etc. Wouldn't take much more then a PHP script and a SQL database.
You can't do anything to resist databases, they're just part of technology, the trick is that everybody has to go in there and anybody can start one.
A cop may have special powers, but they also have a lot more to lose. One bit of video of one petty crime and it's a world of pain.
When you see someone being arrested, politely whip out your camera phone and upload the whole thing to the net in real time. That'll do more to ensure nobodies' civil rights get infringed then just about anything else we've invented yet.
There *will* be abuses. We can hope they'll be few and readily corrected. Better, we can work to see to it that they'll be few and readily corrected, to correct the behavior of those who can be corrected, and to dismiss the rest.
There *will* be false identifications. See above.
Please don't go around expecting information systems to operate perfectly. These same problems have existed since the days when records were impressed into wet clay with pointy sticks. They are *fundamental* because they are failings in ourselves, not our tools. The best we can expect from our tools is that they help good workers to do better work, and help us to detect unsuitable workers.
The proper question for this system is whether the inconveniences inevitably caused by having it outweigh the inconveniences inevitably caused by *not* having it.
I saw this the other day titled "Airport Police Get Blackberries."
I thought they got kicked in the juju.
I saw a few weeks ago.
Nice patriotic-looking, wind-furled U.S. flag waving in the backdrop with the text, "Bush-Orwell `04"
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Anyone, not even having to be a PI, can get their hands on much of this information about anyone who hasn't taken a lot of steps to avoid leaving so many cookie crumbs. That it has been organized for more convenient access was just a matter of time. We need to insure some things:
a) that the information is accurate;
b) that we can examine our information for accuracy and there is a way to correct it;
c) that there are stringent laws governing the use of this information;
d) that there are workable procedures for reporting abuse and taking legal remedies against abuse.
The above will not make us completely safe of course. But they are necessary steps in the right direction in this world of dense information flows.
Well shucks golly, I'm shore y'all of us can, y'hear? Yee-haW!
This is an interesting area of data aggregation. If all the information they're using is publically accessible than the big thing they're doing is gathering and combining it.
Now that means two services:
1) Knowing who to ask/where to look to get the data. Would you know how to get cell phone info and registration info? How about where the various criminal registration info is?
2) How to combine that information. I'd be pretty upset if my cell phone number along with my social security number is available publically. So are they then doing name matches and what happens on duplicates?
I guess the thing would be to attempt an FOIA request for the information and see where that went.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.