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Smile for the US Secret Service
Judg3 writes "Apparently the United States federal government began a plan in 1997 to start a national photographic database, digitizing driver's license photos among other things. More details are availible online. " It's being test piloted in 3 states currently, while kudos goes to Electronic Privacy Information Center for uncovering the information about this program. As would be expected the bogeymen are "illegal immigrants and terrorists".
>Then there are large sections of Muslims, various central american countries, not to mention miscellaneous crackpots who don't really have a legitimate excuse, but would just like to kill Americans out of some misguided jealousy.
It's not "of some misguided jealousy," but rather lust for revenge. The US supports Israel to a good degree and the fundamentalist Muslims don't like that. Also, remember how the CIA helped prop up the Shah of Iran before he got ousted by the populus? Central Americans haven't done any terrorism in the US in a while (if ever). As for the crackpots, the only crackpots I can think of are the ones building fertilizer/pipe bombs in their garages, reading "The Turner Diaries", and stock-piling assault rifles.
That's actually the issue. The government would not walk up to someone from, say, 100 years ago and say "we want your name, date of birth, who you are married to, how many children you have, where you live, your picture, and the right to sell all of that information to the highest bidder, or failing that, give it away. We also want to issue you a number, and if we draw that number, you're going to have to join the army." 100 years ago, the average citizen would have started a revolution over less. (140 years ago, a bunch of people DID.)
Instead, the government said "We just want to start tracking births and deaths. It's important to know how many citizens we have." They had no real use for the information that anyone could see, other than a census - so nobody minded.
Then they started tracking marriages. There were some benefits, and they seemed to offset the problems, so nobody minded. Except a few privacy nuts - probably polygamists.
Then they start issuing ID numbers to everybody. "It's just a number; it helps us keep track of where government benefits should go. You don't want to lose out on benefit money, do you?" So nobody minded.
Then they started licensing drivers. Those new motor cars were dangerous if the driver was unskilled; so nobody minded.
Then they started tracking income. "We have to know where the poorest areas are, so we know who needs help the most." So nobody minded.
And now today, the government knows your name, date of birth, who you are married to, how many children you have, where you live, your picture, tracks you by number for taxation and draft purposes, and nobody minds. Except a few privacy nuts. But hey, don't worry - the government says their all a bunch of paranoid gun nuts. Just watch, I'll bet they'll be in a bunker someday, threatening your children, and we'll have to go after them with tanks. But we'll need their pictures, so we know who we're going after, so if you'll just line up here please, and smile...
-- The meek shall inherit the Earth. In very small plots, about 6 feet by 3.
Ontario, specifically.
Admisiters your Social Security Funds/Number...
Knows where you live...
Knows where you work (via taxes)...
Knows how much money you make...
Knows what medical treatments you recieve (via Medicare)...
Has Imminent Domain over my property and can sieze my house...
Might as well just strap a camera to my ass. They know everything else I do.
What do you need to do to move to the Netherlands? :-)
I am from South Carolina, one of the States who sold DL photos to this company, so might be able to say something. The US Congress passed a law that banned states from selling DL info to companies. Then our State Attorney General, Charlie Condon (Republican, for what it's worth), claiming that Congress had no authority to pass such a law. You see, we have no Constitutional right to privacy and Congress has limited power over the State governments.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Condon: we have no right to privacy and Congress can't do anything about it without passing a Constitutional Amendment. Needless to say, the law was thrown out. Shortly afterwards, the SC government sold millions of DL photos to this company for something like $2000 or $5000. It's totally legal and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Take care,
Steve
But the government _does_not_ sell your SSN and related information to corporations. Some company can't just buy a copy of your tax return. Companies _can_ buy copies of your driver's license and related information.
I don't want to dig around myself, but this was news months ago, where the digitized photos of some Eastern seaboard states were being sold to credit-card clearinghouses to ID people in stores with their driver ID pictures.
Of course, this system is good for convenience, but it could certainly be abused by a big government agency that likes to snoop...
---- Joseph Bowden
ICQ: 13709677
Want to contact me via e-mail?
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
ok let me get this right the fbi , cia ,nsa ,etc... now have a data base of 3 states with the uglist pic known to man , i know ppl know what i am talking about. ever one take out there drivers licence , and take a good look. i noticed on mine the change was very drastic from my long hair down to the short , and no the missing beard . do you think that this thing can be effective in any means on a large scale. on my NC dl i am pissed and become i am at the dmv , but they also digitzed all my info into one of those freaky smart bar code things that are creaping on ups packages , now i stare at it looking for shapes and faces . isnt it nice to know your a bar code now! haha
hail the great goddess caffine keeper of the scared black been , where there is life there is caffine where there is caffine there is life.
Actually, the 'drug war' is being fought against people victimizing the citizenry. It's easy to slip down into a drug subcult and think differently. When the pro-drug people start throwing around numbers, it's always anyone who has ever at any time smoked a little grass who gets counted. Here's a little clue: I've smoked pot, but I quit when I figured out it was a waste of money, time, and left me just more and more stoopid. I think it should be heavily controlled.
Freedom of speech on the net? Surely you recognize that busty bitmaps and pornographics spam aren't the 'freedom of speech' the founders of this country envisioned. Stop painting a picture where if the porn merchants are driven offline you won't be able to talk about breast cancer. It ain't so, though it brings in money to the organizations who spread the alarm.
And don't say nobody cares. If nobody cared, there wouldn't be people out there advocating the things you're so frightened of. The fact that they don't agree with your point of view does not mean nobody cares. It just means your opinion is in the minority. Oh well. . .
Considered growing a beard before your birthday?
Oh, I don't know - you might get away with a decent out-of-court settlement from a lawsuit, provided you agree not to scream to the nationals about their breaching agreed privacy contracts....
Or you might quietly disappear one dark evening and they wouldn't have to worry about it anymore... Our government has entirely too much power over its citzens. The PEOPLE are supposed to BE the government, not be ruled by the government!! I call for OPEN ARMED REVOLT!! Storm Washington! We have a constitutional right, nay a DUTY to overthrow corrupt government!
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Same thing here in California. I have to wonder what it is they do with them though. Ive misplaced my license something like 3 times, and every time I go back, they take a new print and picture. Once I inquired about the proper action if a person was missing their right thumb. I was told that they were then supposed to use the left, and barring that possibility, work their way through all the fingers. No order was specified.
Nope.
Cracking could not be justified.
You talk to lawyers and work within the system to get the photos removed.
If you have the right to make an end-run around what's right and wrong, you've given away your right to complain when they do it.
1. A weak good government.
:-)
:-) A very complicated operating system, but one designed by the community itself, to serve its needs, and who's internal workings are completely open and available for inspection and understanding should you care to look. All the benefits of open source development would apply to governace as well.
2. A strong good government.
3. A weak bad government.
4. A strong bad government.
A weak bad government can easily become a strong bad goverment. A weak good government can become a weak bad government. So the best option is a strong good government.
A strong good government is one with deeply-rooted institutions of openness and accountability. This is the most stable. The US government is like this, but of course it could be better. Weak governments are more unstable and can become tryranical due to ongoing internal corruption or as a result of some external disaster.
The milita types: They fear the government. They want to hide from it as much as possible, even though they are not doing anything illegal. You fear what you don't know. The government is a black box to them. Conspiracy theories abound. They feel threatned by unseen forces. They are at the extreme, but everyone feels this uneasyness to some small degree. The cure for this is more openness.
Government, like source code, should be open.
One reason the government is opaque is simply because it has become so large. Knowing what the government is up to today is a more difficult task than it was 200 years ago when government was much smaller. (30MB Windows vs. 100K DOS) Computers and the Internet can help with this. Require public officials, from the highest to the lowest, to document the reasons for their decisions, and make those documents publicly available on the net.
Another reason for opacity is a legacy of the cold war (proprietary competition). In the long run, secrets are bad for a government.
Secrecy should be allowed only in exceptional circumstances. Have it so that if a federal agency wants to keep a secret for less than obvious "security" reasons, it must buy an "Indulgence" from the federal treasury, for say $1000. In other words, a government department loses $1000 from its budget for each secret it wants to keep.
Ideally, government should be like a personal computer running Linux.
Ever heard of a bulk tape eraser?
Degauss that stripe, if it's not for anything you have any use for.
Tell them you probably were sitting near a strong electric motor.
Why is having a photo of you on file an invasion of your privacy? Unless you walk around all the time with a bag over your head, people know what you look like anyway....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Source code is like manure, if you spread it around things grow. If you hoard it it just smells bad.
Off topic, but here goes:
If it smells like manure leave it out in the barn. Spread it in the field to make things grow, but only during working hours.
And don't come into polite company smelling like that. Take a shower and change clothes before coming into the parlour.
Yep. Nice metaphor there.
What can I say, you live in an enlightened country. Perhaps an enlightened continent. This summer I had the pleasure of visiting a string of countries, and was slightly shocked to find that a person could specify on their mailbox that they did not want bulk advertisements. Information disclosure in the US? Well, you can check your own credit information, but you gotta pay. You can refuse to get a state ID, but then you'll find you cant fly on commercial air lines quite frequently. You cant buy cigarettes untill you appear to be 27 in California (you need to be 18). ack, gotta stop this before i realize im really sitting in a cell.
Yes, the American Government and Interpole both admittedly track all digital pictures related to passports, visas, and green cards already. should we get pissed because they too are keeping track of us.
"Just a question not meant to start a flame war."
I think Calvin & Hobbes said it best in this dialog: (paraphrasing)
C: Hobbes, do you believe in the Devil?
H: You mean a vile creature dedicated to the temptation and corruption of mankind?
C: Yeah.
H: I don't think mankind needs the help.
Basically, I don't really buy into the typical Christian mythology about the lake of fire, eternal damnation, pie in the sky, and marks of the beast. Man is a balance of good and evil, and unfortunately, those less enlightened have been the ones in power for some time. But avoiding a long theological debate, I think this diverts from the intent of the original article, which is basically that the government will have a picture of you on file. (which they already do, they'll just all be linked with each other state now)
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Those of you protest that this photo database is "no big deal" are right in a very isolated sense. If this project were a standalone artifact, the first of its kind, and nothing more, then it would be worth watching closely but no threat to any good person. It is not isolated.
The plan as I recall it, called for digitizing everyone in the USA with instant access terminals spreading throughout the land for customs recognition, check and credit card verification, "terrorist/kiddie porn/undesirable" stopping, etc. You hand over your national ID card, they swipe it, and a few moments later your picture appears probably with a lot of other information too.
Great. Now "no one can use your credit cards," is the selling point. Just remember that the same folks who proposed this innocent little "convenience" are also proposing registration of all guns and owners with confiscation promised, installing government backdoors on all computers to serve search warrants in advance of their issue, outlawing encryption where it is inconvenient, requiring national ID cards and their use for all government services and many private ones too, requiring banks to spy on your financial dealings, confiscating money and property without filing any criminal charges and then keeping the loot, and that is just what comes to mind right now. Oh yeah, it certainly looks like this same government is not above murdering its own citizens with incendiary devices because some tax agency needed a PR video.
Do you still trust them? What about the next administration?
All you European socialists want to chime in? It is illegal to own any encryption device in France or Russia. Russian ISPs will tell you that they can not operate without installing evesdropping software for the FRS (neo-KGB). We used to shudder at the thought of government spying like this. We still laugh nervously at the East Germans and the Stasi. Nearly a third of that country was informing on the other two-thirds. Of course that could never happen in America, and who cares if it does. We do not have death squads...
Computerization and universal networking are extremely powerful tools and can shape society in unexpected ways. Some folks have argued that this database is meaningless because the government is incompetant. Not everyone working for the US government is stupid, and many of these proposals come out of bureaucracies looking to increase in power or contractors looking to make a buck. Neither of these groups care about privacy at all. Add in large coroporate interests, who see negative value in individual privacy, and you have a recipe for disaster.
I would rather live in the society which did not feel compeled to track my movements, associates, financial dealings, personal communications, and very appearance. With a little forethought the same computer system which could be a powerful surveilence system can protect its users privacy and identity. The corporate motivation is lacking because provacy guards cost more and deprive them of potential revenue streams in selling your data. Goverment motivation for privacy is lacking because power and control increase with information. It is up to citizens to demand privacy and see that safeguards are enforced.
Sadly, there are systems that can id people quite well. When these become cost effective, and hooked into the CCTV systems widespread across much of the UK now, such an image database would let the Government monitor your movements quite effectively.
And it's already being done (in the UK). Some months ago on television there was a documentary about this issue, and it showed a system that identified criminals. It only had a success rate of 80% at that time, but that might be improved by now.
I have to disagree on this point.
I believe that:
1. By nature, people are "good".
2. The more people in power, the less power in the hands of the "bad" people.
1. This is not to say that people do not do bad things or have bad goals, but I think that people are not essentially bad by nature, they are bad by conditioning. (ie. they have become bad) This gives me hope that good government is possible. (yep, I'm a bit of an idealist)
2. I think that the number of people around who are bad is going to stay fairly constant, but less than the number of good people (see 1). However, if power is spread through many hands, the likelihood is that most power will be in the hands of good people.
Without really judging whether or not this picture db will be abused or not, I refer to the original post we are replying to here and again ask, "what exactly is so bad about this?". If we assume that people are good, then mightn't this db HELP the gov't be MORE effective ?
-The Devil's Advocate
Ok, you are hopelessly deluded. People are inherintly interested in what is best for themselves at any particular moment. Without any kind of training or conditioning to the contrary they will ALWAYS do what is best for themselves without regard to others.
When we elect someone to a position in our government we HOPE we are electing someone GOOD. However there are in existence more 'Bad' people than 'Good' people. So the more people we have in our government the higher the chance that we have 'Bad' people in it.
Also, you can never 'Assume' people are good. In fact, if we are assuming people are good then why do we need this DB? None of us are criminals, people are Good!
Good government is Possible, but not BIG good government. A Good government is inherently small and efficient, unlike our current government.
The Government has in place a adequate infrastructure for performing its duties, it is not using that infrastructure properly. The government wastes resources in massive amounts on all kinds of useless things. If perhaps some of that were stopped and redirected towards useful programs that are already in existence we wouldn't be looking at some new and expensive program designed to take up the slack every few months.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Kenny
You read those quotes from a column in your little libbertardian magazine, didn't you?
Were we even asked if we wanted this? I don't remember being asked. Lots of things are happening that I am not comfortable with. Maybe an email campaign should be started to let these folks know how we feel. Somehow these losers got elected without telling the people what they were all about and thats not how the system is supposed to work. I say, these politicians sign a *contract* at election time, that says they get the f*ck out if they stray from their stated goals. They can't be trusted at their word any longer.
You'll never see a good selection process as long as the vast majority of the public is somewhere between generally uninformed and utterly ignorant. Politicians respond to whatever gets them votes. Right now, the best ways to get votes are by surfing from one "wedge" issue to the next, running lots of negative TV ads, and trying to convince people that your opponent is either socialist or extremist and doesn't care about you. Why do these work? Because most of the population isn't willing to think for themselves. I don't blame politicians for the current state of government. Most honestly believe they are doing what is best for the people. I blame the political apathy of the population.
I'll have to agree with that. The biggest problem is that the us people keep asking the government to bend them over and fuck them senseless.... We're gluttons for punishment it seems.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
"Pat Buchanan for President!"
Just like gun control issues. Are the "illegal aliens and boogeymen" going to register a gun or get a drivers license? You can drive without one for Lord knows how long, if you drive halfway decent. And guns will always be on the black-market. I am all for privacy. But do you remember that national datbase we already have here in the US? It's call Social Security. Dang near everybody born in the US has a number... Maybe they could just tattoo that on us. Grrr!
Me
Oh Yeh.. This might be a good thing for the gov't to keep tabs on everyone.. like they could know when you leave the country and stuff.. Which might be bad if you on the top 10 most wanted.. =-) and what about that ticket you got for goin 5 mph over.. would they be able to find out about that when they pull you over?? and what if they store you DNA on the DataBase.. will they make clones of me?? I would hate to see 50 me's running around.. and I think the world can only handle one.. =-)
I knew that you're in California. :-)
:-).
Seems you got lucky in Texas- I got scanned and there was no option for not getting it (not like they don't already have it; worked for a defense contractor for a time- they already know me probably better than I know myself...
Recognition could be possible with some of the more advanced neural net engines, but you're right, it'd be hard. I think all that's on the stripe is an index id for your info in the state database and an authentication key to certify that the card's not bogus.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The state of Kansas also has a magnetic strip. In many of the local stores there is a pad that very clearly will erase the magnetic strip on any card (credit cards, drivers lic. etc) so I erase the strip.
Would this imply that the issuing of a driver's license would be a federal program and not a state one?
If they are using the guise of "immigrants and terrorists" perhaps they should give an option to "born" citizens to opt out of the program. (Well, we can't be immigrants so do they consider us terrorists until proven otherwise?)
This should make their database smaller and thus quicker to search.
*sigh*
This sucks. (IMO)
-Vel
> perhaps they should give an option to "born" citizens to opt out of the program.
h tm
h tml t 5articles/ch625act5Sub3.htm
There ALREADY is an way to opt out. Get an IDP (International Drivers Permit)
Remember that the IDP is NOT valid in the place of issue, so don't go to AAA and ask them to give you one!
You DO NOT need a driver's license to travel.
Do a search for "right to travel"
I've included some links here to get you started.
http://teaminfinity.com/~ralph/dl.html
http://www.lvdi.net/~willys/travel.htm
http://www.ironsoft.com/lp/driving.html
http://aero.net/silver/Driving.htm
WHY does the state want you to submit the MSO for an unregistered vehicle and then give you a title back?
i.e.
http://www.co.clark.wa.us/auditor/newveh.htm
http://auditor.co.mason.wa.us/page22.html
http://www.dps.state.la.us/omv/ttl/title.html
http://www.magnet.state.ma.us/rmv/titles/index.
To find the answer, you might want to look up MSO (Manufacture's Statement of Origin) or MCO (Manufacture's Certificate of Origin)
http://205.218.170.194/www.svpvril.com/vehicle.
http://www.legis.state.il.us/ilcs/ch625/ch625ac
Please research these so-called "mandatory" federal/state laws, you will shocked to discover what the laws REALLY say.
The barcode apparently includes your home address. Everytime I move I get a different barcode. (this happens often) On the upside, it would make an easy way to send drunks home, just put them in the nearest mailbox. the USPS will do the rest.
Warning, long rambling post ahead :)
:)
I would have to disagree with your premise, as I understand it, on a number of points. I read your post as saying:
1. Governments can be 'good' or 'bad'.
2. Good government is desirable and should be sought after and protected.
3. Bad government is undesirable and should be overthrown.
4. It is possible for a good government to go bad (implied).
5. It is better to risk the overthrow of a good government than risk not being able to overthrow a bad one.
6. Thus, it is desirable that all governments be weak.
Now, lets take the assumptions in order:
1. Now, I despise pointless semantic disputes, but what is 'good' and 'bad'? I can answer that question to my own satisfaction, and I'm sure that you, and most others can too. But I doubt we agree on all points. For example, would you call the US government good or bad? I think a very good case could be made that it is a bad government, and that therefore (according to the above assumptions) should be overthrown. Do you agree? If so I presume you are actively engaged in the subversion and overthrow of the US government. If not, why not? Can you honestly describe the US government as being good? Has it always been so during your adult life? If it is, what then consitutes bad government? (BTW, if you are actually planning to topple the US government, I wouldn't recommend saying so in a public forum
2. I agree with the intent, if not the formulation of the intent.
3. Should bad governments be overthrown? Is a bad government undesirable in comparison with the likely alternatives (and don't forget that good government is only one alternative, and not a very likely one IMHO). Lets take the situation in East Timor for example. I guess you would call the Indonesian government 'bad'. They are also weak, extremely so. Should they be overthrown? Hell no! If it is overthrown the miltary would take over, and a bad government would be replaced with a (probably) much worse one. There is increasing evidence that the power struggle between the military and government is intensifying, and that the military are prevailing. How many governments have been toppled by revolution in recent centuries? How many of the revolutions delivered a better situation than what was there before? Here are a few 'positive' revolutions I can think of, in rough order of the improvement they brought to the lives of the people. Please feel free to add to them:
The French
The American
Romanian, and other Eastern European nations ditching communism (some of which are arguably not revolutions)
Cuba (OK, just being provocative here)
I would list some of the more horrible revolutions, but I don't have the time or inclination. Too depressing.
4. Well, given any reasonable definition of good and bad, this seems inarguable.
5. The vast majority of revolutions install a much worse government than the one they overthrew. See 3, above. It must always be remembered, romantic images notwithstanding, revolution is a horrible state. It invariably is accompanied by great suffering, and usually great death. Note, I think revolution is the correct action in some circumstances, but those circumstances are pretty damn rare! It should be the absolute last resort, undertaken only in situation of direst extremity.
Also, I would specifically take issue with this statement:
Once a government becomes strong, it is very difficult to make it weak again...
It is natural for all governments to deteriorate over time. Sure, you have to take a longer view than is usual, but eventually all governments weaken and fail, no matter how 'good' or 'bad' they are, no matter how strong or weak.
For an illuminating insight providing a bit of historical perspective, review a bit of ancient history. For the last four thousand years or so China been ruled in turn by various extremely strong governments (which would also count as being very 'bad' in most modern people's estimation, I suspect), all of which inevitably weakened and decayed, and were eventually overthrown and replaced. Rome would provide a similar example in the West. An incredibly powerful government, arguably the most powerful political entity that has yet existed, but still it weakened and fell. Of course we are talking about timeframes of centuries, which is cold comfort if you are suffering now.
It would be interesting to examine whether the strength of a government is related to its 'badness'. I suspect that a case could be made that strong government is usually bad government. Anyway, an argument for another day.
BTW, does anyone else find the similarity between one of the founding principles of the US (ensuring the possibility of revolution), and one of the central tenets of Maoism (perpetual revolution) interesting?
Cheers,
Duane.
- "I never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine" - Bob Dylan (Tight Connection to my Heart)
Oh yes, pretty soon, those things in the constitution will be just tokens as well. The right to bear arms? How close is that to becoming a token..or is it already? If your spirit is broken and you choose to give up and lie down..please have the dignity to do it in silence.
Uhhh. Please don't clone him! Like we need MORE Anonymous Cowards... :)
This slogan always works with Americans. Who could be against it? The database could be used to track down child abductors, or people (funny how they always say "people", when in 99.99% of the time they mean "men") who are evading child support.
How did Image Data feel about South Carolina's actions? "The PR, legal, and legislative situation in the pilot State will continue to be evaluated and dealt with," a January 1999 company report says.
Read that to say somebody will have the shit audited out of them. Nasty visits by guys wearing dark glasses...that kind of thing.
I'd hate to think it, but if things don't change, it might just boil down to that... I don't advocate that sort of thing, but in the end, it'd happen anyway.
The Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department. They have a lot to do with tracking drug gangs via money flow. As far as terrorists, that's pretty obvious as they are responsible for the safety of the President.
Image Data and TeleCheck both use Oracle8 on
Windows/NT workstations to store their databases.
The only reason why their databases are still
operating is that they only have data from a few
southern states. As soon as they start to add data
from the other 40+ states their systems will crash
and burn. The company is a Windows/NT only shop
that is unwilling to consider any other OS or CPU.
Their systems are supposed to handle 100,000,000
records with each reacord containing 512k of image
data and associated text. They also are supposed
to handle 100,000,000 transactions a day of which
50,000 to 100,000 are updates.
Only large scale Mainframe DBMS systems can handle
the workload they are contracted to deliver.
Just a bit of technical advice for anybody who thinks a strong magnet will wipe out a data stripe, or a tape or floppy diskette:
It won't.
There is the slight possiblity that some of the info will be corrupted, but the info will not be wiped clean.
A strong 'DC' magnet will bias the magnetic material, but it almost never wipes out the minute changes in the magnetic field that carry the information.
To wipe out data on a magnetic substrate, use an Alternating Current degaussing coil. They sell them at Rat Shack and many other places as "bulk tape erasers." Power the thing up and swirl it round and round whatever you're trying to wipe clean. Don't be afraid to overdo it, because otherwise you're just fooling yourself, thinking that you've wiped the data.
The technical background: The change in the magnetic flux density is what carries the information. An AC electromagnet 'scrambles' the change, because it totally reverses polarity 60 times a second (50 in some localities). A DC magnet (a regular fixed magnet) does not scramble the information, it just "biases" it to a different level, leaving the minute changes that carry the info riding on a magnetic charge of one polarity or the other, which can easily be read with well designed equipment.
Try some experiments with floppy diskettes and permanent magnets. Don't assume you've wiped magnetic media clean without careful evaluation of good technique.
If the government could prove their ability to utilize such technology without abuse, then I'd be all for it. However, as is inevitable in positions of power, individuals become corrupted. There needs to be some sort of check and balance system on such an undertaking. You know the old saying.... "Who will watch the watchers?"
I, for one, fear what the NSA/CIA/SS/#include favorite TLA can do, especially when they're looking for some dork to patsy on a bust to meet their quotas, further political agendas or whatever cockamanie reason these "agents" have for their intrusions.
In a perfect world, these sort of systems would only be used by reliable, trustworthy individuals who had only the nation and public's well being in mind. Of course, in a perfect world, these measures would not be necessary in the first place.
There's always going to be a system, and it's never perfect. Vagrants/terrorists/kiddie pornsters/etc are going to find a way to beat any system that's put into place, leaving those of us who don't bother anybody put under unjustified observation.
Here's your soap box back.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
We have those in California too, and assuming that New Hampshire uses the same encoding scheme (almost certainly the case given that it is a credit-card industry standard format) it probably just has your driver's license number and name on there.
If you erase the stripe, the only thing you are accomplishing is that your are forcing the cop to key in your driver's license number when you are pulled over. These stripes are not intended to have volatile info on them. They are merely a key to a database somewhere, and that key is nearly always on the card, in case the stripe goes bad.
One reason that I am almost certain the encoding used is that retailers are one of the groups pushing for these stripes on cards. Why? So they can ask for ID, and then grab the name off of it for marketting purposes.
These mag stripes don't hold as much as most people seem to think. There are generally two sets of info. The first is 37 bytes, and holds the account number and some other control information. The second is 80 bytes and holds the same thing as the first, but with the addition of the name on the card. Some older equipment can't read the second.
The cake is a pie
Roe v. Wade was decided largely on an assumed right to privacy. While there is no explicit 'Right To Privacy' delineated in the US Constitution, the Supreme Court has long held that there does exist a defacto right to privacy. The problem with this is that conservative judges, generally appointed by Republican Presidents don't like this level of constructive interpitation and often reject this argument as grounds for more contentious decisions. The fact is that we really should have a right to privacy in the constitution to eliminate this sort of interpitation.
Conservatives often like to use arguments like taxation is a assualt on personal freedom - well, it is. But the fact of the matter is that conservatives are also the people who promulgate proposed restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of religion (and the concept that religous beliefs should become societal norms, but it is MY religion that we use as a benchmark). These are important assaults on basic freedoms, too.
The fact of the matter is that people need to adopt a more libertarian point of view when dealing with government.
Damn right. I, for one, would like to have sensors buried in the road to make people who want to drive 6000 pound SUVs pay for the damage that they do, to nab car thieves, and to nail people driving without a licence/insurance. The further and further away we get from seriously looking at issues, the further we get from fixing them, and insisting that (for instance) everything is some sort of slippery slope into fascism (apart from being stupid) is hideously counterproductive because it assumes that the only group with an agenda is the big bad government. Ain't so.
You used a good example, that of the pot lobby counting their numbers funny. As much as they talk about liberty (a valid issue), medical uses of pot (another valid issue), industrial hemp (a very valid issue), all they really want is to get screwed up and to make society at large make that OK. In short, NORML and Co. wants everyone in America to figure out a way to happily and willingly deal with 5-10% of the population suddenly being given the opportunity to stop contributing anything to society and in many cases to be an active menace (driving while stoned, for instance). And before you say that I am, well, smoking something, think about this: the free market value of a kilo brick of good buds someplace where no one care who grows it is about $40/kg. Assume that mass production would cut that in half. So, for $20, you could have enough weed to keep a serious stoner glued to the couch for a week. $20/week is $1040 a year, and that is a pretty low cost for someone to fry themselves. If weed were this cheap do you really think that it wouldn't become the preferred anasthetic for the masses? And how hard do you think that these potheads will work to supply their habit? Just hard enough to buy the weed, live in squalor, and become seriously malnourished until they wind up in the hospital with malnutrition or an out of control abcess from never brushing their teeth or lung cancer. And then I get to pay for them.
Similarly with the drivers licence shots -- sure, put me in the book. I DON'T DO ANYTHING. And before you say "yeah, well that just means that they will come for you last, man" remember that this is why the Founders gave us privately owned guns. The final line of defense is not the ACLU, it is a large piece of hot lead. Ahem. In the meantime, before "the man comes for me," I am going to be hoping that we can use stuff like this to force people to pay for insurance (or deal with what happens when they don't), to remove illegals (I am in Texas and in Texas, they are here to work because we don't really have welfare here, however, there is a lot to be said for not allowing a large population living outside the law to take up permanent residence in your state -- the vast majority of illegals don;t break the law, but when one does, we never get them because they drop into an uncooperative population and go back to Mexico), and to stop terrorists (and that includes yahoos in Ryder trucks).
Whenever I see people get their panties in a bunch about this it really presses my hot buttons. I loved the time I spent in Germany because I didn't have to worry about speed limits on the autobahnen most of the time and people drove better. In Texas, about 20 years of studies seem to show conclusively that about 20% of the driving population causes 85% of the accidents. This seems to concurr with several studies out of California. These people are in a few categories -- intoxicated, incompetant, physically incapable, and uneducated. Without the impact of these people you have 85% fewer accidents and about 70% fewer deaths. I want these people off the road and I want them to be kept off of the road and I want them punished to the point that they will stay off the road. I cannot see how there is any slippery slope here, and it is not because I lack imagination.
Fifty years of liberal stupidity has made people forget that the rule of law used to be based on reason. As in the "reasonable man" standard. Remember reading about that in history class? Fifty years of hearing "we are all a little nuts" has made people think "well, that could be me" when they look at a child molester or serial killer. No, not unless you are crazy. Fifty years of having self-important twits like Dr. Spock and Carl Sagan and Tomothy Leary getting indulged by a hero-worshipping liberal media has made people believe that there are no such things as standards and everyone is a little off. No, they aren't. So whenever I hear a liberal whinging about how something like this (or locking up street crazies, or requiring school age children to be in someone's home at 04:00, or allowing police to consider hair down to your ass, a peace sign and Greatful Dead stickered VW bus, hash oil fogged windows, erratic driving, and bloodshoot eyes to be "probably cause") is a slippery slope to some sort of Orwellian nightmare society, I have to remind them that they were the ones who wanted to kill standards to legitimize their own deviancy (and no, I am not arguing about Georgia sodomy laws, I am arguing about the "like, everyone is free to love everyone, man" shit that gave us a herpes epidemic, the "you do your own thing and it's OK man" shit that gave us a seriously screwed up national hard drug problem, the "it's not really perjury but a personal issue, man" that gave us a national precedent for allowing a chief executive to get away with things that Nixon never dreamed of in Bill Clinton, liberal great white hope).
In fact, while I am ranting, I have to say that I welcome this "invasion of privacy" that will be coming faster and faster as time goes on. You know why? Because sooner or later it will make it clear to everyone (the same way that SAP has allowed CEOs to push out possible changes in one afternoon to see if what they are doing will screw stuff up and the same way that SAS tools have made this sort of thing trivial, albeit computationally still expensive, to check up on on almost a weekly basis now, and in a few years on a daily basis) who is and who is not paying their own way, and I think that this is where I will get to do things like opt out of social security and the taxes, opt out of medicare and the taxes, and so on. This is going to be a big deal in a very few short years, and I am looking forward to it.
And the State of Texas has already got the digital photo thingy for the drivers licenses. We also have the "mystery" magnetic strip on the back. Ooooh. Scary stuff. :)
:-)
We've got that here in Wisconsin now too.. I've been meaning to find a card reader to see just what's on there.
Probably nothing interesting, but hey, who knows?
What about having installed cameras, identifiying most everybody who walks by (OK, it's a bit difficult...)?
:-)
Ever been in a Wal-Mart?
Seriously, on the corner by the post office downtown where I live there are two cameras 'hidden' in black globes meant to look like a street lamp. Now are they there for the security of the postal workers or...?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Your posts always have that choppy didactic quality.
Big words that seem like professional power tools that somehow have wandered into the posession of someone unsafe with anything more than a rather blunt screwdriver.
It's something I've noticed a lot with people who think they're underground, but it's just their head down there.
Isn't there something about the "Mark of the Beast" in the Bible, where there would be something without which you can't buy or sell anything (or do anything at all, for that matter)? This looks suspiciously close. Bible Belters help me out.
The potential good part (is that possible?!): if identity fraud becomes much more difficult, your rates for things like credit cards could drop, since a company that only allows clients in the ID system to get a card would have less fraud to make up for in their rates. It would also potentially let stores drop prices, since only accepting credit cards hooked to the photo system would drop their per-transaction price (or would it? there would be the added expense of the equipment and such).
Like it or not, it's on its way.
Lifting crypto restrictions is important because until we have a public key system in place, there's no way to locked-down-damn-tight authenticate people.
As soon as it's possible to authenticate properly, we can demand authentication on ALL net traffic. Routers can then quietly just drop packets that aren't authenticated and tracable to an identity. I happen to think that would be a really good thing but suspect there are lots of spooks, creeps, and hackers who would disagree.
So let's hear it for strong crypto.
Good stuff. Will make the net safer. Will throw a lot of the people who are championing it out on their ear.
A good thing, methinks.
I mean what are they gonna do? For all they know you left your card on top of a TV, Speaker, or electric motor. BFD. This happens without trying on my credit cards sometimes. The cashier just keys the number in manually. Though with a DL, the info prob isn't even printed on the card. MAYBE the cop will be to tired to fuck with calling the request and let you go. It can't hurt. If the gov't is destine to fuck us over, at least make them work to do it.
When I got my first Texas licence (at 15), Alan Shivers was in office. Yes, they took my fingerprint then, too. I think that this started in the late '40s.
Yes, that counts as falsifying state records. Felony.
Ok, perhaps I am a bit deluded. But I'm happy in that state. ;)
My view from north of the border might also affect my opinions.
However... I think our real difference here is the old philosophical battle of whether people are good or evil by nature. Much wiser and long dead people have effectively argued for both sides. It is really a personal choice of paradigm which decides which idea is correct. I personally believe that people are good by nature.
And while I am assuming people are good by nature, I did say that there are bad people by conditioning... thus, OF COURSE it's silly to say "Everyone is good and no one is a criminal and who needs this DB?"
I do think that a government of many can work, but perhaps not in the US. (I s'pose we could say that a democracy is actually a gov't of many... but that idea probably pertains more to socialism)
I must certainly agree that the current infrastructure is under-utilised. But that in itself does not necessarily mean that a new idea is useless.
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
These are showing up a lot here in Las Vegas on all these casino club cards. No mag stripe. Just a 15x6 grid of holes (some filled, some not). Sort of a small credit card sized hollerith card. Impervious to degaussing. Smudge a little gunk in there, though.... then again, it's easily blown out.
I agree that there is much good to be had by all concerned getting involved in the government the problem is so many peaple are more attached to their free time,peace, or money than their freedom. Is there any political lobby for privacy and freedom? if not we should start a slash dot Special interest Lobby. if there is we should fund it and support it. if all the /. crowd gave $5 to the lobby they would have alot of money to lobby with. also if none of the major political parties are supporting freedom and privacy and there are enuff of us we could start our own party. I'm Not sure we have enuff peaple though. Maybe in Silcon Vally but certainly not in most states.
Kenny
Topic says it all.
This whole line of replies is scaring me.
Who are you hurting when you're smoking pot? Perhaps yourself, but that's no reason to stop someone from doing it. If we do that, let's keep them from drinking, from looking the wrong way at people, from doing ANYTHING that could possibly endanger them.
There's something wrong with that kind of thinking, and it leads to more and more people being thrown in jail for crimes that have no victims.
Why stop people from smoking pot? Because it made you more and more stupid?! You can't stop people from being stupid, and putting them in jail for smoking a joint is a big waste of YOUR tax money, and everyone else's, when you could be putting it towards a host of other things that are real problems in the world.
Scapegoating all of your problems on the pot smokers and on the porn on the net is a sign of living far away from where reality really is, and it's exactly what the government wants you to think. They'd rather you trade your freedom for your security. You'll end up having neither once they're all done.
I heard on a news show that too often when the media tells the story of how a guy who stole the pizza got 25 years to life, they conveniently neglect to say that the robber assaulted the victim with a knife (a felony) and that it was also the robbers third strike.
in case you didnt know.
the FBI has been taking all mug shots and fingerprints and digitizing them. then giving HP machines to local police departments w/ the mugshot and fingerprint databases. the only police departments i know of that have this right now or will have it in the immediate future are las vegas, the state of massachusettes and west virginia [theres a HUGE fbi compound in clarksburg].
Global warming is good for you!
I don't know about you, but I don't *want* the government to be able to look me up in a database.
"Lets see, how bout we sign up everyone with a middle initial of ASD or F for the draft for WWIII"
This fits right in to my plan to *not* get a driver's licence next year when I reach the age of drivers-licence-qualification.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
where people can get free internet services that enhance users privacy and security.
ompages.com its the debian of networking services
The danger at the present time is that the anti-privacy technology is advancing rapidly, and the government is learning to use it much more quickly than civilians. The asymmetry in surveillance could continue to grow wider and more rapidly, ending in something like 1984. Perhaps the best thing would be for civilians to start learning about this technology, and using it to track the lives of the legislators who favor abuses of privacy.
So maybe there needs to be a web page that shows recent candid photos of all these legislators, and their home addresses, home phone numbers, travel itineraries, tax records, police records, where they eat dinner and who they meet, and all the other fun stuff they would like to know about the rest of us.
In the worst case, the government would use its monopoly on privacy to secure so much power for itself that it no longer requires the process of popular elections. This would remove the last means by which the people constrain the government. Consent of the governed would become an unnecessary hindrance.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Here Here! Are you running for President? You got my vote! This liberal administration, protected by the media, has done more damage to American freedom than we will probably know. And yet the Republicans are demonized. More taxes = less freedom. I don't WANT to have to beg the government for my money back. I want to keep this money so I can save for retirement, start a business, save for my childrens education, etc. I will pay my share for national defense, infrastructure, etc. but refuse to pay to support people who continue to make bad decisions and don't want to be held accountable and take responsibility for their actions. Why are we encouraging irresponsibility?!? Everyone sees the democrats as the protectors of individual rights, when nothing could be farther from the truth. Read between the lines, someday you will see the light.
Yea, well, it's OK for SlashDot to do it, but not the US Government? ... Hmm... *whisper* Rob Malda Works for the CIA *
You are forgetting something verry important. There are many sets of different opinions, and if the people of the USA (or any other country) let laws get passed that *reduce* their rights, then these laws will reduce *everyone's* rights.
What you consider to be a good thing, someone else might consider to be a menance to society.
Do you smoke tobacco?
Do you like to hunt?
Do you have a pet?
Do you believe in sexual freedom? (As in being able to engage in sexual activity of any form with another consenting adult)
Do you think that people should be able to decorate the exterior of their house however they want to?
How bout being able to have your favorite color car?
Do you listen to music?
Watch movies?
Nearly every one of these things is ether currently legally restricted/banned in places, or could verry easily become restricted/banned in *your state/town/country*.
The only good way to prevent restrictions on what *you* like to do, is to not try to restrict what *others* like to do.
I believe rather strongly that if someone wants to do something, and it doesn't majorly harm *me* they have a right to do that, wether it be smoking pot, painting their house bright red, walking around without clothing, practicing some form of christianity, *whatever they want to do is fine*!
Just because I don't want to smoke pot/paint my house red/be christian, doesn't mean that other people shouldn't be allowed to do it. And they shouldn't be allowed to force those practices on me eithor.
I also believe that all surperfolus government laws/programs/etc (With the single exception of NASA) should be terminated. It is the governments responsibility to *implement and inforce such laws as are nessisary to allow people to live their lives*, as well as to build and maintain public resources like interstate highways.
It is not the responsibility of government to provide health care! It is not the responsibility of government to keep alive those who cannot get jobs! These people have families. These people have friends. And realy, if a person has no family/friends/aquantences or a job, do they realy need to be kept alive by the govtment?
The government doesn't need to store a picture of my face, and to keep a record of my doings to perform it's nessisary tasks. Even the effort required to do that is a waste of valuable tax dollars that could be spent on something worthwile. (Like NASA)
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Various factions in the US government have been angling for a "national database" of one sort or another - firearm registration, employment verification, income tracking - you name it.
They've been prevented, in large part, because various privacy laws in the US already prohibit the goverment from collection this sort of information on a national level, and because the information that *really* needs to be shared effectively (ie, information on crimes, suspects, and the like) is already handled by exising agreements between state law enforcement agencies quite adequately.
This isn't just an "image database" - it's a foot in the door. How will they uniquely identify each image? Probably by social security number. Which means they can then link to your tax records, your criminal record, FBI record, credit history, insurance records... and from there, it's just a matter of time before they start tracking other information "in order to serve you better." Maybe not this administration, or the next, or even in the next 50 years; but eventually, someone *will* find a way to abuse the system, and someone - our children, if not us - will pay the price of our complacency.
No no no, The problem is that they *can* and *do* commit the "serious fraud", and in a good percentage of cases, they get away with it.
Why give them the power to mess you over. I could care less if the guy next to me smokes pot or crack, I want to be able to feel safe that I'm not going to get tagged for something that I didn't do that shouldn't be illegal in the first place!
Laws should be minimal. Just because there's a spot where something *can* be regulated/taxed doesn't mean that it *should* be regulated and taxed.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I appreciate the point about the nature of US administrations, and to a lesser extent all western governments since around 1950.
Nonetheless, I do believe they are *relatively* well-behaved, especially when you look at the alternatives. I don't live in the US, so maybe I underestimate the degree to which are behaving badly, but I do still think that limiting the informational resources of even only slightly benign government might increase the chances of the public supporting one that will turn out not to be benign at all.
No, you are very correct for posting this thought. It hasn't been mentioned before here. I find that a bit disappointing.
While none of the advocates of the database approach will admit it, what you mention will be exactly the cummulative side-effect of this approach. It seems that law enforcement can not conceive of a better enforcement framework other than unduly eroding the privacy and freedom of American citizens. Even though I have no experience in law enforcement, I constantly ask myself, is this the best protection my tax dollars can buy from the local and federal policing agencies? Is this it?
Do you remember the white American woman who two years ago drowned her own children in a lake and then gave to the police an open-ended description of a black man as the criminal? They believed her. I heard that every black male in the vicinity was considered suspect with her description. They wouldn't have stopped harrassing innocent law-abiding citizens if it hadn't been for the fact that she finally broke down (I suppose out of guilty conscience) and confessed that she was the criminal. This type of false criminilzation occurs often in America and the image database will make it more acute.
You can see their web page at http://www.taig.org
They are trying to raise some money, and put together a lawsuit.
According to what I know, while Texas had the fingerprinting statute on the books for some time(which only allowed but did not not compell DPS to collect the prints) it was only recently that DPS had the technology to do it all over the state efficiently, as opposed to the larger DPS offices.
While Texas and a few other states do fingerprint, thankfully those states are in the minority, and hopefully it will stay that way.
Come on, the US Government is rivalling Microsoft Windows 98 and Office 2000 combined in level of bloatedness!
The evidence I present is that there exists a department of government with the spare time to compile a database of people's faces/SSNs.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I'm currently going through the motions of applying for a US immigrant visa (sigh) & have been asked to submit a number of 3/4 profile mug shots to fairly precise specs. *Now* i know why..
... [or] who is coming to the United States to engage in prostitition or commericalized vice..
Other funny questions on the application form:
"Are you:
b. An alien convicted of, or who admits having committed a crime involving moral turpitude or violation of any law relating to a controlled subtsance;
YES/NO
c. An alien who seeks to enter the United States to engage in espionage, sabotage, export control violations, terrorist activities, overthrow of the Government of the United States or other unlawful activity; who is a member of or affiliated with the Communist or other totalitarian party; who participated in Nazi persecutions or genocide; or who has engaged in genocide. Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the US Secretary of State?
YES/NO
..
i. An alien who is coming to the United States to practice polygamy;..
YES/NO"
Hi folks, About May this year the New Zealand government introduced photo id licenses. This may make some go "so what?", but it's the process you have to go through to get one of these licenses that makes you frown. 1) Photo's are stored on a national computer 2) Your signature is SCANNED and also kept on a national computer 3) (NOT PROVEN) You have to do an eye test with a special machine that some people believe with good cause retna scans you. New Zealand traditionally gets tech about 3-4 years ahead of the USA (EFTPos was first here by 3 years) because we're small (3 million people) yet up with the play with Technology etc. and so alot of things are test cased here first. The scary thing about these licenses really is the fact that they have your photo, signature and maybe reta scan, basically they have YOU on computer, just hope your never framed by the govt ;)
I agree completely about the risks of strong bad government. Overthrowing such beasts is almost impossible - look at Iraq.
I agree with what you say about most effort in many liberal regimes (and most especially the US) being directed at keeping government weak. I think this has been an unspoken bu longstanding principle for some time - not only must we forbid that the government take certain powers, we must ensure it remains weak so if it does take them, we can overthrow it.
My concern with this is that weak bad governments, being unscrupulous, have a very easy time turning themselves into strong bad governments, especially if people are angry or not particularly aware of what is going on.
The situation the US is in now, where it has a moderately strong government with a widely questionable record, raises the question of what to do to make it at least a good government, if not a strong good government. If people set out to weaken governments on the ground that they are not particularly good, I think its quite possible large portions of the electorate will get upset because certain tasks they think the the responsibility of the state are not being filled. That increases the risk of unscrupulous, and probably bad, governments being elected by promising to clean up the mess. This is what looks like it might happen in Russia.
Um, anybody ever hear of a place called East Timor?
First off, this is already part of States' databases. I know KS and MO already have the images in a database, and I belive that most states that don't use the "real" photographs for their licenses have some form of database. All US passports are also in a database. That is what they are for! Have you ever looked at the little computer the guy has at the immigration booth when you come into the country?
While we all have stories about how the government screws up, wields their power a little too strongly, and is grossly innefficient, fundementally, there are checks and balances that prevent any arm/organization of the government from being able to change things too quickly, or to exercise too much power.
While the idea of a smaller, more efficient government sounds nice, it is good for governments to not be too efficient... it helps keep them from doing too much.
Conspiracy theory... look at what is going on in the world around us... the real demons should be your first concern; the make believe ones will still be around a long time down the road.
The secret service doesn't have jurisdiction over terrorism, I believe that's an FBI function. INS controls immigration. So exactly what kind of dumbass excuse is this?
The USSS does have jurisdiction over treasury matters, like counterfeiting, and over matters relating to the security of the President (and other high gov't officials, cabinet rank mostly). So the only way they could legally justify something like this is to claim that they were doing it to protect the president, and I don't see how a database of pictures is going to do that. Not that the plutocrats in Congress are going to object strenuously, they are just as scared of a common man having freedom as the President is.
Communication is only possible between equals
The New Zealand government recently introduced a photo-id drivers liscence scheme here to replace the old paper ones we've had for years.
They're charging people $25(NZD) from memory to obtain one of these new liscences by the end of the month of their birthday or their liscence expires.
All of the information on these liscences is being forwarded to the NZ police dept and added to a central database.
Fortunately in NZ we have some (partially) sane privacy laws and they can't give the info out to people unless we've specifically given them permission to do so. Of course then there's the clause at the bottom of the form that says "We can give this to whomever the hell we like for whatever reason".
Sigh
I guess the US doesn't have a monopoly on idiocy after all.
Silver
Exactly what do you mean by "authoritarian government"? Are you anarchist, or simply pushing for smaller government? Personally, I am strongly in the second category.
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
Anarchist, but smaller government is obviously a step in the right direction.
You are completely right about the whole convenience for freedom thing. Except the "government" as an entity is just protecting its own existance, which is very defendable. The population is all to blame.
-
That "Mark of the Beast" bit is a bit ridiculous when applied to this context, but it could prove useful.
Consider: although free speech is constantly under attack in the US, no one dares question freedom of religion (no one regarded as a sane person, at any rate). Therefore, you can always refuse to be added to the database "for religious reasons" and the government cannot stop you for fear of word getting out (hell, phrase it that way and this would be an issue that would likely have every activist group in America, from the Christian Coalition to the ACLU, from People for the American Way to the Citizens for the Ten Commandments, all agreeing for once; that'd be kinda cool).
If I remember correctly, this is even precedented on a couple of military bases, where "MARC cards" were becoming popular for matters of security clearance. The name has since been changed to "SMART cards" and they're not as pervasive as they might have been. Someone posted that on Slashdot once; I forget who.
In New Zealand the government said phoey at a Life Time Licence and brought in a digital driver licence mostly for the reasons of disqualified drivers using friends licences.
They're protecting us from them
Unfortunately the old licence had no photo (just name/address/DOB/eyecolour) so they had a perfect excuse for the photo (and thus the choice to record it in any media). Maurice is Minister of Transport and IT... we have a combined Police/Traffic force.
In my town i've seen the current police surveilance camera's, their resolution is scary. Some facial recognition and they could get all those bad guys.
9/9/99 and i'm moderating, huh.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
Your posts always have that choppy didactic quality.
Big words that seem like professional power tools that somehow have wandered into the posession of someone unsafe with anything more than a rather blunt screwdriver.
It's something I've noticed a lot with people who think they're underground, but it's just their head down there.
10 to 1 this was directed at me, but since nothing was qouted I can't be sure. My posts are choppy because I get phone calls in the middle of my paragraphs and have to run across a plant to fix things, by the time I get back I have to reform my thought processes and continue. If you want to judge people on the quality of their paragraph structure I'm afraid you won't find many people here that pass your test.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
There's a difference between the preview and the final submission, uh, why?
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
I think that we agree to a large extent, I just don't see that many so-called victimless crimes are really isolated in impact to the people involved. Perhaps that has to do with coming from a family full of very bright, very successful people with serious drinking problems. I would love it if it only umpacted them, but it didn't. The reason that society as a whole wasn't damaged by them is because they are all rich. The money will take care of you when no one else will. Joe Random Pothead is likely not going to have a huge trust fund. So sooner or later, unless we don't have a problem with JRP dying in his apartment of beri-beri, it will become society's problem and thus I get to pay for it. Believing that people can handle their own shit no matter how weird that shit gets normally suggests that you haven't seen too much weird shit. We are primates, not gods. Don't forget that. Just because we are the primates outside of the cage as opposed to the ones inside the cage doesn;t mean that we will respond differently to stimulus.
Hell, Illinois is even better. We've got a bar code and a dot code (like the tracking sticker on a UPS box). So I can't even degauss my liscense.
{shrug} I still think mandatory sentencing like that is a tad silly, 'tho, given that it drastically reduces, or even negates, the discretion of the judge...
Legislators usually aren't experienced judges, and they sure ain't being paid to be judges. All that for a few percentage points?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
John Hinckley, who tried to assasinate a president, is already out on the weekends. Katherine Soliah, who killed a mother, will be let of with jaywalking.
Are we nuts? Why do we believe this stuff? What's next, the pardon of Timothy McVeigh? Who believes this will combat terrorism. Who could be that stupid?
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You can get 25 years in jail for stealing pizza
The government has a back door into every windows machine
It's damn-near illegal to use software that the government can't crack
The us government spies on the world, and passes secrets on to us companies.
Am I missing anything?
(I should point out at this juncture that, MS-hatin' linux-usin' zealot that I am, I don't believe the NSAkey story).
If you've got a congressbeing, write to it now (irony: listening to Manic Street Preachers as I type. Like they say, if you tolerate this your children will be next).
WillWare writes:
"David Brin talked alot about issues of privacy and surveillance in his book "The Transparent Society". The impression I took away from the book was this: Due to technological advances in cameras, satellites, and so forth, privacy is probably not going to be maintainable over the next few decades."
Remember the furore Scott McNealy of Sun (Or was it Oracle's Larry Ellison?) caused a while ago, with a remark that went something like "Privacy? There is no privacy any more; get over it, already!"? It just struck me, wouldn't it be kind of ironic if he had been reading Brin, found his thoughts to be reasonable and agreed with (most of) them, and in whatever context the subject came up, he just gave a somewhat too compressed summary of them...
"But it has been the ability of the government to conduct its own business in secret which has allowed it to perpetrate all the abuses it has. Brin points out that if surveillance is uniform and bi-lateral, it can be used to enforce accountability upon the government."
Interesting thought, and I'd kind of like to be able to believe in it, but I can't help it -- it still feels kind'a creepy.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Seriously people, could cracking be justified in a case like this: A company without my consent makes copies of my photgraphs for a purpose I believe is illegitimate, and refuses to remove the copies at my request. Argh....
When will humanity stop trying to screw itself over in its endless quest of the almighty dollar?
So, realy, what *is* the problem with Joe Random Pothead dying in his apartement. The death of someone incapible of taking care of themselves, and with no friends or relitives willing to take care of them, is realy probably a Good Thing(tm), especially if this person is not/does not wish to contribute to society.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I live in New Hampshire and our new drivers licenses have a magnetic strip on the back that keeps track of all kinds of information. So when you get pulled over they can just swipe your card. But who is to stop them from keeping information other than Height Weight and criminal history. I'm not sure about the latest ones but the license I currently have has a digital image as well. I wouldn't be surprised to find that there is a list like this in NH or on a state level.
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
There is currently a bill before the U.S. Senate that will prevent states from receiving federal funds if they allow distribution of personal data from driver's licenses or any motor vehicle record without express written consent of the individual which would prevent this invasion of privacy. The bill is S. 1143 and the privacy section is Section 339.
For more info and to send your senator a free fax in support of the bill (assuming you are a US citizen) see http://www.aclu.org/action/drivers106.ht ml.
Are there no privacy laws in the U.S. ? I'm from the Netherlands and we have fairly strict laws on privacy. Organisations always have to inform the people involved that they are/will be registered. Organisations even have to show you what they've got on you if you request it. (This does not apply to all information, criminal investigation stuff for example is different)
When these laws came into effect all organisations had to inform you what info they had on you and for what purpose. This opened my eyes a bit. I never visited a church in my life and found out I had been registered there as a member all my life.
Could someone tell me how this works in the U.S. ?
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
beauty is only a light switch away
7) Illegal immigrants and terrorists segment of population most likely to get legitimate driver's licenses
6) Uncle Billy-Bob now more likely to stop bumming rides; learn to drive
5) Privacy concerns overstated due to overwhelming public appeal of having complete strangers gawk at your license photo
4) Police officers will continue to mistake your photo for your evil twin Volkar.
3) Criminals less likely to steal your particular identity if vast number is available in one place
2) Government less likely to raise taxes thanks to revenue gained by selling image database
1) Unflattering license photos show how people really look
We want endless gardens of data, where the bits can flower, flourish and reproduce. -- Andy Mueller-Maguhn
Student records are centralized, right from kindergarten. Grades are computerized, as are pharmaceutical records (if you're on Ritalin or Prozac, I can find out).
Gun purchase records are being centralized on a fairly regular basis, even though the ATF is explicitly forbidden to do this. Laws, we don't obey no steenkin laws.
If you're here, you're an open book. Everything, and I do mean everything, is already keyed to the Social Security Number. No going back now.
I have a signed statemet from the supervisor at my local DMV, from four years ago which states that their digital pactures "Are never copied or otherwise taken off site"! (I had feared this type of thing when I saw the electronic photo system)
Illegal immigrants and terrorists AGAIN? Can't they come up with something original??
"We're making a national database of driver's licenses to crack down on underage drinking!" Yeah, that's it!!
Unfortunately, that might actually get someone's attention. Most people aren't illegal immigrants or terrorists, but I'd say most of us had a beer or two hundred before reaching the magical 21st birthday. And unless DWI was involved, I somehow doubt most people would want to turn a 19-year-old trying to buy some alcohol into a federal criminal.
Is this the real reasoning behind the program? It might be a component. Who knows? It could be an easier way to track "subversive elements" (like I've posted on other threads, the FBI probably has a good-sized file on me, but it hasn't interfered with my life YET).
Or here's another interesting and somehow frightening thought: IIRC, strict followers of Islam do not believe in taking pictures of anyone or having any pictures taken of them. "You're not in our photo database, and you look Arabic
Anyone else got any to add to this?
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
All we need are neural nets to recognise facial features common among terrorists. If they did that, then a computer could profile you at the airport and tell the rent-an-idiot to search your shit. Also, the NN could be taught to recognise a face even after plastic surgury, just like an old friend could recognize you after you've grown a 2-foot beard and wear sunglasses 24/7.
yeah, i'm gonna piss on my license and call it a urine sample. that'll be funny when the cop picks it up and then smells his hand :).
If your going to let this government rule over you, tell you what do to, how to live, what you are allowed to do freely and what you aren't, send you to prison, and even kill you, certainly they should be entiteled to having photographs of you.
I believe we already have something like this here, and while I'm against the whole idea of authoritarian government, if you are going to have one, it might as well know what you look like.
Lifting the Crypto restictions is SO much more important to your future as free men than this is, but I guess these sorts of issues tend to get spotlight because it doesn't involve mathematics. Sigh.
-
It seems to me that it boils down to a question of use. Will people treat this database as a tool or as an authorative information source. The latter can be very harmfull to individual freedom.
"The future is already here,
it's just not evenly distributed yet"
"The future is already here,
it's just not evenly distributed yet"
- William Gibson
Down here where I live in Texas there are someplaces that make you put your thumb print on a check to cash it. And you have to give up a thumb print digitally to the Drivers License place to even get one. I saw a guy in front of me refuse and they refused to give him a license. National ID card is kinda what this sounds like just twisted differently
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
what if they store you DNA on the DataBase.. will they make clones of me??
that way, any subversive types can be "disappeared" and replaced with a retrained clone so's friends and relatives won't suspect.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I truly don't see a pressing need for this "technology." What exactly is the point? Yes, the ability to search a database is probably the most useful thing a computer can do (besides perhaps worprocessing/page layout) but what is the practical use here? Will a State Trooper have a(nother) computer in his (already crowded) vehicle that he will use to check the ID that I give him? Will store clerks tap into the database?
I just don't see the purpose. Perhaps this would allow me to lose the wallet...just remember my own personal Identification Number and let them figure out who I am. It's already possible for me to just memorize my VISA/phone/etc. numbers and use them without the card...
"I want peace on earth and good will toward men." "We're the U.S. government. We don't do that sort of thing!!"
what you guys didn't know is that the secret
...i can see it now:
...double plus ungood indeed brother.
service was actually working on the
world's largest personals and dating service ever!!
they were going to use your pictures and personal information to match
the whole country up with their prospective
soulmates. *hurt look* and you, rob malda and your damned
Electronic Privacy Information Center cohorts,
have ruined their birthday surprise!
a plaugue on both your houses!
453-28-7539! you will now procreate with 886-91-1027!
-adam
javanet.com/~user
Uhhh. Please don't clone him! Like we need MORE Anonymous Cowards ....
... oh WAIT, they already DO)
Funny you should say thing considering this article is (and I'd assume most of the threads will be) about privacy.
What do I really think about this whole scheme though? Personally I don't care ; I DO honestly think that if they wanted to, this would have already gone on and probably has.
There's little to no chance that we could stop or postpone something like this from happeneing even if we wanted to, and we have to look at what it really means
1> the government has information on us (oohhhh perish the thought
2> they'll know what we look like. God forbid we ever get contacts, glasses, facial hair, shave our head, grow our hair out, get a nose job, etc.
I just see no harm in it, and I don't see a way to stop it
Okay. Seems our "Land of the Free" is very quickly becoming the "Home of the Brave" *New World*.
/. affect on some country's immigration services would be pretty funny.)
Anyone wanna run over a list of countries with better privacy/crypto laws? I've heard Netherlands mentioned on this thread already...
We'll just have a Slashdot vote on the best country, and we can just pack up and leave for the number-one voted. (The real life
It's getting to the point where I don't want to be stuck in America when I am 30. *sigh*
This sig is false.
Well, since I spent several years in the Army, they have even more records of me. They have fingerprints, medical history, dental records, pictures, clothing measurements, shot records, family info, insurance info, pay info and they even do DNA sampling. Yikes.
:). And the State of Texas has already got the digital photo thingy for the drivers licenses. We also have the "mystery" magnetic strip on the back. Ooooh. Scary stuff. :)
Oh, and when you qouted my comment you picked off the
Once again, I'm with Scott on this one: Get over it. We really don't have anything more than token nominal privacy, so does it really matter how much we think we have lost? No.
Your life won't be any different.
-awc
If u buy a "Bahncard" from the german train company (Deutsche Bahn). They digitize ur photo.
Once you prolong the card u get a new one with the pic on it. A friend of a colleague called them to erase the pic and give her a card without one. They replied affirmative. Two months later the new card came with the pic on it. Nice huh? I personally have no problem with my picture being stored on a harddrive. But if anybody desires that this not be done, a company should not lie and then still fuck around with personal information.
There's something I don't get here. I know its a long standing conviction of Anglo-American civil libertarians that this kind of thing is Bad News. I am more or less in agreement with that, but thinking about it a bit more, what exactly is wrong with it ?
It seems to me that measures like this increase the ability of the government to enforce the law, regardless of what that law actually is. That makes the assertion that this will help to catch drug smugglers/terrorists/child molersters/people with green hair/tomorrow's public enemy number one, reallistic. It also, of course, means it can be used to implement arbitary and stupid laws, such as, for instance drug prohibition (just to pick a nice uncontroversial example).
However the problem is not the databases and so on themselves, but the laws they are being used to implement. If the US had the sort of utterly minimal libertarian code of laws that many people here probably favour, would measures like this still be a problem ?
I'm concerned about this, because I do believe that if we stop relatively (note thats relatively) well-behaved governments from doing their jobs effectively, we may well be increasing our chances of getting larger, more unwieldly, more tyranical and more expensive governments in their place.
Oh, and please don't reply with some stupid platitude and privacy and freedom. I know that's what is believed, I want to know why it is necessarily true.
There are already cameras which can use neural nets to do face recognition. Putting this together with a national database of pictures would mean the ability to track you, see who your associates are, etc.
Sadly, there are systems that can id people quite well. When these become cost effective, and hooked into the CCTV systems widespread across much of the UK now, such an image database would let the Government monitor your movements quite effectively.
. htm
See: http://www.dss.state.ct.us/digital/news11/bhsug11
and
http://www.tao.ca/wind/rre/0587.html
and also
http://www.spy.org.uk/n-mandrake.htm
spy.org.uk have lots of info on CCTV and privacy concerns.
-----
Earlier this year they implimented this in New Zealand. We all had a "lifetime license" without our photos on them. Now the WHOLE country MUST turn up during the month of their birthday and pay $30 for a new liscence with a digital photo and digitised signature. Both the photo and the signature are stored in a computer somewhere.
Sorry not logged in. Carrott, parkert@ihug.co.nz
according to this wired article...
Houvener, who says he has been a "victim of
identity fraud," says his national photo file
will be targeted at "identity criminals"
that he estimates cost businesses billions of
dollars a year.
looks like it's not illegal aliens after all?
Who cares if they have a db of everyones picture? They already have microchips in all newborns and people who get those "free vaccinations", a picture cant do crap, but microchip that can be tracked from a sattelite in space, can.
(it's true i tell you! the government is tracking us! i refuse to get any shots,ill die of some old beaten desease before i get a vaccination! hmph!)
Come to think of it, it doesn't hold any.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
If you as an american citizen value your freedom and privacy, contact your federal, state and local government representatives and let them know. Ask them to make it illegal to create national databases of biometric information. Make the federal government go to the states and beg for information. If the fed has to go to the state, that it a good thing, because you will have more control over your state politicians. Go to the Center for Democract and Technology and similar organizations and find out what you can do to stop the federal government's grab for power. Only YOU can change the tide of the governments attempt to control you, and YOU had better START NOW.
could be real only when buildings have a GUI interface to their sprinkler systems available online.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
hmm... would plastic surgeons be required to submit "patches"? :^}
They started digitizing thumbprints lately and the stupid woman at the DMV had the unmitigated gall to tell me that they have ALWAYS taken thumbprints for a Texas license (they never did before) and that the info that they were collecting wouldn't be divulged outside of the Texas government (yeah, riiight- why in the hell are you scanning them then?)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Actually thats only part true. They cant give
out which movie you rented. But they can say you
rented a movie from of genre "Y" where Y could
be "James Bond films made after 1990". Which
to marketing folks is probably just as usefull.
Ah data mining.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I predict fake ids for under 21 people will become more difficult to fake. When bars have access to this database, they can just swipe your cards magnetic strip and get an instant picture and birthdate on screen.
How much information can you reliably store on a magnetic strip on a card anyway? Is it possible to encode an entire picture (10-20k?)
-- Virtual Windows Project
No one seems to have mentioned what I think they'll use this for (sorry for repeating if this was already discussed). You know those police sketches they do according to witnesses' descriptions? Now they can query a facial database using these parameters, dig up a bunch of suspects, and haul in those who might have been in the area when the crime was committed. Maybe even a few who were far away, but the feds just don't like. This is pretty scary, because it may cause these law-enforcement officials do jump to conclusions, not looking for substantial other evidence that the citizen/legal resident did anything "wrong".
They would have been in the database. Ostensibly this is to prevent forged identifications by ident theft or by immmigrants or terrorists from OUTSIDE the country from getting a valid looking ID.
As for your statement- I think you're right, we ARE our own worst enemy. We're following the path of Animal Farm. And I DON'T like it.
Heavens! Now my terrorist days are over, thanks to might of the Mighty Secret Service and those meddlesome kids! Curses! Foiled again!
;)
("Please try to keep posts on topic". Yeah, if you ask nicely it might happen
Killing spammers is too good for them.
Not to be a conspiracy nut, but I no longer know what to believe about Oklahoma City. They LIED to us about Ruby Ridge and Waco. Why not this and everything else as well?
It's simply that the government does not care about them. It's somehow gotten the impression that it is above the law somehow.
Look, once again their cover story is almost legit. But the fact remains, someone will abuse this. It's simply the law of averages; when something is ripe for abuse, someone will eventually come along and do so. Look at Germany in the 1930's and 40's; severe depression, extremely low confidence in the government, and other such factors. Along comes some unknown artist named Adolf, and suddenly you have one of the most hideous examples of abuse of power in history: the Third Reich.
So it will be with this. The nature of the abuse will probably be much different from the Third Reich (I seriously doubt the Secret Service is going to kill people based on race, though when you consider the Japanese internment camps of WWII I suppose it's a possibility), but the effects will be every bit as real. It's only a matter of time. I doubt its creators will abuse it; most people actually do start this kind of hideous obscenity with good intentions (hell; even the pro-censorship people mean well for the most part, not realizing just how selfish/lazy/deluded/evil their reasons for wanting it really are). But someone will come along. Who? I don't know. The most likely candidate in today's admistration doesn't have enough time left in office to do it (seeing as the database isn't even finished).
I must say that I'm a little irked by thought of a national database, seeing that individual states lacked the self-control to keep just their hands on the pictures. If the idea is a database which is somehow publicly accessible (e.g. at a checkout in a store), anyone who masquerades as a company will be eligible to read from the database. Though it doesn't sound as if this version of the database is for public consumption, it is conceivable that rights to portions of the database could be sold to companies such as Image Data. When the motivation becomes an incoming check to public (or private) coffers, over the issue of privacy, I get a little scared.
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
x
/ \
I used to live in US and I honestly couldn't understand
why there was not FAR MORE terrorist activity than there is.
It's not as though the US has not made a few enemies over the
years. For instance the IRA may cause the British government
a few problems, but Irish catholics have received wonderful treatment
over the years compared to American Indians.
Then there are large sections of Muslims, various central american
countries, not to mention miscellaneous crackpots who don't
really have a legitimate excuse, but would just like to kill Americans
out of some misguided jealousy.
I came to the conclusion that there must be a massively higher
amount of surveillance going on than was generally acknowledged.
Since hearing about Echelon and various other NSA activities I think
this conclusion is correct.
Don't misunderstand - I'm not saying that all this surveillance is
a good thing, but don't write off terrorists as a threat just because
you don't often get bothered by them. There are plenty of
potential terrorists out there.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
This is actually no surprise. I was aware of it on a state level a couple of years ago. The scary bits are way beyond this (and, no I only guess at those, no hard data). Think about it, people have known for a long time that the FBI plants people at any potentially worrisome gatherings (e.g. protest rallies) and photographs everyone for the database. How do you think they're indexing those random photos? I think the face-recognition/matching tech has been public for what, 10 years?
On a side note, I find the fact that this directly follows the GPG 1.0 news on Slashdot to be very amusing....
We elect them. The people with large purses don't. Politicians go after the largest purses so they can buy adds to convince us to elect them. History has shown that we voters generally respond to political advertising like lemmings. That's the real problem with politics. Campaign finance reform isn't the solution. Creating an educated public that doesn't rely on negative TV ads to make their decisions is the only way out, IMHO.
The magstripes can't hold more than a couple of hundred bytes. It's got validation info and ID number in it. The rest is pulled from the state databases, I think. A wavelet encoded thumbprint MIGHT fit on there, but there'd be no room for anything else. By the way, Jonathan, did they make you digitize your right thumbprint when you got your last Texas license?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The US government is rather inefficient when it comes to computer databases. Commercial credit firms are more efficient and potentially harmful. State driver license records are considered the most comprehensive publically available databases. Several firms trying to make nationally available for insurance checks, car rentals, employment background, ID, and general credit. Parallel efforts for medical databases for litiguous patients, deadbeat patients, patients with serious diseases for life insurance, private doctors and so on.
I must take the liberty of warning potential readers of my comment, it's going to be a cliche reaction to a cliche occurance with cliche participants.
Being an Australian (yeah right Kangaroos. Let's move on.) I care nought that the Australian government has data on me. Why ? Due to the simple fact that they are incompentant. Our ASIO is the laughing stock of the spy world. Also we lack terrorists and unibomabers and psychos and serial killers (well not in abundence anyway, though i think Tasmania might have a Serial Killers guild). Even so the collection of data on an individual is one the most worrying things that has and will come out of the computer revolution.
The fundemental power that is provided by digital data storing is centralised & integrated relational databases. One of the computers greatest strength is to collate, sort, modify, control and generally keep track of huge amounts of data. Though the real danger comes when all these seperate databases are collected together and integrated. Then truly can your privacy be shot to bits. The tax department recieves daily updates from you insurance company and your work. You said you haden't worked for a month due to penis extension surgery. Wrong. They have it in their records.
Sure it could be argued that if your innocent then you have nothing to hide. But once this infrastructure geets put into place it could be used for massively distructive purposes by the wrong people. So what have the Israeli military hackers been doing lately ? And what platform are these systems on ? It seems the NSA have such a good relationship with Microsoft, maybe the NSA spies are playing Solataire as we speak...
There is no such thing as an innocent invasion of privacy.
The Texas DPS has required thumbprints for a drivers license for years. Before the days of digitizing them into a computer, they did it the old fashioned way with paper and ink. That's how they took mine when I first got my license. A neat trick they taught us in the Army is to cover your fingertips with a thin layer of Elmer's glue and let it dry to mask your fingerprints like invisible rubber gloves. Falsifying your thumbprint to a Texas law enforcement agency would certainly get you thrown into jail however.
I guess from a different point of view, maybe they are confused by what that statement means: Live free or die could also be understood as "Have the taxpayers pay all your bills and get your cable TV and medical coverage and food for free or die..."
Then again, isn't that what the government seems to be doing to the common citizen? Essentially locking us in a cage in return for the the false promise of "we'll make everything all better and there will never be no more ouchies for anybody again and we'll all be happy and no one would ever have to be sad or mad and we'll all be glad and you be so happy if you just submit to it and here take this pill and put this microchip in your skull"
Too many pussy whiny yuppies who do not think concepts through to completion and blindly, unconsciously equate government with the mommy and daddy they ran to crying when they were little because the other little kid "wasn't being fair". They forget the biggest difference in the equation: Mommy and Daddy Love You. The Government Hates You and wishes you would just be quiet.
(Hmmm... that would make a cool bumper sticker: Mommy and Daddy Love You... The Government Hates You" :)
Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that this is a New Hampshire company? The very same state whose motto is "Live free or die."
Also, how many people here have a Passport?
Just my $0.02. I too wish it was not true, but I am willing to except this in exchange for all the really good things about America.
The senators won't listen to you.
The representatives won't listen to you.
I know, we've went down that road- it didn't work.
They listen to the dollars of big business. To be sure, there are some that aren't "bought"- but looking back at all the legislation and things that our government has handed down to us, it's obvious who the government is by and for. And, it's NOT the people anymore.
It's time to send a message, alright. Time to vote each and every one of these SOBs out of office that is up for re-election- and NOT just vote for the loser from the other party, unless that's the only other option. Just flip-flopping things won't fix a damn thing.
It would much more efficient to just install tamper proof cranial bombs/transmitters into our heads at birth that sent our serial numbers to a large tracking satelite so that they can more easily keep track of terrorists and illegal aliens.
I don't believe it IS necessarily true.
Privacy is very subjective. Is it an invasion to have your picture taken and stored ? There are many equally valid views about this. (Someone mentioned orthodox Islamic people who certainly would have problems with such a law.) But where does our sense of ownership begin... do we own our image?
It often seems that this sort of belief of ownership does not crop up until the "evil, conniving, capitalistic" government is involved. How many of us complained about having our pictures taken, printed in a book and handed out to everyone in our school (yearbooks)... likely very few. Admittedly, we DID have a choice about this and we knew that it was being done, but is that the only difference ? Is the real issue that we feel our CHOICE has been taken away from us ?
I think that people are not so riled up about lack of privacy and freedom, since this is not really new... I think people are bothered because the knowledge about it was hidden.
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
There was some sort of voter registration database a year or two ago for voting in Jamaica. The American company TRW, which has moved slowly from military C3I into civilian C3I (they do the credit reports), was the contractor. In Kingston, riots broke out in opposition to this plan because it was rumored to be a plot by the Drug Enforcement Agency to acquire a photo database of all Jamaican nationals.
When you register with a government agency--even the DMV--you give up some privacy.
It's not like this will be terribly useful to the Feds, though. Judging whether someone is a terrorist based on their appearance, either in a photograph or in person, is quite fallacious--my brother, who is more harmless than a sedated Buddhist monk, looks like an Arab and could therefore be singled out. "Profiling" is also illegal, although that's never stopped the Secret Service.
Four years ago at a certain place they may not have, but they can change their mind. Particularly since it isnt the supervisor at your local DMV who decides these things. Not to mention the temptation of money to be had for selling your soul.
No, thats already required.
In IL and probably other states, refusal to submit to a brethalizer, urine, or blood test carries a mandatory six month suspension effective 45 days after the refusal.
In theory, we ought to have privacy rights in the U.S.A. The federal constitution is one of enumerated powers; and the right to pry into and compile the details of everyone's life isn't one of those powers. And the U. S. Supreme Court has held that privacy is a right of citizens (see here for a quick summary).
In practice, we have been suckers for any come-on which promises security, to be "tough on crime" or to protect us from those lurking terrorists. ("Why do you care if you have nothing to hide" is a common attitude.) So there's very little (practically, none) legislation to actually apply that right of privacy to government or private data collecting. The only place that the right to privacy has been actually applied vigorously is as it relates to sex, or to the ability to kill unborn children (the in/famous Roe vs. Wade case where the Court declared the ability to abort a child a fundamental American "privacy" right).
The manager will be overruled by the government and that signed note won't mean squat. If they don't value your privacy, they sure as hell won't honour that "promise".
> It seems to me that measures like this increase the ability of the government to enforce the law, regardless of what that law actually is.
> However the problem is not the databases and so on themselves, but the laws they are being used to
implement.
I'll try to give my opinion, expressed very badly I'm sure, of why I disagree. I believe you are right in saying that measures like this increase the ability of the government to enforce the law. And let's also assume that you can have a good or a bad government. So the four choices would be
1. A weak good government.
2. A strong good government.
3. A weak bad government.
4. A strong bad government.
It seems to me that the only totally unacceptable choice would be four. If you have a strong bad government you're pretty much screwed. At this point you can't really change anything and you're stuck. Once a government becomes strong, it is very difficult to make it weak again, governments do not like to give up power. So a lot of the effort in the US is directed toward keeping our government from getting too strong. This way if, at some point in the future, the people decide that the government has become unacceptable we can still do something about it.
Colorado and Florida sold their driver license photos to a private security firm that makes a terminal that brings up phots for credit card verification. Colorado broke its contract after the public complained, but about 50,000 photos were sent for testing already.
...that doesn't have a damned magnetic strip on it anymore. Currently, my driver's license and the picture of my daughters are about the only thing that don't.
It's getting to the point where you're afraid to walk near heavy machinery for fear of erasing your access to half the stuff you use on a daily basis.
Next thing you know, the Secret Service will want Detroit and anyone else that sells a car in the U.S. to make it necessary to swipe your driver's license in a reader before you car will start. You don't want those illegal aliens and terrorists driving around, you know.
Question: Since when did the Secret Service get interested in illegal aliens. Isn't that the concern of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (yah, Service, that's a good one; ``We're from the Government and we're here to help you.'' and all that).?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Only Illegal Imm/Terrorist? What about Drug Trafficers and Child Pornographers? I though they we included as "intended targets" for all BS-based US policies and legislation! /end attempted humorous rant ;-P
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Just wear a disguise next time you go to the DMV to get your picture taken ;-)
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
They are selling the pictures and information to _private_companies_. Telecheck is a private company which provides check verification and insurance to merchants. I'm sorry, but I have a problem with the government selling my information and my picture to some private business. (Much as I have a problem with them providing my mailing address to private parking companies...)
There is much more to this issue than just the government. This is about strengthening the stranglehold that big business has over the United States.
After years and years of electoral fraud -with thousands of ballot fillers with fake voting IDs- Mexican parties and federal authorities got a "secure" voting card, with digital photo and a lot of provisions that avoid tampering (like holos, barcode, mag tape and so). However electoral fraud just shifted anywhere else but with the ID.
Concerns are now that government even knows who did you voted for...
Do you really think that the "bad guys" really need a legitimate ID to perform their activities?
Is the real danger at home, with criminals and terrorists filling American streets?
Is US so full of terrorist/criminal wanabees that this kind of data (digital fingerprints, digital photos and the like) are really needed?
If that's the case I think that your problem is a LOT bigger and then you need some other solution, really soon.
Since you have lived so much time in a democracy you are growing "fat and slow" on what can happen if a tyran arrives. Then you'll appreciate your -already lost- privacy.
Please think pesimistic, otherwise your liberties are as unsinkable as the Titanic.
Hold on! This means that if you could hack the system, you could be set up with Jennifer Connelly. I think that I like Big Brother.
>what you guys didn't know is that the secret service was actually working on the world's largest personals and dating service ever!!
they were going to use your pictures and personal information to match the whole country up with their prospective soulmates.
Of course, now it all makes sense - Secret Service, Dating Service - they're scoping babes for President Hard-on
I was recently recruited by a company called ANSER. Don't know if you kids are familiar with this company, but they are a NFP corporation which broke away from RAND back in the late 50's. They are a government-sponsored contracting company.
What was I recruited for, you ask? Intelligent agent programming. I would have been working on a package that 1) searched all available publicly accessible systems for images. 2) determined whether or not that image contained a human face. 3) compared that face to a known database of faces (say, a drivers' license photo archive).
I found all that extremely cool, and would've signed on were it not for the BFE factor. Fairmont WV is not my idea of a good time. However, it does raise the definition issue of publicly accessible networks. This was, after all, being developed for Uncle Scam, and he's got a lot more access than us 'joes'.
Let the paranioa begin. This product IS BEING DEVELOPED. If there were other products that collected snapshots from ATM cameras, security footage, television streams, etc, this could be a great aid to our lsw enforcement communities. And of course, anything which is an aid to the fuzz can be abused by the police and other government organizations.
Personally, I choose to have a little faith in our system. It works. Not perfectly, but it works. I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I don't care if the cops come in and measure my dick size, provided that means I can sleep at night knowing no one's going to break in to my house and injure my wife or steal my stuffed animals. And the US can have whatever surveillance equiptment they can afford if it means I can wake up without the Iraqi military camped on my lawn.
Is this a problem? It has the potential to be a problem. I choose security over privacy. Yeah, I know that's not cool. It's not hip. But it's the truth. Let's give the people with the cameras and microphones a break. They're really working for US, no matter how much we'd like to believe otherwise.
Someone should REALLY take my soapbox away.
-- build a man a fire and he'll be warm all day. set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
We've had this in BC (Canada) for the last few years now.
It is just -amazing- how many of these things happen to come in contact with unusual magnetic fields. (read "not accidental").
If I get pulled over, the cop has to type my drivers licence number into his laptop. No swiping it for him. =)
Problem is that we elect officials that look the other way or outright allow the intellegence community to abuse our percieved rights. Though I'm not actually convinced that a national photo database in and of itself is a bad thing, if it were, I'd rather holler at my congressional reps rather than CIA, SS, NSA, FBI, etc...
It's their jobs to collect information. If congress/senate/president insist on bending over backwards to accomodate their requests, we should oust them from office. I'm actually quite comfortable with all those 3 letter agencies existances... I just wish that our elected officials would say no to them (at least once in a while
>They're doing this to counteract terrorists. Excuse me, but we just released the FALN from prison, they went on a spree of 150 bombings, killed cops and others, maimed dozens, and destroyed upwards of 250 million dollars worth of airplanes.
Yes, they did do it but they served time and agreed to renounce what they did to be released.
>John Hinckley, who tried to assasinate a president, is already out on the weekends.
Served time and his caretakers claimed there were improvements to his mental health.
>Katherine Soliah, who killed a mother, will be let of with jaywalking.
According to all her character witnesses, she's as harmless as a fly now.
>Are we nuts? Why do we believe this stuff? What's next, the pardon of Timothy McVeigh? Who believes this will combat terrorism. Who could be that stupid?
Apparently the gov't we chose to rule us. I can't be blamed since I just recently registered to vote. Have you?
Two things I'm curious about are what the bar code on the front is for, and what the mag stripe on the back is for..