We're uncomfortable because by and large the intentional changes tend to be a) more extreme than any single random change; b) patented meaning that companies like monsanto can then come along and sue anyone whose crops are 'contaminated' with by the crossover DNA; and worst c) The companies that make these as a rule do a terrible job of identifying the long-term consequences. A cursory glance at the history of human changes to the environment (e.g. introducing unkillable predators and then spending money to eradicate them, killing off birds, causing starvation due to a poor understanding of the tech) bears this out.
One key problem with many of the GE crops is that they are engineered not to breed naturally. As a marketing point this makes the company the sole source of new seeds. Practically speaking this sets up a problem if the engineered crop contamninates other crop sources preventing them from breeding. Unless seed is available we face the prospect of crop deaths and widespread starvation. For the company that might seem like a financial win but for the rest of the world it is hell.
To put it another way: A lot of changes are unsuccessful and potentially dangerous. Unintentional (read natural) changes cannot be stopped and indeed are often beneficial. Intentional changes are more likely to be dangerous and can be stopped so they should.
I don't agree with the notion that children are "becoming adults too fast". That is a claim that has been made every year that I can remember and was pinned on everything from teh interweb to TV, Rap, and even D&D. If we really want to talk about the rate at which kids mature we might keep in mind that for much of our recent history children were basically small farmhands and were expected to work full days in the fields as soon as they could stand. We forget that our own child labor laws make special exemptions for family farms. Such kids are also quite aware othings like where baby ducks come from, things that are supposedly too "adult" for most minds.
With respect to the sedentary nature of play I think that is an issue. In my experience an increaisng proportion of children are sitting more than before and aren't excercizing enough or exploring the outside world enough. Some of this I think can be chalked up to video games and movie entertainment. A lot of it can be ckaled up to increasing (sub)urbanization which puts families out in areas with a lot of houses and not much else, places where kids have nowhere to go until they can drive and are probably banned from going out after that. A lot of it also can be placed on parenting and culture. I've noticed an increasing number of parents and towns imposing greater restrictions on teens for fear of "gang violence" or "teh pot". One town I used to live in happily banned teens from being out after dark and even being in large numbers at any non-church event. When confronted with the fact that this left teens with nothing to do but sit at home the City Council said "good".
In my experience exploration especially physical activity is an essential part of ones mental development, and the maintentance of physical health is intimately tied with one's mental health. I feel that too many people ignore that and are apt to raise unhappy couch potatos.
In part I would agree with you. As much as the "free market" works in an ideal model I don't think the world oil economy matches that. There are a few actors (the big nations and the big multinationals) that are in a position to affect the price but these all have strong interdependencies which makes them unwilling or unable to really buck the system. Shy of a new massive oil-production field being discovered in a noninvolved state it seems unlikely that any truly competitive actors could emerge in the world oil market that are in a position to truly compete which is what must occur for the economic models to hold up.
I never claimed that Communism or Socialism had no such faults. Nor, if you look at my argument was I even claiming this for all of Capitalism. Capitalism as a principle falls down in many ways. That is why we don't have a "pure" capitalist society. The question is not the arbitrary ideal of capitalism any more than socialism or communism (neither of which have been run in pure form at a state level either). The question is where capitalism makes sense and where it does not. In this case, delivery of essential infrastructure, it does not.
No not without any reason. There are clearly defined reasons for which you cannot refuse someone service (e.g. the color of their skin). Moreover as I understand it, you cannot legally get away with refusing people ad-hoc. If nothing else it opens you up to very extensive lawsuits. Some retailers post signs on their doors claiming "we reserve the right to refuse service" but again that does not protect them if they refuse for capricious or apparently illegal reasons. In that event they would face any one of a number of problems.
This is especially true of national chains that cannot really be open to having different standards in each store. For that reason they often establish very homogenious and restrictive rules for their employees.
Your are correct in that providing fraudulent credentials would be reason to refuse but then again most stores don't require credentials (or have any legal basis for demanding them) when purchasing disposable cellphones.
While one might "be sure someone was using them for illegal goals" the assurance of one person is not proof, and unless you want to live in a society where being suspected of a crime is a crime (in which case I suspect you are a criminal so go turn yourself in) then it is better to require standards of legal proof and to force others to adhere to it. If not then we end up in a place where noone can do anything outside the norm without getting severely punished. Such situations are incompatible with sustainable human societies.
The benefits outwigh the costs only in some cases. To take your comments about process optimization and basic infrastructure you have to consider the costs of privatized infrastructure. Here in the U.S. private companies (varying from state to state) control more or less of the infrastructure. In California almost all of the power infrastructure is in private hands. Those hands recently determined that it was more cost-effective to shut down power stations rather than run them. This was effective because the resulting scarcity of power caused the price of all other killowat hours to go up.
The practical upshot of this was that companies such as Enron were able to stop spending money on some power plants and reap a much higher profit off of the others. For the consumers this meant that even as they faced surging utility bills (as much as 300% increases) they also were forced to deal with "rolling blackouts". The Government of California meanwhile felt its hands were tied and could do nothing to ensure that power was available to its citizens and thus that the essential infrastructure of the economy was running.
Incidentally all of this occurred just before a nasty recall election that booted the governor and brought the Gubernator into office, in part on the grounds that he would do better on the economy.
Just to forestall the obvious comments out the free market consider the cost of competition. If we are to presume that such excesses as I have described above will be checked by the action of the free market we face two problems.
Firstly the cost of getting into competition is extreme. Nuclear power plants don't grow on trees and neither do millions of miles of electrical lines. Infrastructural utilities are, in many ways, immune to competition because of the immense cost of investement and the infeasability of running multiple parallel infrastructure. Picture having multiple distinct road systems, power lines, sewers, or water systems. Picture the difficulty of switching from one system to another. Simple physical space and cost limitations make that infeasible.
Secondly, it was the free market that made that gouging possible. By having a free market on KwH pricing and opening up all aspects to competition and thus making the little intentional blackout scheme profitable.
To put it another way, do you want to pay the "market rate" for garbage removal? Or, What security do you have when your elected officials can't guarantee the flow of water?
At the same time those of you seeking personal changes might do the following:
Bike/walk more and drive less. (the fuel is cheaper) if you don't live in an easy bike to work then move, explore carpooling, take the bus, etc. You might also consider how often you drive outside of work. It isn't necessary to drive everywhere all the time. And it can't hurt health-wize either.
Turn off your lights.
If you aren't in the room you don't need them on. And just do it with a switch. Many of those motion sensors draw more power than you want for no good reason. When you enter the room, flip the switch, when you leave, flip it again. Simple yes?
Turn off your computers.
Seriously Unless the machine is actually doing something (and the screensaver doesn't count) then turn it off. I don't care what rumour you heard that powering off your pc at night is bad it isn't and it doesn't help to keep it running 24/7. Those of you who are stuck with bad admin policies (updates that run at 2am at the office) get it changed. Point out to your bosses that PCs can be made to shut down or power up automatically and that updates can be set for just before or after work meaning that the machines can in fact be off most of the night to save power, and money, and the earth.
The same goes for all electronics.
There is no reason to keep any electronic goods running (or even plugged in) unless they are in use. You will find that many things (e.g. the TV and DVD player) still use a nontrivial amount of power even when they are "off". Many systems that use remotes constantly draw power to wait for the remotes. You might put said systems on a power strip and then switch the strip off when you are out of the room. After all if you can't be troubled to come and turn them on mechanically then you need to work on laziness.
This is especially an issue for AC/DC converters. Most AC/DC converters (the small boxen that come with lamps, cellphones, palm pilots, etc. continue to draw full power even when nothing is attached. Even if the phone is not being charged the AC/DC converter is drawing power and then dissipating it as heat. Unplugging those (or just putting them on a power strip and turning it off) can save a large amount of money and environment over time.
At one point I managed to halve my electricity bill simply by aggressively attaching devices to power strips and unplugging unused AC adapters. It turns out that the TV/VCR/DVD-Player collectively used about the same amount of power when they were "off" as when they were on. Just a single power strip and some good habits saved me some serious money.
Use less disposable goods.
Those of you who get the daily latte, get a to-go cup. If you are spending $2.50 a day on caffene you can probably spend $10 once on a permanent cup. If you go to most places you will even get a discount for doing so.
Keep your car tuned.
Changing the oil and jkeeping the car tuned up also keeps the gas mileage up. Cars that are out of tune or filled with gunk tend to run rich and burn excess oil and gas throwing up more pollution than necessary and fouling the earth heavily.
Drive a clean vehicle.
I know that many of us don't have the luxury of purchasing a new prius, but some do. Those of you who have a hummer just break down and get an electric car for the daily drive. At 8am noone cares what kind of car you arrive in and if you have to have the truck to impress the girls do it in Friday night. Noone cares about a hummer on Wednesday morning anyway.
Never underestimate the power of a large number of small things. We keep looking for the magic single act. We forget that what got us here was not one act but many and what keeps us here is not outside forces but inside habits. Change the habits and you change the world. Even if your neighbor still drives his dumbass hummer your changed habits will still be good.
Once again people are reading the article and doing one of 3 things:
Making poor jokes.
Attempting to refute the article simply because they don't want to believe it.
Asking What can we do?
With respect to the first knock yourselves out. With respect to the second pull your heads from the magical oil sands.
But for the third here is what you can do: Contact your reps.
Those of you in the U.S. will find that election day is fast approaching. The Mid-term congressional elections as well as many state elections are next week!. Now is the time to call, write, and fax your elected reps. Quote this data to them and demand to know what they will do telling them, in plain form, that they will forefit your vote and your money if they do not make you happy.
Don't just focus on the federal politicians California recently showed how a state can aggressively (start) limiting greenhouse gasses. States also control the vast majority of funding for public transit and are in charge of monitoring many polluters. Local Govenrments can do more as well by tackling transit issues as well as local pollution control efforts.
Right now many of them are desperate and worried. Now, more than ever, they can in should be bombarded with calls and moved very clearly in the right direction.
I know that it's fun to sit on/. and argue with the loonies but real action on climate change happens offline. It happens through political muscle and monetary lobbying. No matter how high your/. Karma, the Senators don't care.
A genuine bride to nowhere (except as a piece of aburdist art) would be a waste of time. The question one has to ask though is what is "really" wasteful and what isn't. Unfortunately it is true that one man's pork is another man's livelyhood.
Take the railroads and then the interstate highway systems. Both required plenty of roads and bridges to "nowhere" At the time the railroads were made and the highways many of the places that are now booming in the east and west were small or even nonexistent. Talk about bridges to nowhere.
The catch is that in the game of politics it often devolves to what souds good on TV. "Bridge to Nowhere" has a nice ring. That doesn't mean it is in fact going nowhere. I question the need for that particular bridge but I am leery of declaring that it has no purpose at all.
I am very opposed to poster like the parent who seem to have a really shallow view of the whole thing. That just devolves to the "If I don't see a direct benefit then it's waste" philosophy. That short sighted pholosophy leads to problems not solutions and a government that does not invest in anything long-term because someone always calls it pork.
Few people saw a direct benefit of landing on the moon but as a society (possibly a species) we have. Similarly people without kids don't often see a direct benefit from public education but by having an educated society we can have a viable democracy (or at least try).
While some may claim Alaska has no taxes that isn't the case. It has less taxes than say Massachuisetees but it also has a higher cost of living and lower income than other states.
With respect to the money being "given away" it isn't quite that simple either. The Alaska Permanent Fund takes in state taxes from oil production (Alaska, unlike Louisiana can and does tax oil production). That money is rolled into a large bank account and some but not all of the interest of that money is spent both on state government and on giving back to the population. By this mechanism the state translates consumable wealth (Oil) into long-term capital (investments).
While it may be easy to whine about Pork in Alaska lets consider the alternative, no government spending anywhere that is "local". By this definition no money would be spent on Universities because that benefits only the local university. Similarly no money would be spent on NASA because why should Florida Colorado and Texas have all the fun? The trans-Alaska oil pipeline which supplies most of the U.S.'s domestic crude, gone becuase it is only in Alaska. The same goes for all military bases (tax benefits to local states) and federal grants to public schools (why give a damn about kids in other towns?)
Any Federal project could be criticized as spending money in one place and not others. While Ted Stevens is a master of Pork he is hardly the worst player, only the most prominent one now. Brining home the bacon is what most politicians do and how they get elected. So before you turn to blame Alaska for your problems I'd ask just how much you like the federally funded roads you drive down and the DHS security being provided for your ballgames.
Federal tax dollars are used as pork because the day to day things aren't what most voters notice. What they notice, and what makes them like a given politician, are the big named projects that appear with his fingerprints on them.
even though Liberals do their own part to misrepresent science, the overwhelming lions share of open distortion percieved by the overwhelming majority of scientists has been unfortunately solidly Republican
Ah, but that doesn't matter in today's politics. All you have to do is find a single instance of someone from the other side doing something similar to what you're doing, and that makes it magically okay for you to continue doing it.
The parent poster wasn't endorsing the misuse of science nor did he make any apparent attempt to justify how "liberals" misrepresent science versus "Republicans". I see no point where he/she claimed it was magically ok to do it.
On another note I do love how "Liberals" are paired off with "Republicans". One is a vague label applied with little or no logic often to people as diverse as John McCain and Ralph Nader. The other is a defined political party with registered operatives and stated campaign goals. Attacking the former is the same as blaming the fo, or the Islamofacists and just as fun because you can pin anything on them and you never have to find an actual human target. The other has specific individuals and catalogued actions that can be addressed.
There are no ethics anymore. Instead of people striving to be ethical, they just strive to find other people being unethical so they can excuse their own unethical behavior.
Depends upon who you are talking to and about. For many people I think ethics is a locally defined thing. Actions such as these are unethical but much more abstract. The polluter who will dump mercury into the wellwater based upon a spreadsheet probably wouldn't just feed it to a child directly. That's what spreadsheets are for, to make the unethical justifiable. In some ways I think that's what this is. Political appointees are seeking to a) cut money from a hated program; and b) reduce the effectiveness of "burdensome" government regulations.
Unfortunately many people believe that the EPA is bad and that government enforcement "hurts" business. Those people should look at what's going on in Alaska right now. After years of pushing for drilling in ANWAR the Oil Companies (BP primarily) have been arguing that they could do it safely and without a lot of "pencil pushers" going around looking over their shoulders.
Now the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline is running at less than half capacity. Why, it turns out that BP in its infinite wisdom hadn't been doing ANY maintenance on its feeder lines. Some of them were so badly corroded that they were leaking oil onto the Turnda. This despite 20 years of warnings not backed up by enforcement. Now they've found other problems and what was initial "one small leak" may mean millions of dollars in cleanup.
This is what happens when enforcement is cut. Now BP is losing lots of money on it but their spreadsheets told them it would be okay. Now that's fuzzy ehtics.
(sadly few people connect the EPA to clean air and clean water thanks to effective business lobbying.
(one is a vague title applied to people as diverse as Al Gore and John McCain depending upon the day and the other is an established
The problem with this is the question of a clear line. What exactly makes an image violent? The linked article mentions strangulation, what about BDSM? Do we distinguish between "heavy BDSM" and "light BDSM"? What are the defining characteristics? Is spanking allowed or disallowed? Or do we distinguish between "violent spanking" and "play spanking"?
While this may sound silly this law makes it necessary for those questions to be answered. Over time court cases will come up and, lacking any standards, the police will choose between punishing noone unless they commit some other "real" crime (like murder), or punishing anyone whom they don't like. The latter seems a more likely route. This also then raises the issue of costs. Will this bill be enforced or will it fall by the wayside? If it is enforced how will much money will be spent on that?
This is why one needs to be careful when making law, even though few politicians are. Such laws don't solve anything, they typically raise more questions then they answer and pass the actual problems off to others. It's not that I don't believe that people shpuld be protected from such preadators. They should. I'm just skeptical of this law's ability to do so on the face of it.
Something like this should be an issue and it is your U.S. Senators and Representatives that are the natural targets. Contact your House Rep and your U.S. Senator and tell them:
This is an unwarranted attack on science by a reckless administration.
You oppose any attempts to censor science and the enforcement of environmental laws, laws that keep our air safe to breath and our water safe to drink.
Any elected official who doesn't come out against this will not get your vote or your money
If you say that forcefully, clearly, concisely, and with emphasis on the vote and on the money they'll listen. They have to. Once you then back up your threats they and he will be punished.
The power of any executive in great measure is an at-will excercize. Bush is getting away with things in large part because many members of Congress are rendering their own institution impotent by shilling for him. They are doing so because they believe that being his friend makes them our friends. Punish them, fire them, smack them hard, and he will lose power. If he is faced with a Congress so scared for their own jobs that they'll make his a living hell and you'll see a lot of this stuff stuff he things is free become very very costly.
Party means nothing. Don't vote for his backers because you're a Republican or a Democrat and better them than the other guy. Now is the time to throw out anyone who has backed him and show them that if they won't do their jobs we'll damn well get someone else who will.
Leaving aside the Sarcasm, that's exactly what we want. Other states including New Mexico and Washington have gone this route as have many counties. In all cases its because of the demonstrated problems with voting systems. In New Mexico's 2004 election we have a perfect test case. In that year the state employed eight different systems scattered more or less randomly thuought the state. Four of these systems were optical scanners and four were paperless touchscreen or push-button DREs (Direct Recording Electronic systems). In the 2004 Presidential race it was found that votes were missing largely from minority voters. Worse yet the missing votes were in up-ticket races, noteably the U.S. Presidential Race. Typically votes are missing for down-ticket races like local judges. Interestingly enough these patternes appeared on all the paperless systems not just systems made by one company or another. Lost votes were not a problem in precincts using the optical scanners. The excess (overcounted) votes were removed because they had the paper backup.
At the risk of nagging people, this info doesn't belong just on/. It belongs in letters to our state and local elections boards (whoever actually sets the law). It belongs in local newspapers via op-eds. Other people are concerned but most of then simply know nothing about these problems. Changing opinions on this issue won't really happen here, but elsewhere.
If "war" can be used as a justification for additional powers make no mistake: they will be permenant.
Agreed, many of the powers he is currently seeking are in fact hyperextensions of powers that date to the Cold War and the War on Drugs. The latter has been a 30 year holding action. The former, people justified the loss of rights because of the awful soviets. They are gone but the secret search orders and the large spying beureucracy remain even as both struggle to find new justifications for themselves.
Does anyone else remember back in the day when the United States was a government of the people, by the people and for the people? None of these recent NSA actions sound "for" the people. More like "against" with what should be serious legal repercussions. What the hell ever happened to a weak federal government with strong local governments? That was the basic idea for our government I thought. Instead we have some backwards beltway insiders pushing everyone around while my local county and city governments try to figure out what the hell "PC Load Letter" means.
Ironically these people are members of the party that claims to champion a limited federal government that operates for not against the people. They campaigned on the very idea of shrinking government and reducing its invasiveness. They have reduced education and social spending (mostly through crippling unfunded mandates). They have left the science budget the same but selectively trimmed spending on some subjects e.g. Global Warming. But when it comes to spying on Americans and invading others no amount is too high and no law apparently can stand.
Not even Richard Nixon went around claiming that he was just "above the law because he says so" but apparently these people think that it is a valid legal principle.
This isn't flamebait, I'm being serious, the only other times that I can think of where anyone claimed such a thing (rule of law but my word is above all law) was the old Russian Tsars after Katherine the Great, and Adolf Hitler who had the "Furher's Princip". Again this isn't flamebait it is frightening.
Even if that progressive update is the case, it does not guarantee the security. Unless a method is available to verify the current state against "what it should be" then the chip itself provides no security. And if the hashes can be modified then any given system can backcheck to see that it was loaded "properly" provided it can accurately compare the hashed results, but it cannot do a forward look to ensure that it will be loading the correct software.
If the BIOS hashes the boot loader and stores it, assuming the BIOS is operating properly then that does not necessarily provide security. If the TPM chip is as passive as you say then all it can do is answer the following question: "What is the last hash you were fed?" It can answer this using a signed key to show that it isn't lying. However that alone isn't security. Some measure must be made to compare the hashes to a "gold standard" in order to verify that they are correct.
Given a BIOS B, B can be coded to hash the boot loader before using it. However, unless B "knows" what the correct hash is, it is only handing over control to "some program". If the chip operates as you say, and the chip has no knowledge of what the hash "should be" then control is surrendered at that point. B hands off to a boot loader and the boot loader does whatever it wants. If the only measure of correctness is "the last hash read" then B cannot be certain that what it is about to run is correct. This also holds true for boot loaders handing off to OS's etc.
Either B would have to be hard-coded with knowledge of what the "correct" boot loader hash would be, or the chip would. In either case the hash would have to be non-writable and, itself hashed or the system breaks down. If I can access in any way the storage point for the "verified" hashes then they can be replaced with falsified ones. However if the hashes are hard-coded then I can never upgrade or alter the software (without obtaining a new chip) because the hashes would change.
The only way that the system could work is if a) there exists a mutable storage system for "gold standard" hashes, b) the chip is capable of comparing a signed hash to a gold standard hash in a secure way, c) the algorithm used to do so is always secure and cannot be broken, and c) all of the software run on the system is "completely secure" and no bugs or deliberate attacks allow for the hash system to be fooled. If at any point any of these are violated then an attack is possible. False hashes can be planted for the future and the system is violated.
Keep in mind that hashes are many to one functions. MD5 has been cracked. Others can be as well.
This bill was "fast-tracked" by the Republicans in congress. It did not go through the standard committee process or the full floor discussion. It came directly for a vote in less time than most bills. As such the usual procedures for airing problems did not occur.
The bill is now sitting in the Senate under the auspices of Ted Stevens' Committee on Science and Transportation. It is up to Tube Boy there to decide whether it will come to the committee or to the floor.
Lastly, the Senate, unlike the House allows for a Hold to be placed on the bill. Holds may be placed by any Senator (sometimes anonymously) and will block a bill from moving forward until some issues are addressed. As such the Senate is not vulnerable to the same fast-tracking as occured in the House.
Those of you in the U.S. contact your reps especially if they voted for it. Simply explain a) why the bill is bad (see below), and b) why you won't be voting for the rep because of it. If they didn't vote for it, call and congratulate them, tell them such sensible actions makes you more likely to vote for them and donate money to them. This reduces the likelyhood that they will behave differently in the future. You should also contact your Senator and tell them that you don't want them to support it either. There is no need to scream, just be clear, concise and firm. Asserting that you will not vote for them or donate money to their campaigns ever again is the most important part. Anything else (e.g. screaming) gets nowhere.
Incidentally the text of the bill is at the Library of Congress. It defines a "Social Networking Site" as follows:
(J) COMMERCIAL SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITES; CHAT ROOMS- Within 120 days after the date of enactment of the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006, the Commission shall by rule define the terms `social networking website' and `chat room' for purposes of this subsection. In determining the definition of a social networking website, the Commission shall take into consideration the extent to which a website--
`(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
`(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
`(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
`(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
`(v) enables communication among users.'.
I would note that clause (i) appears to exempt political websites from this as well as school sites while clauses (iv) and (v) are entirely undefined indicating that they have neither been thought through nor are expected to be any time soon. Is a handle personal? If I use my real name is that "highly-personalized". What about if I lie?
These same issues hold true with respect to the "technology protection measure" requirement in 3.a (see text). Strictly speaking turning the computer off entirely is a technology protection measure as is a printed sign saying "Don't do bad things" or an overpriced filtering service that can be easily circumvented.
The law is bad because it leaves many aspects undefined while at the same time further restricting online activities for both children and adults. One of the known problems with COPA is that many adults cannot get things turned on. More importantly it places blame in the wrong places, and places effort there as well. It attacks the social networking sites on the assumption that a) they are entirely to blame and b) poor "technology protection measures" will prevent bad things from happening. Sexual predators exist in the real world and molest kids in the real world. If we spent more time and effort educating parents accurately (which I note this bill encourages but does not pay for) about the dangers their kids face and how best to protect them this might work out. As it is this bill is (at best) a band aid that teaches kids and parents to fear the online world not learn to protect themselves in it. It also places one further burden of censoring information on understaffed underfunded public libearies who, as a rule, exist to share information not hide it.
This is essentially an election year problem. This bill is being voted for becuase the reps think that it is free. By voting for this they can claim to have "struck a blow against online predators" even though this blow is all hot air. In my experience such things get done because the politicians think that it will a) make the
Not nearly the same. Simply screaming "think of the children" rarely works out as well in a courtroom as it does on TV. Yes the jury can be swayed against people but any DA that isn't just going for public points is going to want something more to stand on than that. And any judge worth his salt shouldn't allow the kind of "Think of the children" screaming to occur in his/her courtroom.
Consider the national "No Fly" lists. According to public reports numerous federal agencies from the FBI, DHS, DEA, and the Air Marshalls can all place someone on the "No Fly" list reporting them as dangerous. However, there exists no mechanism to remove anyone from the list or, in many cases, to even check who put them there and why. For a while Senator Ted Kennedy was on the list and, to my knowledge, they still do not know how he got on there or who put him there. It is only because he is a senator that they got him off.
Anyone who includes misleading "words" or "images" intended to confuse a minor into viewing a possibly harmful Web site could be imprisoned for up to 20 years and fined, the bill says.
From the bill iself (pp 157):
SEC. 703. DECEPTION BY EMBEDDED WORDS OR IMAGES. (a) IN GENERAL.--Chapter 110 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after section 2252B the following: '' 2252C. Misleading words or digital images on the Internet ''(a) IN GENERAL.--Whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a person into viewing material constituting obscenity shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 10 years. ''(b) MINORS.--Whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material harmful to minors on the Internet shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 20 years.
"Intended" is the key word here. If I put up a website with people in Barney costumes having sex, the jury would have to prove that I did so in order to lure children there and not to satisfy my own tastes. Proving intention is a legal minefield and is so difficult to cross that it only seems to occur when the jury and judge are already biased against the defendant unfairly (see the Lisl Auman case). Or in cases where the crime is so much of a showpiece that the charge is thrown in.
I predict that (this aspect of the law) will only show up in showpiece cases where some DA who is seeking higher office is attacking some guy in a Pikachu suit to show his "moral fiber" or in civil suits where someone who should have been parenting not watching TV wants a cut.
In either case such a weak joke of a law will do exactly nothing to protect children.
While the police can do a lookup they are not, currently in posession of total tracking information. The issue is not that the licence plate is there it is whether you want the police, jelous lovers, or worse yet, hellfire and damnation crusaders to be nosing about your activities, and be amassing this kind of data.
Think about it from an investigation standpoint. If you take your car out for a drive along some highway and some "incident" happens in the same area. If the police then go back and troll for this info and find you. People in this country have been executed for crimes where the only "evidence" was their proximity to an event. The temptation of this tool to "clear up" or find suspects for hit crimes could lead to far too many weak cases being brought in. You may also find yourself being hauled in for one then and then threatened with others (e.g. old parking tickets) stranger and more nefarious things have happened.
Additionally consider the abuse route. While the data may be collected "to catch stolen cars" or "stop underage drinking" (filming all the cars that go to a bar or strip club) once it is collected it exists. It can be used for anything. In the past would be moral crusaders have abused police records or even supposedly private records (like video store rentals) to harrass and stigmatize people for behaviors they do not like. Do you really want everyone to know where your car has driven or to have that information accessible when they want to embarass you.
Once this data is there it will be supoenad for divroce cases, tax, cases, or just checked by those who see their role as enforcing "higher" laws.
And then there are the errors. In any data-intensive process like this errors can and will creep in. A misread plate here, a faked one there, and pretty soon the data cannot be relied upon, or should not. Yet, people will treat it as gold, they do that with ChoicePoint's data even though it is full of holes. And pretty soon you or another peson may find yourselves on some "watch list" for visiting a site that you never went to, or for being in two places at once.
In a world where people are finding themselves on "no fly" terrorist watch lists for having names that sound kind of like others' or for reasons that cannot be explained, this is dangerous. Unlike Ted Kennedy not everyone is a senator with the power to have their name cleared. Not everyone can even find out who put them on the list.
The surest way, the only way, to ensure that this data isn't abused is to ensure that it is never collected in the first place.
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We're uncomfortable because by and large the intentional changes tend to be a) more extreme than any single random change; b) patented meaning that companies like monsanto can then come along and sue anyone whose crops are 'contaminated' with by the crossover DNA; and worst c) The companies that make these as a rule do a terrible job of identifying the long-term consequences. A cursory glance at the history of human changes to the environment (e.g. introducing unkillable predators and then spending money to eradicate them, killing off birds, causing starvation due to a poor understanding of the tech) bears this out.
One key problem with many of the GE crops is that they are engineered not to breed naturally. As a marketing point this makes the company the sole source of new seeds. Practically speaking this sets up a problem if the engineered crop contamninates other crop sources preventing them from breeding. Unless seed is available we face the prospect of crop deaths and widespread starvation. For the company that might seem like a financial win but for the rest of the world it is hell.
To put it another way: A lot of changes are unsuccessful and potentially dangerous. Unintentional (read natural) changes cannot be stopped and indeed are often beneficial. Intentional changes are more likely to be dangerous and can be stopped so they should.
I don't agree with the notion that children are "becoming adults too fast". That is a claim that has been made every year that I can remember and was pinned on everything from teh interweb to TV, Rap, and even D&D. If we really want to talk about the rate at which kids mature we might keep in mind that for much of our recent history children were basically small farmhands and were expected to work full days in the fields as soon as they could stand. We forget that our own child labor laws make special exemptions for family farms. Such kids are also quite aware othings like where baby ducks come from, things that are supposedly too "adult" for most minds.
With respect to the sedentary nature of play I think that is an issue. In my experience an increaisng proportion of children are sitting more than before and aren't excercizing enough or exploring the outside world enough. Some of this I think can be chalked up to video games and movie entertainment. A lot of it can be ckaled up to increasing (sub)urbanization which puts families out in areas with a lot of houses and not much else, places where kids have nowhere to go until they can drive and are probably banned from going out after that. A lot of it also can be placed on parenting and culture. I've noticed an increasing number of parents and towns imposing greater restrictions on teens for fear of "gang violence" or "teh pot". One town I used to live in happily banned teens from being out after dark and even being in large numbers at any non-church event. When confronted with the fact that this left teens with nothing to do but sit at home the City Council said "good".
In my experience exploration especially physical activity is an essential part of ones mental development, and the maintentance of physical health is intimately tied with one's mental health. I feel that too many people ignore that and are apt to raise unhappy couch potatos.
In part I would agree with you. As much as the "free market" works in an ideal model I don't think the world oil economy matches that. There are a few actors (the big nations and the big multinationals) that are in a position to affect the price but these all have strong interdependencies which makes them unwilling or unable to really buck the system. Shy of a new massive oil-production field being discovered in a noninvolved state it seems unlikely that any truly competitive actors could emerge in the world oil market that are in a position to truly compete which is what must occur for the economic models to hold up.
I never claimed that Communism or Socialism had no such faults. Nor, if you look at my argument was I even claiming this for all of Capitalism. Capitalism as a principle falls down in many ways. That is why we don't have a "pure" capitalist society. The question is not the arbitrary ideal of capitalism any more than socialism or communism (neither of which have been run in pure form at a state level either). The question is where capitalism makes sense and where it does not. In this case, delivery of essential infrastructure, it does not.
No not without any reason. There are clearly defined reasons for which you cannot refuse someone service (e.g. the color of their skin). Moreover as I understand it, you cannot legally get away with refusing people ad-hoc. If nothing else it opens you up to very extensive lawsuits. Some retailers post signs on their doors claiming "we reserve the right to refuse service" but again that does not protect them if they refuse for capricious or apparently illegal reasons. In that event they would face any one of a number of problems.
This is especially true of national chains that cannot really be open to having different standards in each store. For that reason they often establish very homogenious and restrictive rules for their employees.
Your are correct in that providing fraudulent credentials would be reason to refuse but then again most stores don't require credentials (or have any legal basis for demanding them) when purchasing disposable cellphones.
While one might "be sure someone was using them for illegal goals" the assurance of one person is not proof, and unless you want to live in a society where being suspected of a crime is a crime (in which case I suspect you are a criminal so go turn yourself in) then it is better to require standards of legal proof and to force others to adhere to it. If not then we end up in a place where noone can do anything outside the norm without getting severely punished. Such situations are incompatible with sustainable human societies.
The benefits outwigh the costs only in some cases. To take your comments about process optimization and basic infrastructure you have to consider the costs of privatized infrastructure. Here in the U.S. private companies (varying from state to state) control more or less of the infrastructure. In California almost all of the power infrastructure is in private hands. Those hands recently determined that it was more cost-effective to shut down power stations rather than run them. This was effective because the resulting scarcity of power caused the price of all other killowat hours to go up.
The practical upshot of this was that companies such as Enron were able to stop spending money on some power plants and reap a much higher profit off of the others. For the consumers this meant that even as they faced surging utility bills (as much as 300% increases) they also were forced to deal with "rolling blackouts". The Government of California meanwhile felt its hands were tied and could do nothing to ensure that power was available to its citizens and thus that the essential infrastructure of the economy was running.
Incidentally all of this occurred just before a nasty recall election that booted the governor and brought the Gubernator into office, in part on the grounds that he would do better on the economy.
Just to forestall the obvious comments out the free market consider the cost of competition. If we are to presume that such excesses as I have described above will be checked by the action of the free market we face two problems.
Firstly the cost of getting into competition is extreme. Nuclear power plants don't grow on trees and neither do millions of miles of electrical lines. Infrastructural utilities are, in many ways, immune to competition because of the immense cost of investement and the infeasability of running multiple parallel infrastructure. Picture having multiple distinct road systems, power lines, sewers, or water systems. Picture the difficulty of switching from one system to another. Simple physical space and cost limitations make that infeasible.
Secondly, it was the free market that made that gouging possible. By having a free market on KwH pricing and opening up all aspects to competition and thus making the little intentional blackout scheme profitable.
To put it another way, do you want to pay the "market rate" for garbage removal?
Or, What security do you have when your elected officials can't guarantee the flow of water?
If you aren't in the room you don't need them on. And just do it with a switch. Many of those motion sensors draw more power than you want for no good reason. When you enter the room, flip the switch, when you leave, flip it again. Simple yes?
Seriously Unless the machine is actually doing something (and the screensaver doesn't count) then turn it off. I don't care what rumour you heard that powering off your pc at night is bad it isn't and it doesn't help to keep it running 24/7. Those of you who are stuck with bad admin policies (updates that run at 2am at the office) get it changed. Point out to your bosses that PCs can be made to shut down or power up automatically and that updates can be set for just before or after work meaning that the machines can in fact be off most of the night to save power, and money, and the earth.
There is no reason to keep any electronic goods running (or even plugged in) unless they are in use. You will find that many things (e.g. the TV and DVD player) still use a nontrivial amount of power even when they are "off". Many systems that use remotes constantly draw power to wait for the remotes. You might put said systems on a power strip and then switch the strip off when you are out of the room. After all if you can't be troubled to come and turn them on mechanically then you need to work on laziness.
This is especially an issue for AC/DC converters. Most AC/DC converters (the small boxen that come with lamps, cellphones, palm pilots, etc. continue to draw full power even when nothing is attached. Even if the phone is not being charged the AC/DC converter is drawing power and then dissipating it as heat. Unplugging those (or just putting them on a power strip and turning it off) can save a large amount of money and environment over time.
At one point I managed to halve my electricity bill simply by aggressively attaching devices to power strips and unplugging unused AC adapters. It turns out that the TV/VCR/DVD-Player collectively used about the same amount of power when they were "off" as when they were on. Just a single power strip and some good habits saved me some serious money.
Those of you who get the daily latte, get a to-go cup. If you are spending $2.50 a day on caffene you can probably spend $10 once on a permanent cup. If you go to most places you will even get a discount for doing so.
Changing the oil and jkeeping the car tuned up also keeps the gas mileage up. Cars that are out of tune or filled with gunk tend to run rich and burn excess oil and gas throwing up more pollution than necessary and fouling the earth heavily.
I know that many of us don't have the luxury of purchasing a new prius, but some do. Those of you who have a hummer just break down and get an electric car for the daily drive. At 8am noone cares what kind of car you arrive in and if you have to have the truck to impress the girls do it in Friday night. Noone cares about a hummer on Wednesday morning anyway.
Never underestimate the power of a large number of small things. We keep looking for the magic single act. We forget that what got us here was not one act but many and what keeps us here is not outside forces but inside habits. Change the habits and you change the world. Even if your neighbor still drives his dumbass hummer your changed habits will still be good.
With respect to the first knock yourselves out. With respect to the second pull your heads from the magical oil sands.
But for the third here is what you can do: Contact your reps.
Those of you in the U.S. will find that election day is fast approaching. The Mid-term congressional elections as well as many state elections are next week!. Now is the time to call, write, and fax your elected reps. Quote this data to them and demand to know what they will do telling them, in plain form, that they will forefit your vote and your money if they do not make you happy.
Don't just focus on the federal politicians California recently showed how a state can aggressively (start) limiting greenhouse gasses. States also control the vast majority of funding for public transit and are in charge of monitoring many polluters. Local Govenrments can do more as well by tackling transit issues as well as local pollution control efforts.
Right now many of them are desperate and worried. Now, more than ever, they can in should be bombarded with calls and moved very clearly in the right direction.
I know that it's fun to sit on
Those of you in other countries do the same thing neither whining nor lunatic dreams of carbonless oil will get us there.
Karma is not action.
A genuine bride to nowhere (except as a piece of aburdist art) would be a waste of time. The question one has to ask though is what is "really" wasteful and what isn't. Unfortunately it is true that one man's pork is another man's livelyhood.
Take the railroads and then the interstate highway systems. Both required plenty of roads and bridges to "nowhere" At the time the railroads were made and the highways many of the places that are now booming in the east and west were small or even nonexistent. Talk about bridges to nowhere.
The catch is that in the game of politics it often devolves to what souds good on TV. "Bridge to Nowhere" has a nice ring. That doesn't mean it is in fact going nowhere. I question the need for that particular bridge but I am leery of declaring that it has no purpose at all.
I am very opposed to poster like the parent who seem to have a really shallow view of the whole thing. That just devolves to the "If I don't see a direct benefit then it's waste" philosophy. That short sighted pholosophy leads to problems not solutions and a government that does not invest in anything long-term because someone always calls it pork.
Few people saw a direct benefit of landing on the moon but as a society (possibly a species) we have. Similarly people without kids don't often see a direct benefit from public education but by having an educated society we can have a viable democracy (or at least try).
While some may claim Alaska has no taxes that isn't the case. It has less taxes than say Massachuisetees but it also has a higher cost of living and lower income than other states.
With respect to the money being "given away" it isn't quite that simple either. The Alaska Permanent Fund takes in state taxes from oil production (Alaska, unlike Louisiana can and does tax oil production). That money is rolled into a large bank account and some but not all of the interest of that money is spent both on state government and on giving back to the population. By this mechanism the state translates consumable wealth (Oil) into long-term capital (investments).
While it may be easy to whine about Pork in Alaska lets consider the alternative, no government spending anywhere that is "local". By this definition no money would be spent on Universities because that benefits only the local university. Similarly no money would be spent on NASA because why should Florida Colorado and Texas have all the fun? The trans-Alaska oil pipeline which supplies most of the U.S.'s domestic crude, gone becuase it is only in Alaska. The same goes for all military bases (tax benefits to local states) and federal grants to public schools (why give a damn about kids in other towns?)
Any Federal project could be criticized as spending money in one place and not others. While Ted Stevens is a master of Pork he is hardly the worst player, only the most prominent one now. Brining home the bacon is what most politicians do and how they get elected. So before you turn to blame Alaska for your problems I'd ask just how much you like the federally funded roads you drive down and the DHS security being provided for your ballgames.
Federal tax dollars are used as pork because the day to day things aren't what most voters notice. What they notice, and what makes them like a given politician, are the big named projects that appear with his fingerprints on them.
The parent poster wasn't endorsing the misuse of science nor did he make any apparent attempt to justify how "liberals" misrepresent science versus "Republicans". I see no point where he/she claimed it was magically ok to do it.
On another note I do love how "Liberals" are paired off with "Republicans". One is a vague label applied with little or no logic often to people as diverse as John McCain and Ralph Nader. The other is a defined political party with registered operatives and stated campaign goals. Attacking the former is the same as blaming the fo, or the Islamofacists and just as fun because you can pin anything on them and you never have to find an actual human target. The other has specific individuals and catalogued actions that can be addressed.
Depends upon who you are talking to and about. For many people I think ethics is a locally defined thing. Actions such as these are unethical but much more abstract. The polluter who will dump mercury into the wellwater based upon a spreadsheet probably wouldn't just feed it to a child directly. That's what spreadsheets are for, to make the unethical justifiable. In some ways I think that's what this is. Political appointees are seeking to a) cut money from a hated program; and b) reduce the effectiveness of "burdensome" government regulations.
Unfortunately many people believe that the EPA is bad and that government enforcement "hurts" business. Those people should look at what's going on in Alaska right now. After years of pushing for drilling in ANWAR the Oil Companies (BP primarily) have been arguing that they could do it safely and without a lot of "pencil pushers" going around looking over their shoulders.
Now the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline is running at less than half capacity. Why, it turns out that BP in its infinite wisdom hadn't been doing ANY maintenance on its feeder lines. Some of them were so badly corroded that they were leaking oil onto the Turnda. This despite 20 years of warnings not backed up by enforcement. Now they've found other problems and what was initial "one small leak" may mean millions of dollars in cleanup.
This is what happens when enforcement is cut. Now BP is losing lots of money on it but their spreadsheets told them it would be okay. Now that's fuzzy ehtics.
(sadly few people connect the EPA to clean air and clean water thanks to effective business lobbying.
(one is a vague title applied to people as diverse as Al Gore and John McCain depending upon the day and the other is an established
The problem with this is the question of a clear line. What exactly makes an image violent? The linked article mentions strangulation, what about BDSM? Do we distinguish between "heavy BDSM" and "light BDSM"? What are the defining characteristics? Is spanking allowed or disallowed? Or do we distinguish between "violent spanking" and "play spanking"?
While this may sound silly this law makes it necessary for those questions to be answered. Over time court cases will come up and, lacking any standards, the police will choose between punishing noone unless they commit some other "real" crime (like murder), or punishing anyone whom they don't like. The latter seems a more likely route. This also then raises the issue of costs. Will this bill be enforced or will it fall by the wayside? If it is enforced how will much money will be spent on that?
This is why one needs to be careful when making law, even though few politicians are. Such laws don't solve anything, they typically raise more questions then they answer and pass the actual problems off to others. It's not that I don't believe that people shpuld be protected from such preadators. They should. I'm just skeptical of this law's ability to do so on the face of it.
If you say that forcefully, clearly, concisely, and with emphasis on the vote and on the money they'll listen. They have to. Once you then back up your threats they and he will be punished.
The power of any executive in great measure is an at-will excercize. Bush is getting away with things in large part because many members of Congress are rendering their own institution impotent by shilling for him. They are doing so because they believe that being his friend makes them our friends. Punish them, fire them, smack them hard, and he will lose power. If he is faced with a Congress so scared for their own jobs that they'll make his a living hell and you'll see a lot of this stuff stuff he things is free become very very costly.
Party means nothing. Don't vote for his backers because you're a Republican or a Democrat and better them than the other guy. Now is the time to throw out anyone who has backed him and show them that if they won't do their jobs we'll damn well get someone else who will.
Leaving aside the Sarcasm, that's exactly what we want. Other states including New Mexico and Washington have gone this route as have many counties. In all cases its because of the demonstrated problems with voting systems. In New Mexico's 2004 election we have a perfect test case. In that year the state employed eight different systems scattered more or less randomly thuought the state. Four of these systems were optical scanners and four were paperless touchscreen or push-button DREs (Direct Recording Electronic systems). In the 2004 Presidential race it was found that votes were missing largely from minority voters. Worse yet the missing votes were in up-ticket races, noteably the U.S. Presidential Race. Typically votes are missing for down-ticket races like local judges. Interestingly enough these patternes appeared on all the paperless systems not just systems made by one company or another. Lost votes were not a problem in precincts using the optical scanners. The excess (overcounted) votes were removed because they had the paper backup.
/. It belongs in letters to our state and local elections boards (whoever actually sets the law). It belongs in local newspapers via op-eds. Other people are concerned but most of then simply know nothing about these problems. Changing opinions on this issue won't really happen here, but elsewhere.
At the risk of nagging people, this info doesn't belong just on
Some choice morsels of info can be found Here, here, here, here and here
That only makes it worse.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Agreed, many of the powers he is currently seeking are in fact hyperextensions of powers that date to the Cold War and the War on Drugs. The latter has been a 30 year holding action. The former, people justified the loss of rights because of the awful soviets. They are gone but the secret search orders and the large spying beureucracy remain even as both struggle to find new justifications for themselves.
Ironically these people are members of the party that claims to champion a limited federal government that operates for not against the people. They campaigned on the very idea of shrinking government and reducing its invasiveness. They have reduced education and social spending (mostly through crippling unfunded mandates). They have left the science budget the same but selectively trimmed spending on some subjects e.g. Global Warming. But when it comes to spying on Americans and invading others no amount is too high and no law apparently can stand.
Not even Richard Nixon went around claiming that he was just "above the law because he says so" but apparently these people think that it is a valid legal principle.
This isn't flamebait, I'm being serious, the only other times that I can think of where anyone claimed such a thing (rule of law but my word is above all law) was the old Russian Tsars after Katherine the Great, and Adolf Hitler who had the "Furher's Princip". Again this isn't flamebait it is frightening.
Even if that progressive update is the case, it does not guarantee the security. Unless a method is available to verify the current state against "what it should be" then the chip itself provides no security. And if the hashes can be modified then any given system can backcheck to see that it was loaded "properly" provided it can accurately compare the hashed results, but it cannot do a forward look to ensure that it will be loading the correct software.
If the BIOS hashes the boot loader and stores it, assuming the BIOS is operating properly then that does not necessarily provide security. If the TPM chip is as passive as you say then all it can do is answer the following question: "What is the last hash you were fed?" It can answer this using a signed key to show that it isn't lying. However that alone isn't security. Some measure must be made to compare the hashes to a "gold standard" in order to verify that they are correct.
Given a BIOS B, B can be coded to hash the boot loader before using it. However, unless B "knows" what the correct hash is, it is only handing over control to "some program". If the chip operates as you say, and the chip has no knowledge of what the hash "should be" then control is surrendered at that point. B hands off to a boot loader and the boot loader does whatever it wants. If the only measure of correctness is "the last hash read" then B cannot be certain that what it is about to run is correct. This also holds true for boot loaders handing off to OS's etc.
Either B would have to be hard-coded with knowledge of what the "correct" boot loader hash would be, or the chip would. In either case the hash would have to be non-writable and, itself hashed or the system breaks down. If I can access in any way the storage point for the "verified" hashes then they can be replaced with falsified ones. However if the hashes are hard-coded then I can never upgrade or alter the software (without obtaining a new chip) because the hashes would change.
The only way that the system could work is if a) there exists a mutable storage system for "gold standard" hashes, b) the chip is capable of comparing a signed hash to a gold standard hash in a secure way, c) the algorithm used to do so is always secure and cannot be broken, and c) all of the software run on the system is "completely secure" and no bugs or deliberate attacks allow for the hash system to be fooled. If at any point any of these are violated then an attack is possible. False hashes can be planted for the future and the system is violated.
Keep in mind that hashes are many to one functions. MD5 has been cracked. Others can be as well.
Incidentally the text of the bill is at the Library of Congress. It defines a "Social Networking Site" as follows:
I would note that clause (i) appears to exempt political websites from this as well as school sites while clauses (iv) and (v) are entirely undefined indicating that they have neither been thought through nor are expected to be any time soon. Is a handle personal? If I use my real name is that "highly-personalized". What about if I lie?
These same issues hold true with respect to the "technology protection measure" requirement in 3.a (see text). Strictly speaking turning the computer off entirely is a technology protection measure as is a printed sign saying "Don't do bad things" or an overpriced filtering service that can be easily circumvented.
The law is bad because it leaves many aspects undefined while at the same time further restricting online activities for both children and adults. One of the known problems with COPA is that many adults cannot get things turned on. More importantly it places blame in the wrong places, and places effort there as well. It attacks the social networking sites on the assumption that a) they are entirely to blame and b) poor "technology protection measures" will prevent bad things from happening. Sexual predators exist in the real world and molest kids in the real world. If we spent more time and effort educating parents accurately (which I note this bill encourages but does not pay for) about the dangers their kids face and how best to protect them this might work out. As it is this bill is (at best) a band aid that teaches kids and parents to fear the online world not learn to protect themselves in it. It also places one further burden of censoring information on understaffed underfunded public libearies who, as a rule, exist to share information not hide it.
This is essentially an election year problem. This bill is being voted for becuase the reps think that it is free. By voting for this they can claim to have "struck a blow against online predators" even though this blow is all hot air. In my experience such things get done because the politicians think that it will a) make the
Not nearly the same. Simply screaming "think of the children" rarely works out as well in a courtroom as it does on TV. Yes the jury can be swayed against people but any DA that isn't just going for public points is going to want something more to stand on than that. And any judge worth his salt shouldn't allow the kind of "Think of the children" screaming to occur in his/her courtroom.
Consider the national "No Fly" lists. According to public reports numerous federal agencies from the FBI, DHS, DEA, and the Air Marshalls can all place someone on the "No Fly" list reporting them as dangerous. However, there exists no mechanism to remove anyone from the list or, in many cases, to even check who put them there and why. For a while Senator Ted Kennedy was on the list and, to my knowledge, they still do not know how he got on there or who put him there. It is only because he is a senator that they got him off.
From the bill iself (pp 157):
"Intended" is the key word here. If I put up a website with people in Barney costumes having sex, the jury would have to prove that I did so in order to lure children there and not to satisfy my own tastes. Proving intention is a legal minefield and is so difficult to cross that it only seems to occur when the jury and judge are already biased against the defendant unfairly (see the Lisl Auman case). Or in cases where the crime is so much of a showpiece that the charge is thrown in.
I predict that (this aspect of the law) will only show up in showpiece cases where some DA who is seeking higher office is attacking some guy in a Pikachu suit to show his "moral fiber" or in civil suits where someone who should have been parenting not watching TV wants a cut.
In either case such a weak joke of a law will do exactly nothing to protect children.
While the police can do a lookup they are not, currently in posession of total tracking information. The issue is not that the licence plate is there it is whether you want the police, jelous lovers, or worse yet, hellfire and damnation crusaders to be nosing about your activities, and be amassing this kind of data.
Think about it from an investigation standpoint. If you take your car out for a drive along some highway and some "incident" happens in the same area. If the police then go back and troll for this info and find you. People in this country have been executed for crimes where the only "evidence" was their proximity to an event. The temptation of this tool to "clear up" or find suspects for hit crimes could lead to far too many weak cases being brought in. You may also find yourself being hauled in for one then and then threatened with others (e.g. old parking tickets) stranger and more nefarious things have happened.
Additionally consider the abuse route. While the data may be collected "to catch stolen cars" or "stop underage drinking" (filming all the cars that go to a bar or strip club) once it is collected it exists. It can be used for anything. In the past would be moral crusaders have abused police records or even supposedly private records (like video store rentals) to harrass and stigmatize people for behaviors they do not like. Do you really want everyone to know where your car has driven or to have that information accessible when they want to embarass you.
Once this data is there it will be supoenad for divroce cases, tax, cases, or just checked by those who see their role as enforcing "higher" laws.
And then there are the errors. In any data-intensive process like this errors can and will creep in. A misread plate here, a faked one there, and pretty soon the data cannot be relied upon, or should not. Yet, people will treat it as gold, they do that with ChoicePoint's data even though it is full of holes. And pretty soon you or another peson may find yourselves on some "watch list" for visiting a site that you never went to, or for being in two places at once.
In a world where people are finding themselves on "no fly" terrorist watch lists for having names that sound kind of like others' or for reasons that cannot be explained, this is dangerous. Unlike Ted Kennedy not everyone is a senator with the power to have their name cleared. Not everyone can even find out who put them on the list.
The surest way, the only way, to ensure that this data isn't abused is to ensure that it is never collected in the first place.