A quick note to everyone from outside Texas - We have a part time legislature.
There is, incidentally, clearly good and bad to the part time legislature (especially as used in Texas. Most part-time legislatures meet yearly for 60-90 days.) Bills that don't have an clear majority from the get-go, and which aren't entirely important, die at session end. The legislature only has the time to pass things which are fundamentally vital to the state. Representatives have to prioritize what they want to pass and they've got as long as two years to figure out how to do it.
On the other hand, politicians are notoriously bad at removing stupid laws...they measure their productivity in laws passed, not laws removed. While it's somewhat hard to get a law passed in Texas because of it's part-time legislature, it's damn near impossible to get the legislature to remove it once it's in place.
It's all got advantages and disadvantages. I need not mention that Texas is the largest state with a part-time legislature. On a side note, just because a state has a full time legislation doesn't mean it spends all day legislation. My Ohio is a full-time, and they pass bills at a snails pace. (Admittedly, New York and California, both full-times, pass bills while banging their mistresses.)
'The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,'
If *anything* the lesson of 9/11 should have been that identification is not effective nor relevant to certain types of security sitautions, like air travel.
Instead, the assumption stands that identification is essential, but, in regards to 9/11, it was somehow lacking, either in format (see REAL ID act) or application.
Bad security is built around bad assumptions. Remove the bad assumptions and rebuild the security framework.
Based on the vast quantity of individuals flying, and the amazing sum of variables, all of which indicate little about the potential danger of the passenger, a defense could be made that we would be safer building a security system around nameless tickets.
In Europe we have the chip & pin way of using credit and debit cards at Point of Sale.
Chip and Pin is destined to stay outside of the US, which is why US credit card companies are always trying to do something new that is entirely unnecessary.
Mastercard and Visa are competing with people using their debit cardson the debit system and not running the transaction over the MC/Visa system. When you use your debit card on the debit system, you have the card swiped, and then you enter in your pin number...and MC/Visa doesn't get its valuable merchant's fee.
In order to maintain their fees, MC/Visa has to make sure that people swipe and sign the receipts, avoiding the pin code alltogether. The introduction of a pin based MC/Visa transaction in the US would confuse people toward using their debit cards off of the MC/Visa system.
There are those who find the signing the receipt thing a pain, and entering the pin easier. So MC/Visa will continue trying to elminate the signature and get people to feel as comfortable as possible in as easy a transaction as possible. Merchants, who don't have to pay the merchant fee if you pay via debit, would prefer you to run the transaction on that system (though I believe they can't request that you do it via debit as part of their MC/Visa agreements) I can only presume that merchants who agree to install these new credit card readers (as featured in the article) are getting some very special deal on all their MC/Visa transactions.
I hope this goes some way to explain why credit card companies are so keen to reinvent the wheel.
I'm in the UK and personally I wouldn't trust the current system or anyone based on machines.
Keep in mind that, when you vote, you don't vote for many things. I beg your correction on this, but, as I recall, for your May 5 election you voted only once: for your preferred candidate for Parliament. So marking an X in a box on a piece of paper and counting the papers is pretty easy.
In Nov. 2004 we in Columbus (Franklin County OH) voted for 57 different offices and issues: *President-VP *Senator *Congressman *State Rep *State Senator (in some part of the county) *County Commissioner, Recorder, Coroner, Engineer, Clerk of Courts (other county offices I know I've forgotten) *More County and Municipal Judges than you can safely shake a stick at *One State Constitutional Amendment *9 City of Columbus bond issues *One City of Columbus referendum *One Columbus School Tax levy
Admittedly, that was an unusually large election (The poll lines were about 2-3 hours because it took so long for voters to vote.)
At any rate, it's asking quite a lot for pollworkers to accurately count a ballot that large. Certain US Jursidctions have much smaller ballots (like in New England) and some voting precincts may be small enough to count the ballots regardless of the size of the individual ballot...but there were about 550,000 Franklin Countians who voted in Nov. 2004 (avg. 1100 per precinct), and once you multiply that by 57 ballot sections you get a lot of X's.
Doesn't this fly in the face of each States Rights to rule themselves?
Technically, no. The REAL ID act only requires that ID meet certain criteria for federal acceptance. If a state wished to issue a license that did not meet any of the criteria in some way they could still do so.
Interestingly, I don't know if the states are somehow require to indicate that a license does not meet the criteria on the license itself, or if the federal government has to figure that out on their own.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] House approves Real ID Act;one Democrat's objections [priv] Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 09:50:32 -0800 From: James Moyer To: Declan McCullagh
Declan,
With the approval of the REAL ID Act, I believe it's time to place blame of it passage and make sure that Congress knows that there are people who still believe in liberty and care about their privacy.
For this reason, I believe that we (those who care) should begin a campaign against Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, to make sure that he loses the September 2006 Congressional Primary.
We must make it clear, to the people of the 5th Wisconsin district, that Rep. Sensenbrenner, is directly responsible for the creation of the National ID Card, through his sponsorship and work on the REAL ID Act.
We must make it clear that Rep. Sensenbrenner is putting American's identities and lives at stake, by fomenting the introduction of RFID based passports (a result of his "leadership" as chair of the House Judiciary Committee.)
And finally, we must make it clear to people of faith in his district, that he is *most* responsible for paving the way toward the Mark of the Beast, as predicted in the book of Revelations, and that, like the Mark of the Beast, no American shall be able to "buy or sell" without one of Jim Sensenbrenner's "REAL IDs." There should be no doubt his work on the REAL ID Act is entirely unchristian.
By aggressively targeting Jim Sensenbrenner next year, we shall make it clear to leadership that we are demanding that they take liberty and privacy needs into account. We can further awake the sleeping giant of Christians who are concerned about National ID card issues, but haven't found a medium for voicing their concerns.
Now's the time to begin such a campaign, so that everyone is well aware of Sensenbrenner's dastardly REAL ID act. By September 2006 every churchgoer in the Wisconsin 5th shall be aware of it as well.
Anyone who wants to work on this project is more than welcome to get in touch with me.
Of course, if I'm wrong, please post some definitive sources to the contrary
I'm trying to find a definitive source for you right now. All my friends who can tell me that sorta thing are at work.
It's, in my mind, a pretty clear cut case of separation of powers. When a local police officer is sworn in, he professes obligation and duty to the local laws, state laws and state constitution. I don't believe they even swear to uphold the federal constitution.
But your statement of "not just the laws that have been enacted by the government that signs their paychecks" is very accurate in describing the situation. Columbus police officers are paid to enforce local Columbus and state Ohio laws. If the federales wanted federal laws enforced they could put them on federal payroll or send federal agents to Columbus (which is, after all, the FBI) or lobby the state to require local law enforcement to enforce federal law (which incidentally does occur, in some instances. The Ohio legislature is about to pass SB 9 which will require local law enforcement to "comply with certain requests for assistance by federal authorities regarding homeland security" and local judges and prosecutors to inform immigration officials when an illegal is convicted for a felony.
How about SB 9 as your proof? Clearly if local law enforcement were automatically required to enforce all federal laws, then provisions in SB 9 requiring local Ohio law enforcement to enforce some federal laws would be unnecessary...no?
I believe that when someone has violated federal law, there are such things as federal arrest warrants, and the state may have a mechanism for that federal warrant to become a state warrant for arrest...so that local law enforcement can perform the arrest.
(Even then, the local law enforcement will be paid for this service.)
the card will require awful, intrusive things like An adress of current residence
Here in Ohio I worked my ass off and got a legislator last year to introduce a bill that would allow any Ohio license to be issued without an individual's address.
The address is an awful anachronism, and unnecessary today. If you're an attractive 22 year old, would you want to show ever bouncer in town your home address simply to get into a club? For people who use their ID's a lot, it doesn't make so much sense to show everyone and their grandmother where they live. (Keep in mind, this doesn't remove the address record from DMV files, and if the DMV wants proof of address before issuing the license, that doesn't change anything either.)
North Carolina currently issues address-less licenses to individuals who are domestic violence or stalking victims.
I've also pointed out that the address is a huge key toward identity theft, should your license fall into the wrong hands.
(You'll note that the legislation also allowed you to have a license issued without date of birth, also on privacy grounds, for individuals who do not use their license for age verification activities.)
A signature (oh, no!) There is something to be said about your license not having the signature of the bearer, in case the license finds itself in the wrong hands, and then someone can use that signature for nefarious purposes.
A photograph (the horror!)
Approximately 16 states have codified relgious objector's non-photo driver's licenses. All states are technically supposed to issue them under federal case law.
Keep in mind however, you've left out the bigger requirement regarding the photo. It must be a *digital* photo. I guess that's not necessarily a huge thing because all states now are on the digital license kick.
However, this legislation technically requires that every single american over the age of 16 be photographed and that photograph be put into a national photograph database (since the state databases must be combined.) While that's basically in place, it wasn't being done with federal requirement.
Think about it this way, essentially, every American is being required to show up at their local police station and be photographed. Since it's part of the natural licensing process that's been created no one noticed. (My Ohio BMV, when they brought out the photo license in 1974, promised that there would be no central photo archive...which they introduced in 1995 and hoped no one was paying attention.)
and... wait for it... a DRIVERS LICENSE NUMBER.
Did this legislation require a permanent driver's license number? If so...that's basically another SSN, with all its disadvantages and baggage.
A birth certificate as ID has always seemed foolish to me, unless you're willing to step on an inkpad and have your footprint examined. A birth certificate merely indicates that a Duncan Scott was born, not that I'm that Duncan Scott.
Which is funny, because you just admitted above that Maryland MVA will issue a driver's license with a birth certificate and a utility bill.
I used to say that a photo state ID card is just a birth certificate with a photo. There's still a lot of truth to that statement.
Since the city signs the cops paychecks, not the federal government, they do what council wants, not what the law is
One major point to make here...unless the state or the city council specifically require the local cops to enforce immigration law, they are under no obligation to do so.
Immigration issues are federal laws, and it's not the local cop's job to enforce those laws. To think that a local cop is obligated to enforce immigration laws is like assuming a local cop should be knocking at your door to make sure that you've filed your 1040 or you've not done any insider trading. It's not their job, it's not their laws, it's not their problem.
As a Republican, I heartily welcome you wasting your campaign dolalrs against a man who won his district by an enormous margin and is unbeatable.
It's definitely a Republican district...which is why his opponent should be another Republican. If it's so conservative to elect him with 65% margins, then its conservative enough to find a better conservative.
but the ease of getting a driver's liscense is part of why 9/11 happened. Either driver's liscences should ensure residency and identity, or they ought not permit someone on a plane (etc.)
My point exactly. Security morons are assuming that the problem was that the IDs we had are somehow lacking...the problem is actually relying on IDs for security in the first place. The security morons are not questioning their assumption that IDs are appropriate for airline security.
I *just* got this posted on Politech...I'm reposting it here on Slashdot as a Call to Arms.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] House approves Real ID Act;one Democrat's objections [priv] Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 09:50:32 -0800 From: James Moyer To: Declan McCullagh
Declan,
With the approval of the REAL ID Act, I believe it's time to place blame of it passage and make sure that Congress knows that there are people who still believe in liberty and care about their privacy.
For this reason, I believe that we (those who care) should begin a campaign against Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, to make sure that he loses the September 2006 Congressional Primary.
We must make it clear, to the people of the 5th Wisconsin district, that Rep. Sensenbrenner, is directly responsible for the creation of the National ID Card, through his sponsorship and work on the REAL ID Act.
We must make it clear that Rep. Sensenbrenner is putting American's identities and lives at stake, by fomenting the introduction of RFID based passports (a result of his "leadership" as chair of the House Judiciary Committee.)
And finally, we must make it clear to people of faith in his district, that he is *most* responsible for paving the way toward the Mark of the Beast, as predicted in the book of Revelations, and that, like the Mark of the Beast, no American shall be able to "buy or sell" without one of Jim Sensenbrenner's "REAL IDs." There should be no doubt his work on the REAL ID Act is entirely unchristian.
By aggressively targeting Jim Sensenbrenner next year, we shall make it clear to leadership that we are demanding that they take liberty and privacy needs into account. We can further awake the sleeping giant of Christians who are concerned about National ID card issues, but haven't found a medium for voicing their concerns.
Now's the time to begin such a campaign, so that everyone is well aware of Sensenbrenner's dastardly REAL ID act. By September 2006 every churchgoer in the Wisconsin 5th shall be aware of it as well.
Anyone who wants to work on this project is more than welcome to get in touch with me.
You ask some really good questions though it's not related to my own "issue" which is protecting the innocent from prosecution as much as possible.
Thank you. I was just looking for a good outlet to hang those thoughts on, and it so happened that your post seemed to be the one to go with.:-)
The conviction of the innocent is a worry to me as well.
It's best of course to keep conversation to the issue of little kids...your 14-18s make for a lot of philosophical and legal gray areas. It bugs me that a consentual relationship which would be perfectly legal (and normal) in one state is so horrifically illegal in another that its punishment is equivalent to forceable rape or even involuntary murder. Either way, there are less thoughtful people out there wanting to black out the gray areas and make equivalent molestation of an 8 year old and a relationship with a 15 year old.
I dunno if the witch hunt is ending anytime soon. It'll take more than just good, accurate data for that to occur.
Someone else made a sarcastic remark about tracking other offenders as well, but I have to worry about this measure and related measures as well.
It's actually a great example of another area where security experts need to be involved in.
Clearly the goal is reduce child molestation and sexual offense. Figure out where the risks are, what's important, what's not, put laws/programs/whatever in place to deal with the risks and issues.
Politicians don't work like that. The media drools over some sorta rare situation, politicians jump into action to make laws more stringent than the laws that were already on the books. I can tell you one thing, if the horse has already run out of the barn, it doesn't matter how hard you slam the barn door.
What we need is good data.
In spite of what local politicians say, recidivism of sexual offenders is low. (google "sex offender recividism" and parse the info yourselves.)
But I want more complex data than just that...in order to assess risk properly, and put everything in the correct context. For instance:
*Apparently the true serial sexual predator is a very rare situation. We are most afraid of it, with little justification. How common is the true serial sexual predator?
*We have a lot of law enforcement resources locked up in chld pornagraphy--catching those who make real child porn (for good reason) and catching those who consume it. How much is the latter a threat? How likely are they be an actual molester? What's the statistical likelyhood that a child would be molested by an individual that has a taste for child porn. (I incidentally heard somewhere that 2% of Americans have a taste for child porn, but I've not heard that again? Answers?)
*Next, I've heard some evidence to suggest that the majority of child molestaters have only engaged in acts with one child. These individuals have actually not had any significant attraction towards any other children, nor do they after their molestation of the child in question. Further, they are most often relatives or friends of the child/parents, and so know the child well. (I've got a theory here...these people did not have a single bit of pedophilia in them, but something about this child makes their brain go *ping* and things go downhill from there.) So what's the statistical evidence on this?
This is an important thing to know. If your child is slight/significantly/astronomically more liklely to be molested by an individual who has not shown any prior-disposition to children in the past, and further, is likely already known and trusted by you (the parent) then the sexual offender databases and pink license plates serve as a tragic distraction from where the risk actually lies.
These are not people that can be rehabilitated. Sex offenders have amongst the highest rates of recidivism.
Bah! Where do people get this info?? Sex offenders have some of the *lowest* rates of recidivism. Just google "sex offender recidivism" and you can parse the information yourself.
They're wired wrong. They're defective people. What society needs is to protect itself from these people.
There are many issues with that thinking, but simply going from a security aspect, it's not a good use of resources. A child is significantly more likely to be molested by an individual who has never had any previous sexual offense, either reported or unreported. Further, a child is astronomically (I use that word for a reason)more likely to be molested by an individual who is well known to the child and the family, is therefore trusted. The serial molester cases that the media like to drool over are rare and distracting us from more much more risky issues.
I think you wont disagree with the premise that we need to prevent/decrease cases of molestation, but if we know that it is most likely to occur from a person that has never offended, shown any signs of offending, and is trusted by the victim and their family, then clearly, we are approaching the problem from the wrong side of things.
And on a final note, I heard some sorta research (but can't locate) that there's about a 2% disposition toward child porn. That's 1/50 of Americans. In your book, that's quite a lot of people to lock up.
Because sex offenders can't be cured...from what I understand you can only teach them how to supress their urges.
The fact that they can't be cured is irrelevant. You have admitted that they can be taught to supress their urges. The most important thing for getting them back into society is making sure that they don't reoffend, and if you have their urges under control, that would seem to be a pretty good indicator that they are unlikely to re-offend.
Apparently, this is successful, because sex offenders have the lowest rates of recividism of any type of felon offender. (google "recividism sex offender" for info.)
Ford really didnt create any sort of major screen prescence and as such became a rather minor character with a penchant for towels.
I think it would be hard to argue that he is anything more than that in the book. He's a medium for jokes but Adams struggled to make him a really interesting presence (unlike Zaphod.)
I thought he was arguably better portrayed in this version than any other version. He was a quirky alien here.
Other things were just poorly done, for example, the babble fish. They actually do cut to the Guide to explain what a babblefish does, but totally skip the part about God disappearing in a puff of logic.
I disagree with this, I thought it was funny. the fish itself is cute and simultaneously sufficiently leech-like to be amusingly menacing.
I think the stuff about God disappearing in a puff of logic would have not made sense on the big screen.
I am inclined to agree with you regarding the whale (perhaps funnier if you showed things as if you were the whale seeing it...and then cut to shot of whale falling into mountain valley.)
One joke that falls flat in video form is the bowl of petunias. Funny to see it smash against HOG windscreen, but the rest of the joke is funny only in written form and radio form.
He IS paranoid, and - offtopic: sounds a bit of a nob.
The paranoia accusations were coming from colleagues in the security industry, which indicates to me a good chance that he's got a slight inferiority complex and is just doing a "my dick is bigger than yours" by going as over-the-top as possible on security and then bragging about it to the people most likely to care.
I should have added that those states were contributing servicemen to the army in proportions that exceeded that of their percentage of the US population.
But now all you have is middle-of-nowhere towns, built on industries that have long-since been shipped oversees. Leaving a vacuum filled with people who's only source of income is to send their kids into the military.
I am struggling to find this fact (last read in the Economist) but the top states for servicemen were New Jersey, California and Texas.
I'm not disagreeing that you have lots of servicemen come from rural areas...but, in addition, a lot more are 1st generation Americans, whose immigrant parents are not on solid financial footing, and are living in the blue states.
Actually I just didn't get around to making that point. 1967 was the year Ohio passed the mandatory photo license law (didn't actually hit until 1974...so yes, photos on credit cards were useful for general ID.
Something to ponder is that there was developing a system of privately issued photo ID, which the states than took over for themselves by adding the license photos. The need for privately issued ID disappeared afterwards.
I had relatives in Virginia who used to have their SSNs on their checks. It wasn't until the mid 90s (as I recall) that Virginia allowed individuals to have their driver's licenses issued with an ID number that was different from their SSN. (Don't know why Virginia took forever, but someone needs to track down the moron legislator who made the SSN the license ID number and give them a sharp kick in the ass.)
At any rate, in order to facilitate check usage, they put their driver's license number right onto the check, hence it was the SSN.
I would be really surprised if they still had SSNs on their checks. In the defense of my aunt and uncle, they both spent many years in the US Armed Forces, where the SSN is thrown around and printed on documents very freely (and also quite stupidly...I think that's something being corrected...any military peeps out there who can confirm on this?) So they were accustomed to their SSN being overused.
Slashdot Mirror
A quick note to everyone from outside Texas - We have a part time legislature.
There is, incidentally, clearly good and bad to the part time legislature (especially as used in Texas. Most part-time legislatures meet yearly for 60-90 days.) Bills that don't have an clear majority from the get-go, and which aren't entirely important, die at session end. The legislature only has the time to pass things which are fundamentally vital to the state. Representatives have to prioritize what they want to pass and they've got as long as two years to figure out how to do it.
On the other hand, politicians are notoriously bad at removing stupid laws...they measure their productivity in laws passed, not laws removed. While it's somewhat hard to get a law passed in Texas because of it's part-time legislature, it's damn near impossible to get the legislature to remove it once it's in place.
It's all got advantages and disadvantages. I need not mention that Texas is the largest state with a part-time legislature. On a side note, just because a state has a full time legislation doesn't mean it spends all day legislation. My Ohio is a full-time, and they pass bills at a snails pace. (Admittedly, New York and California, both full-times, pass bills while banging their mistresses.)
'The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,'
If *anything* the lesson of 9/11 should have been that identification is not effective nor relevant to certain types of security sitautions, like air travel.
Instead, the assumption stands that identification is essential, but, in regards to 9/11, it was somehow lacking, either in format (see REAL ID act) or application.
Bad security is built around bad assumptions. Remove the bad assumptions and rebuild the security framework.
Based on the vast quantity of individuals flying, and the amazing sum of variables, all of which indicate little about the potential danger of the passenger, a defense could be made that we would be safer building a security system around nameless tickets.
In Europe we have the chip & pin way of using credit and debit cards at Point of Sale.
Chip and Pin is destined to stay outside of the US, which is why US credit card companies are always trying to do something new that is entirely unnecessary.
Mastercard and Visa are competing with people using their debit cardson the debit system and not running the transaction over the MC/Visa system. When you use your debit card on the debit system, you have the card swiped, and then you enter in your pin number...and MC/Visa doesn't get its valuable merchant's fee.
In order to maintain their fees, MC/Visa has to make sure that people swipe and sign the receipts, avoiding the pin code alltogether. The introduction of a pin based MC/Visa transaction in the US would confuse people toward using their debit cards off of the MC/Visa system.
There are those who find the signing the receipt thing a pain, and entering the pin easier. So MC/Visa will continue trying to elminate the signature and get people to feel as comfortable as possible in as easy a transaction as possible. Merchants, who don't have to pay the merchant fee if you pay via debit, would prefer you to run the transaction on that system (though I believe they can't request that you do it via debit as part of their MC/Visa agreements) I can only presume that merchants who agree to install these new credit card readers (as featured in the article) are getting some very special deal on all their MC/Visa transactions.
I hope this goes some way to explain why credit card companies are so keen to reinvent the wheel.
I'm in the UK and personally I wouldn't trust the current system or anyone based on machines.
:
Keep in mind that, when you vote, you don't vote for many things. I beg your correction on this, but, as I recall, for your May 5 election you voted only once: for your preferred candidate for Parliament. So marking an X in a box on a piece of paper and counting the papers is pretty easy.
In Nov. 2004 we in Columbus (Franklin County OH) voted for 57 different offices and issues
*President-VP
*Senator
*Congressman
*State Rep
*State Senator (in some part of the county)
*County Commissioner, Recorder, Coroner, Engineer, Clerk of Courts (other county offices I know I've forgotten)
*More County and Municipal Judges than you can safely shake a stick at
*One State Constitutional Amendment
*9 City of Columbus bond issues
*One City of Columbus referendum
*One Columbus School Tax levy
Admittedly, that was an unusually large election (The poll lines were about 2-3 hours because it took so long for voters to vote.)
At any rate, it's asking quite a lot for pollworkers to accurately count a ballot that large. Certain US Jursidctions have much smaller ballots (like in New England) and some voting precincts may be small enough to count the ballots regardless of the size of the individual ballot...but there were about 550,000 Franklin Countians who voted in Nov. 2004 (avg. 1100 per precinct), and once you multiply that by 57 ballot sections you get a lot of X's.
Probably, but the last time I put it up...it was reasonably well liked.
Doesn't this fly in the face of each States Rights to rule themselves?
Technically, no. The REAL ID act only requires that ID meet certain criteria for federal acceptance. If a state wished to issue a license that did not meet any of the criteria in some way they could still do so.
Interestingly, I don't know if the states are somehow require to indicate that a license does not meet the criteria on the license itself, or if the federal government has to figure that out on their own.
I announced on the Politech list the following:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] House approves Real ID Act;one Democrat's
objections [priv]
Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 09:50:32 -0800
From: James Moyer
To: Declan McCullagh
Declan,
With the approval of the REAL ID Act, I believe it's time to place blame
of it passage and make sure that Congress knows that there are people
who still believe in liberty and care about their privacy.
For this reason, I believe that we (those who care) should begin a
campaign against Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, to make sure
that he loses the September 2006 Congressional Primary.
We must make it clear, to the people of the 5th Wisconsin district, that
Rep. Sensenbrenner, is directly responsible for the creation of the
National ID Card, through his sponsorship and work on the REAL ID Act.
We must make it clear that Rep. Sensenbrenner is putting American's
identities and lives at stake, by fomenting the introduction of RFID
based passports (a result of his "leadership" as chair of the House
Judiciary Committee.)
And finally, we must make it clear to people of faith in his district,
that he is *most* responsible for paving the way toward the Mark of the
Beast, as predicted in the book of Revelations, and that, like the Mark
of the Beast, no American shall be able to "buy or sell" without one of
Jim Sensenbrenner's "REAL IDs." There should be no doubt his work on the
REAL ID Act is entirely unchristian.
By aggressively targeting Jim Sensenbrenner next year, we shall make it
clear to leadership that we are demanding that they take liberty and
privacy needs into account. We can further awake the sleeping giant of
Christians who are concerned about National ID card issues, but haven't
found a medium for voicing their concerns.
Now's the time to begin such a campaign, so that everyone is well aware
of Sensenbrenner's dastardly REAL ID act. By September 2006 every
churchgoer in the Wisconsin 5th shall be aware of it as well.
Anyone who wants to work on this project is more than welcome to get in
touch with me.
James Moyer
Of course, if I'm wrong, please post some definitive sources to the contrary
I'm trying to find a definitive source for you right now. All my friends who can tell me that sorta thing are at work.
It's, in my mind, a pretty clear cut case of separation of powers. When a local police officer is sworn in, he professes obligation and duty to the local laws, state laws and state constitution. I don't believe they even swear to uphold the federal constitution.
But your statement of "not just the laws that have been enacted by the government that signs their paychecks" is very accurate in describing the situation. Columbus police officers are paid to enforce local Columbus and state Ohio laws. If the federales wanted federal laws enforced they could put them on federal payroll or send federal agents to Columbus (which is, after all, the FBI) or lobby the state to require local law enforcement to enforce federal law (which incidentally does occur, in some instances. The Ohio legislature is about to pass SB 9 which will require local law enforcement to "comply with certain requests for assistance by federal authorities regarding homeland security" and local judges and prosecutors to inform immigration officials when an illegal is convicted for a felony.
How about SB 9 as your proof? Clearly if local law enforcement were automatically required to enforce all federal laws, then provisions in SB 9 requiring local Ohio law enforcement to enforce some federal laws would be unnecessary...no?
I believe that when someone has violated federal law, there are such things as federal arrest warrants, and the state may have a mechanism for that federal warrant to become a state warrant for arrest...so that local law enforcement can perform the arrest.
(Even then, the local law enforcement will be paid for this service.)
the card will require awful, intrusive things like
An adress of current residence
Here in Ohio I worked my ass off and got a legislator last year to introduce a bill that would allow any Ohio license to be issued without an individual's address.
The address is an awful anachronism, and unnecessary today. If you're an attractive 22 year old, would you want to show ever bouncer in town your home address simply to get into a club? For people who use their ID's a lot, it doesn't make so much sense to show everyone and their grandmother where they live. (Keep in mind, this doesn't remove the address record from DMV files, and if the DMV wants proof of address before issuing the license, that doesn't change anything either.)
North Carolina currently issues address-less licenses to individuals who are domestic violence or stalking victims.
I've also pointed out that the address is a huge key toward identity theft, should your license fall into the wrong hands.
(You'll note that the legislation also allowed you to have a license issued without date of birth, also on privacy grounds, for individuals who do not use their license for age verification activities.)
A signature (oh, no!)
There is something to be said about your license not having the signature of the bearer, in case the license finds itself in the wrong hands, and then someone can use that signature for nefarious purposes.
A photograph (the horror!)
Approximately 16 states have codified relgious objector's non-photo driver's licenses. All states are technically supposed to issue them under federal case law.
Keep in mind however, you've left out the bigger requirement regarding the photo. It must be a *digital* photo. I guess that's not necessarily a huge thing because all states now are on the digital license kick.
However, this legislation technically requires that every single american over the age of 16 be photographed and that photograph be put into a national photograph database (since the state databases must be combined.) While that's basically in place, it wasn't being done with federal requirement.
Think about it this way, essentially, every American is being required to show up at their local police station and be photographed. Since it's part of the natural licensing process that's been created no one noticed. (My Ohio BMV, when they brought out the photo license in 1974, promised that there would be no central photo archive...which they introduced in 1995 and hoped no one was paying attention.)
and... wait for it... a DRIVERS LICENSE NUMBER.
Did this legislation require a permanent driver's license number? If so...that's basically another SSN, with all its disadvantages and baggage.
A birth certificate as ID has always seemed foolish to me, unless you're willing to step on an inkpad and have your footprint examined. A birth certificate merely indicates that a Duncan Scott was born, not that I'm that Duncan Scott.
Which is funny, because you just admitted above that Maryland MVA will issue a driver's license with a birth certificate and a utility bill.
I used to say that a photo state ID card is just a birth certificate with a photo. There's still a lot of truth to that statement.
Since the city signs the cops paychecks, not the federal government, they do what council wants, not what the law is
One major point to make here...unless the state or the city council specifically require the local cops to enforce immigration law, they are under no obligation to do so.
Immigration issues are federal laws, and it's not the local cop's job to enforce those laws. To think that a local cop is obligated to enforce immigration laws is like assuming a local cop should be knocking at your door to make sure that you've filed your 1040 or you've not done any insider trading. It's not their job, it's not their laws, it's not their problem.
As a Republican, I heartily welcome you wasting your campaign dolalrs against a man who won his district by an enormous margin and is unbeatable.
It's definitely a Republican district...which is why his opponent should be another Republican. If it's so conservative to elect him with 65% margins, then its conservative enough to find a better conservative.
but the ease of getting a driver's liscense is part of why 9/11 happened. Either driver's liscences should ensure residency and identity, or they ought not permit someone on a plane (etc.)
My point exactly. Security morons are assuming that the problem was that the IDs we had are somehow lacking...the problem is actually relying on IDs for security in the first place. The security morons are not questioning their assumption that IDs are appropriate for airline security.
I *just* got this posted on Politech...I'm reposting it here on Slashdot as a Call to Arms.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] House approves Real ID Act;one Democrat's
objections [priv]
Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 09:50:32 -0800
From: James Moyer
To: Declan McCullagh
Declan,
With the approval of the REAL ID Act, I believe it's time to place blame
of it passage and make sure that Congress knows that there are people
who still believe in liberty and care about their privacy.
For this reason, I believe that we (those who care) should begin a
campaign against Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, to make sure
that he loses the September 2006 Congressional Primary.
We must make it clear, to the people of the 5th Wisconsin district, that
Rep. Sensenbrenner, is directly responsible for the creation of the
National ID Card, through his sponsorship and work on the REAL ID Act.
We must make it clear that Rep. Sensenbrenner is putting American's
identities and lives at stake, by fomenting the introduction of RFID
based passports (a result of his "leadership" as chair of the House
Judiciary Committee.)
And finally, we must make it clear to people of faith in his district,
that he is *most* responsible for paving the way toward the Mark of the
Beast, as predicted in the book of Revelations, and that, like the Mark
of the Beast, no American shall be able to "buy or sell" without one of
Jim Sensenbrenner's "REAL IDs." There should be no doubt his work on the
REAL ID Act is entirely unchristian.
By aggressively targeting Jim Sensenbrenner next year, we shall make it
clear to leadership that we are demanding that they take liberty and
privacy needs into account. We can further awake the sleeping giant of
Christians who are concerned about National ID card issues, but haven't
found a medium for voicing their concerns.
Now's the time to begin such a campaign, so that everyone is well aware
of Sensenbrenner's dastardly REAL ID act. By September 2006 every
churchgoer in the Wisconsin 5th shall be aware of it as well.
Anyone who wants to work on this project is more than welcome to get in
touch with me.
James Moyer
You ask some really good questions though it's not related to my own "issue" which is protecting the innocent from prosecution as much as possible.
:-)
Thank you. I was just looking for a good outlet to hang those thoughts on, and it so happened that your post seemed to be the one to go with.
The conviction of the innocent is a worry to me as well.
It's best of course to keep conversation to the issue of little kids...your 14-18s make for a lot of philosophical and legal gray areas. It bugs me that a consentual relationship which would be perfectly legal (and normal) in one state is so horrifically illegal in another that its punishment is equivalent to forceable rape or even involuntary murder. Either way, there are less thoughtful people out there wanting to black out the gray areas and make equivalent molestation of an 8 year old and a relationship with a 15 year old.
I dunno if the witch hunt is ending anytime soon. It'll take more than just good, accurate data for that to occur.
Someone else made a sarcastic remark about tracking other offenders as well, but I have to worry about this measure and related measures as well.
It's actually a great example of another area where security experts need to be involved in.
Clearly the goal is reduce child molestation and sexual offense. Figure out where the risks are, what's important, what's not, put laws/programs/whatever in place to deal with the risks and issues.
Politicians don't work like that. The media drools over some sorta rare situation, politicians jump into action to make laws more stringent than the laws that were already on the books. I can tell you one thing, if the horse has already run out of the barn, it doesn't matter how hard you slam the barn door.
What we need is good data.
In spite of what local politicians say, recidivism of sexual offenders is low. (google "sex offender recividism" and parse the info yourselves.)
But I want more complex data than just that...in order to assess risk properly, and put everything in the correct context. For instance:
*Apparently the true serial sexual predator is a very rare situation. We are most afraid of it, with little justification. How common is the true serial sexual predator?
*We have a lot of law enforcement resources locked up in chld pornagraphy--catching those who make real child porn (for good reason) and catching those who consume it. How much is the latter a threat? How likely are they be an actual molester? What's the statistical likelyhood that a child would be molested by an individual that has a taste for child porn. (I incidentally heard somewhere that 2% of Americans have a taste for child porn, but I've not heard that again? Answers?)
*Next, I've heard some evidence to suggest that the majority of child molestaters have only engaged in acts with one child. These individuals have actually not had any significant attraction towards any other children, nor do they after their molestation of the child in question. Further, they are most often relatives or friends of the child/parents, and so know the child well. (I've got a theory here...these people did not have a single bit of pedophilia in them, but something about this child makes their brain go *ping* and things go downhill from there.) So what's the statistical evidence on this?
This is an important thing to know. If your child is slight/significantly/astronomically more liklely to be molested by an individual who has not shown any prior-disposition to children in the past, and further, is likely already known and trusted by you (the parent) then the sexual offender databases and pink license plates serve as a tragic distraction from where the risk actually lies.
Anybody got any information out there?
These are not people that can be rehabilitated. Sex offenders have amongst the highest rates of recidivism.
Bah! Where do people get this info?? Sex offenders have some of the *lowest* rates of recidivism. Just google "sex offender recidivism" and you can parse the information yourself.
They're wired wrong. They're defective people. What society needs is to protect itself from these people.
There are many issues with that thinking, but simply going from a security aspect, it's not a good use of resources. A child is significantly more likely to be molested by an individual who has never had any previous sexual offense, either reported or unreported. Further, a child is astronomically (I use that word for a reason)more likely to be molested by an individual who is well known to the child and the family, is therefore trusted. The serial molester cases that the media like to drool over are rare and distracting us from more much more risky issues.
I think you wont disagree with the premise that we need to prevent/decrease cases of molestation, but if we know that it is most likely to occur from a person that has never offended, shown any signs of offending, and is trusted by the victim and their family, then clearly, we are approaching the problem from the wrong side of things.
And on a final note, I heard some sorta research (but can't locate) that there's about a 2% disposition toward child porn. That's 1/50 of Americans. In your book, that's quite a lot of people to lock up.
Because sex offenders can't be cured...from what I understand you can only teach them how to supress their urges.
The fact that they can't be cured is irrelevant. You have admitted that they can be taught to supress their urges. The most important thing for getting them back into society is making sure that they don't reoffend, and if you have their urges under control, that would seem to be a pretty good indicator that they are unlikely to re-offend.
Apparently, this is successful, because sex offenders have the lowest rates of recividism of any type of felon offender. (google "recividism sex offender" for info.)
Ford really didnt create any sort of major screen prescence and as such became a rather minor character with a penchant for towels.
I think it would be hard to argue that he is anything more than that in the book. He's a medium for jokes but Adams struggled to make him a really interesting presence (unlike Zaphod.)
I thought he was arguably better portrayed in this version than any other version. He was a quirky alien here.
Other things were just poorly done, for example, the babble fish. They actually do cut to the Guide to explain what a babblefish does, but totally skip the part about God disappearing in a puff of logic.
I disagree with this, I thought it was funny. the fish itself is cute and simultaneously sufficiently leech-like to be amusingly menacing.
I think the stuff about God disappearing in a puff of logic would have not made sense on the big screen.
I am inclined to agree with you regarding the whale (perhaps funnier if you showed things as if you were the whale seeing it...and then cut to shot of whale falling into mountain valley.)
One joke that falls flat in video form is the bowl of petunias. Funny to see it smash against HOG windscreen, but the rest of the joke is funny only in written form and radio form.
He IS paranoid, and - offtopic: sounds a bit of a nob.
The paranoia accusations were coming from colleagues in the security industry, which indicates to me a good chance that he's got a slight inferiority complex and is just doing a "my dick is bigger than yours" by going as over-the-top as possible on security and then bragging about it to the people most likely to care.
I should have added that those states were contributing servicemen to the army in proportions that exceeded that of their percentage of the US population.
But now all you have is middle-of-nowhere towns, built on industries that have long-since been shipped oversees. Leaving a vacuum filled with people who's only source of income is to send their kids into the military.
I am struggling to find this fact (last read in the Economist) but the top states for servicemen were New Jersey, California and Texas.
I'm not disagreeing that you have lots of servicemen come from rural areas...but, in addition, a lot more are 1st generation Americans, whose immigrant parents are not on solid financial footing, and are living in the blue states.
Unmentioned in the article is why the unlock code was hidden from him.
The Soviets were afraid of a defection, which would be possible if he could run the navigation system himself.
Actually I just didn't get around to making that point. 1967 was the year Ohio passed the mandatory photo license law (didn't actually hit until 1974...so yes, photos on credit cards were useful for general ID.
Something to ponder is that there was developing a system of privately issued photo ID, which the states than took over for themselves by adding the license photos. The need for privately issued ID disappeared afterwards.
Things could be very different otherwise.
I had relatives in Virginia who used to have their SSNs on their checks. It wasn't until the mid 90s (as I recall) that Virginia allowed individuals to have their driver's licenses issued with an ID number that was different from their SSN. (Don't know why Virginia took forever, but someone needs to track down the moron legislator who made the SSN the license ID number and give them a sharp kick in the ass.)
At any rate, in order to facilitate check usage, they put their driver's license number right onto the check, hence it was the SSN.
I would be really surprised if they still had SSNs on their checks. In the defense of my aunt and uncle, they both spent many years in the US Armed Forces, where the SSN is thrown around and printed on documents very freely (and also quite stupidly...I think that's something being corrected...any military peeps out there who can confirm on this?) So they were accustomed to their SSN being overused.