It started mostly by clubs on the east coast, and they were really getting noticed when they sold the information to 3rd parties or directly themselves sent patrons "Happy Birthday" and discount patron cards and such. This is DANGEROUS, especially since some states may have little or no encryption in their cards.
Encryption isn't really an issue here. Just the name, address and date is potentially of use to criminals.
Either have multiple IDs for different purposes, or have one ID that basically works with anything, at the slight risk of providing a bit of extra information about yourself.
Problem is that there are various entities, including quite a few governments, who very much like the idea of "one ID for everything". As well as lesser problems such "overloading" and using documents intended for one thing for a different purpose. Most commonly treating a "machine operator's permit" as an identity document.
Thankfully, Canada's PIPEDA privacy law now makes it illegal for them to deny providing you a service because you didn't provide personal information unrelated to the essential requirements for the service.
How long before a government passing a sensible (and apparently needed law) becomes newsworthy?
Exactly! First the state requires me to have an ID to drive a car then they print my Social Security Number and birthdate on the ID. With these two numbers anyone can mail off a fake a credit card application and get a card in my name.
The interesting thing is that the first number should be utterly irrelevent to both driving on public roads or applying for a credit card. With the second number only being relevent to the extent of showing you are over some specific age.
Then to top it all off, I'm expected to show this information to everyone from employers, any police officer, any security person, shop clerks who need to verify I'm really me, and even the bouncers at the local pub. This is insane!
It's insane because only (some) police officers have anything to do with regulating driving on public roads. (Possibly your employer if your job explicitally involves driving.) It's very insane when the activity involves purchase (and drinking) of alcohol, since this is an activity mutually exclusive with driving.
The "ways of sharing" is more important. You need to be able to stream the video to a server where it is kept for at least 2 weeks before any deletion is even possible. That way, even if you're arrested, the phone is smashed, and they find out your password, they won't be *able* to delete the video without your consent.
Or even several (mirrored) servers in several countries. Do you even need a "delete" option?
I definitely will back this up. There are several videos where Tasers are tested on volunteers. Every single documented testing that I have come across has reported that recovery from a taser comes within seconds after the default 5 seconds of shock.
Someone volunteering to have a weapon tested on them (in a safe environment) is hardly the same as encountering a gang of thugs wielding the same weapon...
The officers in this video are either the dumbest cops in the world, to repediately brutalize that young man not only on video but with literally dozens of witnesses. Or they think that because of the uniform they wear, that they are above the law.
Being a police officer does to some extent appear to place people above the law. There's also the problem that you can hardly "call the cops" if the police are misbehaving. They also tend to be far better armed than regular people. Even if the crowd could have made a sucessful "citizens' arrest" there's still the problem that they'd have to hand the prisoners over to regular police.
I'm really growing weary of seeing good cops lose their jobs when they defend themselves. Recently in Austin, while trying to serve a warrant, a 250 lb man attacked the police officer (175 lb), had him on the ground and was on top of him. His partner, 120 lb female, shot and killed the attacker. She lost her job.
As opposed to being arrested, held in custody and subject to a criminal trial. Which could easily lose someone their job even if they are totally aquitted. There are also cases where police officers have literally got away with murder.
The constitution grants the copyright holder exclusive control over distribution.
Actually the US Constitution grants copyright holders absolutly nothing. Instead it grants the US Federal Government the right to pass laws regarding what we now call "intellectual property".
It is interesting to me that the USA is one of the worlds most influential christian nations, and one of the few countries on earth with a constitutional separation between church and state.
Excuse me, that should read corporate intersts. Living in America, I don't see the continuos expansion of copyright law benifitting any American.
Possibly "American Corporate Interests". Though many large corporations are effectivly stateless, or even having power over national governments. One thing about recent copyright laws is that they don't appear to be very useful to the "little guy".
The US was going to cancel the visa-waiver scheme to nations that DID NOT include biometric information on passports by Oct 26th 2006. So the UK government had to choose between choking up US-UK travel for millions of people or rushing a minimal-requirements biometric ID scheme in.
Thing is that the majority of UK citizens travelling abroad are likely to be going to somewhere other than the US. Requiring those who did to get a visa would have mostly impacted the US. Especially if it resulted in people either going elsewhere or staying home.
Given the economic consequences of making *every single passenger* travelling from the UK to the US apply for a visa, it didn't have much choice.
Economic consequences primarily for the US you really don't think that the visa-waiver scheme was altruistic...
Telling them to 'stick it' is fun, but not that practical.
But having everyone who needed a passport having to pay twice as much for one is? Including people who'd still need a visa anyway!
Even if people were to succeed in faking it, a criminal (let's not go down the terrorist route for once) wouldn't be able to erase his old identity from the books without deep inside help, which would probably be noticed by too many people.
Police and spooks will want the ability to implant in-obvious false identities. Unless such a system is specifically designed to be highly resistant to "insiders" it's only a matter of time before infiltration by both criminals and foreign "intelligence".
That's the problem with security theather, once it looks like you're doing something about the problem, you don't need to try anymore. If enough of the sheeple (even elected leaders and "experts" can fall under this category) think that what is in place is good enough then it becomes near impossible to get true flaws fixed. It becomes compounded when the theater starts making arrests, no matter how asinine, because then the 'actors' point to those arrests to say "See? It works!"
Also if it "fails" these same people will tend to claim that more of the same is needed. i.e. more snooping, curtailment of civil liberties, etc. (Of course if what is being done is actually reducing security a positive feedback loop is established.)
I do not mind a little security theater but I would like to get the feeling that there is someone out there who is doing some actual security.
At best "security theater" makes no difference to actually security. In practice it is most likely to weaken actually security, if only by wasting limited resources.
No, none of them used invalid identification, each and every one had completely valid passports from their home countries and completely valid US visas in them.
Actually we know for a fact that several of the alleged hijackers were not even on the planes. Since they turned up alive after the event. In effect we know very little about the identities, even numbers of actual terrorists.
I had the impression that the 911 terrorists had valid ID, but I haven't read the 911 commssion report...
Several of the alleged hijackers turned up alive and well. The US authorities didn't exatcly mention this because it didn't really square with their Bin Laden Conspiracy Theory. But like many other supporters of daft conspiracy theories the Neocons didn't want the facts to get in the way of their claims.
You need to read printed details to get access to the RFID. Sure, you can pick-pocket the passport, read what you need and then clone the RFID - but then you could just pick-pocket an old fashioned passport and spy-camera the page. But I can't pwn your life just by standing next to you on the tube.
The point is that the RFID dosn't actually make a passport harder to duplicate. But it does identify which person is carrying one and which pocket it is in. The result is a decrease in actual security.
You may think that a non party political system is a panacea - it isn't - it winds up being worse than a dictatorship because you just don't know who you're going to end up having in government or what their policies will be after each general election.
Often you don't know what the policies of a government will be. Once the election's over there is nothing ensuring that the winner actually has to do what they claimed in their manifesto (and only that).
A strict reading of the constitution shows that the Feds are allowed to regulate "Commerce...among the several States," in other words, actual interstate commerce and not "anything that affects interstate commerce."
When did the US Government last actually do this? Anyway "regulate" in this context may actually mean "make regular"... (The common usage of words can change over time, even if their dictionary definition remains the same.)
Fundamentally, it is hard to think of any activity that does not affect some kind of interstate commerce, giving the Feds unlimited authority by the reasoning of the supremes.
Including reading things effectivly backwards, since the 10th Ammendment should supercede the "Commerce Clause". Let alone some of the creative interpretations of "commerce".
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It started mostly by clubs on the east coast, and they were really getting noticed when they sold the information to 3rd parties or directly themselves sent patrons "Happy Birthday" and discount patron cards and such. This is DANGEROUS, especially since some states may have little or no encryption in their cards.
Encryption isn't really an issue here. Just the name, address and date is potentially of use to criminals.
Any idea if it would even be legal for them to scan and store a military ID card?
It probably wouldn't matter if it was. It's generally a bad idea to annoy well armed people...
Either have multiple IDs for different purposes, or have one ID that basically works with anything, at the slight risk of providing a bit of extra information about yourself.
Problem is that there are various entities, including quite a few governments, who very much like the idea of "one ID for everything". As well as lesser problems such "overloading" and using documents intended for one thing for a different purpose. Most commonly treating a "machine operator's permit" as an identity document.
Thankfully, Canada's PIPEDA privacy law now makes it illegal for them to deny providing you a service because you didn't provide personal information unrelated to the essential requirements for the service.
How long before a government passing a sensible (and apparently needed law) becomes newsworthy?
I frequently give out my address when websites ask for it. Well, actually I give a fake address in a different country,
One possible way to do things is give an apparently valid address which does not exist...
earn at least $5000000 per year, and happen to be at least 90.
And probably have the odd PhD.
Exactly! First the state requires me to have an ID to drive a car then they print my Social Security Number and birthdate on the ID. With these two numbers anyone can mail off a fake a credit card application and get a card in my name.
The interesting thing is that the first number should be utterly irrelevent to both driving on public roads or applying for a credit card. With the second number only being relevent to the extent of showing you are over some specific age.
Then to top it all off, I'm expected to show this information to everyone from employers, any police officer, any security person, shop clerks who need to verify I'm really me, and even the bouncers at the local pub. This is insane!
It's insane because only (some) police officers have anything to do with regulating driving on public roads. (Possibly your employer if your job explicitally involves driving.) It's very insane when the activity involves purchase (and drinking) of alcohol, since this is an activity mutually exclusive with driving.
The "ways of sharing" is more important. You need to be able to stream the video to a server where it is kept for at least 2 weeks before any deletion is even possible. That way, even if you're arrested, the phone is smashed, and they find out your password, they won't be *able* to delete the video without your consent.
Or even several (mirrored) servers in several countries. Do you even need a "delete" option?
I definitely will back this up. There are several videos where Tasers are tested on volunteers. Every single documented testing that I have come across has reported that recovery from a taser comes within seconds after the default 5 seconds of shock.
Someone volunteering to have a weapon tested on them (in a safe environment) is hardly the same as encountering a gang of thugs wielding the same weapon...
The officers in this video are either the dumbest cops in the world, to repediately brutalize that young man not only on video but with literally dozens of witnesses. Or they think that because of the uniform they wear, that they are above the law.
Being a police officer does to some extent appear to place people above the law. There's also the problem that you can hardly "call the cops" if the police are misbehaving. They also tend to be far better armed than regular people. Even if the crowd could have made a sucessful "citizens' arrest" there's still the problem that they'd have to hand the prisoners over to regular police.
I'm really growing weary of seeing good cops lose their jobs when they defend themselves. Recently in Austin, while trying to serve a warrant, a 250 lb man attacked the police officer (175 lb), had him on the ground and was on top of him. His partner, 120 lb female, shot and killed the attacker. She lost her job.
As opposed to being arrested, held in custody and subject to a criminal trial. Which could easily lose someone their job even if they are totally aquitted.
There are also cases where police officers have literally got away with murder.
The constitution grants the copyright holder exclusive control over distribution.
Actually the US Constitution grants copyright holders absolutly nothing. Instead it grants the US Federal Government the right to pass laws regarding what we now call "intellectual property".
AFAIK, here in the UK, the loser always pays the winner's legal fees as one way of reducing the number of frivolous suits we have.
IIRC it isn't "always" and the costs awarded may be less than the actual fees.
It is interesting to me that the USA is one of the worlds most influential christian nations, and one of the few countries on earth with a constitutional separation between church and state.
It's called "irony"...
Maybe a muslim president would succeed in severing our ubmilical relationship with Israel.
As would an atheist, even (ironically) an Ultra Orthodox Jew...
Excuse me, that should read corporate intersts. Living in America, I don't see the continuos expansion of copyright law benifitting any American.
Possibly "American Corporate Interests". Though many large corporations are effectivly stateless, or even having power over national governments.
One thing about recent copyright laws is that they don't appear to be very useful to the "little guy".
The US was going to cancel the visa-waiver scheme to nations that DID NOT include biometric information on passports by Oct 26th 2006. So the UK government had to choose between choking up US-UK travel for millions of people or rushing a minimal-requirements biometric ID scheme in.
Thing is that the majority of UK citizens travelling abroad are likely to be going to somewhere other than the US. Requiring those who did to get a visa would have mostly impacted the US. Especially if it resulted in people either going elsewhere or staying home.
Given the economic consequences of making *every single passenger* travelling from the UK to the US apply for a visa, it didn't have much choice.
Economic consequences primarily for the US you really don't think that the visa-waiver scheme was altruistic...
Telling them to 'stick it' is fun, but not that practical.
But having everyone who needed a passport having to pay twice as much for one is? Including people who'd still need a visa anyway!
Even if people were to succeed in faking it, a criminal (let's not go down the terrorist route for once) wouldn't be able to erase his old identity from the books without deep inside help, which would probably be noticed by too many people.
Police and spooks will want the ability to implant in-obvious false identities. Unless such a system is specifically designed to be highly resistant to "insiders" it's only a matter of time before infiltration by both criminals and foreign "intelligence".
That's the problem with security theather, once it looks like you're doing something about the problem, you don't need to try anymore. If enough of the sheeple (even elected leaders and "experts" can fall under this category) think that what is in place is good enough then it becomes near impossible to get true flaws fixed. It becomes compounded when the theater starts making arrests, no matter how asinine, because then the 'actors' point to those arrests to say "See? It works!"
Also if it "fails" these same people will tend to claim that more of the same is needed. i.e. more snooping, curtailment of civil liberties, etc. (Of course if what is being done is actually reducing security a positive feedback loop is established.)
I do not mind a little security theater but I would like to get the feeling that there is someone out there who is doing some actual security.
At best "security theater" makes no difference to actually security. In practice it is most likely to weaken actually security, if only by wasting limited resources.
No, none of them used invalid identification, each and every one had completely valid passports from their home countries and completely valid US visas in them.
Actually we know for a fact that several of the alleged hijackers were not even on the planes. Since they turned up alive after the event. In effect we know very little about the identities, even numbers of actual terrorists.
I had the impression that the 911 terrorists had valid ID, but I haven't read the 911 commssion report...
Several of the alleged hijackers turned up alive and well. The US authorities didn't exatcly mention this because it didn't really square with their Bin Laden Conspiracy Theory. But like many other supporters of daft conspiracy theories the Neocons didn't want the facts to get in the way of their claims.
Back-off is reasonable except then someone just wanders through Heathrow spamming passports with their 10m-range RFID reader and then nobody flies.
Or leave RFID jammers on timers around the place. Harder to detect than a bomb and potentially far more disruptive.
You need to read printed details to get access to the RFID. Sure, you can pick-pocket the passport, read what you need and then clone the RFID - but then you could just pick-pocket an old fashioned passport and spy-camera the page. But I can't pwn your life just by standing next to you on the tube.
The point is that the RFID dosn't actually make a passport harder to duplicate. But it does identify which person is carrying one and which pocket it is in. The result is a decrease in actual security.
You may think that a non party political system is a panacea - it isn't - it winds up being worse than a dictatorship because you just don't know who you're going to end up having in government or what their policies will be after each general election.
Often you don't know what the policies of a government will be. Once the election's over there is nothing ensuring that the winner actually has to do what they claimed in their manifesto (and only that).
A strict reading of the constitution shows that the Feds are allowed to regulate "Commerce ...among the several States," in other words, actual interstate commerce and not "anything that affects interstate commerce."
When did the US Government last actually do this? Anyway "regulate" in this context may actually mean "make regular"... (The common usage of words can change over time, even if their dictionary definition remains the same.)
Fundamentally, it is hard to think of any activity that does not affect some kind of interstate commerce, giving the Feds unlimited authority by the reasoning of the supremes.
Including reading things effectivly backwards, since the 10th Ammendment should supercede the "Commerce Clause". Let alone some of the creative interpretations of "commerce".