Jerralyn says:
Given the repeated failure of the FBI to get its act together regarding the documents in this case, our money is on a dismissal.
My paranoid question of the day: Is there reason to think that this is what the feds want?
Head over to Mike harris’ place and read Very Scary Shit About John Ashcroft from the February 2004 Vanity Fair.
Via Teresa Nielsen Hayden who also quotes a jiucy bit of the article and worries that Harris may have quoted too much (read ‘all’) of the original article.
RFIDs well probably be a positive thing for retail inventory management:
(London, UK – 18 February 2004) Exel, the global leader in supply chain management, has announced that it will embark on a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) project with House of Fraser, Britain’s leading department store group. The trial will represent one of the most advanced and ambitious projects in the industry as it will test the application of RFID across international supply chains.
The project will encompass individual products from House of Fraser’s own brand manufacturers in China. RFID tags will be attached directly to garments providing the scope to track shipment movements at item level. The tags enable automatic, real-time product visibility at any point in the supply chain.
This type of application is well underway in the US as well. In particular Wal-Mart has an agressive program.
Once these things proliferate everyone and their cousin will have RFID readers, for example: 1) your friendly border guard will quickly know that you are lying about the price of that nice coat from Canada; 2) on the positive (?) side the traffic cop could quickly know if there are stolen goods in the car she just stopped; 3) your neighbor will know that you bought that sweater at the dollar store not Nordstroms. We will all probably need to buy RFID zappers to kill the damn things once we take something out of the store.
Oh, and remember to pay cash so that your purchases can’t be tied back to your credit card. There is no point in feeding federal, state, local or business databases and giving the banks an automatic skim on everything that you buy.
Via White Rose.
Britsh home secretary david blunkett apparently drinks from the same cup as US attorney general john ashcroft. blunkett is proposing changes to British law that fly in the face of individual rights:
The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 allows foreigners who are suspected international terrorists to be detained indefinitely without charge or trial in the event their lives would be in danger if they were deported.
…….
Mr Blunkett wants to extend this so prosecutors can take action against suspected British extremists even though the evidence may not be strong enough to win a conviction under existing laws.
This may mean lowering the burden of proof in such cases from “beyond reasonable doubt” to what is acceptable in civil cases, “the balance of probabilities”
…..
Evidence in the new trials would be kept secret from the defendants …
…..
We have to have prevention under a new category which is to intervene before the act is committed, rather than do so by due process after the act is committed when it’s too late.
This may mean lowering the burden of proof in such cases from “beyond reasonable doubt” to what is acceptable in civil cases, “the balance of probabilities”.
None of this is acceptable under any circumstances whether applied to citizens or non-citizens.
When dealing with someones life or when justifying war “beyond a reasonable doubt” needs to be a minimum standard.
Via David Carr at Samizdata.
I have had little to say about the current democratic aspirants and probably won’t say much more until there are fewer to deal with.
However, anyone supporting a national ID card in this age of MATRIX and the PATRIOT ACt deserves a hot poker applied to some tender area of their anatomy.
Dean Campaign site:
I will nominate federal judges with outstanding legal credentials, records of professional excellence, and demonstrated commitment to the constitutional principles of equality, liberty, and privacy.
Fifteen months before Dean said he would seek the presidency, however, the former Vermont governor spoke at a conference in Pittsburgh co-sponsored by smart-card firm Wave Systems where he called for state drivers’ licenses to be transformed into a kind of standardized national ID card for Americans. Embedding smart cards into uniform IDs was necessary to thwart “cyberterrorism” and identity theft, Dean claimed. “We must move to smarter license cards that carry secure digital information that can be universally read at vital checkpoints,” Dean said in March 2002, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. “Issuing such a card would have little effect on the privacy of Americans.”
Dean also suggested that computer makers such as Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway and Sony should be required to include an ID card reader in PCs–and Americans would have to insert their uniform IDs into the reader before they could log on
A national ID card seems to be contrary to any meaningful idea of liberty and privacy.
Via Metafilter.