No, you can’t get it quite yet but here is much more then you ever wanted to know about the proposed UK national ID card.
You should read this as this discussion will be coming to the country where you live sooner rather then later.
The US National Security Agency apparently played a major role in the arrest of 9 folks in Britain and 1 in Canada on charges of planning a terrorist act and belonging to a terrorist group. The key: an intercepted email message:
“That’s the first admission I’ve actually seen that they actually monitor Internet traffic. I assumed they did, but no one ever admitted it,” Mr. Farber said.
Officials at the NSA could not be reached for comment. But U.S. authorities are uniquely positioned to monitor international Internet and telecommunications traffic because many of the world’s international gateways are located in their country. And once that electronic traffic touches an American computer — an e-mail message, a request for a website or an Internet-based phone call, for instance — it is routinely monitored by NSA spies.
“Foreign traffic that comes through the U.S. is subject to U.S. laws, and the NSA has a perfect right to monitor all Internet traffic,” said Mr. Farber, who has also been a technical adviser to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
Uhhh, no they do not have that right and to the extent that there are laws allowing this behavior they need to be severly curtailed if not eliminated. There is too great an opportunity for abuse and, at minimum, these searches should not be allowed without probable cause. This does not appear to be the case at NSA.
Frankly, I would have expected Farber, who sits on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to express a little more concern about this.
The Age has some suggestions for warding off door-to-door sales folks of all varieties. For instance:
If Witnesses, Mormons, and other evangelists, such as mobile phone salespeople, provided some notice then things would be different. Forewarned, you could answer the door wearing a Charles Manson T-shirt, carrying a copy of Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law in one hand and a dead chicken in the other, with Alice Cooper’s Welcome To My Nightmare blaring out of the stereo. Or you could answer the door dressed as a Teletubbie, gently cradling a tissue box full of chopped liver. Either strategy would work.
There more, enjoy.
Via The Pagan Prattle.
My response to this plan by a bunch of Vancouver, BC., nightclubs would be to vote with my money and go elsewhere:
Bar patrons in Vancouver will soon have to swipe their drivers’ licences and have their photographs taken every time they enter a club or bar that is a Barwatch member.
A lot of these places probably have security cameras already so a good part of the privacy issue may be moot.
And, I’m not arguing that these establishments should not be able to do this. As private businesses they can set the terms under which they will operate.
I am not interested in having my personal information residing in the hands of a bunch of bar owners that I have no reason to trust, whose internal security is suspect and who might share this information with 3rd parties without my approval.
Oh yea, remember to use cash instead of debit/credit cards as often as possible. No point filling anyone’s database with information about yourself or in giving the banking industry a cut of your transaction.
Via Arguing with signposts…
At Talkleft Jeralyn Merritt asks:
As to the library records, if none have been requested in the aftermath of 9/11, why does the Government need the power to get them?
A few points:
1) Sure, lack of use is a reason to strike this from the books. But why exempt just library records?
2) ashcroft’s statement speaks only to library records which are the most visible issue but not the only things that Section 215 subject to star chamber searches:may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities
3) The no use argument obscures the more basic issue: this power should never have been enacted into law. Something is broken in a system that even allows such a proposal to see the light of day.
And Jacob Sullum gets Zero Reassurance from ashcroft’s ‘no use’ assertion. Sullum notes:
the government is making liberal use of another PATRIOT Act provision with even looser requirements. Under Section 505, the Justice Department, including FBI field offices, can issue “national security letters” demanding telephone, Internet, credit, and bank records. This power has been used enough times in the last two years to fill a five-page, blacked-out list obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act.
There is a lot more objectionable stuff in the patriot act. Let’s just scrap the whole thing except for maybe Section 600 which deals with ‘providing for victems’ which should have been handled separately anyway.