MacRonin sends us to the Washington Post for a story about the FBI's plans for a large biometric identification database. The Post also has a chart detailing the characteristics of the different methods of identification. We discussed the ethics of a similar situation a few months ago. Quoting the Post:
"Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law."
It really amazes me how everybody seems to think that more information is key, whereas I think that *better* information is key. Datamining really is an advanced way of searching for the needle in that haystack and if you throw tons of non-relevant data in there you've just made your job that much harder. The big trick is to try to increase the quality of the data without missing important bits. Trawling all the grandmothers credit card transactions is not going to increase the S/N ratio.
The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.
Orwell was an optimist. The slide into complete loss of privacy, personal liberties, and any chance at atonement for making mistakes, intentional or otherwise, is far more insidious then he ever dreamed — and it is going to be far more complete than he imagined. Our country stands for nothing; we are powerless to change anything; the politicians and their lapdog agencies run rampant. I am ashamed.
From your post:
if you throw tons of non-relevant data in there you've just made your job that much harder.
The data is relevant, don't kid yourself. Your retina print, fingerprints, blood type, genetic details... what tracking these things in this way really means is a profound hardening of classes; felons will always be felons, that time you got caught throwing toilet paper on the courthouse will never, ever come off your record, your political affiliations in college will always, always constrain your future job opportunities and more.
A society that cannot forgive is a society that is lost, as far as I am concerned. A society that marks people specifically so that it can class them has reached the approximate social level of pond scum. There is little - if any - difference between the stars the Jews were forced to wear and a database that marks an individual for an infraction they have long ago atoned for. If the thesis is that one can never atone for an error, mis-step or intentional antisocial act, then it is flawed to begin with.
None of which will stop, or even slow down, this trend. When every liberty is up for trading in return for a claim of improved security, when every freedom is deemed too risky to the body politic, when every over-stated threat causes the public to whimper and keep their children locked inside, the Rubicon has well and truly been crossed. Felons! Terrorists! Pedophiles! Pornography! Drugs! None of these "threats" do a fraction of the damage as the "solutions" America has come to, and is working towards.
The problem with all this information is that you don't know who is behind it, and who is controlling it.
It's a big disappointment to me how the USA has gone on from a sort of example for the rest of the world, to becoming more and more like Russia in the 80's.
It is interesting to note that Total Information Awareness (TIA) components were well underway long before the events of 9/11/01 in America. Whether the FBI renames Carnivore to something else, the way the TIA was stealthily renamed and distributed (the illegal wiretapping of the nation within the first month of the Bush administration, the privatization of intel operations [now spread beyond 70 private contractors with online inputs to the Bushies], the privatization of Comsat leading to the National Applications Office, the final dot in the array - the use of satellites to spy overall on the American citizenry) among a variety of components, with inputs from NSA, NGA, etc., everything is now assembled and in place for TOTAL CONTROL. The Corporate Fascist State has won, end of story.....
Want change? Vote Ron Paul in the republican nomination.
Assuming he can be elected - which is a stretch - having gotten to the post, he'll be able to end the Iraq war. He'll be able to modify a fair amount of our foreign policy, this is an area that a president has a fair amount of autonomy in. However, with a comprised-as-usual congress and senate, most of the rest of the effect he will be able to have will consist of fireside chats with the public; even vetos will be easily defeated by politicia
So you know he's not electable, so what's the point of voting for him? Especially when you end with the line "Good for healthcare; bad for everything else."
The point of voting for him is to get the Iraq war over; to have a president that will engage the public in four years of constitutionally grounded dialog; to have a president that will act with honor and integrity; to have a president that will act to undo the executive orders that the previous ones have inflicted upon us; to have a president th
Please stop with the Ron Paul crap. The only thing I can figure about the Ron Paul fascination is that he is different and that is how far the bar has been lowered. He is not John Jackson or Jack Johnson (to quote Futurama), so people are flocking to him. The problem is, he is a die hard libertarian and naive to boot. Someone who believes that the government should be sold off in a fire sale because corporations with a profit-motive can provide those services cheaper and better is naive at best. Not th
I disagree, I think real change will start with something very simple, no more campaign financing by corporations. Not a cent. Government for the PEOPLE.
Would you tell people giving you millions of dollars to stop it?... as long as I'm rich and my kids are rich, the country doesn't matter.
You realize, right, that the bookeeping of large, publicly traded corporations is (thanks to measures like SarbOx) under incredible public scrutiny? And that a public official doesn't just take a check from a company and deposit it in his personal account. Donations go to their campaigns - and those are in very small amounts (Exxon can't write a million-dollar check d
The funny thing is, the person who recommended Ron Paul actually believes that there is something called "democracy" operating in America today. Seriously, all elections, at least going back to Eisenhower, have been bought (probably even earlier, for all I know).
Now Joe Kennedy obviously purchased his son's presidential election utilizing the help of Mafia elements, Texas oilmen, etc., but John either didn't get the memo or ignored his father and worked primarily on behalf of the citizenry.
How can you be so sure that one's political affiliations "will always, always" have an impact on their life? To use such strong words one needs facts, and I am really sorry, but you don't have any.
Because they're looking to collect, and unify, all the information about each citizen. Fact: they're trying to use national ID cards to pin your identity down; Fact: they're trying to use databases to track your biometrics and link them to the cards; Fact: Our affiliations (political and otherwise) are being tracked by both government agencies and by commercial enterprises - and have been for years, just ask those poor bastards in 1950's Hollywood who got hauled up before McCarthy; this is nothing new. Fact: Watching these elections, what do we see but people's college behaviors and affiliations dragged up out of the blue? Hillary roomed with lesbians. Oooo! What about people who are trying to pursue normal lives and suddenly "wikipedia has a FELON as a CFO!", where the hell did that come from, and why is it even relevant? Did she screw up her work? No. Was she even accused of doing anything wrong? No. It's just past behavior being brought up to haunt current life and lock someone into a role they may very well have no part in. You can't be rehabilitated, you're low class and you will STAY low class. You don't think tracking is going on? Called Experian or one of its brethren lately? Seen your FBI file? Are you aware of the no-fly, no-buy, no-bank-account lists, all sans anything even remotely resembling due process? Think your email is private? When's the last time you transacted more than 10 grand at the bank? Do you realize that each of those transactions gets reported to the feds, and yes indeed, TRACKED? Talked to anyone overseas? Think that call wasn't monitored for keywords? Carnivore ring a bell? How about Echelon? Are you one of those clueless folk who think your SSN was used only for your retirement, as promised?
Buddy, the only reason you're "really sorry" is because you've got your head deep in the sand. But I agree, you are one sorry excuse for an informed person. You can fix it, though.
What's even worse, you base your argument upon speculation, which most of the time includes gross oversimplifications of societal matters.
No, I base my arguments upon facts in the record. Current and recent behaviors and data; basically ince3 the early 1900s until today, you can see all manner of problems that are government related. Everything I talked about there is objective fact. There's plenty more where that came from, too.
It is absurd to think that there is one unified entity which works toward a certain goal, and that entity includes everyone that is in charge of anything important for a society.
Yes. Why would you think that? Are you paranoid? It is a very large collection of traitors, bent upon sundering the constitution either knowingly or otherwise. They aren't an "organization", they are an unaffiliated collection of people with similar goals and similar methods. This doesn't make them any easier to deal with, in fact, it makes it considerably more difficult.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot one thing. "Orwell was indeed an optimist." I mean, come on.
You didn't "forget it", you just aren't together enough to see it. With your head as far in the sand as it is, this comes as no surprise. You should read 1984. Carefully. Then look around you and note the low level preparations going on. The camps [prisonplanet.com] built by the administration's bully-boys, Haliburton. The executive orders that revoke posse comitatus [concordbridge.net], you know about that, right? You know how the commerce clause has been mangled to mean "anything that COULD be be interstate comm
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday December 22 2007, @03:14PM (#21792688)
Hopefully you're trolling, but sadly a lot of people actually believe that.
What they fail to comprehend is that the "criminal" element is just as evenly dispersed among government jobs as among the rest of society. When you create a huge power differential between those holding certain government jobs and the rest of us, you are empowering the criminals on that side as well as the good people on that side.
This is what happens when you try to pre-assign people "goodness" ratings based on what job they hold. You end up with a subset of vastly overpowered criminals (granted power by the laws themselves) and no net decrease in what we commonly regard as criminal behavior (killing, theft, fraud, etc.).
The only sane way to assign arbitrary power to law enforcers is to maintain constant oversight of them, in a circular fashion -- the police watch the citizens, the citizens watch a police oversight body, and the police oversight body watches the police. That we neglect to do this is a serious mistake, and it results in a police force that behaves like it can get away with anything ethical or unethical (and often does).
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday December 22 2007, @04:23PM (#21793156)
What they fail to comprehend is that the "criminal" element is just as evenly dispersed among government jobs as among the rest of society.
As a member of the general public, I take umbrage with that statement. I'm convinced that there is a far greater representation of the criminal element in modern government (at least, in "elected" and appointed office) than in the rest of society. The same can be said of the business executive level.
When you create a huge power differential between those holding certain government jobs and the rest of us, you are empowering the criminals on that side
Exactly. And that is what I think attracts people with criminal tendencies to government office and to business executive. The power and potential rewards are so great as to act like a magnet to people with criminal tendencies.
This is definitely something scary. Many employers might require you to hand over your prints to the FBI - but at the same time, you don't exactly want government to have everything on you if haven't committed a crime.
Wasn't their a bill which was designed to prohibit enforceable gathering of biometric data by employers?
The FBI already retains fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks, at least for companies registered with the SEC. What may be new is the retention for other employers.
The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.
You can get arrested for anything these days and now the FBI is going to become your employers watchdog? I've seen some dickish, big brother behavior since 9-11 but this tops the suck pyramid.
Yeah, and if you're arrested by mistake or acquitted after trial, no one will care. They'll just see some entry in the FBIs database and assume the worst. I think there should be some way that someone who's been falsely accused to get some compensation for not being able to work ever again. Let's face it, if you have any sort of criminal record - true or false - you can never get a job, loan, etc... your life is in effect ruined. And this database will make that much easier for it to be done.
The thing is, this is less about national security than it is about risk avoidance.
Companies that do business with people, and organizations that hire people, wish to avoid risk. In principle, this is just an extension of the way the American credit system works. There, your entire financial history is available to anyone that wants to decide if you can be trusted. It used to be, the deadbeat customer was a normal cost of doing business. In today's world, companies large and small have the credit bureaus to track us for them. However, at least there if you keep your nose clean and wait enough years, your past misdeeds will no longer haunt you. Expect that limit to be removed at some point, because obviously people that can't handle money well are threats to national security.
Make no mistake, the underlying sponsors of this unConstitutional boloney are corporate. From the extension of copyrights to longer credit histories to biometric tracking, this is all about the corporate world wanting to minimize its exposure to risk. The fact that it plays right into the hands of certain power hungry politicians and their appointed/unelected officials is just unfortunate for us.
Isn't this a classic definition of fascism ? I mean the government being a puppet of firm & corporation ? Because if I read that right, this more or less means the FBI suddenly become a special police specifically helping policing employee of corporation... I could be wrong on the definition, though...
Would this mean you can also see when your boss gets hauled up - even if no charges are brought, or he/she is acquitted?
First of all, it'll allow you to see, at the interview stage, if you'll be working for a bunch of crooks.
Second, if companies do start to take "brushes with the law" into account for career advancement, it sounds like a relative in law-enforcement could be the fast track to promotion.
You don't have to work for an employer who decides to use these new services offered by the FBI. That still meets your "survivability" criteria that you think I somehow neglected to take into account.
Sigh. Another "rugged individualist" who doesn't understand how careers work in the real world economy. For any kind of professional career, people have to train for years to get into it. Most industries are designed and regulated so that it is nearly impossible to break into them as an entrepeneur. If you weren't in the industry when it was new or being newly regulated (for example, you weren't alive then), you don't have much of a choice but to work for someone.
Also, real people, no matter who they are, are only good at a limited number of things. A person who is a whiz in chemistry may stink at things like real estate or home repair. You could start a home improvement company or become a real estate agent, but that's not really an option for most people. Plus, you would basically be asking someone like Einstein to drive a truck for a living (although people like you would probably get their jollies off of such a possibility).
The point you are missing is that a decent society does not make the options:
1. Work for FBI-shilling, oppressive company
2. Throw away years of education and expertise, and go work in some field that you are not very good at and that you hate
3. Starve
Chemistry is a good example of what I am talking about. It takes years and a ton of work to get a masters degree in chemistry. You don't have much choice but to work for one of the big companies. Even if you want to start up a small business in one of the chemical areas, you still need some years of experience in the field. Otherwise, you won't know how the real business works, you won't have any contacts to get your business going, and so on. This is true in most professional and technical fields.
Also, in cases like this in actual reality (as opposed to this bizarre one you have concocted from your imbecilic ideologies), there will be no employer that doesn't use and contribute to the FBI database. It will become an "industry standard" practice and there no company will see enough profit in not complying to justify abandoning (or never beginning) this practice. This sort of thing is common and only a drooling idealist would believe otherwise.
Clearly they are getting a headstart by treating all visitors to America as suspects: getting your eyes scanned and both index fingers printed is no kind of "welcome". A few years ago it was a completely different experience.
And this is exactly what bothers me so much about the U.S. government these days. I'm an American, and even though I don't know you I wish you could visit the country without be treated like a dangerous felon.
We (Americans) are really not all bad. As it turns out most of us dislike the current government, too. It's just that, well, we have a fairly large population of over-religious farmers who tend to vote for all the wrong people. And thus sh*t like this is allowed to happen.
And this is exactly what bothers me so much about the U.S. government these days. I'm an American, and even though I don't know you I wish you could visit the country without be treated like a dangerous felon.
Well, there is a philosophical conflict raging here. There's obviously people who want to get into the US to perform terrorist acts. This leaves us with 3 choices:
1. Screen every visitor carefully
2. Screen only "suspicious" people (profiling based on religion, etc. and is often considered "racist".)
Other countries don't have terrorist problems (yet), and so they don't have to perform intrusive procedures.
Under what rock have you been living?
I am not convinced that we are any less safe now then we were a decade or so ago, just much more paranoid. It really says something when a nation of immigrants is deceived into thinking they need to bar foreigners.
A philosophical conflict? How about a conflict of overdramatized, highly unlikely fearmongering juxtaposed against the loss of civil liberties? The latter seems to be the specific problem.
Living freely includes risk. The problem here is that many people have little or no understanding of the freedoms they had, how hard they were fought for and how unusual it is that they had them in the first place. Most troubling is the fact that they had no clue how easy it was to lose them, and now that they have been lost, recovery is much, much more difficult.
As far as I am concerned, when a criminal - be they terrorist, mugger or politician disobeying the constitution - commits an antisocial act, that criminal should be held accountable for that crime. If the crime is large, the accounting should be large. If society can accept that the crime has been atoned for, then the criminal should get a fresh start. If society cannot accept this, then the criminal should be either put to death or imprisoned permanently. In no case should bystanders or citizens not even involved on any level be inconvenienced by actions nominally taken to ameliorate the criminal act. Sure, this approach involves risk. I prefer the risk. We are a better people when we accept risk in exchange for liberty than when we trade liberty for any illusion of safety gained by treating everyone as if they were a potential criminal.
Hi, Don't worry, I can tell the difference between individual Americans and the US govt!
My major client is a large US investment bank and has been for over a decade. American individuals and corporations are fine (well I guess I've met a few bad ones, but in fact mainly of non-US origin strangely), but the 'security theatre' rhetoric of marking all foreigners as potential rapists^Wterrorists is just stupid and pisses off natural friends of the US.
No, I don't trust our (UK) govt with all my sensitive data ei
It's just that, well, we have a fairly large population of over-religious farmers who tend to vote for all the wrong people.
That's funny, every demographic I've ever seen says that between 1 and 2 percent of the US population either lives on a farm or considers farming their occupation. One to two percent of the population has very little sway over the outcome of our national elections.
You go ahead and keep telling yourself that "it's some farmer in the midwest" screwing it all up, though; especially the next time you drive through Florida.
Right now on the US National political scene, it would seem that the default "heir" to the Bush/Cheney ideology of fear is Rudolph Giuliani. What city was he mayor of, again? Are there a lot of farmers living in Manhattan?
Oh wait, I must have been confused; it's Illinois where a lot of farmers live, and their state has given us Senator Obama in the Presidential contender line-up.
Please, if you're going to generalize about the American population, try to generalize in a way that makes sense. Here you're telling our foreign friend "hey look, we Americans are cooler than we might appear", yet then you generalize about "farmers". Nice.
The Japanese government is even worse. They now fingerprint, photograph, and question visitors and returning residents not only when they first enter the country, but again during all subsequent re-entries [debito.org] . And this is in addition to the mandatory re-entry permits (3000 yen fee!), mandatory registration of non-citizens at their local city hall, and mandatory carrying of Alien Registration Cards on one's person at all times. Don't think you're free to wander about the country after your ordeal with immi
This, [eggmann.blog.is] while maybe exageratted(probably not, but I have to give the benefit of the doubt as this is just a one sided view) makes me very sad to live here. The spirit of the law is a dream of the past.
"And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk"...
It's a great way to profit from the coming federal contracts! It doesn't matter to them that the "Science" was debunked a century ago... We'll dress it up with some new buzzwords and make millions!
10 year contracts are not common for software projects in the federal government. 10 years of engineering and support is a serious undertaking by a major federal agency. Taking this down will require a similarly serious effort if people are serious about pursuing that.
you will find that the majority of americans won't be disturbed by this. there are some who will use this as proof that most americans are morons. as if insulting the average citizen is supposed to win you any points in the battle against big/ intrusive government, oh great genius?
no, the average american won't care, because the average american, when given news like this, doesn't see a big downside to this. when told the downside to this as displayed here in some posts, they will think the average slashdot poster has been watching too many paranoid hollywood movies
now give my troll mod for not toeing the party line here
The average person will simply think the government is doing more to look out for *them*.
A few false arrests and multi-year imprisonments because of a software bug or flaw in the biometric database? Just the price to be paid for security.
That particular way of thinking sickens me, but it's quite prevalent. Many people (my mother included) would far rather see 10 innocents imprisoned than one guilty man go free. Because they're terrorists or something.
I try to explain that I know have Iranian family on my father's side and next time it could be me that's falsely accused of associating with and aiding people (incorrectly) thought to be terrorists. But that doesn't seem to get through, that there could ever be a mistake. Somewhere in the back of a lot of folks minds there's this strong conviction that mistakes like that just don't happen, despite multiple high profile examples to the contrary, and even if they do, it doesn't matter because they don't think it can happen to them. Because why would it? I'm a good person, why would the government arrest me?
At that point I usually give up trying to argue and go back to mourning the state of the world. No, it doesn't win me any points, realising that the average person is about as questioning of authority as a faithful puppy, it is unfortunately the true state of the world though.
I guess since the FBI has previously demonstrated its prowess in implementing technology projects, with (inter alia) the Virtual Case File fiasco, and the SirCam infection of their National Infrastructure Protection Center, it's time for them to move on to a higher level.
It's good to know we can still count on the Peter Principle.
The same FBI that couldn't put together an email system in 2 years with a few hundred million bucks. The good news is BIG BROTHER isn't competent, the bad news is that he has no idea he isn't competent. The big problem with that is that he carries a gun, and because the people he deals with on a regular basis are the only people in the world even more brutally stupid than he is, he never figures out he's a little slow.
If it can be abused it will be. I bet the false positive ratio will be greater than 1000 to 1 with this baby. It won't catch many, if any, bad guys, but it will result in countless innocent people being "interviewed" by Bubba the $9 an hour security guard at the airport.
Good luck with that. Time to leave the USA. The fascists have won.
There is an open alternative to this kind of biometric snooping: CheapID. It's a digital identity standard, and a protocol for having a court order be required before the police, or other government agencies, could run a biometric search on the Big Database. It enforces that standard by moving the Big Database to an international level, but encrypting the metadata attached to each record - including fields like name - in a way which means the people with access to the database can't *do* anything with it, because there is no information about *people* in the database (like names,) only information about their physical bodies. Data stripped of metadata is largely worthless, and to unstrip an item needs a court decrypt from a national government.
This paper shows how we can manage large scale biometrics databases and increase the amount of privacy we have from government snooping while still having a secure society.
The basic crux of this paper is that you can separate the biometrics database, which simply identifies your physical body, and isn't necessarily any more intrusive than Flickr or any other online photo sharing site, and the reputation database, which stores things like your credit rating, any criminal record, and the suspicions of various government agencies about your intentions.
So when you do something like rent a car, you give them a token which has your face on it. They match your face to the token, and say "ok, this token is valid." But the token doesn't have your name, or your SSN, or anything else on it: it's totally sterile. But if you steal the car, they take the token to court, as well as the proof you gave it to them, and the court uses the token to get your name, SSN and other details.
If all that FBI or other government biometrics database stored was tokens, and it required a court order to go from a match in the biometrics database to a name and street address, I think we'd have a fair balance between civil liberties and security. A database of pictures of faces or fingerprints is not the intrusive part: it's the connecting of your face or your fingerprint to your background that is the intrusion, and we can separate the two databases and require a court order (and a crypto key) to reconnect them.
Cheap DNA scanners are coming. We've have to fix how we handle biometric data as a society before they arrive.
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
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It really amazes me how everybody seems to think that more information is key, whereas I think that *better* information is key. Datamining really is an advanced way of searching for the needle in that haystack and if you throw tons of non-relevant data in there you've just made your job that much harder. The big trick is to try to increase the quality of the data without missing important bits. Trawling all the grandmothers credit card transactions is not going to increase the S/N ratio.
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From the story:
Orwell was an optimist. The slide into complete loss of privacy, personal liberties, and any chance at atonement for making mistakes, intentional or otherwise, is far more insidious then he ever dreamed — and it is going to be far more complete than he imagined. Our country stands for nothing; we are powerless to change anything; the politicians and their lapdog agencies run rampant. I am ashamed.
From your post:
The data is relevant, don't kid yourself. Your retina print, fingerprints, blood type, genetic details... what tracking these things in this way really means is a profound hardening of classes; felons will always be felons, that time you got caught throwing toilet paper on the courthouse will never, ever come off your record, your political affiliations in college will always, always constrain your future job opportunities and more.
A society that cannot forgive is a society that is lost, as far as I am concerned. A society that marks people specifically so that it can class them has reached the approximate social level of pond scum. There is little - if any - difference between the stars the Jews were forced to wear and a database that marks an individual for an infraction they have long ago atoned for. If the thesis is that one can never atone for an error, mis-step or intentional antisocial act, then it is flawed to begin with.
None of which will stop, or even slow down, this trend. When every liberty is up for trading in return for a claim of improved security, when every freedom is deemed too risky to the body politic, when every over-stated threat causes the public to whimper and keep their children locked inside, the Rubicon has well and truly been crossed. Felons! Terrorists! Pedophiles! Pornography! Drugs! None of these "threats" do a fraction of the damage as the "solutions" America has come to, and is working towards.
Orwell was indeed an optimist.
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It's a big disappointment to me how the USA has gone on from a sort of example for the rest of the world, to becoming more and more like Russia in the 80's.
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It is interesting to note that Total Information Awareness (TIA) components were well underway long before the events of 9/11/01 in America. Whether the FBI renames Carnivore to something else, the way the TIA was stealthily renamed and distributed (the illegal wiretapping of the nation within the first month of the Bush administration, the privatization of intel operations [now spread beyond 70 private contractors with online inputs to the Bushies], the privatization of Comsat leading to the National Applications Office, the final dot in the array - the use of satellites to spy overall on the American citizenry) among a variety of components, with inputs from NSA, NGA, etc., everything is now assembled and in place for TOTAL CONTROL. The Corporate Fascist State has won, end of story.....
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Assuming he can be elected - which is a stretch - having gotten to the post, he'll be able to end the Iraq war. He'll be able to modify a fair amount of our foreign policy, this is an area that a president has a fair amount of autonomy in. However, with a comprised-as-usual congress and senate, most of the rest of the effect he will be able to have will consist of fireside chats with the public; even vetos will be easily defeated by politicia
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The point of voting for him is to get the Iraq war over; to have a president that will engage the public in four years of constitutionally grounded dialog; to have a president that will act with honor and integrity; to have a president that will act to undo the executive orders that the previous ones have inflicted upon us; to have a president th
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You realize, right, that the bookeeping of large, publicly traded corporations is (thanks to measures like SarbOx) under incredible public scrutiny? And that a public official doesn't just take a check from a company and deposit it in his personal account. Donations go to their campaigns - and those are in very small amounts (Exxon can't write a million-dollar check d
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Now Joe Kennedy obviously purchased his son's presidential election utilizing the help of Mafia elements, Texas oilmen, etc., but John either didn't get the memo or ignored his father and worked primarily on behalf of the citizenry.
Which is why
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Informative)
Because they're looking to collect, and unify, all the information about each citizen. Fact: they're trying to use national ID cards to pin your identity down; Fact: they're trying to use databases to track your biometrics and link them to the cards; Fact: Our affiliations (political and otherwise) are being tracked by both government agencies and by commercial enterprises - and have been for years, just ask those poor bastards in 1950's Hollywood who got hauled up before McCarthy; this is nothing new. Fact: Watching these elections, what do we see but people's college behaviors and affiliations dragged up out of the blue? Hillary roomed with lesbians. Oooo! What about people who are trying to pursue normal lives and suddenly "wikipedia has a FELON as a CFO!", where the hell did that come from, and why is it even relevant? Did she screw up her work? No. Was she even accused of doing anything wrong? No. It's just past behavior being brought up to haunt current life and lock someone into a role they may very well have no part in. You can't be rehabilitated, you're low class and you will STAY low class. You don't think tracking is going on? Called Experian or one of its brethren lately? Seen your FBI file? Are you aware of the no-fly, no-buy, no-bank-account lists, all sans anything even remotely resembling due process? Think your email is private? When's the last time you transacted more than 10 grand at the bank? Do you realize that each of those transactions gets reported to the feds, and yes indeed, TRACKED? Talked to anyone overseas? Think that call wasn't monitored for keywords? Carnivore ring a bell? How about Echelon? Are you one of those clueless folk who think your SSN was used only for your retirement, as promised?
Buddy, the only reason you're "really sorry" is because you've got your head deep in the sand. But I agree, you are one sorry excuse for an informed person. You can fix it, though.
No, I base my arguments upon facts in the record. Current and recent behaviors and data; basically ince3 the early 1900s until today, you can see all manner of problems that are government related. Everything I talked about there is objective fact. There's plenty more where that came from, too.
Yes. Why would you think that? Are you paranoid? It is a very large collection of traitors, bent upon sundering the constitution either knowingly or otherwise. They aren't an "organization", they are an unaffiliated collection of people with similar goals and similar methods. This doesn't make them any easier to deal with, in fact, it makes it considerably more difficult.
You didn't "forget it", you just aren't together enough to see it. With your head as far in the sand as it is, this comes as no surprise. You should read 1984. Carefully. Then look around you and note the low level preparations going on. The camps [prisonplanet.com] built by the administration's bully-boys, Haliburton. The executive orders that revoke posse comitatus [concordbridge.net], you know about that, right? You know how the commerce clause has been mangled to mean "anything that COULD be be interstate comm
Parent
Re:He Loved Big Brother (Score:5, Insightful)
What they fail to comprehend is that the "criminal" element is just as evenly dispersed among government jobs as among the rest of society. When you create a huge power differential between those holding certain government jobs and the rest of us, you are empowering the criminals on that side as well as the good people on that side.
This is what happens when you try to pre-assign people "goodness" ratings based on what job they hold. You end up with a subset of vastly overpowered criminals (granted power by the laws themselves) and no net decrease in what we commonly regard as criminal behavior (killing, theft, fraud, etc.).
The only sane way to assign arbitrary power to law enforcers is to maintain constant oversight of them, in a circular fashion -- the police watch the citizens, the citizens watch a police oversight body, and the police oversight body watches the police. That we neglect to do this is a serious mistake, and it results in a police force that behaves like it can get away with anything ethical or unethical (and often does).
Parent
Re:He Loved Big Brother (Score:4, Insightful)
As a member of the general public, I take umbrage with that statement. I'm convinced that there is a far greater representation of the criminal element in modern government (at least, in "elected" and appointed office) than in the rest of society. The same can be said of the business executive level.
When you create a huge power differential between those holding certain government jobs and the rest of us, you are empowering the criminals on that side
Exactly. And that is what I think attracts people with criminal tendencies to government office and to business executive. The power and potential rewards are so great as to act like a magnet to people with criminal tendencies.
Parent
Somehwat scary (Score:3, Insightful)
Fingerprint retention (Score:2)
Re:Fingerprint retention (Score:4, Insightful)
That doesn't make it right.
Parent
This is disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)
The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.
You can get arrested for anything these days and now the FBI is going to become your employers watchdog? I've seen some dickish, big brother behavior since 9-11 but this tops the suck pyramid.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is disturbing (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies that do business with people, and organizations that hire people, wish to avoid risk. In principle, this is just an extension of the way the American credit system works. There, your entire financial history is available to anyone that wants to decide if you can be trusted. It used to be, the deadbeat customer was a normal cost of doing business. In today's world, companies large and small have the credit bureaus to track us for them. However, at least there if you keep your nose clean and wait enough years, your past misdeeds will no longer haunt you. Expect that limit to be removed at some point, because obviously people that can't handle money well are threats to national security.
Make no mistake, the underlying sponsors of this unConstitutional boloney are corporate. From the extension of copyrights to longer credit histories to biometric tracking, this is all about the corporate world wanting to minimize its exposure to risk. The fact that it plays right into the hands of certain power hungry politicians and their appointed/unelected officials is just unfortunate for us.
Parent
Fascism ? Or not ? (Score:3)
equal right to see your bosses' records? (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, it'll allow you to see, at the interview stage, if you'll be working for a bunch of crooks.
Second, if companies do start to take "brushes with the law" into account for career advancement, it sounds like a relative in law-enforcement could be the fast track to promotion.
Re:This is disturbing (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, real people, no matter who they are, are only good at a limited number of things. A person who is a whiz in chemistry may stink at things like real estate or home repair. You could start a home improvement company or become a real estate agent, but that's not really an option for most people. Plus, you would basically be asking someone like Einstein to drive a truck for a living (although people like you would probably get their jollies off of such a possibility).
The point you are missing is that a decent society does not make the options:
1. Work for FBI-shilling, oppressive company
2. Throw away years of education and expertise, and go work in some field that you are not very good at and that you hate
3. Starve
Chemistry is a good example of what I am talking about. It takes years and a ton of work to get a masters degree in chemistry. You don't have much choice but to work for one of the big companies. Even if you want to start up a small business in one of the chemical areas, you still need some years of experience in the field. Otherwise, you won't know how the real business works, you won't have any contacts to get your business going, and so on. This is true in most professional and technical fields.
Also, in cases like this in actual reality (as opposed to this bizarre one you have concocted from your imbecilic ideologies), there will be no employer that doesn't use and contribute to the FBI database. It will become an "industry standard" practice and there no company will see enough profit in not complying to justify abandoning (or never beginning) this practice. This sort of thing is common and only a drooling idealist would believe otherwise.
Parent
U.S.And them (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't want to be treated as a criminal before I've even left airside.
Rgds
Damon
Re:U.S.And them (Score:4, Interesting)
We (Americans) are really not all bad. As it turns out most of us dislike the current government, too. It's just that, well, we have a fairly large population of over-religious farmers who tend to vote for all the wrong people. And thus sh*t like this is allowed to happen.
Parent
What ARE the Alternatives? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, there is a philosophical conflict raging here. There's obviously people who want to get into the US to perform terrorist acts. This leaves us with 3 choices:
1. Screen every visitor carefully
2. Screen only "suspicious" people (profiling based on religion, etc. and is often considered "racist".)
3
Re:What ARE the Alternatives? (Score:4, Insightful)
Under what rock have you been living?
I am not convinced that we are any less safe now then we were a decade or so ago, just much more paranoid. It really says something when a nation of immigrants is deceived into thinking they need to bar foreigners.
Parent
Re:What ARE the Alternatives? (Score:5, Interesting)
A philosophical conflict? How about a conflict of overdramatized, highly unlikely fearmongering juxtaposed against the loss of civil liberties? The latter seems to be the specific problem.
Living freely includes risk. The problem here is that many people have little or no understanding of the freedoms they had, how hard they were fought for and how unusual it is that they had them in the first place. Most troubling is the fact that they had no clue how easy it was to lose them, and now that they have been lost, recovery is much, much more difficult.
As far as I am concerned, when a criminal - be they terrorist, mugger or politician disobeying the constitution - commits an antisocial act, that criminal should be held accountable for that crime. If the crime is large, the accounting should be large. If society can accept that the crime has been atoned for, then the criminal should get a fresh start. If society cannot accept this, then the criminal should be either put to death or imprisoned permanently. In no case should bystanders or citizens not even involved on any level be inconvenienced by actions nominally taken to ameliorate the criminal act. Sure, this approach involves risk. I prefer the risk. We are a better people when we accept risk in exchange for liberty than when we trade liberty for any illusion of safety gained by treating everyone as if they were a potential criminal.
Your option three is the only honorable option.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, I can tell the difference between individual Americans and the US govt!
My major client is a large US investment bank and has been for over a decade. American individuals and corporations are fine (well I guess I've met a few bad ones, but in fact mainly of non-US origin strangely), but the 'security theatre' rhetoric of marking all foreigners as potential rapists^Wterrorists is just stupid and pisses off natural friends of the US.
No, I don't trust our (UK) govt with all my sensitive data ei
Re:U.S.And them (Score:5, Insightful)
You go ahead and keep telling yourself that "it's some farmer in the midwest" screwing it all up, though; especially the next time you drive through Florida.
Right now on the US National political scene, it would seem that the default "heir" to the Bush/Cheney ideology of fear is Rudolph Giuliani. What city was he mayor of, again? Are there a lot of farmers living in Manhattan?
Oh wait, I must have been confused; it's Illinois where a lot of farmers live, and their state has given us Senator Obama in the Presidential contender line-up.
Please, if you're going to generalize about the American population, try to generalize in a way that makes sense. Here you're telling our foreign friend "hey look, we Americans are cooler than we might appear", yet then you generalize about "farmers". Nice.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Japanese government is even worse. They now fingerprint, photograph, and question visitors and returning residents not only when they first enter the country, but again during all subsequent re-entries [debito.org] . And this is in addition to the mandatory re-entry permits (3000 yen fee!), mandatory registration of non-citizens at their local city hall, and mandatory carrying of Alien Registration Cards on one's person at all times. Don't think you're free to wander about the country after your ordeal with immi
Re: (Score:2)
How the... (Score:3, Funny)
What am I supposed to do? Get tin-foil-sunglasses?
Re: (Score:2)
Naw, just cut out your eyes and burn the remanants.
Problem solved! (well, except for the whole "I'm blind!" thing...)
I'm going to sell the FBI Phrenology Biometrics! (Score:2)
It's a great way to profit from the coming federal contracts! It doesn't matter to them that the "Science" was debunked a century ago... We'll dress it up with some new buzzwords and make millions!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So we're going to see the Ministry of Silly Walks?
This is indeed a big effort (Score:2)
where's my troll mod? (Score:5, Insightful)
no, the average american won't care, because the average american, when given news like this, doesn't see a big downside to this. when told the downside to this as displayed here in some posts, they will think the average slashdot poster has been watching too many paranoid hollywood movies
now give my troll mod for not toeing the party line here
yawn
Sad but true (Score:4, Insightful)
A few false arrests and multi-year imprisonments because of a software bug or flaw in the biometric database? Just the price to be paid for security.
That particular way of thinking sickens me, but it's quite prevalent. Many people (my mother included) would far rather see 10 innocents imprisoned than one guilty man go free. Because they're terrorists or something.
I try to explain that I know have Iranian family on my father's side and next time it could be me that's falsely accused of associating with and aiding people (incorrectly) thought to be terrorists. But that doesn't seem to get through, that there could ever be a mistake. Somewhere in the back of a lot of folks minds there's this strong conviction that mistakes like that just don't happen, despite multiple high profile examples to the contrary, and even if they do, it doesn't matter because they don't think it can happen to them. Because why would it? I'm a good person, why would the government arrest me?
At that point I usually give up trying to argue and go back to mourning the state of the world. No, it doesn't win me any points, realising that the average person is about as questioning of authority as a faithful puppy, it is unfortunately the true state of the world though.
Parent
Well... You have an election coming (Score:2)
Expect Leadership to change in the next election (Score:2)
Bigger and Better Things (Score:2)
The same FBI..... (Score:3, Interesting)
CheapID- A Secure, Open Src, Private, Biometric ID (Score:3, Informative)
From http://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php [guptaoption.com]
This paper shows how we can manage large scale biometrics databases and increase the amount of privacy we have from government snooping while still having a secure society.
The basic crux of this paper is that you can separate the biometrics database, which simply identifies your physical body, and isn't necessarily any more intrusive than Flickr or any other online photo sharing site, and the reputation database, which stores things like your credit rating, any criminal record, and the suspicions of various government agencies about your intentions.
So when you do something like rent a car, you give them a token which has your face on it. They match your face to the token, and say "ok, this token is valid." But the token doesn't have your name, or your SSN, or anything else on it: it's totally sterile. But if you steal the car, they take the token to court, as well as the proof you gave it to them, and the court uses the token to get your name, SSN and other details.
If all that FBI or other government biometrics database stored was tokens, and it required a court order to go from a match in the biometrics database to a name and street address, I think we'd have a fair balance between civil liberties and security. A database of pictures of faces or fingerprints is not the intrusive part: it's the connecting of your face or your fingerprint to your background that is the intrusion, and we can separate the two databases and require a court order (and a crypto key) to reconnect them.
Cheap DNA scanners are coming. We've have to fix how we handle biometric data as a society before they arrive.
Re: (Score:2)
It's tomorrow that people are more concerned about.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Bah, I am comforted by Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee. That will do them in.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The gov't, of course. The employers at least pay you money. The gov't _takes_ your money, and then uses it against you!