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Watching You 173

Posted by michael from the masquerade dept.
BWJones writes "National Geographic is running a story this month on surveillance. I received my copy today and the article is reasonably extensive (for National Geographic) and well written, covering many issues that get attention here on Slashdot both good and bad. There is coverage of what's good with the technologies (a program called Poseidon that helps ensure folks don't drown in swimming pools) and what's bad (death of privacy). In between are some additional details on backscatter X-ray and a taste of some of the security for the 2002 Winter Olympics here in SLC. I got to see a little bit more than the average person of the security during the winter games as our building was the emergency backup headquarters if anything went wrong and was routinely crawling with FBI and other folks including the Secret Service making for some interesting nights at the lab."
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Watching You More

Watching You

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  • Damnit (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When is everyone going to figure out that everything in 1984 isn't coming true?

    Seriously, wtf?
    • " When is everyone going to figure out that everything in 1984 isn't coming true?"

      1 January 1985.
    • Vote for it [bbc.co.uk] in the BBC's Big Read final.
    • I don't know about anyone else, but I figured it out as soon as they nominated Reagan.

      I've always thought that Carter could have run a really cool "Let Reagan take you into 1984" campaign.

      Of course, judging from the general supression of the irony and sarcasm responses in the general populace that could well have backfired. . .

      Not that that would have ended up making any difference. :)

      KFG
    • when plasma screens have a direct link to the president, then we are screwed!!
      -Seriv

    • Re:Damnit (Score:2, Funny)

      by t0ny ( 590331 )
      please dont take away the warm security blanket of our conspiracy fears. its all we have left

    • Re:Damnit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geekee ( 591277 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @04:31PM (#7256064)
      " When is everyone going to figure out that everything in 1984 isn't coming true?"

      People haven't figured out the root cause of 1984 is tyranny, not technology. A free society or or even a mostly free society doesn't have 1984-type problems, because this type of government is interested in protecting the freedom of individuals, not some other agenda. 1984 is progressing far better in N. Korea than in the US despite better technology in the US.
      • A free society or or even a mostly free society doesn't have 1984-type problems, because this type of government is interested in protecting the freedom of individuals, not some other agenda.

        And which government is that then? No "other agenda"?

      • I differ. NK's citizens know that they have a totalinarian state. They would gladly throw the yoke ASAP.
        We are the frog that is having the heat turned up, very slowly. In the last 3 years, we have lost huge amounts of privacy in the name of a security that we can not have. Hopefully, when the dust from 9/11 settles (no pun intended), we will rethink it through before it is accepted in our society.

  • Not to worry you or anything, but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 19, 2003 @02:33PM (#7255408)
    "I received my copy today"

    We know.
    • Contrary to faithful /. reader's belief, not every poster actually reads the news article they are posting about.
      • /sigh

        It's an article on surveillance. The joke is that he's already being so carefully watched that he doesn't need to tell us he received his magazine today. It's a funny joke. Laugh.

        Also, change your shirt, you spilled a little coffee on that one, and we don't like pastels anyway.
    • For an article that is supposed so in-depth, there's not much of it to be seen. The link points us to a story about monitoring of swimming-pools, and that's about it. If you want more, National Geographic want you to pay for it.
      • If you want more, National Geographic want you to pay for it.

        ...and it is worth every penny.

        Every month those guys send me a magazine filled with the "pornography" of the natural and human world. (Bare-chested females from tribal and agrarian societies notwithstanding.) Interspliced, you find stories from every corner of the globe, the infinitesimal, the infinite and of the soul.

        They're coverage of "Gulf War PART DEUX!!" was excellent, as is they're continuing series on Afganistan. Also of note was t
    • He gets mail delivery on Sunday?
      • Actually, no. He got it friday. But he only showed up at 9:12:05 this morning at the mailbox. Prior to that, he was at his girlfriend's house for exactly 12 hours, 5 minutes and 10 seconds.

  • Uhh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sir Haxalot ( 693401 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @02:33PM (#7255413)
    Imagine devices that monitor the breathing rhythms of infants in cribs, watch toddlers at day care, and track children as they go to and from school; that can keep an eye on our home supply of orange juice and let us know when the milk is sour. Machines might watch our calorie intake and burn-off, monitor air quality in our homes, and look out for mice and bugs.
    All these things are currently available, and have been for at least 5 years, it's just they're very expensive at the moment.

    • Re:Uhh... (Score:3, Funny)

      by DAldredge ( 2353 )
      Is it really that damn hard to open the fridge and check the milk/oj yourself?

      • Re:Uhh... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by kfg ( 145172 )
        I do it the easy way. I only buy what I'm going to drink before it can go bad and when it runs out go to the corner and buy more. They always have fresh.

        Since I actually know how to cook, rather than just follow recipes, I can decide how much I want to eat and cook that much, eliminating the whole issue of "leftovers." ( I'm not even sure I know what "leftover" means. I just think of it as "food.")

        The baby breathing thing is nice, but beyond that I never felt the need to monitor my kid 24/7. In fact, I f
        • The baby breathing thing is nice, but beyond that I never felt the need to monitor my kid 24/7. In fact, I find the idea kind of creepy.At best it smacks of neurosis on the part of the parent.

          There is that thing called Sudden Infant Death [alltheweb.com] Syndrome. Basically small kids just tend to die from time to time for no apparent reason. :( "SIDS is the leading killer of infants between one week and one year with an
          approximate rate of two per thousand live births (1 in 500). 6000-7000 babies die of SIDS every year i
          • And in 10 years time some couple will get jailed for not installing the device, denounced by the local school teacher that called the police ("... I always thought those two would never make a responsible couple...") once she discovered the two were having a jolly good time on the veranda without the bloody snooper at earshot (can *you* have sex with the intensive care hearbeat monitor pounding your brain? ;-) ) Ok, I'm just joking... I'm all for this kind of tech but hey, if it's not clear what causes the
          • Please read the very part of my post you quoted again. I said the baby breathing thing was nice. Not only because of SIDS but because babies die of accidental suffocation and asphyxiation.

            1 in 500 14 year olds don't get abducted as sex slaves by religious maniacs though.

            I know several people who have lost babies and I'm eternally greatful I didn't lose mine. I don't know anyone who has had their child abducted.

            KFG
            • All right, I didn't read the grandgrandparent post. I though 24/7 also applies to breathing monitoring. I agree with your comment about neurosys if parents want to monitor their teen going to school.

              But putting that aside, there is no reason to take chances here either, if you can do it not invasively, respecting child's freedom and cheaply. It might strike you as odd today, but as these things become available, it would become more reasonable to use them more. Britons may be against the CCTV cameras now,
        • The baby breathing thing is nice, but beyond that I never felt the need to monitor my kid 24/7. In fact, I find the idea kind of creepy.At best it smacks of neurosis on the part of the parent.

          I found myself sneaking in and gazing in wonder at the life I helped create while he was nice and quiet and not being the usual crap and puke factory.

    • Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by qtp ( 461286 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @03:36PM (#7255754) Journal
      Imagine devices that monitor the breathing rythems of workers who are on the clock, watch programmers at thier keyboards, and track office staff as they leave thier desks for "the copier"; that can keep an eye on those expensive paperclips and let us know if our staff is stealing them. Machines might watch our coffee intake to deduct any "extra" from our pay, monitor air quality at our home and our calorie intake to adjust our health insurance premiums.

      Sounds like a wonderful world, doesn't it?

  • Bush the fascist (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Bush: He speaks of small government and personal freedoms, but his administration is one of the largest to date. A large chunk of them are dedicated to stomping on our rights, making sure that you and I are not terrorists.

    And American's are laying down and taking it.

    It's the end of American democracy. We need help.

    Stupid fucks.
  • since only an abbreviated version of this article is available on-line. From what I have seen, though, nothing truly new is learned from the on-line version of this article.

    As always, nanotechnology will simultaneously be our savior and damnation.

    .

  • About the police state (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FrankoBoy ( 677614 ) <frankoboy@@@gmail...com> on Sunday October 19, 2003 @02:39PM (#7255450) Homepage Journal
    One of the government's concern is about security, and this of course can be both good and bad because it has to consider not only the people's safety but it's own too, and that of course can have very bad consequences the moment the government considers you its "enemy".

    If you want to avoid the possibility that the government watch stuff it shouldn't, you better think about alternatives to the State [infoshop.org] because governments will always seek for their own protection just like every other social organization, except that governments have tremendous powers that other organizations can't have.
    • The problem of the state overreaching its bounds was a problem the founding fathers realized which is why there are checks and balanced. For example, to watch certain things you need a warrant from the courts, etc. The problem is that in the interest of security we are eliminating too much of these checks and balances making it easier to get a warrant or eliminating the need for one. Checks and Balances in the government is a good thing. You have ambitious men in different branches that are going to lo
      • ...and I think the best checks and balances possible is to let people do it by themselves in their own self-managed communities via direct democracy. The problem with governments is that their reach is total ( i.e. the entire population and things on some territory ) though only some hundred guys take the decisions ( these "representants" being free to do as they please once they're elected ), and only self-determined communities managed directly by its own people can effectively resolve this issue and avoi
    • governments have tremendous powers that other organizations can't have

      This is the basis of arguments in favor of limited government. Corporations can be taken down with a lawsuit. Governments get taken down by civil war.

      Each "war" our government fights today (drugs, poverty, terror, etc.) is a step closer to a much bigger war, a revolutionary one, in the future.

      I find some of the parallels between 18th century Enlgish imperialism and 21th century US imperialism unsettling. I recommend everyone read T

  • Total secrecy, zero privacy (Score:3, Funny)

    by sammyo ( 166904 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @02:40PM (#7255462) Journal
    Get used to it. You may keep selected keystrokes perfectly secret if you are willing to do all the work and keep your passphrase secret to the death (assuming no truth serum gets to you first) but everyone already knows what you did on TV and they all really care less and less. Set up a webcam in your bathroom, the hit will approach zero over time.

    • People dont realize that is the catch with more and more surveilance data- as always, the more data, the more you have to sort.

      With that large an amount of data, finding anything worthwhile (especially randomly) is going to be impossible. Granted, someone sharp can come along and make a really good sorting/filtering app, but how many really good programmers end up working for the government? answer: not many, and anyone smart ends up stuck behind some middle-management asshole who is just working their 40

      • Howeever, if all that data is there any anybody has reason to look at you they can find all kinds of information about you that you may not want them to find. So, you have to stay in a "don't rock the boat mantality" which is not good for society. The people who go beyond what is normal are often the revlutionaries of a society.
      • 40 years to retirement? Good lord, man, it's more like 20 for most federal employees.

  • Police Surveillance (Score:4, Funny)

    by the darn ( 624240 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @02:42PM (#7255473) Homepage
    Every move you make and every vow you break
    Every smile you fake, every claim you stake
    They'll be watchin' you
  • They can monitor all they want but they will never be able to stop everything. People adapt, counter technology evolves faster everyday. It is not long (I hope) before they learn their efforts are fruitless.
    -Seriv

  • Poseiden rocks (Score:5, Informative)

    by afidel ( 530433 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @02:45PM (#7255496)
    My mother has saved 2 lifes as a result of Poseiden. She is a life guard at one of the first US sites to have it installed and twice she has had it alert her to a person at the bottom of the pool. She says that neither time could she see the person from her chair. The system is not without problems, for instance the water arobics classes move so little from place to place that Poseiden will often flag people as being immobile, and the initial training was quite agrivating with almost constant false alarms, but overall it is definitly worth the cost and agrevation. Btw those two saves were in about 6 months of operations.

    • Re:Poseiden rocks (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      twice she has had it alert her to a person at the bottom of the pool.

      Great, another impediment to natural selection.
      • Great, another impediment to natural selection.

        Natural selection has died out, and has been replaced with something better.

        It was bound to happen.
        • (tilts head) "something better" is subjective.
          • I dunno. Biological evolution is definitely being phased out in favor of technological evolution. No doubt about it. A big part of me sees this as being really, really bad. After all, Darwin has taken us a long way; watching us allow genetic predispositions for things like cancer, diabetes, etc to be passed on by providing technological treatment certainly hurts the gene pool. I have no doubts that if we keep doing this, many generations from now our babies will be born needing to be put inside little

    • Re:Poseiden rocks (Score:4, Informative)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @02:54PM (#7255541) Homepage Journal
      Hrmmm. Thanks for the info. Good Slashdot reporting dictates I should have placed a link to the company in the posting of the story item.
      Here [poseidon-tech.com] it is.

    • Re:Poseiden rocks (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Krandor3 ( 621755 )
      If people understand that such monitoring is taking place and are fine with it these technologies can be very helpful especially in a public place like a pool. It is when it is used to look at people who do not know they are being watched and no not want to be that there is a problem. You example sounds like a great use of the technology.

    • I don't think (Score:3, Insightful)

      by The Tyro ( 247333 )
      most people are concerned with such obviously beneficient uses of surveillance... if it saved my child's life I'd kiss the boots of the guys who invented it.

      I think we all realize surveillance is going on... there's a huge amount of info out there on virtually everyone; that info exists, as it must in a increasingly computerized world. I think the real issue for most people is simply WHO has access to that information, and WHY they want it.

      If the FBI wanted the info from my internet connection for the pu
      • If someone's looking into my information, I just want the courtesy of knowing WHO and WHY... and I'll make my own decisions at that point.

        That's the key point. If the mechanism of surveillance is private, then you will get to decide. I don't think that having a world full of privately owned cameras is a bad thing at all. Your neighbor's cam is probably not set up to watch you, it's there to watch his yard, for example. And if the police want to see what his camera saw, they have to ask him, or ask a judge
      • I just want the courtesy of knowing WHO and WHY...

        Well, that's what warrents and seopenas are supposed to be for. Too bad they're falling out of fashion.

  • A related and interesting article (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @03:03PM (#7255591) Journal
    MSNBC is currently running an article titled "Smile, You're Being Watched." [msnbc.com] It details the gradual growth of CCTV in the UK, and hits on the point that while the cameras made Britons feel safe 10 years ago, they're now seen as invasive and people are even going so far as to pipe-bomb them. The article ends with a choice quote:
    Americans who are being asked to exchange privacy for the promise of security might want to look at Britain. In democratic nations, the balance between liberty and security is a delicate one. American officials would be wise to take note of the wave of indignation sweeping across Britain -- or they could soon face a backlash of their own.
    The source of the article is BusinessWeek and it's on MSNBC. The first time in my recollection that one - much less two - "mainstream" news sources have brought this issue to light without either politicizing it to death or painting a rosy picture of how increased surveillance will save us all from the evildoers.

    Earlier today, the article was at the bottom of MSNBC's "Readers' Choice" list. Now it's scrolled off. Alas I suppose that many Americans just don't care about Big Brother...
    • The "Readers Choice" list is not exactly a scientific measurement, but interesting anyway.

      Readers' choice (Top 10)
      - 'Mystery' ferry nurse comes forward
      - Blame the Cubs
      - Brianna: The Little Girl That Could
      - A window on North Korea's horrors
      - The 'Silver Fox' Unplugged
      - Apple's Music Man
      - Spy programs threaten data on PvCs
      - Parting with a Pet
      - Pope beatifies Mother Teresa
      - How to protect your home network

      Screw Iraq and all those difficault questions about the Economy; the Cubs ain't going to

    • The first time in my recollection that one - much less two - "mainstream" news sources have brought this issue to light

      Hey, even editors, reporters, CEOs, and other mass-media higher-ups want to keep the right to j-walk, steal paperclips, and jerk off in the executive bathroom without being watched.

      --

    • Yeah, the fact that the rest of America isn't interested in the same topics as you is a clear sign that the country is going to hell.
    • There's a wave of indignation?

      * looks around *

      Can't say as I ever noticed one. The only indignation I've noticed relating to a CCTV camera was when one was in the perfect place to get a record of someone smashing in a shop window - but guess what? It wasn't switched on!

      We may have lots of CCTV cameras in the UK, but that doesn't mean we're using them effectively.

  • Slashdot popups? (Score:3, Offtopic)

    by zapp ( 201236 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @03:03PM (#7255592)
    Has anyone else noticed lately that slashdot has had some popups? I don't know what they were, but my blocker did notify me that it blocked a efw from slashdot.org.

    • You should not be seeing popup ads on Slashdot, either at page load or window close or anytime in-between. Last I heard, our policy was not to deliver such ads.

      If you see one again (and you're sure it's Slashdot, not some adware/spyware you installed that affects your web browsing experience)... please let us know. Click on the Bugs link in the left column of every page, and report as many details as you have. In any case I'll mention this to our ad guys on Monday and ask them to keep an eye out for popup

      • Re:Slashdot popups? (Score:4, Funny)

        by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @04:58PM (#7256196) Homepage Journal
        Can I complain about this one really annoying ad that's appearing on the pages I view? It's about this site that offers "News, every day, whether you need it or not." I took a screenshot one of the times it came up. Hold on, let me look for it.

        OK, it's for a site called, uh, "Slashdot".

        On a more serious note, I have been shown an ad for Slashdot on Slashdot twice in the past week. I actually find it really amusing but I have to wonder how much Slashdot pays Slashdot to advertise Slashdot on Slashdot. I just felt like sharing...

        Although I actually have a serious question on the topic of ads on Slashdot. I've been seeing Flash ads show on Slashdot occasionally in the past several months and was wondering if the previous policy of "no Flash ads" had been reversed or if those ads just snuck through. I personally didn't mind these ads, as they had no sound to them, but I'm curious if the Flash policy had been revised.

    • No, but then I also run Google toolbar [google.com], I don't use the pagerank feature only the search input and the popup blocker.
      It is worth installing for the popup blocker alone. Let's you enable popups for for single sites just by pressing the popup blocker counter.
    • I've just noticed two of them (while reading this thread, as a matter of fact).
    • That was really odd, I went into a subnest of comments below my threshold, and I had a popunder on close... Ran latest Ad-Aware, no spyware installed. My fault for not having fired up Mozilla, or better yet, having made it my default browser...

      I reloaded the comment I had the pop-under on after, and no pop-under. This is kinda odd.

  • These things exist.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dwbryson ( 104783 ) <mutex@cry[ ]backpack.org ['pto' in gap]> on Sunday October 19, 2003 @03:21PM (#7255691) Journal
    And are only going to get more accurate

    Imagine devices that monitor the breathing rhythms of infants in cribs, watch toddlers at day care, and track children as they go to and from school; that can keep an eye on our home supply of orange juice and let us know when the milk is sour. Machines might watch our calorie intake and burn-off, monitor air quality in our homes, and look out for mice and bugs.

    I work for a startup company that does this kind of surveillance development. We have software that will detect bad behavior(someone being clubbed over the head at an ATM for example), objects that are left lying around where they shouldn't be(suitcases in airports or trash bags on the side of the road), and everything is network aware... cameras tell other cameras to look at objects if they have a better view. As well as motion tracking, object detection(the cameras can say 'hey i see a red car')... some very very cool but scary stuff.

    on a side note it's all linux based and 100% digital from the photons to mpeg storage
    • This might be scary, but if that helps develop machine vision, that might be a decent trade-off. In the future there will be robots. And these robots would pick up the trash along the roads and clean the airports. Of course, they would have to keep an eye open for objects that shouldn't be. We don't like the cameras, but nobody in their right mind would complain that police officers or security guards (or even simply concerned citizens) on patrol watch for suspicious activity. As robots become smarter, it w
      • I for one welcome our new robotic monitoring overlords!
    • We have software that will detect bad behavior...

      Great, now I have to worry about spending three weeks in prison to be "cleared" because my car stalled.

      Companies like yours are whores for pork-barrel contracts and sickening, to say the least.
  • I quickly threw it away and ran a bug sweep after discovering the 'Os' on the spine and cover were made of glass.

  • Evil is in the watchers, not the watching (Score:3, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Sunday October 19, 2003 @03:47PM (#7255823)
    In a world of total surveillence, the watchers are themselves watched. Video tape or data records of police/official misconduct ensure that abuse is not tolerated. The more data channels and more oversight that everyone has on everyone, the less the opportunity for abuse. We need only ensure that the public has the same oversight tools as the government to ensure that the watchers don't overstep their bounds.

    As for personal privacy, that is an ephermal phenomenon in the scope of human affairs - a byproduct of the industrial revolution and urbanization. Prior to the 1800s nobody had much privacy. Now the world is shrinking again so that everyone, for better or worse, lives in the fishbowl of a little global village. The key will be whether we can develop the tolerance to let people live their lives as they see fit or whether we will be plagued by meddlesome busibodies from both the Left and Right that try to impose narrowminded definitions of _Proper Behavior_.
    • People keep saying this, but do you really expect that the public will be able to review videotape from the NSA or CIA headquarters? We can't right now.

      I assume you are talking about a basic lack of privacy in family life, which was the norm prior to 1800. That's not the same thing.

      Prior to 1800, we did not have video camera surveillance, bugs, cameras that could look through walls, ATM logs, RFID tags, comprehensive national Census records, or any of a billion other things are, have been, or will be use
    • We need only ensure that the public has the same oversight tools as the government to ensure that the watchers don't overstep their bounds.

      Here in Australia, all local, state, and federal government departments have a mantra that they repeat verbatim every time they feel they're being backed into a corner, or they might in some way be held accountable for their actions.... Here, any time you ask for the name of the person advising you over the counter, or the ID of the Police Officer who just stopped you

      • Sorry mate, but that is absolute rubbish. I work for Local Government in Queensland, and up until recently worked in the information management department, mostly dealing with privacy obligations and freedom of information. By law, they are required (and do) provide their own name if asked. What they cannot do, however, is provide inforamtion about anybody else, whether staff or customer, without explicit written permission from the party involved. You seem quite confused about this so-called mantra of
        • > Sorry mate, but that is absolute rubbish.

          I'm not your mate, and it's not absolute rubbish. Much of the defensive hoo-haa that you're spouting is though.

          > I work for Local Government in Queensland, and up until recently worked in the information management department, mostly dealing with privacy obligations and freedom of information.

          So you work(ed) in a non-customer-facing area, yet you're an authority on the behaviour of *all* customer-facing government employees, Australia-wide?

          By law

          • I don't like that that guy said therefore he's ranting, and he's a troll

            No, what made you a troll is claiming that your opinions based on the couple of times you had to deal with government can somehow be applied to all employees, in every locality, across all levels of government: local, state and federal. You then go on to complain about dealing with Telstra, which as far as I know, is no longer a government run telecommunications firm. In fact, the biggest complaints about telstra since the sale (that

    • <tinfoil>

      In a world of total surveillence, the watchers are themselves watched.

      By themselves, of course!

      Video tape or data records of police/official misconduct ensure that abuse is not tolerated.

      And when the police capture video of a fellow policeman beating the living shit out of someone, do you really think they're going to blow the whistle? Of course not. It takes a civilian to do that, but civilians don't have the luxury of being able to mount all-seeing eyes at every intersection. We mere mortal

    • In a world of total surveillence, the watchers are themselves watched.

      Okay, what brand of morality would you like the world to crystalize into, because you'll be stuck in it for the rest of your life.

      Witch hunting will be the spectator sport of the 21st century.

    • Video tape or data records of police/official misconduct ensure that abuse is not tolerated.

      Q: Government, by definition, holds a monopoly on the use of force. How does the transparancy of their actions, limit their actions, when they hold that monopoly?

      A: It's doesn't.
      • Although government does hold a monopoly on legal use of physical force, it is still subject to civil litigation, criminal prosecution, and political forces that stay its hand. Admittedly, these limits on government power can vary between countries and wax and wane in countries that purport to support civil liberties. The extent that private citizens, watchdog groups and political parties can rein in the abuses of government is the extent that transparency ensures that abuses are caught and dealt with.

  • Being in Salt Lake City myself during the olympics, I noticed the increased security. This resulted in people like me being pulled over by police 17 times during the month of February (with at least one ticket each time). I was pulled off the TRAX light rail system at least a dozen times, and threatened with a search of my backpack and my person on numerous occasions. I had to put up with highway checkpoints and shakedowns, giving the police a blank check to search everyone and haul people in for petty warr

    • You admit to be the sort of person who thinks it is appropriate to take guns to public events, yet you want us to sympathize with you because you are also the sort of person who gets a lot of attention from the authorities?

      This just doesn't add up.
  • After all, I prefer liberty than human control.

    I've noted that don't matter how useful technology can be it can be harmful under human hands.
    I've being around with a lot of technology supposely made to make our lifes better, but it just needs a human hand to screw it up.

    How useful are surveillance devices if there are stupid persons making the (supposed to protect) rules?

    And even if it's very directed to my safety (like drownings) if the thechnology is not perfect, which means they don't protect us from
  • Here's the one time that I can remember (and I'm sure other folks will set me straight) that I cannot get to the article in question since it's only in print in its full form. Unless things have changed in the past few years, you can't get the National Geographic on newsstands, or anywhere else for that matter without being a subscriber. Or you could wait about ten years to catch it in your dentist's waiting room.

    So, no, I didn't read the article.

    Someone want to scan it in for us?

    DT

  • It kinda surprises me that National Geographic will do an article on this subject. Aside from the fact that it's quite a departure from their normal range of subject matter, they also run the risk of being shown up for being well less than squeaky clean in matters of privacy themselves.

    I subscribed to National Geographic magazine in late 2002 so that I would receive the magazine for the whole of the 2003 year. I was careful to tick the "don't give my details to anyone" boxes, and I used a variant on my nam

    • I was careful to tick the "don't give my details to anyone" boxes, and I used a variant on my name and mailing address that was unique to them.

      So far, the National Geographic Society has sold my personal details to 'Readers Digest', 'Doubleday Books' (a large Australian publisher/viral marketer - rough equivalent for Readers Digest here in Oz), and another third party whose name escapes me.

      Some countries have laws against this, e.g. the UK. The Data Protection Act is taken very seriously.

    • "Some issues just don't arrive too. February, for example, still hasn't arrived here."

      My dad canceled his subscription almost a year ago and the Geographic continues to arrive monthly to this day. Now we know where those magazines come from :-)
  • You and I as average citizens have pretty well lost ours. But the with on ofr W's first decree, information that all presidents since 1980 can hide whatever they wish to. Hopefully sometime in the future things will be turned back to what our forefathers so wisely thought up. That is that citizens are to have privacy and politicians get little to none.
  • Instead of posting useless links in this article (FBI, Secret Service) how about linking up the Poseidon program (http://www.poseidon-tech.com/us/index.html) or Backscatter X-Ray (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/17/evening news/main563797.shtml)?

    Who the hell cares about links to the FBI and Secret Service?
  • Beyond being able to see your body in all it's glory, it can also see through cars, trucks, etc.

    http://www.as-e.com/technology/image_1.html

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