Monday, April 21, 2008

Michael Chertoff wants your fingerprints

Michael Chertoff, head of DHS, wants to build a "server in the sky" of all fingerprints from all citizens of a variety of countries. When questioned about the potential for privacy invasions, he answered, "A fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world, they’re like footprints. They’re not particularly private." Nevermind that fingerprints can be used as unique identifiers for a person, nor that government-managed databases have huge potential for misuse, theft, misidentification, leaks, etc. Great, this idiot is in charge of keeping us "safe?"

Via thinkprogress, Schneier

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Military news correspondants far from impartial

The New York Times reports that many former military officers that appear as commentators on news networks are not held to the same impartiality standards as other pundits. These analysts regularly had conflicts of interest, including lucrative government contracts for businesses that they were involved in. Furthermore, not towing the Pentagon's line would result in that commentator getting cut off from insider information in the future. As a result, these analysts opinions were almost always in line with the Pentagon's story, misleading the American people about the true nature of the news.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Government to collect DNA samples from arrested persons

More great news! It now seems that the DHS wants to to build a gigantic DNA database of everyone even arrested (not CONVICTED) relating to a crime, regardless of the person's innocence.

This has huge implications for privacy and presumption of guilt. As the Council for Responsible Genetics puts it:

DNA databanks are not required in order to use DNA testing to establish evidence of guilt or innocence when there is a known group of suspects for a crime: a DNA sample can be taken from each individual and compared directly with a crime scene profile. Few people have problems with this use of DNA.

The permanent retention of DNA in a database for use in future investigations, however, is another matter. An individual captured in a police database becomes an automatic suspect for all future criminal investigations where database searches are performed. This undermines the presumption of innocence that is central to criminal justice systems in the US, UK and most democracies around the world.

Setting aside this fundamental problem, benefits of the use and expansion of these databases must be weighed against their societal costs. While the temptation on the part of law enforcement to put more and more people into the database seems logical (i.e. one would assume the more inclusive the database, the more likely a positive identification can be made), in practice, the benefits of expansion may be limited. In the UK, despite the large number of people in the database, DNA profiles are obtained from the examination of less than 1% of crime scenes, so that in 2002/3 only 1.6% of all crime detections were attributed to DNA database matches (including only 0.3% of all detections for violent and sexual offenses). Such a small contribution to crime detection may not warrant the onerous financial costs of large DNA databases, not to mention the dilatory effect backlogs have on crime solving.

At the same time, there are many reasons to be concerned about the use and expansion of police databases.[11] These include: impacts on people's privacy, potential for misuse by governments, discrimination, and the possibility of error and wrongful conviction.

Joe Biden is an Internet Idiot

Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) thinks that you can 1) monitor all P2P traffic easily 2) pick out files that are illegal or infringe copyright by looking at their file names. Idiot.

Monday, April 14, 2008

US to have aircraft spy on its citizens

Surveillance isn't just limited to the Internet and the NSA. Looks like the DHS is going to get in on the party as well by using satellites to monitor citizens. Awesome. Slashdot. Post. Also see Naomi Wolf's Ten Steps to Close Down an Open Society.

Monsanto = Evil

Vanity Fair has a lengthly article on Monsanto called Monsanto's Harvest of Fear. The first part discusses how they are using patent law and mafia-like extortion tactics to support their business. Nice. Found via Slashdot.