US Flight Policies Make No Sense

In an effort to seemingly terrorize the populace by evoking memories of 9/11 (that have been kept so persistently in the forefront of our collective consciousness by those in power) the White House approved a low flyover of a 747 over Manhattan. The official explanation is that it was a 'photo-op.'

In other flight-related news, a flight to the US was diverted because it contained someone on the no-fly list, an author that had been critical of US foreign policy in Latin America. Way to treat guests nicely.

Government can Track your Location Without Telco Help

Law enforcement agencies have been installing "Triggerfish" cell phone tower simulators which force cell phones to reveal unique identifiers. In other words, they now have the ability to track your location if you are carrying a cell phone. This requires a court order, but we all know how that story goes -- nowadays those are viewed as completely optional by those in power (not that they are all that hard to obtain anyways).

This wouldn't be all that significant (compared to other things we know about government surveillance) except that this monitoring technology is unique in that the government does not require the cooperation of any telco company to use it.

Coverage:
Daily Kos
Schneier

eBay linked to Chinese text-message surveillance

Man, if one Silicon Valley giant after another isn't caught red-handed aiding Chinese government evildoers. This time it is eBay, who in a joint venture with a Chinese company owns the company that operates the Tom-Skype text messaging system. Apparently the Tom-Skype system was logging user-identifiable messages that contained certain topics that might be critical of the Chinese government. Luckily, the New York Times article that mentions it at least has the decency to mention the NSA is doing the same thing over here, avoiding the rank hypocrisy that permeates much American coverage of Chinese government policy.

Coverage:
Seth Finkelstein
New York Times

Anthrax and ABC and unsolved mysteries

Anyone who cares about how journalistic ethics have deteriorated and/or the disquieting cooperation of government and press in this country needs to read Glenn Greenwald's two articles on the unsolved 2001 anthrax case. The big questions are: 1) Who sent the anthrax and why? 2) Why did ABC news report it had sources that claim the anthrax was from Iraq and why are they trying to retreat from that now? 3) Who are those sources and why were they misleading the public?

Posts:
Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News
Journalists, their lying sources, and the anthrax investigation

FBI amassing eye scan database

And the new personal information that the government is vacuuming up this week is... eye scans! It appears that the FBI is adding information about people's eyes to the already existing biometric databases of the populace. Great.

NY Attorney General Pressures US ISPs to filter content

And this is how it all begins... under the guise of "protecting the children" and other such claims, the New York Attorney General has pressured several major US ISPs into filtering traffic. At least one ISP, Time Warner, has blacklisted all of USENET.

There can be no justification for this kind of behavior. What will happen we have seen a million times when a clueless administrator tries to close down an open network:

1) The people that this law is supposed to stop will use other channels (proxies, other USENET servers, encryption, etc.)
2) Everyone else will suffer the brunt of censorship and surveillance, until they decide to make like a child pornographer and circumvent the restrictions themselves.
3) The ad-hoc, secretive blacklist expands without notice or warning or opportunity for review by anyone, an increasing number of non-kiddie-porn sites get caught up in the filter, including sites that may be politically inconvenient for the Government (Wikileaks, Pirate Bay, etc.).
4) Government realizes it can get away with this kind of behavior, starts pressing for more elimination of "bad" things from the Internet.
5) Free speech plummets.

News coverage:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9964895-38.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/nyregion/10internet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/10/1819200&from=rss

There was an interesting comment on Slashdot, revealing that one can tell when Google has received a takedown notice for child porn relating to a search. Check out this search for an example (look at the bottom of the page): http://www.google.com/search?q=4chan

Government has plans for martial law

Radar is reporting that the government has (not so?) contingency plans to round up suspicious individuals in the event of declared martial law... 8 million suspicious individuals, that is.

The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

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.

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.

Crossing the border? You're a terrorist!

From the Washington Post via Slashdot: It seems as though the federal government has hatched yet another brilliant idea with which to invade Americans' privacy. The culprit is another data-mining and analysis mega-project aimed to screen everyone who enters and leaves the country for a potential terrorist threat.

In a round-the-clock operation, targeters match names against terrorist watch lists and a host of other data to determine whether a person's background or behavior indicates a terrorist threat, a risk to border security or the potential for illegal activity. They also assess cargo.

Each traveler assessed by the center is assigned a numeric score: The higher the score, the higher the risk. A certain number of points send the traveler back for a full interview.

Yet another opportunity for bigoted assumptions about the nature of terrorists and bad data to act as an excuse for the government to expand its power. A little imagination reveals what the scoring system might look like:
+5 points if an Arab
+5 points if you are under 30
+5 points if you are dark-skinned
+5 points if you are wearing a turban
+5 points if you have no intention of returning to your home country
... and so on ...
+5 points if you look at the border officer the wrong way
+5 points if you assert your rights as a U.S. citizen
+5 points if you have recently attended a peace rally
+5 points if you have ever spoken against any policy of the political party in power

But, of course, DHS et al feel no accountability to any individual citizen, just like their no-fly (and other) lists. Once you've been marked as a terrorist (however apocryphal that label might be), just try getting off of it:

According to yesterday's notice, the program is exempt from certain requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974 that allow, for instance, people to access records to determine "if the system contains a record pertaining to a particular individual" and "for the purpose of contesting the content of the record."

Scary.

Not really terrorists, but not really citizens, either.

Are you a "specially designated national?" That's doublespeak for "kinda a terrorist." If you are, you've been placed on a government watchlist. This list is doubly asinine because business owners have access to it and are required by law to not do any business with anyone on it.

Three comments about this ridiculous, freedom-compromising list:

• Now we can all strike back against terrorists by making sure they don't purchase that washing machine and toaster at Costco!
  
• Of course, no innocents would be on this list and be getting confused with the bad guys... would they?
• Kind of creates an odd situation between owner and customer, doesn't it: "Sir, I can't sell this to you because your name is similar to a terrorist in Iran's. Sorry about that unfortunate coincidence. If it's any help, the police will be here shortly to interrogate you."
  

Another suprise... Patriot Act Abused!

Well who saw this coming? The Patriot Act, which has given law enforcement sweeping powers to invade citizens' privacy, has been abused by officers overstepping the mandate given to them by that same act. Here's the story from Wired and from Slashdot. Slashdot, as always, has some good comments. Some samples:
"Funny. I seem to recall a lot of screaming about the possibility for abuse and I distinctly recall being told to shut the fuck up, we can *trust* them to do the right thing."
"

"There is no excuse for the mistakes that have been made, and we are going to make things right as quickly as possible," the attorney general said.

And this time, we mean it!"