Loss of Privacy

The White House, in another attempt to prevent disclosure of information, has begun a crackdown on USGS scientists, stating that their papers and reports must be screened before they can be released to the public.

The controversy is large enough that the USGS has issued their own response.

If a topic is “policy-sensitive’ or highly-visible” it will be flagged and the USGS Communications Office will be alerted. Now, while many jobs have policies for items to be reviewed before being released, this policy appears to be aimed at items that are contrary to the current administration. This damages the freedom of information that we are used to obtaining from the USGS because it can affect papers and reports on global warming, the Alaskan oil drilling in the Wildlife Reserve, and any other topic that counters the standing White House policy.

It’s also not surprising that the White House wants Mark Myers as director of the USGS. While Myers has a PhD in geology, he has spent most of his career in Alaska. Myers supports drilling in Alaska, something this administration has failed to convince environmentalists and other Americans as a good idea. Myers claims that, if he gets the job, he will only provide data and help people to interpret and understand the data. He claims that he will not be involved in any decision making.

So, why exactly is he being offered the position? He wants to be the director but he doesn’t want to make any decisions.  Can people live in a vaccuum where they can actually do this?

If he is confirmed by the Senate, he will be the first director in many decades who will not be promoted from within the USGS or from the world of Academia. He has also spent a great deal of time working for oil companies as well as the State of Alaska. It is impossible to say that he will stay out of decision making, given the ties he has to corporations and his previous statements of support for drilling in Alaska as well as no human has ever held a position where they didn’t influence outcomes.

The biggest problem that we face, however, is that a little more than half the citizens of this once great country believe that this sort of behavior by government officials is acceptable. Far too many Americans now subscribe to the belief that the government knows best for its citizens and that, if you don’t have anything to hide, then why are worried over such a little thing as the government scrutinizing your every move. And they believe this because the education system is in the toilet and ignorant people are easier to sway than educated ones. People would much rather be told what to believe than do a little research to find the truth.

With most Americans not even bothering to vote and the constant gerrymandering of districts it’s easy to pack Congress with people who will vote along the same lines as the current administration. Couple that with the president’s ability to sign a piece of paper stating that he simply isn’t going to follow whatever law he doesn’t like, while stacking the courts with people who want to give the executive branch more power (see Justice Alito) and you’ve got the makings of a nice authoritarian society. George Bush has recreated our government into a unitary executive and no one cares.

It doesn’t matter to them because they cannot see how it directly effects them. When you try to explain and clarify exactly what it means, peoples’ eyes glaze over because they cannot grasp the most basic concept that the president is capable of taking the government and turning it into a machine that spends trillions of dollars on his own personal interests instead of the citizens he’s supposed to represent.

George Bush and his friends frequently speak of bringing democracy to the world, yet they seem to think that the USA isn’t worthy of keeping what democracy we have. They have decided that we cannot handle knowing the truth or deciphering the truth amongst the clouds of disinformation and junk science. They have decided that we are too stupid (and it seems they might be right in most cases) to figure this stuff out on our own, so they’ll just ban its release so as to not befuddle us.

The USGS has an immense wealth of information that is very informative. Just because a lot of Americans cannot understand the information doesn’t mean that others can’t. Nor should it mean that, since the majority of Americans don’t read this information, it isn’t worthy to be published. Many other scientists and science buffs enjoy reading this information and learning both sides of an issue. The lack of information means that we are shutting down debate, research, and real understanding of scientific methods and principles.

As early as ten years ago, Americans would laugh at you when you would suggest anything like this could happen. You’d be labeled a lunatic, a crackpot, and a conspiracy junkie, never to be taken seriously on anything. Today, however, people are starting to take notice.

What this boils down to is a basic censorship of ideas. We’ve been seeing this type of behavior from the White House for a few years now. American citizens need to speak up and inform their representatives in Washington that this is not what we want. We want our civil liberties and freedoms back. We want to be able to publish differing views on everything, even if it’s something as silly as a flying spaghetti monster.

It is wrong to suppress the information of facts merely because they may have a different view than what the current administration believes. While the USGS has been in trouble before for falsifying documentation, it should be noted that we may never know if it happens again if this new system does indeed get fully implemented.

Hopefully, on January 20, 2007, when the Democrats place Henry Waxman [pdf] as chairman of the Government Reform Committee, he will continue to speak up against the lying and secrecy that has fallen upon Washington. And, even more wishful thinking, that the American people will make enough of a stink about it, whether it be by calling, writing, voting or all three, forcing policy changes that will allow the government to be freer than it has been for the last six years.

Until then, or 2008 when Bush leaves office, most people will probably take the route of least resistance. That is, to sit on the couch and do nothing because to fight for something means to resist your status quo. It means doing whatever is necessary to tell Washington that stripping our freedoms, rights, and privileges in the name of protecting us from terrorism and providing security is wrong.  And they can’t waste time on that when they only have a few minutes left to vote for American Idol.

So, it is left up to us that are sick and tired of these policies to do something. We need to continue the fight against the farcical dangers that Washington says we face and help to restore what we once had, for ourselves and for the stupid and lazy.

It should come as no surprise that Michael Chertoff is defending the REAL-ID Act, claiming that it is vital to the nation’s security. What he fails to address is that our new national ID will actually do little to prevent crime, terrorism, and anything else it is trying defeat.

“The Homeland Security chief, who is nearing his two-year mark with the agency, was likely trying to quell rampant skepticism about the IDs voiced by some privacy advocates, immigrants and other groups. Some have said they fear that the IDs are a stepping stone to a veritable police state, complete with ready surveillance of individuals. Some have argued that the idea of creating more tamperproof IDs is only a marginally better way to screen out those intent on committing terrorist acts because ID cards don’t even begin to tackle a core crime prevention challenge: determining a person’s unspoken intentions. “

The new ID cards will do little to prevent anything other than keeping track of honest people. Terrorists will obtain the ID cards legally, just as they had on 9/11, and the government will perform surveillance on everyone. There is no way of telling if I, an American born and raised, am thinking of going batshit and blowing something up because of being so pissed off at the way my fellow Americans are willingly goose stepping into a police state. There is another Timothy McVeigh out there. These cards will never predict who he, or she, is.

There is also the likely possibility of fraud amongst these new cards. This will probably cause the government to implement biometrics into the cards, forcing people to give up pieces of their identity to do things as simple as banking. Most of the ID fraud is going to occur right now. People are going to IDs today, under false pretenses. These IDs will be considered legal and, when the REAL-ID becomes mandatory, they will simply transfer the ID over. All legit.

The government, on its own, is notorious for its incompetence in handling large scale projects such as this. It is unlikely that they will consult anyone that could actually help secure such a system. While it is claimed that only the most basic information is going to be put onto the card, it is completely obvious that more and more of our private information will be placed onto the card. We already have the technology to do it, it’s just a case of citizens having the desire to fight to keep their privacy. It will only be a matter of years before the REAL-ID really will be your ID. You’ll need it to bank, drive, shop, and eat. It will have your medical records, your biometrics (fingerprints, retina scans, DNA) and every other thing that makes you you.

Now, while it’s great to think that you could ditch your fat wallet full of credit cards and store loyalty cards, do you really want to have all your information in a single database that will become increasingly difficult to correct?

Having a single source holding your identity is a bad thing. It is far too easy to obtain information about you and copy that. You lose your card or someone steals it from you and you are royally screwed.

Nothing is secure. It’s a fact of life. You can make things more secure but it’s only a matter of time before individual technologies are cracked. Right now, there are different types of ID. Each state has their own, with minor variants within each state. By placing all IDs in one place, you create one ID that is trusted everywhere. All it takes is for someone to obtain the information and create a copy that is indistinguishable from the real one. Then what do you do?

We also shouldn’t be making the job of the government to police us so easy. We shouldn’t be letting our information sit in a single database, accessible to everyone including the local bar, airlines, police, and doctor’s offices. They will, most likely, also keep your information in their databases. The DMV will be required to keep digital copies of your birth certificate and social security cards. If you move to another state, get them scanned again. How secure is your identity now?

The more a single piece of identity is accepted as the only true and acceptable ID, the more valuable it will become to criminals and the more likely things like identity theft will increase. Michael Chertoff is essentially telling us that, with REAL-ID, it will be easier to track immigrants and illegal immigrants won’t get your identity because REAL-ID will prevent them from doing it because REAL-ID will be the real thing because it’s impossible to make fake REAL-IDs.

Although enforcement of REAL-ID violates Article X of the US Constitution, those in Washington have become accustomed to running roughshod over that little piece of paper and, instead, have taken to telling the States that they must implement this or lose Federal funds.

The fact is, there has not been that many Americans that have died as a result of terrorism, yet everyone seems to be running around paranoid that a terrorist is waiting just around the corner to kill them. You are more likely to be murdered by your neighbor or family member. Before 9/11 we never feared these people or ran around screaming for a national ID.

Think of the numbers… In the last average American’s lifetime’s worth (~70 years), maybe 5,000 U.S. citizens have been victims of terrorism on U.S. soil – out of a population of 300,000,000. That’s a one in sixty thousand chance, over an entire lifetime, of falling victim to terrorism if we don’t secure things any more than they are right now (what media hype would have us believe aside). Removing a one in sixty thousand risk during my entire lifetime merits a tiny, tiny, intrusion in to my liberties. Whilst all kinds of things may be “vital” to removing that risk, the risk is actually so damn small that the slightest intrusion from any of those “vital” things means it’s far better to suck the risk up and live with it. And that’s before you consider that this is a major intrusion in to civil liberties for something that won’t even remove that tiny 1:60,000 risk and will, at best, just add another zero on the end of an already negligibly small number.

The crazy thing is, we’re hundred, if not thousands, of times more likely to be killed by the crap we eat – yet suggest curtailing our liberty to buy junk food even the slightest bit and you get a political shitstorm far in excess of the people who blindly accept we need to curtail liberties far worse to simply tweak a 1:60,000 risk. Yay for disproportionate responses based on media and political hype.

An ID that will probably include RFID to it is a horrible decision. We know RFID is easily defeated and we know that the government still loves the technology. Marry the two and we are in for constant tracking and huge problems of identity.

And how exactly would this work when you put the human element into it? People are generally forgiving. “Oh I forgot my card at home,” or “Come on, you know me, let me in.” This type of behavior will occur, only leading to more abuses of the system.

Have you actually read the requirements? First of all, this means no more automatic renewal, no renew by mail or Net, everyone will have to physically go to the DMV and stand in line, probably at least doubling or tripling the foot traffic in those already overworked, slow-as-fucking-molasses dens of bureaucracy. You need a birth certificate — so older folks who don’t have one and were born in East Podunk, North Dakota where the old records were wiped away decades ago when the flood happened — well, you’re shit out of luck. You will now need to use a verifiable physical address — no more P.O. Boxes or mail drops on your ID. Great, now if someone is stalking you, they’ll know exactly where to find you. And the most absurd requirement is that you must present some sort of photo ID. Um…excuse me…my driver’s license IS my photo ID. How many people in this country don’t have some sort of second photo ID? And even if they do (school, work, etc.), since those IDs don’t have the same level of security and documentation as this supposedly uber-secure RealID, then what’s the point? You’re using documents that are insecure and easily forged to verify your identity for an allegedly secure ID. Anyone see the fallcy here?

Do you really want to give up your privacy for a little security? If not, you should do a bit more reading and learn what else you can do to help get this overturned.

Last Friday, I took the day off and went into the city with my husband for some much needed “bunking off work” time. We spent the day walking around the American Museum of Natural History and seeing a couple of other sites. However, the most important thing I took away from New York City was that I just don’t care about what’s popular anymore.

On the way back to the train station, we were given a free copy of the NY Post. Yes, free is still too much to pay for this paper. Inside the Post, there was an article about the “hip hop mogul” Damon Dash and the sexual assault/rape case brought against him. Apparently, this has been a case that has been going on since 2003, when the woman filed against him. The alleged crime happened in Brazil and this particular news story was about how Damon Dash had just lost his appeal to have the case heard in Brazil. Fair enough, except, who the hell is Damon Dash? If the story hadn’t reported that he was some sort of hip hop guy, I would never have known who he is, or was. I don’t even know if he’s a has been or a never-will-be.

At one point in time, I had thought that I just grown old and turned into my parents and grandparents. Sure, everyone knows the Paris Hiltons of the world but, as you get older, you tend to not know the latest movie and rock stars and no longer care about fashion. I felt like I had fallen into that category at the tender age of 36 until I started to think about what really occurred.

When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I didn’t listen to the pop music of the day, nor did I wear the latest fashions. I wore then, and still do, a t-shirt and pair of jeans (blue or black). The only time I was in fashion was when Bruce Springsteen released Born In The USA. Suddenly, people started to like me and pay attention to me. But, as with everything else in life, fashions fade and so did interest in me.

While most of my friends were drooling over Duran Duran and Morrissey, I spent my days listening to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Rush, and Bad Company. These guys were big ten years before, yet I enjoyed their music much more. I also listened to classical music and had a particular affinity to Tchaikovsky.

I did know who all the stars were, even if I didn’t like them. I went to dozens of movies every month. As I entered college, I found it much the same as high school. Being a New Yorker and going to college in Nebraska has some advantages. Everyone thinks your exotic and wants to hear you speak with your “funny” accent. You also had the big advantage of the $1.50 theater. Now, if I planned my time right, I could see a dozen movies a week. I still knew what was hot, which famous person was sleeping with which other famous person and what was going on in the world. Or so I thought.

By the time I graduated from college, I realized that most of this was unimportant. Everything that I “needed” to know to keep up with my friends was superfluous to the things that really mattered. I’d rather enjoy hanging out at home and having good conversation, the type I imagined Socrates might have had with his students. I also had the travel bug. I’ve had it my whole life. I don’t just like to read about things like the Mona Lisa, Rosetta Stone, or the Roman Forum. I want to see and feel and touch them. I want to be able to look at it and get the deep kind of appreciation for things that a photo in book just can’t give you.

My nephew calls me a geek and a dork all the time for this. I’m a geek because I build my own computers and try to keep up on technology. I like to learn new programs and interact with others who think likewise. I’m a dork because I watch the news. I read the news on at least ten different sites per day. I like to know all the different perspectives on things so I can make the most informed decision possible on things. I’m also a dork because I like to read books. I’m not so much a fan of novels, though when I do read one, they tend to lean towards the Neil Gaiman and Neil Stephenson types of books. Most of the books that I read are historical, the classics, current events, or political science. For this, I’m labeled out of touch with what really matters.

The fact is, I’d rather know about things like Darfur, the constant problems in the Middle East and how George Bush is screwing up the views others have of America. I don’t like that, when I go on vacation, I feel like I need to defend America. Traveling to a foreign country should be an indication that I want to learn new things and am open to what the world has to offer.

I prefer seeing new countries and meeting new people, not only to enrich my own life but, so that when I am an old woman and can no longer get around, I can have great memories of my younger days. When I look back on life, I want to be able to remember subtle differences in windmills and which type was used for what purpose. I want to remember every detail of each light bulb that hung on the Eiffel Tower in 1999 and laugh at the horrible faces my husband made as I made him drink Bombay Sapphire Gin later that same night.

One of the best days of my life was sitting outside in the cool evening air in Dar Es Salaam, speaking with Moses for two hours. We could have spoken longer, as there was so much more to discuss but he had to help his girlfriend out. This was far more memorable than any of the days I spent at the movie theater or the days being shocked that Hollywood couples break up or cheat on one other.

The problem isn’t that I’ve gotten older. It’s that I’ve gotten wiser. I was never very much into all the popular things to begin with but I see that, as a teenager, you are far more worried about how you look, how you sound and how you act. You don’t want to be labeled and shunned because you care about things your fellow classmates do not. As you get older, you start to realize, “do I really want these sorts of people to be my friends for life or do I want a richer, more fulfilling life.”

So, you see, the problem isn’t that I don’t know who Damon Dash is, the problem is that I just don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me in the long run that some hip hop guy is in trouble with the law. Until Friday, I had never heard of him, and that was okay with me. I don’t need to be a player to get by in life. I don’t need to keep up with you or your friends because, quit frankly, it just doesn’t matter.

The story of the prostitute killings in Ipswich, England is horrible. I think everyone would agree that, even if you are a prostitute, you don’t deserve to die in such a terrible manner. No one deserves to die like that and it is good that the police have arrested a suspect. However, the story also brings about a broader story that I have touched on several times before. The United Kingdom, and a few places in the USA, have touted that CCTV cameras help to prevent crime, despite evidence to the contrary.

Many authorities claim that CCTV cameras will help prevent and reduce crimes but the most they have done in this crime is release footage of one of the prostitutes shortly before she was murdered. Even though the United Kingdom is the one of the most watched societies in the world, they could do little to help this woman.

Now, this is not a dig at the police and saying they can’t do their jobs. What it is, is a criticism of the lackadaisical approach far too many people have towards CCTV. It gives the false sense of protection, when, instead, you should continue to have your guard up. It makes people feel safe when they are not.

This woman had a very dangerous job. You never know what kind of whack job your next john is going to be. The story is reminiscent of the Whitechapel murders and Jack the Ripper, as well as the Yorkshire Ripper. Five women are dead and the police can only ask for people to look closely at the images to help them solve the crime.

Prostitution in Britain is legal but there are laws that make providing sex for money difficult. For example, a woman can sell sex in an apartment, but advertising sexual services, streetwalking, brothels and kerb crawling are all illegal.

Many prostitutes are ignoring police warnings to stay at home and have declined the financial help offered to them. This is likely to continue, especially now that a suspect is in custody. Others in England have begun calling for better protection for prostitutes, legal brothels or both. The police have been deluged with more than 9,000 calls with information and over 10,000 hours of CCTV footage. Maybe, one of the killings was caught on tape. It’s unlikely though.

What will happen instead is that the police will eventually find the killer and point to the tip lines and the CCTV footage as the reason they found the killer. CCTV will be praised for its massive retention of video data and everyone will exclaim how great it is to live in a society where CCTV can save the day. However, law enforcement will claim that, these crimes could have been prevented if they had just had some more cameras in place. They surely would have seen the killer committing his act and would have prevented him from going on a crime spree. Then, everyone will return to their normal lives, waiting for the government to increase taxes so that they can be safer and be spied upon even more.

Other countries, most notably the USA, will use this as an example to shove CCTV down the throats of ignorant Americans and still claim that North Korea and China are evil because they spy on their citizens whereas the US government is merely helping to prevent terrorism and crime. Everyone will smile and give up more of their hard earned money because the government has done a good job of protecting them, while the rest of us cringe and continue to look for a place we can live free from the prying eyes of government.

Photo belongs to Al Bello, Getty Images

In the world of Baseball, this catch by Endy Chavez may be the best ever in the postseason. The ball, hit by St. Louis Cardinals’ Scott Rolen, was well hit and over the wall. A homerun for sure. But a timely jump allowed Chavez to reach over the wall and catch the ball from the clutches of the homerun gods. Instead of celebrating the catch, however, Chavez threw the ball into the infield to complete a 7-6-3 double play.

This catch caught the attention of the voters for the This Year in Baseball awards. They rewarded Chavez with the Postseason Moment of the Year Award.