Loss of Privacy

New York City is stepping up their surveillance of downtown, including license plate readers and 3,000 public and private cameras. The bad news is that these devices are being sold to the public as a way to prevent terrorism, yet there’s very little evidence that they’re effective in such situations.

Who thinks that this type of big brother activity is really a good idea? Have Americans become such pansies that they’re afraid of their own shadows now? Thank God that terrorists are too stupid to have figured out how to copy, fake, or steal plates. I’m pretty happy they aren’t smart enough to use decoys in cars or rent cars that won’t be flagged as suspicious either. It’s even better that they don’t know how to take a train or bus into the city to wreck havoc.

New York City is also using the recent attacks in London as an example of how such systems work. Except they don’t. The ring of cameras around London did nothing to prevent the car bombers. If you can actually remember more than ten seconds ago, it was the ambulance drivers who noticed something was wrong. If two jackasses hadn’t gotten into a fight, a call to the ambulance would not have been necessary. No ambulance drivers means that the original plan could have very well worked. It was only after the incident occurred that British police tracked others through the CCTV cameras.

These same cameras were also supposed to be able to red flag illegal plates and stolen cars. Worked great didn’t it?

9/11 could never have been prevented with such security. However, the hijackers were quickly discovered without anyone invading my privacy. I’ve already had to suffer eliminations of my privacy, such as warrantless searches and wiretaps. Now, I’m assumed a criminal and my license plate will be logged into a database for no good reason.

The use of cameras and license plate readers will further affect how people act. If you know you’re being watched, you’re going to react differently. You might not join in that peace march for fear of repercussions from the government. You ‘ll stop discussing anything controversial in public. You will be forced to conform to what the government wants, merely to keep your sanity and to stay out of prison for a lack of siding with current policy.

While it is a nice idea to make policework a little bit easier for the police, taking shortcuts for work that should be performed live and in person is only going to be abused and misused. Again, this won’t make anyone safe. It’s just there to reassure the public that law enforcement might actually be doing something.

Interpol’s Secretary General, Ronald Noble, doesn’t want terrorists and other criminals roaming the planet so he’s come up with a new way of tracking them.  He wants all airlines to hand over their passenger data on international flights and have nations turn over fingerprints of any foreigner arrested.  He’s also not willing to stop there.

Eventually, he envisions expanding the database to encompass other forms of travel, including trains, ocean liners and cruise ships. “It could be needed for any international travel requiring a passport where reservations are made,” said Noble, a former New York University law professor and Clinton administration official in the U.S. Treasury Department.

The pilot project would gather only passport numbers and the country that issued the passport, and not individual names or other details.

Okay, let me see if I get this right.  He, essentially, wants every international traveler to be put into an interpol database but he’s only going gather passport numbers and the country issuing the passport.  And this is going to prevent terrorism how?

The federal government has worried about fraudulent travel documents in the hands of terrorists, especially when those passports are issued by countries whose citizens can enter the United States without a visa. In May, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would begin using Interpol’s database of 7 million lost or stolen passports to screen foreign travelers. The U.S. began reporting its own lost or stolen passports to Interpol in 2004.

Oh, right, so the terrorists will now be caught by using illegal passports.  Uhm, yeah, the 9/11 highjackers had legal papers.  Idiots.  Forgot about that didn’t they?  Or have they erased that from memory so they can create more databases on people.

The most disturbing thing about this is that the DHS reports their lost and stolen passports to Interpol, but they haven’t been using the database themselves to prevent invalid passports in the USA.  What the hell is the DHS doing?  This is yet another F for security and a little note of incompetence for the government.

there is no centralized international database of passports used in travel, which Noble said could eventually be expanded to track fugitives and people such as sex offenders who may be barred from traveling to certain countries known for sex tourism as part of their probation. “I believe that a country has a right to know where its passport goes,” he said. “Wherever a country wants to track the passport, as long as its laws allow it, and it doesn’t violate (Interpol’s) constitution, we’re prepared to support it.”

Oh yes, let’s bring the children in on this.  We must protect the children from the sex offenders.  So now we’re going to start restricting the freedom of movement.  Sure, they say it’s for those evil people like fugitives and sex offenders, but, just you wait, you’ll be on that list soon enough.

Important details of any pilot project remain murky, including privacy concerns and the question of which nations could access the central repository of passport data. Noble did suggest that the numbers would be accessible only to the nation that issued the passport in the first place–meaning the United States could track its own citizens but not, say, Iranians.

Uh-huh.  Sketchy details.  No concerns of privacy and a promise not to abuse it by only tracking your own citizens.

In the interview on Wednesday, Noble also outlined his plans for national police forces to share more fingerprint and DNA data with Interpol.

“All non-nationals that are arrested should have their fingerprints sent to Interpol and run against its database,” Noble said. That rule would include tourists, H-1B visa holders and even permanent residents with green cards who are arrested.

Are you kidding me?  That’s right.  Interpol considers everyone that has been arrested a criminal, whether it turns out they are or not.  You really think they will delete the fingerprints once you’re found innocent?

When asked whether U.S. citizens who are arrested should be included as well, Noble replied: “The data would overwhelm Interpol, and from a political perspective, the likelihood that a country would accept sending the criminal information of a U.S. citizen to Interpol, I’m not sure if that’s politically viable or even advisable.”

In the U.S., the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System includes more than 4.7 million DNA profiles, including 178,000 that were taken from crime scenes. Nearly all of the rest comes from convicted criminals.

4.7 million DNA profiles is too much to handle for Interpol, but it’s not for the G-8 nations.

A DNA-sharing network linking all G8 nations–meaning Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States–was activated last week, Noble said. It already includes about 65,000 to 70,000 DNA profiles, mostly from crime scenes, and nations can send DNA samples with or without names attached, he said.

Fuck!  The whole world’s going to hell in a hand basket and we’re all happily jumping in by not fighting against any of these idiotic proposals and laws.  We really do deserve what we get because of our own apathy.

Earlier this month, I wrote about police that will be fitted with head cameras.  They look ridiculous.  They invade too much into people’s privacy and seem to be that final step towards a police state.  In the article, the photo of the policeman made me laugh as he looked very stupid wearing the head camera.

This new photo that a friend sent me looks a little better and not as bad as the first photo.

Given the lively discussion over at reddit, it’s hard to imagine an educational system that will be getting rid of lessons on Churchill and Hitler, but that’s exactly what the British school system is going to do.

Secondary schools will strip back the traditional curriculum in favour of lessons on debt management, the environment and healthy eating, ministers revealed.

Even Winston Churchill no longer merits a mention after a drastic slimming-down of the syllabus to create more space for “modern” issues.

Along with Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin and Martin Luther King, the former prime minister has been dropped from a list of key figures to be mentioned in history teaching.

Without a basic understanding of where we’ve come from and where we are, we can never understand where we are going.  We will be destined to repeat the mistakes of the past because we will never learn what happened in the past.  We will lack the basic skills necessary to think and reason and comprehend the world around us.

Critics warned traditional subject disciplines were being stripped of key content and used to promote fashionable causes and poorly-defined “life skills”.

They said that while the two World Wars remain on the curriculum as broad topics the failure to specify teaching on Churchill – while naming other individuals – downgraded his importance.

If you don’t understand what Churchill or Hitler did in WWII, you will never be able to discern why these men did the things they did.  It opens the door to ignorance, antisemitism, and government propaganda.

Among other cutbacks, are the slimming of lessons because, apparently, students can only learn at a few minutes at a time.

Schools are also being told to tear up the timetable of eight lessons a day and introduce classes lasting a few minutes – or several hours – by mixing different subjects together.

Five-minute lessons on spelling, French or German could be “drip-fed” throughout the day.

Ah yes, the students are confused enough, now they will be fed half-assed lessons with no real comprehension.  How would you enjoy walking around all day, changing what you are doing every five minutes?  Is that really teaching a person the “life skills” that the British government seems to think is so vital?

Key subjects such as history and science will be cut back to allow teachers to spend a quarter of the day helping pupils who struggle with literacy and numeracy.

In other words, join the Americans in becoming stupid in History and Science.  They aren’t all that important anyway.  And redefining Science to teach the “moral and ethical implications of science” seems to skirt the line of allowing religion into science.

The British government seems to be content with the constant changing of the curriculum.  It’s as if they want young Britons to be ashamed of their history.  No, they’ve never been the perfect nation, but eliminating anything that isn’t within the current party line is a little too 1984 for me.  It is apparent that they do not want the next generation, or those after them, to question anything.

If individuals don’t understand the basics of science or the history of anything, then it is easy to tell the people whatever you want.  They won’t be learning the past.  They’ll simply be conditioned to believe whatever the government tells them to be true.  Knowledge is something that can never be taken away, however, if you’re never given the opportunity to gain knowledge, then you’ll never know the harm your government is really doing to you.

I’d laugh right now if this wasn’t so sad and I fear young Britons will become like young Americans, largely ignorant of the world, only with funny accents.

In case you missed it, New Hampshire has told the federal government to shove it.  The bill, which was passed overwhelmingly in the State’s legislature, was signed by Governor John Lynch on June 27, 2007.

“Real ID is intended to make us all safer, which I think we can all agree is a laudable goal,” said Lynch in a statement. “However, I strongly believe Real ID’s proposed haphazard implementation and onerous provisions would have the exact opposite effect. The federal government obviously did not think this burdensome system through and that is why we in New Hampshire are right to reject it.”

REAL-ID is frightening, but this makes things a little less depressing.  If other States fighting REAL-ID continue to reject it, the future may not become as bleak as we all fear.  I sincerely hope that Americans remember that the federal government was not given the power to restrict travel.

“Today, we are sending a strong message to the federal government — we are not about to be coerced into another unfunded federal mandate, especially not one that we will pay for with our privacy,” stated Lynch.

Now, let’s keep pushing until all 50 states have collectively told Washington to go to hell.