Loss of Privacy

Wealthy Mexicans have begun chipping themselves due to the growing concerns of kidnappings in Mexico.  So great are the concerns that the Mexican security firm, Xega, has seen a sales increase of 13% over the past year.

Katherine Albrecht, a U.S. consumer privacy activist, says the chip is a flashy, overpriced gadget that only identifies a person and cannot locate someone without another, bigger GPS device that kidnappers can easily find and destroy.

She said fear of kidnapping was driving well-off Mexicans to buy a technology that had yet to prove useful.

‘They are a prime target because they’ve got money and they’ve got a worry and you can combine those two and offer them a false sense of security which is exactly what this is,’ she said.

The problem with this system is that, while a person could hit a panic button before being kidnapped, all Xega can do is notify the police.  The person then still needs a bigger device to carry with them in order for law enforcement officials to find them.  The implanted chip is useless without it.  All a kidnapper needs to do is find the device on the victim and destroy it, making any attempt to find the victim useless.  Either that or cut off the body part with the chip in it.

A new pilot scheme will see 8300 Scottish schoolchildren fingerprinted as a means to simplify the day for school officials.

Supporters of the scheme are citing the advantages of the fingerprinting database including class attendance monitoring, better monitoring of library book borrowing and the buying of school meals (and the end of stigma for those who receive free meals).

One government minister even went on television when I was on holiday in Scotland last week to say that a major benefit of the scheme was that when school bullying occurred, they would have the fingerprints on file to say who did what and they would then be able to track down the bully or bullies involved.

As if the teachers weren’t overworked enough, now they have to become some sort of CSI investigators and collect prints at the scene to determine the guilty.  This government minister is delusional if he thinks this idea is going to work.

The whole idea with fingerprinting students is not to have an easier system, it’s to have better monitoring of a person.  They monitor everything, in a single database, which can be recalled at any time.  This is about getting children used to being monitored as a child so that, as an adult, they will be less resistant to more controls placed upon them.

Given the track record of the UK, is putting the information of your child into a single database really that good of an idea?  My biometric data is mine.  I don’t give it away that easily and there is no justification for forcing a child to use this system.

11 year old Katie and 3 year old Sabrina just wanted to sell some of the produce that they had grown in their garden, so they set up a stand to sell it to neighbors and passers-by.  Clayton, California Mayor Gregg Manning, however, shut them down, due to the fact that their home isn’t zoned for commerce and is considered a traffic hazard.

They did it for maybe four hours on Saturday mornings to make a little money. They haven’t sold a thing since the police showed up recently in response to one complaint to the mayor’s office.

Ah, yes, we now live in the land of one complaint will get you shut down and in trouble with the law.

“They said traffic was being stopped and then they came up with we can’t have a roadside stand and then they said it was a commercial enterprise,” said Katie Lewis, former produce seller.

As for the traffic issue, neighbor Terri Highsmith says there isn’t one.

“On the weekends is when I mostly notice them selling. I come and go a lot and I’ve never seen any traffic problems,” said Highsmith.

Oh, but that doesn’t matter.  A single person has already filed a complaint and they have much more power than common sense.

“They may start out with a little card-table and selling a couple of things, but then who is to say what else they have. Is all the produce made there, do they make it themselves? Are they going to have eggs and chickens for sale next,” said Manning.

“Lemonade stands are technically illegal, but they don’t last long enough to do anything about,” said Manning.

This guy is the mayor?  For crying out loud, these kids are 11 and 3.  They just wanted to do what every little kid has done for thousands of years, yet he’d close down a lemonade stand given half a chance.

“I wish everyone would follow the rules and not be just self-centered,” said Manning.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, because having extra food from your garden that you sell to other people is self-centered.

One person who complained and a “follow the law to the letter” mayor are the ones who are self-centered.  These girls aren’t doing anything wrong and it is extremely unlikely that they are going to grow so big that ConAgra and Monsanto should be worried.

Instead of learning about free enterprise, economics, helping others, and learning the value of hard work, these girls are learning about what happens when you encounter a stick in the mud complainer and end up facing hardass politicians.

They are also learning how to fight the law.  They have been shut down because the mayor claims the law was made to protect the citizens who asked for it.  It is now the citizens who are signing Katie’s petition that are saying they don’t want the protection and the produce stand should go back up.

This is the America we live in today.  It’s a “letter of the law” country instead of a “spirit” of the law country.  This is how we end up with 5 year olds on the terror no-fly list.  Little kids selling their fruits and veggies really shouldn’t scare us.  I guess someone should have told these kids that the new America is all about following the rules, watching TV and playing video games.

Backers of privacy rights are outraged at the police use of tracking vehicles of suspects using GPS without proper authorization in the form of a warrant.

Privacy advocates rightfully ask, why not just get a warrant?  They aren’t that difficult to obtain and, if there’s sufficient evidence, the judge will gladly sign off on it.

Law enforcement officials, when they discuss the issue at all, said GPS is essentially the same as having an officer trail someone, just cheaper and more accurate. Most of the time…judges have sided with police.

Oh, my bad.  The judges are in on it too.

With the courts’ blessing, and the ever-declining cost of the technology, many analysts believe that police will increasingly rely on GPS as an effective tool in investigations and that the public will hear little about it. Last year, FBI agents used a GPS device while investigating an embezzlement scheme to steal from District taxpayers, attaching one to a suspect’s Jaguar.

Well, now that we know about it, we’re all going to let our friends drive our cars around while we go about our day freely.  Court documents of the GPS will just show that we went for a drive, spent some time at the mall, then went home.  Yes, it’s exactly the same as having actual, live people following you around all day.

“I’ve seen them in cases from New York City to small towns — whoever can afford to get the equipment and plant it on a car,” said John Wesley Hall, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “And of course, it’s easy to do. You can sneak up on a car and plant it at any time.”

Awww, isn’t that nice.  It’s so nice that it’s downright creepy.  And this can be abused.  Say you think some punk might smoke pot.  You GPS his car and wait until he’s somewhere near a known pot dealer.  The punk might just be a stupid kid driving in the area.  Or, maybe his grandma lives near a pot dealer.  Now the police have circumstantial evidence to harass him.

Maybe the police don’t like lawyer Johnny because Johnny sues them too much and is hired a lot by citizens that sue the police.  GPS his car, then wait.  Maybe Johnny is a good guy most of the time, but he cheats on his wife.  Well, now the police have leverage against Johnny.

Extrapolate this further to political opponents and protesters.  Same principle.  The police can now monitor every move.  If a police officer had to physically be there to do this, it probably wouldn’t happen.  It would be noticed and questioned.  GPS saves the police the from doing the hard work.

It also helps the crazy people who track the girlfriends.  You can continue with your baseball career and, after the game, check the GPS and see where your girl has been.  Worse, you could be New York City and track and photograph everything in the city.  This defense is said to be the perfect way to prevent another attack on the city.

The police currently need a warrant for all audio/video equipment they wish to install to monitor suspects.  Why should GPS be exempt?  Your car is, legally, an extension of your home.  Therefore, you should expect the same level of privacy as in your home and not have to worry about the police wandering about your private property.

No one, not the police, not my mom, absolutely no one, ever needs to know exactly where I am all the time.  If you can’t follow me as a human being, then there’s no reason to be following me.

I think I need to keep an eye out for any GPS on my car and keep up on how I can detect it.  Once I have detected it, I can either remove it and smash it with a hammer or I can hire a local kid to drive my car around town at odd hours just to mess with the police.  I’m sure they’ll wonder why I drove through the car wash at 3am and then sat in the parking lot of the movie theater for ten minutes before driving 20 miles out of town, turned around and came back home.  I could also take the GPS and place it on a police car in town.  There are many in my town that never seem to move and, if it really does only take three seconds to install, the police can follow themselves.

Leaked Scotland Yard documents reveal that Sir Ian Blair bugged the most senior Asian official, Tarique Ghaffur, in an attempt to discredit him.

The papers allege Tarique Ghaffur, an assistant commissioner, had more than 300 of his telephone calls tapped in an elaborate operation overseen directly by Blair.

He was also photographed and taped attending more than 30 meetings with a fellow officer at restaurants and cafes in west London.

Already under investigation for allegedly giving his friend, Andy Miller, £3 million in police work, this will only further the scrutiny already applied to the Commissioner.

Although the surveillance operation officially targeted another officer, Ghaffur believes it was designed to trap him in a compromising position.

Officially they targeted Ali Dizaei, who was wrongly suspected of having contacts with prostitutes, corruption and spying for Iranian intelligence.

Ghaffur, 53, once the senior Yard officer responsible for signing off on surveillance operations, claims Blair was hoping to trap him into indiscretions even though he did not have the proper legal authority to monitor him.

He claims he was sidelined in his role as head of security preparations for the 2012 Olympics, was excluded from key meetings and had his contract renewed for one year instead of five.