Loss of Privacy

I can only assume this TV show is going to be propaganda to get the American public to like the DHS more and stop resisting its policies.

Every day the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security patrol more than 100,000 miles of America’s borders. This territory includes airports, seaports, land borders, international mail centers, the open seas, mountains, deserts and even cyberspace. Now viewers will get an unprecedented look at the work of these men and women while they use the newest technology to safeguard our country and enforce our laws, in “Homeland Security USA,” which debuts with the episode “This is Your Car on Drugs,” TUESDAY, JANUARY 6 (8:00-9:00 p.m., ET) on ABC.

Homeland Security premieres January 6th on ABC.

I shouldn’t be surprised when I read stories like this, but they still tick me off.  A high school in New Rochelle, New York has torn out several pages of the novel Girl Interrupted, because it’s sexually explicit.

The New Rochelle schools had already denounced the vandalism targeting “Girl, Interrupted” by Susanna Kaysen, about her stay in a Massachusetts mental hospital. Superintendent Richard Organisciak has since followed that by announcing plans to “undertake a review of our policy and practices as they relate to the selection of materials in all formats.”

In addition, the New Rochelle High School English Department – where the decision to censor the book was made in 2004 – has issued a statement calling the decision “regrettable.”

The torn-out pages came to light when students in a film class this year were assigned to compare the book with the 1999 film version, which stars Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie.

Among the students who noticed the excised pages was the son of Robert Cox, who writes the blog, “New Rochelle’s Talk of the Sound.”

Cox e-mailed the English department chairwoman, who responded that the material was torn from the books because it was “of a sexual nature that we deemed inappropriate for teachers to present to their students.”

Cox says he blogged about the torn-out pages when his later e-mails to the principal and superintendent went unanswered. The blog brought public attention and the district announced its disapproval.

Yes, but only after it brought public attention to the matter.  Before that, the kid couldn’t get anyone at the school to answer his questions about why it happened in the first place.

The book’s publisher, Vintage Books, denounced the censorship but said the district’s decision to replace all the torn copies was “a satisfactory redress of the situation.”

Why are we tearing out material from novels?  The sexual nature of the novel is a large part of who this woman became.  Erasing part of her life, simply because you are too prudish to teach or read it is ridiculous.  If this book is too explicit, then why teach it at all?  Find something else to teach so that you can continue to pretend that high schoolers know nothing about this topic and are good, innocent, little children.

New RFID tags with circuitry deposited by simple printing technologies could finally make it cost effective to tag low-value products on retail shelves. The printing process eliminates the need for expensive optical lithography and reduces the consumption of energy and toxic materials, cutting costs: the tags cost less than half as much as existing ones. Mobile phones with built-in RFID scanners could let consumers access information about tagged products, or even pay for them without waiting in line.

Ah, yes, that’s just what we need.  More mobile devices that can act as RFID scanners.  I’m sure that won’t result in anything bad.  After all, it’s not like we’re putting them in our passports and driver’s licenses and expecting them to be secure.

Researchers at the University of Utah have created a device that would jam a cell phone by connecting it to a device that determines whether a person’s car keys are in use or not.

Key2SafeDriving technology uses RFID or Bluetooth wireless capabilities to issue signals from car keys to cell phones to prevent drivers from talking on their phones or texting while driving. Some research shows that as many as 1 in 10 teen drivers are talking on cell phones or texting while driving at any time, and the possible consequences of such ill-advised multitasking have grabbed many a headline in recent years.

A company called Accendo LC of Kaysville, Utah has licensed the technology and is working to build it into commercial devices that could be on the market next year. The company is sorting out how to bring the technology to market, but one possibility is that it would be made available through cell phone service companies and could also be tied in with insurance companies, which might offer discounts for users.

This technology would now prevent emergency phone calls to the driver from getting through.  Are you supposed to pull over in a dangerous, unfamiliar area because you got lost and the only way to get help is to stop, turn off your car, take your keys out, and then make a phone call?

This will also be easily defeated, leaving only the non-tech-savvy person irritated by the device.  You can replace the sim card, copy the car’s key, turn off the bluetooth capability, use a phone without bluetooth, or use someone else’s phone while driving.

This device will only work for the teen who is already conscientious and probably wouldn’t drive and talk at the same time anyway.  It’s a waste of time and money.  The only thing it will succeed in doing is giving tracfone or some other pay as you go phone more business.

Courtesy of SpyBlog

After a 4 year hiatus, the ever busy Simon Davies, of Privacy International, has re-instituted the UK Big Brother Awards, to recognise some of the people who have been trying to keep the monsters of state and corporate mass surveillance , snooping and control at bay.

At a ceremony held at the London School of Economics, despite the looming presence in the background, of the NO2ID / ORG photo collage of surveillance cameras etc. in the shape of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, it was good to hear Simon Davies express some cautious optimism, that perhaps, we are starting to push back the attacks on our privacy and security which the Labour Government, the bureaucracy and others have inflicted on us in recent years.

The evil Big Brother Award, with the boot forever stamping on the human face, was awarded simply to New Labour.

The 2008 UK Big Brother Awards Roll of Honour

Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP – one of the Liberal Democrat Members of the European Parliament whose Human Rights Committee has been trying to stem the onslaught of necessarily repressive legislation in the past few years.

Phil Booth, the National Coordinator of the cross political party

NO2ID Campaign against the Database State. Phil was recently described as the “hardest man in NGO-world”.

Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK, who did so much to help educate politicians and lawyers and the media about the counterproductive evil policy of keeping innocent people’s DNA tissue samples and DNA profiles, seemingly for ever, This has been overturned in the very recent European Court of Human Rights judgement in the Marper case.

Gareth Crossman – retiring Director of Policy at Liberty Human Rights

Becky Hogge – retiring Executive Director of the Open Rights Group

Rt. Hon. David Davis MP, the fomer Conservative Shadow Home Affairs spokesman, who was re-elected as the Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden, on the principles of freedom and liberty.