Loss of Privacy

David Kris, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, was testifying before Congress, urging lawmakers to reauthorize the Patriot Act, when Al Franken read the 4th Amendment to him.

Noting that he received a copy of the Constitution when he was sworn in as a senator, he proceeded to read it to Kris, emphasizing this part:  “no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

“That’s pretty explicit language,” noted Franken, asking Kris how the “roving wiretap” provision of the Patriot Act can meet that requirement if it doesn’t require the government to name its target.

Kris looked flustered and mumbled that “this is surreal,” apparently referring to having to respond to Franken’s question. “I would defer to the other branch of government,” he said, referring to the courts, prompting Franken to interject: “I know what that is.”

Kris explained that the courts have held that the law’s requirements that the person be described, though not named, is sufficient to meet the demands of the Constitution. That did not appear to completely satisfy Franken’s concerns.

You can watch the complete video here or you can just jump to the part with Al Franken reading here.

An expansion is currently underway that will develop the FBI’s current fingerprint collection database into a new biometrics system that includes DNA, facial recognition, palm prints and voice scans.

The plan is to share this data with authorized U.S. and international investigative partners, as the agency does today.

The FBI’s current IAFIS database remains a workhorse; it processes about 200,000 daily transactions from its 370 million 10-fingerprint records, and it just crossed the 250 million transaction mark

The next-generation FBI database system is under design by Lockheed Martin, with MorphoTrak and others, and is expected to include DNA, iris scans, advanced 3-D facial imaging and voice scans among its multi-modal biometrics. Lower turnaround times for delivering information over wide-area networks are planned. The goal is to drop from a roughly two-hour response time for IAFIS urgent requests to less than 10 minutes.

The FBI is already moving into new areas, including setting up a palm-print repository and searchable databases for scars, marks and tattoos that it will be collecting.

The FBI, under the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005, is now allowed to collect reference-sample DNA material for biometrics analysis purposes at the time of booking, Grever said. “DNA has become a powerful and timely tool,” said Grever, adding there are no “privacy or civil liberties issues beyond those associated with fingerprints.”

Given that DNA can be fabricated, how accurate is this new biometric database going to be?  Given that they’re tracking everything else about you, it won’t be long before whatever makes you “you” is in a database somewhere.

While Christmas is going to remain in the schoolbooks of most Texas schools, Neil Armstrong is going to be taken out of their 5th grade science books.  Why would someone do this?  They claim it’s because he wasn’t a scientist.  Except that he was.

He received an aeronautical engineering from Purdue University, and a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He later was a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

And he’s also the most identified person from NASA.  You know, the science people.  Texas has, apparently forgotten something Armstrong said as well.  “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”  And then he walked on the freaking moon!

More than 50 people mentioned in current textbooks are not included in the proposed standards, including Carl Sagan, Colin Powell, Nathan Hale, Neil Armstrong, Eugene Debs, John Steinbeck and Mother Teresa.

Some board members argued for more accomplishments of minorities to be included in the final version. An early recommendation to remove the late farm workers leader César Chávez and the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall provoked a strong reaction. Both are expected to remain in the textbooks.

“We can’t satisfy everyone,” said board member Barbara Cargill, of The Woodlands. “We don’t want to burden textbooks with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of names … As we go through this process we will see a lot more minorities than we ever have been before, so that’s a positive.”

Oh golly gee willikers.  We can’t expect people to know who important people like Neil Armstrong and Carl Sagan.   Why, they haven’t really contributed anything to society have they?

What’s really going on here is they want more religion and minorities taught and a whole lot of other stuff sacrificed to accomplish this.  It’s pretty sad when the state says their kids are too dumb to grasp everything so major events need to be removed so we can be PC about it.