Loss of Privacy

One of the funnier stories I’ve read this week is that of privately employed, parking attendants, now known as super wardens, in Eccles, Manchester being issued CCTV head sets and subsequently being given the power to issue fines up to £80 ($160) for littering and antisocial behavior.  This is the most humorous use of big brother watching you that I’ve seen yet.  Seriously, I can’t stop laughing at the thought of someone with little power walking around with a camera on their head, trying to catch you breaking a minor law.

Their main role is to issue parking tickets but under legislation brought in last year they will also have powers to give on-the-spot fines for anti-social behaviour.

Salford council has asked the wardens to issue penalties up to £80 for offences which include littering, flyposting and allowing dogs to foul the pavement. NCP will use the film as evidence to back up their wardens if any fine is challenged and also in the event of any attack or abuse.

Woo hoo, I got a fine for dog poo, but I still beat the crap out of that guy around the corner and stole his wallet.

Britain, like many countries, has problems with murders, rapes, assaults, and muggings and their genius idea was, “hey let’s put some cameras on those parking attendants and let them fine people for littering or hanging about.  That’ll teach ‘em.”  What will really happen is the cameras will record the traffic wardens hanging out with each other in the back alley, smoking cigarettes and tossing the butts on the ground.  This will, of course, be temporarily interrupted when a traffic warden sees a pretty young woman passing by.

Now every cop, and pseudo cop, has a head camera so they can walk around looking like complete morons.  From what I’ve read, there is a problem in Eccles with antisocial behavior, however, having people run around with video cameras is really the wrong way to go around trying to prevent this problem.

Over in Crawley, West Sussex, the local council has already had to apologize to a grandmother for a ticket she received because for accidentally kicking two potato into a gutter.

Then there’s the news agent who was fined £50 for a few scraps of paper found 120 yards away from him.  His guilt was that the scraps of paper had the name of his shop on them.  Brilliant!  Sell your stuff and put it in a bag with your store’s name on it and get fined when the customer turns out to be a litter bug.

Yes, I know I should be taking this more seriously and there is obvious good and bad aspects to head cameras.  There are also privacy concerns in the overzealousness of the new tasks given to the traffic wardens, but I’m sorry.  I need to stop now.  I can’t stop laughing at that photo.

While the USA has introduced legislation banning discrimination based on genes, the UK still thinks it’s a good idea, but for “scientific” purposes.  James Watson, the father of genetics, believes that sequencing your DNA will become routine within the next ten years.

He said that, as the costs of the sequencing technology tumble, doctors will be able to use the information to plan more effective treatments for conditions including mental illness, cancer, obesity and diabetes.

Professor Watson believes that having DNA sequencing on hand will help doctors in their diagnosis of disease at an earlier stage and enable physicians to advise their patients of the best course of action.

Using current technology sequencing a single person’s DNA takes 20 technicians around nine months. “In five years the hope is that you could reduce that to a week with just two or three people,” said Michael Jones, head of the genomics core lab at Imperial College London. “New technologies are trying to eliminate the technicians you need. The idea is you can take someone’s DNA and plug it into a machine and the data will come out.”

Just like Gattaca.  It is difficult to be overjoyed at this when privacy concerns loom large over this entire technology.  There is the benefit of knowing you carry one gene for a debilitating disease, such as cystic fibrosis, used in the article, and then be able to know if your potential spouse has the gene too.  You could prevent having a child that would be subject to such a disease by choosing not to have children with that particular person.  There is also the ability to catch diseases, such as breast cancer, however, the seemingly flippant attitude of scientists makes those with privacy concerns very nervous.

“A woman doesn’t test herself for BRCA1 unless there’s a history of breast cancer in her family. But when the cost comes down, just sequence yourself.”

Just sequence yourself.  It sounds easy.  It probably will be, but who is going to take care to keep that information private?  Since this is being pushed in the UK, will the information be placed into a large database.  Will it be kept private?  Who will assure that your DNA sequencing won’t be used to deny you vital medical services or life insurance policies?

Prof Watson said genetics would help tackle mental illness. At his Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in the US, scientists have started a project to find the genetic root for every mental condition within 10 years.

Again, on the surface, it appears that this is a great new breakthrough.  Imagine a world where we no longer need to see the mentally retarded, the downs syndrome, and those icky people like Steven Hawking.  Are we really ready for a world where we only want perfect people with no defects?  This technology, while great, has a large upside for abuse and we must be diligent in looking past our own temporary desires for perfect children and a world with no disease before we embrace personal DNA sequencing to solve all society’s ills.

Serious doubts are now being cast against REAL-ID and whether the federal government can enforce its implementation.  Though Homeland Security continues to defend REAL-ID, it appears that ever increasing resistance to it could result in its demise.

Again, the gigantic $14 billion cost of the program is what continues to be the reason for States balking at the use of REAL-ID.  The States have already been forced to foot the bill for welfare reform and No Child Left Behind and they want no part in being told by the federal government that this is the law and they are going to pay for it.

New Hampshire Governor, John Lynch, is expected to sign the bill into law later this week, however, cost isn’t the only factor in rejecting REAL-ID there.

[T]he public policy established by Congress in the Real ID Act of 2005, Public Law 109-13, is contrary and repugnant to Articles 1 through 10 of the New Hampshire constitution as well as Amendments 4 though 10 of the Constitution for the United States of America. Therefore, the state of New Hampshire shall not participate in any driver’s license program pursuant to the Real ID Act of 2005 or in any national identification card system that may follow therefrom.

Regardless of how this ends up, we, the taxpayers, are the ones who are going to be paying the bill for REAL-ID.  We will be paying for something most find disgusting and unimaginable.  That is why it is important to continue to put pressure on State governments to reject REAL-ID.  The more States that reject it will lead to a completely useless law.

You will also have the airlines on your side because, once this becomes a requirement, if enough States have rejected REAL-ID, then there will be far too many people that cannot fly because they don’t have the proper ID to board a plane.  How long will it be before the airlines put pressure on Washington to overturn the law due to massive losses?

Although it is rare for states to reject an act of Congress, New Hampshire and Oklahoma in May joined Montana and Washington state in passing statutes this year refusing to go along with Real ID. The refusals mean those states’ driver’s licenses eventually won’t be accepted as official identification when boarding airplanes or entering federal buildings.

In addition, the Idaho Legislature purposely left out any money to comply with the act. The Georgia Legislature passed a law giving Gov. Sonny Perdue authority to ignore the measure, but he is hoping the federal government will make the act more affordable, said his spokesman, Bert Brantley.

If you want people to have government issued ID to enter federal buildings and board airplanes, then use a passport, which happens to already fulfill all the requirements of REAL-ID.  You do not need a driver’s license in the form of REAL-ID so that you can be spied upon.  Driver’s licenses are a State’s issue.  The federal government needs to keep their hands out of the State’s business and stop pissing on the 10th Amendment.  They already have the ability to change the function of the passport, having done so in the past, so there is no legitimate reason for REAL-ID.

The National Conference of State Legislatures is asking the Homeland Security Department to allow states 10 years after Real ID rules are finalized to reissue existing licenses and to decrease costs by exempting military personnel and others with federal identification from the rigid screening process. If those conditions cannot be met by the end of 2007, NCSL plans to call for repeal of Real ID.

Once REAL-ID goes into effect, it will be near impossible to reject and overturn.  That is why is it so important to continue to push our States to stand up to the federal government and tell them to stay out of our business.  REAL-ID, in short, is an unfunded and unconstitutional mandate that, legally, should never have been allowed to exist.  It’s just too damned bad our Congressmen cannot read a bill before it becomes a law to even know that this kind of crap is slipped into unrelated bills.

Jim Harper of the libertarian Cato Institute, which opposes the driver’s license rules, said the states’ rejections doom the act to failure. “It’s more and more clear that the Real ID system won’t work to secure the country,” he said. More states are likely to refuse the requirements, creating a nightmare at airports where security screeners will have to distinguish between licenses that are Real ID-compliant and those that aren’t, Harper said.

You cannot achieve privacy and security at the same time.  You must choose one over the other and, at this point in time, privacy far outweighs security on this issue.  REAL-ID is not going to make us any more secure and it certainly isn’t going to prevent illegal immigration or fake ID cards.  We are at the line between privacy and security.  Are you going to cross it for a little false sense of safety?

In a new, and slightly scary advancement in technology, fingerprints found at crime scenes can identify unique individual characteristics about a person, including whether the suspect is a smoker, uses drugs, or likes a particular perfume.  Forensic scientists believe that this new information will help in eliminating suspects quicker, as well as narrowing the field of potential criminals at a crime scene.

Fingerprints contain a mixture of skin cells, sweat secretions and substances picked up from elsewhere. Careful analysis can show whether a person may have handled drugs or explosives, but the new tools make it possible to determine a person’s habits from the secretions in their prints as well.

It also appears that the amount of fat in a person’s body could be detected as well.

“It seems people differ in the amount they secrete of the different kinds of lipid,” Jickells says. “The differences aren’t great enough to be able to identify someone specifically, but you could definitely rule out suspects if you found they had produced a lot of one lipid, in contrast to a print at the crime scene.”

The new technique exploits metabolites left in sweat on a person’s fingerprint ridges by using gold nanoparticles.  The new identification method can be used as a quick method in the field, instead of waiting weeks for results to return from the labs.  David Russell, who invented the technique, hopes to modify it to be used in the field, with a portable detector, to find quicker responses to potential outbreaks of diseases, such as avian flu.

The Department of Homeland Security has publicly stated that they want cell phones to have the capability of detecting biological, chemical, and radioactive materials.  Though the user could turn this function off, it would be on by default, making each cell phone user opt-out of this new idea.

Putting hazardous material sensors in commercial cell phones has been discussed in scientific circles for years, according to researchers in the field. More recently, the idea gained support among government agencies, and DHS said publicly in May that it wants businesses to start coming up with proposals.

While, in theory, it sounds like a good idea, it is worrisome that the DHS wants this sort of capability in the hands of the common man.

Cell phone sensors would continually test the air for harmful compounds and digitally relay any information to a central monitoring system if they find anything amiss.

In essence, this gives the government yet another excuse to be able to track an individual, all in the name of protecting innocent Americans.

The cell phone sensors might be less sophisticated than highly advanced ones some developers are fitting into hand-held models, but they would make up for it in what Kelly called “ubiquitous detection.”

If just one went off, it could be ruled a false positive, he said. But if several detected a harmful compound, emergency workers would know there was a problem, triangulate the phone’s location react to the situation.

Currently under the name Cell-All, this technology is still in its infancy.  Though researchers have been toying with the idea for years, there has been little development of the technology.  Several prototypes do exist, but they are costly.  However, with keen interest from the DHS, the idea could be kick-started to life.

Pennsylvania-based eV Products, which manufactures x-ray and gamma ray detection equipment, and Gentag Inc., a company with offices in Washington, D.C., and the Netherlands that designs radio frequency identification (RFID) and other sensors for cell phones are stepping up to the plate. For now, their primarily goal is to create a cell phone-based platform that detects only radiation.

Dartmouth College has done sensor and networking development for the government in the past, and is currently working on MetroSense, a system that can track the movements of people over large areas in real-time. George Cybenko, one of the engineering professors on the project, said “several technological breakthroughs would have to happen” before Cell-All would work.

There are also many problems that prevent widespread use of such technologies.  GPS doesn’t work well indoors, making it unreliable to detect and pinpoint locations inside.  There is the cost of tiny sensors that fit into a cell phone, as well as battery power to consider.  Still, others are finding obstacles to creating accurate sensors, due to the natural occurring radiation on Earth.

One particular challenge for eV Products researchers has been coming up with a sensor that can tell the difference between harmless and dangerous radiation, Smith said.

In the chemical and biological worlds, he said, dangerous compounds are rare. But, “in contrast, radiation is a problem, because when you pick up radiation in the world, 99 percent of it is supposed to be there.”

Scientists are already floating around the possibilities of swapping out sensors to detect different things, as well as devices with sensors permanently attached.  Much like the many different types of cell phone covers, you could keep up with the latest fad by swapping out your sensor.  Today biological sensors, tomorrow radioactive.

Martin Dudziak, founder, chairman and chief science officer of Tetrad Technologies Group, Inc., has said they already have the technology for joining the sensors to networking.

Dudziak said he wants to integrate a cell phone sensor feature into Nomad Eyes, a digital network his company created. Tetrad encourages people with camera- and Internet-enabled cell phones to send data to Nomad Eyes, which will then analyze it and forward it to the proper authorities.

He said his company already has a hand-held biological sensor that can detect tuberculosis, influenza, salmonella, e. Coli and hepatitis, and is ready to put similar hardware in phones.

If all this sounds familiar, maybe it’s because you’ve watched too much Star Trek and are realizing that this is a primitive form of a tricorder.

There are also other problems, such as calibration of the units that will ultimately need to be dealt with.

Bob Durstenfeld, director of corporate marketing for RAE Systems Inc., a San Jose, Calif., company that makes hand-held sensors, as well as systems that have been used at Super Bowls and Presidential inaugurations, said sensors will not stay reliable without frequent service.

Durstenfeld added that he does not see the advantage of a cell phone network over a simpler solution, such as putting sophisticated biological, chemical and radiation sensors on all first-responder vehicles.

Ultimately, the issue over privacy concerns will need to be addressed.  While this could be a useful, first response technology, intrusion into the privacy of individuals will have to be considered before implementation can occur.  Americans already have many intrusions into their lives, such as CCTV cameras, that they cannot control.

We shouldn’t get too excited over this new technology but we should keep an eye on it.  It isn’t quite practical, yet, but there will be a market for it.  Right now, there are many initiatives that need humans that can, and will, be implemented long before your cell phone detects radiation.