Loss of Privacy

Much has been written about what is wrong with the Department of Homeland Security’s behavior detection program, but the government hasn’t listened to any criticism. The DHS is expanding the program in the hopes to catch people with “malintent” by using passive signals.

DHS researchers are stepping things up a bit, by introducing what they call “passive stimuli” — such as non-word images of security signs, guard posts, floor layouts and interview rooms — which are intended to amplify the “malintent cues” emitted by a nervous traveler. DHS has recruited volunteers who have agreed to participate in experiments that will test whether such “passive” methodologies can be effective.

“The goal of the Passive Methods for Precision Behavioral Screening is to activate malintent representations selectively from individuals who already have malintent via passive, environmental stimuli; e.g., pictures, sounds, etc.,” explains a DHS privacy impact statement which was released last December.

The DHS’s apparent goal in this testing is to see if pictures and sounds can trigger a psychological reaction in a person. If it does, then the DHS will try to capture the person’s movements so that security can then determine if that person is a threat to airline security. If it works, the DHS plans on expanding it within the United States.

In the future, DHS researchers plan to run operational tests of this “passive” methodology by studying volunteers as they approach screening sites at public places, such as special events, mass transit portals and border crossings, says the DHS privacy impact statement. “The volunteer will be asked to answer a few questions and to observe various stimuli as they are presented on an LCD monitor,” says the notice.

According to the DHS:

“FAST is not intended to provide ‘probable cause’ for law enforcement processes, nor would the technology replace or pre-empt the decisions of human screeners,”

If it isn’t meant to provide probably cause, then what else is it supposed to be used for? If you eventually manage to catch someone, something that’s highly unlikely with such a dubious program, and you first suspected them because of this program, the person is going to be let go because you can’t use the program as probably cause. So, exactly what purpose do all these volunteer tests serve?

Developed by Britain’s Cobalt Light Systems, the INSIGHT100 airport security scanner can identify the contents of different liquids in bottles, giving millions of airline passengers the hope that they can take their own bottled liquids on planes once again.

From gizmag:

The scanner utilizes Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy, or SORS. The process begins with security personnel placing an individual container inside the microwave oven-sized device. Then, the system shines a near-infrared laser into that container at various locations. Some of that light is reflected back to the device by the liquid. The wavelength of that light, however, is shifted by energy levels of the liquid’s molecules. By assessing the wavelength shifts of those various light readings, the machine is able to identify what the liquid is – within five seconds, to boot.

The INSIGHT100 reportedly has a false alarm rate of less than 0.5 percent, and works with clear, colored or opaque plastic or glass containers. It can be used on bottles up to three liters (0.8 US gallons) in size, and the height of its reading device can be adjusted for partially-filled containers. Additionally, its library of various liquids’ SORS signatures can be continuously updated, to recognize newly-identified security threats.

According to Cobalt, the scanner recently passed its European civil aviation security tests, which means it could start showing up in airports sometime soon.

This seems like a lot of money could be wasted on the INSIGHT100. It takes 4-5 seconds for a scan, which adds more time to people waiting in lines for just a simple scan of a bottle of Coke or some champagne. Personally, I’d never use it. It’s just a waste of time and money for something we don’t even really need. The only two things we ever needed to prevent terrorism on planes we already have; reinforced cockpit doors and passengers who are aware that airplanes can be used as weapons so they can fight back.

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At first glance, H.R. 3166 doesn’t appear to be anything that an American citizen should worry about. After all, the bill states that it only applies in accordance with war. However, careful consideration must be taken when looking at the context of the bill.

(a) In General- Section 349 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1481) is amended–

(1) in subsection (a)–

(A) in each of paragraphs (1) through (6), by striking ‘or’ at the end;

(B) in paragraph (7), by striking the period at the end and inserting ‘; or’; and

(C) by adding at the end the following:

‘(8) engaging in, or purposefully and materially supporting, hostilities against the United States.’; and

(2) by adding at the end the following:

‘(c) For purposes of this section, the term ‘hostilities’ means any conflict subject to the laws of war.’.

(b) Technical Amendment- Section 351(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1483(a)) is amended by striking ‘(6) and (7)’ and inserting ‘(6), (7), and (8)’.

It should be noted that 8 U.S.C. 1481 includes a person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization.

How would this affect common, everyday Americans? In more ways than you think when you consider, if we are at war, everything a citizen does is subject to the laws of war. We already face the fact that many in Washington consider paying by cash to be a form of terrorism. Being a Muslim automatically puts you into a suspect category. What happens if a law enforcement official decides you look Muslim and you’re reading whatever they have deemed to be questionable literature? The government could classify anything from Noam Chomsky to the Qur’an to Ayn Rand as subversive. Read it during a time of war, which we seem to always be in, and a citizen is placing themselves in a precarious situation.

The government also considers anyone who stockpiles food to be questionable. The United States government’s definition of stockpiling food is anyone who has more than a seven day supply of food. That would automatically make anyone living in very rural parts of America automatically questionable. It is often a long drive to town to get food stuffs, making the stockpiling of food logical, but it is a first step for the government to start looking into the lives of Americans.

It would be much easier for the government to start questioning those who live in urban areas as to why they have two weeks of food stocked up. It is also easier for the government to potentially start rationing supplies. If citizens are deemed suspects for having too much food, they stop stockpiling it. It’s then easy to control the supply once this happens.

The NDAA states that the United States is within its rights to imprison or assassinate anyone that is not a US citizen without due process of law for merely being suspected of a crime. If the Enemy Expatriation Act were to pass, any American citizen could be stripped of their citizenship if the government deems them to be involved in terrorism and then the NDAA would apply to them. There would be no due process and no appeal.

Article I, section 8, clause 4 of the US Constitution gives the government the power to do this. Like it or not, this is a real possibility. The government may say that this is aimed at those who come to America and obtain citizenship and, thus, they can use Article I to then strip someone of their citizenship, however, giving the government such broad authority as the Enemy Expatriation Act would should never be allowed. Governments have shown time and again that, given such power, it will be abused. The fact is the Enemy Expatriation Act affects all citizens, natural born or not.

The Enemy Expatriation Act is wholly unnecessary. We already have laws on the books that deal with such issue as to whether or not someone has committed unlawful acts. We do not need a law that automatically strips someone of their rights based merely on the suspicion of a crime. The judicial system is entrusted with taking care of such matters. Circumventing due process is not the road the United States should be traveling on. Before we deny anyone their life and liberty, we owe them due process. If the United States government cannot convict a person without it, then it is their responsibility to investigate and build a better case.

Americans should be outraged that such a bill is even being considered. The Enemy Expatriation Act has now been referred to a committee. Now is the time to notify government representatives and kill the bill before it proceeds any farther.

Earlier this week, Presidental hopeful, Mitt Romney, spoke at a town hall meeting in Iowa that he supports an expansion of the controversial E-Verify program for employment. Currently, the program checks the legal status of new employees, but Romney would push it further.

Mitt Romney backed a national ID system and government pre-approval of all new hires in the country. It’s a stunning amount of power he wants the federal government to have.

You’ve got to crack down on employers that hire people that are illegal, and that means you have to have a system that identifies who’s here legally, with a biometric card that has: this is the person, they’re allowed to work here. You say to an employer, you look at that card, you swipe it in your computer, you type in the number, it instantly tells you whether they’re legal or not.

The E-Verify system is a biometric identification system that is a direct response from Congress as a part of immigration reform. Despite the fact that the government continually tells us that an E-Verify or national ID system would solve our illegal immigration problem, it will never work.

A mandatory national EEV system would have substantial costs yet still fail to prevent illegal immigration. It would deny a sizable percentage of law-abiding American citizens the ability to work legally. Deemed ineligible by a database, millions each year would go pleading to the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration for the right to work. By increasing the value of committing identity fraud, EEV would cause that crime’s rates to rise.

Creating an accurate EEV system would require a national identification (ID) system, costing about $20 billion to create and hundreds of millions more per year to operate. Even if it were free, the country should reject a national ID system. It would cause law-abiding American citizens to lose more of their privacy as government records about them grew and were converted to untold new purposes. “Mission creep” all but guarantees that the federal government would use an EEV system to extend federal regulatory control over Americans’ lives even further.

The E-Verify system is inaccurate fifty-percent [pdf] of the time costing employees thousands of dollars in rectifying the situation. If implemented nationwide, it would cost small business owners billions in additional taxes.

Our immigration system is broken, but this is not the way to fix it. Immigrants, illegal or legal, play an extremely important part in American society. Removing them with a system that only works half the time not only hurts the immigrants and citizens caught up in the system, but every American who relies on the goods and services that they provide.