A softball player who just happens to know the law, sign her up…
Does this woman really matter to you? If you look deep into the background of a possible supreme court justice, do you want actual bench experience or do you prefer someone who knows the law and has written a few hundred papers on well…the law?
Princeton graduate, Harvard Law Dean,…on the surface at least Elena Kagan would seem qualified to become a judge. She has clerked for several well known justices, practiced law in the late 80’s and early 90’s, served as counsel under President Clinton, worked her way to Dean, and there is no doubt she is well versed in case law, precedent, state statues, etc.
Does not having any actual bench time deflate her credentials? Personally, I don’t think it does and based on sheer knowledge and the circles she has been exposed to, Ms. Kagan could successfully perform her duties as justice.
So is she gay? Does it matter to me, no. Ok, let me digress here for a second, this is where I LOVE watching the news and reading media outlets. Now to give you some background on this, recent photos have surfaced of Kagan playing softball.
There has always been a belief that softball was an outlet for lesbian athletes. It’s not something that some jerkoff at a bar conjured up one night with his buddies, the sport became popular after WWII and caught on very quickly with many female, gay athletes. Books have been written about it, one being “Diamonds are a Dykes Best Friend” by Yvonne Zipter. Yes, that is an actual book, look it up.
According to the history, gay females found solace in playing this new sport which over the years has predominantly become a female based activity, thus even more perpetuating the stigma of softball and lesbians. Sooooo…we have a pic of Kagan playing softball…tada!
Strike up the butch band (insert marching people here and balloons aloft), brass section blaring (la da da da la)…here come the cameras…here comes the media (insert clowns dawning tricycles and small cars here)
Let’s focus on her legal experience first, either she makes the grade and gets appointed, or she doesn’t. Once she becomes a justice or if she fails to get swarn in, the gay softball sideshow can continue on and makes for great pre-local news appetizer. If I sued a gay person for doing me wrong and I knew a presiding judge was openly gay, I wouldn’t worry much. Unless of course I lose the case and being a dick, I would countersue for orientation discrimination. SO THERE !!!!!! That’s how our world turns, love it.
Can we for once leave this out of the appointment process? I know gay rights are important but will a justice really make “all” the difference for a particular segment of the population, I don’t believe it.
We’ve seen how much real influence the Supreme Court has on state’s rights when it comes to gay unions and marriage…end of story. The state of Arkansas could legalize the union of llama and field mouse, repeal it the next day, impose the right again, so on and so on…where is the Fed?
Good luck Ms. Kagen..appointment or not I won’t lose sleep.
So why are more companies not yet hiring?
U.S. Workers are still filing a large amount of unemployment claims and this is after five weeks of declines in this area.
Where are the culprits and which industries are still hurting? It’s apparent as we have seen over the last year is that a gradual stabilization of the economy does not naturally translate to a increase in the labor market stability.
The gripping effects of the recession have no indications of going into a double dip as economist like to call it, trade gaps are narrowing, imports and exports are up, and yet bottom line profits are not improving.
Where are the jobs going and why even after the influx of billions of dollars in stimulus funds…the unemployment rate still hovers around 9-10%?
Wow! Those facebook pics sure got some attention!
Interesting story out of Quebec, if you haven’t read the article, do so. Once again, a story comes along that just sends my editorial neurons out of whack.
So, you go to the doctor and are diagnosed with severe depression…so severe that she is forced to go on short term disability for a year from her employer…all the while receiving payments from her employer’s insurance carrier.
All of this sounds normal to me, except for one thing…the diagnosis of the depression. I am not a shrink and I don’t hob nob in the circles of shrinkdom and psychiatric medicine, but I am curious as to how “definitive” a diagnosis of clinical depression really is.
She was seen by a doctor, she was told she was depressed, she was also told to see friends as a way to get herself better…still sounds relatively normal to me….but…..
In my blogging view, if you can jump around the beach, visit your friends, smile for random party pics, and post them on your facebook account…how come you can’t wake up and go to work?
Insurance companies use these tactics all the time to avoid fraud and in many opinions other then mine, this woman committed insurance fraud, or at least in the eyes of the insurance carrier.
There are issues with what happened here. It is sad that insurance carriers are forced to take these measures because there is so much fraud in the claims arena, what other option do they have? Video taping customers is common practice especially when money is involved, money that ultimately is funded by you and I.
The insurance companies definition of “depressed” obviously differs from the doctor’s. All the while, Miss Blanchard fell victim to her own social networking profile (tch tch tch)….and her decision to post them was a costly one. (Oh and for all those “right to privacy” fanatics out there please shush yourself…the Internet isn’t private but you already knew that)
In the end, with a slick attorney, she will probably get her money back…but ask yourself something…after seeing an incident like this…are you sure you want to post some of those pics?
Obama wins a Nobel Peace Prize…?
The news was announced that Barack Obama has been selected by the Norweigian Nobel Committee as a winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
My first reaction is congratulations as this is a nice honor for our Prez to win, on the other hand I am concerned. First let me declare that I am a fan of Obama and I voted for him. Funny coming from someone who has voted the Republican ticket since I was eligible to vote, but something was different this year.
I liked the message of change, I had hope in the messages of health care reform, improvement of foreign relations, and an overall changing of the guard per se. The stance on the wars seemed to be a stand still, troops dying in large numbers and seemingly no direction of our executive leadership to change the course.
I’m just at odds with him actually winning the award right now, almost as if the committee felt bad that his bid for the Chicago 2016 Summer games bombed. Granted, Obama is a true statesman of what is just and right, but so are a lot of other Presidents, the problem is convincing Washington lawmakers to get on board with your thinking.
Yes, he is an advocate of sweeping reform and change, but that is the stance of all politicians and only a few economically viable programs actually see the light of day.
Yes, he is making great strides to reach out to other nations and mend wounds that were seen caused by the last admin. However, the differences in cultures, values, and religion go back thousands of years and it’s not like other administrations weren’t trying to win over the Middle East.
I guess my issue is that I want to see Obama hit hard times and I want to see him tested. I don’t want purely the flash of fancy speeches, the well crafted delivery to world leaders, or the public view that words equate to action, they don’t.
The Peace prize is not only an accolade but now might become a burden. A burden to perform. The award places him in a position which requires even more expectation to lead but also to achieve. Not all goals in politics are reachable, there are accommodations, backdoors, and alternative approaches.
My fear is that too much God like treatment will tarnish the underlying truth, the truth being that Obama is at a very critical crossroads of his tenure and the moment of truth is starting to peak. The world will inevitably be watching now.
Glad the government planned Cash for Clunkers so well !
Little did the gub no that nearly 180,000 cars would be involved in the CARS program. They ran out of money after only one week of the program, people were getting cheated because the minimum MPG ratings changes mid-stream, and just what the hell happens to all those vehicles that are turned in?
Here are some tidbits of the program I question.:
There are several requirements (but you also have to meet certain conditions for the car or truck you wish to buy). Your dealer can help you determine whether you have an eligible trade in vehicle.
Your trade-in vehicle must
- Have been manufactured less than 25 years before the date you trade it in
- have a “new” combined city/highway fuel economy of 18 miles per gallon or less
- be in drivable condition
- be continuously insured and registered to the same owner for the full year preceding the trade-in
- The trade-in vehicle must have been manufactured not earlier than 25 years before the date of trade in and, in the case of a category 3 vehicle, must also have been manufactured not later than model year 2001
Note that work trucks (i.e., very large pickup trucks and cargo vans) have different requirements
There are several requirements (but you also have to meet certain conditions for the car or truck you wish to buy). Your dealer can help you determine whether you have an eligible trade in vehicle.
Isn’t a car more than 25 years old (if it even ran) be considered one hell of a clunker and omission spitting beast? So all those cars stay on the road.
Has to be in drivable condition? Of course it needs to be drivable so the dealer can either put the piece of crap back on the lot, or sell it at auction, which once again, will end up on some other lot and sold to someone else. I thought the whole gist of the plan was to encourage people to trade a car and purchase a more ECO friendly vehicle? Car dealerships now have hundreds of used cars on their lots that initially met the standard of horribleness to be traded in…..ummm..then will be sold? That goal sounds foiled to me.
So, we just removed these cars and put them back on the road again? I guarantee you the dealers won’t have all these thousands of trade in’s smashed into tiny little , shiny metal sauce pans. They make money by moving the car through the system and they get re-imbursed by Uncle Sam for that hefty allowance they just gave you!! This is isn’t a movement to eliminate these cars, we all know it’s more of a push to get dealers making money again. The auto industry still makes the same ECO disaster models so we are just making our roads temporarily more healthy?
The worst joke would be if people are working that $4500 credit into their loan! No No No…you need to ask for cash in your grubby hand! NEVER have a rebate or cash allowance worked into the loan to ease the payment or bring down the balance. If a program offers cash back, then get the cash back and if they don’t offer that option, walk out the door!
Happy car trading and don’t bank on CARS being your answer. As always, buy a car you can afford to pay off in 5 years ! Here that? 5 years ! Or do not buy the car because you can’t afford the lien.
Kisses !
Clinton’s still working their magic!
Look into my eyes and tell me I am the greatest! Now let's go have sushi!
Bill Clinton is no longer charming interns but he still has a keen way of becoming a political pawn and ship himself to North Korea. Thankfully, there was a bigger calling and that was the release of two US journalists who have been imprisoned since March.
Still, I dont like to see our government bow to this man. Didnt we have a policy of never negotiate with terrorists? This country was considered an axis of evil, wasnt it?
Oh wait, that was the ole’ Texan’s administration…by the way 33% of Americans still trust GW as an ambassador to other countries. He isn’t doing it (and actually I am glad he isnt) but still…a pretty high rating considering Clinton is around 39% approval for his ambassadorism (a word?)
Kudos to you Bill and Hillary, you caved a bit (semi-admirable), said you were sorry, and best of all two young women are back home with their families.
Something I’ve Observed: Health care reform is a two headed snake
I am very confused and troubled by all the backlash and analysis of the health care reform proposals. 
Health care is broken…or is it? The current system employs millions of Americans in good paying, secure jobs in the private sector. Those jobs could potentially be lost if more Americans were given “non-private” options at a cheaper price.
Most insured Americans obtain their insurance from an employer based plan…so if you were to lose that plan are you obligated to now enroll in the government backed plan even if the provisions or coverage was not as good as your employer based plan? However, if the portability option comes into play, you take the plan with you…but you don’t have your job anymore, so do you now pay the actual premium for the plan that your emplorer paid or does it adjust to a more affordable price while you search for a new employer plan? I am hearing that many private based plans could disappear with these changes.
I am all for dissemination of medical techniques and procedures. We should all be granted much more freedoms when it comes to how we are medically treated and what medicinal approaches we are most comfortable with. If a “panel” of experts is assigned to a specific medical discipline and given the task of deciding best courses of treatments for people, does that sever the relationships people already have with their doctor when it comes to health choices? Are we placing too much medical decision making in the best interest of the “whole” or the “individual”?
It’s not that I think the plan reformation will be a complete move to a Socialist plan, I am not that definitive in my thinking. I just want to be sure that our leaders do not sway so far from the private sector that it has a negative impact on the good things the system currently provides.
Which leads my thoughts in a completely different direction? The current system is a market based health system in which individual, stock driven companies call most of the shots. As much as I would like to believe there are regulatory forces in place, my gut tells me otherwise. Multi billion dollar organizations have a lot of influence on health legislation and legislators. Many ask the questions so why with all this market freedom, capital, and research funds…do we not have the magic number on treating societies major ills? (obesity, heart disease, cancer, etc)
With all the focus on health, exercise, and wellness…why is 90% of our country still fat? Does the balance swing back towards the food industry’s interest as well? I think so….actually I don’t understand any of the statistics, the trends, the habits, the demographics, or why nothing ever seems to level out in the long run. Does anybody know, please help me.
Texas Driver License RFID – Advanced license can be read by anyone
Chips in official IDs raise privacy fears
By TODD LEWAN
Associated Press
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story, part of a series on the growing industry of radio frequency identification technology and its impact on business, government, health and personal privacy in America, explores its use in passports and driver’s licenses.
————
Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he’d bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car.
It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker’s gold.
Zipping past Fisherman’s Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians’ electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he’d “skimmed” the identifiers of four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.
Embedding identity documents — passports, drivers licenses, and the like — with RFID chips is a no-brainer to government officials. Increasingly, they are promoting it as a 21st century application of technology that will help speed border crossings, safeguard credentials against counterfeiters, and keep terrorists from sneaking into the country.
But Paget’s February experiment demonstrated something privacy advocates had feared for years: That RFID, coupled with other technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge or consent.
He filmed his drive-by heist, and soon his video went viral on the Web, intensifying a debate over a push by government, federal and state, to put tracking technologies in identity documents and over their potential to erode privacy.
Putting a traceable RFID in every pocket has the potential to make everybody a blip on someone’s radar screen, critics say, and to redefine Orwellian government snooping for the digital age.
“Little Brother,” some are already calling it — even though elements of the global surveillance web they warn against exist only on drawing boards, neither available nor approved for use.
But with advances in tracking technologies coming at an ever-faster rate, critics say, it won’t be long before governments could be able to identify and track anyone in real time, 24-7, from a cafe in Paris to the shores of California.
The key to getting such a system to work, these opponents say, is making sure everyone carries an RFID tag linked to a biometric data file.
On June 1, it became mandatory for Americans entering the United States by land or sea from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean to present identity documents embedded with RFID tags, though conventional passports remain valid until they expire.
Among new options are the chipped “e-passport,” and the new, electronic PASS card — credit-card sized, with the bearer’s digital photograph and a chip that can be scanned through a pocket, backpack or purse from 30 feet.
Alternatively, travelers can use “enhanced” driver’s licenses embedded with RFID tags now being issued in some border states: Washington, Vermont, Michigan and New York. Texas and Arizona have entered into agreements with the federal government to offer chipped licenses, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has recommended expansion to non-border states. Kansas and Florida officials have received DHS briefings on the licenses, agency records show.
The purpose of using RFID is not to identify people, says Mary Ellen Callahan, the chief privacy officer at Homeland Security, but rather “to verify that the identification document holds valid information about you.”
Likewise, U.S. border agents are “pinging” databases only to confirm that licenses aren’t counterfeited. “They’re not pulling up your speeding tickets,” she says, or looking at personal information beyond what is on a passport.
The change is largely about speed and convenience, she says. An RFID document that doubles as a U.S. travel credential “only makes it easier to pull the right record fast enough, to make sure that the border flows, and is operational” — even though a 2005 Government Accountability Office report found that government RFID readers often failed to detect travelers’ tags.
Such assurances don’t persuade those who liken RFID-embedded documents to barcodes with antennas and contend they create risks to privacy that far outweigh the technology’s heralded benefits. They warn it will actually enable identity thieves, stalkers and other criminals to commit “contactless” crimes against victims who won’t immediately know they’ve been violated.
Neville Pattinson, vice president for government affairs at Gemalto, Inc., a major supplier of microchipped cards, is no RFID basher. He’s a board member of the Smart Card Alliance, an RFID industry group, and is serving on the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.
Still, Pattinson has sharply criticized the RFIDs in U.S. driver’s licenses and passport cards. In a 2007 article for the Privacy Advisor, a newsletter for privacy professionals, he called them vulnerable “to attacks from hackers, identity thieves and possibly even terrorists.”
RFID, he wrote, has a fundamental flaw: Each chip is built to faithfully transmit its unique identifier “in the clear, exposing the tag number to interception during the wireless communication.”
Once a tag number is intercepted, “it is relatively easy to directly associate it with an individual,” he says. “If this is done, then it is possible to make an entire set of movements posing as somebody else without that person’s knowledge.”
Echoing these concerns were the AeA — the lobbying association for technology firms — the Smart Card Alliance, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Business Travel Coalition, and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security has been promoting broad use of RFID even though its own advisory committee on data integrity and privacy warned that radio-tagged IDs have the potential to allow “widespread surveillance of individuals” without their knowledge or consent.
In its 2006 draft report, the committee concluded that RFID “increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security,” and recommended that “RFID be disfavored for identifying and tracking human beings.”
For now, chipped PASS cards and enhanced driver’s licenses are optional and not yet widely deployed in the United States. To date, roughly 192,000 EDLs have been issued in Washington, Vermont, Michigan and New York.
But as more Americans carry them “you can bet that long-range tracking of people on a large scale will rise exponentially,” says Paget, a self-described “ethical hacker” who works as an Internet security consultant.
Could RFID numbers eventually become de facto identifiers of Americans, like the Social Security number?
Such a day is not far off, warns Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate and co-author of “Spychips,” a book that is sharply critical of the use of RFID in consumer items and official ID documents.
“There’s a reason you don’t wear your Social Security number across your T-shirt,” Albrecht says, “and beaming out your new, national RFID number in a 30-foot radius would be far worse.”
There are no federal laws against the surreptitious skimming of Americans’ RFID numbers, so it won’t be long before people seek to profit from this, says Bruce Schneier, an author and chief security officer at BT, the British telecommunications operator.
Data brokers that compile computer dossiers on millions of individuals from public records, credit applications and other sources “will certainly maintain databases of RFID numbers and associated people,” he says. “They’d do a disservice to their stockholders if they didn’t.”
But Gigi Zenk, a spokeswoman for the Washington state Department of Licensing, says Americans “aren’t that concerned about the RFID, particularly in this day and age when there are a lot of other ways to access personal information on people.”
Tracking an individual is much easier through a cell phone, or a satellite tag embedded in a car, she says. “An RFID that contains no private information, just a randomly assigned number, is probably one of the least things to be concerned about, frankly.”
Still, even some ardent RFID supporters recognize that these next-generation RFID cards raise prickly questions.
Mark Roberti, editor of RFID Journal, an industry newsletter, recently acknowledged that as the use of RFID in official documents grows, the potential for abuse increases.
“A government could do this, for instance, to track opponents,” he wrote in an opinion piece discussing Paget’s cloning experiment. “To date, this type of abuse has not occurred, but it could if governments fail to take privacy issues seriously.”
———
Imagine this: Sensors triggered by radio waves instructing cameras to zero in on people carrying RFID, unblinkingly tracking their movements.
Unbelievable? Intrusive? Outrageous?
Actually, it happens every day and makes people smile — at the Alton Towers amusement park in Britain, which videotapes visitors who agree to wear RFID bracelets as they move about the facility, then sells the footage as a keepsake.
This application shows how the technology can be used effortlessly — and benignly. But critics, noting it can also be abused, say federal authorities in the United States didn’t do enough from the start to address that risk.
The first U.S. identity document to be embedded with RFID was the “e-passport.”
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks — and the finding that some of the terrorists entered the United States using phony passports — the State Department proposed mandating that Americans and foreign visitors carry “enhanced” passport booklets, with microchips embedded in the covers.
The chips, it announced, would store the holder’s information from the data page, a biometric version of the bearer’s photo, and receive special coding to prevent data from being altered.
In February 2005, when the State Department asked for public comment, it got an outcry: Of the 2,335 comments received, 98.5 percent were negative, with 86 percent expressing security or privacy concerns, the department reported in an October 2005 notice in the Federal Register.
“Identity theft was of grave concern,” it stated, adding that “others expressed fears that the U.S. Government or other governments would use the chip to track and censor, intimidate or otherwise control or harm them.”
It also noted that many Americans expressed worries “that the information could be read at distances in excess of 10 feet.”
Those concerned citizens, it turns out, had cause.
According to department records obtained by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, under a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by the AP, discussion about security concerns with the e-passport occurred as early as January 2003 but tests weren’t ordered until the department began receiving public criticism two years later.
When the AP asked when testing was initiated, the State Department said only that “a battery of durability and electromagnetic tests were performed” by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, along with tests “to measure the ability of data on electronic passports to be surreptitiously skimmed or for communications with the chip reader to be eavesdropped,” testing which “led to additional privacy controls being placed on U.S. electronic passports … “
Indeed, in 2005, the department incorporated metallic fibers into the e-passport’s front cover, since metal can reduce the range at which RFID can be read. Personal information in the chips was encrypted and a cryptographic “key” added, which required inspectors to optically scan the e-passport first for the chip to communicate wirelessly.
The department also announced it would test e-passports with select employees, before giving them to the public. “We wouldn’t be issuing the passports to ourselves if we didn’t think they’re secure,” said Frank Moss, deputy assistant Secretary of State for passport services, in a CNN interview.
But what of Americans’ concerns about the e-passport’s read range?
In its October 2005 Federal Register notice, the State Department reassured Americans that the e-passport’s chip — the ISO 14443 tag — would emit radio waves only within a 4-inch radius, making it tougher to hack.
Technologists in Israel and England, however, soon found otherwise. In May 2006, at the University of Tel Aviv, researchers cobbled together $110 worth of parts from hobbyists kits and directly skimmed an encrypted tag from several feet away. At the University of Cambridge, a student showed that a transmission between an e-passport and a legitimate reader could be intercepted from 160 feet.
The State Department, according to its own records obtained under FOIA, was aware of the problem months before its Federal Register notice and more than a year before the e-passport was rolled out in August 2006.
“Do not claim that these chips can only be read at a distance of 10 cm (4 inches),” Moss wrote in an April 22, 2005, e-mail to Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. “That really has been proven to be wrong.”
The chips could be skimmed from a yard away, he added — all a hacker would need to read e-passport numbers, say, in an elevator or on a subway.
Other red flags went up. In February 2006, an encrypted Dutch e-passport was hacked on national television, with researchers gaining access to the document’s digital photograph, fingerprint and personal data. Then British e-passports were hacked using a $500 reader and software written in less than 48 hours.
The State Department countered by saying European e-passports weren’t as safe as their American counterparts because they lacked the cryptographic key and the anti-skimming cover.
But recent studies have shown that more powerful readers can penetrate even the metal sheathing in the U.S. e-passport’s cover.
John Brennan, a senior policy adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, concedes it may be possible for a reader to overpower the e-passport’s protective shield from a distance.
However, he adds, “you could not do this in any large-scale, concerted fashion without putting a bunch of infrastructure in place to make it happen. The practical vulnerabilities may be far less than some of the theoretical scenarios that people have put out there.”
That thinking is flawed, says Lee Tien, a senior attorney and surveillance expert with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes RFID in identity documents.
It won’t take a massive government project to build reader networks around the country, he says: They will grow organically, for commercial purposes, from convention centers to shopping malls, sports stadiums to college campuses. Federal agencies and law enforcement wouldn’t have to control those networks; they already buy information about individuals from commercial data brokers.
“And remember,” Tien adds, “technology always gets better … “
———
With questions swirling around the e-passport’s security, why then did the government roll out more RFID-tagged documents — the PASS card and enhanced driver’s license, which provide less protection against hackers?
The RFIDs in enhanced driver’s licenses and PASS cards are nearly as slim as paper. Each contains a silicon computer chip attached to a wire antenna, which transmits a unique identifier via radio waves when “awakened” by an electromagnetic reader.
The technology they use is designed to track products through the supply chain. These chips, known as EPCglobal Gen 2, have no encryption, and minimal data protection features. They are intended to release their data to any inquiring Gen 2 reader within a 30-foot radius.
This might be appropriate when a supplier is tracking a shipment of toilet paper or dog food; but when personal information is at stake, privacy advocates ask: Is long-range readability truly desirable?
The departments of State and Homeland Security say remotely readable ID cards transmit only RFID numbers that correspond to records stored in government databases, which they say are secure. Even if a hacker were to copy an RFID number onto a blank tag and place it into a counterfeit ID, they say, the forger’s face still wouldn’t match the true cardholder’s photo in the database, rendering it useless.
Still, computer experts such as Schneier say government databases can be hacked. Others worry about a day when hackers might deploy readers at “chokepoints,” such as checkout lines, skim RFID numbers from people’s driver’s licenses, then pair those numbers to personal data skimmed from chipped credit cards (though credit cards are harder to skim). They imagine stalkers using skimmed RFID numbers to track their targets’ comings and goings. They fear government agents will compile chip numbers at peace rallies, mosques or gun shows, simply by strolling through a crowd with a reader.
Others worry more about the linking of chips with other identification methods, including biometric technologies, such as facial recognition.
The International Civil Aviation Organization, the U.N. agency that sets global standards for passports, now calls for facial recognition in all scannable e-passports.
Should biometric technologies be coupled with RFID, “governments will have, for the first time in history, the means to identify, monitor and track citizens anywhere in the world in real time,” says Mark Lerner, spokesman for the Constitutional Alliance, a network of nonprofit groups, lawmakers and citizens opposed to remotely readable identity and travel documents.
Implausible?
For now, perhaps. Radio tags in EDLs and passport cards can’t be scanned miles away.
But scientists are working on technologies that might enable a satellite or a cell tower to scan a chip’s contents. Critics also note advances in the sharpness of closed-circuit cameras, and point out they’re increasingly ubiquitous. And more fingerprints, iris scans and digitized facial images are being stored in government databases. The FBI has announced plans to assemble the world’s largest biometric database, nicknamed “Next Generation Identification.”
“RFID’s role is to make the collection and transmission of people’s biometric data quick, easy and nonintrusive,” says Lerner. “Think of it as the thread that ties together the surveillance package.”
Simple thought #5 – Why don’t civilized countries with National health care riot for private insurance
Simple thought # 5
It occurred to me today that it is a little weird that all of these modern and civilized countries with socialized health care are not rioting for privatized medicine. You see, I hear all the time how bad socialized medicine sucks, and how people who have it hate it, so I find it weird that none of them, not a single one, have demanded private hospitals and private care as an option. I do admit that in some of the countries you can choose to pay a doctor or clinic to treat you, if you wish, but if the demand was truly high for these services there would be private hospitals popping up all over the place, and that is clearly not the case. Is it possible that nationalized health care is actually pretty good, and countries who have it, actually do a pretty good job of servicing the needs of the citizens?
Anyway, just a thought.
Simple thought #4 – Creating a North American Union
Simple thought #4
I am curious why we do not eliminate the borders between the United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America. I say we give Americans and Canadians, as well as Mexicans full citizenship rights throughout North America. This accomplishes a few things that deserve discussion. First it eliminates the need for border patrol, except for coastal areas and a tiny strip of land in Panama. It would give Canadians and Americans the right to own land in Mexico, for the first time, which would create a huge stimulus event as Americans moved to the coast of Baja, and the Gulf areas. Basically every person living in the Midwest could now afford coastal property in gorgeous coastal Mexico. Third, it would create a balance of labor, as poorer areas would have plenty of work available to them as the growth boomed in coastal areas for the next 10 – 20 years, and there would be a huge supply of homes available in the Heartland as agriculture booms and non-agricultural workers move to the new coastal communities.
Anyway, just a simple thought for you to ponder.
Oh, and did I mention between Canada, Mexico and the United States there are enough natural resources to supply all of our energy consumption needs for the foreseeable future.
Heard It In A Bar RSS Feed- Texas – what the hell is wrong with you!? September 3, 2010I’m going to be honest with you, it is going to be very difficult for me to be calm about this. First, we had the Rep. Barton apologizing to BP for the Obama “shakedown”. Even his own party rolled their eyes and popped their Tums. I was up in arms over this and even got [...] […]She
- Lost is over and I actually miss it… September 3, 2010Six years of roller coaster loop de’ loops, dozens of undeveloped characters, and a story line that was as easy to follow as a chicken in a barnyard. If you didn’t watch Lost, you missed a show which challenged the fan to no end. Season after season of questions, theories, hypotheses’, cliff hanging plots, and a [...] […]kansasview
- Teetering on the edge…how does Bret Michaels do it? September 3, 2010I have to give Bret Michaels credit, he has battled a life of disease and he keeps bouncing back. At the age of six, he was diagonosed with Type I diabetes and has struggled to maintain his health all the while becoming an 80’s glam metal rock god, a history of hard hard partying, and what [...] […]kansasview
- A softball player who just happens to know the law, sign her up… September 3, 2010Does this woman really matter to you? If you look deep into the background of a possible supreme court justice, do you want actual bench experience or do you prefer someone who knows the law and has written a few hundred papers on well…the law? Princeton graduate, Harvard Law Dean,…on the surface at least Elena Kagan [...] […]kansasview
- When it rains for Tiger, it pours… September 3, 2010The muscle of this man has shrunk and shows more sign of atrophy as each new story surfaces. This blog did a pretty good job of leaving Tiger alone and I have to say after the recent events, I still stick to that credo. The bomb of the last couple months has dropped, the shrapnel has [...] […]kansasview
- Where have we been? September 3, 2010Well, a few good men and an even better woman started the idea of this blog and we owe it to someone to unspill the contents of our head, or at least mine. The time has come to once again say all the things I want to say and it’s an invitation for you as well! It’s [...] […]kansasview
- Brittany Murphy’s death is troubling September 3, 2010Not that it’s another tragic celebrity death, not that it’s another young life taken so early…these are all troubling and sad in their own right. It’s another tragic case of someone getting caught up in the web of drugs…the legal type! It truly saddens me that so many of these stars seek out more and more prescription [...] […]kansasview
- Internet fun for the weekend… September 3, 2010By far one of my favorite websites of late is called GraphJam.com. Essentially, the website attempts to break down the world and how we interact with it in a series of graphs. It is hilarious when you see how the world around us can be so easily summed up in a pie or bar chart. [...] […]kansasview
- So why are more companies not yet hiring? September 3, 2010U.S. Workers are still filing a large amount of unemployment claims and this is after five weeks of declines in this area. Where are the culprits and which industries are still hurting? It’s apparent as we have seen over the last year is that a gradual stabilization of the economy does not naturally translate to a increase [...] […]kansasview
- Facebook is down…Facebook is down…5:42 (cst) September 3, 2010This website is not a help desk for Facebook but it’s a civic duty to keep the American public aware of all possible natural disasters!! Facebook is down! Facebook is down! Don’t toss your Iphone in the river or hurl it at your wife and complain that it doesn’t work worth a s***. Here is the current [...] […]kansasview
- Texas – what the hell is wrong with you!? September 3, 2010
