Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Government, Politics, Privacy, Society, Terrorism
That’s pretty much my maxim for dealing with any government agency, at any level: no matter what they tell you, the situation will always turn out to be worse the more you find out about it.
You know what’s going to happen when they’re talking about road construction being delayed or taxes having to go up. I expect it when I hear that the economy is “having difficulties”. That’s bad enough. But when they start talking about infringements on your civil liberties, you might as well reach for the lube and grab your ankles.
Latest such instance:
More Groups Than Thought Monitored in Police Spying
The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored — and labeled as terrorists — activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes.
Yeah, those evil bike-lane loving terrorists had to be watched!
Police have acknowledged that the monitoring, which took place during the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), spiraled out of control, with an undercover trooper spending 14 months infiltrating peaceful protest groups. Troopers have said they inappropriately labeled 53 individuals as terrorists in their database, information that was shared with federal authorities. But the new documents reveal a far more expansive set of police targets and indicate that police did not close some files until late 2007.
Your tax dollars at work. Well, if you live in Maryland. But note that bit about sharing the information with the federal authorities? Here’s a bit more from the same article:
The activists fear that they will land on federal watch lists, in part because the police shared their intelligence information with at least seven area law enforcement agencies.
HIDTA Director Tom Carr said his organization’s database became a dead end for the information because law enforcement agencies cannot access the data directly. The database instead acts as a “pointer”: Investigators enter case information and the database indicates whether another agency has related material and instructs investigators to contact that agency. The activists were not a match with any other data, Carr said, and their information has since purged.
“The problem lies in the fact that once [the state police] checked it out and found it was not accurate, they should have removed it from the system,” Carr said. “And they did not do that.”
So of course, we should trust that they have done it now, right?
Sure.
See, if you’re a member of, say, PETA or the ACLU, those organizations had a file tied to that federal database. One which indicated that there was something worth monitoring. Giving justification to any other agency which found that such a file existed to “investigate further”, regardless of the fact that the file should have never existed in the first place.
Kafka would be proud.
Remember: it’s always worse than they first tell you.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Ballistics, Guns, Predictions, Press, Privacy, Promotion, RKBA, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
I’ve mentioned several times recently the ballistics project I’ve been involved with over the last year or so. Well, last night we migrated the temporary site over to its own domain, and except for a few tweaks it is pretty much done. Sometime probably this weekend I will post a comment promoting the site to a couple of the forums devoted to discussing firearms, and then all bets are off as to what happens next. (I’d ask anyone reading this to not spread the word to such forums just yet – please let me do that when we’re ready.)
For those who are not interested or knowledgeable about firearms, this whole thing may seem a bit silly. Actually, it is a huge project which will significantly add to the information base available to shooting enthusiasts, and as such will likely gain a great deal of attention both online and in the print media devoted to firearms. I’ve cautioned my two cohorts in the project to be prepared for a bit of a whirlwind of interest. I doubt that it will penetrate into the general media the way that my Paint the Moon art project did, but in the gun world it could very well be just as well known.
And the anticipation of that is kinda fun. As private a person as I am by nature, I enjoy doing things which are interesting or innovative enough to gain some level of attention, to povoke people to think about something in a different way or to expand their awareness of what is possible. I think that is a big part of the reason why I blog, and why I wrote Communion of Dreams – to help shape the world. This new project will do that in a very tangible way.
So, we’ll see what happens. Wish us luck with it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, Failure, Government, Politics, Privacy, Society, Terrorism, Travel
Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have set forth the “One Percent Doctrine” following the 9-11 attacks. The basic premise is that if there is just 1% chance that an enemy is planning a serious terrorist attack, we have to treat it as though it were a certainty, and respond accordingly.
So, I suppose it really is no surprise that all the absurdity of “behaviour detection” that the TSA employs at airports leads to just a 1% arrest rate, and that they proclaim this as “”incredibly effective.” No, seriously:
TSA’s ‘behavior detection’ leads to few arrests
WASHINGTON — Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports for suspicious behavior are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show, raising complaints that too many innocent people are stopped.
A TSA program launched in early 2006 that looks for terrorists using a controversial surveillance method has led to more than 160,000 people in airports receiving scrutiny, such as a pat-down search or a brief interview. That has resulted in 1,266 arrests, often on charges of carrying drugs or fake IDs, the TSA said.
* * *
TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said the program has been “incredibly effective” at catching criminals at airports. “It definitely gets at things that other layers of security might miss,” Howe said.
Sure it does. Because people who are carrying drugs or using a fake ID are really the terrorist threat that you say you are protecting us from. And to achieve that, they had to have over 99% false positives.
It’s just more Security Theater, of course: the illusion of ‘doing something’, not any kind of practical prevention. I’ve written about this often, and in looking back through those posts it is clear that the real effect of this whole bureaucracy is to make us more and more inured to the systematic destruction of any sense of privacy at the hands of our government. As I wrote just over a year ago:
Over the weekend, news came out of yet another “Trust us, we’re the government” debacle, this time in the form of the principal deputy director of national intelligence saying that Americans have to give up on the idea that they have any expectation of privacy. Rather, he said, we should simply trust the government to properly safeguard the communications and financial information that they gather about us. No, I am not making this up. From the NYT:
“Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety,” Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, told attendees of the Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s symposium in Dallas.
Little wonder that they’re happy to define 1% as “success” – it gets them exactly what they want.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and Daily Kos.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, General Musings, Government, Politics, Privacy, Society
Md. Police Put Activists’ Names On Terror Lists
The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.
Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.
“The names don’t belong in there,” he told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. “It’s as simple as that.”
The surveillance took place over 14 months in 2005 and 2006, under the administration of former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). The former state police superintendent who authorized the operation, Thomas E. Hutchins, defended the program in testimony yesterday. Hutchins said the program was a bulwark against potential violence and called the activists “fringe people.”
Yeah, we can’t be having those ‘fringe people’ who opposed the Iraq War enjoying the protection of the Constitution, you know. Who the hell do they think they are??
*sigh*
Is it time to get our country back from the fascists, yet?
Jim Downey
(Via John Cole. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Blade Runner, BoingBoing, Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Constitution, Cory Doctorow, Emergency, Expert systems, General Musings, Government, Guns, movies, Philip K. Dick, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Ridley Scott, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Terrorism, Violence
So, according to FOX News, our friends at the Department of Homeland Security will soon have a new trick up their sleeve: MALINTENT.
Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind
Baggage searches are SOOOOOO early-21st century. Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening — a body scanner that can read your mind.Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person — not the device — set to wreak havoc and terror.
MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security’s directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.
I’m . . . sceptical. Let me put it like this: if this thing actually, dependably, reliably works the way they tout it in the article (go read the whole thing, even if it is from FOX), then the TSA would be perfectly fine with allowing me to carry a gun onto a plane. After all, I have a legitimate CCW permit, have been vetted by a background check and accuracy test, have had the permit for three years, and have never demonstrated the slightest inclination to use my weapon inappropriately. If I could pass their MALINTENT scanners as well, they should be completely willing to let me (and anyone else who had a similar background and permit) carry a weapon on board.
Just how likely do you think that is?
Right. Because this sort of technology does not, will not, demonstrate reliability to the degree they claim. There will be far too many “false positives”, as there always are with any kind of lie detector. That’s why multiple questions are asked when a lie detector is used, and even then many jurisdictions do not allow the results of a lie detector to be admitted into courts of law.
Furthermore, the risk of a “false negative” would be far too high. Someone who was trained/drugged/unaware/elated with being a terrorist and slipped by the scanners would still be a threat. As Bruce Schneier just posted about Two Classes of Airport Contraband:
This is why articles about how screeners don’t catch every — or even a majority — of guns and bombs that go through the checkpoints don’t bother me. The screeners don’t have to be perfect; they just have to be good enough. No terrorist is going to base his plot on getting a gun through airport security if there’s decent chance of getting caught, because the consequences of getting caught are too great.
Contrast that with a terrorist plot that requires a 12-ounce bottle of liquid. There’s no evidence that the London liquid bombers actually had a workable plot, but assume for the moment they did. If some copycat terrorists try to bring their liquid bomb through airport security and the screeners catch them — like they caught me with my bottle of pasta sauce — the terrorists can simply try again. They can try again and again. They can keep trying until they succeed. Because there are no consequences to trying and failing, the screeners have to be 100 percent effective. Even if they slip up one in a hundred times, the plot can succeed.
OK, so then why do it? Why introduce these scanners at all? Why intrude on the privacy of people wanting to get on an airplane?
Control. As I noted earlier this year, about the news that the US military was deploying hand-held ‘lie detectors’ for use in Iraq:
The device is being tested by the military. They just don’t know it. And once it is in use, some version of the technology will be adapted for more generalized police use. Just consider how it will be promoted to the law enforcement community: as a way of screening suspects. Then, as a way of finding suspects. Then, as a way of checking anyone who wants access to some critical facility. Then, as a way of checking anyone who wants access to an airplane, train, or bus.
Just how long do you think it will be before you have to pass a test by one of these types of devices in your day-to-day life? I give it maybe ten years. But I worry that I am an optimist.
An optimist, indeed. Because here’s another bit from the FOXNews article:
And because FAST is a mobile screening laboratory, it could be set up at entrances to stadiums, malls and in airports, making it ever more difficult for terrorists to live and work among us.
This is about scanning the public, making people *afraid*. Afraid not just of being a terrorist, but of being thought to be a terrorist by others, of being an outsider. Of being a critic of the government in power. The first step is to get you afraid of terrorists, because then they could use that fear, and build on it, to slowly, methodically, destroy your privacy. Sure, the DHS claims that they will not keep the information gathered from such scanners. And you’re a fool if you think you can trust that.
Jim Downey
Via BoingBoing. Cross posted to UTI.
Filed under: George Orwell, Government, Politics, Privacy, Publishing, Society, Writing stuff
Or maybe you don’t. My own knowledge of George Orwell was limited to his most popular novels (Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four) until graduate school, when I also delved into some of his essays. Any would-be writer, and almost anyone interested in political rhetoric, should be familiar with “Politics and the English Language”. His piece on “Why I Write” had a powerful impact on me, and I still find that this passage at the end resonates strongly:
All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
Well, anyway, if you’ve enjoyed Orwell’s writing, you may also enjoy his diaries. The Orwell Prize has just started running entries from Orwell’s diaries 70 years ago, posting them day-to-day as a blog starting with the first entry dated August 9, 1938/2008. As stated on the blog:
From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries. The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time. The diaries end in 1942, three years into the conflict.
What impression of Orwell will emerge? From his domestic diaries (which start on 9th August), it may be a largely unknown Orwell, whose great curiosity is focused on plants, animals, woodwork, and – above all – how many eggs his chickens have laid. From his political diaries (from 7th September), it may be the Orwell whose political observations and critical thinking have enthralled and inspired generations since his death in 1950. Whether writing about the Spanish Civil War or sloe gin, geraniums or Germany, Orwell’s perceptive eye and rebellion against the ‘gramophone mind’ he so despised are obvious.
I’m looking forward to it, to seeing how this man’s mind understood the changing events of the world around him at a critical juncture. Maybe you will, as well.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Daily Kos.)
Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, Government, Politics, Privacy, Society, Terrorism, YouTube
. . . and weep for the Fourth Amendment:
And people wonder why Congress has an approval rate of 9%.
Sheesh.
UPDATE: FISA passed in the Senate, 69 – 28:
WASHINGTON – The Senate approved and sent to the White House a bill overhauling controversial rules on secret government eavesdropping Wednesday, bowing to President Bush’s demand to protect telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.
The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and bitter debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president’s warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The House passed the same bill last month, and President Bush is expected to sign it soon. He scheduled a 4 p.m. EDT White House statement to praise the passage.
Jim Downey
(Via Daily Kos. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Art, Astronomy, Civil Rights, Daily Kos, Government, Politics, Press, Privacy, Society, Space, tech, Wired
Someone is watching you:
BERKELEY, California — For most people, photographing something that isn’t there might be tough. Not so for Trevor Paglen.
His shots of 189 secret spy satellites are the subject of a new exhibit — despite the fact that, officially speaking, the satellites don’t exist. The Other Night Sky, on display at the University of California at Berkeley Art Museum through September 14, is only a small selection from the 1,500 astrophotographs Paglen has taken thus far.
* * *
While all of Paglen’s projects are the result of meticulous research, he’s also the first to admit that his photos aren’t necessarily revelatory. That’s by design. Like the blurry abstractions of his super-telephoto images showing secret military installations in Nevada, the tiny blips of satellites streaking across the night sky in his new series of photos are meant more as reminders rather than as documentation.
It’s art, people. And art can have a purpose and an impact which is more powerful and insightful than journalism. Paglan is an interesting guy, but too often his stuff is used as some kind of substitute for actual journalism. I suppose in an era when so much our government does is tacitly ignored by the mainstream press this is understandable, but it almost misses the point.
Sheesh.
Jim Downey
Cross posted to dKos.
Communion Of Dreams 