We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Bjarni Ólafsson of Great Auk draws our attention to an onslought on civil liberties by the Minister for Transportation, the Chief of Police in Reykjavík and the state “Traffic authority” have launched in the last two days. Böðvar Bragason, Chief of Police in Reykjavík muses:
New ways to cut the number of road accidents have to be found, and one possible way is to install computer chips in every car and thereby increase the amount of government monitoring of driving.
I want to propose an increase in the number of surveilance cameras on intersections in the city, but I also want a task force to inspect wether technology can be used in the cars themselves. I have the idea, which can easily be implemented, to put a computer chip in every single car. The Police then could stop a given car, connect with the chip and see the way the car has been driven that day, and even before that day.
Aarrrgh. We share your frustration, Bjarni.
The statist can never be happy as long as individuals have some modicum of freedom of action and travel, hence these proposals. This kind of surveilance system, coupled with a court system which allows for any and all evidence to be submitted in a criminal trial – without regard to how it was obtained (f.ex. illegal wiretaps are admissable), is a brutal attack on the personal liberties of Icelanders.
Security software company Saflink said today that it would work with Microsoft to develop software for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, sending its shares to its highest level in a month. Mark Belk, Microsoft’s chief architect for homeland security software said:
Together, we provide a compelling solution for Homeland Security programs involving biometrics, smart cards, tamper-proof identities and physical security controls.
Compelling for whom…
Josh McHugh in Wired has a feature on RFID chips in supermarkets. He describes his visit to the Future Store built by European retailer Metro to be the premier live testing ground for RFID tags.
Thanks to the coordinated efforts of the world’s biggest retailers and manufacturers, not to mention the persistence of former lipstick marketer Kevin Ashton, these little tags are about to infiltrate the world of commerce. Depending who you ask, RFID tags constitute:
- the best thing to happen to manufacturing since the cog.
- the biggest threat to personal privacy since the crowbar.
- the near-exact fulfillment of the Book of Revelation’s description of the mark of the beast.
There’s a compelling argument for each of these perspectives – including number three.
He explains why manufacturers and retailers alike are so eager to implement RFID technology. It is mostly about the supply chain margins.
Retailers are even keener to get their hands on the sort of information RFID tags promise to reveal. The way it works now, all the little kinks along the supply chain accumulate in the lap of retailers, which take delivery of products without knowing whether the shipments are correct until they’re unpacked. The average rate for shipping screwups is 1 in 20. That’s a big part of why margins in the retailing business are so thin – average net profit for supermarkets is 1 percent – and precisely the reason that Wal-Mart, Target, and Metro have given their top suppliers six to nine months to start slapping RFID tags onto crates and delivery pallets. Manufacturers want this technology, but retailers need it.
RFID will be good for the customer too. Shopping will be much easier and the information gathered about their shopping behaviour will result in a closer match between demand and supply.
There is more, especially on the argument opposing RFID that we have written about here already. It is worth reading the whole thing.
James Lileks today, on where anti-Microsoft mania can lead:
So I’m not a big fan. But I will come to their defense for the anti-trust suits. Minnesota just settled a suit with the state of Minnesota, where millions of consumers were apparently forced at gunpoint to buy Windows machines. Microsoft once again promised to hand over its wallet if the kicking stopped, and agreed to remain rolled in a fetal position until the money is counted. The verdict was around eleventy trillion dollars or so. When it came to distribute the organs of the corpse the lawyers got the liver, spleen, lungs and most of the brain; the consumers got some regulatory glands, some teeth and a selection of minor toes. I think we get a certificate for ten bucks off on future Microsoft purchases. If the consumers don’t claim the money, some goes back to Bill and some goes to an education fund. The trick, of course, is to get people to claim their money. Florida lead the pack: 18 % of the consumers stepped forward. Obviously they need higher participation rates, since it looks bad when you advocate on behalf of an Inflamed Public that turns out to be utterly indifferent to the supposed offense. So the state has come up with a novel means of informing citizens that Microsoft owes them money. It was buried at the end of the story in the local paper last week.
The state will subpoena local computer resellers to learn who bought PCs.
Maybe it’s just me, but: imagine the outcry if the Justice department decided it wanted a database of computer ownership in America. Who had what. Oh no you don’t would be the general reaction, even if people couldn’t quite explain why they didn’t like the idea. It smacks of typewriter-registration laws in totalitarian states, even though we all know no one will kick down the door and demand to know where you put that 386 you bought in ’92. But this is the mindset of the well-intentioned government lawyer: gee, people might not claim their rebates. How about we use the power of the state to force private businesses to turn over customer lists so we can mail informational material to computer owners? It’s for their own good. Who could complain?
Grrr.
Indeed.
A loyal reader sends in this ‘gem’ of a story… someone was arrested for sketching on the South Bank:
I spent four hours (having already been detained for three and a half) in a cell in Kennington police station wondering whether I might not be joining those in Belmarsh where Mr Blunkett could detain me without explanation and, in the interest of public security, refuse to divulge the alleged evidence. If the majority in this country need protecting, they had better ask who the enemies of democracy currently are.
Read the whole thing… Incredible but not surprising.
The Home Secretary has instructed the Humberside Police Authority to suspend the chief constable of Humberside, David Westwood. I have no views on the actual issue of David Westwood’s competence and whether or not he actually deserves to be suspended and ultimately sacked, but what is alarming is how Downing Street is centralising more and more decisions on local matters that have a huge baring on civil liberties.
Lawyers for Mr Blunkett are expected to ask the High Court, possibly on Tuesday, for an injunction forcing the authority to carry out his instruction to suspend the officer. This will be the first test of powers under the Police Reform Act 2002 and the Home Secretary will argue that suspension is necessary “for the maintenance of public confidence” in the force.
[..]
Colin Inglis, the chairman of the authority and the Labour leader of Kingston-upon-Hull told BBC1’s Look North: “The police authority is not a rubber stamp and if the Home Secretary expected a rubber stamp then that, I’m afraid, is not what he has got.
“The Home Secretary is not David Westwood’s line manager. David Westwood works for the police authority.
The issue is not “is David Westwood a good copper” but “do you want David Blunkett making those decisions?”. No prizes for guessing where I stand on that.
A couple of interesting stories caught my eye.
First, the Queen is working hard to use legal means to include privacy clauses in the employment contracts with palace employees, in an effort to prevent leaks and protect the privacy of the Royal Family.
The new contracts cover more than 300 staff from gardeners and cleaners to the lord chamberlain, but will also affect those working for other leading members of the royal family such as the Prince of Wales whose accounts are published separately.
The move forms part of a broader royal strategy, including the appointment of a director responsible for internal security and vetting, aimed at halting the spate of damaging leaks in recent years.
It is a sign of the times that the palace requires a Director for Internal Security to provide them with a modicum of privacy.
Meanwhile, in another sign of the times, US airlines and the US government are under fire for privacy breaches during background checks.
Four airlines — including Continental, Delta, America West and Frontier — and at least two reservation systems provided the information to the government or its contractors, the acting head of the Transportation Security Administration, David Stone, told a Senate committee. Some of the companies denied that.
The agency previously had said only two airlines had done so.
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, top Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said the agency ”may have violated” the Privacy Act, which says the government must notify the public if it intends to collect records on people.
An agency spokeswoman, Yolanda Clark, said the Homeland Security Department’s privacy officer is investigating the agency’s involvement in the data-sharing from airlines. The information, known as passenger name records, includes credit card numbers, travel reservation details, address and telephone number. It also could mean meal requests, which can indicate a passenger’s religion or ethnicity.
The potential for abuse here seems clear, and I hope that firm action is taken to prevent a reoccurance.
Yesterday Michael Jennings introduced me to Skype, a sort of instant messaging program that is very good at voice communications. This is part of an ongoing trend which is seeing computer networks challenge the traditional telephone networks for business.
Because rather then pay a large sum of money to make an international phone call, I’m now able to speak with Michael in London from my Australian home, for free, and with a better sound quality then I was able to do before.
So as you can imagine, it is a time of fast change in the telephone business. This has implications wider then the share prices of telephone companies.
To encourage take up of VoIP, legislation has been introduced in the US Senate, by Senator John Sununu. The VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act of 2004 is designed to exempt this technology from most state and federal regulations.
Needless to say there’s been plenty of opposition to this. Much of the opposition comes from self-interested telephone companies, but the US Dept of Justice is not happy either.
The VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act of 2004, sponsored by Senator John Sununu, would exempt VoIP service from a wire-tapping regulation called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, commonly used to listen in on traditional telephone calls, said Laura Parsky, deputy assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s criminal division.
“I am here to underscore how very important it is that this type of telephone service not become a haven for criminals, terrorists and spies,” Parsky told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Wednesday. “If any particular technology is singled out for special exemption from these requirements, that technology will quickly attract criminals and create a hole in law enforcement’s ability to protect the public and national security.”
You can read Laura Parsky’s complete testimony here
What this statement is all about is that the Dept of Justice has got quite accustomed to using the wiretap to track down undesirables and is most unhappy that this legislation might prevent them from doing so in the future.
This is part of a wider trend that I suspect we will see more of, with people taking the opportunity to try out new ways of communicating with each other, and regulatory agencies scrambling to keep up. In the United States, there are US Senators who seem, like Senator Sununu, who consider privacy issues and freedom from regulation important. I fear that when the EU catches up, as it surely will, that those issues will be the least of the concerns of the people who draft the regulations.
The Guardian reports that a number of VIP clubbers at a Barcelona nightclub have been implanted with a chip in their upper arm. Steve van Soest, spokesman for the club explains:
One of our owners wanted to do something special for our new VIP section. He’d read about the chip in newspapers, so we started to see if it was possible and legal here in Spain. It was.
Since its launch, 25 people have had the chip injected into their upper arm by a registered doctor at the club, which also plans to use the technology in its sister club in Rotterdam.
Now, however despicable and unacceptable I find compulsory tagging and identification, this is voluntary. These people have chosen to have the chip injected and I see no reason to get excited about that. I will, however, object to the state or other institutions forcing me to do it either by straightforward coercion backed by law or by not giving me a choice.
RFID news reports that the UK-based vehicle licence plate manufacturer, Hills Numberplates Ltd, has chosen long-range RFID tags and readers from Identec Solutions to be embedded in licence plates that will automatically and reliably identify vehicles in the UK.
The new e-Plates project uses active (battery powered) RFID tags embedded in the plates to identify vehicles in real time. The result is the ability to reliably identify any vehicle, anywhere, whether stationary or mobile, and – most importantly – in all weather conditions. (Previous visually-based licence plate identification techniques have been hampered by factors such as heavy rain, mist, fog, and even mud or dirt on the plates.)
The e-Plates project has been under development for the past three years at a cost of more than £1 million, and is currently under consideration by a number of administrations. It is hoped that e-Plate will be one of the systems trialled by the UK Government in its forthcoming study of micro-chipped licence plates.
Brought to my attention by Stephen Hodgson of Unpersons.net. Thanks.
Jay Cline writes for ComputerWorld:
Governments and corporations increasingly see biometrics as the primary way they’ll identify people in the future. In an age of terrorism and fraud, they hope fingerprint and eye scanning will become the cheapest and most reliable means of verifying that people are who they say they are. But are we ready for this convergence of computers with our flesh and bones? I don’t think so. This significant intrusion into our personal space needs a heightened level of privacy protection that most organizations have only just started to envision.
I have a deeper misgiving about biometrics. Because they promise to be much more cost-effective and reliable than traditional authentication methods, I expect businesses will want to adopt biometrics-only authentication, discarding expensive traditional methods.
Three types of system failures could make your life miserable: a failed match, a mistaken match and stolen biometrics… Biometric ID theft victims may never fully clear their names.
Cline goes on to give a checklist of the top controls customers and citizens should demand before cooperating with biometric systems. Since I think that should be never, if you want to know, you’ll have to go and read it yourself…
Plans for a national ID card scheme risk changing the relationship between the British state and its citizens, the information watchdog has warned.
Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner, said he had initially greeted the plans with “healthy scepticism” but the details had changed his view to “increasing alarm”. The government hopes a pilot scheme will pave the way for compulsory identity cards within the next decade. Mr Thomas told MPs the scheme was “unprecedented” in international terms.
Mr Thomas told the MPs that it was now clear the scheme was not just about identity cards but about a national identity register.
This is beginning to represent a really significant sea change in the relationship between state and every individual in this country.
It is not just about citizens having a piece of plastic to identify themselves. It’s about the amount, the nature of the information held about every citizen and how that’s going to be used in a wide range of activities.
Mr Thomas said that if the ID cards did work out as the government planned they would be “a very, very attractive proposition for criminals”.
Yes, let’s see whether Mr Thomas’s words make any difference to Big Blunkett… I guess not.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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