Help kill the Surveillance State Bill

[Fred]

On Tue, 2005-05-10 at 09:15 -0400, Bill Freeman wrote:
> Fred writes:
>  > Keep in mind that your microwave oven can be your best friend in the
>  > defense against RFIDs.
> 
> 	Or if you want it to work sometimes, like when/if it becomes a
> requirement for some transactions, and you just want to prevent remote
> readings, keep it in an aluminum foil envelope (similar to the
> magnetic stripe protection envelope that comes with your ATM card).

If RFIDs ever become a *requirement* for a transaction, there *won't be*
a transaction with me, period.

Even credit card merchants have the option of typing in the number if
the mag stripe fails.

...
>  > And a deguasser is your best friend there. However, none of these would
>  > be effective against bar codes.
> 
> 	What we need is a plastic cover that is clear in visible light
> but opaque or reflective or stippled in the IR.

Nevermind the plastic cover. A felt-tip "magic marker" will do the trick
just nicely.

>  > I found this out the hard way once when I crossed into Canada, and the
>  > Canadian customs ran my DL and pulled up a 5-year-old case of
>  > "disorderly conduct" in which I was found not-guilty. Didn't matter.
>  > They harassed me about it anyway.
> 
> 	And they could do that with just your driver's license number,
> or the number on any other document that they accept as ID.

I don't think anything is tied to my passport number, since it was not
involved in the incident -- but the DL was. The databases are not THAT
good -- yet. Give'em time though.

>   Border
> control is actually a reason for record aggregation that I support.

Until it's your turn to be harassed, falsely accused of something you
didn't do, etc. Then your life will get *real interesting*. 

Errors also typically occurs in the aggregation, and getting them fixed
is, well, an exercise in near futility.

I also experienced this too with regards some benefits my autistic son
supposedly had 5 years back, but no more. It took years to get that crap
out of the State's aggregate database -- much time, money, aggravation,
and bad attitudes from the civil "servants" who refused to serve. The
health insurance company also refused to deal *because* it was a 5-year-
old case and all the records had been archived. It was a nightmare.

Think twice, thrice, and more before being sure you are for record
aggregation. The truth is, I think, that you have an ideal in your head
that, unfortunately, does not reflect reality. Sorry to be hard on this,
but I've seen the worst of it, and don't see how any benefits that can
come from it can outweigh all the concomitant problems that are next to
impossible to fix and will eat up time, fees, legal action, and more.

> The problems here are that: 1. That they felt that they should hassle
> you over a charge that resulted in a not guilty verdict; and 2. that
> not guilty cases aren't expunged from the level of record that they
> can access without first bringing a charge against you.

And that, my friend, is just the tip of the iceberg. This is par for the
course, not an unusual occurrence. 

It has been my long-standing maxim that government cannot not eliminate
misery, but just move it from one place to another, creating more along
the way. Once you think about it for a moment, you'll see it's true.

> 	Basically I agree that we effectively already have national
> and even international ID.  Fighting the provision under discussion of
> the pending legislation is just spitting into the wind.  You cannot
> prevent organizations, and especially government, from keeping track
> of you and much of what you do.

Sure you can. We have ways, and then we have ways. It's just that life
becomes a lot less "convenient", but it can be done. For example, the
very flaws in their aggregation methods can be exploited to make
yourself "invisible", and this can be done legally.

We may not be able to stop them from trying, though.

>   Having a national ID card probably
> makes it harder to delude yourself that you have some degree of
> anonymity, and thus may actually be a good thing.

Until, of course, you get wrongfully accused or suffer some other
travesty of justice and get caught up in the system. Then it's a very
bad thing.

Have we forgotten our history so quickly? How did the Germans keep track
of the Jews during the Holocaust, for example? Can you say, "IBM", boys
and girls?

And with the fascist ways the Bush Administration has been carrying on
lately, are you *sure* it's a good thing? No one that had anything pro-
Kerry on their persons, even in their wallets, or bumper stickers on
their cars even, were allowed into the Republican convention. Hello? Did
I miss something? Has anyone been paying attention? Guess not.

>   At least we don't
> yet have finger print scanners on public restroom doors.

Give'em time.

Consider this -- cameras in public places, connected to face recognition
software, that can track your every move -- everyone's every move. Have
you seen "Minority Report"? I suggest you do if you haven't. There
already are companies claiming they can pick out faces of "convicts" out
of a crowd, say, at a ball park, and this technology has already been
tested under those conditions. I think they had high false positive
rates, but thats the whole problem. Many innocents can be harassed due
to no fault of their own -- just because the *machine* mistook their
face for a known felon. 

Witness what is already in place -- Airport Insecurity. On a flight I
took recently, I and my business partner were flagged and have all of
our belongings searched with a glove. I had to watch total strangers
poke and prod my underwear in full sight of everyone. And yet I was
thinking the whole time -- just for fun, to keep myself amused -- ways
around their infective over-security that a real terrorist with 2
neurons to rub together can get around. 

And what's really scary to think of is when the next terrorist *does*
rub his 2 neurons together and bring down the next plane that insecurity
will become even more annoying than it is now. More innocent people will
be harassed than is currently taking place now. And it will still be
ineffective. 

And to be honest, I would not want  truly *effective* security in place.
I'd much rather take my 1 in 10 million chance and fly without all the
silly security practices that inconveniences *everybody* just to "catch"
that one terrorist in 200 million, and not that it would anyway. Even
with that we are *much* more likely to die in a car accident, but nobody
seems to mind those risks despite the 41,000 documented fatalities per
year. Of which my own younger brother was one recently.

Humans can be mighty frustrating at times. They expend much effort
focusing on paper tigers whilst the *real* tigers snack on their
posteriors.

Ouch!

-Fred
"We'll make great pets!" -- Prono for Pyros