Face Police coming to US Airports...

Newsweek: "Specially trained security personnel" will be watching passengers for "micro-expressions" that will reveal treacherous agendas and insidious intentions at airports around the country. These agents, who may literally hold your fate in their hands have been given a lofty, Orwellian name: 'Behavior Detection Officers.'"

"So while TSA employees are confiscating our scissors and water bottles, they’re going to secretly be staring at us, looking for some telltale sign of terrorist intent in a grimace, a sigh, a crinkled nose"


Creepy, yes. But probably more effective than strip searching toddlers based on inaccurate name matches from a super-duper-secret watchlist, or taking our water away. Can we just be free and get on with it? Take our chances? Not be anal probed OR terrorized?

U.S. to Expand Domestic Use Of Spy Satellites

Wall Street Journal: "The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S. The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials.

The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.

Until now, only a handful of federal civilian agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey, have had access to the most basic spy-satellite imagery, and only for the purpose of scientific and environmental study. "


When did the people represented by the government become separated from it? Why have they become the enemy, to be tagged, cataloged, monitored and watched? Why are we wasting resources watching ourselves? Do you, personally, need to be watched? If the answer is 'no', then any time spent watching you is wasted, and time that could be spent watching someone who needs watching. Why would you support a plan to watch yourself, at great cost and exactly zero impact? Lame.

NYC Trying to Regulate Photon Detection and Recording

New York Times: "Some tourists, amateur photographers, even would-be filmmakers hoping to make it big on YouTube could soon be forced to obtain a city permit and $1 million in liability insurance before taking pictures or filming on city property, including sidewalks."



..meanwhile installing their own surveillance cameras on every corner.

Total Information Awareness - more lives than a cat.

Washington Times: "Homeland Security officials are testing a supersnoop computer system that sifts through personal information on U.S. citizens to detect possible terrorist attacks, prompting concerns from lawmakers who have called for investigations.

The system uses the same data-mining process that was developed by the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project that was banned by Congress in 2003 because of vast privacy violations. "

" The ADVISE and TIA data-mining projects rely on personal data to track individual behavior and consumer transactions to develop computer algorithms that create a pattern that some behavioral scientists say can predict terrorist behavior. Data can include credit-card purchases, telephone or Internet details, medical records, travel and banking information"


Notice a pattern here? Aside from the academic and civil rights arguments against pervasive monitoring of pretty much everything, and aside from the 'bad science' behind this approach as a preventative security apparatus, we're seeing a pattern of disregard.. Executive branch starts it up, Legislative shuts it down. Executive branch moves it to another agency, gives it a new name. Legislative shuts it down. Ad infinitum.

It's a bad idea, open to massive abuse, inaccuracy, and is unlikely to be effective at much more than wasting time and money - at least in the 'war on terrrr'.. Human intelligence and traditional law enforcement is a better bet here.

The information that one is missing a kidney, makes occasional trips to Cleveland, and prefers Colgate toothpaste in no way susses out criminal or terrorist intent. It's all noise, no signal. But it's a great tool for traditional crimes, drug crimes, etc - that happens to bypass due process protections and thresholds for probable cause. (you know, one or two foundational Constitutional amendments...)

It's also a great way to keep tabs on affiliations, dissidents and those who disagree with the those in power. Opinion crimes.

It's just a question of 'what kind of society do we want'... What freedoms do we value? And even if we trust the party in power not to abuse the systems, what about your least favorite party? Going through mail, monitoring phone calls, tracking behaviors. Not to mention insiders... individuals with searchable access to every fact on everyone. Bah.

US Military rolling out new drones with anti-crowd tech

The Register: "The US military has taken another step forward with its research into 'non-lethal crowd control systems' after reaching back into the disco era for inspiration.

The US Army is looking to deploy a powerful strobe searchlight mounted in a pilotless drone aircraft. The strobe is intended to cause 'immobilisation to all those within the beam'.

Earlier this year the US Marines tested a vehicle-mounted directed microwave cooker which is intended to lightly grill the outer skin layer of troublemakers, causing an 'intense burning sensation' which is nonetheless harmless – or anyway, less harmful than other things which the US Marines might do."


...does make you wonder what they're anticipating.. A crowd abroad, or at home?

U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling

New York Times: "The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering"

"The goal, justice officials said, is to make the practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents, including illegal immigrants. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons."

"While the proposed rules have not been finished, justice officials said they were certain to bring a huge new workload for the F.B.I. laboratory that logs, analyzes and stores federal DNA samples. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said they anticipated an increase ranging from 250,000 to as many as 1 million samples a year. The laboratory currently receives about 96,000 samples a year, said Robert Fram, chief of the agency’s Scientific Analysis Section."


All your DNA are belong to us. Forever.
And still doesn't address the issue of the millions of chimeric twins out there. One body - multiple versions of DNA.

IHOP required photo ID to seat customers...

Red Orbit: "John Russo has been a victim of identity theft. So when he was asked to fork over a photo ID just to be seated at an IHOP pancake restaurant, he flipped. "'You want my license? I'm going for pancakes, I'm not buying the Hope diamond,' and they refused to seat us," Russo said, recounting his experience this week at the Quincy IHOP. "

Just because it's the INTERNATIONAL House of Pancakes, a passport shouldn't be required for entrance... Apparently this 'policy' was the result of one lone employee trying to dissuade dine-and-dash incidents.. But since the employee usually doesn't have a stake in the final tab at any real level, so it could also be that iHOP is throwing a worker under the bus on this lame lame practice.