Lawmakers, Activists Furious Over Random Laptop Border Searches

U.S. Border agents have increased their scrutiny over those entering the country, going as far as scrutinizing photos on digital cameras, examining audio files on ipods and music devices as well as whatever you're laptop (or company laptop) may contain, including any Google keyboard searches.

Full article: Lawmakers, Activists Furious Over Random Laptop Border Searches

Given all the personal details that people store on digital devices, border searches of laptops and other gadgets can give law enforcement officials far more revealing pictures of travelers than suitcase inspections might yield. That has set off alarms among civil liberties groups and travelers' advocates - and now among some members of Congress who hope to impose restrictions on the practice next year.

They fear the government has crossed a sacred line by rummaging through electronic contact lists and confidential e-mail messages, trade secrets and proprietary business files, financial and medical records and other deeply private information.

These searches, opponents say, threaten Fourth Amendment safeguards against unreasonable search and seizure and could chill free expression and other activities protected by the First Amendment. What's more, they warn, such searches raise concerns about ethnic and religious profiling since the targets often are Muslims, including U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

Such searches, the government notes, have uncovered everything from martyrdom videos and other violent jihadist materials to child pornography and stolen intellectual property.

The problem with this policy, argues Marcia Hofmann, staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is that the contents of a laptop or other digital device are fundamentally different than those of a typical suitcase.

As Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who is co-sponsoring one of several bills in Congress that would restrict such searches, put it: "You can't put your life in a suitcase, but you can put your life on a computer."

Susan Gurley, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which filed its own Freedom of Information request to obtain the government's laptop search policy, noted that border searches pose a particular concern for international business travelers. That's because they often carry sensitive corporate information on their laptops and don't have the option of leaving their computers at home.

And for many travelers, the concerns go beyond their own privacy or the privacy of their employers. Lawyers may have documents subject to attorney-client privilege. Doctors may be carrying patient records.

Federal appeals courts in two circuits have upheld warrantless or "suspicionless" computer searches at the border that turned up images of child pornography used as evidence in criminal cases.

But late last year, a U.S. magistrate judge in Vermont ruled that the government could not force a man to divulge the password to his laptop after a search at the Canadian border found child pornography. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Vermont is appealing the decision to the U.S. district court.

Now Congress is getting involved. A handful of bills have been introduced that could pass next year.

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., is sponsoring a bill in the House that would also require suspicion to inspect electronic devices. Engel said he is not trying to impede legitimate searches to protect national security. But, he said, it is just as important to protect civil liberties.

"It's outrageous that on a whim, a border agent can just ask you for your laptop," Engel said. "We can't just throw our constitutional rights out the window."

[AP][NewsMax]

New ID Scanners at Borders Raise Privacy Alarm

The federal government has already deployed new detection machines that can scan citizens without their knowledge from as far as 50 feet away and “read” their personal documents such as passports or driver’s licenses.

The Homeland Security Department touts the high-tech devices as increasing security at border crossings, but privacy advocates are raising all sorts of red flags.

Critics say the new machines, which read one’s personal information right through a wallet or purse, do so without consent or a warrant and may set a worrisome precedent.

The devices, called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) machines, allow officials to read remotely any passports, pass cards, and driver’s licenses that contain special chips with personal information.

The RFIDs are so sensitive that, even before a vehicle pulls up at a border checkpoint, agents already will have on their computer screen the personal data of the passengers, including each person’s name, date of birth, nationality, passport or ID number, and even a digitized photo.

The new gadgets are in place, or soon will be, at five border crossings: Blaine, Wash.; Buffalo; Detroit; Nogales, Ariz.; and San Ysidro, Calif. They are slated to have a dramatically expanded presence in June.

Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that the technology could make Americans less secure because terrorists or other criminals may be able to steal the personal information off the ID cards remotely.

Tien and other critics warn that people up to no good can use their own RFID machines in a process called “skimming” to read the information from as far as 50 feet.

Indeed, consumer privacy expert Katherine Albrecht maintains that the chips create the “potential for a whole surveillance network to be set up.” Among other abuses, she says police could use them to track criminals; abusive husbands could use the technology to find their wives; and stores could trail the shopping patterns of patrons.

Homeland Security, however, rebuts the criticism, arguing that the embedded chips surrender only a code to machine readers. That code is then broken in order to display the personal information on the border agents’ screen.

Meanwhile, the same agencies that are issuing the newfangled IDs supply a sleeve that keep out all prying electronic eyes when not in use.

[NewsMax]

LANdroids: DoD turns Homeland into one big HotSpot

Urban wireless to serve intel and PSYOP forces

The government needs more nodes: Various agencies want to seed cities with wireless networking devices (image from a DOD document).

Despite the high costs and unproven social benefits for municipal broadband, dozens of U.S. cities are ignoring laws banning anti-competitive practices and getting into the internet business.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Defense is planning to build robots that configure themselves into ad hoc wireless networks within urban areas.

City mayors claim they want to provide free and low-cost Wi-Fi access to the poor and attract business travelers. Defense planners say they need to have broadband capabilities in urban war zones.

But rather than closing the “digital divide” (which many academics admit is being exaggerated), or providing a redundant service to traveling salesmen, it appears that officials aim to seize control of internet communications and track individuals in urban areas.

Military and law enforcement agencies will also use the wireless networks to stage “hard PSYOP” attacks against a brain-chipped populace, according to historian and commentator Alan Watt, who specializes in secret societies and government intelligence operations.

Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, and Providence, R.I. are among the cities partnering with private companies and the federal government to set up public broadband internet access. Providence used Homeland Security funds to construct a network for police, which may be made available to the public at a later date.

None of the cities are expected to turn a profit anytime soon. Nor are the poor likely to benefit from the projects.

Subscribers to Philly’s “Wireless Philadelphia” service, for example, will pay up to 73 percent more than the rate promised to them two years ago.

“(Philadelphia) presented dangerously inaccurate estimates and figures for the costs and revenue” for its wireless network, according to a recent analysis by students at Harvard Law School.


Seeding: The DOD envisions soldiers dropping robots into cities. The robots will self-configure into what are known as “mesh networks.”

City officials have managed to line their own pockets, however.

Philadelphia’s former chief information officer, Dianah Neff (below, left), now works for Civitium, the consulting firm she paid $300,000 to help build Philly’s Wi-Fi network.



Denise Brady, San Francisco’s former deputy CIO, also took a position with Civitium after bringing the firm her city’s business.

San Franciscans might actually lose more than money to their city’s muni Wi-Fi scheme.

Google and Earthlink, the companies building San Francisco’s Wi-Fi network, want to place cameras and sensors atop lampposts at the same time they are installing their Wi-Fi antennae. The companies say they merely want to help police and emergency workers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU have opposed such police/public proposals.

But even if the cities fail to complete their Wi-Fi projects, the military will be able to set up wireless networks within hours, perhaps even faster.

The DOD, which is in the middle of joint urban war-games with Homeland Security and Canadian, Israeli and other international forces, is experimenting with Wi-Fi networks it can set up on the fly.

According to a recent DOD announcement for contractors, soldiers will be able to drop robots, called LANdroids (below, left), when they arrive in a city. The robots will then scurry off to position themselves, becoming nodes for a wireless communications network. (Click here to download a PDF of the DOD announcement.)



The Wi-Fi antennae dotting the urban landscape will serve not only as communications relays, but as transponders that can pinpoint the exact positions of of individual computers and mobile phones–a scenario I described in the Boston Globe last year.

In other words, where GPS loses site of a device (and its owner), Wi-Fi will pick up the trail.

The antennae will also relay orders to the brain-chipped masses, members of the British Ministry of Defense and the DOD believe.

“We already are evolving toward technology implanting,” reads a 1996 Air Force report.

People, already conditioned to receiving biological agents such as flu shots in their bodies, will welcome brain chips that promise to help them control technology, the Air Force report says.

Indeed, Alan Watt believes one of the purposes of muni Wi-Fi and LANdroids will be to disseminate commands and propaganda directly into the human brain.

Tracking and control of information via wireless networks are just the beginning, Watt said. “The implanted chip will be the end goal.”

[parallelnormal.com][davidicke.com]
--------------------------------------------

The "LifeLog Program": DARPA’s Control Freak Technology

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 05:29:00


(Truth News) -- According to Wired, the Pentagon is "about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable?. What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing?"

Once again, "security experts and civil libertarians" fail to understand the authoritarian, psychopathic mind. Our rulers do these sort of things because they are the ultimate control freaks, paranoid and suspicious of the average person ? or rather what the average person may do in order to get rid of the controllers, the parasites, who are compelled to spend billions of dollars on such projects, that is to say billions fleeced off the people they want to monitor and control. As usual, the excuse is they have to protect us from the terrorists, never mind they created the terrorists, too.

"The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read," Wired continues. "All of this ? and more ? would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health."
In fact, a large part of this is already in place, thanks to the NSA's vacuum cleaner approach to searching for "al-Qaeda phone calls," cataloguing millions of phone calls each and every day, reading email, snooping internet destinations with the help of the telecoms. As for GPS, you have one in your cell phone, as well as a way for the snoops to listen in on what you say, even when you think the phone is switched off.

If the government had its way ? and it may very well in a few years, thanks to the bovine nature of the average American ? you will be chipped or at minimum have an RFID in your wallet or purse, thus they will be track where you go and when.

This gigantic amalgamation of personal information could then be used to "trace the ?threads' of an individual's life," to see exactly how a relationship or events developed, according to a briefing from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, LifeLog's sponsor.

Someone with access to the database could "retrieve a specific thread of past transactions, or recall an experience from a few seconds ago or from many years earlier ? by using a search-engine interface."

For instance, it could be determined if you harbor "discontent" with the government, in other words if you're with al-Qaeda.

On the surface, the project seems like the latest in a long line of DARPA's "blue sky" research efforts, most of which never make it out of the lab. But DARPA is currently asking businesses and universities for research proposals to begin moving LifeLog forward. And some people, such as Steven Aftergood, a defense analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, are worried.

With its controversial Total Information Awareness database project, DARPA already is planning to track all of an individual's "transactional data" ? like what we buy and who gets our e-mail.

While the parameters of the project have not yet been determined, Aftergood said he believes LifeLog could go far beyond TIA's scope, adding physical information (like how we feel) and media data (like what we read) to this transactional data.

"LifeLog has the potential to become something like ?TIA cubed,'" he said.

No doubt, the pointy-heads in the Pentagon are particularly interested in this "how we feel" aspect of the program. Not even Orwell was able to imagine such a scary control device.

You see an image of our commander-guy on television or the web, your biomedical implant registers an elevated level or disgust, and the thought police are dispatched in SWAT fashion. It's off to the re-education camp for you.

Of course, that's really "blue sky" stuff at this point. Instead, for the moment, we'll have to settle for DARPA tracking us on the internet, thanks to technology under development at Microsoft.

In the private sector, a number of LifeLog-like efforts already are underway to digitally archive one's life ? to create a "surrogate memory," as minicomputer pioneer Gordon Bell calls it.

Bell, now with Microsoft, scans all his letters and memos, records his conversations, saves all the Web pages he's visited and e-mails he's received and puts them into an electronic storehouse dubbed MyLifeBits.

DARPA's LifeLog would take this concept several steps further by tracking where people go and what they see.

Of course, if you know the government is tracking where you go, chances are you may not go there. And that's why DARPA is spending your hard-earned tax money on technology you can't get around, just in case you're with al-Qaeda or a Ron Paul supporter.

That makes the project similar to the work of University of Toronto professor Steve Mann. Since his teen years in the 1970s, Mann, a self-styled "cyborg," has worn a camera and an array of sensors to record his existence. He claims he's convinced 20 to 30 of his current and former students to do the same. It's all part of an experiment into "existential technology" and "the metaphysics of free will."

DARPA isn't quite so philosophical about LifeLog. But the agency does see some potential battlefield uses for the program.

Indeed, military types are not normally interested in all that philosophical stuff, as they are too busy finding and eliminating enemies. DARPA concentrates on the battlefield and the battlefield is right here on Main Street. DARPA does somersaults to fit LifeLog into a traditional military context but it fails and fails miserably. Obviously, this system is for us, the commoners, and the real enemies of power.

John Pike, director of defense think tank GlobalSecurity.org, said he finds the explanations "hard to believe."

"It looks like an outgrowth of Total Information Awareness and other DARPA homeland security surveillance programs," he added in an e-mail.

Sure, LifeLog could be used to train robotic assistants. But it also could become a way to profile suspected terrorists, said Cory Doctorow, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In other words, Osama bin Laden's agent takes a walk around the block at 10 each morning, buys a bagel and a newspaper at the corner store and then calls his mother. You do the same things ? so maybe you're an al Qaeda member, too!

Bingo! And as we know, al-Qaeda now encompasses at lot of behavior, as even garden variety criminals are considered terrorists. But the run-of-the-mill pot smoker or bad check writer pales in comparison to those who are walking around experiencing "discontent" with the government. Obviously, a bad check writer will have at best minimal influence on the government while an al-Qaeda terrorist in a 9/11 truth t-shirt is most certainly a direct challenge and threat to the guys in charge, and that's why DARPA was put on the case.

"The more that an individual's characteristic behavior patterns ? ?routines, relationships and habits' ? can be represented in digital form, the easier it would become to distinguish among different individuals, or to monitor one," Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists analyst, wrote in an e-mail.

In its LifeLog report, DARPA makes some nods to privacy protection, like when it suggests that "properly anonymized access to LifeLog data might support medical research and the early detection of an emerging epidemic."

But before these grand plans get underway, LifeLog will start small. Right now, DARPA is asking industry and academics to submit proposals for 18-month research efforts, with a possible 24-month extension. (DARPA is not sure yet how much money it will sink into the program.)

Not that money is an object when the American tax payer is picking up the tab.

Like a game show, winning this DARPA prize eventually will earn the lucky scientists a trip for three to Washington, D.C. Except on this excursion, every participating scientist's e-mail to the travel agent, every padded bar bill and every mad lunge for a cab will be monitored, categorized and later dissected.

And if the scientists are not extra careful, they may end up dead or missing, like not shortage microbiologists, as secret program like to clean up and stragglers who may cause embarrassment or Nuremberg-like trials down the road.

[Kurt Nimmo][Wired][Truth News]

Rhode Island School Children to be Chipped Like Dogs

US: Rhode Island School Children to be Chipped Like Dogs
Sun, 13 Jan 2008 08:40 EST

MIDDLETOWN - The Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union is calling on the Middletown School Department to drop its planned pilot program of a student-tracking system that the ACLU says would treat children like "cattle" and violate their privacy.

The school district this month will test the Mobile Accountability Program, or MAP, which will place GPS tracking devices in two school buses and attach radio-frequency identification labels to the backpacks of the 80 or so Aquidneck Elementary School students who ride those buses. School administrators will then be able to monitor - in real-time, via an online map of Middletown at MAPIT's secure Web site - the progress of those buses and their passengers as the children enter and exit the buses.

MAP is designed to improve transportation safety and efficiency and the pilot would last for the rest of the school year, after which school officials will determine whether to expand the program to the district's entire bus fleet.

The ACLU, in a letter Friday to Schools Supt. Rosemarie K. Kraeger, expressed its "deep concerns" about MAP and urged the school district to halt the pilot project.

Using radio-frequency technology to track school buses seems "rather unnecessary," ACLU executive director Steven Brown wrote.

But it's Middletown's use of electronic chips to also monitor the students themselves that most troubles the ACLU, Brown wrote.

"RFID [radio-frequency ID] technology was originally developed to track products and cattle," Brown wrote.

"The privacy and security implications with using this technology for tagging human beings, particularly children, are considerable.... Requiring students to wear RFID labels treats them as objects, not children. The Middletown school district sends a very disturbing message to its young students when it monitors them using technology employed to track cattle, sheep and shipment pallets in warehouses."

Plus, the IDs could be unsafe, according to the ACLU, because Web sites sell electronic readers that can intercept the data on students' tags.

Schools Supt. Rosemarie K. Kraeger said yesterday that the school district doesn't plan to abandon its pilot program. School officials, she said, considered MAP for more than a year and questioned the provider, MAPIT Corp., about how students' privacy would be protected.

She said the school district is confident that the program includes the necessary safeguards to protect students' identities.

"I wish Mr. Brown had called to find out the details of the project," Kraeger said.

"The company went to extra pains to make sure all our concerns had been addressed, and we did our due diligence. We feel secure."

The School Department sent letters to the parents of the 80 children included in the pilot, and Kraeger said none have complained.

In fact, she said, two parents have recently e-mailed her to express support for the tracking program.

Nonetheless, the ACLU is urging Middletown schools to "respect the privacy and civil liberties of Middletown's elementary school students" and reconsider implementing the MAP pilot.

"This is just another example of overkill," Brown said yesterday.

"The biggest concern is how this could acclimate young kids at an early age to being monitored by the government."

Meaghan Wims

[mwims@projo.com][blogger.com,Providence Journal]

Resource Websites: RFID

A) Websites :

http://www.adsx.com (Applied Digital Solutions’ website, the company that markets the verichip)

http://www.trovan.com (Trovan’s website, a european company that also markets a subcutaneous microchip for humans )

http://www.nocards.org/ (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion And Numbering,CASPIAN's privacy advocates website)

http://www.spychips.com/ (Stop RFID website)

http://www.cybertime.net/~ajgood/ch1p1.html (extremely well documented website !)

http://www.cybertime.net/~ajgood/ch1p2.html (extremely well documented website !)

http://www.prisonplanet.com

http://amsterdam.nettime.org/List-Archives/nettime-bold-0111/msg00237.html

http://www.universe-people.com (including a petition in English against the microchip implant !)
[freewebs.com/nochip/]

Microchip implants for humans : THE article !

http://www.freewebs.com/nochip/

Probably one of the most informative articles I've run across detailing the various types of implanting/tracking around the globe from conception to introduction.
Here are some juicy tidbits you'll find:

Well, today, the microchip is part of what is named the “RFID” technologies (for Radio Frequency Identification Devices), or of the ICT implants (implants of the Internet and Communication Technologies).

In the United States of America, it’s possible for any citizen, since the end of 2002, to get the microchip implant for the “modest” amount of 200 dollars !!! The company A.D.S. (Applied Digital Solutions Inc.), through its subsidiary company “Verichip”, was indeed authorized to commercialise its revolting microchip implant that is also named “verichip”.

The verichip, in its current version, works with handheld proprietary scanners/readers, and with online databases that give all the information (public AND private) necessary. In a very close future, a GPS-based verichip, just like the cellphones that we all know, will work with relay antennas and the GPS satellite system. Its bearer will become totally localizable from space. For further information, please go to : http://www.adsx.com or to : http://www.4verichip.com

Furthermore, this microchip implant has a serial number containing 18 digits, and that number is divided in 3 groups of 6 digits (6, 6, 6… does this remind you anything ?).

“But where’s the problem ?”, will you think, since those good people chose that option in all liberty ? Well, the problem lies here : there are law projects that passed through the American Congress and that will allow to inject the microchip implant to children from birth, under so-called “identification purposes”. Moreover, the president of the U.S.A., following article 100 of the 1986 law on control of immigration, has the power to decide any kind of identification measure that he finds necessary, including a subcutaneous microchip.

The microchip implant was already used during the Gulf war in august 1991; it has already been tested on soldiers, government officials and on the personnel of some enterprises. If we don't fight, soon it will be too late and the chip will become mandatory for all to get !

Still in the USA, the ex-attorney general (who’s also a general), John Ashcroft, allowed the development of “internment camps for civilians”.

In a video called “Gulag USA”, it was proved that these camps are full of torture devices, but also of devices allowing to implant prisoners with the subcutaneous microchip !!!

During World War II, nazis would “mark” prisoners at the entrance of the camps thanks to tattoos… Nowadays, the USA, in these camps for civilians, would mark the prisoners (civilians !) with subcutaneous microchips in order to identify them and to follow their slightest move !

Even scarier : lately, the U.S. independent press warned about the existence of a project that will make the “chipping” of the homeless mandatory in 5 States, including New York and California ! So this means that the microchip will begin to become MANDATORY, starting with the weakest parts of the population !

The pretext invoked makes an amalgam between the homeless and the criminals (the homeless “become criminals easily”) !!!

In October 2004, the Food and Drug Administration gave the authorization to the verichip to be used in U.S. hospitals “for medical purposes”, even though this disgusting implant represents dangers for people’s health (see chapter 4 : the true dangers of the microchip and of its functioning) !!! Question : who, during his/her lifetime, doesn’t go to the hospital at least once ? If one begins to “chip” sick people in hospitals for so-called “medical monitoring” purposes, the whole population will be chipped sooner or later !!!

The Food and Drug Administration definitively classified the verichip as a “class II medical device requiring special controls” !

American intellectuals and CEO’s also began to be “chipped” !

And the verichip begins to be used in American hospitals ! For instance, the Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center installed in its emergency room verichip scanners/readers, and gets ready to chip the patients !!!

Still in the U.S.A. , a bus called the “Chipmobile” drives through the different states, trying to encourage people to get chipped ! And when they find a place where plenty unaware people are interested in getting chipped, Verichip Corporation builds a verichip center to spread the chip and its influence !

The ChipMobile?????? Are you kidding me?

Finally, always in the U.S.A. , here are the latest alarming news : a former Wisconsin governor and ex-secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under George W. Bush, Tommy Thompson, has just joined the Applied Digital Solutions board of directors and should get "chipped" very soon.

BUT THE MOST HORRIBLE THING IS THAT HE JUST PROPOSED A BILL (July 2005). AND THAT BILL, IF IT'S ADOPTED, WOULD ALLOW THE CHIPPING OF ALL U.S. CITIZENS !!!

In September 2005, after the ravages caused by the hurricane "Katrina", Verichip Corporation chipped the corpses of the victims of this terrible natural disaster. Some more free advertisement for the scums from Verichip Corp. ! Besides, some stocks of microchips were made in Louisiana and in Mississipi, "just in case there would be other natural disasters"...

[freewebs.com]

Texas Considers Putting RFID Tags in All Cars

San Antonio Express-News | April 8, 2005
By L.A. Lorek

With the help of a dime-size adhesive tag on a vehicle's windshield and cutting-edge technology that detractors equate with Big Brother, police soon could track Texas cars and trucks — if a legislator's bill makes it into law.

RELATED: Texas Bill Would Require Transponders in All Cars

Though the bill hasn't made it out of the Texas House of Representatives' Transportation Committee, it already has generated outrage among technophiles and privacy advocates who believe the technology, once introduced, will creep into other law enforcement areas.

"Why don't they just tag us like cattle and be done with it?" said Scott Henson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Texas police accountability project in Austin.

House Bill 2893 calls for the state to use radio frequency identification devices, or RFID, for auto-insurance enforcement.

The bill excludes other law enforcement use, but privacy experts say it does little to protect personal rights.

"It's overkill, in my opinion," said Beth Givens, director of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a San Diego-based nonprofit advocacy group.

The tags, which can be attached to just about anything, contain antennae that transmit data to be read by a receiver up to 25 feet away.

It's unclear whether the bill, which has not had a committee hearing, can pass.

Bill sponsor Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, thinks it's a good idea to look at the technology and decide whether it can help law enforcement do a better job and also protect privacy.

"The whole concept of it is being able to let us verify whether people have insurance," said Phillips. "It's a little different approach."

The proposed RFID system works similar to the toll tags on cars today, and doesn't contain personal information, Phillips said.

Under Phillips' bill, the RFID tags would be placed on registration stickers affixed to the windshield. The tags would verify whether the vehicle is covered by automobile liability insurance.

A device such as a handheld scanner or a transmitter at a toll booth could read the tags and check them against a computer database that could immediately verify if the vehicle's insurance is current. Insurance companies would be responsible for supplying updated information to the database, which would be maintained by state agencies.

But privacy advocates say the RFID technology is subject to abuse. The readers could be placed on every lamppost or mile marker on a highway, and police could use them to track automobiles.

That means that if a car speeds by the device, then that motorist may receive a ticket in the mail similar to cameras that track people who blow through red lights now, Henson said.

"It's like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer for really what are seemingly small crimes like not having your insurance or toll violations," Henson said. "He's creating a technology that could be abused in all sorts of ways with virtually no restrictions in the bill on law enforcement."

With RFID, the government could track all of us as dots on computer screens, Henson said. Once the technology is in place, he said, it would be hard to prevent it from being used for other applications.

The bill was scheduled for a public hearing Tuesday, but the Transportation Committee didn't discuss it.

The Spring School District near Houston uses RFID tags to keep tabs on its 28,000 students on school property.

[San Antonio Express-News]

Homemade RFID tag zapper

Radio frequency IDs (RFIDs), small electronic chips that share information when scanned, are rapidly becoming an essential part of global supply management. In order to correctly route and track items from inception to purchase, these chips are attached to packaging and increasingly the products themselves.

The intentional disabling of these chips can cause supply chain disruption. The best method is to HERF (high energy radio frequency, usually microwaves) the chips using a small transmitter (read about high power home made microwave weapons for herfing). The German branch (privacy activists) of the global guerrilla innovation network has developed a simple solution that converts a standard film camera into a short range RFID zapper. This system:

"...copies the microwave-oven-method, but in a much smaller scale. It generates a strong electromagnetic field with a coil, which should be placed as near to the target-RFID-Tag as possible. The RFID-Tag then will recive a strong shock of energy comparable with an EMP and some part of it will blow, most likely the capacitator, thus deactivating the chip forever.

To keep the costs of the RFID-Zapper as low as possible, we decided to modify the electric component of a singe-use-camera with flashlight, as can be found almost everywhere. The coil is made from varnished wire and placed inside the camera exactly where the film has been.

Then the coil is soldered between the cameras electronic and its flashlight. Last but not least most single-use-cameras will require some kind of switch to be build into them, since their activating-mechanism usually is to small and primitive. Once the switch is connected and tested, the camera can be closed again and henceforth will serve as a RFID-Zapper, destroying RFID-Tags with the power of ordinary batteries."


John Cox, NetworkWorld.com

As if there wasn't enough for network professionals to worry about.

Ex-Forrester Research analyst John Robb describes a project that modifies a single-use film camera, to create a short range microwave pulse that can fry nearby RFID tags.

Robb says this and similar devices could be used to disrupt RFID-based supply chains. But...

...I'm skeptical. A short range device can only affect the tags immediately nearby. My guess is a would-be supply chain saboteur would have to visit an awful lot of Wal-Marts, and walk through most of every store, carrying around a backpack load of batteries to keep the little Zapper zapping.

Even then, it's not clear that the supply chain would be in fact disrupted: you might lose RFID data and tracking on the items zapped, but the RFID infrastructure of readers and servers would still be in place, ready to read the next lot of tagged merchandise.

The Zapper is the offspring of a German group calling itself the Chaos Communication Congress, which held its 22nd annual meeting last month in Berlin.

[NetworkWorld.com, GlobalGuerrillas.com]

European court rules DNA database breaches human rights

Peter Walker
Thursday December 4 2008 10.55 GMT

Only DNA samples for those convicted of crimes should be kept, according to the ruling.

Police forces in much of the UK could be forced to destroy the DNA details of hundreds of thousands of people with no criminal convictions, after a court ruled today that keeping them breaches human rights.

The European court of human rights in Strasbourg said that keeping innocent people's DNA records on a criminal register breached article eight of the Human Rights Convention, covering the right to respect for private and family life.

The decision was welcomed by civil liberties campaigners, but the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said she was "disappointed". Police chiefs warned that destroying DNA details would make it harder to investigate many crimes.

The European court said that keeping DNA material from those who were "entitled to the presumption of innocence" as they had never been convicted of an offence, carried "the risk of stigmatisation".

Attacking the "blanket and indiscriminate nature" of the power to retain data, the judges said protections offered by article eight "would be unacceptably weakened if the use of modern scientific techniques in the criminal justice system were allowed at any cost and without carefully balancing the potential benefits of the extensive use of such techniques against important private-life interests".

The decision could oblige the government to order the destruction of DNA data belonging to those without criminal convictions among the approximately 4.4m records on the England, Wales and Northern Ireland database.

Scotland already destroys DNA samples taken during criminal investigations from people, who are eventually not charged or who are later acquitted.

The decision follows a lengthy legal challenge by two British men. Michael Marper, 45, was arrested in March 2001 and charged with harassing his partner, but the case was later dropped.

Separately, a 19-year-old named in court only as "S" was arrested and charged with attempted robbery in January 2001, when he was 12, but he was cleared five months later.

The men, both from Sheffield, asked that their fingerprints, DNA samples and profiles be destroyed. South Yorkshire police refused, saying the details would be retained "to aid criminal investigation".

They applied to the European court after their case was turned down by the House of Lords, which ruled that keeping the information did not breach human rights.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group, Liberty, which helped fund the case, said parliament should be allowed to debate new DNA database rules.

"This is one of the most strongly-worded judgments that Liberty has ever seen from the court of human rights," she said, arguing that the court had ensured "the privacy protection of innocent people that the British government has shamefully failed to deliver".

Smith, however, said existing laws would remain in place while ministers considered the judgment.

"DNA and fingerprinting is vital to the fight against crime, providing the police with more than 3,500 matches a month, and I am disappointed by the European court of human rights' decision," she said.

"The government mounted a robust defense before the court and I strongly believe DNA and fingerprints play an invaluable role in fighting crime and bringing people to justice."

Chris Sims, the chief constable of Staffordshire police, who speaks on forensics for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said the ruling would have a "profound impact" on policing.

Analysis of 200,000 DNA samples retained on the database between 2001 and 2005, which would have to be destroyed under today's ruling, showed that 8,500 profiles had been linked to crime scenes, among them 114 murders and 116 rapes, said Sims.

[guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008]