Monday, September 9, 2002

Arlington TX Police Requesting Thumbprints for Checks Arlington Texas police proposed Operation Thumbs Up, a voluntary initiative for local merchants to collect thumb prints with checks, as a deterrent to forgery. This has a couple of civil liberties and privacy implications: It highlights the growing problem of identity theft. Unfortunately, identity theft cannot be solved by the seemingly perfect solution of biological identifiers, such as fingerprints, because identity theft can actually involve several intervening forms of identification that eventually associate a fingerprint with a different identity. This process can easily begin with a social security number, which is supposed to be very private but is in fact requested by businesses regularly. Identity theft is practically a difficult crime to prevent, but the solution is implausible unless it keeps identity more private, not less. It also mentions the growing problem of surveillance databases, which in this case is a database of citizen fingerprints. Without this type of database, collecting fingerprints with checks is almost useless. Unfortunately, like many other databases used by the police and other government departments, they do not take into account the due process rights of the citizens whose records are being added or modified. [Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Privacy Digest] 3:16:09 AM

Tuesday, September 3, 2002

Clay Bennett Political Cartoons Clay Bennett's 2002 pulitzer prize-winning cartoons have frequently addressed civil liberties issues, post-9/11 and otherwise. This K5 article has plenty of links to his work, in particular unity, security, and equality. 1:39:39 AM

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

The Failures of Technological Security This collection of articles from the Atlantic Monthly highlights the dangers of relying on technological solutions to America's post-9/11 security needs, especially those that invade our civil liberties. The articles all note in particular that there is valid tradeoff between liberty and security-- except that this technology does not provide real security. "The trick is to remember that technology can't save you.... We know this in our own lives. We realize that there's no magic anti-burglary dust we can sprinkle on our cars to prevent them from being stolen. We know that car alarms don't offer much protection. The Club at best makes burglars steal the car next to you. For real safety we park on nice streets where people notice if somebody smashes the window. Or we park in garages, where somebody watches the car. In both cases people are the essential security element. You always build the system around people." The danger to our civil liberty and livelihood is also pointed out in the context of biometric ID cards: "For the purposes of a national ID card, identity is a unique, unchanging set of distinguishing characteristics: the flecks in one's iris, the ridges of one's left thumb.... As Americans, though, we have a higher identity: free agent, self-legislator, citizen. It's a common identity held individually. It's what allows us to bond and make a nation or, if necessary, dissolve our bonds. This identity can't be captured on a card, but there is a risk it could be supplanted by one." These articles should be taken into consideration of the Deering High School ID Badges. 2:30:49 PM

American Library Association: The USA-Patriot Act The American Library Association has posted a collection of information about the investigative provisions of the USA-Patriot Act. The collection is intended to be a guide for librarians, but is also very useful for library users interested in the impact on their privacy and due process rights. [From the Scout Report] 2:02:56 PM

Deering High Requires Photo Badges Deering High School will be requiring students to wear photo badges at all times this upcoming school year. Although the school is seeking to protect students and improve security, the photo badges will not realistically protect the school from intruders. Students will also be losing the opportunity to learn about their rights to privacy and due process. 12:02:15 AM

Friday, August 23, 2002

FBI Misled Intelligence Court to Avoid Fourth Amendment The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret court which approves FBI electronic surveillance requests, said that it was misled "an alarming number of times" in 2001 and 2002 on the intentions of FBI surveillance requests. Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the FBI has a much lower evidence standard to request a surveillance warrant to be used for counter intelligence purposes, but the information they gather cannot be used for any domestic criminal investigation. The court said that it was frequently misled by the FBI that this "wall of separation" between counterintelligence and criminal investigations was being maintained. Surprisingly, the court actually praised the Ashcroft Justice department for cleaning up these abuses, but the court had also rejected the Justice department's request earlier this year to circumvent the FISA protections, saying that the request was not reasonably designed to protect Americans' privacy. The full opinion is also available. [PDF, link from The Washington Post and Slashdot.] [New York Times: National] 3:34:41 PM

Monday, August 19, 2002

Julia Kahrl and George Hill Address Maine Family Planning Threats This editorial in the Press-Herald identifies some of the threats that the Bush administration is bringing to family planning and reproductive freedom in Maine, including appointment of circuit court judges and ineffective "abstinence-only" sex education mandates. [Portland Press-Herald] 2:40:15 AM

Sunday, August 18, 2002

NASA Developing Brainwave Screening for Airports NASA is developing computer systems to identify "likely terrorists" by heart rates and ultimately brainwave patterns. EPIC gained information through a FOIA request of the initiative to add so-called "non-invasive neuro-electric sensors" to the pre-existing Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System (CAPPS) already being used to profile air travelers. Though the system raises due process and privacy concerns, as testing brainwave and heart rate patters would likely constitute a search, the Washington Times article points out that airports have generally had lower due process standards. [Daypop Top News Stories and The Washington Times] 9:32:59 PM

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Princeton Admissions Dean Removed for Accessing Yale Admissions Info Stephen LeMenager, the Princeton admissions dean who was caught gathering information about student applications through Yale's web site, was removed today. LeMenager claimed to be "testing Yale's website for vulnerabilities," he used the site to access information about students applying to both Yale and Princeton. Though LeMenager clearly behaved unethically, it seems obvious that Yale's admissions office was at least as unethical in their behavior of securing admissions information with only a birthday and social security information. This issue illustrates the problem with using the social security number as the de facto private password and user id: the more it is used as a unique id, the less secret it is and the more prone to abuse, as in this case. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: National] 7:16:43 PM

"Homeland Insecurity" The Atlantic | September 2002 A top expert says America's approach to protecting itself will only make matters worse. Forget "foolproof" technology--we need systems designed to fail smartly. This article generally focuses on the value of technological security measures, but the overall illustration of "security measures gone awry" is useful in the context of Homeland Security law enforcement measures and privacy. [via Privacy Digest] 1:55:07 PM

ACLU building support against TIPS Think the Bush administration's citizen informant program is a huge invasion of privacy? The ACLU has a website for you. By Julia Scheeres. [Wired News] 1:27:00 PM

Welcome to the Privacy page. 12:19:09 PM