Blog sprinkles

It's the end of the world!!! Sell everything and meet me on the mountain top in your best bed sheets!

Dear Human...

Trying to escape Chernobyl and failing...

Uh oh... Mongolia is the new frontier for mining...

Making passports almost impossible to get?

Only 4 shrimp a week? Who the hell eats only 4 shrimp at a sitting? Seafood from the Gulf has oil. And dispersants. And chemicals. Which are not going away any time soon.

Sneaking about the closed Post Office Railway in London.

Do not piss this woman off:

Mysterious Vesta.

Help Greenpeace sort through the BP documents.

Countdown with Keith Olbermann starts June 20th:

Pictures of alternate energy.

Giving away your personal information for free

And you don't even know it:

Cruising through downtown San Francisco in his car with a $250 homebrew RFID reader setup consisting of a Symbol XR400 RFID reader and a Motorola AN400 patch antenna stuck to the side of his Volvo, he snagged the info off of two passports in just 20 minutes. The point, he says, is "mainly to defeat the argument that you can't do it in the real world, that there's no real-world attack here, that it's all theoretical." The range of his gear is about 30 feet, which is plenty of clearance.

Hand over your papers

That you must carry with you at all times. Just your passport is not enough:

The Department of Homeland Security has placed an odious new requirement on international air travel to, from, and over the United States. Where previously passenger lists had to be supplied to DHS within 15 minutes of a US bound flight taking off, now those lists must be made available in advance and every passenger must be given “permission” by DHS to board the flight in question. Think about that for a second. A passport is no longer sufficient to allow you to travel abroad, and DHS have given themselves the ability to deny you reentry to the United States…indefinitely.

Next we need to talk about getting really cool uniforms for the Der Department ov Homeland Sekurity, maybe some really shiny knee-high black boots? And some red banners with some sort of symbol on them...

Real ID churns on

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who was unveiling final details of the REAL ID Act's rules on Friday, said that if states want their licenses to remain valid for air travel after May 2008, those states must seek a waiver indicating they want more time to comply with the legislation.

Chertoff, as he revealed final details of the REAL ID Act, said that in instances where a particular state doesn't seek a waiver, its residents will have to use a passport or a newly created federal passport card if they want to avoid a vigorous secondary screening at airport security.

"The last thing I want to do is punish citizens of a state who would love to have a REAL ID license but can't get one," Chertoff said. "But in the end, the rule is the rule as passed by Congress."

Chertoff spoke as he discussed the details of the administration's plan to improve security for driver's licenses in all 50 states — an effort delayed due to opposition from states worried about the cost and civil libertarians upset about what they believe are invasions of privacy.

Under the rules announced Friday, Americans born after Dec. 1, 1964, will have to get more secure driver's licenses in the next six years.

The Homeland Security Department has spent years crafting the final regulations for the REAL ID Act, a law designed to make it harder for terrorists, illegal immigrants and con artists to get government-issued identification. The effort once envisioned to take effect in 2008 has been pushed back in the hopes of winning over skeptical state officials.

Your passport will betray you

And will talk readily to strangers without you knowing:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Passport cards for Americans who travel to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean will be equipped with technology that allows information on the card to be read from a distance.

The technology was approved Monday by the State Department and privacy advocates were quick to criticize the department for not doing more to protect information on the card, which can be used by U.S. citizens instead of a passport when traveling to other countries in the western hemisphere.

The technology would allow the cards to be read from up to 20 feet away. This process only takes one or two seconds, said Ann Barrett, deputy assistant secretary for passport services at the State Department. The card would not have to be physically swiped through a reader, as is the current process with passports.

The technology is "inherently insecure and poses threats to personal privacy, including identity theft," Ari Schwartz, of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said in a statement. Schwartz said this specific technology, called "vicinity read," is better suited for tracking inventory, not people.

The State Department said privacy protections will be built into the card. The chip on the card will not contain biographical information, Barrett said.

And the card vendor - which has yet to be decided - will also provide sleeves for the cards that will prevent them from being read from afar, she said.

Oh, I can hardly wait to find out which Bush crony will get the card vendor business!

Show us your papers, please...

Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.

The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver's licenses and state ID cards into a sort of national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver's licenses will be issued and what information they must contain.

The Department of Homeland Security insists Real ID is an essential weapon in the war on terror, but privacy and civil liberties watchdogs are calling the initiative an overly intrusive measure that smacks of Big Brother.

More than half the nation's state legislatures have passed symbolic legislation denouncing the plan, and some have penned bills expressly forbidding compliance.

Several states have begun making arrangements for the new requirements -- four have passed legislation applauding the measure -- but even they may have trouble meeting the act's deadline.

The cards would be mandatory for all "federal purposes," which include boarding an airplane or walking into a federal building, nuclear facility or national park, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the National Conference of State Legislatures last week. Citizens in states that don't comply with the new rules will have to use passports for federal purposes.

[snip]

Privacy concerns raised

Colorado and New Hampshire lawmakers are not alone. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation say the IDs and supporting databases -- which Chertoff said would eventually be federally interconnected -- will infringe on privacy.

EFF says on its Web site that the information in the databases will lay the groundwork for "a wide range of surveillance activities" by government and businesses that "will be able to easily read your private information" because of the bar code required on each card.

The databases will provide a one-stop shop for identity thieves, adds the ACLU on its Web site, and the U.S. "surveillance society" and private sector will have access to the system "for the routine tracking, monitoring and regulation of individuals' movements and activities."

The civil liberties watchdog dubs the IDs "internal passports" and claims it wouldn't be long before office buildings, gas stations, toll booths, subways and buses begin accessing the system.

Update 8/17: Other posts I have done on Real ID.

Bush works his magic

Over yet another beleaguered governmental department:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is poised to suspend a major post-9/11 security initiative to cope with increasingly angry complaints from Americans whose summer vacations are threatened by new passport rules.

A proposal, expected to be announced Friday, will temporarily waive a requirement that U.S. citizens have passports to fly to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda, provided the traveler can prove he or she has already applied for a passport, officials said Thursday.

The temporary lifting of the passport rule is aimed at clearing a massive backlog of passport applications at the State Department that has slowed processing to a crawl, they said. Rep. Heather Wilson (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M., said the suspension would last until the end of September.

[snip]

Wendy Berry of Franklin, W.Va., applied in March for a passport for her 18-year-old son, Jonathan. But the day he was to leave to visit his sister in Peru, his passport hadn't come.

"There are two things I wish they would do," she said of the government. "The only really responsible party is the Passport Office. I wish they would be held accountable. And I wish they would staff more people. The whole system is ready to collapse."

Excellent overview of the disaster

In getting passports. (Updates as well.) The State Department is understaffed, underpaid and swamped. Do not expect your passports in less than three months.

Wow, Georgie! Here's another fine mess you've gotten us into!

Papers. Hand over your papers.

They must be all in order:

A local activist thinks the federal government is trying to prevent him from leaving the U.S. because of his anti-war efforts that included displaying pictures of Iraq war victims.

Thomas Hays, 38, says he applied for a passport with his birth certificate, Social Security card and Washington state identification card in February. He then received a surprise in the mail at the end of the month when the government said it needed much more documentation -- some of which is difficult to quickly obtain -- to give him a passport.

The State Department says it wanted Hays to provide "school transcripts, high school yearbook pages showing your name and photograph, religious records, medical records, (and) tax/employment records."

All the records, including a full residential record and the names, addresses and phone numbers of immediate family, had to be submitted within 30 days. Hays submitted as much information as he could, but a full employment record has to be obtained through the Social Security Administration, which can take three to six weeks and cost $52.50.

Hays, who says he was "born, bred and raised in Missouri," was distressed because he is planning an accredited trip through Evergreen State College for the Group of Eight Summit in Germany in June followed by a trip to Mexico. Now his hopes of using his non-refundable $1,110.30 airline tickets could be dashed.

(Via cookie jill at skippy the bush kangaroo)

Update: Another story, same wonderful bureaucracy:

"On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past Thanksgiving."

"When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years."

"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said. "

So the whole thing with passports at the border, and the warrantless wiretapping, and the NSA CIA FBI spying is just to keep Americans contained?

and where has all the money gone that was poured into the Department of Homeland Security anyway?

The New York Times:
"Tracking visitors took on particular urgency after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when it became clear that some of the hijackers had remained in the country after their visas had expired.

But in recent days, officials at the Homeland Security Department have conceded that they lack the financing and technology to meet their deadline to have exit-monitoring systems at the 50 busiest land border crossings by next December. A vast majority of foreign visitors enter and exit by land from Mexico and Canada, and the policy shift means that officials will remain unable to track the departures.

A report released on Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, restated those findings, reporting that the administration believes that it will take 5 to 10 years to develop technology that might allow for a cost-effective departure system."

Crossing the border demands more than just a passport

it demands details of your last lunch, your political beliefs, your reading material... and all of it will be used against you by anyone with access to your files:

Sara at Orcinus:
"And now it turns out that, for the past four years, all this information, some factual, some inferred, has been compiled into a superfile that -- unlike my driving record, my medical file, or my credit rating -- is completely out of my ability to view, correct, or control. Every time I cross that border or get on an airplane, I'm adding another data point to its detailed and growing portrait of my life. If the border guard is feeling cranky, he can take the time to read the screen in greater detail, and harass me about the things he finds "of interest." And it does happen: the "Why did you move to Canada?" guy went on to ask a lot of other questions about our political beliefs, more than hinting that he found the idea of Americans choosing to live elsewhere deeply offensive and suspicious. He did not approve of our choice; and he was determined to make us answer to him for it. For about five seconds, we considered discussing his attitude with his supervisor -- and then realized that even that very reasonable step would likely get us written up in a file somewhere (and now we know exactly where) as activist malcontents, and subjected to much worse harassment in the future. But keeping silent is always a mistake, too: because we didn't do that, he's probably out there on the job today, adding who knows what to the files of those unlucky enough to end up at his booth.

The thought that would-be stormtroopers like this one, based on secret information and a whim, could detain me, restrict my access to the country of my birth, put my US assets and mail beyond reach, charge me in secret, and deport me for extrajudicial "treatment" is terrifying. And all this inferential "data" is, day by day, making its way into other databases, where it will be seen (according to the AP) by employers, lower-level governments, contracting agencies, and people who issue licenses. Lies and whispers, hints and allegations -- yet they may someday, without our even being aware of it, determine which of us gets a job, a loan, a university acceptance, a government contract, a business license.

Is it worth exposing myself to all this just to go get my damned mail? It's a question I've started asking myself every time I pull into the southbound customs line to wait for my welcome home.

Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont has promised to institute oversight on the ATS program in the new year."