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If it’s good enough for a dog, it’s good enough for a kid, right? A school district in Texas will be watching over its students a lot more closely, but not with the aid of extra teachers. Instead each pupil will be monitored with microchips.
Officials at the Northside Independent School District in rural Bexar County, Texas have approved a plan to track the whereabouts of each and every student by requiring them to walk the halls with identification cards in their pockets that are equipped with RFID microchips.
By using Radio Frequency Identification System technology, teachers and faculty will be able to monitor the move of over 6,000 students at two select schools and every pupil with special needs throughout the district as soon as next semester. If the pilot program is a success, the district intends on expanding the tracking system to all of its 112 schools, totaling nearly 100,000 students.
Backers of the program say the move is well intentioned and will actually bring the school millions of dollars in extra funding. Ghastly attendance rates in Bexar County currently keeps the district from earning around $175,000 a day in state assistance, reports KHOU News out of San Antonio, TX. Speaking to that city’s Express-News, district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez explains that the school wants “to harness the power of (the) technology to make schools safer, know where our students are all the time in a school, and increase revenue.”
When each step of the students is being watched by administrators, the district expects to see their absentee count drop drastically. But is it worth the cost of killing the privacy of thousands?
“It’s going to give us the opportunity to track our students in the building," Principal Wendy Reyes of Jones Middle School tells KHOU. “They may have been in the nurse’s office, or the counselor’s office, or vice principal’s office, but they were marked absent from the classroom because they weren't sitting in the class. It will help us have a more accurate account of our attendance.”
It will also let teachers know who is in the bathroom and for how long and monitor the group habits of students. It could also become catastrophic, of course, if the very sensitive data ends up in the wrong hands. Similar programs were pitched elsewhere in recent years, but in other instances the American Civil Liberties Union stepped up to speak out; in many cases, the programs were shot down after the ACLU intervened.
"We are urging the school board to recognize the important civil liberties concerns and safety risks implicated in RFID technology," the ACLU’s Nicole Ozer, the technology and civil Liberties policy director of their Northern California office, wrote in a statement back in 2005 . "RFID badges jeopardize the safety and security of children by broadcasting identity and location information to anyone with a chip reader and subject students to demeaning tracking of their movements. We hope the school district reconsiders this serious issue."
In that case, the ACLU was opposed to a program at Brittan Elementary School Board in Sutter, California where youngsters were being tracked with RFID chips. Even though that kind of technology has become both more advanced and commonplace in the seven years since, it doesn’t change the concerns that continue to arise.
"The monitoring of children with RFID tags is comparable to the tracking of cattle, shipment pallets, or very dangerous criminals in high-security prisons," Cédric Laurant of EPIC told the ACLU in 2005. "Compelling children to be constantly tracked with RFID-enabled identity badges breaches their right to privacy and dignity as human beings."
But, hey — how else is the school going to raise a few grand?
“I think this is overstepping our bounds and is inappropriate,” Northside school board trustee M'Lissa M. Chumbley tells other district officials this week. “I'm honestly uncomfortable about this.”
Kirsten Bokenkamp of the ACLU tells the San Antonio Express-News that her organization is once again alarmed by Northside’s plans to implement the program. They are expected to challenge the board’s decision this time around too.
http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-microchips-school-district-262/If it’s good enough for a dog, it’s good enough for a kid, right? A school... more
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First a whole slew of politicians and a wide swath of press fall all over themselves saying “oh, of course this doesn’t mean you can be detained indefinitely without due process” (with a very notable exception coming from Glenn Greenwald). Lindsay Graham actually came the closest to speaking power to truth on the matter when he all but said, “Fuck Americans. America! Fuck yeah!” The sole relevant amendment that actually made it into the bill punted the matter to the courts to decide. President Obama signed it with his signing statement pen, essentially promising, “I’ll never use this for evil,” while allowing for future presidents to do just that.First a whole slew of politicians and a wide swath of press fall all over themselves... more
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Following today's reports of a Yemen-based underwear bombing plot thwarted by CIA operatives, TSA officials have acted swiftly to ensure the safety of all American airline passengers.
Beginning tomorrow (May 8, 2012) at 7 a.m. EST, passengers will no longer be permitted to wear undergarments of any kind on all domestic flights originating from within the contiguous United States.
The new guidelines, hastily but carefully written by Security Operations officials, were posted this afternoon on TSA's widely-read blog, Keeping You Safe - One Invasive Restriction at a Time.
The guidelines, intended for TSA employees and made available as a reference for civilian passengers, noted the following:
All forms of underwear are now forbidden on domestic flights originating from within the contiguous United States. This ban includes:
- Both boxers and briefs
- G-strings & thongs (as well as the low-riding jeans meant to expose them)
- All Bras for women under the age of 40
- Diapers, both infant and adult
- Stadium Pals
TSA employees will check passengers for forbidden undergarments at security checkpoints, stationed outside of the requisite domestic arrival gates.
Any passenger found to be in breach of the new restrictions will be required to step out of line, disrobe, and comply immediately before the nervous, hurried masses (so as to ensure maximal embarrassment as a deterrent for future security breaches).
Full Article: http://my.auburnjournal.com/detail/207512.htmlFollowing today's reports of a Yemen-based underwear bombing plot thwarted by CIA... more
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U.S. and Yemeni officials say the supposed would-be bomber at the heart of an al-Qaida airliner plot was actually an informant working for the CIA.
The revelation, first reported by The Los Angeles Times, shows how the CIA was able to get its hands on a sophisticated underwear bomb well before an attack was set in motion.
Officials say the informant was working for the CIA and Saudi Arabian intelligence when he was given the bomb. He then turned the device over to authorities. Officials say the informant is safely out of Yemen.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive intelligence matter.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/08/al-qaeda-bomb-plot-bomber-cia-informant_n_1501340.htmlU.S. and Yemeni officials say the supposed would-be bomber at the heart of an al-Qaida... more
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"That planned deception was intended to deny the Taliban any warning of the president’s surprise May 1 visit to Kabul.
Few Americans, and very few of his political rivals, will complain about the White House’s anti-Taliban deception, but it starkly contradicts what Carney said at a meeting with student journalists on April 27.
“When I go and stand up in front of the podium, in front of the White House press corps, I never lie. I never say something that I know is not true,” Carney said at the meeting, hosted by National Journal.
Carney made clear, however, that his commitment to not lie does not preclude evasive answers or a refusal to answer. When “I know more than I can say — I answer it in a way that is truthful without obviously betraying the things that I can’t say for national security reasons or other reasons,” Carney said.
“It’s a fundamental principle of doing the job that, for the folks who cover a president, they have to have some faith — substantial faith — that while they know I can’t say everything, and those who work for the president can’t say everything, what we are saying is true.”"That planned deception was intended to deny the Taliban any warning of the... more
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The Western campaign for global dominance has reached the top of the world. To the world’s military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources and long-dreamed-of sea-lanes. The largest military exercise in the High North, inside and immediately outside the Arctic Circle, since the end of the Cold War (and perhaps even before) was completed on March 21 in northern Norway. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/recent-news/43061-cold-response-2012-nato-are-preparing-for-a-new-kind-of-cold-war-in-the-arcticThe Western campaign for global dominance has reached the top of the world. To the... more
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worrg
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1 month ago
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The federal government is about to become the country’s worst backseat driver. Congress wants to put tracking devices in the car of every American, and that’s not even the scariest provision in a new bill being passed around Washington.
The US Senate has already signed off on a new legislation that, if cleared by the rest of Congress, will see to it that the government gets its eyes and ears inside every automobile in the country. Senate Bill 1813 calls for the installation of mandatory recorders and communication devices in Americans’ cars that could connect the whereabouts and actions of the country’s drivers with whomever the government wants to grant access to. It doesn’t stop there, though — another provision in the proposed bill will give the government the power to revoke passports from Americans behind on their taxes, essentially making it impossible for the indebted to escape the country.
It’s being touted around the capital as the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, or MAP-21, and Congress is considering it under the explanation that the bill will “reauthorize Federal-aid highway and highway safety construction programs.” In the abstract drafted on Capitol Hill, however, the act is described as having provisions necessary “for other purposes.” And while no lawmakers explicitly explain the benefits of some questionable content within MAP-21, what the government could get away with if the bill is passed is something eerily Orwellian.
If you’re not scared yet, then here is another eye opener: the US Senate has already approved the bill by an overwhelming vote of 74-22, leaving only the House of Representatives to vote in favor before government-sanctioned blackboxes become as common as carburetors and calibrated friction brakes. At this rate, it won’t be long before every Beetle and Buick in the country is being tracked by Big Brother.
Section 53006 of MAP-21 calls for a “vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications systems” deployed in the country’s cars in the near future. A copy of the bill is available online, but it isn’t until the bottom of the text that things start to get creepy. That section calls on several congressional committees — including the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the House of Representatives — to hear in three years’ time arguments in favor of the deployment of the communications system in question. At that point, a designated person will be asked to recommend an “implementation path for dedicated short-range communications technology and applications,” which includes “guidance on the relationship of the proposed deployment of dedicated short-range communications to the National ITS Architecture and ITS Standards.”
Sending short-wave signals to other automobiles and data hubs is one thing, but the act is also asking for mandatory event data recorders in every car. That’s the actual name, in fact, of what Congress says they want every car to have in the very near future.
“Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall revise part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, to require, beginning with model year 2015, that new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States be equipped with an event data recorder that meets the requirements under that part,” explains the act.
The section goes on to establish that the ownership of data collected by those devices will be the sole property of the owner of the automobile, but other provisions clearly authorize a challenge to this. A court may be granted access to that information “in furtherance of a legal proceeding,” and elsewhere in the bill it says that “the information is retrieved pursuant to an investigation or inspection authorized under section 1131(a) or 30166 of title 49, United States Code.”
Two years after those devices are made mandatory, Congress will also hear a report that will explain “the recommendations on what, if any, additional data the event data recorder should be modified to record.”
Those without drivers licenses won’t be spared from civil liberty infringement if MAP-21 makes it out of the White House with Obama’s approval— another section says that Congress can confiscate the passports of Americans delinquent in paying their taxes. Although the US was built from the ground up by refugees escaping persecution, persons plagued by hardships in the near future won’t be afforded that same ability to escape Uncle Sam’s strengthening stranglehold.
Under Section 40304, the US State Department is allowed the powers to revoke passports from anyone determined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of having “a delinquent tax debt in an amount in excess of $50,000.” Fifty-grand might seem like a big number for 99-percenters, but it isn’t all that outrageous or uncommon. After all, the Washington Post reported in 2010 that out of the 18,000 employees on Capitol Hill, 638 of them were behind on their taxes. What’s more, though, is that of those working within the House of Representatives, the average delinquent was indebted to the country to the tune of $15,498.
"If you're on the federal payroll and you're not paying your taxes, you should be fired," Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) exclaimed at the time. Two years down the road, though, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is requesting that a citizen’s ability to travel abroad be brought to an end for being behind on their taxes. Reid was the author of Section 40304 and is presumably outside of the 4 percent of congressional staffers that owed the feds in 2010, but opponents of the act are saying that stripping passports from poor Americans isn’t a provision that is necessary for MAP-21.
“It takes away your right to enter or exit the country based upon a non-judicial IRS determination that you owe taxes,” constitutional attorney Angel Reyes tells Fox Business. “It’s a scary thought that our congressional representatives want to give the IRS the power to detain US citizens over taxes, which could very well be in dispute.”
“There are so many people that fall into that situation, and I think that’s too invasive. Especially coming out of a bad economy there are a lot of people behind on a lot of things,” adds financial adviser Clark Hodges to Fox.
There are other damning provisions in MAP-21, including a “Stop Taxhaven Abuse” section that says the government can kick any foreign jurisdiction out of the US financial system if it wants to. For American residents up to date on their income taxes and not invested abroad, however, the real dangers lie within the very real possibility that the government will soon be able to track every single automobile on the nation’s roads. Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement requires a warrant if they want to install GPS tracking devices on the cars of suspected criminals, but with that decision quickly collecting opposition, a loophole might have just been brought to light by forcing consumers to purchase cars with tracking systems already installed.
Before the Supreme Court shot down the feds’ plea to allow unwarranted monitoring of automobiles in January, Justice Stephen Breyer said that a decision to not do so would be dangerous for everyone in the country. "If you win this case then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States. … So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like '1984',"explained Breyer.
http://rt.com/usa/news/congress-map-cars-1813-484/The federal government is about to become the country’s worst backseat driver.... more
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MADISON, Wis. (CBSDC) – A video captured a woman shaking and sobbing uncontrollably while being frisked by a Transportation Security Administration agent.
Political blogger Jim Hoft — who runs the Gateway Pundit website — captured the incident at a Madison, Wis., airport Sunday.
“This morning at a Midwest airport I witnessed this poor woman suffering through this horrible sexual violation,” Hoft said on his Gateway Pundit website.
Full Story: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/04/16/video-captures-woman-sobbing-uncontrollably-during-tsa-pat-down/MADISON, Wis. (CBSDC) – A video captured a woman shaking and sobbing... more
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The identities of journalists who allegedly received illegal leaks from former CIA officer John Kiriakou are spilling into the public domain in the wake of his indictment last week on charges that he disclosed the names of CIA personnel involved in interrogations of terror suspects.
Two New York-based reporters, Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito, are among the journalists the government has alleged as being on the receiving end of leaks from Kiriakou, sources familiar with the case told POLITICO.
Cole, described in court papers as “Journalist A,” worked until earlier this year as a producer for ABC News’s investigative unit, but the alleged leaks to him took place before he joined ABC.
Esposito, described in court papers as “Journalist C,” is the senior investigative reporter for ABC’s I-team, headed up by Brian Ross. A complaint filed in the case earlier this year indicates that Esposito and Kiriakou “collaborated on a preliminary book proposal” and in the course of that effort Kiriakou “apparently” gave Esposito classified information.
Cole’s alleged role is closer to the core of the case against Kiriakou and also raises questions about whether Cole, whose website indicates he was working on a book at the time, was straddling the line between traditional journalism and information gathering for lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees.
The indictment says Kiriakou gave Cole the last name of a CIA officer after Cole presented Kiriakou with a first name and other information. “Approximately two hours after” Kiriakou emailed Cole the last name, Cole sent it to a defense investigator working with attorneys for terror suspects held at Guantanamo, the complaint filed in the case says. “My guy came through with his memory,” Cole wrote to the defense investigator later that day, according to the complaint.
Public court papers don’t offer much in the way of context for Cole’s interaction with the defense investigator, who was not named.
Cole did not respond to several Twitter messages seeking comment for this story, but in late February he used one of his Twitter accounts to unleash a barrage of harsh criticism of the Obama administration over a series of prosecutions of individuals accused of leaking classified information to journalists.
“How can journalists protect their communications with sources leaking details to how (sic) the US government accountable? #stopthesuppression” Cole wrote in one message. Other of his Tweets included hashtags such as “#Obamaonlylikesleaksthatmakehimlookdecisiveorheroic” and “#Obamaswaragainstjournalists.”
Cole’s last story on the ABC website appears to be from Jan. 9, about two weeks before Kiriakou was arrested. A reporter who called ABC and asked for Cole last week was told he was no longer with the company, but as of when this post first appeared Monday night, Cole remained on a list of staffers on the ABC investigative team’s web page. Cole appears to have opened a new Twitter account that describes him as “a journalist covering national security...most recently, an investigative producer for ABC News.” Before joining ABC as a staffer, Cole had written a variety of stories for outlets like New York Magazine, ESPN the Magazine and GQ.
An ABC spokesman declined to be interviewed for this post, as did Esposito. Kiriakou's alleged disclosure to him is not mentioned in the indictment filed last week.
Kiriakou’s lead defense attorney, Plato Cacheris, had no immediate response to a message seeking comment for this report.
Another ABC journalist, White House Correspondent Jake Tapper, recently drew attention for publicly challenging the Obama administration for criticizing press repression in other countries while trying to jail journalists’ sources in the U.S. In his Feb. 22 exchange with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney in the White House Briefing Room, Tapper cited Kiriakou’s prosecution, but did not mention that two of the journalists who allegedly received illegal leaks had ABC ties.
“The administration is taking this person [Kiriakou] to court. There just seems to be a disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States,” Tapper said, in comments highlighted a few days later by The New York Times.
Through a spokesman, Tapper declined to comment for this post. However, a colleague of Tapper said he had "zero" knowledge at the time he asked the question that ABC journalists had any links to the case.
Court documents filed in Kiriakou’s case don’t identify any journalists by name, but soon after his arrest in January it became evident that New York Times reporter Scott Shane was one of the reporters who allegedly got illegal leaks from the former CIA officer. The complaint and the indictment refer to Shane as “Journalist B” and cite a specific story he wrote in June 2008 that described the involvement of CIA officer Deuce Martinez in the capture and interrogation of Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubyadah in Pakistan in 2002.
The Times issued a statement in January saying the newspaper and its reporters had not been contacted by investigators or provided any information to the government in connection with the case. The Times statement appeared to try to distinguish Shane’s alleged role in the case from that of “Journalist A,” now identified as Cole.
A knowledgeable source who asked not to be named said Friday that he did not believe any ABC journalists had been approached by the government or cooperated with the investigation.
None of the journalists referred to in court papers has been charged with any crime. Under the Espionage Act, even private citizens who obtain classified information outside of official channels can be charged with disclosing it. The government has never filed such a case against a journalist. Prosecutors did file such charges in 2005 against two ex- lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but the prosecution was abandoned in 2009.
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http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2012/04/more-journalists-linked-to-case-charging-excia-officer-120047.html#.T4RT_t2fnfw.twitterThe identities of journalists who allegedly received illegal leaks from former CIA... more
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I’m sure I’m not the first to suggest this, but what if all those opposed to the continued expansion of the NSA’s illegal surveillance were to seed emails and phone calls with likely triggers for NSA software? “Jihad” might be an effective key word with which to begin. We could also click on an agreed-upon list of jihad web sites. Perhaps such measures would confound the existing software. Or lead to our wholesale detention.I’m sure I’m not the first to suggest this, but what if all those opposed... more
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So, basically, when you ask a prospective employee for his/her password, you signal your intent to knowingly hire individuals who readily agree to breach contractual agreements. Oh, yeah, that’s just fucking brilliant, Einstein.
Now here’s the doozy. I just sent the following message to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.So, basically, when you ask a prospective employee for his/her password, you signal... more
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0800: Good morning everyone and welcome to the day everyone's been waiting for: News Day is here and we're all ready to go here at School Report HQ.
More than 1000 schools across the UK and 30,000 School Reporters are taking part today and this is where you can follow what they're up to!
0807: It's barely gone eight o'clock and School Report has already been on the airwaves several times this morning, with the first report about an egg-selling schoolgirl from Sidford School in Oxfordshire featuring on Farming Today.
0814: BBC Breakfast business presenter Stephanie McGovern is at Oakfield Community College in Middlesbrough, reporting on budding entrepreneurs involved in recycling and the development of a computer application that helps students revise.
0824: As you should be able to see on the right-hand side of the page - the video stream is up and running. We're kicking off with some highlights of the year so far before we go live from our studio in Salford at 0900!
At 1015 we'll go to our radio studio until 1400 - coincidently the big deadline everyone is working towards today - with our Millbank studio taking th reins until 1600. So stay tuned!
0830: "From the daily sport, to the historic politics, we cover everything, and it requires a lot of work. We are especially proud to put our names on each and every piece of work," says a teacher from Rutlish School in Merton. Dominic, a student taking part says: "It is an amazing experience because of all the opportunities it presents."
0835: The team at Tarporley High School in Cheshire will give us a behind-the-scenes experience as they interview Olympic torchbearers from their school and give a report on body image with a plus-size model as a guest. They'll also be exploring what it's like to work in television with CBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell.
0847: Arnold Academy in Bedfordshire are reporting on the departure of their long seriving headmistress and scrutinising the prospective candidates hoping to replace her. Sounds interesting!
0848: Chipping Campden School in Gloucester are gearing up for the 400th local Dover's games as well as reporting on the Chipping Campden Literature Festival.
0853: Ashfield School in Nottingham are interviewing a local Olympic hopeful and reporting on Sports Relief fundraising activities as well as introducing the local community to their new members of staff.
0854: The Sir John Gleed School in Spalding have been reporting on the closing of a wildlife sanctuary, hit by the recession after 25 years. Students have also been talking to one of the last surviving victims of the holocaust about the experience, and to one of their teachers who has been given a place on the National Space Centre team.
0855: Queen Elizabeth's School in Lincolnshire have been preparing their stories for the news day on a wide range of topics including carbon neutral schools and their local traveller community. The students have also been investigating the real cost of free range eggs and why so many students choose to leave the area after finishing sixth form or college. We're also looking forward to their report on travel difficulties experienced by the county orchestra as they make their way across the rural landscape.
0855: Wickham School and Sports College have been busy preparing reports about events in their local area such as a Zumbathon World Record attempt! Students have also been producing a podcast dedicated to PC Rathband who recently passed away, "the podcast will focus on the positive relationship the school had with Mr Rathband and how he inspired students during his visits over the last year" says Learning Co-ordinator Aaron Day.0800: Good morning everyone and welcome to the day everyone's been waiting for:... more
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Don't listen to Facebook, just get rid of your account and you won't even have to worry about this kind of thing with potential employers, or Facebook's ridiculous, ever-changing intrusive privacy policies.
Don't forget that last year Mark Zuckerberg's sister said "anonymity on the Internet has to go away" and Zuckerberg himself called early social networkers "dumbfucks" for giving away their personal information so willingly.
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Facebook privacy chief Erin Egan has issued a stern statement regarding employers and prospective employers who ask individuals for their Facebook passwords. Egan cites a “distressing increase” in reports of individuals being asked to turn over their passwords or other Facebook account information to bosses, prospective employees and others.
Addressing users of the social networking site, Egan wrote, “This practice undermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and the user’s friends,” and added, “If you are a Facebook user, you should never have to share your password, let anyone access your account, or do anything that might jeopardize the security of your account or violate the privacy of your friends.”
Egan held out the possibility of Facebook taking legal action against organizations and individuals who attempt to coerce users into forfeiting their private information. She wrote that such action “potentially exposes the employer who seeks this access to unanticipated legal liability.”Don't listen to Facebook, just get rid of your account and you won't even... more
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R3zn8D
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