Shhh! Part 4

Privacy. How long before it's an alien concept, a quaint reminder of "simpler" times? I'm sure a lot of us recall the descriptions in 1984 of the cameras in every room, watching people all the time - or at least reminding them that they might be being watched, they never knew. Now such cameras, while not (yet) in our homes, surround us. We are recorded at the bank, tracked in the supermarket, scanned as we pass by corporate offices, scrutinized at government facilities. We are observed, measured, tabulated, indexed, and filed.

All the while being told the audacious lie that it's for our own benefit. No, it's not for our benefit at all. So following over these few days, several items about some aspect of privacy. Who has it and who doesn't.

Increasingly, we don't. But if we don't have it, who does? Whose privacy, whose right to keep secrets, is being aggressively defended?

Duh.

Of course, this particular White House administration has been notorious for stonewalling requests for information even from members of Congress. That, I'm sure, comes as no news to anyone here. Instead of that, then, Here are a few accounts of the lesser ways information vanishes these days.

Washington (AP, July 7) - Bush administration officials broke no laws in withholding from Congress estimates of the cost of the new Medicare law, says an internal investigation made public Tuesday.

The Health and Human Services Department inspector general, the agency's internal watchdog, said its three-month investigation found that administration officials used aggressive tactics to keep from Congress its much higher estimates of the legislation's cost - $100 billion more than the president and other officials were acknowledging.

Yet the effort - including threats by Thomas Scully, the administration's Medicare chief until December, to fire chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster - did not violate federal law, the inspector general said.

Scully, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, "has the final authority to determine the flow of information to Congress," the unsigned report said.

The matter arose when it came out that Foster's estimates were considerably higher than those the White House used in lobbying for its Medicare deform package - estimates that would have doomed the legislation, which barely survived conservative complaints about cost as it was. And indeed, when the White House released its budget proposals in January, it gave the 10-year cost as $534 billion. That's $139 billion, or more than a third, higher than the estimate it gave to Congress originally.

Foster's estimates, written during consideration of the bill, still have yet to be made public or turned over to congressional Democrats who have requested them.

In March, Thompson promised to release them and said the inspector general's investigation would clear the air. ...

But since then, he has refused to release the documents in question. House Democrats have sued for the documents in federal court and The Associated Press, which sought the same materials under the Freedom of Information Act, has appealed the withholding of 149 pages out of 162 pages that the agency acknowledges are responsive to its request.

Instead of releasing the information, the White House has once again investigated itself and once again - surprise! - found itself not guilty. It's just fine for the White House to actively hide necessary information, threaten people who could release it, lie about what they know, and then just refuse to release the data even after the fact.

And it doesn't matter even if the information is already out there: the Shrubberies will just take it back. This statement, found at Buzzflash, was released by Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association on July 30:

Last week, the American Library Association learned that the Department of Justice asked the Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the Department has deemed not "appropriate for external use." The Department of Justice has called for these five these public documents, two of which are texts of federal statutes, to be removed from depository libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library.

The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation. The documents to be removed and destroyed include: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA).

ALA has submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the withdrawn materials in order to obtain an official response from the Department of Justice regarding this unusual action, and why the Department has requested that documents that have been available to the public for as long as four years be removed from depository library collections. ALA is committed to ensuring that public documents remain available to the public and will do its best to bring about a satisfactory resolution of this matter.

And if withdrawing and destroying public documents won't work, there's always the other course.

Even the phrase suggests a sort of cognitive dissonance: retroactive classification. Come again? ...

As a long-time, staunch defender of the administration's efforts to improve the nation's defenses against terrorism, as well as an ardent defender of the First Amendment, we at The Republic find ourselves uniquely positioned to say, emphatically and without qualification, that Mr. Ashcroft, this time you truly have gone too far.

The case being considered in that editorial from the July 9 Arizona Republic is that of Sibel Edmonds, about who I've posted before. She is a former FBI translator who made headlines when she went public with charges that she was fired due to her complaints about shoddy and inadequate work in the program, including mistranslated and untranslated documents and allowing politics to control the translation of intelligence.

She sued the government on the grounds that she was dismissed for being a whistle-blower. In response, the government invoked a "state secrets" privilege with the desired result.

Washington (AP, July 6) - A federal judge threw out a lawsuit Tuesday by a whistle-blower who alleged security lapses in the FBI's translator program, ruling that her claims might expose government secrets that could damage national security.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said he was satisfied with claims by Attorney General John Ashcroft and a senior FBI official that the civil lawsuit by Sibel Edmonds could expose intelligence-gathering methods and disrupt diplomatic relations with foreign governments. ...

Edmonds said the judge dismissed her lawsuit without hearing evidence from her lawyers, although the government's lawyers met with Walton at least twice privately. She noted that Walton, the judge, was appointed by President Bush.

In a touch of unintended hilarity, the judge laid down as a serious statement what we all used to use as a joke.

The judge said he couldn't explain further because his explanation itself would expose sensitive secrets.

"I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you." Ha ha.

Not only did the government block the suit, it prevented her from testifying in a case brought by 9/11 families and it "retroactively classified" both the testimony Edmonds gave to Congress in 2002 and letters from Senators Pat Leahy and Chuck Grassley to the Justice Department and FBI about Edmonds' testimony - letters which apparently got no response. When the DOJ's own inspector general did a report on the Edmonds case, that got classified as well.

(The letters from Leahy and Grassley can still be found here at The Memory Hole; Grassley's to FBI Director Robert Mueller on October 28, 2002, includes the transcript of Edmonds' appearance on "60 Minutes" the day before.)

Still, a bit of truth slipped out, as the July 29 New York Times reported.

A classified Justice Department investigation has concluded that a former F.B.I. translator at the center of a growing controversy was dismissed in part because she accused the bureau of ineptitude, and it found that the F.B.I. did not aggressively investigate her claims of espionage against a co-worker.

The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that the allegations by the translator, Sibel Edmonds, "were at least a contributing factor in why the F.B.I. terminated her services," and the F.B.I. is considering disciplinary action against some employees as a result, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the bureau, said in a letter last week to lawmakers. ...

The letter did not say what other factors, if any, beyond Ms. Edmonds's accusations may have played a part in the decision to dismiss her. In the past, federal officials have suggested that her allegations had nothing to do with her dismissal, pointing instead to what they described as her "disruptive" presence in the field office.

I'll just bet, especially since

[a]n official with knowledge of the report who spoke on condition of anonymity said investigators confirmed some of Ms. Edmonds's allegations about translation problems to be true, but could not corroborate others because of a lack of evidence. None of her accusations were disproved, the official said.

People making accurate complaints of incompetence are as a general rule "disruptive."

This, too, was not without its moment of levity. In his letter, Mueller

said the F.B.I. would work with the inspector general to determine whether any employees should be disciplined as a result. And he emphasized that he wanted to encourage all F.B.I. employees to "raise good faith concerns about mismanagement or misconduct" without fear of reprisals or intimidation.

Except, of course, for being branded "disruptive," fired, blocked from any means of redress, and having a report largely supporting your contentions classified. Other than that, no worries.

Oh, but this only happens in areas affecting national security, yes?

Well, I suppose - provided you define "national security" widely enough.

Washington (CNN, July 10) - One day after she was fired, former U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers accused the Bush administration Saturday of silencing dissenting views in the rank and file. ...

Chambers said that she didn't expect to be fired seven months after the Interior Department put her on administrative leave with pay for talking with reporters and congressional staffers about budget woes on the 620-officer force.

She was fired Friday, just two and half hours after her attorneys filed a demand for immediate reinstatement through the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency that ensures federal employees are protected from management abuses. ...

"The American people should be afraid of this kind of silencing of professionals in any field," she said. "We should be very concerned as American citizens that people who are experts in their field either can't speak up, or, as we're seeing now in the parks service, won't speak up."

National Park Service officials said Chambers broke rules barring public comment about budget discussions and prohibiting lobbying by someone in her position.

Chambers said she did nothing wrong except argue for adequate funding for the Park Police, which falls under NPS authority - and perhaps fail to understand that she was required to "toe the party line."

It's estimated that the NPS operates on about 2/3 of the budget it needs to maintain and protect national parks, including so-called "icon" sites such as the Statue of Liberty.

This, too, has its bitter humor:

According to the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees, a group of more than 250 former NPS officials, the Interior Department sent out memos to park superintendents to make further reductions - and "to mislead the news media and public about the service cuts in order to avoid ... 'public controversy.'" ...

The memo argues against discussing the situation with the media, then adds that "if you feel you must inform the public through a press release," refer to "service level adjustments" rather than "cuts."

No, you're not fired. Nor are you "riffed" or "on indefinite layoff." No, you're merely a participant in a service level adjustment. But don't tell anyone: Your employment has been retroactively classified.

Where have all the flowers gone?

According to a commentary in the July 29 Daily Star (Lebanon), a

public opinion poll in six Arab countries ... showed a sharp and continuing slide in America's standing among Arab citizens. ...

In Saudi Arabia, for example, a naturally conservative society that very easily adopts many aspects of American lifestyles and technology, the approval rating of the US in the period 2002-2004 dropped from 12 percent to 4 percent. In Egypt the drop was from 15 to 2 percent, and in Jordan from 34 to 15 percent. ...

The evidence continues to pour in, week after week, poll after poll: the five pillars of US policy in the Middle East are all seen by the Arab people of this region to be unfair and imbalanced, favoring Israel and autocratic Arab leaderships, and harming the sentiments and interests of ordinary Arabs who otherwise embrace most aspects of American life and values. The five pillars that all generate powerful anti-American sentiments are the Arab-Israeli conflict, the regime change and occupation of Iraq as part of the "war on terror," calls for reform, support for non-democratic regimes, and threats against other countries or parties in the region for their alleged WMD plans.

I said it in a letter to friend dated October 19, 2001:

So much we could have done differently, so much we could do differently. And none of it is happening. It's really, really depressing.

It still is. Is it due to ignorance? To the arrogance of power? To deception and deceit in pursuit of imperial aims?

Yes, I think so.

RIP

Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the leading photographers of the 20th century, whose concept of the "decisive moment" when all elements of a scene fall into place has inspired generations of photographers, died Monday at age 95.

"In whatever one does, there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart," he once said in a rare interview. "With the one eye that is closed, one looks within, with the other eye that is open, one looks without."

A selection of his photographs can be found here.

Shhh! Part 3

Updated Privacy. How long before it's an alien concept, a quaint reminder of "simpler" times? I'm sure a lot of us recall the descriptions in 1984 of the cameras in every room, watching people all the time - or at least reminding them that they might be being watched, they never knew. Now such cameras, while not (yet) in our homes, surround us. We are recorded at the bank, tracked in the supermarket, scanned as we pass by corporate offices, scrutinized at government facilities. We are observed, measured, tabulated, indexed, and filed.

All the while being told the audacious lie that it's for our own benefit. No, it's not for our benefit at all. So over these few days, several items about some aspect of privacy. Who has it and who doesn't.

On Tuesday, I noted some evidence that corporate America holds that its interest in profit outweighs our interest in privacy. Today, just a few reminders that even less are we supposed to have privacy in the face of the desires of government America.

Of course, the wholesale, court-approved violations of the 4th Amendment during the DNC should be enough evidence of the government's point of view, but if that's excused on the grounds of "special circumstances," the declared intention of the Boston police to continue "random" suspicionless searches just on general principles should serve in its stead.

And then there is always the TRAITOR Act, which allows unprecedented secret government intrusions into our lives. There are those who are trying to limit the worst of its excesses, but in this area even having the votes is not enough.

Washington (AP, July 8) - The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people's reading habits.

The effort to defy Bush and bridle the law's powers lost by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call's normal 15-minute time limit expired, but GOP leaders kept the vote open for 23 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes.

"Shame, shame, shame," Democrats chanted as the minutes passed and votes were switched. The tactic was reminiscent of last year's House passage of the Medicare overhaul measure, when GOP leaders held the vote open for an extra three hours until they got the votes they needed.

"You win some, and some get stolen," Rep. C.L. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, a sponsor of the defeated provision and one of Congress' more conservative members, told a reporter.

The provision would have undone a section of the law that lets authorities get special court orders requiring book dealers, libraries and others to surrender records such as purchases and Internet sites visited on a library computer while at the same time barring those institutions and stores from letting customers know their records have been accessed. The warrants are issued under intelligence rules, which do not require evidence of illegal activity and thus are much easier to obtain than traditional search warrants, which is of course why the White House wants it this way.

Last July, Otter succeeded in getting the House to block so-called "sneak and peek" searches but the provision was dumped in conference. He tried again this year but got ruled out of order.

The real reason for this devotion to the Act surely can't be any demonstrable successes in fighting terrorism.

"Regarding civil liberties, the 9/11 Commission report essentially says that the Justice Department and White House have not made a compelling case for either the administration’s obsession with secrecy or its Patriot Act," said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director [in a press release on July 22]. "This bipartisan report should serve as a wake-up call for Congress that it must maintain the sunsets in the Patriot Act."

As the report states on page 394, "The burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially enhances security and (b) that there is adequate supervision of the executive’s use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties. If the power is granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine its use." ...

Notably, the commission does not recommend that any sunseted provisions should be made permanent.

Some of us knew that all along. I wrote the following to my Senators on October 14, 2001:

"I believe there are more instances of abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation." - James Madison, 1778

As I'm sure you're aware, in addition to some completely noncontroversial commonsense actions the version of the so-called "Anti-terrorism" act recently passed by the Senate contains several provisions that raise concerns about civil liberties. Sifting through all the pronouncements leading up to the final vote (I do not use the term "debate" because it was much too one-sided and much too rushed to deserve the description) I find nothing in those provisions that leads me to believe that had the bill been in force earlier that the events of September 11 would not have happened. That is, not one such provision has been able to withstand the simple question "Would this have made any difference?"

The fact is, in the weeks since September 11, it's become clear that as a security matter, the attacks didn't happen because of a lack of police powers or security provisions but because of a failure to use those that already existed. Adding more such powers, more authority to invade our privacy, restrict our freedoms, track our movements, more ability to substitute suspicion for proof - all while reducing judicial oversight - only creates more opportunities for official abuse. Despite the hypnotic mantra about "improving our security while protecting our liberties" this bill is nothing more than one of Madison's "gradual encroachments."

(I've quoted a passage from this letter I think twice before, the more recent occasion being July 23.)

If not effective protection or prevention, then what's the point? Fishing expeditions. Probing. Watching. The drive to control dissent by being able to "watch" enough to at least make people think they're being watched all the time by reminding some that they have been. From the Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO) for July 24:

Law enforcement officers visited several Denver young people Thursday to warn them against committing violence at the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

"This is part of an ongoing FBI investigation with the Joint Terrorism Task Force," Colorado FBI spokeswoman Monique Kelson said Friday. "That's all that we can comment right now." ...

Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Colorado, said young people living at two locations in Denver reported the visits to the ACLU and that similar visits have occurred elsewhere in the United States in recent days.

He said officers told the Denver young people that they were visiting "protesters and anarchists."

"It's an abuse of power, designed to intimidate these kids from exercising their constitutional right to protest government policies and associate with others who want to protest government policies," Silverstein said.

It's almost become a cliche that it's unlikely that there is anyone who does not harbor some secret that they would not wish to be broadcast to the world. It may not be criminal, just embarrassing, but it's still something we desire to keep to ourselves. As Billy Joel put it in "The Stranger,"

Well, we all have a face that we hide away forever
And we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.

It's also a truism that the more someone knows about you, the more they can find out. The greater the ability of the government to examine who we are, where we work, who we associate with, what we read, what we buy, our credit and medical histories (we're back to the issue of social security numbers again), the list grows continuously, it seems, the more we may feel - or actively be - intimidated into keeping our unpopular or dissenting opinions to ourselves for fear of the consequences of doing otherwise.

Naturally, such watching is not limited to, and may not even be primarily on, individuals. Tracking ethnic groups is pretty much a snap. Dateline, July 30, the Electronic Privacy Information Center:

EPIC has obtained documents revealing that the Census Bureau provided the Department of Homeland Security statistical data on people who identified themselves on the 2000 census as being of Arab ancestry. The special tabulations were prepared specifically for the law enforcement agency. There is no indication that the Department of Homeland Security requested similar information about any other ethnic groups. The tabulations apparently include information about United States citizens, as well as individuals of Arab descent whose families have lived in the United States for generations.

When questioned, the Department of the Security of the Fatherland gave the Census Bureau the lame excuse that it was trying to decide what languages should be included on signs at international airports. The tiny facts that 1)this ethnic data is useless to that end since it's reasonable to assume that most of these people speak American English and 2)if determining in what languages signs at airports should be really is their intent what they should be curious about is how many non-English-speaking Arabs fly into the US seem to have escaped their pointed little heads.

Even outside of events with such obvious political overtones, Madison's gradual encroachments show themselves, pecking away at privacy.

Washington, Aug 3 (Reuters) - U.S. regulators should make auto manufacturers equip all new vehicles with data recorders to give authorities better information when they probe accidents, safety investigators recommended on Tuesday.

Yes, of course. It's always in the service of "better government" and "public benefit." It's for our own good that our cars should be fitted with devices that keep track of what we do as we drive. Devices that can be used to prosecute us in the event of an accident. Devices that many of us already have in our cars and don't even know it.

Privacy advocate David Sobel said millions of drivers on the road now have no idea that their vehicles are collecting data[, CNN reported on Wednesday].

"They certainly don't know what's being collected, how long it's being retained and who can get access to it under what circumstances," said Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. ...

The highway safety agency says between 65 percent and 90 percent of 2004 vehicles have some sort of recording ability. About 15 percent of vehicles have data recorders.

(I had an earlier post about these devices on March 11.)

The National Transportation Safety Board made the recommendation but can't issue regulations; that would be up to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The NHTSA says it sees no need for such a requirement because car manufacturers are doing it voluntarily - usually without telling buyers.

Different models collect different amounts of data. Some record nothing more than how fast a vehicle sped up or slowed down, while others collect a range of information about the driver's actions and the condition of a vehicle's mechanical systems.

While that's apparently good enough for the moment, it won't be for long: NHTSA has

proposed that by 2008 the auto industry should outfit their vehicles voluntarily with recorders that would collect 42 pieces of accident data, including speed, braking, seat belt use and the time required for air bags to deploy.

Now, many of these devices at present typically only record for about five seconds and then start over, which means that any data collected would only describe those seconds immediately before an accident. But that's only a matter of memory capacity. It would be simplicity itself to allow the devices to be expanded to record minutes, hours, days of driving data. It's only a matter of cost, not technology. Something else that would be only a matter of cost would be the inclusion of a GPS system that would allow the car to be tracked. (As increasing numbers of us now can be via our cellphones.) As costs come down, why shouldn't that be required as well? After all, it's for public safety. For your own good. How can you possibly object?

And how can you possibly object to protecting our future safety as a nation by having the ability to securely identify almost everyone with what the ACLU called "the backdoor creation of national ID cards in the form of a standardized drivers licenses," as proposed by the 9/11 Commission? Whose side are you on, anyway?

In fact, the next step beyond is already being given serious consideration, as this item from the St. Catharines (Ontario) Standard from last month notes (link via Information Clearinghouse):

An influential organization representing U.S. and Canadian drivers' licence bureaus is developing a proposal for a de facto North American identity card: a biometric licence for 300 million people that could be fed through law enforcement databases to nab holders of multiple forged licences.

Such a card would require the creation of the largest database of biometric data in the world — potentially to include digital images of a person’s face or eye, or electronic fingerprints.

So just think: You could be completely safe and secure, knowing you can be tracked, monitored, and recorded at any moment in Canada as well!

So at what point do Orwell's cameras in the walls become, in the favorite phrase of privacy-shredding courts, a "minimal intrusion?"

Footnote, We All Screw Up Sometimes Dept.: On July 31, the New York Times reported that

[t]he American Civil Liberties Union is in turmoil over a promise it made to the government that it would not knowingly hire people whose names appear on watch lists of suspected supporters of terrorism. Those lists are the very type it has strongly opposed in other contexts. ...

The group made the promise not to employ people it knew to be on similar terrorism lists so that it could continue participating in a program that allows federal employees to make charitable contributions through payroll deductions.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said he had printed out the lists but "I've never consulted them." In fact, he said, he'd taken care not to know the names so the group could honestly say it never "knowingly" hired anyone on the hit - er, watch - lists.

That wasn't good enough for a number of people on the ACLU board and it lead to a contentious meeting in which the decision was ultimately made to support Romero's action.

I find agreeing to such a requirement distasteful in the extreme and ethically unacceptable. I also believe the requirement to be an unconstitutional infringement of political free speech and association because it encourages employment discrimination based on suspicion - not even proof, but mere suspicion - of support for what the government defines as terrorism.

Yes, yes, I know that the answer will come back "well, you don't have to participate, you're doing it of your own free will." Except that 1)the party being affected (the person looking for a job) is not the one making the decision to participate in the program and 2)free will or not, it still is in effect offering groups money - access to donations - in exchange for their agreement to practice discrimination in employment.

At the same time, I have to admit that I'm not completely sure how I would have voted had I been on the ACLU board: Romero was in effect going "nyah, nyah" to the feds and that might have been too sweet to pass up.

In any event, if it wasn't good enough for some ACLU'ers, neither was it good enough for the feds.

Mara T. Patermaster, the director of the charity program, ... said that ignoring the information on the lists was unacceptable and no defense.

"We expect that the charities will take affirmative action to make sure they are not supporting terrorist activities," she said. "That would specifically include inspecting the lists. To just sign a certification without corroboration would be a false certification."

In response, Romero issued a statement the next day declaring

Let me be clear. The ACLU will not be intimidated. We will not compromise. We will never check any of our employees against a government list. And we absolutely will not accept any funding that undermines or threatens our principles or our mission. ...

The ACLU will resign from the CFC rather than accept its terms that violate our fundamental principles.

Romero added that the organization is considering the best course to challenge the restrictions in court. Better a delayed reaction than none.

And the whole thing was perhaps worth it just for the experience of having a Shrub official demand "affirmative action."

Updated to include the Footnote.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Garbage?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Beauty Pageantry for $400

As the name suggests, Mrs. United States calls itself "the premier pageant for" women of this status.

Black holes and a-holes

Combine Stephen Hawking's notoriety with the public fascination with black holes, and Hawking's announcement that he's decided he's been wrong about them for 29 years makes for news. Unfortunately, much of that news is either incomplete or unclear. That's not entirely the media's fault: Hawking really only gave an outline of his new argument with the expectation a fuller treatment will be forthcoming shortly.

I'd been intending to put up a geek post about this but I'd been holding off until that fuller explanation was published, which is supposed to be sometime this month. And because his presentation left a number in the audience shaking their heads either in wonder, confusion, or surprise, I also wanted to wait for some analysis and reactions in order to get (and give) a better idea of what's going on here.

Others, however, haven't waited and in the course of not waiting have seriously mashed the issues.

One misunderstanding that keeps coming up is the actual nature of the claim Hawking said he was retracting, based on a misunderstanding of modern physics. One article, for example, said that black holes defy "subatomic theory [which] says matter can be transformed but never fully destroyed." Another said that the standard notion of black holes had violated "a fundamental tenet" of physics, which is that time can run "backward" as well as "forward." In each case, the assertion was Hawking was rescuing standard physics from the problems presented by black holes.

The trouble is, both of those premises are wrong. First, the idea that matter can't be destroyed - conservation of mass - got tossed nearly a century ago by Einstein. Matter can be "destroyed" by being changed into energy. (If it couldn't, nuclear weapons, for one thing, would not work.) It's the conservation of mass-energy that's maintained, and black holes do not violate that.

Sidebar: Nukes aside, it's actually good for us that matter can be changed into energy; if it couldn't, no life would ever have developed on Earth. The fusion reaction that powers the Sun, while actually somewhat more complicated, can be expressed simply this way: Under the tremendous heat and pressure at the core of the Sun, a hydrogen atom (one electron, one proton) fuses with a neutron to produce a deuterium atom (one electron, one proton, one neutron) and two deuterium atoms fuse into a helium atom (two electrons, two protons, two neutrons). Even though a helium atom would appear to be exactly the same as two deuterium atoms, it's total mass is actually slightly less. That difference is the mass that has turned into energy in the reaction. Multiply by the incredible number of times such reactions are occurring and you have a star on which all life here ultimately depends.

As for time, it's true that most physicists accept the idea that time is reversible. But the idea is still debatable, as can be told by the number of debates that go on about it: Some assert that time does indeed "flow" in one "direction" and the laws of thermodynamics prove it, while there are others who even argue that time does not exist, it's merely an artifact of the expansion of space. More importantly, the reversibility of time is not a "fundamental tenet" of physics, it's a simplifying assumption that allows physical processes to be examined without regard to which "direction" time is "going." In fact, it was discovered nearly 50 years ago that the degeneration of a subatomic particle known as a K-meson (or kaon) is not time invariant. That is, the process is not always reversible in time. (This lead to the development of CPT invariance, but we're getting way too complex here.)

The dispute in which Hawking was involved did not relate to the "destruction" of matter or the reversibility of time; it had to do with information. Simply put, the question was, as black holes age and dissipate, as physicists now believe they eventually do, could you examine what comes out of them and reconstruct what went in?

Hawking maintained that no, you couldn't, that any information about what went into a black hole was irretrievably lost and what eventually emerged was random radiation. Others disputed that, insisting that was impossible, that information can't be destroyed - which is a fundamental tenet of modern physics.

Hawking has now said that the information survives: "If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state." That last phrase may be of the things that got some in the audience shaking their heads because it hints that the information may be there but unrecoverable.

If that's what he means, it appears on the surface to come close to splitting the difference: Yes, the information is there, but no, you can't recover it, so in a sense everyone is right. According to the New York Times, which had a pretty decent article on his announcement, Hawking is applying quantum principles describing an "apparent" black hole coexisting with a real one (don't - you'll only get a headache; I understand the basic principles, if not the math, and it still makes my eyes hurt), the dissolution of which, which can happen easily because after all it's not really there (I told you, don't), would mean the radiation thus released would be to some degree correlated with that from the real black hole, allowing a means for information to escape. (I warned you.)

The problem is, "nobody knows how to weigh the different possibilities in such a quantum calculation," Dr. Sean Carroll of the University of Chicago told the Times.

I'm curious to see if what Hawking has come up with is something akin to the idea described by the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle, which holds that it's impossible to accurately know both the position and momentum of a subatomic particle and that the more precisely you know one, the less precisely you know the other. In this case, perhaps something like the greater the correlation here, the less the correlation there. But that's just blue-skying. We'll have to wait a bit to find out.

That, however, has not kept some from passing immediate and ignorant judgments, which is why I've said all this now.

Thanks to Brad DeLong, I hear that Gregg Easterbrook, author of the right wing's favorite environmental tract, A Moment on the Earth, has used his New Republic Online column to trash not only Hawking, but both astronomy and physics in general. DeLong does a good demolition job on the fool here, but I wanted to add some of my own comments.

Easterbrook variously describes Hawking's work as "saying kooky things," "mumbo-jumbo," "claptrap," and "considerable nonsense," adding that in general, "physicists have the status once held by medieval priests." Of course, the fact that a lot of Hawking's work has been validated by others and the whole business operates on the very far edges of our comprehension of the universe doesn't phase him. He doesn't get it, so it must be nonsense. Valid science = Gregg Easterbrook's level of understanding.

In which case, we're in a lot of trouble. To show just how low his level of understanding is, he goes on to mock the Big Bang theory because it "don't do especially well on the common-sense test." Hell, I don't think a gyroscope does well on the common-sense test, but that doesn't keep us from using them in all sorts of ways. His contempt is based on the statement that physics can't definitively answer the question of what came "before" the Big Bang. True, it can't - some say there simply was no "before" or at least it's meaningless to talk about a before; others say that yes, there was a before in the sense there was the quantum vacuum, a state of potential without existence in which it's meaningless to talk of time because these was no change (careful of that headache); still others say that "before" in the quantum vacuum was much as today, seething with "virtual particles" popping into and out of existence, so in a way you could talk about time; others say our universe is simply an outgrowth of a previous state so time did not start with the Big Bang; others.... You get the idea. Since it's all based on mathematical models with an enormous number of possible solutions and we don't currently have the technology to test the predictions, no, science can't say what came "before" - if anything did. (We might have the ability to test at least some ideas within the decade, however.)

But notice that important phrase "test the predictions." What makes for a solid scientific hypothesis is not only that it explains observed phenomena but that it makes predictions about future observations. That is, it provides a means by which it can be tested. Once a hypothesis is confirmed by observation, it can take on the respected title of "Theory." The Big Bang - more specifically, the Inflationary Model of the Big Bang - is a theory. It has explained observations, accurately predicted later findings, and has stood up to challenge. Easterbrook may choose to disbelieve it, but the fact is, it works. And until and unless someone comes up with something that works better, it will remain a linchpin of astronomy, its separation from "common sense" be damned as wholly irrelevant.

You want to get removed from "common sense?" Try this: force from nothing. Literally. Nothing. It's called the Casimir Effect and it has been experimentally demonstrated. Hang two facing mirrors very close to each other in a vacuum and you will find they move toward each other as if they were attracted. Where does the force come from? From the quantum vacuum. All fields have variations, none are absolutely stable. These quantum-level variations can be described as "virtual particles" popping into and out of existence. But such a particle will have a specific electromagnetic wavelength associated with it and can only exist if the space allows for an integer multiple of that.

Huh?

Okay, try it this way. Imagine you have a tube 1" across and 10" long. You also have a supply of dowels that are a fraction under 1" across (so they'll slip into the tube) but of varying length. You want to exactly fill the tube with dowels of the same length. You can do that if the dowels are 1/2" long or 2" or 5" or any other number evenly divisible into 10 - but you can't do it with dowels that are 3" or 4" long. Likening it to subatomic particles, we could say that a particle of wavelength 2" could exist in the tube (there would be five of them) But one of 4" can't (because you can't have 2.5 particles, only whole ones).

In the Casimir effect, what happens in essence is that when the mirrors are close together, enough wavelengths are excluded that the pressure from the virtual particles striking the backs of the mirrors exceeds that of those striking their faces (because there are so many more of them) to a degree sufficient to be observed as a force. And thus you have an observable force generated from nothing. How's that for failing the common-sense test, Gregg? And again, this is something that has been repeatedly demonstrated and in fact is being studied because of its possible effect on nanotechnology.

But to show just how childish Easterbrook's understanding really is, consider his discussion of gravity under Einstein, which I'll have to quote for you to get the full effect.

Einstein speculated that the mass of every object causes space-time to curve, and then less massive objects roll downward on the curvature, and that's where gravity comes from. But wait, even if space is curved by mass, why do objects roll down the curvature - what pulls them? Your guess is as good as the next PhD's.

Isaac Newton had developed a working theory of gravity that involves bodies pulling on each other with a force related to their masses and the distance between them. It worked well enough to explain the motion of bodies on the Earth, as well as the motions of the planets. (It still works well enough for applications up to and including space shots.) But Einstein realized that as velocity increased in accelerated systems (i.e., ones in which things are not moving at constant speeds in straight lines - in other words, the real world), Newton's predictions break down - so he searched for an underlying principle that would encompass but reach beyond Newton. It became his General Theory of Relativity, otherwise referred to as his theory of gravity.

Put as simply as possible, Einstein argued first that space and time are not separate entities but are linked. That is, instead of there being three dimensions of space and one of time, there is four-dimensional spacetime. He further argued that spacetime is warped by the presence of mass, and the greater the mass, the greater the warping. Masses moving through spacetime in the straightest lines possible would tend to follow the warps, with smaller warps causing less acceleration (change in motion) than bigger warps - so objects of lesser mass would tend to move toward objects of greater mass. Gravity, then, becomes an artifact of the warping of four-dimensional spacetime in the presence of mass.

Right.

Okay, here's a common way of trying to imagine this. Picture a sheet of rubber stretched out flat and suspended in the air. Now drop steel balls of various sizes and weights on the sheet, making depressions of various depths. In this simplified model, the smaller, less massive balls will tend to roll down into the deeper depressions of the larger, more massive balls.

But wait, what does that sound like? Yes! Like Easterbrook's description of the theory! What our genius has done is to equate a two-dimensional model with actual four-dimensional spacetime - that is, he has equated a simplified picture of a complex principle with the principle itself! For someone struggling to understand a difficult idea, that's understandable and forgivable. For someone who presents himself as a science writer, it's a bonehead blunder that undermines any remaining claim he may have tried to lay to credibility.

He may not know black holes, but he is certainly some kind of hole.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Genesis?

JEOPARDY!
Rock "G"roups for $1000

Shirley Manson's group got its name when one of the members commented that its music sounded like this.

Shhh! Part 2

Privacy. How long before it's an alien concept, a quaint reminder of "simpler" times? I'm sure a lot of us recall the descriptions in 1984 of the cameras in every room, watching people all the time - or at least reminding them that they might be being watched, they never knew. Now such cameras, while not (yet) in our homes, surround us. We are recorded at the bank, tracked in the supermarket, scanned as we pass by corporate offices, scrutinized at government facilities. We are observed, measured, tabulated, indexed, and filed.

All the while being told the audacious lie that it's for our own benefit. No, it's not for our benefit at all. So following over the next few days, several items about some aspect of privacy. Who has it and who doesn't.

This time, what happens economically when you lose it. It's called identify theft and it's sloppily and selfishly aided and abetted by corporations and government agencies more interested in their own power and benefit than the public's. USA Today said in mid-July that

CNET's News.com noted just how much identity theft has grown. "Though solid numbers are hard to come by, identity fraud has been called the fastest-growing crime in the United States, affecting millions of Americans at a cost of billions of dollars a year. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that 10 million Americans become victims of identity fraud a year, while researcher Gartner places the annual number at around 7 million," the article said. "The Social Security Administration says reports of misuse of Social Security numbers have leaped from about 11,000 in 1998 to 65,000 in the 2001 fiscal year.

Jane Black, who's had a biweekly column on privacy issues in Business Week, wrote last year

[i]dentity theft skyrocketed 81% in 2002, a statistic so shocking that it seemed unreal - until it happened to my sister. Last weekend, she had her wallet pinched. Within six hours, the thieves, clearly professionals, had charged $5,000 to each of her credit cards and wiped out much of her bank account by using her debit card to "purchase" limousine services from a nonexistent company. ...

My sister immediately put a fraud alert on her account with the credit bureaus to prevent anyone from opening new lines of credit. But experts say she'll still have to check her accounts monthly for the next several years. And many credit companies don't always perform every check before issuing new cards. Despite the alert, if criminals do obtain a new line of credit, the onus is on her to prove it was identity theft.

And now, a CNN report for August 3 says that a

2003 study for the Federal Trade Commission determined that in the previous year, 3.2 million Americans' personal information had been stolen by thieves who opened new accounts or loans. On average, victims lost $1,180 and spent 60 hours resolving the problem.

In response to the growing problem and associated outcry, a new law enacted in July

toughens penalties against identity thieves. Congress passed the legislation "in response to evidence that the problem is growing rapidly as more Americans use the Internet to shop and manage their personal finances. The Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act adds two years to prison sentences for criminals convicted of using stolen credit card numbers and other personal data to commit crimes. Violators who use that data to commit 'terrorist offenses' would get five extra years," washingtonpost.com reported.

The law, however, is little more that a PR stunt and will be largely ineffective. Heightened penalties for identity theft will be of little use when the opportunities continue to be so great. What it really does is get government and corporations off the hook by appearing to do something while still leaving consumers twisting in the wind, subject to ever-more common and intrusive demands for personal information from those same corporations and government agencies. As Robert Vamosi, a senior editor at CNET recognized more than a year ago,

there's a mistaken impression that identity theft is carried out merely by rogue hackers.

That's not the case. If your credit history is stolen from a database, the thief is less likely to be a hacker than to be an employee of the company that owns the database.

And Black has noted how our social security numbers, which she accurately describes as "gold mines for thieves," are plastered all over documents we routinely carry with us - and in some cases actively urged to do so.

[T]he numbers are widely used as ID and passwords by banks, brokers, even the IRS. ...

The incident [with my sister] prompted me, as well as my friends and colleagues, to open our wallets. Each of us found at least one piece of ID, and sometimes as many as three, with our Social Security numbers printed in plain sight. Health-insurance and prescription-drug cards were the worst offenders. Mandates that we carry these cards are the equivalent of forcing us to walk around with thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry. ...

So why do health plans, among others, continue to put people at risk? "It's a lazy way for companies to assign customer ID numbers because the Social Security number is easy for people to remember," says Beth Givens, executive director of the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "But by doing so, they are shamelessly putting people at risk."

(Full disclosure: Yes, my health cards have the SS# on them. For that reason, I have stopped carrying them unless I have cause to think I'll need them. And I am prepared to do full-bore legal battle with any hospital that tries to deny or limit treatment because I can't produce proof of insurance on demand.)

In a follow-up column, Black says

BW Online readers say the U.S. government is the worst offender. ...

Although the SSN was originally created in 1936 to track workers' earnings and eligibility for Social Security benefits, federal statutes today mandate that it's used for everything from issuing birth certificates, food stamps, and Medicaid, to identifying all military personnel and veterans. (Click here for a complete list of legal uses of the SSN.) [Link in original.]

Black notes that all military personnel and anyone in their family over the age of 10 is required to carry that SS#-containing ID at all times.

The USA Today story mentioned that

[t]he San Jose Mercury News today ran an editorial on the new law. "... The epidemic won't be stopped until the credit card and credit reporting industries beef up their safeguards to thwart identity thieves before they prey on innocent victims," the newspaper said.

Vamosi would go further:

I say the Federal Trade Commission should step in and mandate strict new policies regarding the handling of credit bureau information. Such rules might resemble the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which sets forth guidelines for the handling of medical information by health care providers, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which outlines privacy rules for customer information at financial institutions.

In addition, companies that access credit bureau reports should be held liable for any abuses and thus be encouraged to audit their employees' activities.

Of course, any such suggestion would be bitterly and vociferously opposed by the credit and financial industries who would bleat forth predictions of total economic doom should they be held liable for the security of the information with which they're entrusted. They even do their best to restrict the use of a so-called "security freeze" by the simple practice of never, ever, letting consumers know the possibility exists.

Consumers in four states - California, Texas, Louisiana, and Vermont - can "freeze" their credit reports, meaning no one can access them until they "unfreeze" them. They can be unfrozen for a particular purpose (for example, if a new landlord insists on a credit check, they - but no one else - can be given access) or for a specified time (say maybe, a week if you're shopping for a car), at the consumer's discretion. The downside is that there's a fee charged for each freeze and unfreeze but the upside is that at least theoretically, without not only your other personal information but also a PIN number, no one can obtain credit in your name.

Very few people have made use of the option largely because almost no one knows about it and the credit bureaus have fought freezes as "draconian," insisting against all evidence that current protections are sufficient.

Still, some progress is being made. In California, a law went into effect on January 1

that requires all corporations to remove Social Security numbers from ID cards. It also mandates that they be removed from correspondence and forbids companies requiring people to transmit a Social Security number over the Internet unless the connection is secure or the number is encrypted.

And another law in California

could have broad consequences when it goes into effect on July 1. Called SB 1386, the legislation requires all companies - even if they're not located in California - to notify their California-based customers of any security breach involving those customers' personal information.

And last year, IBM, declaring it shared its employees' concerns about identity theft and privacy protection, notified health insurance companies with which it had contracts that unless social security numbers were no longer printed on cards issued to their employees, the company would no longer do business with them.

But welcome as all these efforts are - and as welcome as Vamosi's proposal to actually make the companies liable for their own security failures is - they fall far short of what's needed. First because they exempt the biggest offender: the government. (Following the link above to the list of changes over time in what SS#s are used for, it was bitterly amusing to note how many times there was some declaration against a national ID card even as more and more of what we do became tied to that one number.)

What's more, they are all more or less after-the-fact approaches, addressing security of data after it's been collected. What we should be doing is focusing on the collection. Corporations and government should be required to demonstrate the need - not the desire or the convenience, the need - for any information requested. As a direct result of that, no private organization or business, no state or local government, would be allowed to demand or even ask for your social security number unless it was required by federal law to supply it to some federal agency. And we should look at those reporting requirements to see how many of those are necessary and how many of them are, again, simply convenience. Unless a convincing case for necessity can be made, out it goes.

Oh, the howling would be deafening and the sermons of impending doom of all we hold dear would darken the skies. But if we're to be serious about privacy, it's the only way to go.

Important footnote to the preceding

This is something I've been thinking about for a little while and I want to throw it out there: Is there anyone among you who would be interested in making this a team blog?

I'm serious. My intent is not to take any "burden" off myself; I would intend to continue posting as I have been. But a second poster could increase not only the number of posts but the range of topics covered, making this a more useful undertaking for readers while increasing (hopefully significantly) its audience at the same time.

There would be certain requirements. First, we would have to be generally on the same page politically. Not that we would never disagree or have differing interpretations of events or their significance, but we should lie on at least roughly the same part of the political spectrum. I've no desire to see this become a "he said, she said," "point-counterpoint" place.

The other is technical. To be blunt, I've seen too many blogs full of garbled writing and fractured links, rife with typos. While I'm hardly guiltless of any of those faults, I make conscious efforts to avoid them, including re-reading things before I post them to look for garbled syntax (my biggest crime), spell-checking every post, and reviewing links to make sure they actually go somewhere. I would want you to do the same.

If you think you'd be interested, either email me or post a comment here and we'll "talk" - actually, email - about it.

While we sleep

So many things happen, so much goes on, and it's impossible to keep up with it all. It's frustrating and sometimes depressing. Here's an example.

From the August 2004 issue of the American Journal of Nursing (AJN), I learned of H.R.3722, the proposed Undocumented Alien Emergency Medical Assistance Amendments to last year's Medicare deform bill. They were introduced in the House of Representatives by Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA).

This utterly reprehensible piece of trash would deny hospital emergency rooms federal reimbursement for the costs of treating uninsured undocumented workers unless the ER obtained from them personal information and biometric data and forwarded it to Homeland Security for the purpose of initiating deportation proceedings. More: It would empower hospitals to deny treatment altogether if it determined that such treatment could wait until the person was deported or if the expected cost exceeded $50,000.

This would, of course, intimidate both undocumented and documented immigrants - and even some citizens - from seeking needed assistance and put hospitals in the position of being immigration cops who would either have to obtain the information required from everyone who came through the door or, more likely, engage in blatant racial profiling.

I dove headfirst into Google, only to discover not only that this had been a topic of discussion among health care professionals and some blogs (the Google keywords "undocumented alien emergency medical assistance amendments" returned 4,000 hits) but that the final vote on the bill was on May 18 - more than two and a-half months ago - when it was demolished by a tally of 88 yeas to 331 nays. Even the Republicans turned away from it by a margin of 86-133.

(If you want to see if your rep is on the roster of shame that endorsed this exercise in nativist bigotry, the roll call is here.)

The thing is, even though this had a happy ending, it's still frustrating because here was something that was introduced, discussed, debated, and voted on - and I didn't even know it had happened until after the fact. Even then, it was only because it was pointed out to me.

I've said before that in this blog I try to pay a little more attention to the things I don't see getting a lot of attention at least among the Big Boys and Girls. But things like this make me wonder what else is going on out there of which I'm unaware, what other assaults on justice and decency are being undertaken that don't rise high enough to be picked up on the - or, more properly, my - political radar. What, that is, are they getting away with simply because we don't know about it until it's too late?

It's easy to feel overwhelmed at times and I fear I do now. I just have to keep reminding myself of the advice I've given to others: Just do what you can how you can, whatever and however much that is. Doing something, no matter how small, is better than doing nothing.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is the Grateful Dead?

JEOPARDY!
Rock "G"roups for $600

In 1970, Phil Collins became the drummer for this group after answering an ad in "Melody Maker."

Shhh! Part 1

Privacy. How long before it's an alien concept, a quaint reminder of "simpler" times? I'm sure a lot of us recall the descriptions in 1984 of the cameras in every room, watching people all the time - or at least reminding them that they might be being watched, they never knew. Now such cameras, while not (yet) in our homes, surround us. We are recorded at the bank, tracked in the supermarket, scanned as we pass by corporate offices, scrutinized at government facilities. We are observed, measured, tabulated, indexed, and filed.

All the while being told the audacious lie that it's for our own benefit. No, it's not for our benefit at all. So following over the next few days, several items about some aspect of privacy. Who has it and who doesn't.

Certainly, in the face of corporations, we're expected not to.

[A]s banks move away from paper-based transactions, their customers increasingly are bumping into [a] problem. The checks they write become, instead, an electronic debit. And the practice is perfectly legal, unless accountholders object.

What does that passage from an article in the August 2 Christian Science Monitor mean? Simply that instead of actually sending the physical check you wrote to your bank for payment, the creditor will use your account number on the check to generate an electronic debit which is transmitted to your bank and which it in turn uses to pay the creditor by electronic transfer of funds to the creditor's account.

Worse, it and other industry measures that take effect this fall could boost checking-account fraud. ...

"These automatic deductions are obviously much more efficient for the bank and the creditor," says Mark Budnitz, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law and a board member of the National Consumer Law Center. "It saves them money but it also creates more opportunities for checking-account fraud."

Under federal law, creditors must disclose any automatic deductions to a customer's checking account. Electronic payments can be authorized by signing a form or attaching a voided check. But ... a creditor does not have to get written authorization from a consumer. Instead, it is up to the consumer to object (preferably in writing) to the proposed transaction.

That is, pay by check and the recipient of that check can potentially use your account number to access your account to demand payments of subsequent debts, be they real or phony - demands the bank will honor. The creditor does not have to obtain your permission before doing this or even tell you they are. Rather, it's up to you to object - assuming you even know about it beforehand.

Consumers have some protection against checking-account fraud in the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and the Uniform Commercial Code. For electronic debits, provided that you notify the bank right away, the bank typically is required to "recredit" your account with the missing funds - within 10 business days while it investigates.

To which I say, BFD. Notification should not have to be "right away," which simply gives the banks an incentive to hope you don't notice questionable transactions. The amount should be credited immediately upon a complaint, not "within 10 days." And the situation should never arise in the first place because such automatic deductions should exist only when a consumer specifically opts into them and banks should not be allowed to honor such a transaction without proof of the consumer's agreement. And if that's inconvenient for the corporations and banks, too damn bad.

Consumer advocates warn that you can expect even more incidents of checking-account fraud with the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act or "Check 21," slated to take effect Oct. 28. The new law represents a death knell for the process of banks returning original checks to consumers with their monthly statements or even when there is a problem with a particular check. Instead, if consumers want to inspect checks for forgeries or alterations or to present a canceled check as proof of payment, they usually will have to be content with a new payment instrument called a "substitute check" (based on a digital image of the original check).

Once again putting the risk and the burden on consumers for the convenience and benefit of the banks. It's so bad that even the check processing industry is concerned about the increasing risk of fraud.

NACHA, the electronic payments association, based in Herndon, Va., recommends on its website that consumers protect their checking account.

"It's fine to use your checking account information on the Web or over the phone to pay bills or to pay companies you know and trust," says Michael Herd of NACHA. "But you should safeguard your checking-account information, just as you would your address, phone number, Social Security number, and other account numbers."

And just how the hell are we supposed to do that when the account number is on every check we write? When we can't cash or often even deposit a check without having our account number or other personally-identifying information put on the back (which, at least for now, gives it right back to whoever wrote the check to us)? How are we supposed to guard our social security number when federal law requires it be given in order to open a bank account, obtain a credit card, get a job? When it's being used to ID everything from driver's licenses to medical records to credit reports? How are we to protect our privacy when every single day there are demands that we surrender it in order to do what should be normal transactions of daily life? Who is kidding who here?

"If you are unsure about the merchant, never use a check - use a credit card instead," says George Thomas, president of the Electronic Payments Network, a division of the Clearinghouse, the largest private check processing system, owned by many of the nation's largest banks. "That way, you can avoid the possibility of checking-account fraud down the road."

Screw that. Use cash.

But even using cash isn't good enough to protect you from the clutches of those who think of you as just a mass of data to be manipulated for profit. Consider RFID tags. I've mentioned these suckers before but the Electronic Privacy Information Center sums it up well.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a type of automatic identification system. The purpose of an RFID system is to enable data to be transmitted by a portable device, called a tag, which is read by an RFID reader and processed according to the needs of a particular application. The data transmitted by the tag may provide identification or location information, or specifics about the product tagged, such as price, color, date of purchase, etc. ... As the technology is refined, more pervasive — and invasive — uses for RFID tags are in the works.

Right now, the tags are primarily used on pallets as inventory controls, which does not present a privacy issue. They're not widely used in consumer products because the price of the tags, about 30 cents each, when combined with the cost of the readers, which can go for $1000 each, simply isn't worth it. But as advancing technology and economies of scale combine to bring the price down, the use of them can be expected to multiply.

Already, developments in RFID technology are yielding systems with larger memory capacities, wider reading ranges, and faster processing. In response, the market for RFID tags is growing explosively, projected to reach $10 billion annually within the decade.

The potential for privacy invasions and the development of extensive databases of individual behavior is enormous. The tags can easily be hidden inside bottle caps, underneath clothing labels, between layers of packaging, inside handles, and a host of other places where consumers will not even know they exist. Those "customer loyalty cards" all stores (or so it seems) are using for the "Special Discounts!" that used to be available to everyone are an obvious place for them.

Some have raised the vision of the chips becoming so ubiquitous that the databases collecting the information could keep track not only of what you buy but where it is in your house, when you move it somewhere else, when you use it, and for how long. Because the transponders can only broadcast over a range of about 15 feet (although one claims a range of 66 feet), that's not a realistic scenario without a dramatic increase in their power. Some have suggested that the readers could become as common as the chips, including being placed in newly-constructed apartments and homes, enabling just such data collection. That, however, doesn't seem very cost-effective without, again, dramatic improvements in the technology and drastic reduction in cost. A likelier possibility is more powerful transponders, able to transmit, say, 100 yards (about 90 meters), coupled with mobile readers - which could allow a van with a reader to pass through a neighborhood, gathering information about most of the people there.

Here's another scenario which is even more realistic; in fact, it's within reach of the current technology. You enter a store. A reader in the doorway gathers the information from the chips in your clothing - and instantly a clerk in the store with access to the readout knows everything you have on, where you bought it, when you bought it, and how much you paid for it. They know about the chip-holding Chapstick and the package of gum in your pocket or purse. If you have one of their customer cards, they have access to your entire purchasing history there.

And how is all this data going to be used? Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) provided an answer during a presentation to a June 21, 2004 FTC workshop on RFID technology. The group cited an article on CRM - "customer relationship management" - written by Marty Abrams, Executive Director of the Center for Information Policy Leadership, a project of the hotshot lawfirm Hunton & Williams. And if you think CRM means that you are something to be "managed" for the benefit of the corporation, you're exactly right.

At the most macro level, [Abrams wrote,] CRM is the process of using information technology and statistics to maximize a company's relationship with every current and potential customer. Maximization in some cases means providing while-glove service and pricing that expands the firm's share of that customer's wallet.

In other cases, it means marginal service and high prices designed to drive the unattractive consumer somewhere else. A critic of targeting - which I am not - might refer to this as digital redlining.

The privacy implications are so great that, just as in the check business, the industry is aware of the risk. In this case, however, the result is not to warn but to spin. EPIC notes that CASPIAN

located internal public relations documents which detail how RFID developers plan to offset public opposition to the technology. The documents, prepared by Fleishman-Hillard, a communications consultancy, suggest that RFID industry leaders are planning a public relations campaign designed to counter opposition to the pervasive use of RFID technology.

In its FTC presentation, CASPIAN said the plan was to "pacify consumers, convey [the] inevitability of RFID, [and] rely on consumer apathy." (The organization where the documents were found, the Auto-ID Center, closed up shop last October, declaring it had "completed its work," and transferred its technology to EPCglobal. That website says it has the archives of the Auto-ID Center, but I didn't find this particular document there, not that I was surprised by that. However, you can still find the documents at a mirrored site; the links can be found here. The Auto-ID Center lives on as Auto-ID Labs, a group of six universities around the world doing research on auto ID systems.)

Give EPIC the last word on the subject:

As RFID technology becomes more advanced, consumers may ultimately lose all ability to evade products implanted with chips. Corning researchers have developed tiny, barcoded beads that are invisible to the human eye. The microscopic beads can be embedded in inks to tag currency and other documents, and even attached to DNA molecules. ... Researchers say the technology could be ready for commercial use in three to six years.

Some technology already can't be evaded. Another point CASPIAN makes is that a number of stores are already using tracking technology to follow and record your movements on their premises, following where you go, how fast you go, where you stop, and for how long. One outfit, Sorensen Associates, already has contracts with over 80 stores plus colleges and day care centers across the country.

There are efforts to resist this trend. EPIC and CASPIAN are good places to start. And it may be possible to stop it altogether. Business Week for March 5 said

[w]hatever the motivation, it's clear that industry is finally getting the message: RFID is fine for pallets of goods in a warehouse, but not for people. In an age of ubiquitous surveillance cameras, government tracking systems, and biometrics, consumers dislike the idea that they can be tracked via packages of cream cheese, razor blades, and shampoo.

State legislators share this dislike, too. On Feb. 24, the Utah House of Representatives passed a bill mandating clear labeling of any product in which an RFID chip is embedded. A bill introduced on Feb. 27 in the California Senate goes further, arguing that retailers should need consumers' permission. ...

The proposal is sponsored by Sen. Deborah Bowen (D-Redondo Beach), a long-time privacy activist.... The new bill requires any business or state agency that uses an RFID system to track products and people to follow three rules. First, tell people that RFID is tracking and collecting information about them. Second, get express consent from customers before doing that. Third, detach or destroy tags before the customer leaves the store.

Katherine Albrecht, director of CASPIAN, says that business is coming to the point of accepting that RFID chips must be "killed" (deactivated) at the point of purchase. (There are those - count me among them - who argue that killing the chip isn't enough because as consumers we have no way of knowing if it actually was deactivated or not and we should not be - and must not accept being - in the position of having to blindly trust the merchants. Detach and dispose! Nothing short of that is acceptable.) The next big battle will be what happens inside the store: Who owns that information?

Legally, it belongs to the store. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled time and again that individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public venues. That's why RFID detractors such as Albrecht say they're prepared to use their buying power to stop practices, such as covert tracking of shoppers, which they consider anticonsumer.

The issue of that reasonable expectation of privacy needs to be joined directly. It was developed at a time when that lack of privacy involved being in a situation where you could be observed by human faculties, perhaps enhanced by basic technology such as binoculars or even a camera. But RFID technology promises to not only observe but make a permanent record of your behavior, including, potentially, things which are invisible to a human observer. Can we as a people safely accept the notion that our reasonable expectation of privacy reaches only to those areas which cannot at that moment be reached by our most advanced technology? If not, a line must be drawn. And I say draw it at the warehouse.

The shortest distance between two pointed heads is a straight deregulation

Back on February 1, I noted that the EPA was pretty much ignoring the requirement of the Endangered Species Act that it consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service on the potential effect on plants and wildlife before approving new pesticides. The solution offered was to eliminate the requirement.

Via The Hamster, we learn that's now exactly what's been done.

Interestingly, the changes were proposed after

a Washington judge ruled in January that farmers could not use nearly 40 pesticides around salmon-bearing streams because the federal and independent data showed the agents posed a threat to several kinds of salmon.

And it will go into force despite the fact that

several groups made public a National Marine Fisheries Service letter from April concluding that EPA did not use the best available science when it determined 28 common pesticides would not injure threatened and endangered salmon.

But who cares when we're "streamlining the bureaucracy?"

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Ford's Theater?

JEOPARDY!
Rock "G"roups for $200

Albums from this group include "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been" and "Terrapin Station."

Nobody expects....

Consider it another example of why freedom of religion must include freedom from religion.

The Toronto Star for Sunday reports that

[t]he Vatican issued a letter yesterday attacking the "distortions" and "lethal effects" of feminism, which it defined as an effort to erase differences between men and women — a goal, the statement said, that undermines the "natural two-parent structure" of the family and makes "homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent."

The source was a 37-page letter written by reactionary Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a chief adviser to Pope John Paul II. Ratzinger, who has his own fan club - I am not joking - heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which the Vatican's website says is intended to "spread sound doctrine and defend those points of Christian tradition which seem in danger because of new and unacceptable doctrines."

Founded in 1542 by Pope Paul III with the Constitution "Licet ab initio," the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was originally called the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition as its duty was to defend the Church from heresy.

In other words, these are the people who brought you the Inquisition. Of course, now they do it in a "collegial fashion." Including squelching liberation theology, punishing moves to ecumenism (because they fail to accept the primacy of Catholicism), controlling diocese budgets, transferring dissenting clergy, excommunication, and trying to deny disfavored Catholics the sacraments of their faith: Ratzinger was behind the attempt to bar John Kerry from receiving communion.

Showing the continued connection to the real world of Ratzinger's minions, Suzanne Scorsone, spokesperson for Archbishop Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic of Toronto's Roman Catholic church, said

"most people in the West ... would agree with the principle" that human rights for men and women should be equal. But, she said there is other more extreme thinking stemming from feminism that, as the document states, isn't necessary. ...

"Somewhere down the line, the thinking became a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. The thinking became that male and female relationships became all about the domination of one of the other. For women to get married was like they wimped out."

She said that this way of thinking could have been what led to many homosexual relationships.

That's right, not only is feminism "lethal," it - gasp! - causes homosexuality! And we all know how evil that is, yes? It's almost as evil as feminism! Or maybe even more! Or - well, anyway, they're both really, really bad!

Here we go again

Sometimes I think that the repeated "warnings" of vague "nonspecific" threats of terrorist attack are actually just bureaucratic CYA, with the Department of the Security of the Fatherland just throwing out anything it gets so that when and if an attack actually does occur, no one can point any fingers at the agency.

The rest of the time, though, I think the timing of the alerts is just too damned convenient. A few weeks before the DNC, we get warnings about dangers facing Boston and the media, resulting in clampdowns on protest and acceptance of wholesale violations of the 4th Amendment. Now, a few weeks before the RNC, which will face bigger protests, we get bigger, scarier warnings.

Security at financial sites in New York City, northern New Jersey and Washington, D.C., increased significantly Sunday after the Department of Homeland Security raised the terror threat level for those areas to orange, or high.

"Alarming" intelligence from multiple sources indicates that al Qaeda terrorists could be poised to strike financial institutions, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said.

The potential targets include the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington, Prudential Plaza in Newark, New Jersey, and the Citigroup Building and New York Stock Exchange in New York.

The information apparently comes from computer files of a suspected al-Qaeda operative taken in Pakistan earlier this month. Documents and emails indicated there had been careful and extensive surveillance undertaken of several "iconic" buildings involved in finance.

However, Ridge was forced to admit that there is no time frame on the supposed threats.

Raising the threat level in specific areas will make the buildings more secure and the people in them more aware, Ridge said.

But he said the intelligence lacked specific information about when the strikes might occur and did not indicate whether they were imminent.

Meanwhile, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

said the targets could be a deliberate attempt by terrorists to deceive authorities into focusing their resources on the targets, thereby leaving other targets vulnerable to attack.

He said it was not clear when the information was gathered.

"Some of this information could have been collected over the last few years," he said.

That is, to be particular, what we actually have at most is information that al-Qaeda people were at some point casing the buildings. But we don't know when such an attack is planned. We don't know if one is planned. Indeed, we don't even know when the surveillance was done. A US counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP that

the scouting was going on before and after Sept. 11, 2001, but it's unclear how recently.

Even so, Ridge declared, "we don't have the luxury of guessing." So

[i]n New York, police stopped trucks and vans at toll booths.

Authorities banned commercial traffic from using the Holland Tunnel to travel from New Jersey into Lower Manhattan, and rerouted it to the Lincoln Tunnel and George Washington Bridge, which cross the Hudson River farther north of the financial district.

Officers with rifles and body armor patrolled the financial district.

What's more,

Police sealed off some streets in New York, put international-finance employees in Washington through extra security checks, and added barricades and a heavy armed presence in Newark, N.J., in response to a heightened terrorism alert aimed specifically at titans of the financial sector. ...

New York police closed several streets in midtown Manhattan....

In Newark, police set up metal fences surrounding the Prudential Plaza building, blocked off two city streets and toted assault rifles.

All of this, remember, is being done based on a supposed threat with no time frame. So are these "added measures" to remain in place forever? Or are we going to find the once the Republican convention, having gorged itself on how "secure" George "We are a nation in danger" Bushleague is going to make us, is safely past and the post-convention bounce secured, that we can relax a little while Still Remaining Vigilant? At one time, the NYPD was raising the possibility of wanting to have the authority to search everyone who came to the planned demonstrations. Is that going to be revived? Are the delegates' sensitive souls going to be even more insulated from dissent than already intended?

Are the warnings real? Are they legitimate? Quite frankly, it's impossible to tell. But the timing of the announcements damn well smells like nine-day old fish, and I’m certainly not the only one who’s gotten a whiff.

In an interview on CNN's "Late Edition," [Howard] Dean said he was "concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism."

"His whole campaign is based on the notion that 'I can keep you safe, therefore, in times of difficulty in America, stick with me,'" Dean said.

"It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there's some of both,"

CNN says. That was, of course, immediately denounced as "most cynical" by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Senate majority whip, an opinion eagerly seconded by Tail-gunner Joe Lieberman, who insisted that no one "who has any fairness or is in their right mind" could possibly even imagine such a thing. The very idea!

Certainly, any such idea must be banned from the mainstream of right-thinking people, and McConnell, a reactionary ideologue happily doing the bidding of his political masters, is more than willing to do his part. As for Lieberman, I'm not sure if he secretly dreams of being Zell Miller but knows he couldn't pull that off in Connecticut or if he's just that big of an asshole.

Not that those are mutually exclusive.

Footnote: The UK, which was also given warnings based on the seized documents and computer files, was rather less impressed.

The Home Office in London, which is responsible for policing and security in Britain, said it didn't believe the computer seizure revealed a "specific threat" or that the British public needed to take any specific action as a result.

The department said the threat from terrorism is "real and serious" but it added and that its position was unchanged in the wake of the developments in Pakistan.

Then again, Tony Blair is not in a tight race for re-election.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Russell Johnson?

FINAL JEOPARDY!
National Historic Sites

This national historic site was reopened as a theater in 1968 after 103 years.

And speaking of slimebag GOPpers

It seems that

Florida Republicans are sending a mixed message about touchscreen voting technology.

Gov. Jeb Bush has been trying to reassure Floridians that touchscreen voting machines are reliable, but the Republican Party is urging some Miami voters to use absentee ballots because touchscreens lack a paper trail and can't verify a vote.

No, there's no mixed message at all. It's just an indication of whose votes they want to make sure get counted - and whose they don't.

Buzzflash has a picture of the flyer here.

Speaking of conventions and therefore elections

Haaretz (Israel) tells us on July 26 that

IDF Military Intelligence chief Major General Aharon Ze'evi said Sunday that Arafat is biding his time until November, in hopes that U.S. President George W. Bush will lose his bid for re-election and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government will fall by then, Army Radio reported.

Great. We've already seen the "Kerry is bin Laden's Man" bumper stickers, how long now before we see the "Kerry is Arafat's Man" ones?

Speaking of conventions

An AP report for July 31 informs us that security planners for the Republican Convention in New York are "learning from the Democrats' experience in Boston." It includes this:

The first night, delegates heading into the FleetCenter for the start of the Democratic National Convention had to navigate a crowd of singing protesters, libertarians with bullhorns and demonstrators handing out Christian leaflets.

The unexpected influx, with no fence to separate protesters from delegates, added distraction and delay for officials who had carefully scripted so much of the convention's security.

This was described as a "hitch," a "mistake," an "unfortunate mistake," and an "example of the difficulty that convention organizers have had."

Absolutely! Demonstrators actually being able to approach delegates? Outrageous! We can't have this!

Footnote: RNCnotwelcome.orgis coordinating events around the RNC. Be there.

Speaking of the DNC

It seems I'm not the only one who thinks that circulation of "unconfirmed reports" by the FBI to the effect that domestic terrorists were planning to attack media vehicles with "explosives or incendiary devices" was intended to frighten media away from covering protests. James Ridgeway, writing in the July 29 Village Voice, says the same thing, even saying the FBI's Boston field office "faked" the threat.

Mark Potok, editor of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report, which tracks the far right, told Glynn Wilson of the serious-minded Southerner Daily News blog, "We have had no indication whatsoever, not an inkling, that there is any kind of violent action planned by the radical right in Boston. We follow these groups quite closely."

In fact, it would be out of keeping with such groups' histories to attack the media, which they would much rather use than drive away. (Which, I suppose, is pretty much true of all of us.)

Just FYI

If you were satisfied with neither the mass media's GOP-sourced coverage of the DNC nor the bloggers' collective drooling over everything Democrat, check out Democracy Now!'s archives of its coverage, which brought a generally-approving but still different perspective and managed - gasp - to have some coverage of what went on outside the hall.

I won't bother with links to each day, just go to the homepage and then to the archives.

Sunday! At Raceway Park!

Sunday, my more-or-less day off from blogging. But I have some time and a few things I think are of interest, so here they are.

First, let me mention that small updates have been made to this post as well as this one.

Footnote: If you know what the headline means, email me and we'll share some memories.