- Remember convicted felon and Bush administration official John Poindexter's 'Total Information Awareness' project? Well DHS is getting ready to roll-out its freshly scented version of TIA, a data management system that will be the fusion center of fusion centers, a one-stop-shop for spooks who want the dirt on us. DHS, naturally, wants to exempt its new database from the Privacy Act, which means it's full speed ahead to the bad future! Boo.
- And how will they fill that fancy new database? By spying on us without warrants, of course! Not only are we saddled with woefully inadequate protections due to the fact that electronic privacy law was written before the internet existed; not only must we live in a PATRIOT ACT America, wherein warrants look so 20th century: we now face the prospect of living with a wide-ranging so-called 'cyber security' bill that'll make it a lot easier for the government to suck up our online data to feed to the hungry hungry data beasts in the DHS, DOD, DOJ and increasingly, your local police station. EFF has the details. Public Intelligence's breakdown is also really worth reading.
- Public Intelligence has also published Facebook's law enforcement/subpoena guidelines.
- Testing is underway at the Georgia Tech Research Institute to program drones with face recognition technology, enabling the pilotless killing machines to spot targets, identify them using the facial mapping software, and then potentially, kill them on the spot.
- Airport officials at LAX and two other LA airports are rolling out a biometrics identification pilot program to replace the magnetic swipe cards now in use by airport employees. Now it's people who work at the airports. How long until it's those of us hoping to pass through them?
- For Indian citizens, that day is approaching rapidly. A government cabinet committee has announced that it plans to collect biometric information on every single Indian.
