Marci Kaptur North American Union Cintra

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A House Speech from Rep. Marcy Kaptor (D) from a couple years ago.

Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies: Ron Paul on The Emerging Surveillance State

Ron Paul
Free Market Man
April 7, 2008

Last month, the House amended the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to expand the government’s ability to monitor our private communications. This measure, if it becomes law, will result in more warrantless government surveillance of innocent American citizens.

Though some opponents claimed that the only controversial part of this legislation was its grant of immunity to telecommunications companies, there is much more to be wary of in the bill. In the House version, Title II, Section 801, extends immunity from prosecution of civil legal action to people and companies including any provider of an electronic communication service, any provider of a remote computing service, “any other communication service provider who has access to wire or electronic communications,” any “parent, subsidiary, affiliate, successor, or assignee” of such company, any “officer, employee, or agent” of any such company, and any “landlord, custodian, or other person who may be authorized or required to furnish assistance.” The Senate version goes even further by granting retroactive immunity to such entities that may have broken the law in the past.

The new FISA bill allows the federal government to compel many more types of companies and individuals to grant the government access to our communications without a warrant. The provisions in the legislation designed to protect Americans from warrantless surveillance are full of loopholes and ambiguities. There is no blanket prohibition against listening in on all American citizens without a warrant.

We have been told that this power to listen in on communications is legal and only targets terrorists. But if what these companies are being compelled to do is legal, why is it necessary to grant them immunity? If what they did in the past was legal and proper, why is it necessary to grant them retroactive immunity?

In communist East Germany , one in every 100 citizens was an informer for the dreaded secret police, the Stasi. They either volunteered or were compelled by their government to spy on their customers, their neighbors, their families, and their friends. When we think of the evil of totalitarianism, such networks of state spies are usually what comes to mind. Yet, with modern technology, what once took tens of thousands of informants can now be achieved by a few companies being coerced by the government to allow it to listen in to our communications. This surveillance is un-American.

We should remember that former New York governor Eliot Spitzer was brought down by a provision of the PATRIOT Act that required enhanced bank monitoring of certain types of financial transactions. Yet we were told that the PATRIOT Act was needed to catch terrorists, not philanderers. The extraordinary power the government has granted itself to look into our private lives can be used for many purposes unrelated to fighting terrorism. We can even see how expanded federal government surveillance power might be used to do away with political rivals.

The Fourth Amendment to our Constitution requires the government to have a warrant when it wishes to look into the private affairs of individuals. If we are to remain a free society we must defend our rights against any governmental attempt to undermine or bypass the Constitution.

US jobless figures: The specter of a new depression

David Walsh
Global Research
April 6, 2008

Friday’s Labor Department report, revealing that US payrolls were cut by 80,000 jobs in March and that 232,000 jobs have been lost in the past three months, can only mean new levels of social misery and raises the specter of a severe economic slump, perhaps the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The March decline in jobs is the largest in five years. The number of private sector jobs has dropped by 300,000 since November 2007.

Millions of Americans face the prospect of a sharp decline in living standards and conditions of life. Because of their commitment to the profit system, no section of the US political establishment—neither the Bush administration and the McCain campaign nor the Clinton and Obama camps—is capable of proposing any measures that will materially assist those seeing their jobs, homes nor social benefits disappear or devastated by the present developments.

The figures contained in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey are bleak. The number of those officially counted as jobless rose by 434,000 in March to 7.8 million. The unemployment rate rose from 4.8 to 5.1 percent (the highest since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005). In the past 12 months, 1.1 million people have been added to the jobless rolls and the official jobless rate has climbed by 0.7 percent.

The number of people unemployed because they lost jobs climbed to 4.2 million; that figure has grown by almost one million in a year.

The debacle in the housing, credit and financial sectors is leading to “a broad-based decline,” in the words of Moody’s economist Mark Zandi. March’s figures on jobs, said Zandi, indicated that the problem “wasn’t just housing and Wall Street. The problems in the housing market have now affected the rest of the economy.” (Los Angeles Times)

Construction continued to be hard hit, with a loss of 51,000 jobs in March. Construction employment is down 394,000 since its peak in September 2006. Most of the decrease in March, 42,000 jobs, took place among specialty trade contractors. Both residential and commercial construction employment declined. David Wyss of Standard and Poor’s told the Associated Press that the construction figures were “doubly troubling” because March is “the first good month you get on construction because seasonal factors aren’t as large as they are in January.”

Manufacturing jobs fell by 48,000 in March (the largest drop since October 2006) and 310,000 have been lost in the past 12 months. The biggest job losses have taken place in durable goods, where wages and benefits tend to be higher.

Construction-related industries, such as wood products (5,000 jobs), nonmetallic mineral products (5,000 jobs) and furniture and related products (also 5,000 jobs) all suffered. Plastics and rubber products and textile mills also lost jobs, according to the BLS.

Jobs in employment services fell by 42,000 in March and have decreased by 210,000 since August 2006. Twelve thousand jobs in retail trade were lost, including 9,000 in building material and garden supply stores.

The March employment figures were worse than analysts had predicted. Moreover, the unemployment numbers for January and February were revised upward, adding another 67,000 jobs lost. John Silvia, chief economist for Wachovia, told CNNMoney.com, “The revisions are the real surprise in the report. If we had known it was anything like that, there would not have been any debate going on about whether we were in a recession. It’s pretty stark.”

Other analysts chimed in with gloomy comments. “Another terrible report,” said Joseph Shapiro of MFR, Inc., an economic forecasting firm in New York. “Private payrolls now down for four consecutive months. Consumer spending outlook is grim, with wage and salary income growth fading fast and other headwinds as strong as ever… This economic slump is going to be a long, grinding one, and a ‘v-shaped’ recovery appears quite unlikely.”

Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics noted that the overall numbers were “significantly worse than expected … Trends are awful; unemployment will keep rising, squeezing spending.”

The Economic Policy Institute pointed out that for “the fifth month in a row, fewer than half of industries have added jobs, demonstrating the pervasive nature of job loss.”

The government’s jobless rate notoriously underestimates the actual number of people out of work. The BLS reports that the “total unemployed” rate, a somewhat more realistic gauge of the actual job situation, which includes those working part-time involuntarily and those who have given up looking for employment, stood at 9.1 percent in March 2008 (seasonally adjusted), some 13.9 million people, up from 8.0 a year earlier, an increase of 13.75 percent over 12 months.

At the same time, increases in workers’ wages are falling behind inflation. Over the course of the year, wages grew 3.6 percent, less than the inflation rate of approximately 4 percent. Furthermore, since weekly hours also slowed during the past 12 months, weekly earnings are only up 3.3 percent, markedly behind the rate of inflation.

For certain staple items, prices have risen far faster than 4 percent. Flour, milk and eggs were up 24 percent for the year ending in February, according to the Consumer Price Index. By March 30, American Automobile Association figures indicate, gasoline had risen to an average of $3.287 a gallon for regular unleaded, more than 61 cents (or 23 percent) above the price a year ago.

Associated Press economics writer Jeannine Aversa commented, “With lofty energy and food prices, workers may feel like their paychecks are shrinking.” This is, in fact, a mass experience, at the same time as Wall Street operators and corporate CEOs continue to rake in vast fortunes. These geniuses, who have proclaimed the wonders of the market for the past quarter-century, preside over the present disaster threatening wide layers of the population.

The process feeds on itself. Economic uncertainty and the loss of jobs lead to decreased purchases, which contribute to further layoffs. US auto sales fell sharply in the first three months of 2008, as domestic and foreign car companies combined to post one of the worst first quarters in years. US auto sales as a whole dropped 12 percent over the same quarter a year ago; General Motors sales were down 19 percent; Ford, 14 percent; Toyota, 10 percent and Honda, 3.2 percent.

The BLS reported Friday that auto jobs fell by 24,000 in March, in part because of the ongoing strike at American Axle in Detroit and western New York state; the average monthly decline in auto was 6,000 jobs per month in the year ending in February.

The day before the bureau issued its report, an influential member of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen of San Francisco, told an audience that the US economy has “slowed to a crawl” and said no improvement was likely until 2009 at the earliest.

Addressing a conference in Florida in mid-March, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, which dates business cycles in the US, remarked: “I believe the US economy is now in recession. Could this become the worst recession we have seen in the postwar period? I think the answer is yes. I would emphasize the word ‘could.’”

The assault on the working population goes beyond the growth in joblessness and inflation, as serious as they are. This “perfect storm” of an economic crisis means that the value of the only asset many people possess, their home, is dropping even as the job market shrinks and prices rise. Standard & Poor’s recently indicated that US home prices might decline as much as 20 percent by the end of 2008 from their peak in 2006.

The result is a flood of mortgage foreclosures, which rose to an all-time high at the end of 2007, the Mortgage Bankers Association revealed in a March 6 report. RealtyTrac reported at the end of March that 225,000 properties were in some stage of foreclosure, an increase of nearly 60 percent from the same period one year earlier.

The social consequences are appalling.

The increased number of empty houses for sale (now, in percentage terms, as high as at any time since 1956, when records were first kept) has led to an epidemic of break-ins aimed at stripping homes of pipes made of copper and other valuable metals. Reuters reported April 1, “In areas hit hardest by foreclosures, such as the Slavic Village neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, copper and other metals used in plumbing, heating systems and telephone lines are now more valuable than some homes.” A Cleveland city councilor, Tony Brancatelli, explained, “We’re seeing houses sold for $100 that are distressed houses that should not be recycled.”

Meanwhile the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, resulting in the deaths of countless Iraqis and Afghans, the killing and maiming of thousands of Americans and the draining of the US treasury to the eventual tune of trillions of dollars.

The lame-duck Bush administration barely goes through the motions in the face of alarming economic news. The Wall Street Journal noted acerbically Friday that, apart from tracking economic data and advising Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, “Treasury officials seem to have two clear missions: agree with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and don’t utter the word ‘recession.’”

A White House spokesperson indicated the administration was “not happy” with the jobs report and promised that the economy would pick up later in the year.

George W. Bush spent Friday evening with the president of Croatia, Stjepan Mesic, in Zagreb. Oblivious to popular suffering either in America or the Balkans, during the course of his toast to Mesic, Bush idiotically declared: “We believe there’s a Creator that has given every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth the great gift of freedom. We believe markets are capable of unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit of our peoples. We understand that freedom requires sacrifice.”

Even as this “entrepreneurial spirit” was wreaking havoc in the US and global economy, the various major party rivals for Bush’s office made clear they intend to do nothing to alleviate the economic distress of the broad mass of the population.

Presumptive Republican Party candidate for president, John McCain, promised more of the same “free market” policies that have led to the present calamity, declaring, “it is essential to reduce the burdens on businesses and workers by lowering taxes, streamlining regulation, tackling health care costs, opening markets to American goods and helping those workers in need.”

The Democrats sought to gain political advantage from the bad economic news, without offering any concrete plan for remedying the situation. New York Senator Hillary Clinton praised the $30 billion Bear Stearns bailout and urged “equally aggressive action to help American families struggling in our bearish economy.”

She again endorsed proposals being drafted by Democrats Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, aimed at averting an even deeper financial crisis and propping up the banks by ending the decline in home prices. The Frank-Dodd plan—which will not be enacted, in any event, due to Republican opposition—would aid only a fraction of the millions of families facing foreclosure.

Illinois Senator Barack Obama also criticized the Bush administration without offering a serious alternative. Both Clinton and Obama always have to make certain that they do not offend powerful financial and banking interests, on whose endorsements and funding they depend.

Obama said, “Instead of doing nothing for out-of-work Americans, we need a second stimulus that extends unemployment insurance and helps communities that have been hit hard by this recession. Instead of tolerating decades of rising inequality, we need to grow the middle class by investing in millions of new Green Jobs and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.” These vague promises, which will never be carried out, will not help anyone.

The leading Democrats are insulated from the day-to-day reality and sentiments of broad masses of people in the US and could not respond even if they were aware of them. They speak for one wing of the oligarchy that rules the country.

Meanwhile a radicalization is under way that will blow apart the two-party system and the entire political set-up in America. A poll whose results were published in the New York Times Friday provides a glimpse into the actual state of popular opinion. The newspaper reported that Americans “are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s.”

The survey found that 81 percent of respondents believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” an increase from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002. Only 21 percent of those surveyed said the overall economy was in good shape, and 78 percent felt that the US was in worse condition than 5 years ago. Only 28 percent approved of Bush’s performance.

The decline of the position of American capitalism in the world, its decisive loss of global hegemony, has the most profound implications. For wide layers of the population it means, in the first place, a series of severe shocks. In the end, this process must have revolutionary political consequences.

Police State Tactics: Tasering Pregnant Women and the Elderly

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
April 7, 2008

In George Lucas’ film THX 1138 (1970), the police in a futuristic state make citizens compliant by shocking them with “pain prods.” After seeing the movie, I remember thinking that if the police were ever allowed to use implements such as these, we would rapidly move into a police state. This has now happened with tasers.

Tasers are electro-shock weapons that are currently used by more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. Designed to cause instant incapacitation by delivering a 50,000-volt shock, tasers are hand-held electronic stun guns that fire two barbed darts. The darts, which usually remain attached to the gun by wires, deliver a high voltage shock and can penetrate up to two inches of clothing or skin. The darts can strike the subject from a distance of up to 35 feet, or the taser can be applied directly to the skin. Although a taser shot is capable of jamming the central nervous system for up to 30 seconds, it can disable the subject for even longer. And because tasers can be aimed anywhere on the body, they can immobilize someone more easily than pepper spray, which must be sprayed in the face.

Taser manufacturers and police agencies insist that tasers are a safer alternative to many conventional weapons typically used to restrain dangerous individuals. This may be true in situations where tasers are used as an alternative to other impact weapons that can cause serious injury, such as batons or lethal force. However, research shows that in many police departments, officers routinely use tasers primarily as a substitute for low-level force weapons such as pepper spray or chemical spray. Tasers have become a prevalent force tool, often used against individuals who pose no serious danger to themselves, the officers or others.

Amnesty International reports that in instances where tasers are used, 80% of the time they are used on unarmed suspects. In 36% of the cases, they are used for verbal non-compliance, but only 3% of the time for cases involving “deadly assault.”

Since 2001, over 300 cases indicate that tasers exacerbate health issues and accelerate death. In November 2003, a mentally disabled man was tasered by Georgia police a total of six times for violating a home detention order. Hours later, he died in jail.

Incredibly, police officers have tasered pregnant women, even when they are fully aware of their pregnancies. In 2001, Cindy Grippi was tasered in the back for entering her house against the instructions of police officers, despite the fact that she was not engaging in any truly disruptive or criminal behavior. As a result, Grippi fell onto her stomach and recounts that she “felt a sharp pain in her abdomen as the taser struck her.” Hours later, doctors diagnosed Grippi with “fetal demise,” and she delivered a stillborn child. Tianesha Robinson was tasered by police officers in 2006 for resisting arrest during a traffic stop. Days later, she suffered a miscarriage.

In Colorado, a man was repeatedly tasered in the genitals for “resisting” after being handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car. In 2003, an imprisoned African-American woman was asked to remove all her jewelry. When she asked for a mirror to help remove her eyebrow ring, she was pepper sprayed and tasered. The tasering caused her to “fall to the ground and lose control of her bladder. While on the ground, a male officer forcibly removed her eyebrow ring with pliers. She was left in her urine for several hours without being given anything to clean herself with.” In August 2007, a man was tasered while holding an infant–causing him to drop the child on its head.

Police using tasers are supposedly trained to press the trigger lightly to guarantee that the shock lasts no longer than five seconds. However, there are numerous cases in which police officers have continued to press down on their triggers in hopes of elongating the shot and maximizing pain. In other cases, police officers have continued to shock individuals repeatedly, despite the fact that the first shock achieved their goal of thoroughly immobilizing the target. In 2003, an elderly blind woman, who was also extremely hard of hearing, was struck by a taser three times for failing to respond to police officers. As a result of the taser shocks to her back and the pepper spray to her face, the woman’s prosthetic right eye was ultimately dislodged from its socket.

The use of tasers by police raises a number of concerns for the protection of human rights. Portable and easy to use, with the capacity to inflict severe pain at the push of a button without leaving substantial marks, tasers are obviously open to abuse by officers. Their use often violates standards set out under the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, which requires that force be used as a last resort and that only the minimum amount necessary be used.

Taser International, the company that manufactures and sells the stun guns, has sold them primarily to law enforcement agencies. The company has sold several hundred thousand to such agencies nationwide. However, since 1994, slightly less powerful tasers have been sold to the general public.

This development is truly alarming. Silent and instantly crippling, the taser is an ideal weapon for criminals to assist them in robbery, rape, abduction, etc. An attacker can now carry his own personal victim-paralyzing device, powerful enough to instantly incapacitate the victim and give the attacker complete control.

Tasers are also ripe for sadistic use. For example, in January 2008, a man in Albany, N.Y., was sentenced to 46 months in prison and 24 months of probation for using a 30,000-volt stun gun on his 18-month-old son during a game of peek-a-boo. He claimed that he “wanted his child to be tough…to be the toughest cage fighter ever.” It is impossible to remain untroubled by these words, as well as the image of a father purposefully torturing his defenseless child. The Social Services caseworker who investigated the situation said, “The look in the child’s eyes will not easily be forgotten.”

Clearly, the use of tasers should be suspended immediately–or at least until a comprehensive medical study can be conducted proving they are safe to the general public when used by police officers. And the police must by law be severely restricted in their use. Otherwise, we are opening the door for rampant abuse and police state tactics.

Petraeus Testimony Will Signal Iran Attack

Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House
April 6, 2008

Today the London Telegraph reported that “British officials gave warning yesterday that America’s commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian militiary facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment.”

The neocon lacky Petraeus has had his script written for him by Cheney, and Petraeus together with neocon warmonger Ryan Crocker, the US governor of the Green Zone in Baghdad, will present Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday with the lies, for which the road has been well paved by neocon propagandists such as Kimberly Kagan, that “the US must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq.”

Don’t expect Congress to do anything except to egg on the attack. On April 3 the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies totaling $196 million. Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is already on board with the attack on Iran. The London Telegraph quotes Skelton: “Iran is the bull in the china shop. In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi’ite groups, whether they be political or military.”

All Skelton knows is what the war criminal Bush regime tells him. If Iran really does have all these connections, then it behooves Washington to cease threatening Iran and to make nice with Iran in order to stabilize Iraq and extract the US from the nightmare.

Reporting from Tehran on April 4, Reuters quotes Mohsen Hakim, whose father, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, an ally of the Maliki US puppetgovernment in Iraq: “Tehran, by using its positive influence on the Iraqi nation, paved the way for the return of peace to Iraq and the new situation is the result of Iran’s efforts.”

Instead of thanking Iran and working with Iran diplomatically to restore stability to Iraq, the Bush regime intends to expand the nightmare with a military attack on Iran. Ryan Crocker was quick to dispute Hakim’s report that Iran had used its influence to end the fighting in Basra. Crocker alleged that Iran had started the fighting. The absurdity of Crocker’s claim is obvious as even the neocon US media reported that the fighting in Basra was started by the US and Maliki in an effort to clear out the Shi’ite al-Sadr militias. Most experts saw the attack on al-Sadr for what it was: an effort to remove a potential threat to the US supply line from Kuwait in the event of a US attack on Iran.

Crocker alleges that the rockets dropping on the Green Zone during the Basra fighting were made in 2007 in Iran. As should be obvious even to disengaged Americans, if Iran were to arm the Iraqi insurgency, the insurgents would have modern weapons to counter US helicopter gunships and heavy tanks. The insurgents have no such weapons. The neocon lie that Iran is the cause of the Iraqi insurgency is just another Bush regime lie like the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda and the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan attacked the US.

The Bush regime will tell any lie and orchestrate any event in order to “finish the job” in the Middle East.

“Finishing the job” means to destroy the ability of Iraq, Iran, and Syria to provide support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Syria might simply give up and become another American client state. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Israel can steal the rest of the West Bank along with the water resources in southern Lebanon. That is what “the war on terror” is really about.

The entire world knows this. Consequently, the US and Israel are essentially isolated. The US can only count on the support that it can bribe and pay for.

At the NATO-Russian summit in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, Russian President Putin said: “No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent.”

Of course it would, but that is not what the warmonger Bush regime wants.

Perhaps the British government has derailed the plot to attack Iran by leaking in advance to the London Telegraph the disinformation Cheney has prepared for Petraeus and Crocker to deliver to the complicit US Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday. On the other hand, the US puppet media is likely to bury the real story and to trumpet Petraeus claims that Iran has, in effect, already declared war on the US by sending weapons to kill US troops in Iraq.

By next Thursday we will know from how the Petraeus-Crocker dog and pony show plays in the US Congress and media whether the Bush Regime will commit yet another war crime by attacking Iran.

Big Brother’s Plan to Put RFID on Americans

Kristi Heim
Global Research
April 7, 2008

Some University of Washington students, faculty and staff are being tracked as they move about the computer-science building, with details of where they’ve been, and with whom, stored in a database.

Professor Gaetano Borriello checks a computer to find graduate student Evan Welbourne’s last location: on the fourth floor, outside room 452 at 10:38 a.m. Wednesday. He opens another screen to reveal the building’s floor plan, and a blinking green dot representing Welbourne shows him walking down the hall.

If it seems a bit like Big Brother, that’s the intention. The project is meant to explore both positive and negative aspects of a world saturated with technology that can monitor people and objects remotely.

"What we want to understand," Borriello said, "is what makes it useful, what makes it threatening and how to balance the two."

The technology, radio frequency identification, or RFID, is rapidly moving into the real world through a wide variety of applications: Washington state driver’s licenses, U.S. passports, clothing, payment cards, car keys and more.

The objects all have a tiny tag with a unique number that can be read from a distance. Many experts predict that the radio tags, as an enhanced replacement for bar codes, will soon become ubiquitous.

Leaders of the UW’s RFID Ecosystem project wanted to understand the implications of that shift before it happens. They’re conducting one of the largest experiments using wireless tags in a social setting.

"Our objective is to create a future world where RFID is everywhere and figure out problems we’ll run into before we get there," said Borriello, a computer science and engineering professor.

RFID has been used primarily to track goods in supply chains, and the RFID Ecosystem works as a kind of human warehouse.

For more than a year, a dozen researchers have carried around RFID tags equipped with tiny computer chips that store an identification number unique to each tag. Researchers installed about 200 antennas throughout the computer-science building that pick up any tag near them every second.

The researchers hope to expand the project, funded by the National Science Foundation, to include participation by about 50 volunteers — people who regularly use the building. Volunteers will have the option of removing their data at any point.

The system can show when people leave the office, when they return, how often they take breaks, where they go and who’s meeting with whom, Borriello said.

The technology seems less intrusive than a camera, but it’s much more precise.

It’s a lot easier to fool a camera with a blurred image or disguise. But the latest RFID tags contain a 96-bit code meant to uniquely identify an object or person.

Yet if people don’t see the tags, it’s easy to forget they are giving out information whenever they come within range of a reader.

"One of the most surprising things is how invisible these tags can be," said Welbourne, who stashed the paper-thin tags in his jacket and bag nine months ago and doesn’t always remember he’s carrying them. "It’s a risk for people. I built part of the system, and I’m caught off-guard."

Lessons learned

UW researchers are gaining some valuable lessons on how to make the technology useful while protecting privacy. Radio tags add a new dimension to social networking. The key is allowing subjects to control who sees what information about them.

They created an application called RFIDDER that lets people use data from radio tags to inform their social network where they are and what they’re doing. The feature can be used on the Web and on a mobile phone, with a connection to the social-networking service Twitter.

Borriello can let Welbourne, the project’s lead graduate student, see where he is all day, or he can modify settings so Welbourne can only see where he is within 15 minutes of their scheduled meeting. The system is transparent, so each can tell if the other has checked his whereabouts.

The lab’s Personal Digital Diary application detects and logs a person’s activities each day and uploads them to a Google calendar. Users can search the calendar to jog their memories about when they last saw someone or how, where and with whom they spent their time.

Potential pitfalls

Yet the UW researchers also recognize many potential privacy pitfalls.

Some systems, including new U.S. passports and driver’s licenses, have been designed to divulge more information than necessary, opening the door to security and privacy problems, Borriello said.

Experts from the UW RFID team went to Olympia to testify on privacy issues related to the state’s Enhanced Driver’s License.

"There’s no reason to have remotely readable technology in a driver’s license," Borriello said. He recommends a system that requires contact with the surface of a reader, so the license-holder knows when information on his license is being read.

However, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security required states to use an RFID chip that is readable from a distance to be compatible with its REAL ID initiative.

Washington state went along so it could offer an optional Enhanced Driver’s License as an alternative to a passport for residents crossing the Canadian border.

Gov. Christine Gregoire signed a bill last week that attempts to mitigate security and privacy concerns by making it a felony for unauthorized users to read or possess information on another person’s identification document without that person’s knowledge or consent.

Piecing a profile

Without the right safeguards, data from radio tags can be pieced together to offer a detailed profile of a person’s habits without his or her knowledge.

"People don’t understand the implications of information they’re giving out," Borriello said. "They can be linked together to paint a picture, one you didn’t think you were painting."

If someone carrying the new RFID-chipped driver’s license visits a store that has an RFID reader and then uses a credit card, the store can start to form an association between the ID number and the credit-card number.

That information can be used to send targeted advertising messages to the customer, a scenario depicted in the film "Minority Report." A man is recognized as he walks by a store and given a personalized sales pitch.

RFID readers placed around shopping malls and airports could help government agencies collect information about visitors’ travel patterns, shopping habits and relationships.

"People might think maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it will make me safer," Borriello said. But he added, "You can see this inching forward until we’re tracking people wherever they go."

That might sound far-fetched, but it’s going on in other parts of the world. Last year, the number of police requests for information from London’s RFID-based transit card rose from four per month to 100, Borriello said. Police use the data in criminal cases.

In southern China, the government is installing RFID readers throughout the city of Shenzhen to track movements of citizens, and U.S. companies are helping deploy the technology, The New York Times has reported. Chips in national ID cards contain not just a number, but a person’s work history, education, religion, ethnicity, police record and reproductive history.

"You could argue for any of this stuff in the name of security," Borriello said. "It’s important to understand what the technology can do and we, collectively, have to decide what we’re going to use it for."

The lessons from the UW RFID project point to the need for consent and transparency, informing people what data are being collected and giving them a way to review, correct or delete it.

The technology alone can’t be made to do the right thing without a good system of laws and policies around it.

Protection lacking

So far, there are few such legal protections in the U.S., Welbourne and Borriello say.

While RFID is relatively new, one technology with a potential to track people is well-established: cellphones.

"Most of us trust that information is not being tracked by anyone, but in fact it is," Borriello said.

Large U.S. telecommunications companies are in the middle of a bitter dispute over their role assisting in government wiretapping, and whether they can be sued or be given legal immunity.

Right now RFID is following a typical technology cycle, moving from obscurity into popular usage. The UW researchers are trying to stay ahead of that cycle.

"As soon as it becomes widely used, then it’s more attractive and people start attacking it," showing its vulnerabilities, Borriello said. The trouble is "by that time, it’s hard to change."

Leahy Takes Chertoff to Woodshed Over Vermont Checkpoints

EVAN LEHMANN
Reformer
April 7, 2008

WASHINGTON — Sen. Patrick Leahy chastised Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff Wednesday for his agency’s plan to build a permanent immigration checkpoint in central Vermont, wryly exclaiming that Chertoff should just “federalize Vermont.”

The interaction comes as the Bush administration is proposing a $4 million project to build fixed facilities within 100 miles of the Canadian border to conduct random vehicle checks for illegal immigrants, drugs and weapons, according to Leahy.

“So what you’re saying is in a little state like mine everyone should be stopped going down that interstate, no matter whether they’re going to visit a sick relative at the VA hospital?” Leahy prodded Chertoff in a Judiciary Committee hearing.

“We’re all sort of presumed guilty until proven innocent,” the Vermont Democrat added. “It sounds like Big Brother gone awry.”

Chertoff said, “Here’s the bottom line. Having checkpoints make sense.”

He said drug dealers and child molesters have been captured at similar checkpoints.

A similar, though temporary, checkpoint was maintained for 18 months along I-91 near Hartford, Vt., before closing in May 2005, according to Leahy.

But he says it’s an inconvenience for Vermonters miles away from the border they may never cross.

Leahy, for instance, was stopped at a different checkpoint in New York and told to get out his car, he recalled at a separate hearing last month. When he asked the Border Patrol agent under whose authority he was working, the agent pointed to his gun.

“That’s all the authority I need,” the agent said, according to Leahy.

Interior checkpoints are used mostly in the south as a second layer of security to apprehend terrorists, illegal immigrants and drug smugglers who evaded detection at the point of entry. But there is debate about the effectiveness of permanent facilities versus tactical checkpoints, which are moved frequently.

“We have dozens and dozens of roads you can take from the Canadian border to get down to either New York or Massachusetts from Canada,” Leahy said Wednesday, adding dryly, “Why don’t you just put roadblocks on every one of them and federalize Vermont?”

Leahy then leaned into his microphone and whispered conspiratorially: “We’ve had Canadians come up to my house in Vermont. Some of them are related to my wife.”

Chertoff responded, “That’s great. But I’m not sure what your point is, Mr. Chairman.”

But by then Leahy was done jesting with Chertoff.

“I think you understand my point,” Leahy said.

Shoppers’ fear shakes U.S. economy

ANNE D ‘INNOCENZIO
Associated Press
April 7, 2008

The gloomiest outlook for the economy in 35 years may be forcing Americans to live with what they have and save up for what they want.

Lynda Nicely has been living in a sparsely furnished rental apartment in a Milwaukee suburb since October while she saves enough money for furniture at a second-hand store. And when temperatures soar this summer, she plans to buy a fan, not an air-conditioner.

“I am a little rattled, ” said the 28-year-old resident of West Allis, who took a second job as a waitress and plans to hoard three months worth of emergency cash just in case she loses her primary job in public relations.

A growing number of anxious people across all income segments are shopping at less-expensive stores, reacquainting themselves with the library, paying down credit-card debt and cutting back on new clothes and cars, vacations and meals out.

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Al-Qaeda claims rocket attack on US oilmen in Yemen

AFP
April 7, 2008

SANAA (AFP) — Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for a rocket attack late Sunday on villas housing US oil experts in Yemen’s capital, a security source said Monday.

“Al-Qaeda has claimed the attack on the villas in Sanaa and the security services have obtained a statement confirming this from one of Al-Qaeda’s websites on the Internet,” the source, who declined to be named, told AFP

AFP was unable to access a website that traditionally carries such statements to confirm the claim.

Yemeni police arrested seven people in connection with the attack, the security source added, without giving details.

The attack was the latest to hit the impoverished state which has been plagued by Al-Qaeda-linked violence.

The attack on the villas, located next to a residential complex for other Westerners, occurred two days after the arrest in Sanaa of an Al-Qaeda operative, Abdullah al-Rimi, according to the security source.

Residents told AFP three rockets struck near the residences of US employees of the Yemen-owned Safer oil company, formerly known as Hunt Oil.

There were no reports of casualties.

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The Trillion-Dollar War

Veronique de Rugy
Reason Magazine
April 7, 2008

At the end of December, Congress approved $70 billion in bridge funding—a down payment to cover the gap between the beginning of the fiscal year and the passage of the actual appropriation bill—to keep financing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Legislators at the time were still chewing on the rest of President George W. Bush’s request for a fiscal year 2008 war budget of $196 billion. Should that funding be appropriated—and if recent history is any guide, it certainly will—then the total price tag for America’s present wars will rise to at least $822 billion, approximately 80 percent of which will be spent on Iraq. That surpasses the cost of the Vietnam War ($670 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars). And the Iraq portion dwarfs the $50 billion to $60 billion cost predicted at the outset of the war by Mitch Daniels, then director of the Office of Management and Budget.

These runaway costs do not include a single dollar from the Pentagon’s annual operating budget, which in 2008 reached a whopping $481 billion. If the war were being accounted for based on a rational, transparent budget process instead of an opaque and politicized shell game, Americans would be painfully aware that we are now in the seventh year of what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has called a $1 trillion war.

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Food riots fear after rice price hits a high

Peter Beaumont
The Observer
April 7, 2008

A global rice shortage that has seen prices of one of the world’s most important staple foods increase by 50 per cent in the past two weeks alone is triggering an international crisis, with countries banning export and threatening serious punishment for hoarders.

With rice stocks at their lowest for 30 years, prices of the grain rose more than 10 per cent on Friday to record highs and are expected to soar further in the coming months. Already China, India, Egypt, Vietnam and Cambodia have imposed tariffs or export bans, as it has become clear that world production of rice this year will decline in real terms by 3.5 per cent. The impact will be felt most keenly by the world’s poorest populations, who have become increasingly dependent on the crop as the prices of other grains have become too costly.

Rice is the staple food for more than half the world’s population. This is the second year running in which production - which increased in real terms last year - has failed to keep pace with population growth. The harvest has also been hit by drought, particularly in China and Australia, forcing producers to hoard their crops to satisfy local markets.

The increase in rice prices - which some believe could increase by a further 40 per cent in coming months - has matched sharp inflation in other key food products. But with rice relied on by some eight billion people, the impact of a prolonged rice crisis for the world’s poor - a large part of whose available income is spent on food - threatens to be devastating.

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Web could collapse as video demand soars

Lewis Carter
Telegraph
April 7, 2008

The internet could grind to a halt within two years under the pressure of booming demand for online video, experts have warned.

Soaring visitor numbers to video websites such as YouTube and the BBC’s iPlayer are putting the copper wires, which underpin parts of the internet, under severe strain.

Experts warn that unless billions of pounds is spent on upgrading the web’s infrastructure, it could slow down or even collapse. An internet meltdown would have a disastrous impact on the economy.

Larry Irving, co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, an American industry group lobbying for universal improvements in the web’s network, said: “Our streets in cities like London or New York were designed for a certain amount of traffic.

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