U.S.: 10 airports install body scanners capable of seeing body sweat

Just remember, the sense you're being violated is all in your fucking head. Or maybe not.

Your government would never do that, right? Just asking.

Devices can peer under passengers' clothes BALTIMORE - Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation's busiest airports in one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body parts. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently started using body scans on randomly chosen passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, Albuquerque and at New York's Kennedy airport. Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport in Washington starts using a body scanner today. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.

Here's my take on this. If the goddamn TSA inspector is giving me a hard on its my business and not hers. She has to wait for me to buy her drinks before that is available knowledge.

Disclaimer: I'm joking here. I've never bought anyone a drink in an airline terminal other the moi.

Note: Headline links to source.

Privacy

Click for larger (photo AFP)
How does this make you feel if you're an American?

Just look at all the countries which respect a person's privacy more than does the US.

Via The Economist.

Protests force Facebook to change

This is so fucking bizarre I find it hard to wrap my head around it.

People are uncomfortable if their buying habits are shared?

They don't realize the goddamn government is looking at their online purchases, bank, phone and medical records, their emails and chats and who-knows-what? But God forbid Facebook tell Lands' End they're buying a sweater from Eddie Bauer!!!1!!

Give me a fucking break.

Americans (people?) can be teh stupid.

Facebook members have forced the social networking site to change the way a controversial ad system worked. More than 50,000 Facebook users signed a petition calling on the company to alter or abandon its Beacon advertising technology. When Facebook users shopped online, Beacon told friends and businesses what they looked at or bought. Many considered the data sharing to be an intrusion that exposed them to more scrutiny than was comfortable.

Actually, because she has "Eddie Bauer Hazard" (protesting nanotechnology) painted on her back, she probably won't be shopping there even though it looks like she could use a sweater, but many men might be enticed.

Via The Signs.

E.U. Seeks Data on American Passengers

Privacy? What privacy? You don't need no fucking privacy.

You silly goose.

American travelers' personal data would for the first time be exported to all European Union states by airline carriers flying to Europe under a proposal to be announced this week.

And speaking of gooses; and you just got one:

I guess what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Via WaPo.

Gazing Back From the Abyss

This can't be good. In fact it is more likely catastrophic.

Writing in the Washington Post, Susan Landau points out that one of the real dangers of the recently passed FISA law is that it might enable private hackers to get into the government’s systems and spy on private citizens as well.

Avoiding warrants for these cases sounds simple, though potentially invasive of Americans’ civil liberties. Most calls outside the country involve foreigners talking to foreigners. Most communications within the country are constitutionally protected — U.S. “persons” talking to U.S. “persons.” To avoid wiretapping every communication, NSA will need to build massive automatic surveillance capabilities into telephone switches. Here things get tricky: Once such infrastructure is in place, others could use it to intercept communications.

Grant the NSA what it wants, and within 10 years the United States will be vulnerable to attacks from hackers across the globe, as well as the militaries of China, Russia and other nations.

Just how much safer is this making you feel? Just asking.

(read more)

Fighting big brother

It was coming sooner or later. Big brother just can't do whatever he wants.

A revolt against a national driver's license, begun in Maine last month, is quickly spreading to other states.

The Maine Legislature on Jan. 26 overwhelmingly passed a resolution objecting to the Real ID Act of 2005.

The federal law sets a national standard for driver's licenses and requires states to link their record-keeping systems to national databases.

Within a week of Maine's action, lawmakers in Georgia, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Vermont and Washington state also balked at Real ID. They are expected soon to pass laws or adopt resolutions declining to participate in the federal identification network.

"It's the whole privacy thing," said Matt Sundeen, a transportation analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "A lot of legislators are concerned about privacy issues and the cost. It's an estimated $11 billion implementation cost."

(read more)