Dutch coffee shops introduce fingerprint ID

Jan Libbenga / The Register | March 21 2006

Some Dutch coffee shops, which sell marijuana in small quantities for personal use, are introducing fingerprinting technology to check the age of customers.

The shops are not allowed to sell to anyone under the age of 18. Coffee shops currently require photographic ID for proof of age.

The first coffee shops to use turnstiles with built-in fingerprint sensors are Inpetto in Rotterdam, Birdy in Haarlem, and ‘t Rotterdammertje in Doetinchem in the east of the country. Customers must first register with the shops, but personal details will not be stored.

The technology has been developed by FingerIdent, a company owned by Gerrie Mansur, one of the members of legendary Dutch hacking group Hit2000. According to Mansur, the system can match 35,000 fingerprints in less than a second. […]

http://infowars.com/articles/bb/biometric_id_dutch_coffee_shops_fingerprint_id.htm

Heh…’I couldn’t resist’: the new catchphrase!

http://30gms.com/index.php?/permalink/beard_moustache_white_trainers/

This is disgusting. I too have a beard, moustache and wear white trainers. My hair was quite a bit longer up until a month or so ago. But I’ve haven’t been stopped recently. Is it because I have white skin and blue eyes?

The irony is that this guy is working on a site for the Home Office that deals directly with this. I wonder how he can go on working on it with a clear conscience after this has happened to him.

Are you familiar with NAIS? Let me give you a little background. The USDA wants to register the GPS coordinates, name, address, phone, and other data on every farm, home, and other location that has even has a single animal, with a government Premise ID. For this privilege of mandatory registration, you will pay a fee of $10 or more, per year. Next, they intend to tag every single one of your animals with a RFID, or other tag. This will be mandatory. In addition to paying an annual fee and paying for tags for all of your animals, you would also be required to log, track, and report all “events,” such as the birth of an animal, death of an animal, animals leaving, or entering your property. All reports must be made within 24 hours, or you could face stiff fines. Do not expect them to keep your private information secure. In a little “Oops,” the USDA just released the social security numbers of 350,000 farmers.

Big producers, like factory farms, get to use a single batch ID for tens of thousands of animals,to keep their costs down. For them, NAIS is a minor bookkeeping entry that gives them big profits in the export markets to Japan and other countries. Small farmers and homesteaders, with their mixed-age flocks and herds, would be required to tag and track every single individual animal. NAIS is great for big corporate producers, and hellish for small farmers and homesteaders. The cost of NAIS in fees, tags, equipment costs, and time will bankrupt small farmers, and overwhelm people who raise their own food animals. In the end, the consumer will pay – NAIS could add almost a thousand dollars a year to the annual food budget for the typical family of four. By destroying small producers, NAIS will kill the Slow Food and the Buy Local movements, as local farmers are driven out of business.

NAIS is already mandatory in some states, starting this year, including Texas and Wisconsin. In other states, like Vermont, the agricultural commissioner and state vet have said they will tag and track every animal, right down to the back yard level. This means everyone, even Granny with her one laying hen, is going to have to get a $10 per year premise ID, a RFID tag for her chicken, and make government reports on its movements. Texas has implemented a $1,000 per incident per day, fine for non-compliance. What small farmer or homesteader can stand up to that kind of fire power? […]

USDA agents can come to your home, and kill all of your livestock, without a warrant or any legal appeal under NAIS. Once you are registered into the mandatory NAIS system, you effectively lose your rights to your own livestock. You become a serf for the state, worse than in Communist Russia. If you do not believe me, then please go to the USDA web site, and read the draft proposal for NAIS, which is already being implemented in stages, without public feedback or scrutiny. Check out the timeline – we all must start fighting it now, before it is too late. Together, we can stop this fascist move to take away our property and livelihoods. We can still protect our traditional rights to farm, if we act now. […]

Justice William O. Douglas,
U.S. Supreme Court (1939-75)
http://www.eco.freedom.org/el/20060301/walterjefferies.shtml

They have some real problems going on over there don’t they?

American’s wont’t accept a state issued national ID card, so the corporations who are set to fleece every sheepish supjecte have arranged to tag every animal in the USA.

Also, since only 23% of people have passports, they can’t pull the same ‘its not compulsory compulsion’ trick that they are trying here; 80% have passports in the UK, and so the ‘sheering point’ is more accessible.

Animal, Man, its all wool right?

Jowell singsong
‘broke licensing laws’

Hélène Mulholland and agencies
Friday March 17, 2006

Tessa Jowell returned to the spotlight today for breaching a law she herself introduced as part of new legislation which MPs say was mishandled by her department.

The beleaguered culture secretary fell foul of regulations under the Licensing Act (2003) when she led an apparently innocent singsong to mark International Women’s Day on March 8.

The Licensing Act heralded a massive overhaul of the regulations for public entertainment and drinking, combining 10 separate licensing schemes into one regime.

Though the terms of the act require a licence for any musical performance in a Royal Park, Ms Jowell did not have one when she lead a rendition of The Truth Is Marching On in front of a statue of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens Royal Park near the Houses of Parliament.

The council’s attention was drawn to the minister’s breach by musician Hamish Burchill, who has campaigned against the act’s provisions on public entertainment.

Westminster city council’s cabinet member for licensing, Audrey Lewis, confirmed that Ms Jowell and her fellow singers had breached the law, but said no prosecution was likely for this first offence.

She told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Technically, to have a performance which was advertised of singing in a Royal Park, which is a premise under the terms of the new Licensing Act, is an offence, because it is not licensed.

“We would not, however, expect to prosecute because nobody has complained about it. It wasn’t a question of disorder breaking out or indeed public nuisance. Having said that, they have had a first offence and if they wanted to do this quite regularly, they would have a warning.” […]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1733278,00.html

The fact is, she is not being prosecuted because she is a minister. That being said, there is something moreinteresing about this story.

I have written before about there being too many laws; we will eventually reach a tipping point where there are so many new and absurd laws that parliamentarians are directly or indirectly affected. When that happens, (in a perfect world) there would be an immediate push for mass reapeal of all bad law. This can only happen when, for example, a ministers daughter cannot have music at her wedding because of some stupid statute.

As for tessa jowel, since we are commenting on a Guardian story, lets put the knife in, in a way that would be guaranteed to be erased from comment is free: What a stupid fucking bitch!

Critics claim ministers are breaking an election promise that the ID scheme would be voluntary by insisting that anyone who renews a passport will also have to get an ID card and be entered on the national register.

But Mr Clarke rejected this charge last night to laughter and jeers of derision from the opposition.

“Passports are voluntary documents,” he insisted. “No one is forced to renew a passport if they choose not to do so.”

Invertebrates refuse backbones.

So, from this final statement by Dumbo, I infer that there must be no legal requirement for me to have a passport in order to leave this country and return. Otherwise, once again, HMG are stating that I will be under confinement within the UK mainland unless I comply with their ‘voluntary’ ID card scheme.

A quick search on the UK Passport  Service site reveals no page detailing any legal requirement for holding a passport in order to leave the country. Hmmm… I wonder. Don’t you?

Further information: freedom of movement, and ka-tzetnik, and propiska, Economic and social liberals have a generally negative attitude towards identity cards on the principle that if society already works adequately without them, they should not be imposed by government, on the principle that “the government that governs best, governs least”. Some opponents have pointed out that extensive lobbying for identity cards has been undertaken, in countries without compulsory identity cards, by IT companies who will be likely to reap rich rewards in the event of an identity card scheme being implemented.

Very often, opposition to identity cards is born out of the suspicion that they will be used to track anyone’s movements and private life, possibly endangering one’s privacy; for instance, a person will probably not want others to know he or she is attending meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous. In countries currently using identity cards, there is no mechanism for this. However the proposed British ID card will involve a series of linked databases, to be managed by the private sector. Managing disparate linked systems with a range of institutions and any number of personnel having access to them is a potential security disaster in the making.[1]

Opponents have also argued that some nations require the card to be carried at all times. This is not necessarily impractical, as an ID is no more cumbersome than a credit card. However, opponents point out that a requirement to carry an identity card at all times can lead to arbitrary requests from card controllers (such as the police). Even where there is no legal requirement to carry the card, functionality creep could lead to de facto compulsion to carry.

Some opponents make comparisons with totalitarian governments, which issued identity cards to their populations, and used them oppressively.

• They point out that the issuing of unique biometric identities was taken to its logical conclusion within living memory by the Nazis (see Godwin’s Law), when they tattooed unique concentration-camp detainees numbers on the arms of people taken to be processed by the Final Solution.
• More recently, the apartheid-era government of South Africa used pass books as internal passports to oppress that country’s black population.

[…]

France

France has had a French national identity card since 1940, when it helped the Vichy autorities identify 76,000 for deportation as part of the Holocaust.

In the past, identity cards were compulsory, had to be updated each year in case of change of residence and were valid for 10 years, and its renewal required paying a tax. In addition to the face protograph, it included the family name, first names, date and place of birth, and the national identity number managed by the national INSEE registry, and which is also used as the national service registration number, as the Social Security account number for health and retirement benefits, for the access to the personal judiciary case, for taxes declarations.

Later, the laws were changed so that any official and certified document (even if expired and possibly unusable abroad) with a photograph and a name, issued by a public administration (or enterprise, such as railroad transportation cards, or student cards issued) can be used to prove one’s identity (such as the European driver’s licence, a passport, …). Also, controls of identy by the law enforcement forces (police, gendarmerie) can now accept copies of these documents, provided that the original is presented within two weeks. Any of these documents must be treated equally to proove one’s identity when accepting payments by checks, issuing a new credit (however credit cardsare now much more common and do not require such additional proof, as all French credit cards issued by banks include a processor requiring a four-digit code, the magnetic tape being almost never used).

The current identity cards are now issued free of charge, and non-compulsory. Legislation has been published for a proposed compulsory biometric card system, which has been widely criticised, including by the “National commission for computing and liberties” (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés, CNIL), the national authority and regulator on computing systems and databases. Identity cards issued since 2004 now includes biometric information (a digitized fingerprint record, a numerically scanned photograph and a scanned signature) and various anti-fraud systems embedded within the plastic-covered card.

The next generation of the French green card, named “Carte Vitale”, for the Social Security benefit (which already includes a chip and a magnetic tape with currently very few information) will include a numeric photograph and other personal medical information in addition to identity elements. It may then become a substitute for the National identity card.

[…]

United States

Main article: Identity documents in the United States

There is no true national identity card in the United States of America, in the sense that there is no federal agency with nationwide jurisdiction that directly issues such cards to all American citizens. All legislative attempts to create one have failed due to tenacious opposition from libertarian and conservative politicians, who regard the national identity card as the mark of a totalitarian society. Driver’s licenses issued by the various states (along with special cards issued to non-drivers) are often used in lieu of a national identification card and are often required for boarding airline flights or entering office buildings. Recent (2005) federal legislation that tightened requirements for issuance of driver’s licenses has been seen by both supporters and critics as bringing the United States much closer to a de facto national identity card system.

[…]

Hong Kong

See also Hong Kong Permanent Identity Cards

Hong Kong has a long history of identity document, from paper document to recently smart card. It has not yet aroused much controversy from its first issue.

Compulsory identity document was first issued in 1949, the year the establishment of People’s Republic of China. The issue of identity documents was to halt large influx of refugees and control the border from mainland China to then-British colony Hong Kong. The exercise was completed in 1951. Although the registration was compulsory, it was not required to bring the document in public area.

The identity document was replaced by a typed identity card with fingerprint, photograph and stamp from 1960. Another replacement was taken in 1973 and new card was with photograph but no fingerprint. Stamp colour was to identify permanent residents from non-permanent.

From 24th October, 1980, it is compulsory to take the identity card in public area and produce it to a policeman when asked. This law was to halt waves of illegal immigrant to the city.

In 1983, the issue of identity card was digitalised to reduce forgery and from 2003 a smartcard embedded identity card replaced the old digital cards.

The issues of card is in general giving more desire effects than harms. It helps to reduce the crime rates in the region and provide fast access to mainland China and Macau.

[…]

Others

According to Privacy International, as of 1996, around 100 countries had compulsory identity cards. They also stated that “virtually no common law country has a card”.

For the people of Western Sahara, pre-1975 Spanish cards are the main proof that they were Saharaui citizens as opposed to recent Moroccan colonists. They would be thus allowed to vote in an eventual self-determination referendum.

Some Basque nationalist organizations are issuing para-official identity cards (Euskal Nortasun Agiria) as a means to reject the nationality notions implied by Spanish and French compulsory documents. Then, they try to use the ENA instead of the official document.

[…]

Countries with compulsory identity cards

Note: the term “compulsory” may have different meanings and implications in different countries. Often, a ticket can be given for being found without one’s identification document, or in some cases a person may even be detained until the identity is ascertained. In practice, random controls are rare, except in police states.

• Argentina: Documento Nacional de Identidad. Issued at birth. Updated at 8 and 16 years old. Small booklet, dark green cardboard cover. The first page states the name, date and place of birth, along with a picture and right thumb print. It’s a hand written form, and the newer models have a adhesive laminate for the first page. Next pages issue address changes, wish to donate organs, military service, and vote log. Half of the pages have the DNI (a unique number), perforated through the first half of the book. Prior to DNI was the Libreta Civica (“Civic booklet”), for women, and the Libreta de Enrolamiento (“Enrollment Booklet”), for men. A few years ago there was a big scandal with the electronic DNIs that were going to be manufactured by Siemens, and it was decided that no private corporation could control the issuing of national identity. The federal police also have an identity that is valid sometimes instead of the DNI, which many people prefer to carry because after the loss of DNI there is a long process (caused only by bureaucratic reasons) in which the person is limited in some situations which require the DNI. Random controls cannot be made without a judge’s order, except in situations such as military border checkpoints.
• Belgium: State Registry (in Dutch, French and German) (first issued at age 12, compulsory at 15)
• Brazil: Carteira de Identidade. Compulsory to be issued and carried since the age of 18. It’s usually issued by each state’s Public Safety Secretary, or sometimes by the Armed Forces. There is a national standard, but each state can include minor differences. The front has a picture, right thumb print and signature. The verse has the unique number (RG, registro geral), expedition date, name of the person, name of the parents, place and date of birth, and other info. It’s green and plastified, officially 102 × 68 mm[3], but the lamination tends to make it slightly larger than the ISO 7810 ID-2 standard of 105 × 74 mm, resulting in a tight fit in most wallets. Only recently the driver’s licence received the same legal status of an identity card in Brazil. There are also a few other documents, such as cards issued by the national councils of some professions, which are considered equivalent to the national identity card for most purposes.
• Chile: (Carnet de identidad; First issued at age 2 or 3, compulsory at 18)
• China(mainland):(First issued at school age, compulsory at 16)
• China(Hong Kong SAR) : Immigration Department (Children are required to obtain their first identity card at age 11, and must change to an adult identity card at age 18)
• Estonia: id.ee (in Estonian), [4] (in English)
• Germany: Personalausweis (in German) It is compulsory at age 16 to possess either a “Personalausweis” or a passport, but not to carry it. While police officers and some other officials have a right to demand to see one of those documents, the law does not state that you are obliged to submit the document at that very moment, but that you have to be able to submit it at all (bring it to the police station/municipal office the next day, or know where it is and can show it to the police at your home, etc.) You may only be fined if you do not possess an identity card or passport at all, if your document is expired or if you EXPLICITLY REFUSE to show ID to the police.
• Indonesia: Kartu Tanda Penduduk (KTP)
• Israel: Teudat Zehut (first issued at age 16, compulsory at 18)
• Italy: Carta d’Identità
• Hungary: [5] (in Hungarian) It is compulsory to possess and carry either an ID card or a passport from the age of 14. A driving license can be also used for identification from the age of 17.
• Madagascar: Kara-panondrom-pirenen’ny teratany malagasy (Carte nationale d’identité de citoyen malagasy). Possession is compulsory for Malagasy citizens from age 18 (by decree 78-277, 1978-10-03).
• Malaysia: MyKad. Issued at age 12 and updated at 18.
• Netherlands: Ministry of Justice and Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations While it is not compulsory to possess an identity card, every person over 14 years of age must always carry, and be able to submit, identification (i.e., an identity card, passport, driver’s licence or aliens’ document).
• Poland: Dowód osobisty (compulsory at 18) The relative law is roughly similar to German one.
• Portugal: Bilhete de Identidade (compulsory at 10, can be issued before if needed)
• Romania: Carte de identitate (compulsory at 14)
• Singapore: National Registration Identity Card. It is compulsory for all citizens and permanent residents to apply for the card from age 15 onwards, and to re-register their cards for a replacement at age 30. It is not compulsory for bearers to hold the card at all times, nor are they compelled by law to show their cards to police officers conducting regular screening while on patrol, for instance. Failure to show any form of identification, however, may allow the police to detain suspicious individuals until relevant identification may be produced subsequently either in person or by proxy. The NRIC is also a required document for some government procedures, commercial transactions such as the opening of a bank account, or to gain entry to premises by surrendering or exchanging for an entry pass. Failure to produce the card may result in denied access to these premises or attainment of goods and services. Immigration & Checkpoints Authority
• Slovenia: Osebna izkaznica compulsory at 18, can be issued to citizens under 18 on request by their parent or legal guardian.
• Spain: Documento Nacional de Identidad (DNI) compulsory at 14, can be issued before if necessary (to travel to other European countries, for example). It is to be replaced by Electronic DNI.

Also Croatia, Egypt, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Thailand.

Countries with non-compulsory identity cards or no identity cards

Austria, Canada (“Certificate of Canadian Citizenship”), Finland, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland have non-compulsory identity cards.

• Sweden has recently started issuing national identity cards, but they are by no means compulsory. Most Swedes have not even seen one. Commonly people use their driving licences as ID, or a ID issued by banks or the post. Some big companies and authoritys also issue ID cards to their employees which are usually accepted inside Sweden as identification.

Denmark, Norway, the United States, the Republic of Ireland and Iceland have no official national identity cards.

Note: As noted above, certain countries do not have national ID cards, but have other official documents that play the same role in practice (e.g. driver’s license for the United States). While a country may not make it de jure compulsory to own or carry an identity document, it may be de facto strongly recommended to do so in order to facilitate certain procedures.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID_Card

THE NEW TERRORISTS – ARE YOU ONE? DOWNLOAD MUSIC? BLOCK TRAFFIC? WRITE A BAD CHECK?

Posted By: Rayelan
Date: Sunday, 15 January 2006, 6:12 p.m.

The reclassification of terrorism is spreading across this country. A bill just BARELY defeated in Oregon would have made you a terrorist if you download music, block traffic or write a bad check. Want to know what the punishment would have been? Read on…

This Madness Is Spreading Nationwide!!

Excerpts from a recent interview of
Dr Walter Belford
by PT Shamrock

DWB – For instance Senate bill 742 in Oregon, which was narrowly defeated by just three votes, would have classified terrorism as a plethora of completely unrelated actions.

Downloading music, blocking traffic, writing a bad cheque or any form of protest, none of which has anything to do with terrorism. All these ‘offences’would be punishable by life in prison unless you agreed to attend a “forest labour camp” for 25 years of enforced labour.

I understand that a made over version of Senate bill 742 will be reintroduced in late 2006 with another name and with some minor adjustments and will probably pass the second time around. Then it will naturally, spread nationwide.

Not even Communist China or Stalinist North Korea put people in labour camps for writing a bad cheque, but this was nearly implemented in the ‘land of the free’. Debtor’s prisons were supposed to have been banned more than 150 years ago! Explain to me what does writing a cheque with insufficient funds have to do with fighting terrorism? Nothing I tell you, absolutely nothing!

Understand and know that this was an actual bill and there are similar ones around the nation that are also being drawn up by your so-called representatives in government.

DWB – If you think Oregon is bad, try Wisconsin! Wisconsin is crazy about control. It takes fingerprints when a police officer pulls you over for a broken taillight. And blood specimens if they suspect you are intoxicated or on drugs. Wisconsin has the honour of sponsoring the Super National ID legislation which will also be a Pan American Union Card, i.e. an international ID as the US merges with Canada and Mexico.

PTS – What else is Wisconsin infamous for?

DWB – A man was sent to prison for five years for “paper terrorism.” He sent too many papers in a complaint he had with the government.

DWB continues – In Rhode Island, governors proposed a bill that would have outlawed criticism of the government, defining it as anarchy under World War One era rhetoric.

In the UK there is a very active advert campaign presently that encourages anyone to report “any suspicious” behavior from their neighbors, etc. to the authorities. What “suspicious” means is left entirely up to the person who would report someone. So if you had a neighbor that was angry with you for any real or imagined reason, you’d be reported and your name will remain on numerous government databases forever! Your name will never be deleted from those government databases.

…

Couldn’t find the “real” article and don’t really have time to find all the dates/actual instances of all the mentioned things in this article, but it really is quite ridiculous… I wonder if one day not paying a parking meter will land me in a forced labour camp (because, after all, parking fees are all about private property, which is the most important thing of all…).

Shoppers can pay by fingerprint

Not only is the whole idea of this horrific, but the fact that the article mentions nothing of the multitude of possible downsides to this just baffles me. This isn’t journalism, this is just reprinting press releases.

There was a report on the radio this morning about a European (read EU blighted) search engine ‘Quaero’ to be set up as an alternative to Google. After googling around I found, typically for BBQ, that this was old news dressed up in mouton clothing.

Anyway, the idea of an EU-centric search engine to rival google almost made me choke on my breakfast – until recently the EU website had the single worst search tool I’ve ever seen online (It is now marginally better, and almost useful).

The reason why there is not a ‘Google equivalent’ is that whereas US taxes, financial regulations and competitive research programmes have not discriminated against startup companies almost every equivalent piece of work/employment legislation coming from the EU runs counter to small and new companies. All the blustering of Chirac (whose announcement it was that BBQ relayed) will not change this if he adheres to the typical EU top down imposing of ‘solutions’.

Last week’s story about a retired Texas school teacher who came under Homeland Security’s microscope for paying off a $6,522 credit card debt has been trumped by a similar case involving an amount of just $650.

Previously, Walter Soehnge made national headlines when he attempted to pay off debt on his MasterCard. The payment was rejected and automatically triggered an investigation by Homeland Security.

Now we have the story of Edie Booth, a community college professor in East Texas.

Trying to pay off her February credit card bill, Booth found her funds short and so asked to borrow $650 from her sister to avoid an interest overcharge of $140.

Booth made a $3,500 payment from her own account and then sent the other $650 with permission from her sister’s electronic account.

I watched the status of these two payments on line, since I am not the ‘trusting’ type, when it comes either to banks, credit card companies, OR government,” says Booth.

“The $650 was pending one day and then showed funded the next. All seemed fine. However, I continued to check the status on-line for the next 5 days.

“On the 6th day I found the extra $650 payment CANCELLED.”

Upon calling the credit card company, Booth was told that Homeland Security would not allow her to make two payments from two different sources in the same day.

Booth was then slapped with the $140 overcharge for causing the hard working boys at Homeland so much inconvenience.

This is a monumental waste of time and if there were any real terrorists out there Homeland Security is more interested in your spending habits than Al-Qaeda.

As Edie Booth points out, this is “such insanity, I mean, if you are paying your credit card, you have already obtained the explosives or whatever some time before.”

“Where is the leadership? When will we get some relief from these morons?”

The very individuals that used 9/11 to force layer upon layer of increased state surveillance and big government bureaucracy upon us are the ones in business with Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. And yet it is law-abiding citizens that get hassled for the simple desire to pay off some debt.

Homeland Security targets toy store owners, t-shirt sellers and kindergartners while hiring former East German Stasi heads to spy on Americans and recruiting tattle-tale squads under ‘Highway Watch’ – a program that encourages truckers, toll takers, road crews and bus drivers to watch their fellow citizens and report suspicious activity.

It seems painfully obvious that the people trying to take away our freedoms are not wearing turbans and shouting Allah Akbar, but that the enemy is within the gates.

[…]

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/march2006/070306borrowedmoney.htm

And the sign above those gates reads “Arbeit Macht Frei”.

The most terrible thing about this is that the banks and credit card companies are executing these laws, with the words “we are only obeying orders”.

When will you get some relief from these morons? When you CANCEL YOUR CREDIT CARD and inform them that you are doing it because they are blithley FOLLOWING ABSURD HOMELAND SECURITY REGULATIONS and that their obedience is costing you money.

Thats when.

And I also note with dismay, that this report does not mention the name of this woman’s credit card company.

Sharks with implants are planned to be released off Florida

Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into “stealth spies” capable of tracking vessels undetected, a British magazine has reported.They want to remotely control the sharks by implanting electrodes in their brains, The New Scientist says.

[…]

Like Dr Moreau’s island for the 21st century neocon.

You know what the next logical step is.

And you know that as soon as they can, they will.

Pay too much and you could raise the alarm

By BOB KERR
The Providence Journal
28-FEB-06

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Walter Soehnge is a retired Texas schoolteacher who traveled north with his wife, Deana, saw summer change to fall in Rhode Island and decided this was a place to stay for a while.

So the Soehnges live in Scituate now and Walter sometimes has breakfast at the Gentleman Farmer in Scituate Village, where he has passed the test and become a regular despite an accent that is definitely not local.

And it was there, at his usual table last week, that he told me that he was “madder than a panther with kerosene on his tail.”

He says things like that. Texas does leave its mark on a man.

What got him so upset might seem trivial to some people who have learned to accept small infringements on their freedom as just part of the way things are in this age of terror-fed paranoia. It’s that “everything changed after 9/11” thing.

But not Walter.

“We’re a product of the ’60s,” he said. “We believe government should be way away from us in that regard.”

He was referring to the recent decision by him and his wife to be responsible, to do the kind of thing that just about anyone would say makes good, solid financial sense.

They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.

And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges’ behavior was found questionable.

And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn’t call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn’t try to sneak a machine gun through customs.

They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn’t changed.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

“When you mess with my money, I want to know why,” he said.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn’t move until the threat alert is lifted.

Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union and me. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.

“The more I’m on, the scarier it gets,” he said. “It’s scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy.”

Eventually, his and his wife’s money was freed up. The Soehnges were apparently found not to be promoting global terrorism under the guise of paying a credit-card bill. They never did learn how a large credit card payment can pose a security threat.

But the experience has been a reminder that a small piece of privacy has been surrendered. Walter Soehnge, who says he holds solid, middle-of-the-road American beliefs, worries about rights being lost.

“If it can happen to me, it can happen to others,” he said. […]

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=RAISEALARM-02-28-06 

So, NOW you see what has been happening while you were asleep.
The one comforting thing about this story is that this man went bezerk, and called everyone he could to ‘expose’ this ‘scandal’. Note how he describes himself and his generation. I fear that the youth of today would not raise even an eyebrow had this happened to them, shoulder shrugging eloi that they are.

That is the tragedy.

And of course, the decades long crusade to spread democracy and exert control over the middle east has all been for nothing. Now that the Iraqui resistance has engineered a civil war, the american press is actually saying out loud that us troops will have to pull out until the fighting dies down should it all get any worse. Had they never gone in there in the first place, and left ‘The Lion of the Desert’ in place, none of this would ever have happened.

Now they are set to leave Iraq as it self destructs, and they have the audacity to try and provoke an attack against Iran, which is completely stable.
Wasted lives, wasted money, mass murder, the destruction of the American way of life, the discrediting of democracy, all for nothing…nothing. What an unmittigated disaster.

The more I hear about the environmental situation regarding the ‘Thames Gateway’ redevelopment the more I wonder how the area is going to cope.

Even now we are hearing stories that this year there will be significant water shortages in SE England, never mind the additional demand of an extra million people and associated infrastructure. The lack of winter rainfall is undoubtedly a sign that a large amount of water is remaining in the sea (in addition to that being added by ice-cap melting) which can only worsen the situation of the areas being ‘planned’ on flood plains – we can at least rest assured that the insurance market will determine the value of such developments.

(Since I wrote that paragraph it has been reported that Kent Water will be allowed to compel residents to install water meters)

In addition to such concerns the utterly political excercise of producing a £60,000 house for ‘keyworkers’ is producing a number of lacklustre and shoddy designs for houses – the life expectancy of some of the cheaper ‘affordable homes’ is less than ten years (I am sure I read that a £30k home could be built but would have a 5 year lifespan), making the resale value negligible and not a sound investment by any means. If the government weren’t determined to tie developers to producing ownable homes rather than rented accommodation the quality of housing for key workers could be much improved.
Cheap, non-traditional housing types will have higher insurance premiums and probably more onerous mortgage requirements thus increasing the day to day costs for workers rather than reducing them. In addition to utility, transport and taxation costs rising above the rate of inflation.

Additionally the short term succouring of the demand for more key workers in the SE will just further increase demand down the line, it would be better to let individuals decide whether they can afford to live in the SE/London with expensive services or decamp north/westwards where the price of living is generally lower.

I could go on, and probably will in another post. (Can we have a Cassandra category?)

Technorati Tags: Thames, Gateway, water

This a from a week ago but I’ve been taking some time away from the computer so I didn’t think to post it until now. Check it out:

Day proposes national ID card

Ottawa — Sooner or later, Canadians will have to carry some form of identification other than a passport to travel outside the country, says the new federal minister of public safety.

The British Commons has just adopted legislation for a government-issued national ID card and Stockwell Day suggested in an interview with The Canadian Press that such a card is inevitable for Canada.

“At this point, I don’t know what it should be called, to tell you the truth,” Mr. Day said.

“I don’t know if we’ll call it that, but we want good, law-abiding people to have smooth and quick access at all border points — not just North American, but international.”

New life is being breathed into the proposal now that the United States has dropped its demand that Canadians be required to show passports to cross the border.

“We also want to be able to stop people who are a menace or a threat from getting in or getting out, so that’s the overall goal,” Mr. Day said.

Mr. Day said the need for identification of some sort came up again this week when he spoke on the phone with his U.S. counterpart, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Cherkoff.

“I think it’s fair to say that in both Canada and the U.S. we do want some kind of enhanced security provision,” he said.

“Whether that’s some kind of a biometric approach, an enhancement on a driver’s licence — all of that needs to be explored, so we do want to see enhanced technological capacity in that area.”

The idea of a national ID card was raised in the months following the Sept.11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States but proposals go back even further, as a way of replacing the abused social insurance number.

…. (Globe and Mail)

I find it rather oxymoronic that the new “Conservative” government really want to BLOAT out government by instituting ID shams and Reagan-style prison ghetto-reform (can’t find a good link to that story, though, Sorry – basically Harper thinks that it will be a greater deterrent to throw more of “the bad guys” into prison for longer – in your dreams, Steve-O). Let’s not also forget also all the happy fundamentalist (minority) Xtian groups who think that their whack-job agendas will be more supported by the government because the new PM is a Christian from Alberta, as is Stockwell Day, who is actually far MORE insane and stupid than this news story implies.
Lord help!

Back to shovelling snow.

(this is my first post with WordPress. Using Camino 1.0, the interface is wonky and laggy, but no more so than blogger. BTW, I know it was discussed before but has there been any progress on dispaying the author’s name after the post? It is truly weird without them… though usually it’s pretty easy to distinguish who is who by the style of writing)

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal.The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

“We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together,” Mr Alifi said.

Mr Alifi, Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.

“When I asked him: ‘What are you doing there?’, he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up”.

Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.

“They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife,” Mr Alifi told the newspaper.

[…]

The second fab ‘justice’ story of the day. Must be the weather…

A bicycle courier in Colombia has been given a four-year jail sentence for grabbing a woman pedestrian’s bottom, a TV station has reported.A judge’s ruling – criticised by some as being too harsh – ruled the courier had committed an abusive sexual act.

Diana Marcela Diaz told RCN that the courier had cycled off after groping her, but had been caught by passers-by.

When he was arrested, she was given the option of slapping him, letting him go, or filing a complaint.

[…]

Wow! I was very taken with the idea at the end here. To think, you could be given a choice as to how to punish those who offend against you.

Someone nicks your car, you get to (a) send them to prison, (b) make them do community work (c) punch them in the face 3 times or (d) take any 3 items you like from their home.

Vigilante justice, proscribed by law. What a lovely concept!

Mark Leyner, in ‘Et Tu, Babe’, has the main characters punished for stealing a phial of Abraham Lincoln’s morning breath by random punitive confiscation. At regular intervals, police would turn up and take one item from their home, without telling them what it was. Sometimes it’s obvious, like the TV. Sometimes you don’t find out until you need it, like an ironing board, or a waffle machine. Confiscated items cannot be replaced, under the terms of the punishment.

I like that idea.

My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist is my favourite Leyner book.

Especially the chapter entitled ‘Fugitive from a centrifuge‘

‘There were no longer Italian neighborhoods, or Cuban neighborhoods, or Irish or Greek neighborhoods. There were Anorexic neighborhoods, and Narcissistic neighborhoods, and Manic And Compulsive neighborhoods.’