A passport card set to be issued by the State Department for travel to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean doesn’t require privacy protection, even though it uses a radio frequency identification chip which can be read from 20 feet away, because the chip itself doesn’t contain personal information, according to the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Archives: May 2007
Internet sales tax proposed again
Posted: May 29, 2007 2:02 am
The Internet sales tax is back.
Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) has introduced a bill to require Internet-based businesses to charge state sales taxes on out-of-state purchases.
Audit: FBI critical network still vulnerable
Posted: May 25, 2007 8:21 am
A critical Federal Bureau of Investigation network for sharing law enforcement and investigative information is at risk of being misused or having its services interrupted, according to an audit released this week.
Exceptions to the First Amendment
Posted: May 24, 2007 6:45 am
“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .”
Unless, of course, it wants to.
Help not wanted if you’re an anarchist
Posted: May 23, 2007 1:29 pm
Members of a group who went to Greensburg, Kan., to assist in relief efforts after a May 5 tornado destroyed most of the town were forcibly ejected by police on the scene for being “federal security threats.”
Mobile devices to change people’s interactions with government
Posted: May 22, 2007 3:20 am
Technology is changing how people interact with government forever, says a prominent homeland security consultant.
WIC: Killing children with kindness
Posted: May 21, 2007 3:20 am
The United States Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly known as WIC, distributes vouchers for food for low-income families. Among the food distributed is about half the infant formula in the entire U.S. According to a study from the University of Hawai’i, WIC’s distribution of infant formula not only distorts the market for infant formula, it puts these infants at risk of illness and death.
After tornado, FEMA disarms town, turns away help
Posted: May 18, 2007 4:34 pm
On Friday, May 4, an F5 tornado wiped the town of Greensburg, Kan., almost entirely off the map. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, along with the National Guard and local police from all over Kansas, then systematically kept out relief workers while they went house to house disarming the residents.
JFK single shooter evidence “fundamentally flawed”
Posted: May 17, 2007 9:13 pm
New research conducted at Texas A&M University casts doubt on the decades-old analysis of the bullet fragments which the government used to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Social Security card to be national ID
Posted: May 16, 2007 9:34 pm
Two proposals being floated around Capitol Hill call for the Social Security card to be updated with biometric information and for U.S. employers to be required to verify it with the Department of Homeland Security when hiring.
Ron Paul gains support in second GOP debate
Posted: May 16, 2007 4:09 am
Updated: May 16, 2007 4:39 am
For those who doubted that Rep. Ron Paul was a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, the debate Tuesday night in South Carolina put all doubts to rest. Paul stirred up a firestorm of controversy for suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security made national security even more inefficient after September 11 than before, and especially for his assertion that U.S. foreign policy over the past several decades contributed to the rise of Islamic terrorism.
But viewers at home responded, putting Ron Paul in second place in FOX’s own tamper-proof viewer poll.
Defense Department blocks YouTube, Myspace, MTV.com
Posted: May 15, 2007 12:26 am
Citing operational security and bandwidth usage concerns, the Department of Defense said Monday that access to 13 popular file and video sharing and social networking Web sites would be blocked from all DoD computers worldwide.
Apology, community service for Mooninite scare
Posted: May 14, 2007 8:58 pm
Two men who planted electronic light boards around the city of Boston to promote the Aqua Teen Hunger Force cartoon, resulting in city officials overreacting and shutting down the city, have resolved the criminal charges against them.
You are the homegrown terrorist threat
Posted: May 13, 2007 11:26 pm
If you’re an American reading this, then under expansive definitions being used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several states in their counterterrorism training, you just might be a domestic terrorist.
Bush takes control of continuity planning
Posted: May 13, 2007 6:25 pm
The White House will take a more direct role in managing continuity of government plans to be used in the event of a “decapitating” attack on the federal government, under a presidential directive issued Wednesday.
Homeland Stupidity on Myspace
Posted: May 11, 2007 7:45 pm
For all of those of you who are younger than I am, you’re probably on Myspace, that huge social networking site which has a profile for almost everyone in the country under 30.
Now you can get Homeland Stupidity on Myspace.
Bureaucrat Appreciation Week
Posted: May 11, 2007 3:56 am
“Federal, State, and local governments are responsive, innovative, and effective because of the outstanding work of public servants.”
If you believe that, I’ve got some critical infrastructure to sell you. But Congress certainly seems to believe it, unless they’ve recently taken to passing satire off as Congressional resolutions.
Airlines to be forced to fingerprint departing visitors
Posted: May 10, 2007 3:08 am
If you’re planning a visit to the U.S., you already have to give up your fingerprints and retinal scans to the Department of Homeland Security in order to enter the country. Now the department wants to require every visitor to go through the same procedure in order to leave the country.
And they want to force the airlines to collect your biometric information, rather than do it themselves.
DHS: You’ll take a national ID and you’ll like it
Posted: May 9, 2007 2:33 am
The Department of Homeland Security will move forward with plans to implement the REAL ID Act despite widespread opposition from citizens and state legislatures.
Terrorist hoaxes can only get better?
Posted: May 9, 2007 12:07 am
Boston became the laughingstock of the country earlier this year after two incidents in which it responded to harmless devices as if they were real terrorist threats. Now Sen. Ed Kennedy (D-Mass.) wants to make absurd overreaction into national policy.
Army tries to suppress new OPSEC regulation
Posted: May 8, 2007 2:11 am
An officious bureaucrat with the U.S. Army has tried to intimidate the Federation of American Scientists into removing from its Web site a copy of the Army’s recently updated regulation on operational security. And FAS government secrecy project director Steven Aftergood told the bureaucrat in no uncertain terms to get lost.
Why everybody hates the TSA
Posted: May 6, 2007 5:43 pm
Whether it’s harassing elderly and disabled travelers, or breaking or even stealing valuables from passengers’ luggage, almost everyone has a low opinion of the Transportation Security Administration. Except, perhaps, for those who want to get in on the jackbooted action.
100,000 TSA employees’ personal data stolen
Posted: May 5, 2007 7:14 pm
A hard drive containing the names, Social Security and bank account numbers for 100,000 current and former Transportation Security Administration employees was reported stolen this week, prompting a criminal investigation.
Talk show hosts in hiding after police threat
Posted: May 4, 2007 4:35 am
Updated: May 4, 2007 5:24 pm
Until this week, the only people who really hated the Jersey Guys were corrupt politicians. Now, corrupt state troopers hate them, too.
Craig Carton and Ray Rossi walked out in the middle of their popular afternoon talk radio show and took their families into hiding after learning of a press conference in which New Jersey state police union leader David Jones gave out their home addresses and threatened to “crush” the people who leaked anonymous Internet postings by state troopers in which they apparently were plotting a ticket-writing blitz.
Army: “Soldier blogging unchanged” in new OPSEC regulation
Posted: May 3, 2007 4:10 pm
Noah Shachtman reported Wednesday at Wired News that new Army regulations would severely restrict soldiers’ ability to maintain web logs and send personal email, requiring them to clear every single post with a commanding officer. The Army says that’s just not true and that nothing has changed for soldiers on the ground.
Congress probes low morale at DHS
Posted: May 3, 2007 2:20 am
Morale at the Department of Homeland Security remains low, but Marta Perez, the department’s new human capital officer, says that “significant progress is being made.” It’s just not clear what the department is progressing toward, exactly.
Who wants a national ID?
Posted: May 2, 2007 6:31 pm
The majority of Americans, it seems, support the idea of a national ID, as long as it doesn’t contain biometric information, according to a recent UPI/Zogby poll. But a large coalition of groups from every part of the political spectrum has gotten together to oppose the REAL ID Act as a threat to Americans’ security.
Katrina housing aid extended through 2009
Posted: May 2, 2007 3:51 am
About 110,000 households displaced due to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 will continue to receive housing assistance through March 1, 2009, under a plan the Bush administration announced last week.
Is that homeless guy a terrorist?
Posted: May 2, 2007 2:28 am
Updated: May 2, 2007 4:23 am
It’s said in the Bible that the poor will always be among us. In Springfield, Ill., as in most cities across the U.S., the homeless are at the public library. They use the restroom in the stairwell of the parking garage on top of which the library sits and they store their meager tarp-covered possessions next to the building. And mayor Tim Davlin is apparently at his wit’s end trying to deal with the homeless problem.
But a local alderman has come up with a novel idea to clean up downtown Springfield: Suggest a terrorist threat from homeless people.
