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Idaho has joined a growing trend of states that are flat out telling the federal government to jump off a cliff. The REAL ID act has been attacked by privacy organizations for being a national ID card which will have far reaching implications to personal freedom. Not only that, but implementation of the system is extremely expensive and each state is supposed to pay for it.

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Thanks to the good work of the people over at Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering - CASPIAN, a plot by American Express to patent technology that would "identify people, track their movements, and observe their behavior" has been exposed. According to their article:

That patent application, titled "Method and System for Facilitating a Shopping Experience," describes a Minority Report style blueprint for monitoring consumers through RFID-enabled objects, like the American Express Blue Card

The funny part is that when American Express top brass learned that they'd been discovered, they scrambled into damage control mode and met with the leaders of Caspian promising to "ensure that any people-tracking plans be accompanied by language requiring consumer notice and consent". They also promised to make a spychip-free version of the card if a customer asks for it.

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The Consumerist found a Walmart PowerPoint presentation outlining their new focus on profiling customers into value groups and treating them accordingly. This is not new (read my Angel/Demon Customer Profiling article for details), but the funny part of it is that WalMart is so mad that it's dirty laundry was aired, that they sent a DMCA takedown notice to the Consumerist.

Walmart, "seemingly" embarrassed by having their "allegedly" sinister plot exposed, threatened the Consumerist into removing it from their site. So here's a copy.

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Bruce Shneier says it better, with more sources, but the FBI is abusing it's powers to circumvent the subpeona process.

The Justice Department's inspector general has prepared a scathing report criticizing how the F.B.I. uses a form of administrative subpoena to obtain thousands of telephone, business and financial records without prior judicial approval.

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There's buzz online about how a Symantec researcher has already broken Vista's firewall to pieces. This is hardly surprising, but what is surprising is how easy it was. While the firewall has a dialog box asking if a user wants to allow a program to access the Internet, Microsoft allows the program itself to click the OK button for the user. So basically, spyware programs can choose to get online or not. I wonder what they'll choose to do?

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Microsoft has now admitted that their software validation tool will check in with Microsoft servers even if you tell it not to.

But if you cancel the installation of WGA, maybe because you dislike the privacy implications, the software will still phone home. Microsoft stresses that WGA does not take any information which could identify you as an individual, but is only used to collate statistics on WGA use.

Who cares if it can't personally identify you (if that is indeed true)? The point is that you are not in control of your own software. For those non-technical among us who have always wondered by geeks hate Microsoft, it's because of stuff like this.

(Update:) ArsTechnica expands on this saying that this behavior is typical of ANY software distributed through Windows Update.

George W. Bush

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In a move that's sure to shock every child under the age of 6, Bush's privacy board cleared him of any privacy invasion.

Civil liberties groups who've advocated that the board be separated from the executive branch and given real subpoena power are unlikely to be satisfied with the board's findings. Congressional Democrats have already expressed disdain for the new report, and they're moving to strengthen the board's oversight capabilities.

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Apple is laughing all the way to the bank with the release of Vista. In their recent ad campaign, you see two people where one represents a Mac and the other a PC. One of the more accurate ones describes the new security "features" of Vista that prevents you from doing nearly anything without constant warnings and dialogue boxes. It may be tounge-in-cheek, but it's pretty close to the reality.

It's stuff like this that make people turn off security features just so they can get work done.

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Using some simple deduction, a security consultant discovered how to clone a passport as it's being mailed to its recipient, without ever opening the package.

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The Mac website is tearing Vista to shreds listing how many of its "cool features" have been in Max OS X since 2001. As I'm reading the nearly snide snickering articles about why Mac is (and has always been in their opinion) better than PCs, I noticed one important thing about the upcoming Leopard system.

Apparently, they plan to have a type of content management built into the OS which means that if you open a file to find it corrupted or accidentally made changes you didn't intend and saved it, the Operating System will let you "go back in time" to see earlier versions of that document.

This is not the same as Windows' System Restore feature that keeps backups of your system files, this is for each individual file and can be accessed without system restart.