What you got in there?

(Image is in the Public Domain)

You can be forced to turn it on and let border agents browse around for stuff to charge you with. Isn't that nice?

(Image is in the Public Domain)

First the FBI was going to put the DNA of innocent people on permenant file, but now they're going to drag in the DNA of any relatives to the offenders as well.

He was a church-going father of two, and for more than 30 years Dennis Rader eluded police in the Wichita area, killing 10 people and signing taunting letters with a self-styled monogram: BTK, for Bind Torture Kill. In the end, it was a DNA sample that tied BTK to his crimes. Not his own DNA. But his daughter's.

Investigators obtained a court order without the daughter's knowledge for a Pap smear specimen she had given five years earlier at a university medical clinic in Kansas. A DNA profile of the specimen almost perfectly matched the DNA evidence taken from several BTK crime scenes, leading detectives to conclude she was the child of the killer. That allowed police to secure an arrest warrant in February 2005 and end BTK's murderous career.

The sad thing here is that the practice could be used to do great good, but we can't let the FBI ever have the power to do this because they can't be trusted to use it properly.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

The U.S. government will soon begin collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime and from many immigrants detained by federal authorities, adding genetic identifiers from more than 1 million individuals a year to the swiftly growing federal law enforcement DNA database.

If you are found innocent, you can't be treated like a criminal. Duh.

What is happening at the FBI that they can violate our privacy and rights over and over and over?

(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

Reunion.com is using a deceptive marketing strategy where they pretend to be someone you know who is inviting you to Reunion. If you go to Reunion.com to see who it is, sign up, and make the horrible gross mistake of giving them your e-mail address password, they will automatically send out false e-mails to all the people in your contact list.

Two things are going horribly wrong here. One is that Reunion.com is using false and deceptive practices and is doing nothing less than what a virus or hacker would do. I hope the hammer of law hits them hard and fast

The second thing is that people somehow believe it's ok to give up their e-mail address password which is a huge no no.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

The FBI has been up to no good:

Counterterrorism officials in FBI headquarters slowed an investigation into a possible conspirator in the 2005 London bombings by forcing a field agent to return documents acquired from a U.S. university. Why? Because the agent received the documents through a lawful subpoena, while headquarters wanted him to demand the records under the USA Patriot Act, using a power the FBI did not have, but desperately wanted.

FTC

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I'm skeptical of the Federal Trade Commission's ability to deal with spyware or Spam, but the crack-down on fake blogging and unlabeled DRM is interesting.

Fake blogs (flogs), like the ones set up by Sony to promote the PSP, also try to gain authenticity by masquerading as homegrown labors of love. And while most established media sites have policies designed to keep editorial and advertising separate, blogs may have no such rules in place.

Case in point: the Sony BMG rootkit fiasco, a case in which the Commission actually did charge the company with deception for not informing consumers that certain CDs contained DRM that limited their usefulness.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

It was just yesterday that I was explaining why closed circuit tv systems (the the ones they have prominently installed all over London) don't work. Here's an article about a London Graffiti artist who carefully painted a giant message to the authorities that spans three full stories on a building right next to a security camera.

The secretive graffiti artist managed to erect three storeys of scaffolding behind a security fence despite being watched by a CCTV camera. Then, during darkness and hidden behind a sheet of polythene, he painted this comment on 'Big Brother' society.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC])

The last thing this cult wants is more exposure into their secret operating documents. Go Wikileaks!