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It's getting worse over there.

Assistant chief constable Simon Byrne said: "People clamour for the feeling of safety which cameras give.

Yes, but that's only because you tell them that cameras make them safer. How do you prevent them from becoming abused? What if a new law suddenly turns all those cameras on normal people. Things could go from ok to nightmare in a single day because of the infrastructure of social control that they're building.

I like this quote from Slashdot:

Is there any evidence to suggest that this increasingly Orwellian society is actually any safer?"

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For the switch to digital from analog, Onstar's fantastic customer service tactic is to completely abandon all analog users.

Naturally, there are many people who are up in arms about this (especially the people that fell for Onstar's deceptive ad campaign linking their service to happy endings to extremely unlikely scenarios).

An Onstar representative was quoted as saying "PPPPBBBBBLLLTTTT!!!" while thumbing his nose.

NSA

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Verizon, who I was pretty certain hadn't handed over any customer records according to them, is now saying that it's ok for them to do it, it's free speech.

Essentially, the argument is that turning over truthful information to the government is free speech, and the EFF and ACLU can't do anything about it. In fact, Verizon basically argues that the entire lawsuit is a giant SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit, and that the case is an attempt to deter the company from exercising its First Amendment right to turn over customer calling information to government security services.

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Assuming the bill is written well, this is a very good thing. Congress is pushing through a law that would prevent discrimination based on genetics. If you don't understand what this means, check out Gattica, a movie that explains the risks better than any other I've seen.

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I've heard about this before. Using the right equipment, you can see most of what is on someone's computer monitor from a good distance and through walls.

RFID

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The people over at CASPIAN have warned about how companies are trying hard to get RFID tags into all their products without people knowing. Well, now they will. The anti-theft tags that nearly every product currently has will be combined with RFID technology so that nearly every item you walk out of the store with will also transmit a unique identifying number to any reader nearby. Theives, marketers and big brother are salivating.

You don't believe that companies are desperately interested in what you do every waking moment? Then you haven't been paying attention.

Real ID

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Why they don't do this for other issues, I don't know, but several organizations have banded together to fight the implementation of REAL ID.

George W. Bush

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In what is hardly news, Bush again picks a poor choice for an important position. Michael Baroody, a high-ranking member of the National Association of Manufacturers, has been nomintated as chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (the agency responsible for reigning in manufacturers). What exactly is it about conflict of interest that Bush doesn't understand?

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Talon, a Pentagon program that has been used to track and monitor peaceful group and members of some churches is now being dismantled.

Assuming there are protections in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening again and that whoever was responsible for this in the first place is disciplined, then this is a good thing.

REAL ID still unpopular

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While they aren't the first (even though they mysteriously claim to be).

"We also don't think that bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., ought to tell us that if we're going to get on a plane we have to carry their card, so when it's scanned through they know where you went, when you got there and when you came home," said Schweitzer, a Democrat.