|
|
U.S. Supreme Court may allow the government to track phones without a warrant
The upcomingSupreme Court decision on Antoine Jones’ GPS case could have a drastic and disturbing impact on the privacy of every American citizen.
If the Supreme Court finds that law enforcement were within the law when placing a GPS tracking device on the car of suspected drug smuggler and nightclub owner Antoine Jones, it would open the door for even more egregious violations of our privacy.
This decision would essentially allow the government to monitor anyone and everyone’s movements without a warrant for any reason or no reason at all.
While the PATRIOT Act is already an affront to the Constitution and everything that America was built upon, this would dangerously expand the power of the government to act without even having to seek out a warrant.
The most unsettling aspect of this prospect is that so many people seem ready to accept the fact that the government will be able to openly track them around the clock wherever they go.
November 24th 2011
Document Trove Exposes Surveillance Methods
The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents, spanning 36 companies, include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people's computers and cellphones, and "massive intercept" gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country. The papers were obtained from attendees of a secretive surveillance conference held near Washington, D.C., last month.
Intelligence agencies in the U.S. and abroad have long conducted their own surveillance. But in recent years, a retail market for surveillance tools has sprung up from "nearly zero" in 2001 to about $5 billion a year, said Jerry Lucas, president of TeleStrategies Inc., the show's operator.
Read more about the documents.
November 22th 2011
Justice warns of 'Big Brother society' as Supreme Court decides if police can use GPS to track you without a warrant
A Supreme Court justice has warned there could be a strict Big Brother society if the police are allowed to use GPS devices to track suspected criminals without advance approval.
Justice Stephen Breyer said there could be around-the-clock surveillance reminiscent of the totalitarian world of the George Orwell novel 1984.
His comments come as the Obama administration appeals a ruling that threw out a drug conspiracy conviction when the FBI and police installed a GPS device on the suspect's car without a search warrant.
November 15th 2011
Big Brother alert over surge in 'citizen spies' as thousands more volunteer to snoop on neighbours
Councils across the country have recruited thousands of ‘citizen snoopers’ to report ‘environmental crime’.
They target dog foulers, litter louts and neighbours who fail to sort their rubbish properly.
The volunteers act as the ‘eyes and ears’ of their neighbourhoods and are encouraged to take photos of ‘environmental crime’ and send them in with location details for a rapid response.
They are given hand-held GPS computers for the task or phone cards to cover the cost of using their own devices. Evidence gathered this way is sometimes used in criminal prosecutions.
There are already 9,831 snoopers signed up – a 17 per cent increase on the number two years ago – and a further 1,310 are set to be recruited and trained as part of schemes run by 18 councils.
Volunteers often apply to become ‘street champions’ through council websites, but many have also been lured by recruitment drives in local newspapers.
November 13th 2011
New Fed GPS Trackers Found on SUV
As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear oral arguments in a case Tuesday that could determine if authorities can track U.S. citizens with GPS vehicle trackers without a warrant, a young man in California has come forward to Wired to reveal that he found not one but two different devices on his vehicle recently. The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man’s girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car.
November 9th 2011
Total surveillance: SMART grid, SMART homes, SMART
healthcare and a camera on every corner
While many of us wondered why the Federal government and numerous federal corporations
operating in fraud, portraying themselves as “public service”, were so insistent on dispensing
with anything other than all digital, all the time, we have enough experience to know that the
Federal government while possessing the capability to actually do something to benefit the
public
at large, rarely ever does. Good ideas quickly go bad as the policies, laws and regulations
quickly convert to privileged deals, fictionally created science to facilitate global warming
scams, economy killing agreements and special considerations for those extra-special
campaign donors called, corporations, which the Supreme Court appears to be courting also.
November 6th 2011
Big Sis To Monitor Twitter For Signs Of Social Unrest
The wave of civil unrest that has swept the globe over the past year has prompted the Department of Homeland Security to step up its monitoring of Twitter and other social networks in a bid to pre-empt any sign of social dislocation within the United States.
“Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Caryn Wagner said the use of such technology in uprisings that started in December in Tunisia shocked some officials into attention and prompted questions of whether the U.S. needs to do a better job of monitoring domestic social networking activity,” reports the Associated Press.
November 2th 2011
The Database: Why Criminal Governments Spy On Citizens
At the very foundation of perhaps every modern day conflict between the expansive powers of unchecked bureaucracy and the dwindling freedoms of the ordinary citizen dwells the vital issue of privacy. Privacy and the right to hold personal and political views without being singled out and scrutinized by government is absolutely essential to any society which dares to deem itself “fair and just”. Ultimately, without the presence of these two liberties, and without people to defend them, a nation is ill equipped to circumvent the growth of tyranny, and anyone claiming to be “free” in the midst of such a culture is living a delusion of the highest order.
Total Control of United States (FULL MOVIE) The Israel Lobby
Coming soon: Robots in the sky that recognize and track you
Military research has been the source of a number of modern technologies, most notably the Internet.
But now, the Army just issued contracts to develop two technologies that don’t seem as fun as, say, poking someone on Facebook.
The contracts, which Wired reports are for work on surveillance projects, could make drones more adept at targeting specific individuals.
One is to develop drones with strong facial recognition that prevents the drone from losing a face in a crowd. Others are for machines that can integrate intelligence data with information from an informant to determine your intent.
Part of a broader effort called TTL (for “Tagging, Tracking and Locating”), these new projects will support the Pentagon as it attempts to monitor enemies and insurgents in places like Afghanistan, where the strategy has switched from rebuilding societies to targeting specific individual bad actors.
Current technologies include using tiny transmitters that can use cellular, satellite or radio frequencies to report their whereabouts and lingering scents that mark targets with a vapor that can be tracked for hours. But they are inadequate because targets may discover their transmitters and remove them, and scents eventually dissipate.
The Story of Your Enslavement
Plans to put Atlanta’s public spaces under camera surveillance will move forward this week with the opening of a state-of-the-art video monitoring center.
Whether it’s good that Atlanta is joining other big cities in the video surveillance race depends on your comfort level with being watched more often by police.
The downtown “Video Integration Center,” funded by a mix of private donations and public money, has already given Atlanta police links to more than 100 public and private security cameras.
Talks are underway to link up with more cameras at CNN Center, Georgia State University, the Georgia World Congress Center and MARTA, along with cameras in Buckhead.
Officials say hundreds or thousands more private-sector cameras will eventually feed into the center. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution toured the center last week, as live footage of a traffic stop and archived video of a DragonCon parade played on a 15-foot screen. Officers can watch up to 128 views at once.
Big Brother Literally Watching You - and Talking!
July 13th 2011
Two more ridiculous examples of the nanny state kicking into high gear add to the overwhelming weight of evidence indicating that America is in a state of terminal decline, with an overtly authoritarian big government enforcing a command and control system at every level of society.
 Government environmental permits will now be required in San Diego for any kind of fireworks display, meaning state permission will be required for fireworks at birthday parties or any other outdoor event. Small-scale gatherings would now require an “environmental assessment” before they can take place.
“According to the strictest interpretation of this, jumpy-jumps and everything else would be subject to environmental review if this ruling stands,” said lawyer Robert Howard, who represented the La Jolla Community Fireworks Foundation in the case. “It’s a breathtaking ruling.”
Meanwhile in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Albemarle Road Presbyterian Church was fined $4,000 dollars by the city government for “improperly pruning its trees.”
June 1th 2011
Draft of Washington-EU deal leaked to the Guardian shows agreement 'violates basic European principles'
 The personal data of millions of passengers who fly between the US and Europe, including credit card details, phone numbers and home addresses, may be stored by the US department of homeland security for 15 years, according to a draft agreement between Washington and Brussels leaked to the Guardian.
The "restricted" draft, which emerged from negotiations between the US and EU, opens the way for passenger data provided to airlines on check-in to be analysed by US automated data-mining and profiling programmes in the name of fighting terrorism, crime and illegal migration. The Americans want to require airlines to supply passenger lists as near complete as possible 96 hours before takeoff, so names can be checked against terrorist and immigration watchlists.
 The feds will mandate next month that all new cars be fitted with a black box, according to news reports. So-called black boxes record information about speed, seat belt use and brake application.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been involved in the use of black boxes since their introduction. In 2006, the safety administration encouraged but did not require automobile manufacturers to install the systems and also did not set a single standard for the way data would be recorded, according to the New York Times.
In February, NHTSA administrator David Strickland said the government was considering making the technology mandatory in the wake of recalls of millions of Toyota vehicles. Strickland made the disclosure to a subcommittee hearing by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Now they will make the installation of these device mandatory under federal law. If we are to gauge the reaction of the corporate media, this story is not very important. Outside of industry and technology publications, the story was not reported.
Computer chip manufacturer Intel showed off its event recorder last year following the Toyota recall. “With new vehicles, there will very likely be video cameras inside and outside,” said Intel’s chief technology office, Justin Rattner, in a July, 2010, interview. “It’s not particularly new or stunning, but when you combine the cameras with GPS, you’re geo-tagging the video.”
May 25th 2011
Department of Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano told a conference of travel and tourism industry leaders gathered in Las Vegas that the prospect of shoe bombing remains a threat to aviatio
“Aviation remains a target. Material taken from Bin Laden’s house in Pakistan confirms that,” she said.
“We are moving away from one size fits all in security,” she added. “Trusted traveller programs are where we are focused. But it is more difficult than you imagine. You need to recognize it only takes one plane to go down.”
Napolitano’s remarks fall on the heels of a report commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association that calls on airlines to create a voluntary “trusted traveler” program similar to a mandatory one previously proposed by president Bush and rejected by Congress.
TSA administrator and former deputy FBI director John Pistole told the Wall Street Journal that the agency would use data from frequent-flier programs, which many carriers have kept for decades, to identify potential “trusted travelers,” the Boston Globe reports. Boarding passes of individuals in the program would be marked with a bar code, and those passengers would go through an expedited screening line after presenting their passes and valid identification
May 22th 2011
 The city of Boston has been taken to task by the ACLU over concerns about a roll-out of thermal imaging cameras being used to monitor energy efficiency inside homes. A pilot program to take aerial and street-level photos of heat loss in Boston was part of a scheme to encourage participation in home energy improvement programs, as well as to drive consumers towards green companies.
According toCBS, the project had been halted following public outcry about invasions of privacy, namely that “infrared cameras would reveal information about what’s going on inside the homes.” Further objections have been raised about potential violations of the Fourth Amendment (but what’s that anyway?). Officials reportedly “planned on sharing the photos and analysis with homeowners, and were hoping the findings would increase enrollment in efficiency programs and also create business opportunities.”
April 13th 2011
 It has become nearly impossible to determine the "truth" in our increasingly chaotic world. Reality is seemingly being twisted and flipped on its head in this rapid unfolding of multi-front crises. The world is facing a new world war in the Arab world, nuclear holocaust from the Fukushima meltdown, total economic collapse/takeover, and a stunning rise in the cost of essential commodities.
In each case, the public is being told directly the opposite of basic human understanding. In fact, it's so blatant that it appears to be a test to see how fast and far the collective human psyche can be warped. George Orwell would be impressed with the level of doublespeak manipulation that has taken place concerning these recent catastrophic events
April 11th 2011
Highway Checkpoints and Licence Plate Reading Camera Legislation Moving Forward In The Texas Senate.(Your Papers Please)
 One thing I learned about politicians they never keep their promises and do the opposite of they say they will do for the people. This is why I never had any faith in those who ran on the Tea Party platform because once they were in office. They would get all caught up in the web of deceit of special interest. Most of the bills filed in the Texas legislator this session infringe on our rights and does not secure them.
What rights that are being infringed upon is the right to travel and the right to contract or not enter into an agreement. SB-1700- filed by Texas State Senator Tommy Williams would set up checkpoints to check for licenses and insurance from motorist if this bill becomes law. Has Senator Williams realized the economy is in the tank? People can not afford to buy auto insurance. They are barely able to survive with high fuel prices and the spike of food cost shopping at the supermarket.Is this Senator doing the bidding of the insurance lobby to make sure every Texan is forced to purchase auto insurance to drive on the roads the taxpayers paid for.Texas made sobriety checkpoints illegal years ago because people complained about the abuses by Police where they never hardly caught drunks. Mostly people who did not have their papers(License,insurance and registration please?)These were the people that were affected.Not the drunks driving. Drunks know how to avoid these checkpoints. These checkpoints are only for revenue generation for the state to enrich there budgets
March 30th 2011
 But then Verizon doesn’t just throw cash to ultra-right politicians. It throws their corporate weight here and there to oppose freedoms you care about. For instance, Verizon fought hard against net neutrality and went so far as to sue the Federal Communications Commission in January to get rid of the rules to protect an open Internet. Why, unless they’re inherently repressive? Also, Verizon once rejected NARAL Pro-Choice America’s request to send text messages on the Verizon network, saying it had a right to block messages it deemed were “controversial or unsavory.” When did Verizon Wireless start playing Big Brother?
March 1th 2011
 The Federal Bureau of Investigations announced recently that it is dedicating up to $1 billion for a Lockheed Martin-developed system that will enable on-the-fly analysis of detailed identification information that can be instantaneously shared with law enforcement all around the world.
It's called the "Next Generation Identification System" (NGIS), and if you're a fan of television dramas like the CBS crime drama NCIS, it may sound pretty familiar.
The FBI says their forthcoming system is an "incremental" upgrade to their currently-existing "Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System" (IAFIS), but it's more than just an upgrade: it's a revolution in law enforcement technology that's bound to draw comparisons to the "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) project Congress ostensibly shut down in 2004.
The TIA project, however, was broader in scope, targeting private individuals all over the world instead of just suspected criminals or terrorists.
March 25th 2011|
America's Total Surveillance Society
 In 2003, an ACLU report warned that "Big Brother" no longer is fiction, America having advanced to where total surveillance is now possible. Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program said:
"Given the capabilities of today's technology, the only thing protecting us from a full-fledged surveillance society are the legal and political institutions we have inherited as Americans. Unfortunately, the September 11 attacks have led some to embrace the fallacy that weakening the Constitution will strengthen America."
As a result, civil liberties fast eroded. In 2007, another ACLU report warned about America being six minutes to midnight "as a surveillance society draws near...." Powerful new technologies potentially make total monitoring possible under a president, a compliant Congress and courts that believe national security takes precedence over constitutional freedoms.
As a result, "we confront the possibility of a dark future where our every move," transaction, and communication is "recorded, compiled, and stored away" for ready access for whatever authorities may want.
One of several earlier articles on institutionalized spying can be accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2008/01/institutionalized-spying-on-americans.html
February 28h 2011|
FBI urges Congress to expand Internet wiretapping
The FBI urged members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security on Thursday to update the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) and make it easier for authorities to eavesdrop on Internet.
The act was passed in 1994 and requires telecommunication companies to design their equipment and services to ensure that law enforcement and national security officials can monitor telephone and other communications whenever necessary.
"Over the years, through interpretation of the statute by the Federal Communications Commission, the reach of CALEA has been expanded to include facilities-based broadband internet access and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services that are fully inter-connected with the public switched telephone network," FBI General Counsel Valeria Caproni told the subcommittee.
"Although that expansion of coverage has been extremely helpful, CALEA does not cover popular Internet-based communications modalities such as webmail, social networking sites or peer-to-peer services."
"As a result, although the government may obtain a court order authorizing the collection of certain communications, it often serves that order on a provider who does not have an obligation under CALEA to be prepared to execute it," she explained. "Such providers may not have intercept capabilities in place at the time that they receive the order."
February 19h 2011
FBI can obtain phone records without oversight, Justice Dept memo claims
 Without court oversight, the nation's top law enforcement agency can obtain domestic records of telephone conversations made to international receivers, the Justice Department claimed recently.
"[The Office of Legal Counsel] agreed with the FBI that under certain circumstances (word or words redacted) allows the FBI to ask for and obtain these records on a voluntary basis from the providers, without legal process or a qualifying emergency," the Justice Department's inspector general said in a recent report by McClatchy Newspapers.
The claim put forth in the document released to McClatchy seemed to indicate that the Obama administration has continued the previous administration's policies.
The Bush administration maintained that the FBI needed such policing powers in order to stop possible terrorism. Critics of the FBI's surveillance program stated that the tactic was frequently applied in abusive manners.
Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told McClatchy that the OLC's disclosure that explained its legal position on part of the 1978 federal wiretapping law was a missing puzzle piece
February 13th 2011|
Why Do We Just Accept Things?
 The things that we human beings will accept are absolutely amazing. On many occasions, large groups of people have managed to accept things that make people today think they must have been stupid or cowards. And people today accept things that, in the future, our descendants will probably regard the same way.
Acceptance is not all bad, of course. The world isn’t all roses and sunshine; humans do need to adapt, and before that can happen, we need to accept and absorb what is around us. No doubt, there have been some humans who had too much of a tendency to not accept the things around them, and they probably didn’t make much of a contribution to our gene pool.
But when it comes to our social environment, over-acceptingness can be a major point of weakness, and even a fatal flaw. “Doormat” is a pretty apt metaphor for one who consistently accepts too much. “Sheep” is another. Vast numbers of people have knowingly been led to horrible fates simply because they nodded their heads and submitted at the wrong moment. Those same people didn’t have much to contribute to the human gene pool.
February 1th 2011
AIRPrint performs ranged fingerprintscanning, won't let the terrorists win
 While ears may be the new biometric du jour, Advanced Optical Systems (AOS) is doing its best to keep fingerprints as the preferred method for identifying enemies of the state. The company has built a fingerprint scanner with the ability to accurately read a print up to two meters away, and our military views the system as a means to reduce the risk to soldiers at security checkpoints all over the world. The AIRPrint system is a significant upgrade over previous biometric security systems because it allows a person's identity to be confirmed by military personnel from behind the safety of a blast wall or armored vehicle, which keeps our serviceman out of harm's way.
January 20th 2011
Cameras & Phones Pinpoint Your Location Online
January 14th 2011
Judge warns of ‘Orwellian state’ in warrantless GPS tracking case
 Police in Delaware may soon be unable to use global positioning systems (GPS) to keep tabs on a suspect unless they have a court-signed warrant, thanks to a recent ruling by a superior court judge who cited famed author George Orwell in her decision.
In striking down evidence obtained through warrantless GPS tracking, Delaware Judge Jan R. Jurden wrote that "an Orwellian state is now technologically feasible," adding that "without adequate judicial preservation of privacy, there is nothing to protect our citizens from being tracked 24/7."
January 1th 2011
"National Security" Means Tyranny
The term “national security” has become like the word “racism.” It has been applied so liberally for so long that its overstretched usage has rendered it meaningless. Definitions necessarily require a limited and fixed meaning. If everyone is a “racist” then no one is. If everything becomes “national security” then nothing is.
Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona announced this month that obesity “affects our national and global security.” We also learned this month that the Department of Homeland Security believes that “climate change has the potential to accelerate and intensify extreme weather events which threaten the nation’s sustainability and security.” Being fat is a matter of “national security?” Global warming falls into the category of “national security?” Really?
December 31h 2010
 Even as the Justice Department reports a two-year decline in the number of wiretap applications approved by a secret U.S. intelligence court, the workload of Justice Departmen lawyers assigned to request and oversee such sensitive surveillance activities appears to be growing.
The activity by the department's National Security Division, which is responsible for obtaining authorization from a secret court to tap Americans' telephone calls and e-mails and conduct other surveillance, was a prominent factor cited by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in a campaign this month to prod the Senate into confirming President Obama's nomination of James M. Cole to serve as Holder's deputy.
December 26th 2010
IF YOU TOLERATE THIS...
December 25th 2010
Who Are They Really?
 Who are these creatures that want to shut down the truth-telling side of the net? Who, What and Why are they attempting to do this.
The 'WHO' is easy; "they" are the long-time enemies of freedom and self-rule. They are those, who believe that society must always be controlled because they believe that we are all just savages; without enough sense to govern ourselves. They also believe that 'if left to our own devices' the world would automatically revert to total Anarchy: And they could not be more wrong
The government's one-way mirror
One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian government is its fixation on hiding everything it does behind a wall of secrecy while simultaneously monitoring, invading and collecting files on everything its citizenry does. Based on the Francis Bacon aphorism that "knowledge is power," this is the extreme imbalance that renders the ruling class omnipotent and citizens powerless.
In The Washington Post today, Dana Priest and William Arkin continue their "Top Secret America" series by describing how America's vast and growing Surveillance State now encompasses state and local law enforcement agencies, collecting and storing always-growing amounts of information about even the most innocuous activities undertaken by citizens suspected of no wrongdoing. As was true of the first several installments of their "Top Secret America," there aren't any particularly new revelations for those paying attention to such matters, but the picture it paints -- and the fact that it is presented in an establishment organ such as The Washington Post -- is nonetheless valuable.
December 22th 2010
 Lauded as a security feature, Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processor can be remotely disabled by a hardware/software combination known at Anti-Theft 3.0. Systems can be disabled over 3G networks, even while the OS is not running. Even when the hard drive is replaced, the critical systems will still be terminated.
At first this sounds great: if an owner loses a laptop it can be remotely disabled to ensure no sensitive data is compromised. But essentially we are giving up control of our computers and putting that control in another’s hands.
With the Patriot Act in place and and legislation like the ‘kill switch’ bill, many of the rights we took for granted are threatened. It is well within reason to fear this type of technology as it could be used as a means of control and censorship.
The CIA recently created a ‘honeypot’ on a hijacked mirror site associated with Wikileaks and used it to identify people who download the sensitive data.
December 15th 2010
Buying a Car a Little Harder Now: Terror Check Required For Financing
 If you're in the market for a car, be prepared to prove you are not a terrorist.
The federal government's Red Flags Rule mandates that auto dealers, banks, credit unions and other "creditors" and "financial institutions" take additional steps to prevent identity theft and fraud, beginning Jan. 1. Included in the list of so-called creditors is your family doctor.
Among those steps is determining whether a person applying for financing - or even paying cash for a car - appears on any government watch lists of known or suspected terrorists or terrorist organizations.
As a result, consumers hoping to finance a new or used car, a home or even a major appliance will be required to supply personal information - such as their Social Security number and birth date, as well as the answers to five questions designed to confirm a customer is who they say they are - to the business at the time of the sale. Those questions could include anything from previous addresses and area codes to the names of other members of the consumer's household.
Ncvember 21th 2010
Why you may soon need a warmist’s permission to eat
 SO you think I exaggerate when I say global warming is just the latest cause of the closet totalitarian?
Then pay close attention to an experiment the warmists are about to inflict on the people of Norfolk Island.
Be warned. What’s being trialled there with $390,000 of Gillard Government money may, if it works, be spread to the mainland, say the researchers. Which means it’s coming for you.
The plan - and, no, I’m not joking - is to put Norfolk Islanders on rations to fight both global warming and obesity.
Funded by the Australian Research Council, and approved by the Socialist Left Science Minister Kim Carr, researchers from the Southern Cross University will give each volunteer on the island a “carbon card”.
Every time they buy petrol, electricity or an air flight, they will have “carbon units” deducted from the fixed allowance on their card.
More units will be lost each time they buy fatty foods, or produce flown in from a long way away.
If, at the end of each year or so, they have carbon units left over, they can sell them. If they’ve blown their allocation, they must buy more.
Ncvember 6th 2010
 Technology is opening new doors to hotel safety, and the way we navigate hotels is set to change in the blink of an eye. Or the swipe of a cellphone. Or the print of a finger. With futuristic systems like scent and iris scanners and digital facial-recognition, hotel security is being taken to the next level.
Those plastic key cards that once seemed so innovative will soon go the way of the actual key. The new thing is contact-less Smartcards and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) cards that need just be waved to allow room access. Much like the cruise world's one card system, these cards may soon make hotel stays easier by allowing guests to pay for services, as well as to check-in and check-out, through a single device. Travelers may even be able to save preferences on the cards, from pillow type to floor choice. RFID cards are already in use at New York's Plaza Hotel, and Starwood Hotels are considering introducing them into their hip Aloft and Element properties.
Ncvember 5th 2010
 A speed camera designed to catch motorists committing up to five offences at the same time could be heading to Britain's roads. As well as catching speeding motorists, the Asset camera should be able to pick out drivers who are not wearing seatbelts and accurately measure distances between moving cars to identify tailgating.
Asset (advanced safety and driver support for essential road transport) can also note number plates and recognise cars with out-of-date tax discs and no insurance.
Funded by the European commission, the camera system is being developed by a consortium that includes a number of European universities and research institutes and is being tested in Finland.
Motoring organisations and campaigners in the UK gave the system a cautious welcome. AA president Edmund King said he was pleased if it stopped motorists tailgating but hoped it would not be used as a money-making measure. "Tailgating is more dangerous in most cases than speeding so I think most motorists would welcome it," he said. "We will need sophisticated technology to police the roads and there would have to be safeguards. But it needs to be done as a safety measure, not as a money-making machine."
Ncvember 4th 2010
 The Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition is pushing ahead with plans to allow Britain’s security services and police to spy on the activities of every citizen who uses a phone or the Internet. The secret services and police will have unlimited powers to track every single phone call, email, text message and website visit made by anybody in the UK.
The plans were contained within last month’s “Strategic Defence and Security Review” in which the government stated, “We will introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework.”
Ncvember3th 2010
Detroit — Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is pushing for a law that calls for jail time for parents who skip parent-teacher conferences, a plan some call inspired and others consider the nanny state run amok.
Worthy pitched her plan Tuesday to the Detroit City Council and is shopping it to the Wayne County Commission and state Legislature. Drawing a link between parental involvement and youth crime, Worthy wants a sponsor to guide the idea to law. Her plan would require parents to attend at least one conference per year or face three days in jail. Parents of those excelling in school would be exempt, as would those whose health issues make travel difficult and those "actively engaged" with teachers through e-mail, phone calls or letters.
October 20h 2010
| |
