Another Anti-Terrorism Measure or Big Brother Coming Closer to Reality??

This article on my favorite online newspaper this morning as I woke up....

It seems that "Real I.D." is here and is law and it will affect everyone personally the next time they go to renew their drivers liscence.

This new identification card has lots more to it than this story tells about.
With this I.D. there is rumor that the card itself will contain a whole slew of information regarding your personal history...so much information that it is to be akin to "your entire life" on a card.

As this guy (link to article below) so elequently puts it, I guess most of that information is already available:
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0802/0802files.htm

So alot of information is already out there but I truly feel this card is a bit unnessicary. But according to a bunch of stories I have read in the past few years, it will be almost impossible to live a day to day life (traveling, banking ect) without one of these cards...

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=607401
Click on link- above- for full story

Welcome to 1984....a few years late...

Spying on Americans....

How will you feel when one of these is in every single room of your personal dwelling and everywhere else you go for that matter...

Well if Mr. Bush gets his way with his push for his "spying program" this camera may soon become reality along with many more ominous spying tools to keep an eye on our every move....

The editorial below was just put forward in today's online New York Times and I felt it was important enough to recopy here in it's entirety.

In my opinion no matter what has happened since 911, our government does NOT have the right to dig into our personal business the way that our president wants to.

I have said before and I will say it again that what I see is our constitution and thus our individual rights and freedoms are being eroded more and more since this administration has been in office.

I have the deepest feeling that history will look back on this time as a time where great errors and miscarriages of liberty and justice and individual freedoms being eroded as one of the sadest and ugliest times in American history.

The America that our forefathers founded and the basis for which they created this once great nation are no longer valid, at least according to the current leadership of this Once Great Nation.

I feel very worried and sad for our future....

Read on for this very interesting editorial:

___________________________________________________________________

May 2, 2007

Editorial

Spying on Americans

For more than five years, President Bush authorized government spying on phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States without warrants. He rejected offers from Congress to update the electronic eavesdropping law, and stonewalled every attempt to investigate his spying program.

Suddenly, Mr. Bush is in a hurry. He has submitted a bill that would enact enormous, and enormously dangerous, changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping. It would undermine the fundamental constitutional principle — over which there can be no negotiation or compromise — that the government must seek an individual warrant before spying on an American or someone living here legally.

To heighten the false urgency, the Bush administration will present this issue, as it has before, as a choice between catching terrorists before they act or blinding the intelligence agencies. But the administration has never offered evidence that the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, hampered intelligence gathering after the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush simply said the law did not apply to him.

The director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, said yesterday that the evidence of what is wrong with FISA was too secret to share with all Americans. That’s an all-too-familiar dodge.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is familiar with the president’s spying program, has said that it could have been conducted legally. She even offered some sensible changes for FISA, but the administration and the Republican majority in the last Congress buried her bill.

Mr. Bush’s motivations for submitting this bill now seem obvious. The courts have rejected his claim that 9/11 gave him virtually unchecked powers, and he faces a Democratic majority in Congress that is willing to exercise its oversight responsibilities. That, presumably, is why his bill grants immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated in five years of illegal eavesdropping. It also strips the power to hear claims against the spying program from all courts except the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret.

According to the administration, the bill contains “long overdue” FISA modifications to account for changes in technology. The only example it offered was that an e-mail sent from one foreign country to another that happened to go through a computer in the United States might otherwise be missed. But Senator Feinstein had already included this fix in the bill Mr. Bush rejected.

Moreover, FISA has been updated dozens of times in the last 29 years. In 2000, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, who ran the National Security Agency then, said it “does not require amendment to accommodate new communications technologies.” And since 9/11, FISA has had six major amendments.

The measure would not update FISA; it would gut it. It would allow the government to collect vast amounts of data at will from American citizens’ e-mail and phone calls. The Center for National Security Studies said it might even be read to permit video surveillance without a warrant.

This is a dishonest measure, dishonestly presented, and Congress should reject it. Before making any new laws, Congress has to get to the truth about Mr. Bush’s spying program. (When asked at a Senate hearing yesterday if Mr. Bush still claims to have the power to ignore FISA when he thinks it is necessary, Mr. McConnell refused to answer.)

With clear answers — rather than fearmongering and stonewalling — there can finally be a real debate about amending FISA. It’s not clear whether that can happen under this president. Mr. Bush long ago lost all credibility in the area where this law lies: at the fulcrum of the balance between national security and civil liberties....
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

___________________________________________________________________

Another Step towards 1984...Mind Reading Getting Closer to Reality

Something to "think" about....Is the world of the movie "Minority Report" which was set in the year 2054 -coming closer to reality???

After reading the article below I have to wonder....

A link to that movie's sypnosis in case someone reading this post has never heard about it or seen it (and in that case I highly reccomend that they do):

http://www.minorityreport.com/

And a little more info on the world in 2054 as envisioned by this cool movie:

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/webpages/minorityx21x06x02

A few paragraphs from an article on mind reading....

____________________________________________________________

For the moment, reading minds is a cumbersome process and there is no chance scientists could spy on decision-making surreptitiously. Haynes' studies focus on people who choose between just two alternatives, not the infinite number present in everyday life.

But scientists are making enough progress to make ethicists nervous, since the research has already progressed from identifying the regions of the brain where certain thoughts occur to identifying the very content of those thoughts.

"These technologies, for the first time, give us a real possibility of going straight to the source to see what somebody is thinking or feeling, without them having any ability to stop us," said Dr. Hank Greely, director of Stanford University's Center for Law and the Biosciences.

"The concept of keeping your thoughts private could be profoundly altered in the future," he said.

Civil libertarians are concerned that mind-reading technology may fit into a trend of pre-emptive security measures in which authorities could take action against individuals before they commit a crime - a scenario explored in the 2002 science fiction film "Minority Report."

Already, Britain is creating a national DNA database that would allow authorities to track people with violent predispositions.

In addition, the government has also floated the idea of locking up people with personality disorders that could lead to criminal behavior.

"We need to start thinking about how far we are going to allow these technologies to be used," said Wolpe.

_____________________________________________________________

My thoughts:

Even though the world of "1984" envisioned by George Orwell didn't come to pass that year (the year I graduated from high school by the way), it seems that we are slowly but surely catching up to that world that he depicted in such vivid and sureal terms.....

The story below sheds some light on what scientists are up to these days in the area of "reading minds". Interesting stuff and alot of implications I can see already....most not very positive.
The ability to read a person's thoughts.....hmmm.

I do not know if I am ready for this future that we are carving for ourselves.
Star Trek and science fiction and Orwell's world are coming ever so close.
It is scary to say the least.

Read on for the rest of the story:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/READING_MINDS?SITE=WIMIL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT