The State Department has a notice of proposed rulemaking out on the “card format passport.” They are laying the groundwork for a card-style passport Americans would use when they travel to Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
What’s special about it?: “Vicinity read technology would allow the passport card data to be read at a distance of up to 20 feet from the reader.” That’s right: a promiscuous RFID chip would make your serial number widely available to whomever with a reader might want to know your whereabouts. (The system would not put personal data beyond this identifier on the card.)
If you have concerns about it, the comment period lasts until December 18, 2006. You can e-mail— wait, there’s no e-mail address.
Instead, it says, “Comments by Internet are to be sent to http://www.regulations.gov/index.cfm.” So you must go there and search for the Federal Register notice and submit your comment— wait, they are not accepting comments online either.
This Agency does NOT accept electronic comments for this Federal Register document. You must print out this comment and submit it to the agency by any method identified in the Federal Register document for the rule you are commenting on. The agency’s contact information will also appear on the printed comment form. Your comment will not be considered until this agency receives it. For further information, follow directions in the specific Federal Register document or contact the specific agency directly.
That’s right. The State Department is proposing to put RFID-chipped passport-lite documents in our hands – an ill-considered technological leap forward – without using basic, proven technologies to make its actions open to public participation or criticism.
So, after the jump, a six-step instruction guide for sharing your thoughts about RFID-chipped ID cards with the apparently indifferent State Department:
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WIlliam Patry writes today about what the election could mean for copyright. Bottom line, either Howard Berman or Rick Boucher will take over the IP subcommittee in the House, and Patry thinks there’s a good chance it will be Boucher. Boucher is no friend of the DMCA and seems to understand fair use.
Mr. Boucher is viewed by content owners as generally less sympathetic to their interests, although I would phrase the matter quite differently. Mr. Berman will always play an important role in the House on IP matters even if he is not chair of the subcommittee. In the past, he has taken great interest in international issues, and that may be the way he goes. The idea that he would pass on a different chairmanship solely at the urging of content owners is an idea that doesn’t reflect Mr. Berman’s overall interests or his role as a member of Congress. This isn’t to say he won’t take the IP subcommittee, it is only to say that I doubt the matter is as settled as some think.
In general, I don’t think elections have a big effect on technology issues, as they don’t tend to break down along partisan lines. One possible exception is network neutrality regulation. It seems that Democratic control of Congress is likely to make it easier for the pro-regulation folks to get their preferred legislation through Congress. On the other hand, the issue probably isn’t at the top of the Democratic agenda, and it’s complicated enough that the Democrats might find it hard to reach a consensus. Personally, I’m still rooting against Congress passing any telecom legislation.
Congress still has the opportunity to come back for a lame duck session, where it might still pass NSA white-washing legislation. I hope the Republicans have enough shame not to do that, but I wouldn’t put it past them. When the new Congress starts, it would be nice if they repealed the gambling bill, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
One race that makes me a little bit sad is Mark Kennedy’s loss in the Minnesota Senate race. Kennedy was a strong supporter of DMCA-reform legislation. I met with one of his staffers back in April, and he struck me as a smart guy genuinely interested in promoting good policies. It would have been nice to have an articulate DMCA critic in the Senate.
Yesterday the FCC did something a little weird. One week after putting up for public comment Cyren Call’s proposal to revamp public safety communications, it rejected the petition but also decided to keep the commenting open. Quite admirably, the Commission cites lack of authority from Congress. What’s weird is that they didn’t decide to reject the petition during the three months they sat on it before putting out for comment. Also weird are the post-decision comments, which will now have another audience: Congress.
In the new issue of Regulation magazine I explain the depth of the public safety interoperability problem and how we might go about tackling it.
In some parts of Europe, private enterprise builds and maintains the public safety network and sells interoperable communications capacity to the agencies there. A similar approach could be pursued in the United States. The government could allow private carriers to build advanced networks on frequencies that it now restricts to public safety use. Instead of building their own incompatible and duplicative networks, agencies and jurisdiction could purchase their communications needs from the private carriers. Because public safety communications typically use very little communications capacity, the carriers could sell space on the network to private entities without interfering with emergency communications.
This a warm-up to a paper I’m writing for FCLJ symposium on public safety interoperability that the Mercatus Center and GMU’s Tech Center are co-sponsoring. The event will take place Dec. 8 at GMU School of Law. Cyren Call’s Morgan O’Brien will be one of the panelists. Event details here.
Over at my other blog, my friend Amy Phillips has a funny comment about the blurring of nipples on those plastic surgery reality shows:
I watch a lot of plastic surgery, and while they always blur out women’s nipples, they never blur men’s (even when the men in question have boobs bigger than some of the pre-surgery women).
This leads to very weird results in shows about the plastic surgery that transgendered people undergo. When giving breast implants to a M-to-F transgendered person, the nipples are never blurred out at the beginning of the show, but about halfway through the surgery, once the implants are inflated, they pixelate the nipples. Same nipples, but when they sit on a rounder chest, they become indecent.
On F-to-M transgendered people, they blur out the nipples at the beginning of the surgery, but once a sufficient amount of breast tissue has been removed to make the chest look male, out come the nipples. Again, the same nipples that were once obscene become perfectly okay to look at once the chest is flattened out.
This happens without fail, regardless of what gender the patient in question considers her/himself, regardless of what genitalia the patient possesses, and regardless of the person’s legal gender. Context is everything, apparently.
Given that these are usually cable shows, we probably can’t blame the FCC for this one. We just live in a strange country.
Wow:
In Indiana’s Marion County, about 175 of 914 precincts turned to paper because poll workers didn’t know how to run the machines, said Marion County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler. Election officials in Delaware County, planned to seek a court order to extend voting after an apparent computer error prevented voters from casting ballots in 75 precincts.
Illinois officials were swamped with calls from voters complaining that poll workers did not know how to operate new electronic equipment
In Florida, voting was briefly delayed at four districts because of either mixed up ballots or electronic activators being unintentionally wiped out, according to Mary Cooney, spokeswoman for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections. Voters were forced to use paper ballots after an electronic machine broke in the Jacksonville suburb of Orange Park.
In suburban Pittsburgh, some precincts opened late because workers couldn’t zero out voting machines, raising concern that votes from previous elections had not been purged
In Passaic County, N.J., Republicans complained that a ballot had been pre-marked on some machines with a vote for the Democratic Senate candidate; the state attorney general was looking into the matter.
In Utah County, Utah, workers failed to properly encode some of the cards that voters use to bring up touchscreen ballots.
In Kentucky, a school board race was inadvertently left off the touchscreen ballot in two precincts in Bourbon County, requiring the county clerk to make paper ballots on the spot.
And the polls haven’t even closed yet. I thought e-voting was supposed to make elections less error-prone.
The BBC confirms that Microsoft’s Zune platform and its “Plays for Sure” platform will be incompatible:
Microsoft has said it will stop selling music from MSN music from 14 November, when Zune goes on sale in the US.
But in a move that could alienate some customers, MSN-bought tracks will not be compatible with the new gadget.
The move could also spell problems for the makers of MP3 players which are built to work with the MSN store.
The problem has arisen because tracks from the MSN Music site are compatible with the specifications of the Plays For Sure initiative.
This was intended to re-assure consumers as it guaranteed that music bought from services backing it would work with players that supported it. MSN Music, Napster, AOL Music Now and Urge all backed Plays For Sure as did many players from hardware makers such as Archos, Creative, Dell and Iriver.
In a statement a Microsoft spokesperson said: “Since Zune is a separate offering that is not part of the Plays For Sure ecosystem, Zune content is not supported on Plays For Sure devices.”
Amazing.
Last week I wrote about how excited I was to learn that Microsoft would soon be announcing an eagerly awaited movie / video downloading service for its XBOX 360 gaming console. And now we have the details of their new business model. And, in my opinion, it looks like a winner for MS, content developers and consumers alike.
Beginning on November 22nd–the second anniversery of the XBOX 360 launch–XBOX users will be able to use their “Microsoft Points,” which can be earned or purchased on the XBOX Marketplace, to download movies and TV shows from affiliated partners. The first round of deals MS cut were with CBS, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.
More deals are sure to follow, but that’s quite a bit of content already. I look forward to downloading Comedy Central and VH1 shows in particular, in addition to all the movies they’ll be offering. And my kids will love all the Nickelodeon and Nicktoons stuff that is on there. (A list of all the content companies involved in the deal can be found here).
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Ohio is having problems with e-voting again:
In one elementary school in the predominantly black district of East Cleveland, Ohio, all 12 machines went down when voting opened at 6:30 am (1130 GMT), according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.
The machines were not started up until two hours later and poll officials refused to hand out paper ballots until a lawyer for the watchdog group Election Protection showed up.
“The machines weren’t working and they were just turning people away,” said the attorney, Fred Livingstone. “They are not allowed to do that.”
More than 250 problems were reported at polling places in Ohio soon after polls opened according to an Election Protection watchdog operation run by a minority rights group and other non-governmental organizations.
I see two reasons for concern here. First is the obvious one: one of the basic requirements for voting machines is that they work. Every voting system has problems, but I’m not aware of any situations in which paper ballots refused to boot.
The more serious concern, though, is the possibility that this was the result of deliberate tampering. It’s conceivable (although highly unlikely) that someone programmed those machines to crash in order to reduce voting in precincts thought to be favorable to a particular candidate. I think it’s unlikely–but it’s not impossible. But if someone were trying to steal an election, this is precisely the kind of tactic they might employ. It would look like an ordinary computer glitch, and people would probably think it was just a coincidence that it happened mostly in precincts that heavily favored a particular candidate.
Like I said, this was probably an innocent glitch, not a case of tampering. But it’s very worrisome that we will never know for certain.
Over on Cato@Liberty, I’ve written a couple of times about how government access to data threatens many new and forthcoming business models.
TechDirt, a favorite tech-business blog, writes today about some ISPs’ perceived lack of cooperation with law enforcement. That ‘lack of cooperation’ is asking for a warrant before revealing customer data. “But requiring a warrant is a check against abuse; without them it’s hard for ISPs to judge the legitimacy and seriousness of a request. By valuing privacy, they better serve their customers, and ensure that law enforcement is only pursuing cases within the scope of the law.”
Very nice to see a business-oriented blog showing how privacy protection nests with commercial interests and good government.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.