Articles by Jim Harper 
Jim is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. Prior to becoming a policy analyst, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the House and Senate.
A DHS announcement says they have released grant money for REAL ID compliance.
The REAL ID Demonstration Grant Program will provide $31.3 million for checking motor vehicle records in other states to ensure that drivers do not hold multiple licenses, and for verification against federal records like immigration status. This grant will help standardize methods by which states may seamlessly verify an applicant’s information with another state and deploy data and document verification capabilities that can be used by all states, while protecting personal identification information.
That’s fully .18% of the $17 billion it will cost to implement REAL ID!
(That’s easy to mock, of course, but even $31.3 million is enough to keep cash-strapped government contractors and other hangers-on lobbying for implementation.)
Since I can’t find the announcement online, I’ll reproduce the whole thing after the break. To see the grant documentation – there’s no permalink – go to www.grants.gov, click on “Find Grant Opportunities” in the navigation, click on “Browse by Agency” in the navigation, click on “Department of Homeland Security,” and skim down. It’s currently on the second page.
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I can’t help but notice how debased the Google-DoubleClick merger discussion has become.
It started this morning when I read on Scott Cleland’s blog that C|Net journalist Declan McCullagh failed to reveal that his wife worked at Google in publishing his great article exposing Commerce Committee Joe Barton’s selective interest in privacy and merger issues.
So selective is Barton’s interest in privacy that he favored the USA-PATRIOT Act and the REAL ID Act. Now there’s a privacy hawk for you.
Now I discover that the Electronic Privacy Information Center has petitioned to have FTC Chairman Deborah Majoras recuse herself from any review of the merger because of her and her husband’s relationships with a law firm that represents DoubleClick.
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Via the 463, a great tech policy publication, National Journal’s Tech Daily, will be shutting down.
This is a loss, but it also represents progress. TechDaily was a subscription service that was quite expensive – more than a thousand dollars per year. (It won’t matter now if I reveal this to any TechDaily reporters, right? . . .) I long ago switched to TechLawJournal, coming in at $250 a year for reporting that serves my needs well. (TLJ reporter David Carney is a machine, people!) And, of course, there are dozens of resources that are completely free.
So, sayonara, TechDaily, and thank you.
TechCrunch reports that Jackass 2.5 will debut online, for free.
Sure this is an important development in the evolution of entertainment business models to accommodate modern communications, but I’m just as excited because it’s such an advance for our culture!
Dudes! Jackass 2.5!
My employer, the Cato Institute, believes that the promotion of the classical liberal ideals of liberty, free markets and peace is an essential effort.
Accordingly, today Cato is launching six innovative foreign-language Web sites. These new sites will publish in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Persian, Kurdish, and for African audiences in English and Swahili. These join three other highly-successful sites in Spanish, Arabic and Russian.
I mentioned briefly earlier the expansion of the US-VISIT program to collecting ten fingerprints. I’ve done more thinking on it, and will now victimize you with that.
The Department of Homeland Security announced this week that it would begin collecting 10 fingerprints from foreign visitors to the United States, an extension of the US-VISIT program. This looks like another self-injurious overreaction to the threat of terrorism.
I don’t think collecting ten fingerprints in the US-VISIT program violates civil liberties. People have a diminished right against search and seizure at our international borders. But it is a serious privacy concern for visitors to the U.S.
Their biometrics are entered into a U.S. government database and they have no idea what may be done with that information in the future. DHS keeps that data for 75 years. Yes, lawful visitors to this country, who come to snap pictures of the Statue of Liberty and teach their kids about the United States, go into a U.S. government database for the rest of their lives. It’s just insulting to the millions of good people who want to visit us.
With that, let’s do a rough cost-benefit analysis of collecting 10 fingerprints from foreign visitors to the U.S. It appears to be another security program whose costs outweigh its benefits.
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Here’s a very appealing Web video that has enough doom ‘n’ gloom to make your head explode.
It’s interesting to see the anti-everything (-trade, -globalization, -consumerism, etc.) worldview summarized so neatly. I would be very unhappy if that was my ideology. The video’s host obviously has not read (or has dismissed) Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource – to say nothing of Austrian economics.
There are legitimate concerns expresed in the video – with negative externalities in third world countries, for example. But, um, hiring workers in the third world is not a negative externality. And there’s no acknowledgement of how the rule of law and property rights in those countries would empower and enrich people there.
Still, this is good stuff to consider. I could do without giving or getting all that junque at Christmastime.
Visitors to the United States are now being required to share 10 fingerprints on entering the country. Here’s the text of a release the DHS is sending around. (I’ll link to it when I find it online.)
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now collecting additional fingerprints from international visitors arriving at Washington Dulles International Airport (Dulles). The change is part of the department’s upgrade from two- to 10-fingerprint collection in order to enhance security and fingerprint matching accuracy.
“Anyone who’s watched the news or seen crimes solved on television shows can appreciate the power of biometrics,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “They help the legitimate traveler proceed more quickly while protecting their identity and enable our frontline personnel to focus even greater attention on potential security risks. Biometrics tell the story that the unknown terrorist tries to conceal, and it causes them to question whether they’ve ever left a print behind.”
I wonder how visitors from other countries feel being asked to submit fingerprints and go through biometric background checks just to come here and visit. I’m not sure we’re the beacon of liberty we used to be.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.