Steve Bellovin points out a silly proposal to require licenses for Geiger counters. Like Bellovin, I’m at a loss as to why anyone would think this was a good idea. The police department says the legislation would “prevent false alarms and unnecessary public concern,” but it’s not clear either that false alarms are a major problem, or that this registration requirement would prevent them. Strangely enough, the article doesn’t cite a single example in which “false alarms” created serious problems for anybody.
A couple of other problems with the legislation spring to mind. First, it’s likely to be totally unenforceable. Geiger counters are widely available for a few hundred dollars. Any New Yorker who wants one will have little trouble going to New Jersey and buying one.
Second, I got to play around with a Geiger counter in my high school physics class. Does this legislation have an exception for instructional use? If not, this seems like a serious burden on education for now good reason.
Today, the Department of Homeland Security issued final regulations implementing the REAL ID Act, our moribund national ID law which several states have already refused to implement.
The regulations, in two parts, can be found here and here.
I will have more to say after examining them, but the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Chairman has already registered his preliminary objections. Cost issues, the difficulty of implementing this national ID, and privacy issues concern Chairman Thompson, who notes that DHS has spent close to $300 million on programs that have been discontinued because of failure to adhere to privacy laws and regulations.
REAL ID is, of course, a wasteful affront to privacy whether or not DHS follows all the rules. The Department is not in a position to correct the errors in this fundamentally misguided policy.
Even before Heritage did, the Department of Homeland Security emailed me an invite to the Heritage Foundation event, Making REAL ID Real: Implementing National Standards.
Headliner Stewart Baker from the Department of Homeland Security will be joined by pro-national ID lobbyist Janice Kephart (client: Digimarc) and a guy nobody’s ever heard of named Donald Rebovich.
Must miss! I do wonder what an event like this could be for, as it is assured to be devoid of content. (Rumor has it that the REAL ID Act regulations may come out this Friday.)
Check out this article that describes how the state of Victoria in Australia will be trying out GPS speed monitoring devices that are installed in cars. The GPS technology identifies speed limits on all roads and operates on three levels:
Drivers get an audible warning they are over the limit at level one.
At level two, the device cuts power to the engine to prevent the driver from speeding, but the system can be adjusted or overridden.
At level three, the system cannot be switched off or adjusted and all speeding is cut.
Not sure Americans would ever go for this! And it seems to me that there are sometimes legitimate reasons to go above the posted speed limit (maybe passing a car?), and all of a sudden having the throttle shut down could be dangerous.
The case of Crawford v. Marion County Election Board is being argued in the Supreme Court tomorrow. In a TechKnowledge commentary out today, I argue that the voter ID debate is largely a tempest in a teapot. But teapots can boil over . . .
I was sick of social networking before it was cool. (I may still have an account on Ryze, for heaven’s sake.) But I am growing intrigued with the concept once again. Perhaps I’m having my own little Social Networking 2.0! (OK. That’s all the self-reference I’ll do in 2008 – I guarantee it.*)
I’m interested in the brouhaha that Plaxo has created by creating a process in which they screen-scrape Facebook members’ email addresses. Facebook presents them as images to make harvesting difficult, but apparently Plaxo is using OCR to gather them, contrary to Facebook’s Terms of Service. Best of all, Plaxo is using journalists and bloggers to test it. Robert Scoble has gotten zapped by Facebook for using the Plaxo scraper.
There are wonderful competitive issues, PR issues, and privacy issues here, all balled together in an ugly mass.
I think Michael Arrington has it right:
Beyond the automated script issue, Facebook also has a very good reason for protecting email addresses – user privacy. Robert Scoble may be perfectly fine with having my contact information be easily downloaded from Facebook, but I may not be. Ultimately it should be me that decides, not him. And if Plaxo wants to push the envelope on user privacy issues, again, perhaps they should at least have given Facebook a heads up. And be prepared to take the consequences themselves instead of passing them off to their users.
*not a guarantee
You can hardly tell that I’m a carousing womanizer in today’s Cato Daily Podcast, titled “Once More Into a Breach.”
Vie Secrecy News, the NSA is expanding its electricity generation capability.
The Proposed Action includes the construction of generator facilities, two electrical substations, a boiler plant and chiller plant, as well as ancillary facilities and parking. The proposed utility upgrades would allow for 100 percent self-contained redundancy, should off site power sources fail.
Each year, the Edge Foundation surveys a score (~160 this year) of prominent scientists and other notables for brief-essay answers to a big-picture question. This year: “What have you changed your mind about?”
Some elaboration:
When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.
WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?
Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?”
With Richard Dawkins, Aubrey de Grey (less repetitive than usual), various Dysons, Denis Dutton, and Brian Eno among the respondents, there’s plenty of interest to read and consider.
And much to mock. On the existence of god as a signal of one’s above-it-all elitism, compare the trite Alan Alda (yes, him) with an unusually shrill Clay Shirky.
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