At his press conference announcing the REAL ID Act last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said:
We are not going to have a national database. REAL ID does not require that states start to collect additional information from applicants that they have not already created. We are not going to wind up making this information available willy-nilly. In fact, the steps we are taking under REAL ID will enhance and protect privacy rather than degrade and impair privacy.
[A]mong the things we’re doing under REAL ID is requiring that state motor vehicle agencies have in place background checks and security plans for their databases at – in terms of the motor vehicle information. Traditionally, again and again we have seen corruption at motor vehicle agencies leading to people improperly disseminating personal information. These security plans and these background checks will actually minimize the risk that employees will improperly take that information and disseminate it.
Meanwhile, Section 508 of
the Court Security Improvement Act of 2007, signed into law by President Bush last week, allows federal judges and Supreme Court Justices to withhold their addresses from the REAL ID database system, giving the addresses of their courts instead.
The federal judiciary evidently doesn’t trust Secretary Chertoff’s assurances.
Musings on Nick Carr’s latest book, from Jim Delong. Pertinent to various Google controversies.
Confirming my suspicions about its involvement, here’s an AP story reporting that Beaverton, OR-based Digimarc spent $350,000 lobbying for the REAL ID Act. Direct lobbying is only a small part of the PR and outreach efforts that go into a public policy effort.
Previously, I noted that Digimarc lost money in 2007. A wounded animal is the most dangerous. I think that may apply to this corporation, which is now clearly a direct enemy of Americans’ freedom.
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.
Hillary Clinton is my friend. On MySpace, that is. If I were going to vote for the first candidate that responded to my social networking “friend” request, it would be her. Of course, that’s a silly idea, but with all the hoopla over politicians using new technologies, one might ask: How has Web 2.0 changed the political process?
Web 2.0 generally refers to the explosion of services like social networking sites, wikis, blogs, podcasts, RSS (really simple syndication) feeds and so on. These are the technologies that have helped make the Internet even more interactive and content-rich than it was in the first place and, in this election cycle, these technologies are key.
Social news site, Digg, just announced a partnership with CBS for political coverage and also hosts its own candidates pages. MySpace held its own presidential primary the day before the Iowa caucuses (Barack Obama and Ron Paul won). Facebook cosponsored the Republican and Democratic debates with ABC and also publishes its own polling data. The candidates are embracing these technologies as well.
Sen. Barack Obama used professional networking site LinkedIn to ask “How can the next president better help small business and entrepreneurs thrive?” and at a recent speech, Hillary Clinton suggested that America “have a government blogging team.” On the Republican side, Ron Paul has raised millions by harnessing the open nature of the Net, and Rudy Giuliani’s strange behavior when he interrupted his NRA speech to answer a cell phone call from his wife was viewed more than 20,000 times on YouTube.
Clearly, American citizens no longer need to rely on mainstream media for their political data. They can now get it from numerous services all over the Web and respond just as quickly so others can see their opinion. Interactive politics is here, but is more data making things better?
[…]
Read more here.
In less than a decade, Google has grown from a Ph.D. research project to be the indispensable tool of the information economy. With the objective of making all information instantly and universally accessible, Google now controls the principal index to the internet and the email traffic of millions, while adding new features such as maps replete with street-level photos cataloging the non-virtual world.
How should governments around the world treat this data? Is it a great new resource for national security and law enforcement, or should we protect it from the prying eyes of bureaucrats? Should private companies be reigned in by regulation, or will government action only serve to undermine the modicum of privacy we maintain in the information age?
On January 16th Americas Future Foundation (AFF) will be hosting a roundtable to discuss these and other questions.
The panelists:
- Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
- Amber Taylor of O’Melveny & Myers LLP
- Jim Harper of the Cato Institute
- Cord Blomquist of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (me)
The event will take place at the Fund for American Studies, 1706 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, near Dupont Circle. Drinks at 6:30; Roundtable begins at 7:00. Roundtables are free for AFF members, $5 for non-members. So join today! Please RSVP to Cindy Cerquitella at cindy@americasfuture.org.
Hopefully we’ll see some TLF fanboys at the event!
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.
A couple of corporations or trade associations have started blogs about technology policy that are worth checking out. Here’s a partially list of some of the ones I follow in my Bloglines account. I’m interested in hearing from readers about others that should be added to the list. Perhaps we should add a new section to our blogroll to help readers keep tabs on corporate tech blogs like these.
Google – Google Public Policy Blog
Cisco – Cisco High Tech Policy Blog
Cable (NCTA) – Cable Tech Talk
Verizon – Verizon Policy Blog
“Cable-TV Industry Girds for New Threats.” That’s the title of an article today from Ben Charny of the Wall Street Journal, who is reporting on what he’s seeing at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and how it is upending the traditional TV market:
“[A]s evidenced this week by the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas… thanks to the Internet becoming a bigger distributor of entertainment, and new gadgets and other developments that make it easier to show the Internet’s content on TVs. … As the Internet becomes a larger provider of video, and technology makers ease the flow of that content to television sets, it threatens the cable and satellite industries. Currently, the number of subscriber dropouts remains relatively small, according to cable and satellite operators, but anecdotal evidence suggests those affected by a souring U.S. economy are more inclined to keep their less-expensive Internet services than their cable-TV subscriptions.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin was out at the show this week, too. Hopefully he was watching and listening so his outrageous regulatory “war on cable” can finally come to an end.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.