Reviving an old tag, here's a story about newborn DNA on record:
Newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it’s often done without the parents’ consent, according to Brad Therrell, director of the National Newborn Screening & Genetics Resource Center.
In many states, such as Florida, where Isabel was born, babies’ DNA is stored indefinitely..
Video tapes from mini surveillance cameras saved him from rape rap, but revealed maybe up to 500 thoroughly enjoyable homosex sessions over an unreported number of years ... (that would be ten years, at one a week).
Now that everyone is naked, a bad day for gay hustlers as truth bearers and a bad day for Republican politicians as truth bearers.
(h/t bloggernista)
Apparently, never try to record or video tape the police (apparently, they know it and don't like not having a free-for zone in which to operate):
Coming soon, via a Republican Senator from Alaska?
Open Internet Coalition
Tax collectors want to track you in your car:
Drivers test paying by mile instead of gas tax
and
Germans deploy microdrones, to avoid limitations of fixed cameras
Electronic hide-and-seek with the Feds.
... the most interesting question unanswered in the FBI affidavit (.pdf) is how the bureau gets its "Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier" onto a target PC. -Wired
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An internal FBI audit has found the agency violated rules ...
...some two dozen of the newly discovered violations involved agents' requests for information that U.S. law did not allow them to have, the audit found.
THE POWER OF FREE MARKETS
More in the long, long line of scamming the elderly, but this time abetted by fee-for-service information databases:
Mr. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on scores of other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers, regulators say.
....
The banks and companies that sell such services often confront evidence that they are used for fraud, according to thousands of banking documents, court filings and e-mail messages reviewed by The New York Times.
Although some companies, including Wachovia, have made refunds to victims who have complained, neither that bank nor infoUSA stopped working with criminals even after executives were warned that they were aiding continuing crimes, according to government investigators. Instead, those companies collected millions of dollars in fees from scam artists. (Neither company has been formally accused of wrongdoing by the authorities.)
Employee likely fired for posting gay personal ad - 2 years ago ... It's all legal, sadly (not that laws ever stopped employers from 'finding a way').
I'll bet anything that this is just the tip of the iceberg, as far as folks dismissed for similar/same reasons.
(hat tip: the gist)
Item to add to the iNfoRmaTION age of AnXiety list:
Coincidentally, a member of my family received an invitation to participate in a federal medical study. The government could only know that she was eligible for the study if they had access to her medical records or records of her over-the-counter drugstore purchases. And indeed, the government's mailing said, "Names and addresses were obtained from a consumer information database." - link, Peter Levine
Indeed, CNN’s citizen journalism I-Report feature was swarmed with cell phone pictures and video from on-campus students. Not only that, these ‘reports’ got plenty of time on air.
The assault on privacy and liberty are battles often fought in backrooms, sometimes following measures with unintended consequences, sometimes openly, with competing objectives, nefarious and otherwise. Anyone who is a "seller" (usually of labor) and not a "buyer" in the social economy is at risk, one might argue.
Here's a list of some items:
MATERIAL WITNESS INFORMATIONDUBLIN, Calif. (AP) - A video blogger, who spent a record 226 days behind bars for refusing to turn over his footage of a chaotic 2005 street protest, walked out of prison after cutting a deal with prosecutors.
Joshua Wolf, 24, said Tuesday he was looking forward to "pizza and a beer" after spending more time in prison than any journalist who's refused to testify.
Under the deal with prosecutors, Wolf agreed to turn over the uncut video, which he also posted on his Web site Tuesday. But he refused to testify before the grand jury about the events at the protest or the identities of participants
Police Log Confirms FBI Role In Arrests
Group Detained, Questioned During D.C. War Protest
By Carol D. LeonnigWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, April 3, 2007; Page B01
A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political and religious beliefs, newly uncovered documents and interviews show.
For years, law enforcement authorities suggested it never happened. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. And police told a federal court that no FBI agents were present when officers arrested more than 20 protesters that afternoon for trespassing; police viewed them as suspicious for milling around the parking garage entrance.(hat tip, Drudge, for these two items)
John Lennon's FBI file (he's a Marxist sympathizer ...):
IS INFORMATION NEUTRAL?
Many people believe you have nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong, but there is always The Garden of the Forking Paths to consider. To wit:
Census Bureau Aided Internment Of Japanese, Researchers Say
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN; Staff Reporter of the Sun; March 30, 2007
... and, in relation to the struggle over health-care privacy:
Many think that security of electronic health records serves primarily to preserve the privacy of people with HIV/AIDS, just as Todd Sloane suggests in his article Privacy could be IT standards' deal-breaker. Nobody considers national security concerns. What if one of our growing number of enemies gains control of a significant portion of American citizens' health records? - article
and such theft in relation to reality?
April 02, 2007 (Computerworld) -- After more than two months of refusing to reveal the size and scope of the high-profile intrusion into its systems, The TJX Companies Inc. finally disclosed details about the extent of the compromise. In filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week, the company said 45.6 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen from two of its systems over a period of more than 18 months by an unknown number of intruders. That total eclipses the 40million records compromised in the mid-2005 breach at the former CardSystems Solutions Inc., and makes the TJX incident the worst publicly disclosed compromise involving the loss of personal card data.
All told, same struggle, new day, and, as ever, not too much learned.
