Identity theft issues?

BoingBoing reports that, as part of Bush's Real ID Act, by 2006 passports will include RFID chips, and by 2008 driver's licenses will have them.

RFID is "tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as "fingerprints or iris scans.""

Link to original post.

War journalism

Senator Calls for Inquiry Into Journalists' Access

The senator, Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, said his request was prompted by an assertion by Judith Miller, the reporter for The New York Times who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to identify a confidential source, that she had "security clearance" during her assignment with a military unit in Iraq in 2003.

...

In an interview last week, Ms. Miller said that in her account in The Times of her role in the C.I.A. leak case, she imprecisely described the rules covering her assignment in Iraq. Ms. Miller said that she did what dozens of other journalists covering the war did: sign a written agreement called a "nondisclosure form" that allows reporters to see and hear classified information but treat it as off the record.

...

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said the procedure was a practical way to permit reporters to travel with military units and be exposed to sensitive information, and not compromise the operation.


Link (nytimes.com with compulsory registration; use bugmenot.com to bypass).

Sickening.

A student was doing a class assignment illustrating the rights laid out in the Bill of Rights.

The student took a photo with an anti-Bush poster, and dropped off the film to be developed.

The Wal-Mart photo department called the police, who called the Secret Service.

"Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room," she says. "Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he'd never been in any trouble."

Then they got down to his poster.

"They asked me, didn't I think that it was suspicious," she recalls. "I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!"

Link.

Disappearing rights

Like the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, fill this mug with a hot beverage and watch the articles in the Bill of Rights fade away. Link.

A fine line

An investigative report by ABC on security at nuclear reactors is raising issues about journalistic ethics.

Both university officials said the interns should have identified themselves as being from ABC News.

"I think the ethics is somewhat questionable," Shultis said. "It's a fine point when they were trying to misdirect or mislead."

But ABC said it's likely they would have been treated differently as reporters. The point was to show how a terrorist could pose as a student and easily be a threat, Ross said.

"We were students," said Dana Hughes, a Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism student who worked on the project. "We were interested in the programs. We did not hide our cameras. We were hiding in plain sight. It wasn't as sneaky as they were making it out to be." Link.

Words, words, words

The BBC presents the etymology of British swear words, here.

The Chicago web publication Gapers Block asks for the funniest non-obscene words, here.

Also from the BBC, 20 of the best unusual non-English words, here.

Prada Marfa

"But come Saturday it will look as if a tornado had picked up a Prada store and dropped it on a desolate strip of U.S. 90 in West Texas. That is where Prada Marfa, a permanent sculpture by the Berlin artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset will be installed. (Actually it will go up in Valentine, Tex., about 26 miles outside Marfa, a town of 2,400 that has become a magnet for artists and art lovers.)

The sculpture is meant to look like a Prada store, with minimalist white stucco walls and a window display housing real Prada shoes and handbags from the fall collection. But there is no working door."

It's Not Sexy Being Green (Yet)

The New York Times reports on George W. Bush's new movement toward conservationism, and discusses ways to get "hipsters and college students" interested in the green movement. Link.

"For some, like Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show," who responded to the president's speech by shouting, "The apocalypse is upon us," it was almost as if Michael Jordan had told the country to stop exercising, or Michael Dell had denounced capitalism."

RIAA -- Out of Control

"Tanya Anderson, a 42 year old disabled single mother from Oregon, has filed a countersuit against the RIAA, in which she claims that the organization engaged in numerous crimes, including fraud, deceptive business practices, and racketeering. In addition, she claims that RIAA has been "abusing the federal court judicial system for the purpose of waging a public relations and public threat campaign targeting digital file sharing activities."" Link.

(Be sure to also check out the link to this EconoCulture article, which includes a list of questions the RIAA refuses to answer.

"The new initiative amounts to a crackdown on mom-and-pop record stores—and the prosecution of employees for selling indie releases and underground staples such as self-releases and DJ mix-tapes. As the RIAA zeroes on CD-Rs, stores have to be more wary of selling mix-tapes and homemade CDs – the tools that drive, promote and sustain underground hip-hop.")

Siren Song

Siren Song
Originally uploaded by mleak.

A nice pastel drawing from an artist that plays with corporate logos.

Here are some interesting links for me use to test this page.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/fashion/thursdaystyles/29ROW.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1128053148-PNGiseNqTcUbUu+I564dtw

http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/wildcamafrica/wildcam.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20051002/ts_latimes/thisilliteratebrazilianshomespeaksvolumes