This issue is a left over from the Bush Administration. George Bush issued a presidential directive called Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12 (HSPD12) whose stated intent was to create a more uniform ID system to allow Federal employees to access Federal facilities. Note, and this is critical and often ignored, the employees in question are NOT engaged in ANY secret or sensitive work nor have access to places within Federal facilities where such work occurs. These are just average employees, students, academics and contractors engaged in NON-secret, NON-sensitive work. There is nothing wrong with Bush's original directive. Where it all went wrong is how the Bush Administration chose to implement it. This was at the peak of the Republican culture of fear and surveillance, so Bush's crew decided to implement the process in the most intrusive way possible. My wife and her fellow NASA scientists and various NASA facilities, including JPL, were presented with a form that in effect asked them to sign away their right to privacy, giving the government permission to investigate ANYTHING and EVERYTHING about them including their medical history and personal life. I would assume people on the left and right would agree that this is an excessively intrusive, not to mention costly, way to treat employees who have no contact with sensitive or secret matters. The implementation led to objections, and in some cases lawsuits, within places like the Department of Education, Bureau of Land Management, and NASA. The lawsuit with perhaps the most widespread impact is JPL Employees vs. NASA, Department of Commerce, and Caltech. This case pits some of America's top scientists and engineers against the US government bureaucracy in defense of the basic right to privacy in America.

I have covered this case almost from the beginning, since my wife brought it to my attention with a stack of printed out emails from NASA scientists discussing this. You can read the details in the following articles:

My Wife Faces Homeland Security Part I: Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12

My Wife Faces Homeland Security Part II: The Suitability Matrix

My Wife Faces Homeland Security Part III: The Resignation Letter

And the most recent info on the case, where it headed for the Supreme Court, can be found here.

And it is in the Supreme Court that the US Attorney General's office gets it wrong, essentially making a major error in how facilities like JPL function. This comes from the JPL scientists who are fighting the case:  read more »

The Republican Party, the party that used to want to "get government off our backs" has led America to becoming one of the most intrusive governments in the world. We now rank right down with China and Russia as leading the world for surveillance of civilians, according to Privacy International. I should note that the study does not cover every nation, merely the EU and 20 non-EU nations including America.

Privacy International, based in London, was formed in 1990 by more than 100 human rights organizations to defend personal privacy. Here's what they have to say for themselves:  read more »

A "crowdsource" request is more than a request for help. I am asking all of you who read this blog to put in a little bit of your knowledge of this situation in the comments as part of my research for this story.

What I need from all of you is to give me whatever information you have about the Taxi Alliance strike that is going on right now and that will continue until Friday morning (that's when the scheduled 48 hours of the strike will end).

I could actually write off-the-bat a littany of reasons why the GPS system that is being rammed down the throats of taxi drivers is a really bad idea --not just from an ethical standpoint but also from a legal one; especially if we are talking about how this would impact not just the civil rights of drivers but of passengers as well.

But the one sticking poing in this situation is the division between the two unions. On one end is the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, led by a woman called Bharavi Desai. On the other end is the opposing union, New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, led by a Fernando Mateo.

I have spoken to Ms. Desai and have gotten background on their grievances. I have tried contacting Mr. Mateo to no avail.

This is what I am missing in this story :  read more »

Seriously. I know that being a Republican and all, you are predisposed to both extra-legal surveillance and lying about said activities, but please, for the love of Fiorello LaGuardia, please stop bullshitting me. It's unseemly and it makes you look like an even bigger ass. Today I read in the New York Times that you had to unleash the NYPD on all those "potential terrorist" and "anarchist" groups that may have been "planning to cause or take advantage of any disruptions", but that "We were not keeping track of political activities" and "We have no interest in doing that.”

Bullshit. You know it and so do I.

“We had a fundamental responsibility to learn whether groups might include any potential terrorists or anarchists planning to cause or take advantage of any disruptions,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at a news conference. Toward that end, he said, the Police Department monitored those who said they intended vandalism or disruptions and, he added, “in a few instances, we did keep track of groups or individuals who did plan to come to New York for the R.N.C. convention and who might have been planning violent acts.”  read more »

From the New York Times:

Lawyers for the city, responding to a request to unseal records of police surveillance leading up to the 2004 Republican convention in New York, say that the documents should remain secret because the news media will “fixate upon and sensationalize them,” hurting the city’s ability to defend itself in lawsuits over mass arrests.

Yeah, well; the City could have considered that before spying on a Martin Luther King Rally endorsed by sitting members of the City Council. One would think this would have been obvious at the time.

It gets better.  read more »