News & Commentary

The Transportation Security Agency has come under significant and ongoing criticism. One major source of concern and irritation are the No-Fly lists, which contain tens of thousands of names and has generated a lot of negative press when U.S. senators, famous musicians and others have been kept off of flights. There are even those who say that TSA is largely engaged in "security theater," meant primarily to psychologically reassure travelers while doing little to actually improve the security of goods and travelers. Luckily, the criticism has not kept TSA from starting a blog, called Evolution of Security. The rather amazing thing — it's open for comments.

SB 31 overwhelmingly passed the California State Senate last week with a vote of 36-3. To read the bill language of SB 31, visit here.

The ACLU released the following statement as a response to today's Washington Post article about Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff defying Congressional extensions and attempting to implement WHTI now.

A recent blog post discussed privacy concerns with the new Bay Area TransLink transit card.

At the Consumer Electronics Show last week, top executives from media giants AT&T, NBC/Universal and Microsoft announced that ISPs may be ready to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level.

Congressional leaders from throughout the nation released statements expressing their dissatisfaction with the Real ID regulations released today by the Department of Homeland Security.

The Department of Homeland Security today issued its final regulations for the implementation of the Real ID Act, the plan to create a national identity card system, which Congress passed in May 2005 with little debate as an attachment to the tsunami and Iraq War appropriations bill.

The Bay Area's transit systems are about to join other cities and get a single payment card. The TransLink card will let you pay for rides on BART, San Francisco Muni buses, and the Peninsula's Caltrain.

Can't imagine the library keeping track of the books you browse in the stacks and using that information to put advertising flyers in the books you check-out or "personalize" library services to you?