News & Commentary

We are now living in a world where the technology exists to keep track of everything we do and say and everywhere we go. Video surveillance, RFID chips that allow stored data to be read at a distance, and massive databases of who we call and what Internet sites we browse mean more information about our lives is being preserved, and being preserved for longer periods of time.

Advances in digital storage capacity, and computers now capable of efficiently indexing and searching vast amounts of archived digital data, seem to be leading our society toward a digital version of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon , a world in which citizens limit their speech and actions for fear of how endlessly retained surveillance or personal data might someday be used against them.

But some academics and scientists are turning technology on its head, developing technical solutions that help to enhance users' privacy.

For example, Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government argues in a recent working paper that personal digital information should have a reasonable, predetermined shelf life, enforced by the same technologies that collect and store it.

In a similar vein, Belgian and German researchers have proposed a system to help individuals manage the photographs taken of them with cell phone cameras, integrated into the very camera-phones that take and transmit the pictures.

Late breaking news that the Board of Supervisor's Budget Committee will hold a public hearing on Monday afternoon about the Earthlink/Google contract.

While other states are courageously standing up to Congress' misguided national ID mandate, California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is giving his constituents a different, or shall we say, indifferent message.

In 2007, the California Court of Appeal declared that the permanent injunction imposed on a so-called gang in West Sacramento is void. The injunction could not stand because the County District Attorney failed to give adequate notice to those who would be affected by it.

Jerry Miller, a former Army cook, spent nearly 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. In 1981, at the age of 22, Miller was tried and convicted for the brutal rape of woman in downtown Chicago. His conviction was based on what is now understood to be mistaken eyewitness identification.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision  issued on April 18, 2007 upholding a federal law banning certain abortions will endanger women's health and is a set back for all Americans who believe politicians should not legislate medical decision-making.  The decision disregards the opinion of leading doctors and medical organizations that oppose the ban because it is harmful to women's health.

If these documents are embedded with RFID tags, the government could use the technology to read all of our drivers'licenses from a distance, without our knowledge, as we walk down the street or attend a political protest or gun show- surreptitiously keeping track of who we are, where we go, and what we do.

The government's possible justification for tracking and monitoring all of us through National IDs? They might catch a few wrongdoers in the process.

Using RFI

ACLU of Northern California wrote an amicus brief on Josh Wolf's behalf in both the District Court and Ninth Circuit, contesting the government's argument that a journalist cannot invoke a First Amendment privilege when presented with a grand jury subpoena.

Click here for more information and to read the court documents.

Remember in the movie, Minority Report, when the characters walked by a billboard and it changed to target the advertisement to that particular person or walked into a store and over the loudspeaker, it welcomed them and asked how they liked those pair of pants that had been purchased? That future is starting to become a reality with the use of RFID tags in products and not without serious privacy and security concerns.

Despite reports of the privacy and security problems of the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, companies and consumers continue to experiment with RFID. Sprint has developed two RFID applications based on customer loyalty cards that can identify a customer as he or she walks through a store. Microsoft is reported to have developed an active RFID system that can match your clothes or provide recipes based on the presence of ingredients. In January, MINI (the car maker) began to use RFID tags to conduct a targeted marketing campaign called "Motorby."

MINI installed interactive digital billboards in 4 U.S. cities, Chicago, Miami, New York and San Francisco (you can see one in San Francisco on I-80 approaching the Bay Bridge) and invited a few hundred MINI owners in these cities to join their pilot targeted advertisement campaign. The owners sign up on the MINI website (and answer a survey providing information about themselves) and MINI sends them a RFID key fob. When the MINI owner drives by the billboard, it displays a targeted message, such as "Looking good today, Scooter." If the pilot program is successful, MINI plans to expand the number of billboards in more cities and allow every owner to participate.

This advertising program raises some of the same security concerns as the Nike tracker. According to the program FAQ in the invitation email, no personal information is contained on the key fob. However, the key fob must contain some unique identifier that is linked to personal data in a MINI customer database. MINI also claims that only the MINI readers can trigger the key fob, but there have been plenty of examples of RFID cards being copied from a distance of a few feet or with commercially-available technology costing less than $100. See the IO Active handheld cloner. Just like with the Nike tracker, it isn't hard to imagine others tracking individuals using the RFID key they carry around with them. In addition, assuming the billboards accumulate logs of when each driver passes by that billboard, which begs the question: what kind of access will law enforcement (or even private third parties) have to that data?