Wednesday, May 14, 2008

False security

This week I'm writing about Jo Walton's Farthing and Cory Doctorow's Little Brother so with that in mind here are a couple of interesting tidbits.

Someone who lives in Fairfax County, Virginia told me his recycling will now have RFID attached. The idea for him will be that he recycles and gets some points which he can redeem for dollars off at the pizza parlor or whatever. But of course it also means recycling can be tracked and you could theoretically figure out who put what in the bins.

A new Maryland law passed that means every person charged with a violent crime will have a dna sample taken. The sample is meant to be destroyed if they are found innocent but we all how things like that actually work. A delegate interviewed for last night's news said not only is it an invasion of privacy but it's a useless waste of resources and money because there is nothing to connect the samples to actual crimes waiting to be solved. Cory talks about the false sense of security you get from these sorts of meaningless invasions of privacy in his book.

Dep Comm Anthony Barksdale of the Baltimore Police was quoted as saying, "It's not an invasion of rights. It's an evolution of policing."

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