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Technology and Privacy
Members with Undisclosed Earmarks Will Still Get Their Goodies
The Hill reports that Members of Congress who failed to disclose their earmark requests as required by new rules in the House will still get their goodies.
Members who failed to disclose their earmarks as required by the April 4 deadline should have them rejected out of hand. But Congress makes the rules, and Congress can break the rules.
WashingtonWatch.com compiled a state-by-state list of links to earmark requests recently. Because Members of Congress published their requests in different formats, information about all the earmarks that have been requested is still rather obscure.
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“Enhanced Driver’s License” Snake Oil
Here’s Michigan state representative Paul Opsommer (R) on the Department of Homeland Security’s “Enhanced Driver’s License,” which contains a radio frequency identification chip with a long read range:
Expect the Department of Homeland Security to tell you what a great thing they are doing by allowing you the ability to buy these RFID licenses. They create the problem, provide a solution that is the cheapest for them and most risky for you, and then expect you to like it. But RFID is not mandated by Congress, and if enough states stand up for themselves the policy will be changed. Michigan needs to say no and do just that.
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Appointees Are Like Astronauts
Did you ever notice how astronauts are praised simply for being astronauts? They have heroism imputed to them simply for what they might do in the future.
So it is with political appointees, such as the chief technology officer President Obama named Saturday morning during his weekly radio and Internet address. Reports the Wall Street Journal:
Silicon Valley execs and tech bloggers sounded genuinely excited about Obama’s choice Saturday morning and tech industry lobbying groups TechNet and the Business Software Alliance quickly released statements of support, as did several tech heavyweights.
Would any group with business before the government, hoping for influence and goodies from the White House, not praise an appointee? We learn from these paeans precisely nothing.
To me, Aneesh Chopra is an empty vessel. He looks like a nice person and appears to have suitable experience for the job he’s been named to. My substantive comments about him will wait until there is something on which to comment. I look forward to his first space-walk.
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Evo Morales’ Biometric Identity System
It was with interest and concern that I read about the new election law recently signed by Bolivian President Evo Morales. The AP reports that it “sets stricter standards for voter authentication, introducing a $30 million system of biometric identification, based on voters’ fingerprints.”
It is important to secure voting systems against fraud, but be careful how you do it. Identity systems are powerful administrative tools which historically haven’t mixed well with authoritarian governments.
A biometric voter identification system was apparently a demand of Morales’ right-wing opposition. Don’t be surprised if he uses it to consolidate power or do far worse than that to his political rivals.
Some advocates have dabbled in supporting a national ID in the United States for election administration, but that would be error. I wrote about the many risks of uniform identity systems in my book Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.
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The Beginnings of Earmark Transparency
Under reforms announced in March, House members have to publicly declare the earmarks they’re requesting from the Appropriations Committee. Most of the requests have now been published and WashingtonWatch.com has assembled a state-by-state catalogue of links to Members’ earmark requests.
Getting earmark requests published is progress. Getting them published in uniform, machine-readable formats would allow the public to do really thorough oversight of all the projects that Members of Congress think federal taxpayer dollars should go to.
In December, we had a policy forum called “Just Give Us the Data!” where we explored some of the current issues in government transparency.
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Speaking of Broken Promises …
… or at least implied promises, candidate Obama lamented the Bush administration’s overuse of the “state secrets” privilege.
But last week, the Obama Justice Department filed a motion that embraces Bush administration arguments and even seeks to extend them. Glenn Greenwald has the details of the Obama administration’s “new and worse” approach to “state secrets.”