[real-eyes] Re: Fascinating
- From: "jose" <crunch1@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:09:05 -0500
amazing truly amazing. I wonder if you can somehow by pass the id stamp on
the priter. wouldn't it be cool to use the same color papper as the inc
that the prineter uses? maybe it will not show up.or maybe only install the
black cartrage on the printer. wonder what happends then.I keep thinking of
a fraze each time I here of another right taken from us. don't think I herd
this any place. the fraze is. and the noose tightens.
dude I hope someone cutgs the rope before that noose kills what's left of
our freedum. I wonder if the governments computers that scan emails for key
words catch any of mine because of my crappy spelling. ooupos i bet there
reading this now.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Reginald George" <sgeorge@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 11:18 AM
Subject: [real-eyes] Fascinating
> Great and classic stuff from my always contriversial travel Insider
> newsletter!
>
> This Week's Security Horror Story : A pilot, in full pilot uniform, while
> going through airport security, is discovered to have a knife in his
> carry-on
> bag. It is taken from him. Sounds marginally sensible?
>
> Oh - I forgot to mention that the 'knife' is one of the short, stubby,
> rounded, blunt dinner knives that his airline gives, on the plane, with
> meal service
> to its passengers. So you can safely be given such a knife, on the plane,
> by the airline, but if you are the pilot of the plane, you can't take the
> same
> knife on the plane with you? Full details
> here.
>
> Is this merely an
> amazing coincidence
> ? It is actually a small fear always playing at the back of my mind,
> too - and how terribly reprehensible that any of us should ever need to
> feel that
> way in this country.
>
> And now, for a change, here's an interesting and reasonably
> positive article
> about the shadowy background forces that are hard at work protecting our
> air travel safety.
>
> Great reading, although I can't help but get the feeling that the writer
> doesn't fully approve of several of the people she writes about.
>
> Freedom of speech is of course both a bedrock foundation of our society
> and of free countries the world over, and the ability for dissident groups
> to safely
> and anonymously distribute their materials has been one of the activities
> that have kept the flame of liberty alight in some very unfree countries.
>
> But did you know that almost anything you print on a color laser printer
> can potentially be traced back to you? Most color laser printers these
> days will
> print a nearly invisible stamp on each page using only pale yellow ink, in
> very small size, that can't conveniently be seen unaided by the naked eye
> in
> white light. The information printed includes the printer's serial
> number, and possibly the date/time of the page's printing too.
>
> If you know where to look, and use a blue light and magnifying glass,
> you'll see the information. And then - if you're a government agency, for
> example
> - you can ask the printer manufacturer for details of who has registered
> that printer with them, or, if that information is not available, they can
> possibly
> trace it through records of where and when the printer was sold, and
> possibly who to (most stores scan serial numbers and enter them into their
> sales transaction
> along with your information).
>
> Free speech might remain free, but it is becoming less anonymous. Add to
> that the growing fear of 'retribution' such as mentioned in the amazing
> coincidence
> article above, and the reality is that free speech is becoming less free.
>
> More details
> here.
>
> I've written before about the potential threat of having your laptop
> seized when crossing an international border (including when returning
> back to the
> US). Not only does this potentially expose personal and perhaps corporate
> secrets to a whole range of government officials, but it may also cause
> you
> to be without your laptop for an unknown amount of time (and you did back
> up everything before your journey, didn't you?).
>
> This threat has become sufficiently real as to cause many companies to
> issue corporate travel policies that forbid employees from carrying most
> data on
> their laptops when crossing borders.
>
> Now there's a new potential intrusion as well. The G8 is looking at plans
> to give airports the power to scan portable media players for copyrighted
> material
> when you fly under its upcoming Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement. This
> would give custom officials the power to scan MP3 players, laptops and
> even
> mobile phones for illegally-obtained copyrighted material when passengers
> pass across borders.
>
> The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement Measures form part of an
> international agreement aimed at stamping out piracy.
>
> It isn't clear to me exactly how your friendly airport official will be
> able to determine if your copy of the latest hit tune is a legal copy or a
> pirated
> copy, and I suspect it isn't clear to the G8 dignitaries who are
> supporting this new invasion of privacy. But you can be sure that it is a
> further intrusive
> step into our private lives that governments around the world will
> enthusiastically embrace.
>
> According to
> this article
> , the government watch list of terrorist suspects has now grown to exceed
> one million records (with duplicates, this represents about 400,000
> people).
> About 20,000 names are believed to be US citizens, and the other 380,000
> are foreigners.
>
> While the government continues to reassure us about the accuracy and
> validity of this list, the consequences of being inappropriately on the
> list can be
> dire, to say the least.
> This article
> reports the travails of one US citizen who was held for five hours,
> shackled to a chair, and kicked by a US Customs agent while trying to
> simply cross
> the border from Canada back to the US, as part of an interrogation due to
> his name incorrectly appearing on this list.
>
> That's not the way we're supposed to treat guilty people, and it doubly
> isn't the way we're supposed to treat people who are guilty of nothing
> more than
> misfortune for having their name appear on a list of names that is known
> by everyone to be woefully inaccurate and full of errors.
>
> The state security services of our country are becoming increasingly out
> of control and unaccountable to the people they are supposed to be
> serving.
>
> I mentioned
> last week
> an interesting study published by Dell, that suggested as many as 2000
> laptops are lost each week. A reader who perhaps should be nameless has
> an interesting
> alternate perspective on this. He writes :
>
> Something not mentioned in the Dell study... a number of those laptops
> "lost" at airports are intentionally left behind. Technology advances a
> lot faster
> than budget controllers will allow equipment to be replaced, unless of
> course you happen to lose one (wink, wink, nod, nod)....
>
> One of my more obscure tasks at (a major airline) was helping Central
> Baggage crack passwords on laptops, including the ones left at (a major
> airline's
> major hub) checkpoints. Let's just say that employers were always glad to
> get a call from us, but the end-users were not always as pleased. I was
> surprised
> at first, but a fair number of the people we contacted had no desire for
> us to return them (shipping for laptops left at checkpoints was at
> customer expense).
>
> And lastly this week, a common criticism levied at airport security
> workers is they have no common sense. Typically this results in them
> banning things
> which, if they had half an ounce of common sense, they'd let through (as
> this week's security horror story evidences).
>
> But, sometimes, the lack of common sense works the other way. Here's a
> story from New Zealand, taken from the
> NZ Herald.
>
> Never mind the nail scissors, what about the chainsaw. A reader writes :
>
> "My brother-in-law went through security at Auckland domestic airport and
> witnessed a passenger having to fish out her nail scissors from her
> handbag and
> leave them behind. He went through security and then boarded his plane.
>
> After being seated he could smell petrol. He knew you shouldn't be able
> to smell petrol on a plane, because planes don't use petrol. The smell
> got worse
> and eventually he got the attention of one of the flight attendants.
>
> They started to look around to see where it was coming from. They found
> in the overhead compartment a chainsaw in a bag that was leaking petrol
> into the
> compartment.
>
> His plane was delayed as the owner was identified and the chainsaw removed
> and put with the main luggage. The owner of the chainsaw said security
> had stopped
> him but had let him through because it wasn't one of the things on their
> list to confiscate.
>
> Until next week, please enjoy safe travels
>
> David M Rowell aka The Travel Insider
>
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