Peeping Tom Beaten and Arrested

According to a Fox8 news story, a Greensboro N.C. man heard noises from under the bed he and his girlfriend were laying on:

"(When) I looked underneath there, I saw these eyes staring back at me. I was like 'what the crap! This ain't normal,'" said Lynn. "So I start(ed) slinging him around. I was upper cutting him, beating him left and right."

...

"I talked to the cop. He told me if I wouldn't have caught him, he planned on spending the night."

Police are in the process of notifying the victims of the other cases and anticipate more charges will be filed.

Click the title link for the full story, a photo of the peeper and a video interview with the man who found him and give him a well deserved beating.

Disney Fired Husband and Wife Over Legal Gun

Zendo Deb over at TFS Magnum pointed out the story in the title link. Here's a couple of excerpts from the letter published at NRA-ILA.com:

I represent Doug and Linda Gray, a husband and wife who were both employed by the Walt Disney World Company. ...The Grays had to begin their commute before sunrise, and had to travel through some less than safe areas. In fact, they had been accosted on their commute to work in the past. They contacted law enforcement about this and were advised that they should purchase a firearm for their own protection during their commute. Based on this advice, Mr. Gray purchased a revolver to protect he and his wife. When the Grays arrived at work, the revolver was locked in their vehicle.

...

Just 17 days before their 10th anniversary of employment at Disney, they were both terminated. While Mrs. Gray was being asked about an absence from work, she responded that her husband was unable to attend, and she didn't feel safe traveling into work without him. Upon further questioning, Mrs. Gray revealed that Mr. Gray had the firearm in their vehicle for their protection. Disney had the vehicle searched, and the firearm was found, locked in the vehicle where the Grays indicated it was. Both Mr. and Mrs. Gray were terminated. Additionally, Disney had the Orange County Sheriffs issue a trespass warning against Mr. and Mrs. Gray, so that neither could step foot on any Disney property again.

This same basic issue has come up repeatedly. Weyerhauser fired a dozen employees for possessing firearms in their vehicles, and in response to this the Oklahoma State Legislature passed a law forbidding employers to prevent employees from having legally owned firearms in their vehicles. (Here's my post on that story.)

I think employers should not be able to inquire about the contents of nor search employee vehicles. When you drive your car on a public road, police officers do not have the right to search your vehicle without either a search warrant or some evidence that your vehicle contains an illegal item (i.e. probable cause). Under the law your automobile is treated much like your home or your clothing in terms of privacy and the search rights.

I have often heard people say that the private property rights of the employer should allow the employer to make any rules they like about what vehicles can park on their property. I strongly disagree. An employer should have the right to forbid people to enter their property, but they should not have the right to violate your privacy as a condition of granting you access. Allowing employers to search private vehicles is a violation of privacy similar in spirit (albeit not as traumatic), as allowing employers to conduct daily body cavity searches. After all, an employee could hide a folding knife, a home-made hand grenade, poison, drugs or other potentially dangerous items in an orifice.

Just how far are people willing to let employers violate the privacy of employees? Could an officer of the company require all female employees to bare their breasts to them so that the officer can verify that they don't have a small Seecamp or a Bobcat hidden inside their bras? Could an employer demand the right feel the breasts of busty female employees to try and determine if their allegedly silicone implants and gel filled bras might instead be hi-tech liquid explosives? (TSA agents already have the right to do this at airport security checkpoints.) Can an employer randomly squeeze the crotch of male employees or put their hands up women's skirts to make sure they aren't wearing Thunderwear holsters?

If an employer can forbid employees to have legal firearms in their vehicles, I don't see why they couldn't legally ban any other item they don't like. With this crazy logic, a Christian Scientist employer could forbid medicine in cars, an atheist employer could forbid bibles and a censor-happy employer could forbid "immoral" books and music. Perhaps a Catholic employer could even forbid contraceptives and copies of The Da Vinci Code.

I say that the 4th Amendment should protect employees from such unreasonable searches and bans:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Potential U.S. Terrorist Database Quadrupled in 4 Years

My previous post mentions that government shouldn't be trusted with a massive identity database. The WashingtonPost.com story in the title link further supports my case, and I encourage you to go read the article in its entirety. Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetite:

Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. "The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control," said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean.

Pause for a moment and think about that. 435,000 people are already in this database, which is roughly equivalent to the entire population of Kansas City, Sacramento or Cleveland.

The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to "horror stories" of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.

I understand that there is probably a legitimate need to track potential terrorists, but there should be a simple process for getting yourself removed from this database in the event that you are experiencing negative consequences as a result of a mistake.

In 2004 and 2005, misidentifications accounted for about half of the tens of thousands of times a traveler's name triggered a watch-list hit, the Government Accountability Office reported in September. Congressional committees have criticized the process, some charging that it collects too much information about Americans, others saying it is ineffective against terrorists.

...

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last year that his wife had been delayed repeatedly while airlines queried whether Catherine Stevens was the watch-listed Cat Stevens. The listing referred to the Britain-based pop singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. The reason Islam is not allowed to fly to the United States is secret.

I have followed this issue since the passing of the Patriot Act, and have found news stories about infants, two year olds and other seemingly harmless people that have been added to the no-fly lists. While I have no use for Ted Stevens, it is ridiculous that a U.S. Senator's wife gets flagged by the system because of a similarity to a male British singer. The system needs to work better and include a modicum of common sense.

The 80 TIDE analysts get "thousands of messages a day," Travers said, much of the data "fragmentary," "inconsistent" and "sometimes just flat-out wrong."

With any old scrap of unreliable information being fed into this database, it's no wonder that the list of names have quadrupled in four years. At the current rate of growth, by 2010, this system will contain nearly 2 million names, a number larger than the population of 15 different U.S. states. If this same growth continues until 2014, the list will include 8 million people, more than the population of 39 different U.S. states. Data mining is a useful tool, but the database must be accurate, and must have a viable mechanism for removing faulty information. We need to take a serious look at the current TIDE system and ensure that it is actually increasing public safety and is not evolving into something that violates the privacy of innocent people while generating false leads that could potentially spread our security staff so thin that they no longer have the resources to catch the real bad guys.

Government Selling Your Identity Online

Here's another example of why you should fight the concept of national ID cards and any other form of comprehensive identity database.

From the Napa Valley Register story in the title link:

SACRAMENTO -- The Social Security numbers, addresses and signatures of more than 650,000 Californians have been available for purchase since 2004 -- for about $6 each on a Web site operated by the secretary of state's office.

...

The Web site had been used to post bank lending and collateral statements -- so-called Uniform Commercial Code filings -- that were frequently purchased by financial institutions conducting loan research. The site contained about 2 million records, a third of which contained individual borrowers' information. The rest had information about business loans.

From NBC11.com:

For three years, the Secretary of State's office routinely placed thousands of documents containing Social Security numbers on the Internet and then sold them to the public for $6 each." The state has literally been selling on the Internet an ID theft starter kit," said Sacramento assemblyman Dave Jones.

From CBS13.com:

"I was really surprised to see this and really stunned to see the names of people I knew in the community, businesses large and small and see their social security numbers, signatures and their addresses," said State Assemblyman Dave Jones.

In fact, Jones' staff got 14 people's records from the Secretary of States' website for less than $90.

As if this particular issue of selling identity information online wasn't bad enough, here's another story to make privacy conscious people cringe:

From SCMagazine.com:

The personal information — including Social Security numbers — of 71,000 Indiana state health care workers were accessed by a hacker in January.

The attacker accessed the data, as well as the credit card information of 5,600 individuals and businesses.

If you are curious about what people might be doing with these Social Security numbers, here's an example from WRAL.com:

Raleigh — The state Division of Motor Vehicles issued about 27,000 driver's licenses to people with invalid Social Security numbers, according to a state audit released Tuesday.

...

Almost 12,800 of the invalid numbers belonged to dead people. About 7,500 of the people who provided those numbers had revoked or expired driver's licenses.

About 7,200 of the people providing other invalid Social Security numbers also had revoked or expired licenses, according to the audit.

...

The DMV didn't require Social Security numbers to issue a license before last year. Since August, the agency has used an online verification program that allows employees to check the authenticity of Social Security numbers with what officials call "ironclad accuracy."

Keep in mind that the above stories all came out in just the last few days. If you keep an eye out for the subject of identity theft, you will continuously find stories like these on the internet news sites. If you let the government put all of our identity data in one place to create a multipurpose national ID card, you will simply do the following:

• Create a single target for people to hack, bribe, buy and steal identity information from

• Allow criminals to operate with impunity once they obtain such an ID card, as the government keeps telling us how this "hacker proof", "theft proof" ultra secure" cards can't be compromised and thus can be trusted by everyone

We are safer when government agencies and corporations have as little information about us as possible, and when that information is as compartmentalized and as difficult to access as possible. We don't need a single magic number that lets a data miner access our credit history, medical records, buying habits, home address, tax records, firearms ownership, driving privileges, etc. all from a single database. We are already near this point since people widely misuse Social Security numbers for more than tax purposes. Lets not make matters even worse.

Housing Community Bans Possession of Firearms

According to NewsChannel5.com:

ANTIOCH, Tenn.- Some people in a Nashville neighborhood are furious over a new rule that makes it illegal to own a gun.

Residents in Nashboro Village said it's unconstitutional and leaves them defenseless.

Two weeks ago, residents received a letter from their homeowners' association indicating that guns are not allowed on the property.

I haven't found a more detailed version of this story yet, and the article in the title link is unclear about exactly what gives the property manager the right to impose such restrictions. At one point, it is referred to as being in a letter from a "homeowner's association", and in another place it makes it sound as if the rule was decreed by "Officials with Ghertner and Company, the property manager at Nashboro Village".

This article makes me wonder if homeowners associations actually have the power to vote in firearms bans. I would think that if they can control what color you paint your home, where you can park your cars, etc., there's probably a legal mechanism for them to hold a vote and decide to ban the ownership of otherwise legal firearms from your property. Things like this make me glad that I absolutely refused to consider buying any home under the dominion of a homeowner's association. I can't understand why anyone would volunteer to be subjected to an additional layer of bureaucracy in their lives, especially since we are already burdened with a plethora of government bodies and agencies that regulate how we use our private property.

Possible Federal Ban On Radar Detectors

According to i-go-cars.com:

The legislation, sponsored by Senator Steve Oelrich of Gainesville, Florida, would make using a radar detector a secondary traffic infraction, which means you could be ticketed were [you] pulled over for another offense and found to be using a radar detector.

I understand that many people think that this is a safety issue, but I'm against any such ban. I don't own a radar detector and am not a pedal-to-the-metal sort of driver, so my objection to the ban is not about making it easier for me to speed.

I object because it amounts to denying a private citizen the right to own a device that passively receives and alerts them to a signal that is being beamed at them for the purposes of surveillance. If somebody (in this case the police) is bouncing a laser or radio wave at you for the purposes of measuring and recording your actions, you should be entitled to own a gadget that informs you that you are being targeted. If it ever becomes illegal to have such devices, it paves they way to make it illegal to own other tools that could detect more egregious intrusions upon your privacy.

Imagine if someone, such as a pervert neighbor, was using an infrared illuminator to see into your darkened bedroom through an open window. Or, imagine if an unscrupulous hotel maid plants a wireless camera in a room in order to record what happens in bed. It is technologically possible to create devices to warn you of these sorts of intrusions upon your privacy. If it is OK to federally ban a radar/laser detector, why would it not be equally OK to ban other spy-detection devices? The fundamental concept behind the detection technology is the same.

Law enforcement agencies sometimes use microphones, wire-taps, hidden cameras, FLIR, infrared optics and other technology to gather evidence. As better spying technology becomes available, both law enforcement and private citizens will use it. It would be much easier for them to use technological spy tools on people if it was impossible for anyone to obtain devices to detect such spying. Banning radar and laser detectors is a legal step in the wrong direction as it creates a precedent for banning other types of passive detection equipment to warn people that they are being spied upon. It is wrong to deny law abiding citizens (and even criminal suspects since they haven't yet been convicted of anything) a legal means to detect when their privacy is being invaded.

Our right to privacy is more important than the convenience of law enforcement agencies. We have already seen countless cases of people using hidden cameras to photograph up girls' skirts, spy on locker room showers, dressing rooms, and more. As new technology becomes available, perverts and snoops will use it and people should not be barred the use of detection equipment just so that it is easier for the police to gather evidence.

Say Goodbye to In-flight Privacy

Imagine being watched by cameras hidden in the backs of every seat and listened to by sensitive microphones throughout the duration of your flight. According to the SmartMobs.com article in the title link, this may soon become a reality:

Scientists from Britain and Germany are spending £25 million to develop a system they hope will make it virtually impossible to hijack an airliner by providing pilots and cabin crew with an early warning system. They say rapid eye movements, blinking excessively, licking lips or ways of stroking hair or ears are classic symptoms of somebody trying to conceal something.

A separate microphone will record speech, including whispers; Islamic suicide bombers whisper texts from the Koran in the moments before they explode bombs.

Although this seems hard to believe, given the U.K.'s love of police-controlled cameras and considering that I found this same story on a number of blogs and news sites, it might actually be true. If it does happen, I suspect it will cause more problems than it solves. Will a Muslim who is afraid of flying be flagged as a terrorist if he/she mutters a prayer under their breath on takeoff? How many privacy activists will create false hits by blinking and whispering just to protest the system?

FBI Still Losing Weapons, Laptops and Data

According to the arstechnica.com story:

In the 44 months that it took to complete the new audit, the FBI lost 160 weapons and 160 laptop computers—a massive improvement over the 354 weapons and 317 laptops lost during the first 28-month-long audit.

"Perhaps most troubling," says the report, "the FBI could not determine in many cases whether the lost or stolen laptop computers contained sensitive or classified information. Such information may include case information, personal identifying information, or classified information on FBI operations." Laptops can also contain goodies like the software that the FBI uses to make its identification badges, a copy of which was installed on a laptop stolen from the Boston Field Office in July 2002.

It is stories like this that make privacy advocates mistrust the government and speak out against national id cards and massive databases containing info on law abiding private citizens. This data inevitably will wall into the wrong hands. If we ever create a comprehensive database about private citizens for the purposes of increasing national security and/or tracking medical records, it will only be a matter of time before large portions of that data are accidentally left unsecured on the internet, are recovered from lost or stolen hardware and/or are compromised by hacker attacks.

If you'd like more evidence, try the following searches on the Google News web site and see just how common this sort of problem is:

lost laptops
stolen laptops
identity theft laptops
military data identity theft

Technology and Government

As a follow up to the Ted Stevens post, I here are two more examples of what happens when ignorant government officials make technological decisions for our entire nation:

Example #1: File Sharing Technology
Peer-to-peer file sharing technology allows computer users all over the world to easily exchange files in a manner that is difficult to monitor, track or prevent. As a result, this technology is heavily used to illegally distribute and download music recordings, movies and other copyrighted material. This illegal activity, however, does not mean that file sharing technology is “bad” and that it has no legitimate uses. Peer-to-Peer technology is a fantastic way to distribute information over the internet without overloading a single server or network. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) doesn't care that this technology can be also be used for legally distributing files, and thus they launched a campaign to crush file sharing technology. Eventually this issue ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, and all nine justices unanimously decided that peer-to-peer companies like Grokster can be held liable for copyright piracy on their networks.

According to Justice Sourter:
"There is no evidence that either company (Grokster or StreamCast) made an effort to filter copyrighted material from users' downloads or otherwise impede the sharing of copyrighted files."

According to Donald Verrilli Jr., an entertainment industry lawyer:
"Copyright infringement is the only commercially significant use of file sharing"

In short, a group of very elderly Justices who have most likely never even used peer-to-peer technology and who don't understand its potential have declared open season on people who facilitate it's usage. Now, people who facilitate peer-to-peer networks are faced with the impossible and immoral task of censoring all traffic on their servers (which they would probably get sued for) or risk being sued out of business by the RIAA.

The ironic thing is that since this decision, the entertainment industry is now partnering with peer-to-peer companies such as BitTorrent and Guba.com to distribute their movies and content. Likewise, Apple has all but formally announced that their next operating system will include bit torrent technology to allow for easier distribution of patches and possibly even some files from iTunes. Thus, the very technology that has been under attack as being only useful to pirates is suddenly being embraced by the industries that have been trying to destroy it.

Example #2: RFIDs in Passports
The U.S. State Department plans to start issuing e-passports to Americans starting in August. This will entail embedding an RFID chip in passports that contains your identification information. This would allow devices to scan the passport from a short distance to retrieve this identity information, and will supposedly make for faster and more accurate processing at customs checkpoints. The problem is, this technology is NOT secure.

Hackers have already figured out how to create long range RFID scanners that can read this sort of information over long distances (i.e., from many yards away). They have also figured out how to change the information embedded into RFIDs, and even transmit a virus via RFIDs. And all of this before the first e-passport was even issued! Imagine what hackers will be able to do in 10 years by the time this first generation of e-passports expire? Will anti-American terrorists use this to identify targets for kidnapping? Will terrorists capture your identity from a distance, and then embed that identity into a chip on their own fake passport so that they can travel without the hassle of being arrested? All of these things will probably be possible in the near future. Google for RFID Hacking if you'd like to see some of the ways RFIDs have already been compromised by hackers.

Woman's SS# Used By 81+ Illegal Aliens

This NFDailyNews.com story is yet another reason why we should crack down on illegal immigration and require employers to verify social security numbers before hiring employees. Here are some excerpts:

DUBLIN, Calif. (AP) - Audra Schmierer's Social Security number really gets around. It has been used by at least 81 people in 17 states, most of them probably illegal immigrants trying to get work.

...

"They knew what was happening but wouldn't do anything," said Schmierer, 33, a housewife in this affluent San Francisco suburb. "One name, one number, why can't they just match it up?"

...

Schmierer realized she had a problem in February 2005, when she got a statement from the IRS saying she owed $15,813 in back taxes _ even though she had not worked since her son was born in 2000.

...

What started as a hassle turned into a major headache earlier this year when she sought work through a temporary agency that learned her Social Security number had been used by a woman in Texas two years earlier. The agency could not hire Schmierer for more than a month while the situation was clarified.

Stolen or fabricated Social Security numbers are frequently used by illegal aliens in order to obtain employment. As you can see from this story, this often harms the people who were really issued those numbers. Since the purpose of a Social Security number is to track taxation, Social Security contributions and Social Security benefits, it is ridiculous that employers are not required to check the validity of these numbers before hiring new staff. Keep in mind that employers must contribute money into Social Security for each employee, issue tax statements to each employee and the IRS based on these numbers. Thus, if they have the wrong number, they effectively are providing bogus information to the Federal Government and in my opinion are either aiding and abetting a crime or at the very east are being very negligent.

The government either needs to stop forcing employers to contribute tax and Social Security money for their employees, or they need to create a fast and easy way to verify Social Security numbers and require employers to use it. Right now, employers are required to contribute money based on these numbers, regardless if the numbers actually mean anything. This is stupid.

Tax Funded Cameras: 1 for Every 30 People

The LATimes.com revealed an interesting story about a small remote town in Alaska. Apparently, someone thought it would be a good idea to use Homeland Security terrorism prevention money to install a lot of surveillance cameras to watch 24,000 people in the middle of nowhere.

Here are some quotes from the story:

By mid-February, more than 60 cameras watched over the town, and the Dillingham Police Department plans to install 20 more — all purchased through a $202,000 Homeland Security grant meant primarily to defend against a terrorist attack.

Now the residents of this far-flung village have become, in one sense, among the most watched people in the land, with — as former Mayor Freeman Roberts puts it — "one camera for every 30 residents."

Some don't mind, but many others are furious and have banded together to force the city to take the cameras down.

...

It is a working town in the middle of what some might call nowhere, which, according to Police Chief Richard Thompson, is why residents must be vigilant. Terrorists intent on attacking the United States could, he says, "backdoor it" through a nowhere dot on the tundra just like Dillingham.

Thompson, with the blessing of the City Council, applied for the Homeland Security grant last year. He is 51, wiry, with a slightly harried air about him. He has spent 22 years in the Dillingham Police Department, starting as dispatcher and becoming chief a year and a half ago.

It's his department. He and his six officers take the oath to protect very seriously. He bristles at any reference to Big Brother.

This is wrong on so many levels. Unless terrorists are plotting to disrupt our nations Salmon supply, this town doesn't seem to be a high risk target. Thus, even if one can stomach the idea of continuous camera surveillance, why are we throwing away anti-terrorism tax dollars on installing such a system in this city?

Even worse, why are a bunch of peaceable small town residents putting up with this gross invasion of their privacy? I thought this sort of thing was mostly limited to wacky large cities like London, Tokyo and New Orleans where people are desperate to throw away their privacy rights in order to supposedly cut down on rampant crime. To be honest, I'm surprised people in a small fishing town like that aren't simply using their hunting rifles to disable these stupid cameras as fast as they are installed.

This story is proof that no method of encroaching upon your privacy is too asinine to be brought to your home town. Stay vigilant and expel from public office any idiot who tries to spend your tax money on techniques to reduce your privacy and other rights.

Houston PD Wants to Use Spy Cameras

From the Houston Chronicle:

Facing a shortage of police officers, Police Chief Harold Hurtt called Wednesday for a new type of patrol: surveillance cameras on downtown streets, apartment complexes and shopping malls — and in extreme situations, private homes.

"If you're not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?" Hurtt told reporters.

Anyone in law enforcement who uses the argument "If you're not doing anything wrong, why should you worry" should be summarily banned from law enforcement and public office. When justifying a new encroachment on our privacy, they must convince us, the people, why it is "necessary", how it will "help", and what will be done to "prevent" abuse. It should NEVER be necessary for the law abiding public to have to defend their reasons for "worrying about it" when a new invasion of privacy or reduction of rights is being considered by law enforcement. The burden of justification is entirely upon the law enforcement/government. Every time you see the old "what do you have to hide?" argument, it is a sign that law enforcement/government is trying to cover their lack of justification by wrongly putting concerned citizens on the defensive.

Remember: Government cannot do anything without our consent so it is THEIR duty to convince us to support their idea. Letting government put us on the defensive on such issues would be like allowing a door to door salesman MAKE you explain why you shouldn't have to buy his product. Just tell firmly tell them no and send them on their way.

This sort of massive camera surveillance system has already been implemented in London, New Orleans (prior to the flooding) and other cities, so don't assume that decency will prevail if you ignore it. According to the article, Houston Mayor Bill White must approve this plan before the cameras can be installed. Thus, send him your thoughts on this issue,even if you don't live in Houston. If he gets thousands of email messages and hundreds of phone calls and letters saying that this is a horrible and invasive misuse of public funds, he probably won't approve it for fear of a voter backlash. Every time something like this passes, other cities see that this is possible and are more tempted to try it too. Stopping it in Houston will help prevent it from coming to your town.

Mayor Bill White
City of Houston

P.O. Box 1562
Houston, TX 77251

PHONE: 713.247.2200
EMAIL: mayor@cityofhouston.net

Revisiting Employer vs Employee Rights

Whenever I post an article proposing that employers should not be able tell employees how to live while they are out of the office, I invariably get a comment along the lines of:
"Employers should be able to offer employment on their own terms, and if the employees don't like it they can quit."

My recent post "2 Women Fired for Having Nicotine in Blood", was no exception to this rule. In the post I complained about Weyco terminating employees who smoked while "off the clock", and how they enforced this rule via mandatory blood tests. Fellow LLP member, The Unrepentant Individual, disagreed with me in his post. Here’s a quote:

How about, why don’t you let the owner of Weyco decide who he does and does not want to employ, based upon the criteria he determines. This isn’t government here, nobody is forcing these employees to work for Weyco. He has in no way infringed upon their “rights”, because the only right here is the right of contract.

If we take this logic to the farthest extreme, the so called “right of contract” would trump basic human rights. What if Weyco decided to fire all employees who have not been surgically sterilized in order to make sure that childcare issues never impacted productivity? What if all staff were required to vote only for political candidates that favored Weyco’s industry? How about requiring them to maintain a small shrine to a certain god both in their work area and in their homes? If the "right of contract" is all that matters, such abominations would be considered acceptable.

If these examples are too extreme, consider the inverse of the smoking issue: If it's ok for the employer to forbid nicotine in the employees' blood, wouldn't that imply that it's also ok for Weyco to require that the employees always have nicotine in their blood? Most people are non-smokers, and thus probably find it easy to side with anyone who forbids smoking. What if the tables were turned? Would people still side with the employer if he fired non-smokers instead and only kept the smokers?

I believe employers pay employees for the successful completion of units of work, whatever that work may be. As long as staff correctly produce the required units of work and do not otherwise disrupt business, they should be left alone. I don’t mind if an employer bans smoking in the office, or if they fire individual smokers because their frequent smoke breaks make them unproductive. I do, however, object if the employer fires people just because they have a legal and non-impairing substance in their blood.

If we take any isolated case and let the employer do as they please, the employees can indeed vote with their feet. If enough employees quit, the employer will go out of business. This system won’t work, however, if all employers offer equally miserable terms and workers have nowhere else to go (look at the beginnings of the industrial age). Just because an employee agrees to be exploited doesn’t make it right to exploit the employee. If that were the case, it would be ok for pedophiles to engage in sex with children as long as the victims don’t know enough to object. While I object to minimum wage laws and don’t like undue restrictions on employers, I do draw the line at letting employers intrude upon the personal lives of employees.

2 Women Fired for Having Nicotine in Blood

Here's yet another example of an employer intruding too far into the personal lives of its staff. According to the CBSNews.com story:

Weyco gave employees 15 months to quit [smoking], before subjecting them to random nicotine testing. If you fail, you’re out.

...

at a company benefits meeting two years ago, the company president announced, "As of January 1st, 2005, anyone that has nicotine in their body will be fired,” Anita remembers. “And we sat there in awe. And I spoke out at that time. ‘You can't do that to us’ And then he said, ‘Yes, I can.’ I said, ‘That's not legal.’ And he came back with, ‘Yes, it is.’”

And it was legal: in Michigan, there’s no law that prevents a boss from firing people virtually at will. At Weyco, that meant no smoking at work, no smoking at home, no smoking period.

If you read the full story, it seems this is the usual case of an employer supposedly trying to limit health related liabilities, a concept I do not object to. In general, smokers have more health issues and employers don't like them causing health insurance premiums to increase. What I don't understand is why the employers don't mitigate this liability by either passing on the cost of the higher premiums to smokers or by not offering them health insurance. If people want to smoke while away from the office, don't fire them for it; simply let them pay for the increased costs. Smokers already pay more for life insurance (if they directly buy a policy unrelated to their work benefits) so why not let them pay more for their medical insurance?

FBI Spys on US Citizens without Oversight

Articles like the USA Today story in the title link confirm my reasons for not wanting government agencies to have too much power. Here are some quotes:

FBI agents have violated government policies by secretly conducting surveillance on U.S. citizens for more than a year without notifying Justice Department officials.

...

FBI spokesman John Miller said Monday that the precise number of violations by agents could not be disclosed because some information on the bureau's surveillance activities in this country remains classified.

...

... the FBI has dramatically increased its surveillance on people in this country, including U.S.U.S. citizens are overseen by a secret court and a presidential panel whose activities are not made public. After obtaining such a warrant, FBI agents are supposed to follow Justice procedures designed to prevent abuses of such authority.

I realize that the article only mentions several cases of this happening, and that this represents a miniscule portion of the FBI's workload. Nevertheless, if they won’t disclose the precise number of procedural violations to protect “classified” information, I’m not willing to take it on faith that there were few such violations. While most FBI agents probably follow protocols and obey the law, it only takes a few highly placed people to let abuse of power to get out of hand. Remember J. Edgar Hoover’s secret files?

citizens. Warrants that allow such surveillance of

What concerns me is that ever since 9/11, the Patriot Act fans make it increasingly easier for such abuses of power and invasions of privacy to take place without public knowledge. When the FBI says they conducted “surveillance” on U.S. Citizens, what exactly are they referring to? Watching and photographing people when they appear in public? Intercepting and recording their phone calls? Using hidden microphones and/or cameras to record interpersonal conversations? Snooping through their internet usage, credit card records? Using remote sensing devices, such as thermal imagers, to watch them in the privacy of their homes and bedrooms? When these sorts of violations are discovered, the details should be released to the public as a show of good faith. If the agents are proven to have violated procedure, they should be fired and if applicable, prosecuted. If the FBI is not quickly forthcoming with such details and actions, one can only assume that they condone such behavior.

With each passing year, technology makes it easier to gather, store and disseminate information about people. While preventing crime is important, systems should remain in place to protect civil liberties and privacy. It is imperative that we the people demand and protect our rights from the government if we are to remain a free nation. Throughout history, emergencies and crises have been used as justification to increase government powers and reduce individual rights. This is a trend that should be stopped.

Overseas Call Centers Selling Personal Data

According Australian media sources, Indian call centres are at the centre of a fresh controversy with an Australian television channel claiming that some of them were illegally selling personal information of tens of thousand Australian customers.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) TV claimed that its reporters were offered banking pin numbers, passport numbers, credit card details and other personal information on thousands of Australians for just 10 Australian dollars each.

Looks like outsourcing jobs has yet another down side. The full story mentions that information was also sold about people in the United States of America, Canada and the United Kingdom in addition to the Australians mentioned in the above excerpt.

Employees Punished for Off Duty Actions

Last January I posted an article about an employer that was firing employees for smoking while out of the office. Since then I have been following a story of how GM and Chrysler facilities are requiring employers who do not drive GM/Chrysler vehicles to park in undesirable remote parking areas. In March, I posted another article about a Weyerhaeuser facility in Oklahoma that fired 12 employees for having firearms locked safely in their vehicles while the vehicles were parked on company property. These types of stories have made me very concerned that there might an increasing trend of employers exercising a little too much control over the lives of their employees. The USA Today article in the title link seems to confirm this.

Here are some excerpts:

At the Atlantic City, Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, bartenders and waitresses can be fired if they gain more than 7% of their body weight. They are first given a 90-day unpaid suspension to lose the weight. Officials say it is a recent clarification to the company's appearance policy.

...

Lynne Gobbell was fired from her job packing insulation by her Moulton, Ala.-based employer for displaying a John Kerry bumper sticker on her car, according to the Associated Press and numerous media reports. Gobbell could not be reached for comment.

...

Ross Hopkins, who worked for a Budweiser distributor, sued after he says he was fired for drinking a Coors at a Greeley, Colo., bar after work.

I know these are just a few more isolated cases, but I am very curious to find out if this becoming an increasingly common issue. If this is a trend, it will be a difficult one to fight. On one hand is the employee’s freedom, and on the other is the employer’s freedom to hire certain types of workers.

I'm going have to side with the employees on this one. Employees should be free to partake of any legal activity while they are off the clock, off the employer's property and out of uniform. I also think it is wrong for employers to make rules about what types of items can be concealed inside of an employees car when it is parked on company property. Let's hope this issue doesn't become a growing problem.

A New Way To Spy on People Via Email

Here's an excerpt from an ITBusiness.ca article about a Canadian who is developing a new method of programmatically analyzing email to find people that are up to no good:

Dr. David Skillicorn’s work is based on the idea that when people are trying to hide something, they write differently than people who have nothing to hide. That’s more true of e-mail than of more formal documents, he adds, because few of us go back and edit our e-mails.

One difference might be the complete absence of words someone might possibly think would draw a law enforcement agency’s attention to their e-mails, but that most people would occasionally use innocently (as in “my presentation yesterday really bombed.”) Another, Skillicorn says, is that research shows people speak and write differently when they feel guilt about a subject, for instance using fewer first-person pronouns, like I and we.

“If you’re up to no good,” he says, “it’s very hard for you to write something that looks ordinary.”

To me this is scary. We already know of programs like the FBI's Carnivore that can scan email for suspicious phrases and key words. The idea of scouring email for a conspicuous absence of dangerous or incriminating phrases is even worse. I'm interpreting this to mean that a person who talks about bombs and terrorism can get flagged as a suspect, and a person who doesn't talk about threatening things can also get flagged as a suspect. Wouldn't this mean that nearly everyone who gets scanned by these opposing sets of logic would get flagged as a likely criminal?

Commercialization is not high on Skillicorn’s list of priorities. Such technology has obvious applications in surveillance by law enforcement and security bodies, but Skillicorn suspects agencies like the U.S. National Security Agency have little need of his help. “I infer from things they say around me that some of this stuff they already do,” he says.

No surprise there. Our great democratic bastion of freedom has always been very adept at using hi-tech surveillance methods to spy on people. The problem is, with laws like the Patriot Act, we no longer have a right to know who is getting spied on. For all I know, this blog has gotten me flagged on some sort of watch list since it often criticizes government policy when those policies chip away at our constitutionally guaranteed liberties.

One More Reason Against National ID Cards

Stories like this remind us why it is a bad idea to let the government stockpile information about private citizens and why we should be against national ID cards and similar programs.

Computer-security flaws at the U.S. tax-collection agency expose millions of taxpayers to potential identity theft or illegal police snooping, according to a congressional report released Monday.

Any computer database, if readliy accessible its intended users, can be compromised by an attacker. The more information that is stored in one place, the greater the attraction it poses to unauthorized users, thieves and overzealous government officials. In this case, it sounds like the database and computer system are so accessible that literally thousands of people could easily wreak havoc.

In all, 7,500 IRS employees, law enforcers and outside contractors can access and modify tax returns and financial-crime reports, the GAO found.

A master list of passwords and user names is also widely available, the report said.

"Increased risk exists that unauthorized users could ... claim a user identity and then use that identity to gain access to sensitive taxpayer or Bank Secrecy Act data," the report said.

Identity thieves have used stolen passwords to gain access to nearly half a million profiles of U.S. citizens maintained by data brokers ChoicePoint Inc and LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier .

I don't fear black helicopters in the night and I really don't believe that our government is out to get us. Nevertheless, stories like these prove to me that nobody, our government included, should be trusted with any more information about private citizens than is absolutely necessary. It is bad enough that credit tracking companies such as TRW have a record of people's addresses, social security numbers, financial relationships, etc. At least with a private company, the fear of law suits, angry shareholders, criminal prosecution and other threats make them very motivated to keep their data secure. These checks and balances don't really exist when it comes to government. There is no law enforcement agency to attack a branch of the federal government if they fail to keep our data private. Likewise, it is very difficult to sue the government, and there are no shareholders ready to sell stocks and deprive the government of funding if they make a mistake. Sure, we can vote the current administration out of power at the next election, but for all practical purposes there isn't really that much an individual can do to punish the government for misusing or distributing information about private citizens.

Interesting Gun Law Legal Battle

The [Oklahoma State] Legislature passed the law in response to the firings of 12 workers at a Weyerhaeuser Co. paper mill in southeast Oklahoma in 2002. The timber company had extended its longtime ban on guns in the workplace to the parking lot, and dogs found guns in the 12 employees' vehicles. The law, part of the Oklahoma Firearms Act and the Oklahoma Self-Defense Act, prohibits businesses and employers from establishing policies that prohibit anyone other than a convicted felon from transporting and storing firearms in a locked vehicle in company parking lots. In February, the state House passed legislation to exempt businesses from legal liability if a gun stored in a worker's car results in injury or death at a work site. Business groups said the measure still does not address safety issues.

It should be ok for employees to possess any legal items, including guns, in their cars providing they are stored in a lawful manner. A car should be viewed as an extension of the domicile, and should be subject to the same rights to privacy.

Should a conservative employer be able to search my vehicle for sex toys if they feel they are amoral? What if I have a six pack of beer in the trunk for a party after work and my employer objects to alcohol? Should that employer be able to search my car to make sure I don't have any alcohol? Can a liberal employer pass a rule forbidding employees from having conservative political publications in their vehicles while at work? Should a paranoid employer be able to forbid the carrying of tools in vehicles because wrenches can be used as dangerous bludgeoning weapons? What about a Christian employer who wants to forbid Muslim prayer rugs from being stored in employee vehicles while they are parked on company property?

I hope this legal battle ends up supporting the laws that protect employees from having their rights violated by employers.