Trusted Traveller?

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Bruce Schneier on the DHS’s “Trusted Traveller” Program:

IF YOU FLY OUT of Logan Airport and don’t want to take off your shoes for the security screeners and get your bags opened up, pay attention. The US government is testing its “Trusted Traveler” program, and Logan is the fourth test airport. Currently, only American Airlines frequent fliers are eligible, but if all goes well the program will be opened up to more people and more airports.
Participants provide their name, address, phone number, and birth date, a set of fingerprints, and a retinal scan. That information is matched against law enforcement and intelligence databases. If the applicant is not on any terrorist watch list and is otherwise an upstanding citizen, he gets a card that allows him access to a special security lane. The lane doesn’t bypass the metal detector or X-ray machine for carry-on bags, but it bypasses more intensive secondary screening unless there’s an alarm of some kind.
Unfortunately, this program won’t make us more secure. Some terrorists will be able to get Trusted Traveler cards, and they’ll know in advance that they’ll be subjected to less stringent security.

DHS: Dept of Agriculture for 21st Century?

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Thomas Barnett:

I have long predicted that the Department of Homeland Security will become the Department of Agriculture for the 21st century. What do I mean by that? The joke on Ag is that it now has something like two bureaucrats for every farmer in America. Well, this review notes that DHS has 186,000 employees, and most good estimates of global terrorism put the highest numbers of active players in the 10,000 range, with a potential for almost 100,000 more active sympathesizers or potential recruits. That means we already have one DHS employee for every terrorist on the planet and, with any luck (given the recent Republican flare for enlarging government), we’ll pass the 2-for-1 mark within the second Bush Administration.

Legacy Media & Dan Rather

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There’s been no shortage of discussion regarding the apparent forged documents that 60 minutes used last week on a Bush National Guard Story. Jay Rosen has written a “stark message” for legacy media here.
I lived in San Francisco during the 1989 “pretty big one”, the Loma Prieta earthquake. I remember reading about this, and frankly feeling repulsed at the image of a Rather in a limo next to the flattened I-880 expressway stating this:

Some time after dark, a long white stretch limo pulled up beside the remaining structure in West Oakland. The back door opened and Dan Rather got out. He pulled down his tie, rolled up his sleeves, mussed his hair a bit so it might look as if he?d actually been somewhere doing something, looked into the camera and said, ?We?re here in San Francisco, where the freeway ??

When, in fact, he was in Oakland….

The SUV; take to it’s “logical” extreme

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Autoextremist:

When is too much, just plain too much? When International, a maker of heavy-duty trucks, decides that what the world needs right now more than anything is a monster SUV that weighs 7 tons, twice as much as a Hummer H2. The new CXT (for Commercial Extreme Truck) stands 9 feet tall and is more than 21 feet long – more than 4 feet longer than the Hummer H2 pickup. The CXT is a development off of the heavy-duty platform that International uses for its rugged-use trucks designed for road work and snow plowing, etc., and gets between six and 10 miles per gallon (we’d venture closer to six) from its commercial truck diesel engine.

“Creative Destruction”

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A term coined in 1942 by Joseph Schumpeter in his work, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, to denote a “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”
I thought of this concept (which I learned in High School many years ago) and refined at the UW recently while visiting with a local small business owner. This guy’s firm formerly sold voice mail systems. That business has changed quite a bit therefore, he is now selling services and IT solutions including replication, archive and “secure” email products.
I told him that I was impressed by his ability to zig and zag as the market changed. It’s clear that every worker today, at any level must be ready for new challenges and opportunities, as this article on the NY Times outsourcing plans illustrates.

IP Extremists & Kerry: Lessig

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Larry Lessig:

One of the exciting thing about the early days of the Democratic primary was that there was at least some debate about whether the Democratic Party would continue to be led by IP extremists. Some of the worst in IP came, after all, from the Clinton administration. Reflecting on that, many were hopeful we?d see some new thinking. Many of the most passionate Deaniacs were eager to see new thinking on this issue. Senator Edwards addressed some of this on this blog.
Word now is that Bruce Lehman, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and Commissioner of Patents, is spreading the word that he is running IP policy on the Kerry campaign. In the scheme of extremists, few are more extreme. Of all the government ?Czars? in our form of government, he proved himself to be most to be feared.
Yet another bit of depressing news, if true, from this extraordinarily important campaign.

Speaking of IP, the Gutenberg Project is publishing Scientific American e-zines that have entered the public domain. This is a useful article, from 1891 (!) on “The Business End of American Newspapers.