Be afraid.

From Wired News:

The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II) is designed to scan multiple public and private databases for information on individuals traveling into and out of the United States. The system will feed the results to an analysis application that mathematically ranks travelers' potential as security threats.

I'm sure this is going to be a powerful deterrent to any terrorist contemplating mayhem while in the air. Of course, the people who are selling the concept to the government insist it will work. "It could be very effective" in identifying potentially dangerous passengers, according to Allen Shay, president of Teradata, a data warehousing division of NCR Corp (from an article in Federal Computer Week).

What about the privacy implications? Says Shay: "When it is done in the commercial world, it is known as customer resource management. When it is done by the government, it's an invasion of privacy," he said. "To move forward in a positive way, that's something we're going to collectively have to get over."

It would be a lot easier to collectively get over this process of "moving forward" if such such companies were to be held liable for errors in their system, and if the lives of their managers were to be forfeited in case any terrorists do manage to board a plane. (This would not prevent terrorists from doing so, but it would liquidate an embarrasingly smug, stupid, and greedy segment of the population.)

More, from the Wired News article:

Though the [Transportation Security Administration] has stated that people whose records are pockmarked with unpaid parking tickets, unfiled tax returns and overdue child-support payments have nothing to fear from CAPPS II when trying to fly from point A to point B, civil liberties advocates aren't so sure.

And the civil libertarians'd be right.

I got a letter the other day from the Social Security Administration. Inside, they told me what I could expect, moneywise, when I retire. They took great pains to keep my SSN confidential (in case the letter were to fall into the Wrong Hands, I suppose), and exhorted me to "protect my Social Security Number!"

Who are these people trying to kid? My SSN was my student ID number back in college, my service number in the Marines, and has been provided to so many different agencies, employers, potential employers, banks, etc. as to make the idea of "protecting" my SSN (i.e., keeping it secret) beyond laughable.

And yet, the original intent of the number was, simply, to be an account number with the Social Security Administration.

Another example: A local restauranteur here in Pagosa was arrested a while back for DUI. It turns out that if you hold a liquor license in this state and are so arrested, your liquor license is summarily yanked, along with whatever happens to you otherwise. The restaurant, which was more of a bar than an eatery, closed. Was this what was intended back when liquor licensing laws (or even DUI laws) were first envisioned?

This kind of punishment is not unique: revocation of, for example, the professional licenses of those deemed "deadbeat" parents for child support payments is a standard sanction in some states (bringing back the glory days of the debtor's prisons, where your ability to make a living was taken away until you coughed up owed money).

Another example (talking about deadbeat parents): A woman came into the shop some time ago and asked me to wordsmith a letter for her. Her Federal Tax refund, you see, had been seized by the State of Hawaii for failure to pay child support. She had written them, explaining that she had never had any children, and that they must've made a mistake, but got no reply. (I wrote a somewhat more direct letter for her that suggested the situation might be newsworthy. The refund came by return mail, but I digress...)

I can see where a CAPPS III system could be extended to, say, gas stations, which would swipe your license through a terminal every time you stopped to buy gas. In addition to keeping tabs on where you are (and where you are going), the system would also be dandy for making sure that nobody with an expired license, a revoked license, no insurance, any felony warrants, etc. would be driving around. Imagine, we could also keep track of sex offenders, drug dealers, suspects in general,... you get the picture.

And of course, all of this would be done in the name of the "war on terror."

Be very afraid.

Cheers...

Hitchcock would've been proud... I think...

The third Netflix movie arrived, probably Saturday, but I only saw it this morning at the store. Drew opened the store and I showed up around 10 or so to lend a hand (it was slow) and do the report. I saw the DVD envelope before Drew got back from downtown.

I just finished watching the film with Galina a few minutes ago. It's Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien (literally (I think): Harry, a friend who wishes you the best), which the distributors decided would go well under the name With a Friend Like Harry. Puh-leeze!

Of course, it doesn't help that the blurb on the DVD sleeve suggests there is something not at all right about a chance encounter between our hero - a 34-year old fellow named Mike (Michel, in French) with a wife and three bratty preschool daughters - and a personable fellow, named Harry, on his way to Switzerland with his fiancé to see the Matterhorn.

The best description I can give to the film is that it's... quirky. Harry goes about solving all of our hero's problems, starting with buying him a brand new SUV to replace the late-model, un-air-conditioned clunker that we first see Mike and his family in before the opening credits. His help continues, but I'd be strewing spoilers on six-inch centers if I elaborated.

It's definitely an interesting film. My first impression, upon seeing the final credits and thinking back over the film, was that with the exception of "physical evidence" (e.g., the gifted car), Harry and his girlfriend really don't have to have existed at all as real people in the film. I mean, despite what ostensibly appear to be gross abuses of trust, all that Harry really seems to have at heart are Mike's best interests.

And the more I think about it, there are two sequences - the first, where Harry seems to be driving like a maniac down a French country road, and the second, soon after, centering on what Harry and Mike find at the top of the stairs after Harry gets a plastic shopping bag out from under the sink - that leads me to believe that, somehow, Harry isn't really real. Most of the evidence, including that car, can be explained away with relatively little effort, but I digress...

I would venture to guess that Harry is the Darth Vadery side of Mike that all of us have, and that most of us keep under very tight control.

Indeed, viewed in that light, everything that Harry says to Mike becomes a form of talking to oneself, and the single-mindedness of that talk seems far too focused for it to be coming out of the mouth of a stranger. Eventually, Mike regains control after, perhaps, undergoing a kind of mid-life crisis. In any event, piecing together a scenario for a grand mind game played by the director and writer of this film on the audience is a whole lot easier than trying to do the same thing for, say, Mulholland Drive.

So I wonder what, if anything, is at the bottom of that well?

Cheers...