Civil Liberties, Health Care, Food Policies

Air Security Israeli-Style

January 8, 2010

AP - ... Some say the U.S. should take a page from Israel's book on security.

At Israeli airports, widely considered the most secure in the world, travelers are subjected to probing personal questions as screeners look them straight in the eye for signs of deception. Searches are meticulous, with screeners often scrutinizing every item in a bag, unfolding socks, squeezing toothpaste and flipping through books.

"All must look to Israel and learn from them. This is not a post-911 thing for them. They've been doing this since 1956," said Michael Goldberg, president of New York-based IDO Security Inc., which developed a device that can scan shoes for hidden weapons while they are still on people's feet.

Israel also employs profiling: At Ben-Gurion Airport, Jewish Israelis typically pass through smoothly, while others may be taken aside for closer interrogation or even strip searches. Another distinquishing feature of Israeli airports is that they rely on concentric security rings that start miles from terminal buildings.

Rafi Ron, the former security director at Israel's famously tight Ben Gurion International Airport who now is a consultant for Boston's Logan International Airport, says U.S. airports also need to be careful not to overcommit to securing passenger entry points at airports, forgetting about the rest of the field.

"Don't invest all your efforts on the front door and leave the back door open," Ron said.

While many experts agree the United States could adopt some Israeli methods, few believe the overall model would work here, in part because of the sheer number of large U.S. airports - around 400, versus half a dozen in Israel.

Also, the painstaking searches and interrogations would create delays that could bring U.S. air traffic to a standstill. And many Americans would find the often intrusive and intimidating Israeli approach repugnant.

Some argue that policies against profiling undermine security.

Baum, who is also managing director of Green Light Limited, a London-based aviation security company, agrees profiling based on race and religion is counterproductive and should be avoided. But he argues that a reluctance to distinguish travelers on other grounds - such as their general appearance or their mannerisms - is not only foolhardy but dangerous.

"When you see a typical family - dressed like a family, acts like a family, interacts with each other like a family ... when their passport details match - then let's get them through," he said. "Stop wasting time that would be much better spent screening the people that we've got more concerns about."

U.S. authorities prohibit profiling of passengers based on ethnicity, religion or national origin. Current procedures call for travelers to be randomly pulled out of line for further screening.

Scrutinizing 80-year-old grandmothers or students because they might be carrying school scissors can defy common sense, Baum said.

"We need to use the human brain - which is the best technology of them all," he said.

But any move to relax prohibitions against profiling in the U.S. would surely trigger fierce resistance, including legal challenges by privacy advocates ...

Body Scanners Can Store, Send Images, Group Says

January 11, 2010

CNN - A privacy group says the Transportation Security Administration is misleading the public with claims that full-body scanners at airports cannot store or send their graphic images.

The TSA specified in 2008 documents that the machines must have image storage and sending abilities, the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said.

In the documents, obtained by the privacy group and provided to CNN, the TSA specifies that the body scanners it purchases must have the ability to store and send images when in "test mode."

That requirement leaves open the possibility the machines -- which can see beneath people's clothing -- can be abused by TSA insiders and hacked by outsiders, said EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg.

EPIC, a public-interest group focused on privacy and civil rights, obtained the technical specifications and vendor contracts through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The written requirements also appear to contradict numerous assurances the TSA has given the public about the machines' privacy protections.

"The machines have zero storage capability," the TSA Web site says.

A TSA video assures passengers "the system has no way to save, transmit or print the image."

And the TSA has distributed numerous news releases with similar language as it lobbies for public acceptance of the machines as a less intrusive alternative to pat-downs.

A TSA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official is not authorized to speak on the record said all full-body scanners have "strong privacy protections in place" and are delivered to airports "without the capability to store, print or transmit images."

"There is no way for someone in the airport environment to put the machine into the test mode," the official said, adding that test mode can be enabled only in TSA test facilities.

But the official declined to say whether activating test mode requires additional hardware, software or simply additional knowledge of how the machines operate.

The controversy arises as the TSA is promoting the machines as a possible way to prevent assaults on U.S. airliners, such as the Christmas attempt on Northwest Flight 253.

About 40 machines are already in use at 19 airports, and the TSA says it will deploy 150 more nationwide this year, while appropriating money for an additional 300 machines for 2011.

"I don't think the TSA has been forthcoming with the American public about the true capability of these devices," EPIC's Rotenberg said. "They've done a bunch of very slick promotions where they show people -- including journalists -- going through the devices. And then they reassure people, based on the images that have been produced, that there's not any privacy concerns.

"But if you look at the actual technical specifications and you read the vendor contracts, you come to understand that these machines are capable of doing far more than the TSA has let on," he said.

The TSA should suspend further deployment of the machines until privacy and security questions are resolved, Rotenberg said.

TSA officials say they have taken sufficient measures to protect privacy...

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Says Privacy is No Longer a 'Social Norm'

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has denounced privacy as a ‘social norm’ of the past as social networking's popularity continues to grow.

January 11, 2010

Telegrpah - Talking in San Francisco over the weekend at the Crunchie Awards, which recognise technological achievements, the 25 year-old web entrepreneur said:

“People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.”

He went on to say that privacy was no longer a ‘social norm’ and had just evolved over time.

"When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was, 'why would I want to put any information on the internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?'."

"Then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way, and just all these different services that have people sharing all this information,” he explained.

Mr Zuckerberg's statements about privacy chime in with the latest changes made to Facebook’s own privacy settings – which caused controversy and has affected the network’s 350 million user base.

From last December onwards, all Facebook users’ status updates are made publicly available unless the user actively opts to change the settings and make its private. Users were alerted to changes via a ‘Notification’ posted in the bottom right hand corner of the site.

The sites’ users were also given the opportunity to change settings on things like photographs and videos they upload to the site. However, the changes sparked criticism from internet users’ rights groups who said the move was a way for Facebook to facilitate more people making more personal information publicly available without realising it.

The changes also followed agreements Facebook signed with both Google and Microsoft’s Bing, to allow people’s status updates (which are not set to private) to be indexed by both search engines in order to enable the search giants to provide real-time results.

Facebook chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, publicly said in September 2009 that Facebook was making no money from the search arrangement with Microsoft – unlike Twitter – which has signed similar deals and understood to be generating cash from both arrangements with Google and Microsoft. Although all three parties – Twitter, Microsoft and Google – have declined to comment.

Mr Zuckerberg defended the changes made by Facebook to its privacy settings, saying it was in line with the new social norms. “

A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built," he said. "Doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do.

"But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it," he explained.