Free Republic

Already removed mine- and recommend you do the same Now you can see anyone's Driver's License on the net, including your own! Searched for mine and there it was, picture and all... THANK YOU DHS  There's still an opt-out option though, so go to the web site, and enter your name, city and state to see if yours is on file. After your license comes on the screen, click the box marked 'Please Remove.'  This will remove it from public viewing, but not from law enforcement. Notify all your friends so they can protect themselves, too- National Drivers' License Data Base NowPublic  ...

MADISON — A funding showdown is shaping up between one of the Legislature's most powerful committees and Wisconsin’s elections watchdog, in part over a recall database not released to the public. The GAB's $75,000 expenditure on a database that failed to allow the public to search recall petition signatures stopped state Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester, dead in his tracks. He is co-chairman of the Joint Finance Committee, or JFC, which reviews all bills dealing state appropriations and revenue before they pass to the Legislature. “Why would we pay (GAB) money to create a useless database that the public can’t use?”...

Madison - In their effort to review 1.9 million recall signatures, state election officials are embarking on a project unlike any they have done before, relying on newly purchased software that can convert handwritten names into entries in six searchable databases. Experts say that the type of software the state is using can produce databases in a short time, but that officials must be ready to address numerous errors because computers sometimes misread handwritten letters. "Handwriting recognition software is not great," said Daniel Lopresti, a computer science professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. "A lot of the names are going...

<p>President Obama is putting plans in motion to give the Commerce Department authority to create an Internet ID for all Americans, a White House official told CNET.com.</p> <p>White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt told the website it is "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet.</p>

Cases of marriage fraud will become less common in China if the establishment of a national marriage database in 2012 has the effect top civil authorities want it to. The database, which was announced on Friday, will record the marital statuses of Chinese citizens who tied the knot in the past six decades. That information will be uploaded to the Internet next year, said Li Liguo, civil affairs minister. So far, 25 provinces and autonomous regions have set up their own online databases, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Chinese law forbids polygamy. Even so,...

Civil libertarians are raising the alarm over the state’s plans to create a Big Brother database that could map drivers’ whereabouts with police cruiser-mounted scanners that capture thousands of license plates per hour — storing that information indefinitely where local cops, staties, feds and prosecutors could access it as they choose... The computerized scanners, known as Automatic License Plate Recognition devices, instantly check for police alerts, warrants, traffic violations and parking tickets, which cops say could be an invaluable tool in thwarting crime. The Executive Office of Public Safety has approved 27 grants totaling $500,000 to buy scanners for state...

WASHINGTON — When the Taliban dug an elaborate tunnel system beneath the largest prison in southern Afghanistan this spring, they set off a scramble to catch the 475 inmates who escaped. One thing made it easier. Just a month before the April jailbreak, Afghan officials, using technology provided by the United States, recorded eye scans, fingerprints and facial images of each militant and criminal detainee in the giant Sarposa Prison. Within days of the breakout, about 35 escapees were recaptured at internal checkpoints and border crossings; they were returned to prison after their identities were confirmed by biometric files.

Hollywood bombshell Anna Nicole Smith's 2007 death in a South Florida hotel room ignited a frenzy of headlines. The four-poster bed she died in at the Hard Rock Hotel. The tub of crushed ice to break her fever. The row of amber pill canisters on the night table. The coroner's verdict: An accidental overdose of some of her nine prescription drugs killed the former Playboy Playmate. Not long after, authorities declared legal narcotics were killing three times as many people as street drugs in Florida. Those events combined to give the Sunshine State an embarrassing new nickname: Pill Mill Capital...

School Salary Database Reveals What Ohio Educators Earned In 2010By Patrick Preston Published: January 18, 2011 COLUMBUS, Ohio - An updated salary database allows Ohioans to search the salaries of administrators and teachers in Ohio's 613 public school districts. The Buckeye Institute, a conservative think tank based in Columbus, received the data from the Ohio Department of Education showing 1,800 public school employees made more than $100,000 in 2010. In the Columbus City School District, 78 employees earned more than six figures in 2010. Superintendent Gene Harris topped the list in Columbus with a salary of $185,912. The head of...

Privacy advocates fear massive fed health database U.S. Office of Personnel Management wants to collect data from three health programs Several privacy groups have raised alarms over plans by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to build a database that would contain information about the healthcare claims of millions of Americans. The concerns have surfaced because the OPM has provided few details about the new database and because the data collected will be shared with law enforcement, third-party researchers and others. In a letter to OPM Director John Berry, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and 15 other...

Several privacy groups have raised alarms over plans by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to build a database that would contain information about the healthcare claims of millions of Americans. The concerns have surfaced because the OPM has provided few details about the new database and because the data collected will be shared with law enforcement, third-party researchers and others. In a letter to OPM Director John Berry, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and 15 other organizations asked the agency to release more details on the need for the database and how the data contained in...

9,111 retired California government workers receive pensions in excess of $100,000 from CalPERS Searchable database

THE COMPUTER DATA BANK: WILL IT KILL YOUR FREEDOM? All around the U.S., computer centers may be talking too much about everybody and everything BY JACK STAR LOOK SENIOR EDITOR Did your sister have an illegitimate baby when she was 15? Did you fail math in junior high? Are you divorced or living in a common-law relationship? Do you pay your bills promptly? Are you willing to talk to salesmen? Have you been treated for a venereal disease? Are you visiting a psychiatrist? Were you ever arrested? Have you taken an airplane trip in the past 90 days; with whom:...

We all collected things as children. Rocks, baseball cards, Barbies, perhaps even bugs -- we all tried to gather up as much stuff as possible to compile the biggest most interesting collection possible.  Some of you may have even been able to amass a collection of items numbering into the hundreds (or thousands). As the story always goes, we got older, our collections got smaller, and eventually our interests died out...until now. There are currently organizations around the world in the business of amassing collections of things, and their collections number into and above the trillions.  In many cases these collections, or...

Karl Rove discusses the current Obama-Dodd financial reform Bill. - video "It creates a new office and monitors every finanical transaction in the United States"

As of last week, there is now a U.S. Government national security agency called the Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA).  It supersedes a Biometrics Task Force that was established in 2000.Though nominally a component of the Army, the biometrics agency has Defense Department-wide responsibilities.“The Biometrics Identity Management Agency leads Department of Defense activities to prioritize, integrate, and synchronize biometrics technologies and capabilities and to manage the Department of Defense’s authoritative biometrics database to support the National Security Strategy,” according to a March 23 Order (pdf) issued by Army Secretary John M. McHugh that redesignated the previous Biometrics Task Force as...

The most extensive collection of writings about the Book of Mormon published between 1829 and 1844 has been made available as an online database. The collection, “19th-Century Publications About the Book of Mormon (1829–1844),” includes nearly 600 publications, with close to 1 million words of text. It is intended to comprise everything published during Joseph Smith’s lifetime relating to the Book of Mormon. For more than 10 years, Matthew Roper, a research scholar at Brigham Young University’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and head of the project, has been collecting this literature. Through the auspices of the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A national database that allows consumers to view the history of used vehicles went into effect this year, but federal official said Tuesday that some states are not contributing vehicle records to the system. The National Motor Vehicle Title Information System allows potential used car buyers to check the title, odometer reading, accident history and other information for a fee of less than $5. The system was first proposed in the early 1990s, but was stalled until consumer protection agencies took legal action forcing the federal government to enact the program. It is currently administered by the...

Britain has built the world's biggest DNA database without proper political debate and police routinely arrest people just to get their DNA profiles onto the system, the genetics watchdog said in a report on Tuesday. The Human Genetics Commission, which advises the government on the social, legal and ethical aspects of genetics, called for a review of the database and said new laws must be passed to govern its use. In a damning report, the commission said "function creep" had transformed the system from a DNA store for offenders into a database of suspects. More than three-quarters of young black...

A searchable map detailing 40 years of Israeli archaeological work in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, developed for the USC Digital Library, has won the 2009 Open Archaeology Prize from the American Schools of Oriental Research.A nonprofit organization founded in 1900 and located at Boston University, the American Schools of Oriental Research support the study and public understanding of peoples and cultures of the Near East. The prize, to be presented today at a professional meeting in New Orleans, recognizes “the best open-access, open-licensed, digital contribution to Near Eastern archaeology by an ASOR member.” Project leaders Lynn Swartz Dodd...

Anti-war protesters and train spotters arrested under anti-terror laws could have their DNA kept for life under Home Office plans. In contrast, those innocent of any other suspected crime will be kept for a maximum of six years. The proposals have been drawn up in the wake of a European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that a blanket policy of retaining profiles of innocent people indefinitely was illegal. Up to a million innocent people are currently held on the national database. As part of a climb-down, the Home Office now plans to keep the profiles of children innocent...

In Utah, the National Security Agency is building a $2 billion storage facility that will house and analyze all forms of electronic communication...a potential yottabyte of everyone's (formerly) personal data. So how big is a yottabyte? CrunchGear puts it well: There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte, a thousand terabytes in a petabyte, a thousand petabytes in an exabyte, a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte, and a thousand zettabytes in a yottabyte. In other words, a yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000GB. In terms of data on current human scales, a yottabyte is nearly infinite (though I'm sure the NSA will manage...

The NYPD is amassing a database of cell phone users, instructing cops to log serial numbers from suspects' phones in hopes of connecting them to past or future crimes. In the era of disposable, anonymous cell phones, the file could be a treasure-trove for detectives investigating drug rings and other criminal enterprises, police sources say. "It's used to help build cases," one source said of the new initiative. "It doesn't replace the human element, like debriefing prisoners, but it's another tool to use that we didn't have in the past." A recent internal memo says that when cops make an...

Lt. Col. Brian Coleman, adviser to the Iraqi Army's Director of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Program, takes questions from Iraqi officers about the Iraqi Army Maintenance Program, an electronic database designed to assist the maintenance workshops with organizing work orders and documenting inventory, at Camp Taji, Sept. 30. Photo by Sgt. Keith VanKlompenberg, 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary). < CAMP TAJI — Iraqi Army (IA) maintenance sites, called Medium Workshops, recently transitioned from handwritten orders and logs to the new Iraqi Army Maintenance Program (IAMP) computerized database. U.S. Army Soldiers met here with Iraqi Army (IA) officers to discuss the progress...

All dogs in Britain will be fitted with microchips which contain their owner’s details, under cross party plans designed to track family pets. Owners will be forced to install the microchip containing a barcode that can store their pet's name, breed, age and health along with their own address and phone number. The barcode's details would then be stored on a national database which local councils could access in a bid to easily identify an owner’s pet. The new scheme, supported by the Tories and Labour, is designed to curb the trade in stolen dogs, prevent the use of animals...

This is funny...but could become very true under the Obama Czaristic Administration

A couple of days ago I discovered that when I clicked on MY PROFILE , somebody else's profile which hasn't been accessed in 4 year appears . There is no problem with my HOME page , and all my info / pic links / etc are still in EDIT PROFILE . I contacted MYSPACE but have not heard back from them as yet . Anybody got an idea as to what happened or what I can do about it ?

India is planning to provide its 1.1 billion-plus citizens with ID cards. Entrepreneur, Nandan Nilekani has been chosen to lead the ambitious project which will be the second largest citizens' database in a democracy, with China being the biggest. The government believes the scheme, which will be finalised over three years, will aid the delivery of vital social services to the poorest people who often lack sufficient identification papers. It also sees the scheme as a way to tackle increasing amounts of identity fraud and theft and, at a time of increased concern over the threat of militant violence, to...

Officers are targeting children as young as 10 with the aim of placing their DNA profiles on the national database to improve their chances of solving crimes, it is claimed. The alleged practice is also described as part of a "long-term crime prevention strategy" to dissuade youths from committing offences in the future. The claim comes amid widespread criticism of government proposals to store DNA profiles of innocent people, including some children, on the database for up to 12 years. Civil liberty campaigners have condemned the tactic of as "diabolical" and said it showed contempt for children's freedom. A Metropolitan...

DENVER — Area legislators hailed Thursday’s passage of Colorado’s version of Katie’s Law as a means of protecting the public and exonerating the innocent. “We created legislation that is going to save people’s lives,” Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez said Thursday, just before Gov. Bill Ritter inked Senate Bill 241 into law. “I couldn’t be more pleased or excited to see the bill go through.” Tipton, with Rep. Steve King, R-Grand Junction and Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, sponsored the bill, which requires DNA samples from anyone arrested on suspicion of a felony. The law is named for Katie Sepich, a...

It is time for conservatives in South Carolina to begin seriously asking themselves whether or not we can continue to tolerate Senator Lindsey Graham's increasing betrayal of our values. The Senator is now an accomplice to an anti-gun bill gaining steam in the Congress. Senate bill S.391 would vastly expand the role of the government in our private lives and place our most personal medical information into a central, anti-gun database, preventing certain citizens from purchasing firearms based solely on their medical history. Thus, when your pediatrician asks your child about the firearms you keep in your home, beware if...

Government plans to track the correspondence of millions on social networking sites have been met with fierce criticism The private correspondence of millions of people who use social networking sites could be tracked and saved on a “big brother” database, under new plans being drawn up by the UK government. Ministers revealed yesterday that they were considering policing messages sent via sites such as MySpace and Facebook, alongside plans to store information about every phone call, e-mail and internet visit made by everyone in the United Kingdom. There was immediate uproar from opposition parties, privacy campaigners and security experts who...

Films and details of campaigners and journalists may breach Human Rights Act Shocking footage shot by police, accompanied by their own critical commentary, shows how their officers monitored campaigners and the media – and demanded personal information – at last August's climate camp demonstration in Kent Link to this videoPolice are targeting thousands of political campaigners in surveillance operations and storing their details on a database for at least seven years, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal. Photographs, names and video ­footage of people attending protests are ­routinely obtained by surveillance units and stored on an "intelligence system". The...

DNA samples taken from 1.1million children are being held on an ever expanding government database. The figures, revealed yesterday, show that 1.09million DNA profiles of people aged under 18 were held on the database with 337,000 under 16. The Metropolitan Police has added the largest number of profiles to the register including 117,000 boys and 33,000 girls. The new figures come as it was claimed ministers are sneaking sweeping powers to collect and retain more DNA samples. The Tories said the Government was attempting to give itself a 'blank cheque' to store swabs and fingerprints of criminals and those cleared...

This Global database is marked with a numbering system. Each RFID microchip has a 16 digit number on it that links it to the database. That is where the power to control everything on earth is located. The power is in the database. He who controls the database will control the world very soon... A spider web is being built around us right now. The Real ID is designed to be the main system to pull in the masses. December 31, 2009 is the date by which it becomes law. It's the point of the spear designed to pierce our...

Since Labour was elected 12 years ago, a massive and frightening array of powers have been introduced which curtail Britain's long-fought-for commitment to the freedom of the individual. There are 56 such freedom-destroying powers, according to the Convention on Modern Liberty. They range from the shameful decision to ban inconvenient but peaceful protests in the vicinity of Parliament to the storage by the police of DNA samples taken from entirely innocent people. Town Hall Stasi routinely deploy anti-terrorist powers to snoop on dog foulers and families suspected of cheating school catchment area rules. Low-ranking officials have access to the chilling...

Legislature weighs cost, privacy to expand database Tens of thousands of Hoosiers never convicted of a crime could find their DNA in state and federal databases under a bill making its way through the Indiana Senate. The legislation is an attempt to take the next step with a scientific advance many consider to be the best crime-fighting tool in decades. But others wonder whether government is going too far and invading the privacy rights of citizens. “Why not just get everyone’s DNA when they are born?” asked Sen. Tim Lanane, D-Anderson. “There is still a presumption of innocence in our...

Tens of thousands of politicians, celebrities and local bigwigs will be able to keep their addresses and details about their families off the Government's new children's database, it was revealed yesterday. They will be allowed to withdraw everything but their children's names, sex and ages from the controversial computer record. Powerful and influential parents who believe they will be in danger from others who may be 'hostile' will have their details struck off the ContactPoint database along with domestic violence victims and those in witness protection programmes. But the great majority of ordinary families will be compelled to display their...

To prevent "Orwellian political lists" of law-abiding activists, Maryland lawmakers outlined plans Thursday to prevent the kind of surveillance the Maryland State Police used on dozens who were wrongly described as terrorists in a police database. Plans for the legislation, which will be introduced next week, were discussed even as further details were made public about the extent of the surveillance. Equality Maryland, a group that advocates for domestic partner laws, was included on a list of groups described as a threat to public safety by state police, the group's former executive director, Dan Furmansky, said. Opponents of capital punishment...

Innocent British citizens may be drawn into foreign criminal investigations after the Government agreed to EU-wide access to its 'Big Brother' databases, the Conservatives have warned. All 26 other member countries will be able to check against sensitive personal information held on driver registration, DNA and fingerprint computer systems. Where there is a match, a suspect-could be extradited to face trial abroad or - at the least - be forced to explain their movements or provide an alibi to prove their innocence. An example of the DNA kits used to take swabs from 4.6m members of the public, 800,000 of...

A Lincoln market trader has been given fresh hope that his long battle to have his DNA removed from a national database could soon be over. Gordon Eden (65) was arrested on suspicion of common assault against a fellow trader on November 7, 2006 but released without charge and no further action was taken. Since his arrest, Mr Eden, who has run Pennies cosmetics in the Central Market for the past 32 years after a career in the RAF, has been fighting to get his details removed from the police database. And he says he is heartened by a landmark...

When the Government introduced its ID card legislation several years ago, it made one thing clear. Even though it would be obligatory to register on the ID database when obtaining a new passport, it would not be compulsory to carry a card. This has led some people to assume that the scheme is voluntary. It is not, except insofar as someone whose passport has expired is happy never to travel abroad again. But ministers recognised that the scope for ID ‘matrydom’ was high if people were forced to carry an ID card. The last identity system was abolished in 1952...

Government plans new credit, mortgage programs By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer 19 mins ago WASHINGTON – The government introduced a pair of new programs Tuesday that will provide $800 billion to help unfreeze the market for consumer debt and to make mortgage loans cheaper and more available.

Washington--The government is working on a new loan facility to help companies that issue credit cards, make student loans and finance car purchases. The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve will unveil the program Tuesday, according to people familar with the plan. They spoke on condition of anonymity because a formal announcement has yet to be made. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said he plans to use a "relatively modest share" of the $700 billion financial bailout money to pay for the new program. It's the latest effort by the government to break through a dangerous credit clog that has...

Obama’s Database Dear Rush: As you pointed out, this database of Obama’s 3 and a half million hard core supporters presents problems. It is hard to overestimate the power of a database. Remember that Bin Laden became a power by amassing a database in Afghanistan of freedom fighters in the war against the USSR. This database later became known as “Al Qaeda” or the base. When Lieberman (for example) stands against Obama and Obama sends his name to his database he will immediately have 100,000 phone class, 100,000 emails and 100’s of people waiting by the nearest door. He’ll have...

Internet "black boxes" will be used to collect every email and web visit in the UK under the Government's plans for a giant "big brother" database, The Independent has learnt. Home Office officials have told senior figures from the internet and telecommunications industries that the "black box" technology could automatically retain and store raw data from the web before transferring it to a giant central database controlled by the Government. Plans to create a database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit made in the UK have provoked a huge public outcry. Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner,...

"Ever since we launched the statewide voter registration database back in January, 2006, we have been able to remove 160,000 invalid registrations, including a number who were signed up in more than one county, voters who had died, and convicted felons who have not had their voting rights restored," said state Elections Director Nick Handy. "But we would be the first to acknowledge that dealing with felon voters is a work in progress. Ultimately, we need state lawmakers to clear the way by passing reform legislation." The state aggressively uses reliable and current data to scrub the voter rolls four...

Knesset okays controversial biometrics bill, turns it over to Constitution, Law and Justice Committee for further legislation. If passed, will compel citizens to make fingerprints available to government, or risk jail The biometric database bill passed its first Knesset reading on Wednesday, with 18 Knesset members voting in favor and only MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) voting against it. The bill now stands to undergo further legislative work in the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. The bill, brought before the House by the Ministry of the Interior, proposes Israel make the switch to "smart" identification methods, using fingerprints and digital...

The last time "plumbers" were as prominent in national politics as accidental celebrity Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, they were a team of political operatives caught breaking into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. This time, however, it may be the real plumber whose privacy is being invaded: Ohio's inspector general is investigating why Wurzelbacher's records in several government databases were accessed shortly after he became the official everyman of the 2008 presidential race. ... read more

MI5 and the police may be allowed to secretly collect genetic samples from items such as cigarette butts and teacups under new laws that could massively expand the national DNA database. The powers would allow investigators to break in to suspects’ homes to collect DNA which could then be shared with foreign governments to check for links to crime and terrorism. The new law, being discussed by Parliament, would mean the ‘stolen’ samples – thousands of which have already been taken by the security services – would be admissible in court and at a stroke hugely expand the Government’s controversial...