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spreading the wealth

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/29/politics/29HOME.html?pagewanted=print&position=

WASHINGTON, April 28-- When Tom Ridge arrived here after the Sept. 11 attacks and opened the White House Office of Homeland Security, the former Pennsylvania governor quickly surrounded himself with a group of trusted deputies... [who have now] emerged as lobbyists whose corporate clients want contracts from Mr. Ridge's multibillion-dollar agency. Lobbying disclosure forms filed in Congress show that at least four of Mr. Ridge's senior deputies at the White House are now working as "homeland security" lobbyists.

...They are a small part of a booming new lobbying business in Washington that is focused on helping large corporations get a share of the the billions of dollars that will be spent by the vast domestic security bureaucracy that Mr. Ridge oversees. The Homeland Security Department, with a budget of about $40,000,000,000.00 this year, and Mr. Ridge are obvious targets for an array of industries and their lobbyists in the capital. "My one year is up, so I can lobby him and lobby the White House and lobby the Hill," said Rebecca L. Halkias, who was Mr. Ridge's legislative affairs director in the White House... Her clients include Tyco Electronics, which would like to sell its wireless communications systems to government emergency response agencies... Asked if she was concerned about any conflict of interest in lobbying Mr. Ridge, she said, "This conversation is over," and hung up.

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you're either with us or with the terrorists

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=14919

I stood in a dim basement office facing a rack of electronic equipment. An employee in the ID card office grasped my thumb and pulled it toward the glass top of a small scanner. "Your hands are wet," she said, turning on a miniature fan. I forced myself to breathe deeply while my hands dried out. My fingers always get clammy and cold when I'm scared... I work for a nonprofit in space donated by other companies. Next week we move to the offices of one of the biggest corporations in America. They happen to fingerprint all their tenants... Once my hands dried out, the employee rolled my fingertips over the scanner of the Electronic Fingerprint Capture Station (ECFS) 2100 [see http://www.integratedbiometric.com/fingerprint_capture.htm].

...This month, researchers from the Department of Defense and other government agencies released the "Face Recognition Vendor Test 2002" [see http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/n03-04.htm], mandated by the PATRIOT act... Those in the hip-hop generation beware: Even the top surveillance systems had their worst ID rate with young Americans. The top three had less than a 65 percent accuracy rate for people aged 18-27.

The bad news about face recognition hasn't stopped the Washington, D.C., police department from building a high-tech command center to watch dozens of surveillance cameras placed around the downtown. The system [was] first activated on September 11, 2001... Meanwhile, I feel like a suspect for some crime I haven't committed yet. A private company may have gathered my fingerprints, but the government's new Total Information Awareness system will allow virtually unfettered access to private databases for "anti-terror" purposes. (Check their nifty diagram [at http://www.darpa.mil/iao/TIASystems.htm].) A friend of mine says I've been Ashcrofted -- forced to give up my privacy for pretty much no reason at all.

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poor tommy

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,4386,186149,00.html

WASHINGTON - The US has asked Belgium to curb 'politically motivated' lawsuits such as one against General Tommy Franks, the commander of US forces in Iraq and the Middle East. 'We believe the Belgian government needs to be diligent in taking steps to prevent abuse of the legal system for political ends,' said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher on Monday.

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bad news about sars

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/printpage/0,5481,6360520,00.html

SOME patients in Hong Kong suffered relapses of SARS after being listed as recovered and discharged from hospitals, a health official has said. Health Department spokesman Jimmy Lee would not provide numbers or details of the relapses... However, University of Hong Kong microbiologist Malik Peiris said... "From what we know from other animal coronaviruses, I don't think it would go on relapsing forever and ever," Peiris said. Hong Kong has recorded 1,572 cases of SARS and 150 of the patients have died. But 759 have recovered and been discharged.

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