Showing posts with label internet privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet privacy. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

American Woman: Civil Liberties and the TSA Pat Down



Our government thinks you don't care about the new TSA scans and pat down rules. They think you will allow any intrusion on your civil rights as long as the authorities tell you that it is necessary to "fight terror".

Is it?


Will you?


As a Pagan woman whose tradition has no problem with nudity, per
se, I can stand to have this done to me when I travel but I completely reject the idea that my "choices" should be intrusion and radiation or being groped by strangers; all done on the orders of my government when I have done nothing wrong. Nor do I believe that TSA's newest attempt at security theater will make me one wit safer. So I plan to use my voice to protest this obscene violation of my civil rights.

All this makes me wonder: If a socially liberal, nudist beach loving eco-feminist like me feels that way, how must other, more socially conservative (or, if you prefer, modest) women feel about this intrusion? In one of the worst bits of irony to date in the "war on terror" we find our government "defending our freedom" against men who are infamous for the subjugation and abuse of women in every country where they have influence by subjecting women (and men) to sexual abuse here at home.

I keep thinking about these modest women, women who, however different their lives or world views might be from my own, I respect as human beings and might well enjoy knowing. So, here we are today: All women are now told by TSA that
that if they don't like it, they don't have to fly. And why? Because patriarchal-minded extremists (both foreign and domestic) gain power from our fear. Really, TSA? Really?

Perhaps you are one of those people who believe that such measures (measures even security conscious Israel does not impose on travelers) are necessary, especially when dealing with foreigners and non-citizens. If you believe that anything goes in this fight, please imagine for a moment that it is you working as an hourly-wage
TSA employee, performing sexually intrusive acts on American-born women like these:

* A Catholic lay worker flying out to serve families living in the dangerous and disease-infested camps of Haiti


* A Quaker nurse who chooses to wear modest dress, traveling to her work with AIDS patients in Africa

* A elderly Buddhist nun bringing books and toys to orphans in Nepal


* A Hindu academic traveling to a woman's conference in Switzerland who is traveling with her 12 year old daughter
.

* A Muslim pediatrician whose skills are urgently needed to help child refugees after the recent earthquakes, floods and famine in Pakistan.


* A Baptist social worker using her vacation time to bring vital burn medications to the hundreds hurt in the volcanic eruptions in Indonesia.


What have such women ever done to us that we would hurt them so?


These women are fictional, if plausible, examples of people traveling right now and they are offered here to make a point which is that good people are being hurt by this rule. Already
one rape survivor has been traumatized by this treatment. As reported in Newsweek:
For women and men who have already been sexually assaulted, the new screening rules—or just the threat of these rules—present a very real danger. They can be triggering events, setting off a post traumatic-stress reaction...“After a sexual assault, it seems that many survivors have difficulty having their bodies touched by other people,” says Shannon Lambert, founder of the Pandora Project, a nonprofit organization that provides support and information to survivors of rape and sexual abuse. This fear of contact even extends to partners and, often, medical professionals. “A lot of survivors do not want to be in positions where they’re vulnerable. They put up defenses so that they can be in control of their body. In cases like this, it seems like some of that control is going away.”
I, for one, agree with those who argue that full frontal nudity does not make us safer and I have to wonder how parents feel about having their children subjected to either unnecessary radiation and/or intrusive handling.

Let me end with two questions:


* Are we as a nation, willing to hand over our dignity and our civil rights to the incompetent and untrustworthy officials at TSA?

* Will you trust that your own naked-as-a-jaybird
scans won't end up on the net?

Somewhere the terrorists are laughing.

Sia

Art
found here

P.S. This isn't just about women, of course. Noted
Humorist Dave Barry didn't find his own patdown very amusing.

Related Articles:

Nudity at Events: Our top 13 reasons why you can't always bear all

Update:

Former Bush Homeland Chief Got Sweetheart Deal Selling Scanners to TSA

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Privacy Concerns - Facebook & Google


There are serveral reasons why I won't use Facebook, but this is chief among them:

Facebook is to be quizzed about its data protection policies...The investigation follows a complaint by a user of the social network who was unable to fully delete their profile even after terminating their account.

I first heard this complaint from Rowan Fairgrove over at Second Life. Rowan is a very tech savy gal, and she found that when she left Facebook, she could not delete her information. They have indeed turned into the Hotel California- you can check out, but you can never leave. You can read more about this issue at the BBC site, in a story titled Facebook Faces Privacy Questions

I have the same sorts of concerns about Goggle Reader and Gmail. If you use Gmail, I would suggest reading When Google Is Not Your Friend by Declan McCullagh at CNET.

As Annelee Newitz noted way back when, in her article Dataopocalypse

To pay for this amazing free service, Google is serving up a few little ads with each email. No big deal.

Except these ads are context sensitive. They're generated by bots reading your email the instant you open it, discerning key concepts in the message and choosing ads that somehow fit with the content of your email. So an email from your friend about picking up some bagels will be accompanied by ads for bagel shops in your area. An email from your lover which refers to an intimate moment you had the night before might include ads for sex toys or online dating services.


These days, information surveillance is the name of the game. Companies make huge profits from collecting and selling your personal information. Money can also be made by providing wide ranging background checks for private employers and goverment agencies.

These days, your most private email can also be used against you in a court case . Gmail will give the goverment pretty much anything it wants, any time it wants it. As Brad Templeton, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, writes in his blog:

...because GMail gets your consent to be more than an e-mail delivery service -- offering searching, storage and shopping -- your mail there may not get the legal protection the ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) gives you on E-mail.

Google Reader is also problematic. Jack Schofield wrote an article for The Guardian titled Google Reader Invades Your Privacy and It's Not Going To Stop, which should be required reading for anyone who doesn't want Big Brother looking over our shoulder, checking our on-line search patterns, our reading habits, our political opinions, and our buying choices.

Alter.net says this in their recent story on society and spying:

When one of America's largest electronic surveillance systems was launched in Palo Alto a year ago, it sparked an immediate national uproar. The new system tracked roughly 9 million Americans, broadcasting their photographs and personal information on the Internet; 700,000 web-savvy young people organized online protests in just days. Time declared it "Gen Y's first official revolution," while a Nation blogger lauded students for taking privacy activism to "a mass scale." Yet today, the activism has waned, and the surveillance continues largely unabated.

Generation Y's "revolution" failed partly because young people were getting what they signed up for. All the protesters were members of Facebook, a popular social networking site, which had designed a sweeping "news feed" program to disseminate personal information that users post on their web profiles. Suddenly everything people posted, from photos to their relationship status, was sent to hundreds of other users in a feed of time-stamped updates. People complained that the new system violated their privacy. Facebook argued that it was merely distributing information users had already revealed. The battle -- and Facebook's growing market dominance in the past year -- show how social networking sites are rupturing the traditional conception of privacy and priming a new generation for complacency in a surveillance society. Users can complain, but the information keeps flowing.

So be careful out there,

Sia

Links:

Privacy International

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Electronic Communications Privacy Act

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

Art: An ancient sculpture of Maat, Egyptian Goddess of Truth, Justice and Order. Tour Egypt notes that:

The primary duty of the pharaoh was to uphold this order by maintaining the law and administering justice. To reflect this, many pharaohs took the title "Beloved of Maat," emphasizing their focus on justice and truth.

At any event in which something would be judged, Maat was said to be present, and her name would be invoked so that the judge involved would rule correctly and impartially. In the underworld, the heart of the deceased was weighed by Anubis against Maat's feather. If the heart was heavy with wicked deeds, it would outweigh the feather, and the soul would be fed to Ammit. But if the scales were balanced, indicating that the deceased was a just and honorable person in life, he would be welcomed by Osiris into the Blessed Land. Maat's presence in all worlds was universal, and all the gods deferred to her. ....Even the gods are shown praising Maat.