Security

eManifests in use in AZ

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The US Customs and Border Protection site has announced the “First Electronic Truck Manifest Filed on Southern Border”. I guess to be accurate they should clarify that the manifest is electric, not the truck.

Anyway, I haven’t seen this picked up in any news (perhaps since it has been working for some time on the northern border of the US and isn’t newsworthy) but I figured the announcement must be meaningful to those who monitor the progress of tracking systems, plus it had some interesting language:

The automated manifest provides CBP officers with cargo information prior to a shipment arriving at the gate. Comprehensive data such as information on the driver and passengers; a description of the conveyance and any applicable equipment like a trailer; and details regarding the shipment are included.

[…]

There are currently 31 ACE ports in the states of Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota and Washington. The schedule for deployments of ACE to additional ports continues in January, beginning with selected ports in Texas in early 2006.

That is many more than I had been aware of and so I am curious when intra-state borders or even road-side checkpoints will have ACE setup.

History, Security

Historians rate the US presidents

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I’ve been writing too many comments again on Schneier’s blog lately, so I thought I’d post a few interesting things here instead. This article from the History News Network caught my attention with some interesting insights into the risks from various Presidents and how they stack up from a historian’s point-of-view:

The George W. Bush presidency is the worst since:
In terms of economic damage, Reagan.
In terms of imperialism, T Roosevelt.
In terms of dishonesty in government, Nixon.
In terms of affable incompetence, Harding.
In terms of corruption, Grant.
In terms of general lassitude and cluelessness, Coolidge.
In terms of personal dishonesty, Clinton.
In terms of religious arrogance, Wilson.

And then there are the oft-cited Bush quotes that give another perspective on how some might use his own words to conclude he may be worse than so many of his predecessors:

“You don’t get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier.”
— From Paul Begala’s “Is Our Children Learning?”, Governing Magazine July, 1998

“If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”
— CNN.com, December 18, 2000

“A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it.”
— Business Week, July 30, 2001

Security

Going Sober

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The f-secure bloggers have posted an odd story today about the Sober Y worm. Apparently someone in Germany read the worm’s message and decided to take it so seriously that he turned himself and his computer in to the authorities, and they found child porn. The Police have a writeup about it here (German) and a (very rough) tranlation is here:

Paderborn harmful computer worm helpfully – Sexualtaeter placed itself to the police (MT) still in November even the Federal Criminal Investigation Office (Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigations) before the danger of the computer worm “Sober Y” had warned. Now the criminal worm of the Paderborner helped police with the clearing-up of several sexual crimes.

History

Judge upholds intelligence in schools, strikes down school board liars

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The BBC reports that a Judge in Pennsylvania has questioned the integrity of ID proponents and struck down their attempt to inject creationism into science curriculums at school:

Judge Jones said he had determined that ID was not science and “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents”.

Citizens had been “poorly served” by members of the school board who voted for the ID policy, he said.

“It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID policy,” he said.

“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom.”

Religious extremists misrepresenting their true objectives? Impossible. My favorite comment from the BBC peanut gallery is from someone who claims to be from the US:

U.S. school students are falling behind their peers in developed countries in science and mathematics. Therefore, U.S. schools need to intelligently redesign their science curriculums not teach intelligent design as science.

Well said!