ComputerWorld reports that California has made it a crime to read RFID without authorization:
California became the second state to pass a law making it illegal to steal data from RFID (radio frequency identification) cards.
The law sets a penalty that includes a maximum fine of US$1,500 and up to a year in prison for someone convicted of surreptitiously reading information from an RFID card.
Roger Cohen wrote an editorial on Palin, risk and national security:
I know one thing: this is no time for further gambling. John McCain rolled the dice on Sarah Palin. I’m grateful to Bob Rice of Tangent Capital for pointing out that the actuarial risk, based on mortality tables, of Palin becoming president if the Republican ticket wins the election is about 1 in 6 or 7.
That’s the same odds as your birthday falling on a Wednesday, or being delayed on two consecutive flights into Newark airport. Is America ready for that?
The lesson of the last eight years is this: when power is a passport to gamble, people can end up seriously broke or seriously dead.
There is one capable, sober guy in the Bush administration: Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He recently said that U.S. forces in Iraq had to learn counterinsurgency on the job. “But that came at a frightful human, financial and political cost,” he noted.
Gates warned that “warfare is inevitably tragic, inefficient.” He urged skepticism of any notion that “adversaries can be cowed, shocked or awed into submission, instead of being tracked down, hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block.”
In short, he lambasted the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush war effort for its gambler’s irresponsibility. The financial equivalent of reckless “Shock and Awe” has been “Sub and Prime.”
The BBC reports that a China dairy requested media and relations help from officials:
The Chinese authorities have already acknowledged that the Shijiazhuang government sat on a report from Sanlu about milk contamination for more than a month while Beijing hosted the Olympic Games.
It now says that in a letter to the city government, Sanlu asked for help to “increase control and co-ordination of the media, to create a good environment for the recall of the company’s problem products”, the People’s Daily reported.
This is not a Chinese problem. This is a failure of leadership. I have commented several times on Governor Palin’s attitude towards data and bad news. Troopergate is a fine example. This is exactly the kind of problem I would expect from her in the White House. She is likely to focus efforts entirely on positive spin for corporations and self-promotion even at the cost of human life and great suffering.
“This is to avoid whipping up the issue and creating a negative influence in society,” the Sanlu Group is reported to have said.
Palin said she did not want any negative feedback in her office. Only when casualties and public outcry overwhelm this kind of leader will they be motivated to act. At that point they are likely to describe the situation as an “unforseen” emergency and ask for even greater power with less oversight to deal “efficiently” with the problems. Sound familiar?
The US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has revealed how insecure America has become as a result of the Bush administration attitude towards the environment. You might think a guy who likes to release photos of himself fishing and clearing brush would want to make the safety of wildlife and nature a top priority. Not so, says the truth and his record:
The purpose of this hearing is to examine the Bush Administration’s record on important public health and environmental matters. Unfortunately, instead of reviewing accomplishments—we look back on years filled with environmental rollbacks that serve special interests, and do not serve the American people.
Today, this Committee will shine a light on the Bush Administration’s efforts to undermine EPA and the Department of the Interior’s mission to protect public health and the environment.
Here is a typical example:
EPA proposed to do what it called the “CHEERS study” jointly with the chemical industry, in which low-income families were offered gifts and other incentives if they agreed to enroll their newborn children in pesticides studies in their homes over a two year period. After a great outcry, EPA cancelled the study. EPA recently tried to revive a study much like CHEERS, but retreated after our Committee’s staff asked detailed ethical questions about it, which EPA could not answer.
Apparently the administration has been gutting the agencies meant to protect the natural resources of the country, and disregarding evidence of harm to the people who live, work and play in them.
The Committee hearings are available for review in full online.