http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000558.html
A Ringside Seat at Computers, Freedom and Privacy
This sure has the look of a calamity in the making.
With-it geeks from the reality-based community leave
the feds holding a ripped tissue of lies, evasions
and misconceptions...
But, you know, maybe it'll somehow work out for the best!
People who travel overseas are supposed to be
the richest and most influential Americans;
so maybe when these jetsetters recognize that
their identities and privacy are electronically leaking out
all over the floor of every airport on the planet,
at the tender mercy of every spammer, ID
thief, purse-snatcher and terrorist in the world,
the RFID industry will Chernobyl so violently
that it'll be comprehensively redesigned while
it's still young. "Fail early, fail often!" And
fail on the grandest scale.
It's no use reasoning with the Bush State Department.
Everybody else knows that; Americans might
as well learn it. Who's minding the store
there? Nobody much.
Remember when passports were
made necessary for travel to Canada
and Mexico? Well, never mind that idea; oh.
//www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/15/bush.passports.ap/
This must be the coolest thing about working
for the Bush Administration; no intellectual consistency
is required. You just ship it, present
the fait accompli, and when the reckoning comes
due, you change the subject! Hey, that worked
for Enron; it worked for years on end.
Imagine if people could do this who actually knew how
to govern! Wow! A brand-new world would
beckon! All that was solid would melt right into air!
It would mean that a revolution had occurred
and nobody bothered to watch it on television.
