[IP] more on Op-Ed Columnist: May I See Your ID?
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 23:08:45 -0800
From: Simon Higgs <simon@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] NYTimes.com Article: Op-Ed Columnist: May I See Your ID?
X-Sender: simon@xxxxxxxxx
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: nicholas@xxxxxxxxxxx, letters@xxxxxxxxxxx
At 02:56 AM 3/17/2004, Dave Farber wrote:
For IP. So this NY Times journalist is high from smoking the latest press
releases?
I took a look at the American Library Association's "100 Most Frequently
Challenged Books of 19902000", which can be found here:
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/100mostfrequently.htm
It turns out that aside from The Anarchist Cookbook (William Powell), which
wasn't compulsory reading at my school, many of the other books that were
challenged were required reading, such as:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl)
Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
The main "anarchist cookbook" repository is actually run by the US
government. The US Patent & Trademark Office is currently being ransacked
by Homeland Security because of the liability of what are "years old public
records". The latest victim is US Patent 3,060,165, Preparation of Toxic
Ricin, which is now missing in action. Now, what does this imply for the
scientific and technical community if legitimate scientific research and
constitutionally protected intellectual property such as patents become
censored? The NY Times author seems to think that a patent has the same
free-speech value as child pornography.
What is worse, is to imply that the US has been spared from chemical and
biological attacks because the knowledge hasn't been easy to get. This is
nonsense. Lord Jeffrey Amherst used Smallpox as a weapon in 1763 - long
before there were books on the subject. The same physical location was the
source of the Anthrax mailings after 9/11. There have been 5 deaths
associated with inhalational anthrax:
http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/r011121p.htm
Now, if we're going to ban something that really kills people, then let's
use real statistics. If we're going to ban the #1 killer, then let's ban
automobiles:
Killed in car accidents 42,116*
Killed by the common flu 20,000*
Killed by murders 15,517*
Killed in airline crashes
(of 477m passenger trips) 120
Killed by lightning strikes 90*
Killed by Anthrax 5
http://www.unitedjustice.com/stories/stats.html
If you really want to be "safe" then go to the National Safety Council's
web site and see what the odds of dying really are. If you actually
understand what you see there, then you'll never let the chance of being in
terrorist act bother you ever again. But you might just remember to wear a
seat belt:
http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm
Op-Ed Columnist: May I See Your ID?
March 17, 2004
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Someday we'll look back with shame at the infringements of
civil liberties in the last few years.
There's been a broad pattern of injustice to individuals
(mostly Muslims) in the name of protecting security for the
rest of us. Think of the detention of more than 1,200
Muslim immigrants in the U.S., the jailing of children in
an extralegal zone in Guantánamo, and the unending
imprisonment, without access to lawyers, of "enemy
combatants," even when they are American citizens.
But that ground has been well poked over. For me, the
tougher question is whether there are some areas where we
should be more aggressive about sacrificing our liberties.
In fact, I think there are two where we could significantly
increase our security with a negligible cost in freedom.
First, we should adopt a national ID card. Surprisingly,
this is anathema to many conservatives. If the right is
willing to imprison people indefinitely and send young
people off to die in Iraq in the name of security, then why
is it unthinkable to standardize driver's licenses into a
national ID?
More than 100 nations have some kind of national ID card.
And the reality is that we're already moving toward a
government ID system - using driver's licenses and Social
Security numbers to prove who we are - but they neither
protect our privacy nor stop terrorists. Instead, they
simply promote identity theft.
At least seven of the Sept. 11 hijackers, some living in
Maryland hotels, managed to get Virginia ID cards or
driver's licenses, which can be used as identification when
boarding planes. Americans routinely travel to and from
Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean with just a driver's
license.
Some U.S. officials privately fret that security may depend
on a harried immigration officer in Maine who is handed a
forged Guam or North Dakota driver's license. One
undercover federal study underscored the vulnerability last
year by using off-the-shelf materials to forge documents
that were then used to get driver's licenses in seven
states and the District of Columbia. The forgeries worked
in each place attempted.
So why not plug this hole with a standardized,
hard-to-forge national ID card/driver's license that would
have a photo, a fingerprint and a bar code that could be
swiped to check whether the person is, for example, a
terror suspect who should not be allowed onto a plane? We
could simultaneously reduce identity theft and make life
tougher for terrorists.
The other area where I'd like to see a tougher approach has
to do with "cookbooks" to make anthrax, sarin and other
chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Over the last few
years, I've collected a horrifying set of booklets,
typically sold at gun shows or on the Internet, detailing
how to make mustard gas, VX, anthrax or "home-brew nerve
gas."
"One of the greatest feelings in the world is knowing you
have the technology to wipe out your whole neighborhood,"
one booklet declares.
Another book says: "Nerve gases have been called `the poor
man's atom bomb,' with good reason. They make the World War
I gases look like kid's stuff. I'm sure you'll be surprised
how easy to make and use these little gems are." It offers
advice on how to distribute the nerve gas to devastate a
city, "using one or more ultralight aircraft."
In fact, biological and chemical weapons are not quite that
easy to make or use. But a cult or terrorist group,
particularly if a member had a background in chemistry,
could make sarin, just as the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan
did before releasing it in the Tokyo subways in 1995.
Sure, I cherish the First Amendment. But remember what
Alexander Bickel, the eminent First Amendment scholar, told
the Supreme Court when he argued on behalf of this
newspaper in the Pentagon Papers case. Pressed by the
justices on whether publication could be blocked if 100
Americans would certainly die as a result, he reluctantly
agreed: "I am afraid that my inclinations to humanity
overcome the somewhat more abstract devotion to the First
Amendment."
W.M.D. cookbooks present such an exceptional situation.
They have as little free-speech value as child pornography,
and they are more dangerous. We have been largely spared
chemical and biological attacks because the knowledge
needed to make effective weapons hasn't been easy to get.
Now in these cookbooks we're seeing "information
proliferation" that empowers terrorists.
In these exceptional circumstances, we are - I hate to
admit it - better off banning books.
E-mail: nicholas@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/opinion/17KRIS.html?ex=1080520831&ei=1&en=f52f2a1159ba3041
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Simon Higgs
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