] Millions of Americans will be required to show passports
] when they reenter the United States from Canada, Mexico
] and the Caribbean by 2008 under new rules announced
] yesterday by the State and Homeland Security departments.

U.S. closes borders.

U.S. Will Tighten Passport Rules (washingtonpost.com)

] The Department of Homeland Security's privacy board chose
] as its chairman Paul Rosenzweig, a conservative lawyer
] best known in technology circles for his defense of the
] Pentagon's Total Information Awareness project.

The new "privacy" board at DHS continues to sign up people with dubious credentials as privacy advocates. Lisa Sotto has an analysis of RFID in healthcare that seems to think implanting verichips in people is A-OK as long as you make them sign a "consent form" (without which you won't treat them). She seems to have missed the fact that I can use that 16bit identifier to track your movements regardless of whether or not I have access to the data.

It seems the new profession of "privacy adviser" is a little like tax accountant. Minimize the clients liability while enabling him to do as much as possible. Find loopholes. DHS seems to be hiring some of the best.

Their privacy board isn't about how they can respect privacy. Its about how they can violate it as much as possible without getting in trouble.

Homeland Security panel picks controversial chief | CNET News.com

] The biggest equity impacts so far has been twofold: it
] has put a damper on sales at retailers of the most price
] sensitive consumers -- Tthat means the bigger discounters
] (Wal-Mart,Target, Kmart, Kohls, etc.).
]
] Second, sales of the largest and most profitible SUVs are
] slowing. This has a disproportionate impact on GM and
] Ford. I'm not sure what the net net is on an individual
] (consumer) level; if you own a large SUV, I expect you
] will be disappointed at what you can sell it for, as long
] as gas stays near $2.50 per/gallon. Now consider all of
] the SUVs which have been leased over the past 3 years:
] Dealers will soon have a glut of them on their lots, if
] they don't already, as lease renewal/extensions and trade
] ups slow.

The Big Picture: Gasoline Prices (Adjusted for Inflation)

Interesting context piece about folksomy systems.

Picking Up Where Search Leaves Off

] Congress returns next week to escalating pressure from
] the left and the right over a Republican proposal to
] change Senate rules that allow the Democratic minority to
] filibuster judicial nominees, a battle the two sides say
] reflects anticipation of a Supreme Court vacancy perhaps
] as soon as the court's term ends in June.

The New York Times - Lobbying Heats Up on Filibuster Rule Change

This looks neat. Same director as Akira.

Sony Pictures - Steamboy

] Our methodology was simple. We examined 1303 electronic
] high-tech initial public offerings for a 10-year period
] ending in 2002. We limited ourselves to IPOs from the New
] York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, which were ground zero
] for the telecom and dot-com explosion of the 1990s. We
] sorted out those that were VC-funded and compared them
] with those that were not. We rated them on a scale of 1
] to 5, with 1 being the most technically innovative. [See
] sidebar, "Scoring Innovation."]
]
] We were shocked by what we found. Overall, the level of
] innovation during that decade was surprisingly low. Even
] more dismaying, it did not correlate well with VC
] funding: the level of innovation actually dropped sharply
] after 1996, even as venture funding was going through the
] roof.

Feature Article: VC doesn't drive innovation.

One of this year's April Fools RFCs.

] Promiscuous modes of operation are an abomination, exceeded only by
] multicast.
]
] No avian carriers were harmed in the production of this document.

Requirements for Morality Sections in Routing Area Drafts

] Following the 1997 introduction of the optical
] memory-based %u201Cgreen card%u201D (the U.S. Permanent
] Resident Card) by the then U.S. Immigration and
] Naturalization Service (INS), the U.S. Department of
] State (DOS) selected the same optical card technology to
] enhance security on the U.S./Mexican border. So, in 1998,
] the optical memory-based BCC (or %u201CLaser Visa%u201D)
] was introduced and mandated for all new BCC applications
] and as a replacement for old, counterfeit prone
] documents.

This what they should be using in passports instead of RFID.

LaserCard Systems : Solutions : Optical Memory in Border Management

] The agency best known for protecting presidents and other
] high officials is tying together its employees' desktop
] computers in a network designed to crack passwords that
] alleged criminals have used to scramble evidence of their
] crimes.

The Secret Service is just now setting up a distributed crypto cracking network. Frnakly, you would think they'd have a much more sophisticated hardware based approach, and that they would have done this a long time ago.

DNA Key to Decoding Human Factor (washingtonpost.com)