Skipping the Barcode Tattoo

The Human Genome Project was an effort to sequence the entire human genome. The human genome contains about 23,000 genes and 3 billion base pairs. The project was completed in 2003, took 13 years and cost over 3 billion dollars.

Today a human genome can be sequenced in about 6 weeks at a cost of $60,000. Researchers who predicted that the cost may be as low as $1000 in three years have been leapfrogged by two companies who claim to be able to do it in one day for $100. At this cost it will soon become part of the standard physical.

The Department of Homeland Security is set to begin collecting the DNA of any citizen who is arrested and any foreigner who is detained. As usual, the U.K. is way ahead on this. British police want to collect the DNA of potential criminals including children as young a 5 years old if they exhibit anti-social behavior.

Let’s Call It National Barbecue Month

Hoof and mouth disease, a virus deadly to livestock, has been researched since 1954 in a government lab on Plum Island, NY. Since that time there have been some accidental releases of the virus, but none escaped the island. That’s why the lab in ON an island.

In 2002 the government ran a simulation of a hoof and mouth outbreak. It resulted in tens of millions of cattle killed by National Guardsmen, riots and protests and a 25-mile burial trench for the carcasses. “It was a mess,” said Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, who played the president.

Now the government wants to move Plum Island’s lab to the mainland and Kansas is one of the proposed sites. What does Senator Roberts have to say about that, huh? “It will mean jobs,” he says. It will mean research and development, he says.

Yeah, and if all else fails it will mean jobs digging that 25-mile barbecue pit.

Killing Our Own

The death toll in Iraq of 4000 Americans has been widely reported and one is led to assume that they died while doing the dangerous job of soldiering. Such is far from the case. Fully one fifth of them are “non-hostile” deaths, such as illness, accident or suicide. Some of these 800 deaths were by electrocution while taking a shower.

Cheryl Harris, the mother of electrocuted Sgt. Ryan Maseth, has now filed suit against KBR, one of the largest contractors operating in Iraq. Initially informed that her son had died after bringing an electrical appliance into the shower, later reports revealed the cause was a faulty water pump that shorted out and electrified a metal shower hose.

Pre-trial investigation discovered that Maseth’s death was not unique. At least eleven other soldiers have died by electrocution as a result of faulty wiring and construction. The Pentagon says they are investigating. KBR says it’s not their fault.

Greg Mitchell goes into detail about non-hostile deaths in Iraq in his book So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits — and the President — Failed on Iraq.

Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere

The U.K may have a lead on the U.S in the surveillance of its citizens but the race is neck and neck. When John Poindexter revealed the Total Information Awareness(TIA) program in 2002 the public and the Congress responded with outrage to this Orwellian surveillance program. Funding was cut and Poindexter was shown the door. Anyone would think that was the end of it. But the powers that be have their agendas, and as Bruce Schneier points out, those in the intelligence business don’t have the same agenda as you and me. The TIA program was too good to let slip away. Its parts were renamed and reassigned.

In 2002 TIA’s domestic spying seemed Orwellian. Today it is business as usual. The FBI can issue National Security Letters without court approval to obtain bank, credit, telephone, email, internet, insurance and library records. Anyone receiving one of these letters is placed under a gag order. While the Patriot Act describes how and when these letters can be issued, there has been widespread abuse. In 2005 alone, there were over 1.000 violations, out of 19,000 letters issued. According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, all these violations weren’t their fault. He blamed it on the banks and telecoms for handing over too much information.

Still, writing all those letters can be a nuisance, so the telecoms are willing to help. It’s been widely reported that AT&T let the NSA tap into their trunk lines and vacuum up all the phone and email traffic. Now a whistleblower accuses Cingular of giving similar access to the FBI.

The intelligence organizations say they need this information to protect us. Unfortunately they don’t have similar concerns about protecting the information once it’s gathered. Information has leaked from stolen laptops, from hacker attacks and from simple mismanagement. The private sector does no better at protecting confidential material, but they are better at covering up their losses. Neither are they hampered by regulation on what information they can collect. This has become a boon for not just federal law enforcement and investigation, but for state and local agencies as well. Detectives can forget the footwork and interviews, now they just have to log into the department’s Choicepoint account.

Phone records, purchase receipts, library books, insurance claims, emails, browsing habits are not just for federal intelligence consumption anymore. All these records are becoming available to police across the country.

I’m sure glad that all these people are of the highest integrity and never make mistakes.

Paying For The Other War

Pew Center on the States, part of the Pew Charitable Trusts released a report (pdf) this week examining the prison population in the United States. One of the most shocking findings was that one percent of the population is behind bars. While 1 in 100 is bad enough, the breakdown of the prison population is even more startling. It’s not surprising that the prisoners are mostly male nor that there are more blacks than whites in prison, but the numbers put these facts in sobering relief – 1 in 30 males between 20 and 34 are incarcerated, but for blacks that ratio jumps to 1 in 9. Similar disparities exist for black women who are 4 times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts. As well those in their 20s much more likely to be jailed than those who are over 40.

All those prisoners cost money. In 1987 the sum of state spending was 10.6 billion. In 2007, it was 44 billion, an adjusted increase of 127%. Compare this with an increase of 27% on higher education over the same period.

Yet, these costs haven’t kept pace with the rise in prison population, which has increased 300% over the same time. We lead the world in both real and per capita lockups. Russia locks up 1 per 200, China 1 per 1000. Even Iran imprisons a smaller percentage of their population

Florida’s prison population has risen from 53,000 to 97,000 in fifteen years. Growing population and crime rates have probably contributed to this rise but most analysts attribute it to law changes that require a prisoner to server 85% of his time regardless of good behavior, the “zero tolerance” laws, and the mandate that probation officers report every violation, no matter how insignificant. At this rate Florida will run out of capacity within a year.

The costs feeding, clothing and tending a prisoner ranges from about $13,000 (LA) to almost $45,000 (RI). Add in buildings and maintenance and the approximate typical cost rises to $65,000 per prisoner. In addition to the rise in medical cost in general, communicable diseases spread quickly in a close and captive population. Hepatitis C, for instance, is estimated to infect from 25% to 40% of prisoners. In 2004, 1.8% of inmates tested positive for HIV. Curiously, people with HIV, hepatitis C and tuberculosis seem to spend more time in prison. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, each year 25% of HIV-infected, 33% of hepatitis C infected and 40% of those with active tuberculosis spend some time in a correctional facility.

Old prisoners cost more to maintain than do younger ones. From 1992 to 2001 the number of inmates aged 50 or more increased 173% and it it’s projected to reach one third of all inmates by 2010. Older convicts are often preyed upon by younger ones and may need special housing or protection. Obviously, they also suffer from the common age-related maladies of incontinence, restrictions in diet, hearing and visual impairment. As a result, the cost of an older prisoner can be two to three times that of a younger one.

All these costs are direct and immediate, but the burden of incarceration reaches far into the community. Inmates don’t pay taxes, they don’t pay child support and they don’t pay victim restitution. Families of inmates often turn to welfare. Of the 2 million children with one or both parents in prison, 55,000 of them wind up in foster care.

How can this population be increasing? According to the FBI, violent crime is down 32% since 1995, property crime down 23%. The answer is drugs. Federal law punishes any amount of marijuana with up to 1 year and a minimum fine of $1000. A second offense carries a mandatory prison sentence. Distribution of paraphernalia can result in three years in prison. State laws are often more strict. In Florida, for instance, a person can spend five years in jail for possession of less than an ounce of pot. Sell it near a school, college or park and the sentence is 15 years.

This is the cost of the War on Drugs.

Help Wanted, No Skills Required

Comcast is taking heat for packing a recent FCC meeting on internet neutrality. The topic of net neutrality has pitted the telecom companies against wide segments of the public, including groups as diverse as ACLU, Gun Owners of America, American Library Association, Christian Coalition of America and the Parents Television Council. At issue is whether all data should be treated equally or if the telecoms can do “traffic shaping”, favoring some types of data over others.

The FCC often holds public meetings to allow citizens to voice their opinion. At the recent meeting in Harvard Comcast paid a group of people to fill the available seats. Interested individuals who arrived as much as 90 minutes before the meeting found the room nearly full. Comcast admitted to the payoff and stated that the seats were being held for Comcast employees, most of whom did not show up.

Linestanding is a common practice at congressional hearings but this appears to be the first time it’s been used at a public meeting outside of Washington. Lobbyists pay linestanders between $10 and $15 an hour, many of whom will queue up for a hearing the day before. This practice has been common since the early ’90s and several linestanding companies exist to serve the lobbyists. The end result is that the public rarely gets a chance to attend. Senator Claire McCaskill, freshman Democrat from Missouri, has recently introduced a bill to ban lobbyists from employing linestanders.

Comcast packs the room
Sen. Claire McCaskill
Washington Post interviews linestanders

Scary Tales + Politicians = Rushed Legislation

Lead is bad. Everyone knows that. We should keep it out of our water and our air. Until recently lead was used in solder, which means that every electrical or electronic device contained lead. Enter the European Union and their RoHS Directive. In July of 2006 lead solder was banned from the EU. Manufacturers have been forced to find replacements, usually an all tin solder instead of the lead/tin solder formerly used.

Many engineers have raise concerns. Tin solder has a number of drawbacks – it is brittle; it has a tendency to cause shorts; it requires more heat; it doesn’t “get along” well with other types of solder on the same board. This last issue can cause problems with repairs and with electronics that are composed of parts from multiple manufacturers.

Although the RoHS only applies to the European Union, it affects us all. Manufacturers cannot supports different processes for different countries. Assembly lines have been switched over to the new soldering techniques whether they are making radios or communications satellites or medical equipment or airliners.

It’s too early to tell if this will cause problems, although anecdotal evidence suggest that it has. Studies on Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) have been hampered by manufacturers who are unwilling to let their failure rates be documented. Meanwhile, the manufacturers are blaming hot-headed environmentalists for possible failures and environmentalists claim that greedy industry welcomed the change because failures sell more product.

Cringley’s column has more to say

Drive Another Stake, George. It’s Rising Again.

It’s no revelation that the Bush administration has been secretive. John Ashcroft, Bush’s first Attorney General, issued directives that government information should be considered secret unless there was a good reason to make it public. Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) requests have languished and many journalists and concerned individuals have had to go to court to force the release of documents.

This stonewalling had not gone unnoticed by Congress. For five years Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) have been trying to pass legislation that would create a tracking system for Freedom of Information Act requests. Impose penalties for exceeding a 20-day time period, and allow people who had to go to court to be reimbursed for their legal fees. In addition, it created an ombudsman who could step in before FOIA disputes went to court.

The Senate unanimously passed the Open Government Act. The House followed suit and passed it by voice vote. In December, 2007 the bill was given to the President to sign. He did so on New Year’s Eve.

Now, buried in Bush’s $3.1 trillion budget, “on page 239, at the appendices of the Commerce Department section, which had nothing to do with the Justice Department, is a phrase that does not mention FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, does not mention the Office of Government Information Services, which is the name of the ombudsman, does not mention the National Archive. It just has this, you know, pithy little phrase that says, ‘This position will no longer exist.’” [quoting Rebecca Carr, national correspondent for Cox Newspapers, On The Media broadcast, 8 Nov 2008]

Duties of the ombudsman will transfer to the Department of Justice, the main target of criticisms for not enforcing the FOIA.

In a 3.1 trillion dollar budget and its funding for the war in Iraq, it is unlikely that this will cause much stir unless a major noise is made.

Satellite Target Practice

What’s behind the U.S. shooting down a malfunctioning satellite?
Here are some things to consider
* The U.S. strongly objected to the Chinese test of anti-satellite weaponry when they shot down one of their satellites in January, 2007.
* The stated reason for the U.S. shooting down this malfunctioning satellite is to protect people from a possible toxic cloud of gas from the on board fuel. This is preposterous. Both fuel laden satellites and booster rockets are commonly left to fall to earth. Any possible cloud of gas would impact an area of about 2 football fields and the chance of anyone being hurt is about as likely as getting hit with a meteorite.
* The Russians and Chinese are trying to restart the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space treaty discussion which would ban space weapons.
* A low orbit satellite is an impressive test subject since it travel much faster than one in high orbit.
* A new administration may not give the Missile Defense Agency the top-level advocacy that it currently has. A successful test increases the likelihood of program refunding.

Smile and Say Cheese

The United States has laws that prohibit it from spying on its own citizens. This is not to say they don’t do it, just that they avoid being caught. As example, take the ruckus caused by the discovery that the NSA was sucking up all the phone and internet traffic flowing through ATT. By the way, ATT and the other cooperating telecoms are about to get a pass on violating their privacy contracts with their customers. The Senate has passed a bill granting them retroactive immunity and the House is expected to follow suit.

Another key surveillance tool is the spy satellite. How well these satellites can see is a closely guarded secret but those in the know guess that they can see things as small as a softball. The government is about to allow local law enforcement access to much of this spy satellite imagery. A warrant will still be required to obtain the images but the details “would be determined in the future”.

The common argument for all of this increased surveillance is that if you have nothing to hide, then there is nothing to fear. This assumes a perfect system, but every system is vulnerable abuse, to hacking from inside or out, and to “mission creep”.
AP New report