Issues

Tell the feds: Hands off our medical records!

March 11, 2010 - 8:55pm

The Institute for Health Freedom has a great primer on a proposed rule from the bureacrats at the Department of Health and Human Services in DC.  HHS wants to force doctors to create and share electronic medical records of their patients without patient consent.  HHS is taking public comments on the rule until Monday.  IHF has all the details including how to send in your comments to HHS:

Yet another national ID card proposed by Sens. Schumer, Graham

March 11, 2010 - 5:12pm

Papers, please:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

Justice Dept promises not to plunder Census data

March 4, 2010 - 8:54pm

The Assistant Attorney General has sent a letter to concerned members of Congress   insisting that personal data collected on Americans by the U.S. Census Bureau will not be disclosed to "law enforcement or national security officials."  This is a commendable position.  It would be nice if the NSA Director released a similar letter.

This concern would not be so pronounced if the Census stuck to their Constitutional mandate in the first place and only inquired as to the number of persons in the household. 

Latest surveillance tech: Portable license-plate scanners

March 4, 2010 - 8:25pm

The latest in police/revenuer surveillance technology?  Read all about it in The USA Today:

The cameras read license plates of parked and moving cars — hundreds per minute — and check them against vehicle databases, said Lance Clem, a spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which purchased several systems for its police vehicles last fall.[...]