Naked Truth: Civil Rights & CNN coverage of "F.B.I. biometric database - 'Server in the Sky'"

CNN reporter Jeanne Meserve adds ominously, "Your banking records, your music choices, your emails, your business contacts -- all can be examined, copied and stored by the government when you enter the country, if they're in an electronic device." - US customs agents can examine, copy data from searched laptops, David Edwards & Mike Sheehan, props to SingSing

Going on Up To the "Server in the Sky"...

FBI Deputizes Private Contractors With Extraordinary Powers, Including 'Shoot to Kill'"

Nexus : Save time but at what cost? International FBI Biometric Program announced to the surprise of Canada's Privacy Commissioner...

& CNN covers the FBI biometrics program

Who killed Brad Will? - victim videotaped own murder @ Oaxaca Protests?

Biometrics – Security & Authentication, Biometrics Institute Conference, Sydney, Malcolm Crompton, Australian Federal Privacy Commissioner, 20 March 2002The next part notes the range of claims – the solution to everything or the end of the world, as we know it – that are made about the interaction of privacy & biometrics. It goes on to identify and explore impacts on privacy through the collection & use of biometric information. These include or depend on:

• the extent of personal information collected and stored in the context of a biometric application
• the extent of choice for people about whether to provide biometric information
• the fact that biometrics are a powerful identification tool but also can go powerfully wrong
• potential for greater & possibly covert collection of very sensitive information in the course of ordinary transactions
• bodily privacy in the collection of biometrics
• openness & choice in the collection of biometrics
• anonymity
• potential for data linkage &
• function creep
• potential for biometric information to act as a universal unique identifier.

What was Hope Steffey's Crime?

Guantanamo Comes to Main Street U.S.A. - By Mark A. Goldman, ICH.

News interview investigating why Hope Steffey calls 911 for help...
...& ends up stripped naked & abused by Start County Sheriff Dept.

Flagged down: Activists arrested in row over protest flag, allege abuse by Buncombe deputy

Asheville Flag Peace Protesters Attacked At Home by cop without warrants
...After knocking on the door, the couple answered it and, after being shown the statute, said they complied and took the flag down. Scarborough then asked for their identification.

“The flag covered our whole front porch; he comes up with this printout about the law and tells us that we can’t attach things to the flag, that we’re desecrating it,” Deborah Kuhn said. “We tell him we’re not meaning to desecrate it — all we had was a picture of [President] Bush with ‘out now’ on it and a note saying this was not a sign of distress or disrespect. We did this because the country is in distress and we don’t know what to do.”

Then, she said, Scarborough “started talking arrest, so we took the flag down. He kept wanting to see our ID. We refused. We said, ‘Why should we show you our ID — are you arresting us?’; so we walked back into the house and closed the door.”

There, the accounts diverge. According to Deborah Kuhn, Scarborough “tried to force the door, but we got it closed and locked it with the deadbolt. He then kicked it, punched the glass out, unlocked our door and came after us.”

The sheriff’s office report states that “the man [Mark Kuhn] refused to identify himself and slammed the door on the officer’s hand, breaking the glass pane out of the door and cutting the officer’s hand.”

However, the Kuhns’ account is backed up by Jimmy Stevenson, who was working with Ace Hardwood Floors nearby and asserts that he saw Scarborough break down the door.

“I saw that one cop [Scarborough] pull up and I saw those people come out on the porch and start talking to him,” Stevenson said. “They took their flag down, asked the officer to leave and closed the door. Then he started kicking the door, he kicked it about five or six good times, then he laid right into it. After he got done kicking it, he broke the window out – I saw him hit the window.”

Deborah Kuhn says that Scarborough then “pursued my husband into the kitchen, they were scuffling, [and] Mark was trying to get away from him. He pulls out his billy club and I call 911 and say that an officer has broken into our house and is assaulting us.”

Scarborough sustained a cut to his arm when the window broke and Mark Kuhn had several cuts on his face from the scuffle with Scarborough.

“I was just trying to defend myself and back away from him,” Kuhn said. “They never, ever told us why we were being arrested until we were in jail.”

Deborah Kuhn asserted that no warrant was displayed or permission asked to enter the house. After calling 911, she says, she ran outside and began screaming for help.

Sam York, who lives nearby the couple, was awakened by the struggle, as the Kuhns and Scarborough both came out into the yard. “I woke up to Debbie screaming,” he said. “Mark and Debbie were saying ‘you assaulted us’ and the officer [Scarborough], was demanding their identification. Then another officer threatened them with a taser. He told Debbie to back away or he’d taser her and demanded that Mark get on the ground.”
...
After his experience, Mark Kuhn said he is convinced this is not an isolated occurrence. “If Americans don’t wake up to the martial state we’re in, the cops, the police, the sheriffs, the state police will all come to our door and take us away if we allow this to happen – it’s time for America to wake up.”