ISP Information:
As it relates to computers today, a font is a specific style of displaying characters (a typeface), often scalable to a variety of sizes. "Arial" is a font, for example. This differs from the traditional definition of font, where each style and size was its own font (i.e., "9 point Arial" as opposed to simply "Arial").
ISP Glossary:
Font - Submitted by: John Gilmore There's something you can do *right now* that will stop pending abusesof air travelers' private data. And your chance to do it will expirethis coming Tuesday (Sept 30).The government has published a Privacy Act notice about its CAPPS-2program, which would require all airlines to provide JetBlue-styleinformation (full PNRs) to the government -- all the time, beforeevery flight. It's like another JetBlue database dump that happensagain and again, day after day, month after month, airline afterairline. Affecting everyone who ever flies.CAPPS-2 is the real thing, for which the Torch Concepts/JetBluecontract was one of the test runs. The government is taking publiccomments on the CAPPS-2 proposal, by email or postal mail, between nowand September 30th. After that, if you send them your opinion,they'll ignore it (even more than usual).Address your email like this:To: privacy@dhs.govSubject: DHS/TSA-2003-1Then tell them whatever you want. If the government is honest, thenthey would stop CAPPS-2 if they got individual notes from 10,000people saying "KILL CAPPS-2! Don't sacrifice the privacy of 600million travelers each year in a foolish attempt to catch less than adozen actual terrorists each year." If they are dishonest and don'tcare what the public thinks, then they would at least be on noticethat 10,000 honest and involved people are watching them.You can write them pages and pages of details on how terrible CAPPS-2is, and how corrupt they are to propose it, instead of a short note.But I suggest reading the details of what they propose, if you'regoing to that much trouble. You can find their proposal (inproprietary PDF format) here:http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/CAPPSII_PRIVACY_ACT_NOTICE.pdfThey claim that they're putting up the comments for public viewing onhttp://www.dhs.gov, but if they have done so, I can't find them there.You can find an earlier round of 282 overwhelmingly negative publiccomments on CAPPS-2 here, if you click "Simple Search" and enter"1437": http://dms.dot.govAs a brief overview, CAPPS-2 would require airlines to collectpeoples' full legal name, residence address, home phone number, anddate of birth (none of which is currently used by airlines today)before they can even make a flight reservation. They would berequired to hand this information, and everything else in the PNR(flight reservation), to the government, LONG BEFORE the flight takesoff. Then the government (or its "contractors") would do the samekind of data matching that Torch Concepts did, hooking up your flightreservations to credit databases and many other government and privatedatabases. The difference is that if YOUR data was one of those"anomalous records" (that didn't fit one of the standard patterns ofyour airline's customers), you would be singled out to be speciallysearched, and/or kept off the airplane.Torch Concepts' report blew the whistle on this secret program. Thereport is at http://cryptome.org/jetblue-spy.pdf. On page 22,Torch found two major groupings of JetBlue customers:(1) Young Middle Income Home Owners with Short Length-of-Residence(2) Older Upper Income Home Owners with Longer Length-of-ResidenceEverybody else they categorized into "anomalous records". If you'rean oldster who moved to Florida recently -- or a renter -- or a lowerincome person of any type -- you're anomalous. You're going to getthat special government search whenever you fly on JetBlue, if TSAsucceeds in imposing CAPPS 2.(Oh, perhaps their final system will be more subtle than this clumsycontractor was, but the basic problem is the same: the government willforcibly identify each traveler, evalulate their lifestyle fromdatabase records, and then make snap decisions about what civil rightsthat person will have while traveling. They propose to permanentlywithhold the right to anonymity; grant or withhold the right totravel; and grant or withhold the right not to be searched withoutprobable cause. I thought rights were something tha
|
