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A school district in San Antonio, Texas, is implementing mandatory RFID tracking of students in two of schools, John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School, at a cost of over $500,000. Andrea Hernandez, a student at one of these high schools, is refusing to wear the RFID badge. The Hernandez family and their supporters are protesting against the system over concerns of it being used to violate privacy rights.

RFID tracking devices such as these students are to be forced to wear can be detected up to about 70 feet away. Some say the ranges may already be longer than this with recent RFID systems.

Although the basic underlying technology is very similar to proximity cards that been used widely in businesses for decades, most of those ID cards have to be in close physical proximity to a scanner (within a foot) for their RFID information to be captured. The badges being used in San Antonio reportedly contain batteries and higher power transmitters that can be tracked at much greater distances.

Some have been attacking this family as Christian wackos who believe the RFID badges are the “mark of the beast” mentioned in Revelations in the Bible. But there is plenty that can be said about the potential problems of abuse of this technology that has nothing to do with religion.
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We’ve added Google Translate as a feature on our site. Now readers who read better in a language other than English can easily have Google translate the page for them. Simply look down at the new control bar at the bottom of the web page and pick the desired language from the pop up menu on the right side. A control bar will appear on the top of the page showing you that the page has been translated to another language and giving you the option to go back to the original view.
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Selectman Willie Farnum

Tamworth, New Hampshire, resident Scott Finman was upset with a local law banning citizens from carrying guns on town property. In the “Live Free or Die” state, it was an offensive law. Rather than just being upset, he took action. He blogged against the firearm restrictions that violated New Hampshire state law. He even drew cartoons and posted them on the Live Free and Comply website to poke fun at the illegal law at the tyrannical behaviors of the town government. The town’s volunteer firefighters and other residents joined him in his criticisms.

This was too much for town tyrants John Roberts, Willie Farnum, and Cassandra Pearce to tolerate. Recently, the Tamworth Selectmen (the local government council) decided to get even with Finman. They reassessed his home for $4 million and issued him a $70,000 tax bill, reasoning that since he didn’t let an assessor enter the home to inspect it that they could apply whatever valuation they wanted. This is at least the second time this year they have reassessed a property to punish a critical local resident. They did this earlier to former Selectman Tom Abugelis for writing a letter-to-the-editor criticizing the attitudes and actions of the town government.
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We’ve noticed that some phone and mobile devices, particularly those with small screens running Windows Mobile Internet Explorer, are really clunky at viewing our site and many others, too. If you’ve got a Windows Mobile device, we’ve noticed that Opera Mobile seems to work a lot better in our experience. We’ve done some brief testing using version 8.65 running on a Sprint Touch on a CDMA 3G network and it works reasonably well for viewing our content.
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If you’ve been reading our articles about police abuse and brutality, you are probably aware of the threat to your life and safety from police officers violating the law. But a far more common threat to innocent people comes from merely talking with police. This article discusses why you should never, ever talk with police. That is especially the case if the conversation is not being recorded by you and somebody aligned with you and if you don’t have an attorney present. But even in those circumstances, simply talking with police is a major risk with little if any benefit.

Let’s say you’re a typical law-abiding citizen who has never been charged with a crime. While you might be aware of the police being a threat to your safety and life as they have been to countless other people they have assaulted and even killed with no provocation or just cause, you might think you can safely talk with the police.

You’d be wrong.
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Do you have an unsecured wireless network or wireless access point in your home or business? If so, you may think all you have at risk is somebody wasting your bandwidth. But there’s a lot more at risk than megabits per second here. If you’re running unsecured wireless networks, you may be setting up your friends, employees, family and yourself for being scapegoated as child pornography or identify theft criminals.
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I’ll be up front with my opinions about this story. I think it is a government spin job on what really happened. I personally consider it far more likely that the kid in the story below who brought a bomb into a CPS office was abused by CPS and got the idea of blowing up his social worker but backed out on it at the last minute out of fear or uncertainty.

Admittedly, I haven’t a shred of evidence for that guess. Then again, I haven’t a shred of evidence for the bizarre sounding government tale, either. Maybe somebody who knows this kid will chime in with a comment about what was really happening.
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Eileen Lasher, San Diego Mother

I’m having a surreal feeling at the moment — almost like I’m an assistant scriptwriter. Let me explain. I just watched a video interview of Eileen Lasher, a mother whose children suffered at the hands of San Diego County’s CPS, family court, police, and DA “organized crime” syndicate for 15 years until her youngest child turned 18. The interviewer, Fred Sottile, used my article San Diego County Grand Jury Cites Further CPS Misconduct as the outline for his interview. I had no idea this was going to be the case when I started watching. It was truly odd to hear him reading the first paragraph of the story and thinking that sounds just like a story I wrote a few months ago. So I looked up the story and compared the words — it’s the same. That’s fine with me, I’m glad my article helped him with his interview.
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The Associated Press has recently published news of an investigation it conducted into people being framed for child pornography by the use of computer viruses and other malware. The results make it clear that innocent people are having their lives ruined by government witch hunts for child pornography after unknowingly becoming victims of computer viruses.

Michael Fiola: Victimized by Virus, then by Massachusetts Government

Michael Fiola’s computer was infected by a virus that cost him his job, his life savings, and nearly his freedom. His life was threatened repeatedly. Even his car tires were slashed by somebody who heard the accusations against him. All this happened because the virus downloaded child porn to his computer and the government persecuted him for years before finally admitting that they couldn’t prove their case.
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We don’t usually write technology articles here, but with the Windows 7 hoopla many people are rushing out to buy upgrades and are paying more than necessary. This is especially the case for households that have more than one computer and/or have university students.

Family Pack Upgrade for 3 PCs For Under $150

While the list price for the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade for a single PC is $120, it’s easily possible to get licenses for 3 PCs in the same home for just a little more than that. Costco is selling 3 PC upgrades “for a limited time, until supplies run out” for $135. It’s also available from many other vendors, too, but they are usually a little more expensive, perhaps $150. Staples is selling it for $150, and if you find one of their $30 off $150 coupons, it can be a little less expensive there.

Upgrades for College/University Students for $29.95!

Ed Bott’s article Seven perfectly legal ways to get Windows 7 cheap (or even free) outlines a number of other ways to get big discounts on Windows 7, particularly for college students and IT professionals. One of the best is the $29.95 upgrade offer for a digital download of either Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional for currently enrolled college students. The offer expires on January 3, 2010.

Buy a New PC With Windows 7, Get Upgrade for 50% Off

Through January 2, 2010, an offer that likely applies to most folks thinking of buying a new PC plus upgrading an old one is this buy a new PC with Windows 7 installed, get Windows 7 (any version) for up to 50% off offer from Microsoft and a variety of retail partners. These include Costco and Amazon.com. The new PC you buy must come with Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate for this offer to apply. If you buy one and then upgrade your main PC to Windows 7 Ultimate (which has the “remote desktop” feature) on the offer described above, you’d save $80 to $100 versus the typical cost of that upgrade, a nice chunk of the price of a new notebook computer.
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