This Friday morning, at the State House, is visibility day for marriage equality. Fellow-traveling defenders of individual liberty and defenders of the right to marry will be meeting in Montpelier starting at 8:00 a.m.
Folks will be walking the halls of the State House and discussing equal justice for all Vermonters throughout the morning and early afternoon.
This is a good chance to come to Montpelier, see your Representatives and Senators in the General Assembly and tell them how important equal marriage rights are to you as a voter, a constituent, a Vermonter and an American.
Vermont has one of the lowest divorce rates in the country, and it’s no surprise. Vermont gives partial legal recognition to gay and lesbian couples through civil unions. Obviously, increasing the level of mutual support (and perhaps the level of competition too!) for legal coupling in Vermont – through Civil Unions – has been a healthy shot in the arm to all types of family units. As we've seen in Vermont, legal recognition of a family leads to greater respect for all unions — homosexual and heterosexual.
But remember, civil unions is just a first step. Partial legal recognitation is not the same as equality just like being 3/5 a constitutional human is not the same as equal rights for all.
It is time we recognized the fact that marriage equality is a measure of how civil society respects marriage, it is how our Government respects our rights as Vermonters. And, as advocates, it is how we respect ourselves as members of a healthy community.
Friday's details after the flip . . .
Please consider coming to Montpelier on Friday to meet with your elected representatives.
While Douglas was down in Washington pleading for stimulus payments from the federal government, activists across Vermont were rallying to protest Douglas's proposed cuts in public benefits and programs. From one end of the state to the other, hundreds of people turned out to challenge Douglas's plans. Here are some reports from across the state:
In Randolph therre were 40 people, representing the local bookshop owner, senior center director, human services, youth, and disability rights advocates, six VSEA guys from the state garage, doctors from Gifford Hospital, members of the local peace coalition, Vermont Law School staff, one of the Randolph reps (Patsy French).
At the 5:00 rallies, there were some notable apperances. For instance, at the Northfield rally Republican Representative Anne Donahue joined 25 hardy souls, saying that all options, including increased revenues, must be on the table.
About 125 people turned up at the Burlington rally, 120 in Montpelier, 100+ in Brattleboro, and about 70 in Rutland. Smaller, but still significant, crowds assembled in Bennington, St. Johnsbury, and St. Albans.
Were you there? Do you have rally experiences to share? Please post a comment and share your experiences.
There was a lot of noise a while back about the planned RFID (radio frequency ID) licenses in VT, but because the topic is complicated, and right-wingers were all too happy to decimate everyone’s right to privacy for the sake of false “security,” the discussion generated more heat than light.
Remember the photo of the happy Motor Vehicles Commissioner Bonnie Rutledge smiling behind a sample “enhanced” license?
[source Times-Argus]
Well, here’s something: it’s expensive to implement, it makes us less secure, and it opens us up to identity theft.
The first few are to be issued next month to VIPs, and they’ll become available to the general public early in 2009, according to Vermont Motor Vehicle Commissioner Bonnie Rutledge.
The new licenses cost $25 more than regular ones. Anyone applying will have to present extensive documentation to prove their identity and be interviewed by a motor vehicle employee. Unlike traditional ones, they’re not going to be issued on the spot. Instead, they’ll be mailed once the information has been verified.
With the budget quaking under the weight of economic collapse, it’s time to revisit the reasons why tagging everyone with an RFID is a VERY bad idea.
RFID tags are tiny little radio transponders that broadcast and receive information. In this case, they broadcast a number that is assigned only to you, and often other information. The ones embedded in your clothing even broadcast what you’re wearing, and if one from your pet food bag landed on your shoe, you’re even broadcasting what you feed your pets.
Someone with the right inexpensive and easy to acquire equipment can find out more about you than you ever wanted to tell them (where did you get that underwear?). Do you have a new credit card with a chip? Guess what you’re broadcasting!
The one common thread among identity thefts stories we hear about is that someone got inappropriate access a computer to get your data.
But what if all they needed was an antenna?
With RFID, that’s all that’s needed. If you have an RFID license, an RFID passport, and one of the newer RFID credit cards, anyone with a couple pieces of hardware and a laptop can get your data simply by being nearby. They can then clone the data, and create a whole new set of RFIDs indicating that they are you.
Ironically, RFID makes passport and license forgery EASIER. And to all those college kids looking for fake liquor IDs, you’re golden! Just snag some hardware, and start cloning. You’ll have an iron clad ID that everyone will THINK is real. You can quit working on lowering the drinking age, and instead just invest in a little hardware. It’ll be faster and more convenient.
Here’s a quick video of how easy it is to clone RFIDs:
In addition to the ease of stealing and cloning someone else’s data, RFIDs still provide the more traditional identity theft route – a double-whammy to your identity security:
The information from every RFID tag, whether it’s the one in your license, your credit card, your passport, or your sexy push-up bra, is stored in a database. In the database, that number is connected to a whole bunch of other information about you. In some databases, that means name, age, address, date of birth, social security number are stored together, often unencrypted. For merchandise, the item, purchase date, purchase time, purchase location, a purchaser ID, and perhaps information about you or your credit card. For credit cards, any information you provided in order to get the card, perhaps purchase information, and more.
Even if you believe the Government will only use the data the ID provides about your every move benignly (right), you should be concerned about data security.
Here are a couple of examples of why you should be concerned about yet ANOTHER database full of your information:
Unauthorized software that was secretly installed on servers in Hannaford Bros. Co.’s supermarkets across the Northeast and in Florida enabled the massive data breach that compromised up to 4.2 million credit and debit cards, the company said Friday. The finding was revealed in a letter from Hannaford general counsel Emily Dickinson to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and Gov. Deval Patrick’s Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation.
DENVER – A computer stolen from a private contractor holds a database that may contain personal information of up to 1.4 million Coloradans, including information of anyone recently hired by any company in the state, officials said.
Affiliated Computer Services Inc. this week began notifying at least 500,000 people listed on the state’s child-support enforcement division database that their identity may be on the desktop that was stolen Oct. 14.
The “enhanced” license program is one of those budget items that’s simply a waste. It provides no benefit whatsoever to Vermonters, dramatically increases the chances of identity theft, and eliminates our privacy.
Plus, in exchange for increased vulnerability, your trip to the registry for one of these licenses will cost more ($25 more per license) and take longer, while you present a bunch of extra information (birth certificate, social security number, etc.) and go through an extensive interview process with a specially trained registry employee in a specially built room.
The RFID license program can be shut down before it costs the taxpayers another penny. The existing database can be erased, and current RFID licenses can be treated as normal licenses. For those who have such licenses already, and worry about the information they’re broadcasting, some people have tested various methods for disabling RFID chips in things like credit cards.
Sure, there are sunk costs already in the system ($2 million or so), but throwing good money after bad isn’t good fiscal policy, especially in shaky financial times. While the legislature figures out what to cut, this one is a no-brainer.
Just for fun, I’ve included a few extra news snippets on recent data thefts below the fold.
Below are more instances of data theft. I collected all these in one Google search. These were all on the first page of results. There are tons and tons more examples, many thousands as a matter of fact. Your data is not safe, whether collected by retailers, hospitals, credit card companies, card processors, or the government.
Do we really need greater exposure to identity theft? Is it really a good idea to be walking around broadcasting the info needed by identity theives? Should we be spending our tax dollars on this?
SAN FRANCISCO, June 24PRNewswire – A week after CardSystems Solutions, Inc. disclosed that thieves made off with credit-card information affecting up to 40 million cardholders, the company has provided scant information about how the theft was perpetrated. CardSystems and the FBI are reportedly searching for the cause and the perpetrators.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Fidelity National Information Services, a financial processing company, said Tuesday a worker at one of its subsidiaries stole 2.3 million consumer records containing credit card, bank account and other personal information.
Google has confirmed that personal data of U.S. employees hired prior to 2006 have been stolen in a recent burglary.
Records kept at Colt Express Outsourcing Services, an external company Google and other companies use to handle human resources functions, were stolen in a burglary on May 26. An undisclosed number of employees’ details and those of dependents such as names, addresses, and Social Security numbers were on the stolen computers. It is understood that Colt did not employ encryption to protect the information.
Bank of America will pay Connecticut $350,000 as part of a settlement for a data breach by Countrywide Financial Corp., which the bank acquired last year, state officials said Thursday.
The bank will also provide at least $25,000 to reimburse Connecticut residents forced to pay for freezing and unfreezing their credit reports because of the breach, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said.
Georgia motorists are being advised to monitor their credit reports after a government computer programmer was charged with downloading state driver’s license information to his home computers.
More than three months after detecting a breach of its systems, retail giant TJX Companies released this week its best guess at the number of customers whose credit-card information and other data were stolen by online thieves.
Credit card payment processor Heartland Payment Systems announced this week that hundreds of millions of credit card transactions were stolen last year. This latest hack far eclipsed the 45 Million TJX Companies records lost from 2004-2007. The stolen data includes names, credit/debit card numbers and expiration dates.
…
Heartland reportedly determined the source of the breach last week as a piece of malicious software.
Heartland Payment Systems is a member of the Payment Card Industry’s (PCI) small group of payment processors. Any business that handles credit card data, from an end merchant through processors and the issuers themselves, are part of the PCI. Established by a consortium of Visa, Mastercard, American Express and others, PCI is one of the largest commercial groups creating a minimum security requirement for their members.
I just finished listening to the founder (Jack Harding??) of Vermont Tiger on the Mark Johnson Show … seems one can compare Vermont to California until one tries to compare Vermont to California.
What am I talking about? I heard the fella giving glowing reviews of California’s Silicon Valley including wonderful descriptions of how public/private partnerships had made housing more affordable. Well, after I called in and quickly related a relative’s issues with housing in California, and a California resident called in with a similar negative statement regard the affordability of California .. well, all of a sudden we’re supposed to be comparing to New York or New Hampshire or Massachusetts or sumthin of the like (talk about apples, oranges, granite and fleeting reference comparisons).
On top of that Harding had to totally miss-characterize my comments to make some point he wanted to.
I made a reference to Vermonters protecting the physical environment and some economic issues … yet Harding had to argue with my bringing up some notion of “beauty”.
Now Rep. O’Donnell of Vernon and Rep. Flory of Pittsford are suggesting that we tax our non-profits in order to pay for V-Pharm. Perhaps they believe that Vermonters don’t see through their attempt to pin non-profits against those who are the very beneficiaries of their services. This is so uncreative. It is not one or the other – medicaid benefits or the salaries of non-profit managers.
Why is it that the same people who oppose any increase in income tax want to tax the our non-profit executives only? Isn’t this a disguised clear call for the raising of revenue? Why should it only be a few non-profit employees who make that sacrifice? Wouldn’t a state-wide raising of revenue based on income (such as an income tax surcharge on people earning more than a certain amount) be an even broader-based shared sacrifice?
Has anyone noticed that the list that Rep O’Connell distributed last week of non-profit salaries (which was inaccurate on many levels) listed everyone who spoke up last week about the Gov’ budget proposal.
It is unbelievable that we now live in a state where those who speak out will be silenced and where we target tax those who manage some of the most effective organizations in Vermont that work on behalf of the citizens and not against them.
UVM needs a new commencement speaker (see kestrel immediately below). Why not be helpful and make a suggestion to Presdient Fogel?
But who could they get of the same caliber and quality of Fogel’s BFF Ben Stein, who had agreed to show, but suddenly remembered he had a lunch date that day or something…
Let’s see… comparing opponents to nazis… complete rejection of science and reality… blaming school shootings on the separation of church and state… I’m thinking John Hagee, Ann Coulter, maybe even Michael Savage fit the mold. What do you think?
According to the World Food Programme, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and Palestinian officials, between 35% and 60% of the agriculture industry [in Gaza] has been wrecked by the three-week Israeli attack, which followed two years of economic siege.
Christine van Nieuwenhuyse, the World Food Programme’s country director, said: “We are hearing that 60% of the land in the north – where the farming was most intensive – may not be exploitable again. It looks to me like a disaster. It is not just farmland, but poultry as well.
. . .
As well as the physical damage done by Israeli bulldozers, bombing and shelling, land has been contaminated by munitions, including white phosphorous, burst sewerage pipes, animal carcasses and even asbestos used in roofing. In many places, the damage is extreme. In Jabal al-Rayas, once a thriving farming community, every building has been knocked down, and even the cattle killed and left to lie rotting in the fields.
In al-Atatra, Ahmad Hassan, 65, the overseer of an orchard that once had hundreds of lemon and orange trees, surveyed an area flattened by bulldozers. “This was the well,” he said, showing a pile of bulldozed concrete. “We can clear the ground in two weeks. Then what? The well is gone. The pump has been destroyed. And where will the trees come from to replant the land?”
Good thing the Isrealis are our terrorists … otherwise we might have to do something humane for the Palestinians for a change. Uh … Obama? You paying attention?
Here are the results of the online poll. A few folks took the time, but once again, we’ve proved that GMD users are just not poll takers:
Look for discussion in coming days/weeks of exactly what each of these folks is doing right now to stand up to the Douglas agenda and promote progressive alternatives.
Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama’s economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care.
Their state treasuries drained by the financial crisis, governors would welcome the money from Capitol Hill, where GOP lawmakers are more skeptical of Obama’s spending priorities.
The 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, planned to meet in Washington this weekend with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other senators to press for her state’s share of the package.
I do know our own “Jumpin’ fer dollars” Jim is a big fan of the economic policies that have helped to destroy our nation’s economy; drive down lower and middle class wages; eliminate benefits; keep medical care away from the undeserving poor; trash our only source of food, water, air and shelter (aka the physical environment); and more … I’d like to know how all these other “gimmee my monee” guvs felt about the bushies and their Republican cohorts in DC … I imagine much the same.
In response to the recent Gaza War, a fundraising page was set up on ActBlue.com in order to contribute to elected officials who have been supportive of the peoples of Israel and Palestine. The page is called “A Dream of Peace: Justice and Equality for The People of Israel and Palestine”, and can be found here.
The mission of the page states “All of the people of the Holy Land need to live in peace and security. We need to support and elect candidates that are willing to stand up for the rights of the citizens of Israel and Palestine. These candidates support measures to stop violence, increase economic and humanitarian aid, actively engage in negotiation, and promote co-existence among these two Peoples.”
On January 28th, Rep. John Olver (MA-01) sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton requesting that the State Department release funds to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) for reconstuction and humanitarian assistance in Gaza. The letter was signed by a total of 63 Democratic House members, including Vermont’s Peter Welch (VT-AL). The full text of the letter, as well as the full list of signatories can be found here.
As a result of this request, President Obama, yesterday, authorized the use of $20.3 million from The US Emergency Refugee and Migration Association (ERMA) for humanitarian needs in Gaza. $13.5 million went to UNRWA, $6 million went to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and $800,000 went to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Congressman Welch, as well as the rest of the signatories, are all strong supporters of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. They are speaking out to help lessen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and to commend President Obama on his early committment to the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We need to help these candidates as they face pressure from the anti-peace community. Please visit our fundraising page and contribute to these members, as well as any (or all) of our candidates.
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