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Under the "Smart ID" program, ID badges have been issued with a tracking chip, which students must wear when attending school. The school badges, worn like a necklace, contain a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip and links to their social security number. This allows the school to track the student's location after leaving campus and for as long as the badge is on the student's person.

Amazon announced today that its Associates program is to be terminated in California, in response to a new sales tax bill that was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown. "We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue.", Amazon said said in an email to (now former) California Associates.

The ACLU has come to aid of a 12 year old girl who has been the victim of bullying. Not from her fellow students, but from the very adults who run the school.

Daily News @ http://RevolutionNews.US - ACLU seeks information on Michigan program that allows cops to download information from smart phones belonging to stopped motorists.

TheNewspaper

The Michigan State Police have a high-tech mobile forensics device that can be used to extract information from cell phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan last Wednesday demanded that state officials stop stonewalling freedom of information requests for information on the program.

The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.

Washington, D.C. - Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch will testify this week at a Senate hearing on facial recognition technology and the privacy and civil liberties risks associated with rapidly growing biometric databases. The hearing is set for Wednesday, July 18, at 2:30 p.m. Facial recognition technology is becoming increasingly sensitive and sophisticated, creating new ways for government and private entities to identify and track people throughout the United States.

Under a controversial 2005 domestic security program passed by Congress and known as Real ID, states were required to issue more secure licenses initially by May of 2008, extended to December 2009 and now to May of 2011. DHS said 46 states are not in compliance with the requirements, and 13 have passed laws refusing to participate.

In California, a special program was designed to guard the safety of peace officers and judges by keeping their addresses private to protect them from criminals.
The program has since expanded to include legislators, city council members, county supervisors, prison employees, trial court workers, parking officers, Child Protective Services social workers, national park rangers, other groups, and their spouses and children, and even after they are no longer public employees.

For the past three decades, Uncle Sam has been providing a handful of patients with some of the highest grade marijuana around. The program grew out of a 1976 court settlement that created the country’s first legal pot smoker.

Advocates for legalizing marijuana or treating it as a medicine say the program is a glaring contradiction in the nation’s 40-year war on drugs — maintaining the federal ban on pot while at the same time supplying it.

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