The Risk Factor

Beginning today, the US government begins accepting applications from employers for the 65,000 H-1B visas for Fiscal Year 2009. According to news reports, "Citizenship and Immigration Services has said it will accept H-1B visa petitions over five business days, ending April 7. In mid-April, the agency will run a computerized lottery to choose about 65,000 petitions."

For the first time, companies are prohibited from filing more than one petition for the same worker.

Reports also indicated that, "The three biggest users of the H-1B program in 2007 were three companies based in India that perform computer and software contract work here using foreign workers, mainly Indian."

"The three companies — Infosys Technologies and Wipro of Bangalore, and Satyam Computer Services of Hyderabad — accounted for more than 8,500 of the H-1B visas that received preliminary approval in 2007, figures show."

I wonder how many Microsoft is going to apply for?

There is a very interesting article in the Seattle Times about a National Science Foundation funded experiment at the University of Washington called the RFID Ecosystem project. According to the story, a number of University of Washington "students, faculty and staff are being tracked as they move about the computer-science building, with details of where they've been, and with whom, stored in a database."

The point of the exercise is to "explore both positive and negative aspects of a world saturated with technology that can monitor people and objects remotely."

Computer science and engineering Professor Gaetano Borriello says in the article that, "Our objective is to create a future world where RFID is everywhere and figure out problems we'll run into before we get there."

The project has highlighted how easily a person's privacy can be penetrated without their knowing about it - something that governments around the world have started exploiting.

The article, for example, describes how the UK police are increasingly asking for information from London's RFID-based transit cards as well as the governmental activities in southern China, where "the government is installing RFID readers throughout the city of Shenzhen to track movements of citizens, and U.S. companies are helping deploy the technology. Chips in national ID cards contain not just a number, but a person's work history, education, religion, ethnicity, police record and reproductive history."

The article also notes that the Department of Homeland Security requires states to use an RFID chip in driver licenses that is readable from a distance and is compatible with its REAL ID initiative, which Borriello doesn't think is a good idea.

"There's no reason to have remotely readable technology in a driver's license," Borriello is quoted as saying in the article. Instead, he "recommends a system that requires contact with the surface of a reader, so the license-holder knows when information on his license is being read."

If you want to see how RFID may be used in your near-future, go read the story and the other publications at the UW RFID Ecosystem project website.

IEEE Spectrum also had an article last March on the ethics of implanted RFID chips and another in December 2004 on how employers are using surveillance technology to keep an eye on workers.

My friends in the UK alerted me to this amazing story and accompanying footage involving the newly discovered species of flying penguins that the BBC released yesterday.

I have been told by sources in the Pentagon that both the BBC and the British government are catching heat from the US Air Force, however, for disclosing the existence of the penguins, which have amazing stealth characteristics and a fantastic ability to generate power from a small wing surface.

Unofficial word is that the British version of the multi-nation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter under-development will be soon be named the Flying Penguins.

The U.S. Census Bureau announced yesterday that it was reverting back to paper from its plan of using handheld computers for the 2010 Decennial Census. The reason?

According to Director of the Census Steve H. Murdock's testimony before the United States House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science, "the problem with the FDCA (Field Data Collection Automation) program was due to a lack of communication between the Census Bureau and the prime contractor for FDCA, and to difficulties the contractor had in developing the full scope of the project within our deadlines. From the beginning, we did not effectively convey to the contractor the complexity of census operations, and the detailed requirements that needed to be fulfilled in order to complete the operations that FDCA covers."

In U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez testimony, he said that, "In 2007, the Address Canvassing dress rehearsal was conducted, at which time development and scoping problems emerged. Reports from the Census Bureau’s field staff, consultants from the non-profit MITRE Corporation working for the Bureau, and the Government Accountability Office confirmed these problems. The department’s Inspector General also raised concerns."

"In late 2007 and early 2008, more than 400 new or clarified technical requirements were identified by the Census Bureau. Upon the realization of the large scope of requirement changes, Census Director Murdock established the 2010 Census FDCA Risk Reduction Task Force, to begin to propose and evaluate options to keep the FDCA program on track. These efforts served to clarify the issues and confirm the urgent need for action."

The action was to punt (and bad mouth the contractor as much as possible even as the Bureau "accepted responsibility").

Gutierrez's testimony, as damning as it is, fails to mention that both technical and management issues with the handhelds were raised well before May of 2007 - all the May 2007 dress rehearsal did is to confirm them. Even as the sirens were going off that major trouble was brewing and that urgent action was required to be taken by July 2007 at the very latest, the Census Bureau and especially Gutierrez himself kept their collective heads in the sand, all the while claiming the project was moving along smartly, and that the critics (like me) were unjustifiably bashing the program.

Guess I wasn't, after all.

So, another $2.2 billion to $3 billion will be spent on top of the $11 billion already allocated to complete the census. What the hell, it's only taxpayer money.

Kudos to the Census Bureau for creating yet another case study on how not to manage a large scale software project in government. A classic IT blunder and debacle all rolled into one.

That said, let's hope that Congress demands a thorough, open and detailed analysis of this project be under taken now - before the files are "lost" - and a plan developed outlining how the Census plans to automate the 2020 census actually using for once the lessons learned.

Want to bet that this won't happen?

British Airways (BA) yesterday said it was hoping to run a "normal" flight schedule this weekend after a week of trouble with its new baggage system at its brand spanking new Terminal 5. Normal meant a new "normal," not the old "normal" like that at Terminal 4 where baggage system problems was the norm.

Well, it looks like the new normal is the same as the old normal.

BA announced earlier today that, "the BAA baggage system in Terminal 5 has suffered another computer problem today, which has caused disruption to British Airways flights."

"We are urging BAA to resolve these issues as soon as possible. Today’s failure affects the baggage reconciliation system. This ensures that for security reasons we do not load any bags onto the aircraft where the passenger is not travelling."

"This means we have to manually reconcile bags for each flight which takes considerably more time than using the automated system. As a result this has led to flight delays and we have had to make a number of shorthaul cancellations."

"We apologise to passengers for the inconvenience."

BAA, the airport operator, also issued an apology: "This morning, a software problem has arisen in the baggage system at T5. This is entirely BAA's responsibility. We apologise to British Airways and all passengers who have been affected and can assure them that our specialist staff are working hard to resolve the problem and keep disruption to BA's operation to a minimum. While we know what the problem is, and have a potential solution, we are having to carefully consider how and when we apply this, to avoid further problems. We will provide further updates when appropriate."

It is never a good thing when you think your software fix may make things worse rather than better.

At least 12 flights were canceled today, and many flights were delayed for three hours or more.

Since the new terminal opened, over 400 flights have been canceled, at least 28,000 bags have been "mis-placed" and are being sorted in Milan, Gatwick, Manchester, Scotland, and the US, and the estimated costs to BA are at least $50 million. No word on whether BA will be asking BAA for compensation.

Life will get more interesting at the end of the month when most of the remainder of BA flights will move from Terminal 4 to Terminal 5. Of course, when the other airlines of the SkyTeam (Aeroflot, Air France, Alitalia, Bmi, Continental, CSA, Delta, Kenya Airways, KLM, Korean Air and Northwest Airlines) move into the space vacated by BA in Terminal 4. Given all the shuffling, I think it would be wise to avoid Heathrow until the end of the year.

The problems at Terminal 5 has inspired a game called Wee Willie Walsh in honor of British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh. The object of the game is to get a bag, get it through the security scanner, and then onto the plane.

The LA Times is reporting that a worker - since fired - was responsible for snooping through 61 electronic medical records at the UCLA Medical Center, 32 of which were those of celebrities including California first lady Maria Shriver and actor Farrah Fawcett.

UCLA Medical Center management claimed last month that when pop star Britney Spears' electronic medical records were illegally looked at by 25 staff members that it was an anomaly. Seems it wasn't.

What's more, the Medical Center didn't bother to tell either the authorities or the patients themselves that their records were looked at. In fact, it wouldn't have disclosed the breach at all if the news hadn't leaked to the press. As the Times story notes:

"UCLA officials initially determined that alerting authorities and the patients involved was not required (in the Shriver, Fawcett, etc. case), but they are reconsidering whether to notify the patients."

'As this becomes more public, that may change our minds,' said (Dr. David) Feinberg, (chief executive of the UCLA Hospital System), who joined UCLA last July."

I guess the irony of his statement escaped Dr. Feinberg.

The California Department of Public Health is now going to investigate the matter in some detail.

London-headquartered HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank, admitted that it had lost a disc containing details of 370,000 customers, according to news reports.

The data disc went missing a month ago after being sent by unregistered mail from HSBC's offices in Folkestone, England to the Swiss Reinsurance Co. because HSBC's electronic wire system wasn't working.

There is nothing to be concerned about, HSBC insists.

According to HSBC, the disc was password-protected (but not encrypted) and contains details including customers' names, life-insurance cover levels, birth dates and smoking status. It doesn't contain clients' financial details or addresses.

Nevertheless, HSBC said that, "We are apologizing to our customers.''

Why does HSBC feel the need to apologize if there is no harm? I thought the official government sanctioned rule in the UK on data breaches was "no harm, no foul."

Anyway, this and the HMRC episode last year does make one wonder what is going on at the Royal Mail. Is there a sorting machine somewhere that senses when sensitive computer discs are in an unregistered mailer and snaps them up?

The Washington Post has a story on the proliferation of data fusion centers that have sprung up in dozens of states after 9/11. The centers tap into various commercial information brokers such as Accurint, ChoicePoint's Autotrack and LexisNexis, which the Posts writes, provide, "Web-based services that deliver instant access to billions of records on individuals' homes, cars, phone numbers and other information."

The story notes that each the fusion centers operate under state-defined different rules, and much of the activity is not open to outside review. At least one center (in Rhode Island) also claims that it has access (through the FBI) to classified CIA databases. This gives a back door channel to the CIA to keep an eye on US residents, something that it can't do directly.

It is not known how much information that is captured is wrong, but given that the Treasury Department's terrorist watch list has on-going problems with inaccurate and outdated information, there is little doubt that much of the information in these centers is suspect.

Even if when the information is accurate, the Treasury Department says that many users of the information don't bother to use it correctly. No doubt this happens with the information in these data centers as well.

I wonder how long before RFID information is captured by these data fusion centers.

The Washington Post reported last week that the College Board will be dropping the Advanced Placement Computer Science AB course and exam (the curriculum is here) after the 2008-2009 academic year. The College Board says that with only 5,064 students and 1,163 teachers taking part there was not enough interest.

According to the College Board website, "Computer Science AB includes all the topics of Computer Science A, as well as a more formal and a more in-depth study of algorithms, data structures, and data abstraction. For example, binary trees are studied in Computer Science AB but not in Computer Science A. The use of recursive data structures and dynamically allocated structures is fundamental to Computer Science AB."

The Computer Science A course seems unaffected.

The Australian Sunday Times ran a story last weekend claiming that old hospital computers containing confidential patient information were being dumped in an open trash container in a busy alleyway at Royal Perth Hospital. The paper claimed to have been able to recover some of the information, including patient names and addresses, dates of birth, medical conditions and patient numbers. According to the Times, some 500 computers have been dumped this way.

Royal Perth, however, claims that the computer hard drives were wiped clean, but the Times said regardless that it was able to access the information very easily. The hospital also said that the computers were being destroyed by the scrap metal contractors picking them up, but the Times said it had sources that said that the computers were sometimes being resold.

After the story was published, the hospital and others claimed that the only way the Sunday Times could have accessed the information is if the paper had stolen the computers. Jim McGinty, Western Australia's Health Minister, is accusing the paper of "stealing the computers and engaging a 'hacker' to access their contents" during its investigation into Royal Perth Hospital's security of patient information. McGinty has called the police to investigate both the journalist and the paper.

This should get interesting.

In a side note, Western Australia's Auditor-General Colin Murphy in March reported that “personal details of public servants, including salaries, home addresses and tax file numbers, were being released to the public when second-hand State Government computers were sold for as little as $2.” This is what drove the Times to do the story, it said.

The Guardian had an article recently about Britain's leading civil liberties groups No2ID and Privacy International planning to offer a £1,000 reward for the lawfully obtained fingerprints of the Prime Minister Gordon Brown's or Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

The two groups who are opposed to the UK government's planned ID card scheme, have launched the campaign to show the dangers of the collection of fingerprints into central government database, according to their websites. The article says that the groups are creating 10,000 pseudo 'Wanted' posters to be placed in tube stations and pub lavatories offering the cash for the fingerprints, saying that Brown and Smith are wanted for "planning to steal the fingerprints of the entire British population."

The groups stipulate on the poster that "the fingerprint must be obtained lawfully and can be located on a beer glass, doorknob or any object with a hard surface. Corroborating evidence is required to ascertain the identity of these thieves. The fingerprints will then be made publicly available."

The poster continues, "As fingerprint technology spreads, this government will essentially have back-door access to your computers, files, wallets and even cars and homes. We are offering this bounty to teach these individuals a lesson about personal information security."

Both No2ID and Privacy International are fully expecting to be prosecuted by the government for incitement.

"Liquor shrinkage" where bartenders "overpour" drinks or sell drinks for cash and pocketing the money is becoming harder at the MGM Mirage resorts and casinos in Las Vegas ComputerWorld reports. Seems that the Mirage has bought an RFID system that monitors the amount of each pour a bartender makes.

The RFID chip, which is embedded in those little liquor bottle pouring spouts, produces information on exactly what is being poured and when, as well as the time and date when the spout is placed on and taken off the bottle. Real-time analysis programs can then identify bartenders who are not pouring to company standards, or who are pouring drinks without recording it on the point of sale systems.

You can read about such a system produced by the company Capton which provides RFID solutions to the hospitality industry here.

Of course, this RFID produced information will be a bonanza for lawyers who are suing or defending a business that sells alcohol to someone who later causes the personal injury, death, or property damage to another. With very little work, the exact amount of liquor sold to someone and the time it was sold will be available. I wouldn't be surprised that in a couple of years, insurance companies will insist that any business that sells alcohol install these types of systems if they want insurance.

British Airways (BA) decided in consultation with BAA, the airport operator, to delay moving the remainder of its flights from Terminal 4 to Terminal 5 to June instead of from the end of this month as planned. According to press reports, the move would have meant the number of passengers handled at Terminal 5 doubling from 40,000 to 80,000 a day. BA and BAA felt that it wasn't ready to handle the expanded number of people just yet, as some elevators were still not working, and the baggage system still needed some "fine tuning."

Per usual, both BA and BAA apologized for the decision - something they have been doing a lot lately.

The other 54 airlines who were expecting to move among the other Heathrow terminals once BA vacated Terminal 4 in a game of complicated musical chairs are, to say the least, extremely unhappy.

There are still some 7,000 bags that have not yet rejoined their owners, and many may be burned, which has not made BA passengers happy, either. According to the Evening Standard, Giovanni Tinelli, from Onboard Express in Milan, which has a £5 million a year contract to sort lost BA bags, is quoted as saying, "All our BA bags that are untraceable are sent back to BA and then they are destroyed in an incinerator."

And just to make sure BA passengers stay unhappy for another few months, because BA had planned to have all of its Heathrow flights operating out of Terminal 5, BA designed its May 2008 onward schedule under that operating assumption. Thus, the new schedule assumed that less time would be needed for passengers transferring between BA flights since everyone would be arriving and departing at the same terminal.

Well, now, that assumptions has been knocked into a cocked hat. Some BA passengers transferring between flights, if they have to transfer between Terminals 4 and 5, now may not have adequate time to be able to make their flights. BA is offering to refund tickets or rebook the affected passengers.

It is going to be a longer summer at Heathrow.

The only good news is that Terminal 5 check-in and baggage systems seem to be now operating without any major disruptions.

The LA Times reports that the California Department of Public Health faulted the UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, its Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital and a sister hospital in Santa Monica for two privacy breaches involving Britney Spears. The first occurred when Spears gave birth to her first son in 2005 and again when she was hospitalized in Resnick's psychiatric unit earlier this year.

The Times said that "at least 53 UCLA staffers, including 14 physicians, sneaked a peek at Spears' medical records on the two occasions, even though they were not treating her, according to statistics from the state and UCLA officials."

As a result, 18 non-doctors resigned, retired or were dismissed after the snooping was discovered. However, not one of the 14 physicians resigned or were fired.

The Times asked why the staff were dismissed but the doctors allowed to stay on, "Kathleen Billingsley, deputy director for the California's health department's Center for Healthcare Quality, said, 'I can't speculate as to why.' "

The chief executive of the UCLA Hospital System, Dr. David Feinberg, promises that things will change in the future. He also promises that more security will be built into its electronic medical records system to protect patients' privacy.

As I noted in an earlier post, UCLA has claimed that such snooping on patients was rare, but in another LA Times story, it appears that snooping has been going on since at least 1995. The records of Tom Cruise, Mariah Carey, Dom DeLuise and George Harrison were among those looked at. Worse, the hospital knew about the unauthorized snooping, but senior management didn't see fit to take any decisive action to stop it.

Given its track record, any promises from UCLA hospital management to protect patient privacy have to be taken with a large grain of salt.

For those still working on their taxes, my sympathies. However, my real sympathies go out to those 3,400 LA Unified School District (LAUSD) employees who received incorrect W-2 forms. As I mentioned previously, the number of employees affected by the payroll system fiasco may be greater than 3,400 because many more employees than that have pay stubs that don't match their W-2s.

While the LA Daily News reports that the LAUSD promises to cover any additional costs incurred by employees because of the payroll problems, such as tax penalties because of an incorrect or late filing or fees for tax preparers, I doubt this has brought total peace of mind to LAUSD employees.

As a footnote, sometime this month a new estimate will be given on how much the LAUSD payroll system will cost over the next 15 years, which is the time frame they plan to key the system.

There is a very well done story in Government Computer News on the update to the FAA En Route Automation Modernization System (ERAM) that was successfully completed by Lockheed Martin last October.

The ERAM update, which consisted of 1.2 million lines of code, was delivered on budget, six months ahead of schedule and met its technical requirements, which is unusual in this business. What makes it more interesting is that the software consisted of 1.2 million lines of Ada code.

In June of 1983, the Department of Defense (DoD) issued its first official policy on Ada directing its use for all DoD mission critical systems. This began the Ada-programming wars in earnest in the software engineering community, which ended in April 1997 when DOD reversed course and removed the Ada mandate.

While many defense programs moved quickly away from Ada, the language has continued to live on especially in the aviation/space software community and a few others where reliability (and now security) is important. For instance, nearly 90% of the code for the F-22 Raptor is in Ada, and it is used on the F-35 Lightening II, Boeing 777 and 787, and on the Airbus 380. Maybe someone out there has a more complete list.

I was once deeply involved with Ada in my early career in government and later as an employee of SofTech, so I felt a wave of nostalgia as I read the story. I doubt a revival of Ada is in the winds, but it is still a very worthy programming language that unfortunately never found sufficient support outside and especially within the government.

The UK press is reporting that British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh has fired two BA executives as a result of the Heathrow Terminal 5 opening week problems. The two are Gareth Kirkwood, the operations director who handled the logistics of the transfer to Terminal 5 from Terminal 4 and David Noyes, the customer services director who supervised training for all customer-facing staff. Both were asked to leave immediately, and it was clear from the BA press release that they are being blamed for the disaster. Walsh says he will take over both jobs, as well as his own, until someone can take over both jobs which will be combined into a central operations manager position.

Of course, Walsh made a big deal about accepting responsibility for the problems, but obviously, that "acceptance" has a hard limit.

In a bit of double-speak, BA said that firing the two executives meant that Walsh was indeed taking responsibility: " 'He [Walsh] has said from the beginning and on Friday that the ultimate responsibility is his. That's why he has taken interim charge of these two areas until the chief operations officer is appointed. That is taking responsibility.' "

It was also reported that many insurance companies are now stopping coverage for lost luggage or delayed flights for passengers going through Terminal 5. They say that they will restore coverage when conditions at the Terminal improve.

Finally, the Financial Times is also reporting that it may take until October, instead of June, for BA to move all of its flights from Terminal 4 to Terminal 5.

I bet insurers don't offer Terminal 5 baggage coverage until November, at the earliest.

The Boston Globe had a story on latest twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec Corp. released last week.

The story said that Symantec is reporting that credit card numbers were selling for as little as 40 cents each and access to a bank account was going for $10 in the second half of 2007. In addition, the company "detected 711,912 new threats last year, 468 percent more than in 2006, when it found 125,243 - and almost two-thirds of all 1,122,311 Symantec has cataloged since 2002."

Last September, I noted that prices for stolen information had started to fall then. As I also remarked, with the falling prices, it was a good time for authorities to follow Gresham's Law and deliberately flood the Net with bogus stolen credit information and such to drive the prices down even further, and force hackers to spend energy trying to determine what is real from what is bogus information.

Still seems like a good idea to me.

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released its sixth annual assessment on major defense system acquisitions. It states that, "Since 2000, the Department of Defense (DOD) has roughly doubled its planned investment in new systems from $790 billion to $1.6 trillion in 2007, but acquisition outcomes in terms of cost and schedule have not improved. Total acquisition costs for major defense programs in the fiscal year 2007 portfolio have increased 26 percent from first estimates, compared with 6 percent in 2000. Programs have also often failed to deliver capabilities when promised."

One of the reasons the cost increases is software.

"Programs continue to have difficulty managing software development for weapon systems. Roughly half of the programs that provided us data had more than a 25 percent growth in their expected lines of code since starting system development."

The report says that programs like Future Combat Systems (FCS) has seen code increases of 300% while others like the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program have experienced major software reliability problems that have contributed to their cost and schedule delays.

Software has been the long pole in the tent on defense acquisitions for the past 30 years, and given DoD's aim of building system of systems, the pole will only get longer.

The London Times last week reported that the new UK children’s database which is part of the Every Child Matters program "will contain details of relatives with drinking problems and of relationship difficulties between parents. The register is intended to identify and help youngsters felt to have problems holding them back at school. It is not designed for children at risk of harm but for those with any health, learning or general wellbeing problems."

What's more the story says that, "The common assessment scheme will encourage professionals such as teachers and doctors, who have contact with children, to pass on concerns to assessors who will then talk to families about a child’s homelife."

The details that are going to be put into database "include 'family routines', evidence of a 'disorganised/chaotic lifestyle' and 'any serious difficulties in the parents’ 'relationship' " as well as "signs of mental illness or alcohol misuse by relatives, quality of accommodation and 'ways in which the family’s income is used' " according to guidance the UK government is providing.

Is this a recipe for trouble or what? How soon do you think it will be before loads of teenagers, angry after being disciplined by their parents, decide to use this scheme as a way to get back at them?

And exactly what objective standards are going to be used by assessors? For example, how does one measure a disorganized/chaotic lifestyle?

The New York Times reported that on the 12th of February, WellCare Health Plans Inc inadvertently posted the names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, and dates of eligibility for some 71,000 adults and children enrolled in Medicaid or PeachCare for Kids insurance programs in Georgia. WellCare Health Plans was hired by the State of Georgia to administer health benefits for low-income patients.

The information was on the web for seven weeks. WellCare was notified on 28 March that the information was publicly accessible, but it took another 5 days for the information to be removed.

WellCare Health Plans, which has sent out letters to those patients affected, is offering to pay them for credit monitoring services for a year.

This is the second time that Georgia's Medicaid and PeachCare for Kids participants have had their data compromised. Last year, Affiliated Computer Services lost a computer disk in the mail containing data on 2.9 million recipients.

There was an interesting and disturbing article in Sunday's Washington Post about the increasing use of DNA to predict a person's future behavior or life possibilities (e.g., longevity) in court. The article said that, "... defense attorneys are asking judges to admit test results suggesting that their clients have a genetic predisposition for violent or impulsive behavior, adding a potential 'DNA defense' to a legal system that until now has held virtually everyone accountable for their actions except the insane or mentally retarded."

The article goes on, "Some gene tests are even being touted for their capacity to help judges predict the likelihood that a convict, if released, will break the law again -- a measure of 'future dangerousness' that raises questions about how far courts can go to abort crimes that have not yet been committed."

In addition, courts are being asked to reduce or increase civil awards because a person's DNA make them genetically disposed to certain diseases. For example, "In once case, a mother sued a doctor and a hospital, claiming that negligence during her labor and delivery caused her daughter permanent brain injuries. A geneticist suspected that the girl had Angelman syndrome, a rare disease caused by a defective chromosome. The trial court ordered a DNA test, but the mother refused, resulting in her not only losing the case but also being held in civil contempt."

While it may take a while, the article suggests that courts may in the future routinely allow a person's DNA to "testify" about them - for good and bad.

That potential trend creates a set of risks that haven't been fully addressed by governments engaged in creating DNA databases of its citizens. The UK has been actively involved in creating DNA databases, and there are some there who are advocating that every person's DNA be recorded in it.

The US government has just changed its policy to collect DNA not only on those convicted of a federal crime, but also arrested for a felony (in the UK anyone arrested can have their DNA collected). Thirteen states already do so now and turn the data over to the government, and many others are considering following suit.

Anyone care to speculate on how long it will be before some government decides to use their DNA database to identify people prone to "future dangerousness?"

And if they do, will they require them to wear some sort of brain-activity box which will indicate when they are contemplating something the government dislikes?

Like bloggers who ask these types of questions?