CIA’s Secret Fear: High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover
wired.com
wired.com
They're friendly enough to Israel and Western nations that they "didn't catch" the assassins; even the article says the Mossad's blown cover is a surprise.
Meanwhile, Dubai seems happy to roll out biometrics aggressively at their borders.
Ok, those are the facts. My analysis: Dubai wants to clamp down on "unilateral" operations (read: illegal or politically toxic acts where Dubai is the pawn in other nations fights).
Dubai could become Switzerland-esque neutral party that can reasonably claim Arabs are safe, _and_ Israelis are safe.
It would surely boost their tourism to have a clean record. "Come visit us. We can police our streets and protect our borders."
And I imagine they wouldn't mind having that kind of political clout either.
You can take political correctness and cultural relativism too far: this attitude about what is appropriate public behavior, taking into consideration the other behaviors that are considered (in)appropriate in concordance with it, is just awful and can't change soon enough.
I have zero problems with public nudity, but, I also have zero problems with laws against outright public displays of affection (PDAs) - hell, for that matter, when I go to burning man, there's lots of environments where you trip across balls-out sexual-activity - and I don't recall being particularly offended (or even shocked after the first couple times). So, I do believe it's a lot about social-relativsm, and defining what the norm should be. Depending on where you are, any of these activities (kissing, nudity, intercourse) may be considered lewd/indecent - and I don't usually judge/disapprove of a society that makes any of these activities illegal.
I do think it's important (and I do judge cultures) as to whether they clearly establish what the laws are, and that they uphold a certain level of evidence before finding someone guilty. I also think you should have the opportunity to confront your accuser. So - No problem with Dubai outlawing public kissing, but, I do have a lot of problems with the way the approach to the law went in this case (2 year old child's testimony of a third-party event, and the mother of the child/child didn't even show up at the trial)
My position is simple: people are happier in countries where kissing in public is allowed. People have become happier in countries where things like kissing in public have become allowed.
Things like enlightenment, separation of church and state, democracy and checks and balances result in countries where people are generally happier and more free. That has been experimentally verified in a number of countries over the past few hundred years. Some sets of ethical beliefs produce results that are deemed better, even by those that object to part or all of those beliefs.
Cultural relativism cannot and must not be used to excuse repressive behavior.
(One smart thing that have done is hire essentially Blackwater to have a heavily armed brigade ready to crush internal dissent or coup attempts.)
In general, considering the 8 U.S. military bases in Tokyo (not Japan, just Tokyo), and in particular, the 31000 sq metre military base in the centre of the city, in Roppongi (prime real estate worth at least $60 m, with a few military helicopters landing/taking off from there every day, and a lot more towards the weekend), IMHO, Japan is an occupied territory not too different from Afghanistan or Iraq. IMHO, the role of Japan in the scheme of things as designed by the US is to hold US debt, giving legitimacy to the piece of paper printed by the Treasury. The entire Toyota drama was about Japan trying to assert it's independence and not follow orders.
The reason is that it's a vassal state, and the way it pays its tribute is, depending on how you want to look at it, by sending awesome manufactured goods over, or buying bad paper at high prices with its huge annual trade surplus. Cf Germany.
Edit : Assuming you were not asking for proof, only information, see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehicl.... Note that "After a 10 month search, NASA and NHTSA scientists found no electronic defect in Toyota vehicles. Driver error or pedal misapplication was found responsible for most of the incidents". But the dive in Toyota stock price, sales, and most importantly, brand image, was enough to send the message. Toyota stocked surged 20% after the then-Japanese PM resigned after his failure to get the US off of Okinawa.
I know it's not the same as fingerprinting. But with image recognition getting better it's not that far off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_agents_in_the_U...
So expect a lot of thumbdrives taped to the backsides of toilets in the future.
Of course in the future there's no reason that national biometrics databases couldn't store unique identifiers that could be used to identify individuals (given the biometrics for an individual, you would be able to look up that individual in your database).
However my very patchy understanding of systems as currently implemented is that they provide a way of tying a document reliably to an individual - so that you can present a passport and an automated kiosk can scan your irises/take fingerprints to work out if the document actually belongs to you. This is what's called a "closed search" problem.
If you can generate the document in the first place then this doesn't really change the situation from before.
Of course systems may get more sophisticated but I suspect the problems with collisions of biometric checksums are likely to put some sort of a limit on the practicality of an approach like this. Especially when retina scans etc can be defeated by wearing lenses etc.