Government agent stalks girlfriend

According to Information Week, a special agent in the Department of Commerce has been indicted for using a Homeland Security database to stalk his ex-girlfriend. Benjamin Robinson allegedly accessed the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS) at least 163 times in 2003 and 2004 to track her travels. According to the charges, he repeatedly threatened to have her deported or to kill her and her family.

This is the kind of thing that inevitably happens when the government gathers extensive information on the whole population, minimizes safeguards on its use, and cloaks its surveillance in secrecy. The article doesn't say anything about why so much information about the woman was in the database, but we know the answer to that: she was in the United States and traveled. That makes her a criminal suspect under the rules of the War on Terror.

Robinson is being prosecuted over four years after his actions started, and the actions which he's accused of were particularly blatant and personally motivated. How many other agents are engaging in more subtle extracurricular uses of government data and never being noticed? If somebody with a higher rank encourages a bit of unofficial information gathering, to hurt an enemy or for monetary gain, what are the chances it will be found out and prosecuted? The federal government claims that "national security" makes secret spying an imperative and legal restrictions will let terrorists kill us.

The government will most likely throw the book at Robinson in order to give the appearance that we're protected against rogue spies. Someone with more friends would just get away with it without a word reaching the public. Someone probably is.

See also commentary at The Spectrum.

Mandating web accessibility

A court ruling spells additional regulatory burdens for web sites, as a federal judge has certified a class action suit against Target which calls for requiring its web site to be made accessible to blind users. The case is just starting, but the ruling means that in principle web sites could be required under the Americans with Disabilities Act and California law to provide handicapped access.

What might be required is unclear. The article says that "the suit charges that [Target is] failing to make its site accessible to blind users via vocalization software or other tools." Making a site "accessible" comes in many options and levels. Target's web site actually is pretty good, at least at a first glance, compared to a lot of commercial sites I've seen; it has text labels and ALT text throughout, and doesn't arbitrarily lock out users who don't have Flash or JavaScript active in their browsers. I don't know what specific demands the plaintiffs are making.

When judges, rather than the success or failure of a business with its customers, dictate how a web site is designed, the requirements put a heavy burden on the host site. Legal training is a worthless background for making technical decisions; design requirements which come from a judge's bench are apt to be hard to implement and not very useful in practice.

It isn't big companies like Target that won't be able to comply, but the smaller ones working with a limited web design budget. The threat of a lawsuit for insufficient accessibility could discourage some companies from having a web site at all; this would hardly help the handicapped, who in many cases find it easier to shop from a computer than to have to travel to a store.

Apple sued for cutting prices

Here's one for the Department of Silly Lawsuits: a New Yorker is suing Apple for a million dollars for cutting the price of the iPhone. The suit accuses Apple of "price discrimination, underselling, discrimination in rebates, deceptive actions and other wrongdoings." Dongmei Li claims to be "injured" because she can't resell the phone for as much as she had hoped.

I have all kinds of electronic junk in my closet which I can't sell for more than scrap value. Obviously I should sue the manufacturers of the new, better, cheaper toys fo