Society & Politics archives: January-February 2004

• 27 February 2004
  "Lawmakers in several states this week are preparing rules to prevent Wal-Mart and other companies from using radio-frequency identification tags to spy on their customers. In statehouses in Utah and California, and at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, legislators and regulators discussed how retailers and government spies might use the data gathered from RFID tags to monitor consumers. Utah's House of Representatives passed the first-ever RFID privacy bill this week, 47-23. Utah state Rep. David Hogue said that without laws to ensure consumer privacy, retailers will be tempted to match the data gathered by RFID readers with consumers' personal information." As more companies utilize RFID technology some politicians are arguing that consumers need new legislation to protect their privacy. Read more at Wired News.



• 26 February 2004
  "Astronomers have revealed how they came within minutes of alerting the world to a potential asteroid strike last month. Some scientists believed on 13 January that a 30m object, later designated 2004 AS1, had a one-in-four chance of hitting the planet within 36 hours. It could have caused local devastation and the researchers contemplated a call to President Bush before new data finally showed there was no danger. The procedures for raising the alarm in such circumstances are now being revised." This startling report reveals how some astronomers were on the verge of warning President Bush that the earth was about to be hit by an asteroid, forcing many to call for a reexamination of the procedures for raising an alarm in case of such an emergency. Learn more at the BBC.com.



• 25 February 2004
  "If you were the head of a small American company that had invested heavily in research and development for new products, chances are you'd think twice before jumping into partnership with Chinese partners. But then you wouldn't be Edward Newman, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Xybernaut Corp. in Fairfax, Va. Newman was in Hong Kong recently to announce that his company, which makes computer hardware that users can actually wear, was forming a joint venture with Hong Kong and Chinese companies." Despite the prevalence of copyright infringement, more and more American companies are attempting to do business in China. In turn, the Chinese government is implementing more reforms to protect intellectual-property rights. Learn more about this symbiotic economic/political relationship in this week's Business Week.



• 24 February 2004
  "Cybercrime cost British companies hundreds of millions, and perhaps billions, of pounds in lost business last year, and the next wave of Internet attacks is likely to be more severe, a conference heard on Tuesday. In a police survey of 201 of Britain's largest companies, 83 percent said they had experienced some form of cybercrime in 2003, costing more than 195 million pounds in business downtime, lost productivity and perceived damage to their brand or share price...Police blame organized crime gangs, particularly those in Eastern Europe and Asia, as the biggest culprit for the outbreak." As the British example demonstrates, cybercrime is having a global economic impact. Learn more in today's Yahoo News (link no longer active).



• 23 February 2004
  "There is certainly no shortage of political heat surrounding the subject of jobs migrating abroad. On the campaign trail, Senator John Kerry routinely decries 'Benedict Arnold' bosses. And N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, faced an uproar after he said earlier this month that offshore outsourcing was a good thing for the economy in the long run. In a presidential election year, when few new jobs are being created despite a growing American economy, the issue of jobs lost to foreign competition - and what can be done about it - will be an important one on the campaign agenda of both Democrats and Republicans. Job migration, while only one factor in the current employment slump, points to two related economic challenges." In an election year many in the U.S. are discussing the issue of job migration. Yet, the issue is more complex than many realize. Learn more in today's New York Times.



• 20 February 2004
  "'Tech jobs are fleeing to India faster than ever,' moans the cover of Wired. Watch 'Lou Dobbs Tonight', America's main business show, and every factory-closing is hailed as proof of America's relentless 'hollowing-out' at the hands of dark forces in China, India and indeed the White House. Strangely, no mention is made of the fact that a pretty tiny proportion of all jobs lost actually go overseas...In the absence of an obvious jobs recovery, it is perhaps not surprising that the myth arose that the American economy was being buffeted by structural, not cyclical, forces. Yet it nevertheless is a myth-as three notable economists, William Baumol, Alan Blinder and Edward Wolff, point out in a recent book." While many in the United States argue that American jobs are being "outsourced" there are some who argue that this is simply a myth. Read more in this week's Economist.



• 19 February 2004
  "It's been a rough decade for New York's mafia. Dozens of members broke rank and became government witnesses; racketeering lawsuits took away control of big moneymaking operations and unions. But for all the bad-mouthing brought on by those setbacks, charges now pending in Brooklyn federal court against two alleged high-tech schemers suggest that while garbage carting and the Teamsters may no longer be under mob sway, the organization has remained remarkably resilient—and immensely profitable." Although the era of mafia gangsters is over, crime families appear to be changing with the times. Learn more about these "cyber-age Goodfellas" in a report by Tom Robbins of the Village Voice.



• 18 February 2004
  "Jerry Rowland feels the dragon breathing down his neck. He's the CEO of National Textiles, a T-shirtmaker in a U.S. state that has lost more than 37,000 textile jobs since the U.S. lifted quotas on Chinese imports two years ago. Unless Rowland's North Carolina workers suddenly become competitive with Chinese counterparts who earn just a few dollars a day, he fears his employees will be next...Half a world away, Yang Rong manages the privately run Jinhua Asset Underwear Co., with a factory tucked into hills a few hundred kilometers from Shanghai that exports some of the world's sexiest lace bras. ...His laborers come from villages across China to work 8-to-10-hour days for up to $120 a month and consider that a good deal in a nation where urban per capita income is $86 per month." Both American and Chinese workers are worried about a coming trade war between the U.S. and China. Read more at Time Magazine Europe.



• 17 February 2004
  "Many people from the developed world come to India for the rejuvenation promised by yoga and ayurvedic massage, but few consider it a destination for hip replacements or brain surgery. Yet that's exactly what the government in the Indian state of Maharashtra hopes will happen soon. Together with the state's business sector and private health-care providers it recently launched the Medical Tourism Council (MTC) of Maharashtra. Its aim: to make India a prime destination for medical tourists." Many Indian medical facilities are offering current medical and surgical techniques for a low price, and some are predicting that this will soon lead to the outsourcing of medical care. Learn more about how some in India are hoping to lure Western patients at the BBC.com.



• 16 February 2004
  "Supporters and opponents of cloning both agree a South Korean breakthrough in cloning human embryos means legislation is urgently needed, but U.S. efforts to regulate the field are stymied...U.S. researchers expressed frustration that a team in another country made the breakthrough while they were prevented from seeking federal funding to do the same work... Opponents of cloning are equally frustrated. Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who has led several unsuccessful efforts in Congress to ban all embryo research, said he would try again." Learn more about how recent Korean research is reigniting the debate surrounding stem cell research in the United States at Yahoo News (link no longer active).



• 13 February 2004
  "Homes could start being connected to the Internet through electrical outlets, and consumers and business may find it easier to make cheaper telephone calls online under new rules that the Federal Communications Commission began preparing on Thursday. Taken together, the new rules could profoundly affect the architecture of the Internet and the services it provides. They also have enormous implications for consumers, the telephone and energy industries, and equipment manufacturers...Under the new rules, expected to be completed in coming months, electric utilities could offer an alternative to the cable and phone companies and provide an enormous possible benefit to rural communities which are served by the power grid but not by broadband providers." Read more about this new F.C.C. ruling in today's New York Times.



• 12 February 2004
  "They do the jobs no one else wants to do, with an attention to detail that boggles the mind. Even so, no government or political party is putting up immigration barriers to keep them out -- at least not yet. This new breed of worker is a robot that goes about its tasks, well, automatically. And, for hundreds of thousands of U.S. consumers who own the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, the centuries-old-vision of automating what was once back-breaking labor has become real, and even a bit fun...'We are no longer selling to early adopters. We are selling to people who want to get their vacuuming done,' says iRobot founder and president, Helen Grunier, an engineer-turned-robotics-entrepreneur. 'Besides being robot geeks, we are very practical people.' The age of automatic appliances is at hand, said 36-year-old Grunier." Learn more about the ways that robots are transforming household chores, the workplace, and even the battlefield at Reuters (link no longer active).



• 11 February 2004
  "As expected, the French parliament has voted in favour of a new law to ban the wearing of Islamic headscarves in schools. And despite mass protests by French Muslims in recent weeks, the ban won by a landslide. It will not just affect Muslim girls - large Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps are also banned, as almost certainly are Sikh turbans. After months of public debate, the vote in parliament was a brief affair. Just five minutes for each party to sum up their position on this controversial new law...Yet others warn that far from uniting the country, this new measure will divide it more than ever." Despite widespread support throughout France, some are worried that this new law could have particularly adverse affects on the children of immigrants. Read more at BBC.com.



• 10 February 2004
  "Poor people in India's nearly 600,000 villages will be able to consult specialist doctors in the cities through live video when a tele-medicine satellite is launched at the end of 2005, the country's space agency said Tuesday...The satellite, to be named Healthsat, will give villagers access to urban health care facilities that are otherwise unaffordable and unreachable. The Indian government and several state governments have sought to link medical facilities in villages and cities with tele-medicine, a term for examining a patient, or images such as X-ray, by video from afar and giving consultations." Read more about how the Indian government is utilizing modern technology to offer health care to some of its poorest citizens at Yahoo News (link no longer active).



• 9 February 2004
  "A U.S. official has slammed a decision by several Asian nations to ban American poultry after chickens on a farm in the eastern state of Delaware were diagnosed with bird flu...Delaware's agriculture secretary said Sunday the Japanese and South Korean bans on U.S. poultry were 'unfortunate' because the bird flu virus found on the farm is contained and does not infect humans. 'I understand the concern because of what's taking place in other parts of the world, especially in Asia,' Secretary Michael Scuse told CNN. 'It's unfortunate that our trading partners would take this stance.'" The recent outbreak of bird flu in Delaware is having an impact on global trade. Read more about how this new outbreak is affecting poultry farmers in the United States at CNN.com.



• 6 February 2004
  "Poor nations must develop their own science and technology capabilities or risk falling farther and farther behind the industrialized world, a group of 90 national science academies reported on Thursday. The inability of most poor countries to keep up with rapid technological change shows that current models of technology transfer and international aid are not working well, the InterAcademy Council said in a report to the United Nations." Read more about this recent study and why it is so critical for poorer countries to develop their science programs at Reuters (link no longer active).



• 5 February 2004
  "Web surfers battling 'spyware' face a new problem: so-called spyware-killing programs that install the same kind of unwanted advertising software they promise to erase. Millions of computers have been hit in recent years by ads and PC-monitoring software that comes bundled with popular free downloads, notably music-swapping programs. The problem has attracted dozens of companies seeking to profit by promising to root out the offending software. But some software makers are exploiting the situation, critics allege, turning demand for antispyware software into a launch pad for new spyware attacks." Read about how some software companies are preying upon people's elevated fears of computer viruses at CNET News.



• 4 February 2004
  "When Kaiser Permanente began a program to dispose of its obsolete computer equipment two and a half years ago, it was motivated more by cost concerns than by the desire to properly dispose of products with potentially toxic content...But a more troubling aspect of the issue for Kaiser's [executives] came to light early in 2002, when two activist groups released a graphic and controversial report on the export of U.S. e-waste to developing countries. The report, released by the Basel Action Network (BAN) and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), asserted that 50% to 80% of e-waste collected in the U.S. is exported to developing countries." Read about the new environmental concerns surrounding the disposal of e-waste in this week's Computerworld.



• 3 February 2004
  "State and federal lawmakers are finding little success in efforts to stop technology companies from sending jobs overseas. But a paragraph buried in the giant federal spending bill the president signed Jan. 23 could pave the way for state laws around the country aimed at preventing the export of white-collar jobs to cheaper foreign markets. The paragraph prohibits the federal government from awarding certain contracts to companies that will perform the work overseas. The measure expires at the end of September, and industry officials say few contracts are likely to be affected. But the provision sets a precedent that information technology companies say could stoke a national backlash against them." Read more about this recent provision that could signal the beginning of a fight against the outsourcing of American jobs in the Washington Post.



• 2 February 2004
  "Should people have to buy electronic stamps to send e-mail? Some Internet experts have long suggested that the rising tide of junk e-mail, or spam, would turn into a trickle if senders had to pay even as little as a penny for each message they sent. Such an amount might be minor for legitimate commerce and communications, but it could destroy businesses that send a million offers in hopes that 10 people will respond. The idea has been dismissed both as impractical and against the free spirit of the Internet. Now, though, the idea of e-mail postage is getting a second look from the owners of the two largest e-mail systems in the world, Microsoft and Yahoo." Read about how the increasing volume of junk e-mail is forcing some to consider using "e-mail stamps" in today's New York Times.



• 30 January 2004
  "'I do not see much hope in the political domain, but a lot of hope in the technological domain,' said Shimon Peres last week at a private breakfast he hosted in a knotty wood-paneled ski-hotel dining room in Davos, Switzerland. The problems of the world, the former Israeli Prime Minister and Foreign Minister said, 'will be solved not by politicians but by technology.'...Peres was one of many speakers who made the very Davosian point that in a world of six billion people, 80 percent of the economic activity is coming from a mere one billion, while another billion lives on less than $1 a day." At this year's Davos conference many world leaders and captains of industry expressed confidence that technology will help solve a variety of the world's problems. Read more at CNN.com.



• 29 January 2004
  "Your computer -- that auxiliary brain that lives outside your skull -- soon may be issuing public updates on what's happening inside your body. Using tiny sensors, transmitters and some software, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have turned personal computers into advanced polygraph machines that they say are capable of monitoring people's emotions and abilities...The idea, according to Peter Merkle, who heads the Mentor/PAL program at Sandia, is to develop ways to understand and improve human performance, particularly in military or other high-risk situations." Learn how scientists are using computers to "read" people's emotions in Wired News.



• 28 January 2004
  "The sword of Damocles has been hanging for a while now, but few thought that United States lawmakers would finally allow it to drop. It was hardly surprising then, that when the US Senate, in its first federal move against outsourcing, passed a bill late last week seeking a ban on the sub-contracting of government jobs outside the US, India's money-spinning information technology industry was shell-shocked...But even as many, starting from the industry minister, analysts to industry honchos, hastened to add that the move's financial blow on the country's IT-enabled sector would be 'little to nil', nobody can deny that the economic and political implications of this bill are significant." Find out more about the latest measure aimed at slowing the outsourcing of American jobs and the impact that it may (or may not) have on India's IT industry in the Asia Times.



• 27 January 2004
  "A landmark legal battle over the creation of so-called 'designer babies' is to be settled by Britain's House of Lords. Opponents will challenge an Appeal Court decision that allowed a couple to use advanced screening techniques to select an embryo whose tissue could save their terminally ill son. Shahana and Raj Hashmi were granted permission by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to screen the tissue type of their IVF embryos to ensure they had a baby whose stem cells would be compatible with their son Zain." Read more about this controversial case and why opponents are worried that a ruling in favor of the Hashmis could lead to a trend in which parents would "design" certain physical traits of their unborn children in Reuters (link no longer active).



• 23 January 2004
  "Vittorio Rossi, a stocky car dealer from Sao Paulo in Brazil, tucked into his vegetarian dinner at a busy restaurant near Mumbai's Sahar international airport. 'I like the dosa,' he drooled. 'Indian food might be good for Brazilian travelers, but it can be too spicy in my country.' But the dosa, he averred, will be a hit back home in Brazil." Global "convergence" is a multi-faceted phenomenon. As McDonald's has proven, fast food is one way to introduce formerly distant cultures to each other. But it isn't only American fast food as demonstrated at today's The New Scientist.



• 21 January 2004
  "Computer scientists are concerned that new electronic voting machines - already bought by several US states - have been designed to have the capability to transmit vote tallies wirelessly. Critics of e-voting have previously cited uncertified software upgrades or bugs in the programs as problems, but they say the new touchscreen machines' wireless potential poses a novel security threat... Some say wireless communication is too insecure to be trusted with the democratic process. They also point out that simply having the PCMCIA slot means a bogus election official or voter could secretly slip a wireless card into the machine." Learn how this new technology being applied to voting machines could affect the democratic process at The New Scientist.



• 20 January 2004
  "Sharla Miller of Gillette, Wyo., always wanted a baby girl, but the odds seemed stacked against her...In the course of her Internet research, she stumbled upon a Web site for the Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, headed by Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, where she learned about an in vitro fertilization technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis. By creating embryos outside the womb, then testing them for gender, PGD could guarantee—with almost 100 percent certainty—the sex of her baby." Drawing upon new types of technology Parents are now able to choose their children's gender. Read more about this new technological advance that raises troubling questions for many in this week's Newsweek.



• 19 January 2004
  "What do these things have in common: the TV show American Idol, Howard Dean's presidential campaign, eBay, and the open-source Linux operating system? They're all manifestations of a key trend of our time: the shift in power away from centralized institutions and toward the individual -- from the center to the edge." Read about the way in which the internet is creating a social and economic trend that some are describing as the "bottom-up economy" at CNN.com.



• 15 January 2004
  "By the middle of next year, the British passport could be quite different to the document currently waved at immigration. As part of growing concerns about national and global security, immigration and asylum, as well as plain old identity theft, the official UK travel document will not just carry a photograph, it will also have a microchip in it. The chip will hold biometric data - unique physiological or behavioural characteristics - and will be mandatory in passports renewed from 2007/8." Read more about these new British travel documents at BBC News.



• 13 January 2004
  "To high-technology companies, China has been a land of seemingly pure promise in recent years. Not only is it a fast-growing consumer market, but it has also become a low-cost workshop for assembling technology products for American, European and Japanese concerns. But as China moves to expand its own technology industries, the government has taken unusual steps that are leading to new trade tensions with the United States, according to Silicon Valley executives, trade experts and United States officials." Read more about some of the measures that are worrying American executives and trade officials in today's New York Times.



• 12 January 2004
  "Women in many Asian countries do not have as much access to computers and the Internet as men, speakers at a technology summit said Monday. The disparity exists in countries from South Korea, the world's largest market for broadband Internet, to India, an emerging software superpower, speakers said at the Asia Information Technology Ministers Summit in this southern Indian city." Read more about the gender divide between Asia's internet users at Yahoo News (link no longer active).



• 9 January 2004
  "The Palestinian people may forgo their decades-long struggle for an independent state and instead push to become citizens of a single, Jewish-Arab nation, the Palestinian prime minister said Thursday in response to an Israeli threat to unilaterally draw boundaries." Read more about the latest development in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and why the creation of a single Israeli/Palestinian state could be catastrophic for Israelis in today's The San Francisco Chronicle.



• 8 January 2004
  "Worried about possible government reaction to the movement of U.S. technology jobs overseas, leading American computer companies are defending recent shifts in employment to Asia and elsewhere as necessary for future profits and warning policy makers against restrictions. In a report released Wednesday, the companies said government efforts to preserve American jobs through limits on overseas trade would backfire and 'could lead to retaliation from our trading partners and even an all-out trade war.'" Read more about how tech companies are defending the movement of jobs at CNN.com.



• 7 January 2004
  "Adapting a concept that supermarkets have perfected, U.S. immigration authorities today will begin using a digital inventory control system to keep tabs on millions of foreign visitors who enter the country with visas. Instead of bar codes and scanners that shopkeepers use to track cereal boxes, the government will take digital fingerprints and photos to register visitors as they arrive in the United States, and eventually to confirm their departure." Read more at Yahoo News (link no longer active).



• 6 January 2004
  "The World Health Organization urged caution on Monday as provincial leaders in southern China rushed to kill thousands of civet cats as a preventive measure against SARS. Organization officials warned that such a large-scale slaughter, if done improperly, could pose serious hazards, including the possibility of more infections...After the announcement about the civets, the W.H.O. officials called for leaders in Guangdong Province to conduct a risk assessment study before killing the estimated 10,000 civet cats in captivity in the province." Read more about the W.H.O.'s concerns in this article published by The New York Times



• 5 January 2004
  "Disaster could hardly have struck at a worse time or taken a less anticipated form...The authorities were ill-prepared. It was Bam’s first big quake in a millennium." The earthquake and its tragic consequences in Iran are nothing new in history, but, today more than ever, politics converges with nearly everything of significance and an earthquake of this dimension is very significant. The comments at Britain's Economist don't go into detail, but do remind us that a controversy-ridden nation in a controversy-ridden region has special reason to worry about the consequences of natural disasters.



• 2 January 2004
  "The internet is set to become the basis for just about every form of communication, according to net pioneer Vint Cerf, and he should know what he is talking about...To begin with, he thinks, the net will stop being a part of the telephone network. Instead the telephone network will become a part of the net." And there's more in this article on the Internet's future at London's BBC News, reminding us that the Internet is the beginning, not the end, of a communications revolution.



• 1 January 2004
  "Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions..." Can voluntarism replace regulation? If not, what level of regulation are willing to accept and who will enforce it? Guy Gugliotta and Eric Pianin report at the Washington Post.

 

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