From Bob Parsons about NTIA’s decision to strip away constitutional right to privacy:

Today I have the unfortunate responsibility of informing you that there has been a decision made by bureaucrats of a Federal agency that takes away your right to privacy as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

This decision was unilaterally made by the National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA) without hearings that would determine the impact on those affected, and delivered without notice — in short, the NTIA decision was made without due process of any kind. This is exactly how our government is not supposed to work.

The effect of this decision is to disallow new private domain name registrations on .US domain names. In addition, if you already own a private .US domain name registration, you will be forced to forfeit your privacy no later than January 26, 2006. By that time, you will need to choose between either making your personal information available to anyone who wants to see it, or giving up your right to that domain name.

I personally find it ironic that our right to .US privacy was stripped away, without due process, by a federal government agency — an agency that should be looking out for our individual rights.

On my personal Blog, www.BobParsons.com there are a number of articles where you can learn more about the NTIA’s unfortunate decision and what you can do to help get it reversed.

Add comment Datestamp: March 30th, 2005

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On facade of a Wal-Mart outside of Houston.

Add comment Datestamp: March 28th, 2005

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US Visit kiosk with passport and fingerprint scanner.

Add comment Datestamp: March 27th, 2005

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Newark Internatonal–US Visit exit program kiosk.

Add comment Datestamp: March 27th, 2005

The New York Times > Arts > Art & Design > Need Talent to Exhibit in Museums? Not This Prankster

The New York Times > Arts > Art & Design > Need Talent to Exhibit in Museums? Not This Prankster

It was not nearly as dangerous as the time he sneaked into the elephant pen at the London Zoo and scrawled a graffiti message from the point of view of an elephant: “I want out. This place is too cold. Keeper smells. Boring, boring, boring.”

Add comment Datestamp: March 24th, 2005

Guestbook

Just Because

[Really, I never wore one, but found this strangely compelling.]

The Side Ponytail Petition:

I believe that the Side-Ponytail should be brought back into the fashion world and adopted by all of the most famous and most relevant international models and other jet-setting, trend-setting people in the world.

Long live the Side-Ponytail!

Add comment Datestamp: March 23rd, 2005

— CAE DEFENSE FUND —

When Thought Becomes Crime
The New York Council for the Humanities recently rescinded a grant awarded to the City University of New York for its series on academic freedom because Steve Kurtz was one of the invited speakers!

Read Critical Art Ensemble’s response.

Add comment Datestamp: March 22nd, 2005

BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Grins banned from passport pics

BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Grins banned from passport pics
Grins banned from passport pics

Travellers have been ordered not to look too happy in their passport photographs to avoid confusing facial recognition scanners.

Toothy, open mouthed grins are being outlawed from the tiny 35mm by 45mm photographs because they will throw off scanners used at airports.

Add comment Datestamp: March 22nd, 2005

MakingThingsPublic

MakingThingsPublic

A Project Curated by Steve Dietz for Making Things Public

An artist friend tells the story of attending the 1967 Montreal World’s Fair nearly every day during the summer he was 12 years old. It was an eye opening experience, where he first saw Josef Svoboda’s theater, Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome (the American Pavilion), Kino Automat, an early interactive cinema, and a “great 360 degree film with a cliff sequence, which you almost fell over with the car.”

Today we have learned to understand World Fairs as exercises in nationalist diplomacy, in multinational marketing, in techno-utopian visions of an uncontestable future. They are events one would only visit like an anthropologist or with an out of town guest, who is distantly related by blood.

In either case, fairs assemble a public — or publics — and that is the goal of “Fair Assembly,” which uses the reach of the Internet to assemble a public beyond the time and space of the Making Things Public exhibition in Karlsruhe, Germany, and to assemble a set of projects, which is beyond the reach of a single curator.

Add comment Datestamp: March 21st, 2005

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Is it Mickey? Or Jamie and the parking meter…

Add comment Datestamp: March 20th, 2005