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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
--- Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2003 17:24:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Nick Kralevich To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: Big Brother -- Diversity Visa? [please remove my e-mail address if you repost this message -- too much spam] The US Department of State recently announced it's new process for handling the Diversity Visa of 2005. The Diversity Visa, for people who aren't familiar with it, is a program where up to 50,000 people are granted admission to the United States from under-represented countries. http://travel.state.gov/dv2005.html What's interesting about this year's change is that all applications are now submitted electronically. Included with each application is a JPEG photo of the person submitting the application. In the past, even the paper versions of the Diversity Visa have been subject to privacy concerns. Now that the data is being submitted electronically, one can only imagine how the data may be abused. In an article about a year ago, Ed Dickens made the following comments on the paper version of the Diversity Visa: http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/politics/3914573.htm Ed Dickens, a spokesman for the Bureau of Consular Affairs, which runs the program, said the State Department would be willing to change its rules to share all the forms with the FBI and the CIA. "We'd be happy to mail them to the CIA if they wanted," Dickens said. "They're not of particular use to us." One can only wonder at the possibilities now that the data will be electronically available... Take care, -- Nick Kralevich ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------