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Planet Better

Scott Shuger
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 8, 1999, at 7:08 AM ET

The Washington Post leads with the Clinton administration's announcement that it plans to play a role in the numerous city lawsuits against the gun industry. Federal officials, says the Post, will begin pressing gun makers to make concessions to settle the various city lawsuits and if the companies don't, HUD will bring a class action suit of its own against them on behalf of the nation's public housing authorities. The story is fronted at the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. The LAT leads with the first official bureaucratic reaction to the almost certain loss of the Mars Polar Lander: NASA's vow to completely reassess its interplanetary exploration program, a story everybody else fronts but the NYT. USA Today goes with a story everybody else stuffs: the decision by a federal judge to block a web news service's attempt to post the annual financial disclosure forms submitted by all federal judges. Paper versions of the forms are already available to the general public. The NYT leads with a local story: The claim of public school investigators that dozens of New York City teachers and two principals supplied answers to students for the standardized tests that determine how city schools are ranked and also whether or not students are promoted. The paper's top non-local story, which nobody else fronts, is Israeli P.M. Ehud Barak's call for a moratorium on further Jewish settlement of the West Bank, an apparent reversal of the policy Israel had been following since Barak came into power last summer.

The WP lead observes that the new federal gun strategy could realize through the courts gun control measures that have failed in Congress. Measures like controlling sales at gun shows, limiting the volume of gun purchases at any one time, and cutting off dealers whose sold guns are disproportionately involved in crimes. The NYT story adds a White House-supplied stat that fleshes out the public housing angle: Typically, more than 70 percent of the 500 murders occurring annually in the nation's 100 largest housing projects are committed with a handgun. The papers point out that the federal government's move is patterned after its lawsuit against the cigarette manufacturers. But the LAT notes an important difference: the tobacco companies have many times the size and staying power of the gun companies.

The LAT NASA story goes high with the agency's administrator saying, "Clearly something is wrong, and we have to understand it." The coverage makes it clear that understanding might require postponement or even scrapping of already-scheduled space missions. A main object of NASA's reassessment, says the LAT, will be the "faster, better, cheaper," mandate the unmanned missions have been operating under, including the entire $356.8 million Mars two-mission package that failed this year. The LAT lead breaks a baffling silence that has marked the papers' NASA coverage in recent days: it finally identifies the Mars program's prime contractor--Lockheed Martin (although not until the 10th paragraph). In this, the paper's hand was somewhat forced, since it's now apparent that the company's performance will be a focus of the NASA re-look. The Wall Street Journal story also mentions Lockheed, but the NYT story doesn't, nor does USAT's, nor does the WP's front-pager, (although an inside Post NASA effort does).

The central issue of the federal bench financial data case--whether dissemination via the Web poses some sort of extra danger not posed by paper--is also raised in a front-page WSJ feature about a recently discovered scam in which someone applied for and got and used credit cards in the names of the top U.S. military officers, including more than 75 generals and admirals. This was possible because the officers' service numbers, which are just their Social Security numbers, were made available to Congress as part of the promotion process, and have since appeared on a Web site maintained to protest the use of the SSN as a national ID. But, the story points out, nobody can prove that the brass' SSNs weren't gotten directly from the Congressional Record. None of the brass are on the hook for the money cadged but the story points out a more serious angle: Since service numbers are now just SSNs, if a soldier is captured, as things stand now, he is required to provide his SSN to his captors, which they could use to find out all about his family, finances and personal background. The Pentagon is therefore, says the Journal, seriously considering going back to its old practice of issuing separate service numbers unrelated to SSNs.

An inside WP story reports that the tense situation between Cuba and the U.S. over custody of that six-year-old boy was compounded when Cuba demanded that the U.S. return the crew of a fishing boat it says was hijacked out of Cuba Monday, and is now in Coast Guard custody.

About Face! On Nov. 12., Today's Papers wrote that Bill Bradley joined the National Guard during the Vietnam War. In fact, he joined the Air Force Reserve. TP regrets the error and has fixed it in the online text.

The WSJ reports that Discover, American Express and MasterCard can now be used to pay income tax bills. But not Visa. The paper doesn't explain why. You'd think the company would want its piece of what's sure to be a record volume of tax payments, no?

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Scott Shuger was a Slate senior writer and the original author of "Today's Papers." He died June 15, 2002.
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The readers respond:


I am not a lawyer but I can understand why Visa won't accept tax payments by credit card. If you fail to pay your taxes the IRS can seize your assets. But if a credit card company pays your taxes and then you don't pay the credit card company what measures can the credit card company take to get its money? I can't imagine that in court the debt you owe to the IRS is equivalent to the debt you owe your credit card company. This seems like a real good deal for the IRS and a horrible idea for the credit card companies. In effect, the IRS is using them as a collection agency.

--Daniel Thomas

(To reply, click here.)


My, but isn't this a slippery slope? So, when will the government go after the car industries for the countless lives lost in automobile accidents due to the reckless and careless people behind the wheel? Perhaps they should sue the alcohol industries for the high price that drunk driving has on society. Maybe we will really be safe from ourselves if the government takes control of all business, but only in an advisory capacity at first, and has the final say in what gets produced and how, who sells it and where, who buys it and how much they have to buy. Let's trade all our freedom for security and then maybe the world will be a better place.

--Paul

(To reply, click here.)


Paul you are absolutely right. My favorite statistic being bandied about now is that 40,000 people a year die due to doctors' and hospitals' preventable errors. Where's the hoopla about that? What about knives? They are designed to cut. That is patently unsafe. I demand a knife that can only be used by its registered owner and which cannot be operated in an unsafe manner.

"70 percent of the 500 murders occurring annually in the nation's 100 largest housing projects are committed with a handgun." How many innocent people have protected themselves with a handgun? Ooops I forgot, nobody innocent owns a handgun. And what about the crime rate? Isn't it going down? Shouldn't that have a bearing on this? Here's a good one: In 1998 there were more kids killed by airbags than in school shootings.

--Sparsons

(To reply, click here.)


There is one critical difference between the paper and web versions of these records. In the paper case you are required to state name and occupation, and the judge is notified of who requested the documents. Unfortunately it's a lot easier to forge that information on the web--we desperately need an internet-based identification system. (Practically speaking, we have registrars that will do this, several companies that issue secure web ids will also issue personal ones given proof of identification, but this obviously isn't in wide use.)

More interesting to me though, is the notification policy. If you read David Brin's excellent book on privacy, The Transparent Society, you'll see that he recommends that we give up on trying to keep things private (if the government doesn't get us, the corporations will) and instead have a policy of openness and notification.

Openness levels the playing field. If you can see the information, so can I. So restrictions such as those on criminal records (the feds have a complete list, but you and I have to go to every courthouse in the country to find the information) go away. If the government can watch people, I can watch who they are watching too.

Notification is the second key item though. Anytime anyone accesses your "private" information, you get notified. Consider how different you'd feel about your credit records and such if you knew that every time some anonymous company requested them you got full information on who asked and what they asked for. That fact alone would put a hold on a lot of individuals who are just curious about their neighbors--let he who has no secrets ask for his neighbors' secrets.

We can't close the gate on a lot of our privacy (and Brin's book points out that new video technology is going to impact us even more), but we can level the playing field so that every individual knows who is meddling with their life. I think that's more the point of this recent judicial decision. Our task should be making sure that the technology and standards exist so we can carry this kind of verification into the digital world.

--Kee Hinckley

(To reply, click here.)

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