This quote is from an article in Chron.com about plans in the State of Texas to run criminal background checks on anyone attempting to board an evacuation bus in an emergency such as another big hurricane or tornado.

Of course this has nothing to do with the Orwellian Police State that America is becoming, these nice folks just want to keep the sexual predators away from the children:

The idea, according to Jack Colley, is to keep sex offenders and others who may be wanted by police off the same buses used by the most vulnerable during an evacuation: the elderly, disabled residents and children.

What’s even better is that this really nice trustworthy telecom company called AT&T is going to provide electronic bracelets for everyone so they don’t get lost:

Earlier this month, it was announced AT&T Inc. has contracted with the Texas Governor’s Division of Emergency Management to provide electronic wristbands for those residents wanting them, before they board an evacuation bus.

The wristbands would be scanned by emergency management officials and the person’s name would be added to a bus boarding log. That person’s name and their bus information would be sent wirelessly to the University of Texas Center for Space Research data center.

When the evacuee arrives at a designated shelter, the wristband would be scanned again to help state employees respond to inquiries from the public about the safety and location of evacuated family members.

The decision to wear a wristband is purely voluntary. But anyone who boards an evacuation bus will have to provide a name. There will be no requirement to show an identification card, such as a driver’s license, but officials may ask those boarding for an ID.

Oh, and you don’t have to show ID to anyone even though some jack booted thug will be ‘asking’ for it.

Come on people, the only difference between what’s being described here and what happened to the Jews in Germany is that these guys are much more organized and they’ve got better technology which makes them that much scarier.

I saw this in an article here:

Where Are You Now?

One of the more interesting aspects, other than a nationwide broadband WiMax service in the first place, is Sprint and Google actively working on location-based services that can track exactly where the device is.

“Assuming that a customer opts-in in a transparent way, we can do location in a couple of different ways. The first is, traditional advertisers would be very interested to know where people are. If they are close to restaurants or bars or other places of interest, we think advertising Email Marketing Software - Free Demo could become very meaningful to customers,” Cannistra said.

“A second way, on an opt-in basis, would be to locate where people on your contact list are. Wherever you are, say on a Friday night, you could see … on a map on your device, where your friends are,” he explained.

This would be cool, as long as it’s opt-in, and the Feds don’t have an API feed from it, but unless we get Ron Paul as President that probably won’t be the case.