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Privacy advocates obtained database records showing that the government routinely records the race of people pulled aside for extra screening as they enter the country, along with cursory answers given to U.S. border inspectors about their purpose in traveling. In one case, the records note Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore’s choice of reading material, and worry over the number of small flashlights he’d packed for the trip.

The breadth of the information obtained by the Gilmore-funded Identity Project (using a Privacy Act request) shows the government’s screening program at the border is actually a “surveillance dragnet,” according to the group’s spokesman Bill Scannell.

“There is so much sensitive information in the documents that it is clear that Homeland Security is not playing straight with the American people,” Scannell said.

The documents show a tiny slice of the massive airline-record collection stored by the government, as well as the screening records mined for the controversial Department of Homeland Security passenger-rating system that assigns terrorist scores to travelers entering and leaving the country, including U.S. citizens.

The so-called Automated Targeting System scrutinizes every airline passenger entering or leaving the country using classified rules that tell agents which passengers to give extra screening to and which to deny entry or exit from the country.

The system relies on data ranging from the government’s 700,000-name terrorism watchlist to data included in airline-travel database entries, known as Passenger Name Records, which airlines are required to submit to the government.

In a series of multibillion-dollar deals, Dubai, Qatar and Abu Dhabi reached out to acquire significant stakes in three stock markets and a U.S. private equity firm, illustrating their increasing appetite for investing the growing wealth from record oil prices in high-quality assets abroad.

But one of the deals could run into political resistance in the United States – as happened last year when DP World of Dubai was pressured to sell the U.S. port operations it had acquired as part of a larger deal.

On Thursday, Dubai – the fastest-growing financial center in the Gulf – agreed to take a stake in the Nasdaq Stock Market, which is based in New York. It would become the first government-controlled stock exchange to hold a significant stake in an American rival, prompting calls in Washington for a national security review of the Nasdaq deal.

Elena Rusalkina, the silver-haired woman who runs the institute, gestured to the center of the claustrophobic room, where what looked like a dentist’s chair sits in front of a glowing computer monitor. “We’ve had volunteers, a lot of them,” she said, the thick concrete walls muffling the noise from the college campus outside. “We worked out a program with (a psychiatric facility) to study criminals. There’s no way to falsify the results. There’s no subjectivism.”

“The key $1.40 level has been breached and dollar weakness is evident across all currency pairs reflecting the prospect of a move in interest rate differentials against the currency,” said Derek Halpenny at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

The euro’s rise through the psychologically important $1.40 barrier – seen as pain barrier for eurozone exporters – triggered a flurry stop-loss buying, sending the single European currency higher across the board.

The euro rose 0.5 per cent to $1.4035 against the dollar and by 0.4 per cent to £0.7006 against the pound – its highest level since January 2005. It gained 0.2 per cent to Y162.20 against the yen.

Meanwhile the dollar fell 0.2 per cent to $2.0050 against the pound, 0.4 per cent against the yen to Y115.55 and 0.6 per cent to a fresh 30-year low of C$1.0090 against the Canadian dollar. It also lost 0.9 per cent to SFr1.1739 against the Swiss franc.

David Woo at Barclays Capital said as the US economy slowed down, it would become more difficult for the US to attract financing for its current account deficit.

“This increases the risk of a disorderly adjustment of global imbalances in which the dollar is likely to perform very poorly,” he said. “With euro/dollar now having broken above $1.40, the market is likely to price in this risk through higher volatility.”

Analysts said the move in euro/dollar through $1.40 would also prompt a rise in political comment on currency issues.

“With the dollar moving to some sensitive levels, currency politics are likely to return to the agenda in the last quarter of this year,” said Simon Derrick at Bank of New York Mellon.

He said that after recent comment from Nicholas Sarkozy, the French president, it would not be surprising to hear more comments from within the eurozone on the impact of the strong euro on the region’s exporters.

Meanwhile, he said tensions between the US and China were also set to rise ahead of the launch of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, which is intended to maximise returns on $200bn of China’s $1,330bn dollar stockpiles.

Analysts said the launch of the fund might speed up the diversification of China’s reserves away from the dollar, piling more pressure on the currency.

“With $200bn to play with, there will be heightened speculation on what they will spend their money on,” said Mr Derrick.

Hans Redeker at BNP Parisbas said Saudi Arabia, which is also sitting on significant dollar stockpiles, was also going to be in the spotlight since it did not follow the Fed in cutting interest rates, even though the Saudi riyal is pegged to the dollar.

He said it was understandable that Saudi Arabia was not following the Fed’s lead, given the rising inflationary pressure within its overheating and oil price supported economy, but the country would have to tighten fiscal conditions – which was unlikely to happen.

“This is a very dangerous situation for the dollar,” said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

“Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States,” he said.

The Saudi central bank said today that it would take “appropriate measures” to halt huge capital inflows into the country, but analysts say this policy is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to the collapse of the dollar peg.

As a close ally of the US, Riyadh has so far tried to stick to the peg, but the link is now destabilising its own economy.
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The Fed’s dramatic half point cut to 4.75pc yesterday has already caused a plunge in the world dollar index to a fifteen year low, touching with weakest level ever against the mighty euro at just under $1.40.

There is now a growing danger that global investors will start to shun the US bond markets. The latest US government data on foreign holdings released this week show a collapse in purchases of US bonds from $97bn to just $19bn in July, with outright net sales of US Treasuries.

The danger is that this could now accelerate as the yield gap between the United States and the rest of the world narrows rapidly, leaving America starved of foreign capital flows needed to cover its current account deficit — expected to reach $850bn this year, or 6.5pc of GDP.

Mr Redeker said foreign investors have been gradually pulling out of the long-term US debt markets, leaving the dollar dependent on short-term funding. Foreigners have funded 25pc to 30pc of America’s credit and short-term paper markets over the last two years.

“They were willing to provide the money when rates were paying nicely, but why bear the risk in these dramatically changed circumstances? We think that a fall in dollar to $1.50 against the euro is not out of the question at all by the first quarter of 2008,” he said.

“This is nothing like the situation in 1998 when the crisis was in Asia, but the US was booming. This time the US itself is the problem,” he said.

Mr Redeker said the biggest danger for the dollar is that falling US rates will at some point trigger a reversal yen “carry trade”, causing massive flows from the US back to Japan.

Jim Rogers, the commodity king and former partner of George Soros, said the Federal Reserve was playing with fire by cutting rates so aggressively at a time when the dollar was already under pressure.

The risk is that flight from US bonds could push up the long-term yields that form the base price of credit for most mortgages, the driving the property market into even deeper crisis.

“If Ben Bernanke starts running those printing presses even faster than he’s already doing, we are going to have a serious recession. The dollar’s going to collapse, the bond market’s going to collapse. There’s going to be a lot of problems,” he said.

The Federal Reserve, however, clearly calculates the risk of a sudden downturn is now so great that the it outweighs dangers of a dollar slide.

Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan said this week that house prices may fall by “double digits” as the subprime crisis bites harder, prompting households to cut back sharply on spending.

For Saudi Arabia, the dollar peg has clearly become a liability. Inflation has risen to 4pc and the M3 broad money supply is surging at 22pc.

The pressures are even worse in other parts of the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates now faces inflation of 9.3pc, a 20-year high. In Qatar it has reached 13pc.

This is Animal Farm meets the Marx Brothers!

It would be one thing if this were meant for the massive factory farms run by agribusiness conglomerates, which account for the vast number of disease outbreaks. After all, they have corporate staffs, computer networks, and existing systems of inventory tracking. But no — rather than focus on the big boys that cause the big harm, NAIS targets hundreds of thousands of small farms, homesteaders, organic producers, hobbyists … and maybe even you.

Me, you shriek?! Yes. If you keep a pony for your kids or board a couple of riding horses, if you’ve got a few chickens in your backyard, if you’ve got a potbellied pig or a pet goose, if your youngsters are raising a half-dozen ducks as part of a 4-H club project, if you maintain a buffalo or a goat just for the fun of it — indeed, if you have any farm animals, NAIS wants you in its computerized grasp.

Every farm, home, horse stable, or other domicile of these animals would have to have its address and precise GPS coordinates filed into the system’s central computer, along with the name, phone number, and other personal data of the owner/ renter of the premises. Owners of the animals would have to tag every one of them (luckily, fish ponds are not included!) with an approved tracking mechanism — most likely by implanting radio-frequency ID chips into them.

Then comes the burden of logging and reporting the “events” in each animal’s life. These not only include sales and deaths, but also any movement of the animals off the registered premises, including taking them to a vet, going to a horse show, presenting them for judging at the county fair, trucking them to another farm and participating in a roundup or sporting event.

…

With the unveiling of its 2005 strategic plan, however, the USDA got way more public participation than it wanted. Quicker and hotter than a prairie fire, word of this corporate driven, bureaucratic monstrosity spread throughout the countryside, and NAIS instantaneously became the most hated initiative in rural America. Meetings were held, rallies were organized, research was done, websites sprang up, blogs raged, Paul Reveres rode, groups formed, lawyers leapt into action — and the rebellion was on!

Stunned, the establishment took a step back. The 2005 plan said NAIS was mandatory, but in November 2006, the USDA rushed out a revision declaring NAIS would be voluntary and that the feds would let states take the lead in implementing the system.

Perry appeared in 4th District Court in Orem to enter her plea in a case prominent Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred described as a gross injustice.

“Today, law enforcement in Orem has enshrined itself as the laughing stock of our country by prosecuting a 70-year-old great-grandmother for allegedly not watering her lawn,” Allred said.

“This ill-conceived action ensures Orem’s law enforcement authorities first place in the [Guinness World Records] for stupidity.”

Perry’s next appearance will be on Oct. 11 for a pre-trial conference.

In July, Perry was cited by Officer James Flygare of the police’s Neighborhood Preservation Unit for failing to water her lawn. Perry refused to give her name to the officer and, when Flygare tried to stop her from going back inside her house, she reportedly tripped and injured her nose.

She was arrested and taken to police station but released shortly afterwards.