Thursday, January 12, 2012 Brandon Turbeville Activist Post
Over the past few months, I have written several articles dealing with the coming cashless society and the developing technological control grid. I also have written about the surge of government attempts to gain access to and force the use of biometric data for the purposes of identification, tracking, tracing, and surveillance.
Unfortunately, the reactions I receive from the general public are almost always the same. While some recognize the danger, most simply deny that governments have the capability or even the desire to create a system in which the population is constantly monitored by virtue of their most private and even biological information. Others, either gripped by apathy or ignorance, cannot believe that the gadgets given to them from the massive tech corporations are designed for anything other than their entertainment and enjoyment.
However, current events in India should serve not just as a warning, but also as a foreshadowing of the events to come in the Western world, specifically the United States.
Recently, India has launched a nationwide program involving the allocation of a Unique Identification Number (UID) to every single one of its 1.2 billion residents. Each of the numbers will be tied to the biometric data of the recipient using three different forms of information – fingerprints, iris scans, and pictures of the face. All ten digits of the hand will be recorded, and both eyes will be scanned...[Full Article]
Well, remember the movie “Minority Report,” how cameras everywhere would scan Tom Cruise, instantly recognizing him to either welcome him into the shopping mall or send the cops after him? The same sort of facial recognition technology is exactly what Digital Signal Corporation is into–except these guys are for real.
Marketwire recently reported that DSC received $15 million to develop three dimensional long-range biometric facial recognition technology...[Full Article]
Not since AT&T whistleblower Marc Klein's 2006 revelations that U.S. telecommunications giants were secretly collaborating with the government to spy on Americans, has a story driven home the point that we are confronted by a daunting set of invisible enemies: the security and intelligence firms constellating the dark skies of the National Security State.
As echoes from last month's disclosures by the cyber-guerrilla collective Anonymous continue to reverberate, leaked HBGary emails and documents are providing tantalizing insight into just how little daylight there is between private companies and the government.
The latest front in the ongoing war against civil liberties and privacy rights is the Pentagon's interest in "persona management software."
A euphemism for a suite of high-tech tools that equip an operative--military or corporate, take your pick--with multiple avatars or sock puppets, our latter day shadow warriors hope to achieve a leg up on their opponents in the "war of ideas" through stealthy propaganda campaigns rebranded as "information operations."
A Pervasive Surveillance State
The signs of a pervasive surveillance state are all around us. From the "persistent cookies" that track our every move across the internet to indexing dissidents already preemptively detained in public and private data bases: threats to our freedom to speak out without harassment, or worse, have never been greater.
As constitutional scholar Jack Balkin warned, the transformation of what was once a democratic republic based on the rule of law into a "National Surveillance State," feature "huge investments in electronic surveillance and various end runs around traditional Bill of Rights protections and expectations about procedure."...[Full Article]
In an exclusive interview with Raw Story, attorney Chris Calabrese, an ACLU's legislative counsel in Washington, D.C., warned that this move in particular was indicative of a fast approaching mass surveillance state that poses a "grave danger" to American values.
The FBI's forthcoming biometrics center will be based on a system constructed by defense contractor Lockheed Martin, and part of that system is already operating today in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Starting with fingerprints, and creating a global law enforcement database for the sharing of those biometric images, the system is slated to expand outward, eventually encompassing facial mapping and other advanced forms of computer-aided identification.
To help ramp up the amount of data flooding into this center, the FBI said that electronic fingerprint scanners would be sent to state and local police agencies, which would be empowered to capture prints from any suspect, even if they haven't been arrested or convicted of a crime.
"We think rolling out these kind of invasive measures is really another step toward mass surveillance of the population," Calabrese told Raw Story. "I mean, now if you're just walking around on the street, do you think that automatically police should be able to check your fingerprint? Seems very invasive to us."...[Full Article]
The National Identity Card includes Complete Biometrics of all school children and adults by 2012.
Councilors and legislators involved in the matter were unaware of the terms of the presidential decree published today in the Official Journal of the Federation (the official paper where laws are made public), despite the refusal from congressmen, the IFE (Federal Election Institute, CNDH (Nation Human Rights Commission) and the IFAI (the Mexican equivalent to the FOIA).
Consejeros y legisladores, involucrados en este tema, desconocían hasta esta tarde los términos y alcances de este decreto publicado hoy en el Diario Oficial de la Federación. Councilors and legislators involved in the issue were unaware until this afternoon as to the terms and scope of the decree published today in the Official Journal of the Federation. "We are analyzing the document and according to preliminary data this seems to be an act of war from the Executive who clearly has earned the sense of being authoritarian," said Rep. Canek Vázquez, chairman of the panel that examines the issue of the identity card.
[In your face people! They did not know of this decree. Yeah sure! So, here they are accepting that Fecazi is an act of war on the people. The term ‘albazo’ in Spanish refers to just that as staed by Congressman Vázquez. (Follow link http://es.thefreedictionary.com/albazo). And yes, Vazquez finally says that Calderon is a Dictator of a Fascist State. A mini Franco, a mini Hitler, a psychopath that has to be removed from power by the goodelements within our Armed Forces that believe in the Constitution and are willing to do the right thing.]
Among the amendments and additions include changes to Article 47, paragraph I, so that the card contains photographs, fingerprints, iris imaging and citizen’s signature of the city, it also specifies that the registration of these data will be in accordance with the mechanisms that by the Ministry of Interior determines.
[So, you see? It is in accordance to what Big Brother wants, decrees and determines. The Ministry of the Interior… sounds so much like Goebbels in Hitler’s time, doesn’t it? Scanning, databasing, concentrating, selecting the few, culling the rest.
Mind you that Calderon stated before coming into power that he was going to do this but the ‘unwoken sheeple’ of a people that live in Mexico are totally ignorant with the NOW, the Illuminati and the Antichrist Conspiracies that they believe that Dan brown and JJ Benitez are both true instead of fiction. It’s all about State and Corporate Mind Control and dumbing down the sheeple via the media, GMOs, MSG, chemtrails, vaccines etc.
Sadly, it sinks in when seeing how fast all this is playing out and how the few who are awake and understand the depth and scope of this are ready to take it to the next stage, but the rest do not follow and shamefully curdle into their little peasant beds doing what they are ordered by ‘Papa Gobierno’.]
Transients in this decree specify that “during the 5 years following its entry into force, the National Population Registry (RENAPO) can register Mexicans who are 18 years of age and have their Citizen Identity Card issued.” Mind you that next Monday, January 24th 2011, the RENAPO starts the process and procedure for the issuance of the cards to children between ages 4 and 17 living in one of the six states selected for this first stage (Baja California, Colima, Chiapas, Guanajuato, Jalisco and Nuevo León). ‘Gobernación’, a loose term referring to the Secretaria de Gobernacion or Ministry of the Interior, vis a vis, the Department of State, announced that the expedition of minors will be completed by the end of 2012.
[How lucky of our children to be marked in one of the first 6 states. Just remember! We are never, ever, ever going to let the regime scan us, steal our private property which includes our mind, our thought, our eyes, our hands, our bodies and be registered like cattle or criminals
DOZENS of Scottish schools have introduced “intrusive” biometric systems, such as fingerprinting, to identify pupils as young as four.
New figures show 68 schools are now using technology to manage meals, control library books and even allow access to toilets.
Almost two-thirds are primaries, where fingerprinting and palm recognition can be used to identify young children. And another 10 schools in Midlothian have the capability for biometric ID but are not yet using it.
Yesterday, critics said the extent which the technology was being used in Scotland’s schools was “worrying”...
"Figures show 68 schools are now using technology to manage meals and even allow toilet access."
Pilots who fly passenger and cargo planes want the U.S. government to implement a program under which their identities will be confirmed using biometrics so they can pass quickly through airport security checkpoints and avoid -- for the most part -- controversial screening procedures involving body scanners or pat-downs.
Pilots unions have entered into what are described as "high-level" and "sensitive" talks with Obama administration officials in recent days in response to a public backlash against the use of the whole-body imaging machines and physical pat-downs that are seen as being too invasive...
Bergen County, N.J., has dealt with one particular dilemma for years: The Department of Human Services (DHS) needs to estimate how many homeless individuals receive services, such as food, medicine and shelter. But many people served by the department don’t have accurate forms of identification, and without a precise tracking system, the DHS might have erroneously counted one person who visits the shelter 10 times, for example, as 10 different people visiting once.
And when it comes time to properly fill out grant applications to receive funding support, accuracy counts for the DHS.
“It’s not like you can do a head count,” said Susan Nottingham, the department’s Homeless Management Information System administrator. “We could sit down and say, ‘Can we talk to you for 45 minutes?’ But we didn’t want them to turn around and say, ‘We’re not that hungry.’”
Now with biometrics technology, Bergen County has implemented a solution that helps the DHS keep an accurate count of the homeless people who receive social services. In September, the DHS unveiled a fingerprint identification system developed by Fulcrum Biometrics, a San Antonio-based company...
[Webmaster - Track...Trace...and Database... One step closer to the New World Order. They always start with the weak, the vulnerable, and the outcasts. Someday everyone will be required to do this.]
When the 24 Hour Fitness chain announced it was scanning the fingerprints of members for entry into its gyms, the move was hailed as a step forward in preventing fraud and criticized as a step backward into Big Brother territory. But no matter how you feel about the tech-enhanced measures that businesses now take to keep an eye on you, know that they're here to stay.
Companies will be spending $7.4 billion on so-called biometric technologies by 2012, Victor Lee, a senior consultant with the International Biometric Group (IBG), told SC Magazine, a publication for IT security professionals. Fingerprint-recognition will occupy 38.1% of the market; face recognition, 19%; iris recognition, 7.7%. One older technology, blood vein pattern recognition, can still hang with the gizmo'd up new kids and is expected to grab 10% of the security budget.
Some of these outfits are not normally associated with high security needs. Remember the Rockwell song that goes, "I always feel like somebody's watching me"? You'll be singing that tune from the ATM to the candy dispenser. The following are everyday enterprises that in their own way have joined the surveillance generation...
(NewsCore) - A British high school has installed a £9,000 ($14,238) face recognition camera to discourage students from turning up late to classes -- and plans to use the system to track teachers.
Sir Christopher Hatton School in Northamptonshire. Central England, is one of the first in the country to install the monitors, which will be used to track more than 200 senior year students.
It uses two cameras to produce a 4D scan and identifies faces by measuring eyes, nose and face shape -- and can distinguish between identical twins. It records pupils¿ attendance and enables the school to have those arriving late make up the time at the end of the day...
Canada has announced a new biometrics system to protect its borders from illegal immigrants.
Canada to use biometrics to secure its borders
Canada Immigration has announced a new five-year plan to institute a secure, biometrics-based border entry system to protect the nation from illegal immigrants.
According to Karen Shadd, spokeswoman for the federal immigration office, Visa applicants in Canada will be required to provide biometric information in the form of fingerprints and a photograph to acquire a digital Visa, the Canadian Visa Bureau reports.
Shadd told the news source, "biometric verification significantly reduces the chance that one individual could pose as or be mistaken for another individual. Biometrics will bolster Canada’s existing measures to reduce identity fraud and enhance the safety and security of Canadians."
According to the Toronto Sun, the new program, which could show dividends as early as next year, will put Canada's border security in line with other nations such as the United States and UK.
Greg Cox of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told the news source that the biometric program will reduce fraud and enhance the law enforcement office's ability to screen criminals applying for Visas.
Recently, India, Costa Rica and Gambia have announced new plans to use biometrics to protect their borders from foreign nationals who may enter the country illegally. Movements to use biometrics in immigration and border patrol are spreading across other parts of the globe as well, with New Zealand instituting a fingerprinting policy for foreigners entering the country.
Scanning prisoners’ irises is just Step 1. In Afghanistan, local and NATO forces are amassing biometric dossiers on hundreds of thousands of cops, crooks, soldiers, insurgents and ordinary citizens. And now, with NATO’s backing, the Kabul government is putting together a plan to issue biometrically backed identification cards to 1.65 million Afghans by next May.
The idea is to hinder militant movement around the country, and to keep Taliban infiltrators out of the army, NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan commander Lt. Gen. William Caldwell tells Danger Room. “The system allows the Afghans to thoroughly screen applicants and recruits for any potential negative past history or criminal linkages, while at the same time it provides an additional measure of security at checkpoints and major facilities to prevent possible entrance and access by malign actors in Afghanistan,” Caldwell e-mails.
It’s a high-tech upgrade to a classic counterinsurgency move — simultaneously taking a census of the population, culling security forces of double agents and cutting off guerrilla routes. (Plus, bombs and weapons can be swabbed for fingerprints to build files on insurgent suspects.) Gen. David Petraeus, now commander of the Afghan war effort, relied heavily on biometrics during his time in command of U.S. forces in Iraq.
Twenty to 25 Afghans a week are currently caught in the biometric sweep, military officials estimate. That number could grow significantly in the months to come. The “population registration division” of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior is “embarking on a program to develop, print and distribute biometrically enabled national ID cards,” e-mails Col. Craig Osbourne, the director of NATO’s Task Force Biometrics...
[Webmaster - Afghanistan, Iraq, illegal aliens on the border... These are the groups they start with as a beta test before they perfect the system and implement it for all of us eventually.]
As the U.S. government moves its military into the next phase of Iraq’s occupation by claiming the war is over to pacify the American people (while merely renaming combat troops and surging mercenaries into the country), its plan to transfer biometric info to the Iraqi government is raising fears among Iraqis that it will be misused to carry out vendettas.
The U.S. military has been collecting biometric info on Iraqis over the past seven years since the war started and taken fingerprints and DNA from 80,000 Iraqi detainees. It also computerized Saddam Hussein’s fingerprint files, feeling the need to the include the enemies of the dictator it overthrew in the database.
“After the military’s incursion into Fallujah in 2004, US soldiers collected fingerprints and iris scans of every resident as they passed through checkpoints to return.”
Iraqis who assist the United States are afraid that allowing the Iraqi government to access this information will result in them being identified as traitors and targeted for revenge by subversive enemies within the Iraqi police.
By delivering “shock and awe” to Iraq and upturning Iraqi society, the United States can practice the policies that it is implementing at home, using the people of a conquered nation as test subjects. While the media brainwashes U.S. citizens to believe that the notion of privacy and rights are relics of the past, the government’s experience in Iraq helps it to quicker solidify the control grid once each new police state measure is introduced and hesitantly accepted by the public as “neccessary to its security”.
A biometrics research and development company is set to roll out iris recognition technology across an entire city in a move that it claims will create a real life Minority Report society where anyone taking a train or shopping in a department store will have their eyes scanned by hi-tech sensors.
Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI), based out of headquarters in New York, has announced that it will use the technology to begin creating what it claims will be “the most secure city in the world” in Leon, one of Mexico’s largest cities.
The move will see GRI’s “eye swipe” machines, which come in a variety of different shapes and sizes, hooked up to a huge iris database created in conjunction with Leon law enforcement authorities.
“In the future, whether it’s entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris,” Jeff Carter, CDO of GRI tells tech website FastCompany.com.
According to the article, “Criminals will automatically be enrolled, their irises scanned once convicted. Law-abiding citizens will have the option to opt-in.”
Yet Carter seems confident that everyone, whether a criminal or not will soon be hooked into the database:
“Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years,” he says.
In Carter’s hideous control freak vision of the future, anyone taking money out of an ATM, paying for items in a store or simply catching a bus will have to stare directly into the beast system while “Police officers will monitor these scans and track the movements of watch-listed individuals.”
Carter even alludes to Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report, noting that the system will operate to a degree even more controlling than in the cult classic dystopian story.
Not even the “dead eyeballs” seen in Minority Report could trick the system, he says. “If you’ve been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter. If you’re a known shoplifter, for example, you won’t be able to go into a store without being flagged. For others, boarding a plane will be impossible.”
One of the blinking iris scanners is revealed in the video below:
This scanner can process 50 people per minute, while the other smaller units seen in the picture at the top of this article can scan between 15-30 people’s irises per minute.
“Phase one” of the plan encompasses placing the machines in law enforcement facilities, security check-points, police stations, and detention areas, while “Phase two” will see the technology integrated into public locations across the city. This speaks volumes. Integrate the criminals and prisoners first, then simply shift the prison framework out into society. Presumably “Phase 3″ will be to begin implementing the thing in every city in the world.
There isn’t even any pretence of a benign agenda behind this – it is a bold in your face admission of a plan to force every human being into a big brother system by hooking it up to the essential amenities and infrastructure of the city. The stated aim is to monitor everyone, everywhere, all the time – the perfect technological matrix-like prison system.
This system is the ultimate perversion of humanity, taking what makes us all unique and using it to catalogue every one of us as if we are sheep or cattle on a plantation. It represents the screaming death knell of freedom.
Mr Carter and GRI don’t care about that though, they want you to know that your freedom is already utterly dead, so resistance is futile:
“The banks already know more about what we do in our daily life–they know what we eat, where we go, what we purchase–our deepest secrets,” he says. “We’re not talking about anything different here–just a system that’s good for all of us.”
Carter also has a warning for any sheep who think they can stray from the flock:
“When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in.”
Carter even speaks of tailoring the technology to “enable advertisers to track behavior and emotion” by scanning people’s eyes from when they look at a billboard to when they enter a store and purchase the product.
Minority Report was written as a stark warning of what may happen in the future should society be engulfed by invasive technology and begin to regard privacy and civil liberties as antiquated. Yet increasingly it, and other works like it, have become the handbooks for those who would gladly see the planet fully transformed into a giant fascist control grid if it means they can swim in the filthy meaningless lucre and revel in the pathetic soulless power trip it will generate for them.
This technology is here now – it is not some paranoid geek’s frightening description of a distant future. it is time to grow up, wake up and take note of what our society is being transformed into.
Readers may politely and constructively voice their disapproval of GRI’s plan to cover the planet with biometric iris scanners here. We can only pray that citizens of Leon will raise hell with their elected representatives over the invasion coming their way and refuse to allow their city to become a testing ground for a monstrous worldwide big brother control system.
POWAY, Calif. -- A popular skate park in Poway unveiled a new security measure Friday that is being met with some opposition.
At the Poway Skate Park, surveillance cameras capture the every move of every visitor. Additionally, motion detectors are also present and a wrought iron fence surrounds the park. Some visitors said the security measures are a bit much.
"This is the only facility, I'd say, in the San Diego area that has this big reinforcement around it and the turnstile. I've been here when law enforcement causes problems for kids. They come in here and everyone panics, they start feverishly running and they get hurt on the bowls," said skater Doug Marker...
The ATM runs on the latest in "finger vein" technology, with an infrared light detecting a unique pattern of micro-veins.
(CNN) -- Poland's cooperative BPS bank says it's the first in Europe to install a biometric ATM -- allowing customers to withdraw cash simply with the touch of a fingertip.
The digit-scanning ATM, introduced in the Polish capital of Warsaw, runs on the latest in "finger vein" technology -- an authentication system developed by Japanese tech giant Hitachi.
The company says that an infrared light is passed through the finger to detect a unique pattern of micro-veins beneath the surface - which is then matched with a pre-registered profile to verify an individual's identity.
"This is a substantially more reliable technique than using fingerprints," Peter Jones, Hitachi's head of security and solutions in Europe, told CNN.
"Our tests indicate there is a one in a million false acceptance rate -- that's as good as iris scanning, which is generally regarded as the most secure method."
Unlike fingerprints, which leave a trace and can be potentially reproduced, finger veins are impossible to replicate, according to Jones, because they are beneath the surface of the skin...
The Stow (Ohio) Fire Department recently deployed MyChoice, a Web-based subscription service from My LifePlan that uses fingerprint biometrics to access patient records. Responders are using BIO-key International’s biometric solution to scan program enrollee’s fingerprints in order to gain instant access to health records on scene, said Michael Depasquale, BIO-key’s CEO.
Enrollees subscribe to the company's MyChoice program for a monthly fee. Their fingerprints are recorded and their medical records are aggregated into a centralized database, Depasquale said. Responders then can access aggregated records using a software-based, encrypted biometric identification solution.
“This is a system that ensures that anyone who is participating in the program will have all of their information in one place for whoever may require it,” he said...
As of last week, there is now a U.S. Government national security agency called the Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA). It supersedes a Biometrics Task Force that was established in 2000.
Though nominally a component of the Army, the biometrics agency has Defense Department-wide responsibilities.
“The Biometrics Identity Management Agency leads Department of Defense activities to prioritize, integrate, and synchronize biometrics technologies and capabilities and to manage the Department of Defense’s authoritative biometrics database to support the National Security Strategy,” according to a March 23 Order (pdf) issued by Army Secretary John M. McHugh that redesignated the previous Biometrics Task Force as the BIMA...
DHS Global Biometric Plan, Facial Recognition Billboards (plus more)
