Thursday, February 3, 2011
Expiring technology patent insures that you will soon have your eyes scanned everywhere you go
Place eyes here for secure entry citizen
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Wednesday, Feb 2nd, 2011
The impending expiration of a key technology patent is paving the way for a scramble amongst scores of biometrics research and development companies, all desperate to make their own brand of iris scanning technology commonplace, effectively creating a real life Minority Report society, where everyone is linked into an identification database.
As detailed in a Bloomberg News report today, the patent for recording the unique characteristics of the Iris as a form of identification was granted to two eye doctors in 1987, who then approached a Cambridge University professor to develop a way of automating iris identification. That further patent was granted in 1994, but it expires this year, opening a door for a slew of technological nightmares to come pouring through.
Leading marketing companies believe that within the next five years, iris recognition technology will create over $2 billion in revenue by becoming a routine part of everyday life.
The technology is already being used for screening employees of Bank of America, travelers at London’s Heathrow Airport and New York City prisoners.
The Department of Homeland Security has tested iris scanners at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is developing standards for the technology’s use.
One company, Hoyos Corp., “wants to make the technology ubiquitous,” according to the Bloomberg report. Chief Development Officer Jeff Carter says the company foresees iris scanners on mobile phones and computers, and even on ATMs, to be used as a replacement for bank cards.
Last year the company, then known as Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI), based out of headquarters in New York, announced that it was using the technology to create what it claims will be “the most secure city in the world” in Leon, one of Mexico’s largest cities.
So called “eye swipe” machines, which come in a variety of different shapes and sizes, are to be hooked up to a huge iris database created in conjunction with Leon law enforcement authorities.
Leon is effectively a testing ground for the mass rollout of the technology.
“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,” Carter explained to 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 withdrawing cash, 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.”
The technology is also evolving rapidly. Newer scanners are able to capture the Iris from a distance of ten feet. “Future devices might read irises from more than 30 feet, said Tim Meyerhoff, North American business development director for Iris ID Systems Inc.,”, another of the 20 or so companies set to push iris scanning into everyday life.
The newest machines are also able to process hundreds of iris scans per minute, meaning they can be used effectively in crowded public places.
One of the Hoyos mobile iris scanners is demonstrated in the video below:
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 Hoyos Corp. don’t care about that though, they would like you to believe that your privacy and your basic freedoms were long ago completely extinguished , 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.”
Hoyos CEO and founder, Hector Hoyos, echoes Carter’s pronouncement, noting “You really can’t control technology. Oppenheimer and Einstein said it. The cat’s out of the bag. You can try to put certain protocols in place and hope that people who get their hands on technology abide by your protocols. That’s all you can do.”
Essentially, Hoyos is saying that if the bad guys get their hands on the technology, tough luck. Of course, it’s easier to live with that potential scenario if you’re sitting on a sizeable chunk of the $2 billion a year and rising revenue than if you’re one of the slaves in the database having their eyes scanned everywhere they go.
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.
The 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 wake up, take note of what our society is being transformed into and ensure our freedoms are not completely wiped out before it is too late.
——————————————————————
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.Labels: iris scanning, Steve Watson
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Breitbart
Mexico will on Monday become the first country to start using iris scans for identity cards, according to the government, which claims the scheme will be highly secure.
"The legal, technical and financial conditions are ready to start the process of issuing this identity document," Felipe Zamora, responsible for legal affairs at the Mexican Interior Ministry, told journalists Thursday.
The documents, which will include the eye's image as well as fingerprints, a photo and signature, will be 99 percent reliable, Zamora said...
[Full Article]
Labels: ID cards, iris scanning, Mexico
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Labels: iris recognition, iris scanning, iris-detection
The New York Police Department has begun photographing the irises of people who are arrested in an effort to prevent escapes as suspects move through the court system, a police official said Monday.
The program was instituted after two embarrassing episodes early this year in which prisoners arrested on serious charges tricked the authorities into freeing them by posing at arraignment as suspects facing minor cases. The occurrences exposed weaknesses in the city’s handling of suspects as they move from police custody into the maze of court systems in the five boroughs.
With the new system, the authorities are using a hand-held scanning device that can check a prisoner’s identity in seconds when the suspect is presented in court, said Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman.
Officials began photographing the irises of suspects arrested for any reason on Monday at Manhattan Central Booking and expect to expand the program to all five boroughs by early December, Mr. Browne said.
The department has been working on the program for months, Mr. Browne said. But the effort caught many in the city’s legal circles by surprise as news of it began trickling out late last week. It is raising concerns among civil libertarians and privacy advocates, who say the authorities’ cataloging of the new data could put innocent people under permanent suspicion.
“It’s really distressing that the Police Department is once again undertaking a new regime of personal data collection without any public discourse,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, “and we don’t know the reason for it, whether this is a necessary program, whether it’s effective to address the concerns that it’s designed to address, and whether in this day and age it’s even cost-effective, not to mention whether there are any protections in place against the misuse of the data that’s collected.”...
[Full Article]Labels: iris recognition, iris scanning, iris-detection, New York City
Saturday, October 9, 2010
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...
[Full Article]
Labels: big brother, biometrics, face recognition, iris recognition, iris scanning, iris-detection, privacy
Friday, September 24, 2010
[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.]
Labels: Afghanistan, big brother, biometrics, iris scanning, iris-detection
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Posted by Erin Rosa - September 21, 2010 at 2:48 pm
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is planning to test iris scanning technology on undocumented immigrants in the border town of McAllen, Texas, according to a report from a Mexican news service.
In a story that has gained little media attention in the United States, DHS representative Amy Kudwa confirmed to Notimex that the agency will be conducting a preliminary test of the technology in October on undocumented immigrants who have been detained in southern Texas. The eye scanners being tested are reported to have the ability to track up to 50 people a minute from several feet away.
Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have already warned against the potential for the technology to be used by the government to abuse the civil rights of citizens and foreigners traveling in the country. The scanners record the biometric information and store it in a database for identification at a later time.
The report quoted Kudwa, saying that “This is a preliminary test of how the technology works. At this point we have no specific plans to acquire or deploy this technology.” However, the test raises the possibility that the technology will be adopted by the agency to replace the collection of finger prints that is normally done when immigrants are locked up.
DHS manages the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies, which detain thousands of immigrants each year.
[Webmaster - First, they start by testing it on the illegal immigrants. That is to condition and acclimate us to accept the technology and process. Then, when they deem the time is right, they will deploy this for use on all U.S. citizens.]
Labels: border, eye scanners, iris scanning, iris-detection, Mexico, U.S.
Monday, September 13, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department plans to test futuristic iris scan technology that stores digital images of people's eyes in a database and is considered a quicker alternative to fingerprints.
The department will run a two-week test in October of commercially sold iris scanners at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, where they will be used on illegal immigrants, said Arun Vemury, program manager at the department's Science and Technology branch.
"The test will help us determine how viable this is for potential (department) use in the future," Vemury said.
Iris scanners are little used, but a new generation of cameras that capture images from 6 feet away instead of a few inches has sparked interest from government agencies and financial firms, said Patrick Grother, a National Institute of Standards and Technology computer scientist. The technology also has sparked objections from the American Civil Liberties Union.
ACLU lawyer Christopher Calabrese fears that the cameras could be used covertly. "If you can identify any individual at a distance and without their knowledge, you literally allow the physical tracking of a person anywhere there's a camera and access to the Internet," he said.
Iris scans can be quicker than fingerprints. "You can walk up to a wall-mounted box, look at the camera, and that's it," Grother said.
Homeland Security will test cameras that take photos from 3 or 4 feet away, including one that works on people as they walk by, Vemury said.
In 2007, the U.S. military began taking iris scans of thousands of Iraqis to track suspected militants. The technology was used in about 20 U.S. airports from 2005 to 2008 to identify passengers in the Registered Traveler program, who could skip to the front of security lines.
Financial companies hope the scans can stop identity fraud, said Jeff Carter of Global Rainmakers, a New York City firm developing the technology. "Iris is going to completely reshape the fraud environment," he said.
Labels: Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security, iris scanning, iris-detection
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Colorado Police Using Biometric Iris Scan Technology
Labels: biometrics, Colorado, iris scanning, iris-detection, police, video
Saturday, August 21, 2010
“Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years”
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Thursday, Aug 19th, 2010
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.
Labels: big brother, biometrics, iris scanning, iris-detection, Steve Watson
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