Surveillance & Loss of Freedom

Homeland Security and the transformation of America

A National Information System: EO #13011

Who is Reading Your E-Mail? | No Place to Hide?

 

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When freedom & privacy fades, our only real security is in Jesus Christ.  Those who belong to Him need not fear the future.  Psalm 27:1-3 and Psalm 32:7


Janurary 2004

Watching Big Brother: "Jeffrey Rosen, an associate professor at George Washington University Law School... said an August 2002 government report found that the cameras reduced crime in parking lots but had little or no effect on public transportation or in other public areas in the center of the city. Even so, people liked the cameras, because they made them feel safer. 'The cameras are extremely popular,' said Mr. Rosen. 'Civil liberty objections have not been accepted by a majority of the public.'" Chart: Total transformation

 

Bush Grabs New Power for FBI: "While the nation was distracted last month by images of Saddam Hussein's spider hole and dental exam, President George W. Bush quietly signed into law a new bill that gives the FBI increased surveillance powers and dramatically expands the reach of the USA Patriot Act. The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 grants the FBI unprecedented power to obtain records from financial institutions without requiring permission from a judge." Homeland Security and the transformation of  America

December

Summit group confirms use of ID chip: "Organizers of the World Summit on the Information Society yesterday confirmed that badges worn by high-level attendees were affixed with identification chips some say were unknown to the forum's participants.... Last week's summit, which was partly organized by the United Nations, focused on Internet governance and access, security, intellectual-property rights and privacy. The badges were worn by more than 50 prime ministers, presidents and other high-level officials from 174 countries." No Place to Hide?

November

US names the day for biometric passports: "Our goal is to begin production by October 26, 2004,' Moss announced. Current plans call for the new passport books to include a contactless smart chip based on the 14443 standard, with a minimum of 32 Kbytes of EEPROM storage. The chip will contain a compressed full-face image for use as a biometric." Psalm 32:7

US names the day for biometric passports: "US government official has laid out detailed plans for the timing and form of US government issued biometric passports.... 'Our goal is to begin production by October 26, 2004.'" See No Place to Hide?

October

Japan Plans GPS Tracking System for Kids: "Stunned by the kidnapping of a teenage girl, a rural Japanese city plans to use a satellite-linked tracking system to help parents find their children.... It will use a combination of technologies provided by mobile phone companies and the Global Positioning System, a U.S. satellite navigation service used by everyone from hikers to ship captains."

September

Scots teenagers to be issued with ID cards: "Every secondary school pupil in Scotland is to be issued with an ID card bearing his or her name, age and address, under a controversial government scheme.... Civil rights organisations and opposition politicians believe the Scottish Executive is ‘softening up’ a new generation to the idea of compulsory ID cards....

     "... the cards could be used to allow children to swipe their way into schools and lessons, meaning that class registers could be taken electronically.... It is also envisaged that the entitlement cards will carry data such as blood groups, and possibly medical records such as allergies to certain drugs or treatments."

Bush Touts New System to Track Education Data: (registration required): "President Bush on Tuesday announced the creation of a nationwide data-gathering system to help parents and policymakers assess student achievement under the 2001 No Child Left Behind education reform law.  The new $55-million public-private partnership would enable states to collect and analyze education information and consolidate it in a database accessible via the Internet." (By Edwin Chen, LAT, 9/10/03) See No Place to Hide and the next link:

Plan to keep file on every child (UK): "Every child in England will be given a unique identifying number attached to an electronic file of personal information about their lives.... In 150 local authorities, where education and children's social services are to be merged into new children's departments, there will be a 'local information hub' recording details of all the children living in the area'....

     "It will consult on whether information could be included in files without consent of the child or carers and whether it could include 'warning signs' within the family such as imprisonment, domestic violence, or mental health problems.

     "The paper proposes early legislation to remove legal and technical barriers to information sharing, allowing children to be tracked around the country when families move."

     The same kind of information system is being established in the USA-- and eventually for the rest of the world. In fact, "barriers" to the implementation of these instrusive new programs are being removed around the world. See Legalizing Mind Control and Homeland Security and the Transformation of America

 

Panel to close Pentagon terror-spy office: "The Pentagon office that was developing a vast computerized terrorism surveillance system would be closed and no money could be spent to use those high-tech spying tools against Americans on U.S. soil, House and Senate negotiators have agreed. But they shifted some of the high-powered software under development to different government offices...

     The House restriction... allowed the research to continue at DARPA but barred its implementation against Americans in the United States without specific congressional approval." See first two items here

August

'Spy' plans for new cars: "The government is reportedly planning to fit all cars in Britain with a personalised microchip so rule-breaking motorists can be prosecuted by computer."

 

Postal ID plan creates privacy fears: "A government report that urges the U.S. Postal Service to create 'smart stamps' to track the identity of people who send mail is eliciting concern.... The report, released last month by the President's Commission on the U.S. Postal Service, issued numerous recommendations aimed at reforming the debt-laden agency. One recommendation is that the USPS 'aggressively pursue' the development of a so-called intelligent mail system." Homeland Security and the Transformation of America

July

School keeps an eye on every pupil's diet: "Queueing time for lunch was cut yesterday when pupils used an eye recognition system for the first time in a British school.... The machine is similar to those seen in science fiction films such as Mission Impossible. Pupils stand six inches away while it scans the iris, reading the unique image in seconds. It is linked to a database holding personal details, including what pupils can and cannot eat.... 'It takes just 10 to 12 seconds to register first time on the machine and each and every time after that it works in an instant to detect the pupil. Another iris scanner is being planned for the library to store information about pupils who have books on loan." Psalm 32:7

 

Big Brother Gets a Brain - The Pentagon's Plan for Tracking Everything That Moves: "The cameras are already in place. The computer code is being developed at a dozen or more major companies and universities.... Everything is set for a new Pentagon program to become perhaps the federal government's widest reaching, most invasive mechanism yet for keeping us all under watch.... Its architects at the Pentagon say it will help protect our troops in cities like Baghdad, where for the past few weeks fleeting attackers have been picking off American fighters in ones and twos. But defense experts believe the surveillance effort has a second, more sinister, purpose: to keep entire cities under an omnipresent, unblinking eye...

  "'There's almost a 100 percent chance that it will work,' said Jim Lewis, who heads the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 'because it's just connecting things that already exist." See Homeland Security and the Transformation of America and Psalm 27:1-4

June

Airport Screeners May Get X-Ray Vision: "To the eye, she is dressed in a skirt and blazer in dark, business-like colors. On the monitor, the director of the Transportation Security Administration's security laboratory is naked, except for a gun and a bomb that she hid under her outfit." No Place to Hide?

 

EU to tighten visa and passport security: "EU citizens will have their fingerprints stamped on their passports or undergo an iris scan as from next year, under proposals to be drawn up by the European Commission. These measures partly stem due to a US law enacted in 2002, which will start demanding visas from EU citizens from 26 October 2004 if they do not have biometric information (fingerprints, iris scans or DNA) on their passports." Homeland Security and the Transformation of America

 

US adds biometric check to travel documents: "The meeting of the G8 richest industrialised nations in early May was the platform chosen by the UK home secretary, David Blunkett, to secure support for plans to include biometric data in UK passports. ...Federal Privacy Commissioner Malcolm Crompton commented: Biometrics are powerful tools that also can go powerfully wrong. It is therefore very important that privacy issues are addressed during the development of biometric identifiers." Psalm 27:1-4

May

A Spy Machine of DARPA's Dreams: "The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable....

  "The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read. All of this -- and more -- would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health. This gigantic amalgamation of personal information could then be used to 'trace the 'threads' of an individual's life'..." Psalm 32:7

Proposed System Would Use Lots of Data: "The data the Pentagon envisions would include all kinds of visual and text files in various formats. But if it were all simple text, one petabyte would contain enough room for almost 40 pages of information on each of the more than 6.2 billion human beings on Earth." Psalm 32:7

 

Court will decide if police need warrant for GPS 'tracking': "William Bradley Jackson worried that he hadn't properly concealed his victim's shallow grave. So he snuck away one quiet fall day to finish the job, unaware that sheriff's deputies had secretly attached a satellite tracking device to his truck. Police trickery triumphed over his treachery.... But what if the same secret technology, called global positioning satellite tracking, could track anyone at any time?" See No Place to Hide?

 

GPS implant makes debut: "The dimensions of this initial 'personal location device,' or PLD, prototype are said to be 2.5 inches in diameter by 0.5 inches in depth, roughly the size of a pacemaker. Once inserted into a human, the device can be tracked by Global Positioning Satellite technology and the information relayed wirelessly to the Internet." No Place to Hide?

February

American babies are next: "On October 30, 2002 in the United Kingdom, a new-born baby was assigned a new, permanent, government-mandated, medical identification number.... Beth, who came into the world at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infimary, became the first baby in the country to be given an NHS ‘lifelong’ identification number. The unique nine-digit reference number will stay with Beth for the rest of her life...."

  "Assigning every American a 'unique health identifier' is necessary for Hillary Care’s new, centralized, medical database to work.... 1) New-born babies will be assigned this new federal number (as is done now in the United Kingdom and soon to be in Australia). 2) Senior Americans will be assigned a number when they first apply for Medicare. 3) The rest of us will then get our number." See No Place to Hide?

 

GPS devices increasingly are used to spy on people: "While GPS technology that uses satellites has been a boon to millions who don't want to get lost, others increasingly are turning to the same technology to track people and keep an eye on them.... Oregon is considering the feasibility of installing GPS technology in the cars of its residents to record how many in-state miles they drive as the state considers imposing car-related taxes based on road-mileage-driven versus fuel purchased." 

January 2003

Take everyone's DNA fingerprint, says pioneer: "Everybody in Europe and the US should have their genetic fingerprints entered into an international database to enable law enforcement agencies to fight crime and terrorism in an unstable world, according to James Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix.... 'The sacrifice of this particular form of anonymity does not seem an unreasonable price to pay, provided the laws see to a strict and judicious control over access to public data,' he said." But there is no such "strict and judicious control." See A National Information System

Digital Angel Teams with University To Develop Biosensors: "The 3.5-ounce unit... is the newest entry in the emerging market for wearable devices that provide wireless connectivity between people, or between people and their pets or assets. Some of the early work at the engineering school will support programs to integrate sensors that trigger alerts on abnormal changes in body temperature, pulse or blood oxygen levels." See Who is Reading Your E-Mail?

Michelin to Embed Electronic ID Tags in Tires: "... the system consists of an antenna and an integrated circuit the size of a match head. Proponents of such RFID tags, which store, send and receive data through weak radio signals, believe they will one day replace bar codes and revolutionize the way that inventories are tracked and consumer products are designed."

Pentagon database plan hits snag on Hill: "A plan to link databases of credit card companies, health insurers and others--creating what critics call a "domestic surveillance apparatus" [the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program (TIA)] raises concern on Capitol Hill.'" See the next link:

repeat Surveillance. The DARPA Information Awareness Office: "The key to fighting terrorism is information. Elements of the solution include gathering a much broader array of data than we do currently, discovering information from elements of the data, creating models of hypotheses, and analyzing these models in a collaborative environment...." Complaints led to the removal of the TIA symbol: the masonic, all-seeing eye in the pyramid. Representing the new world order, it covered the planet with its enlightening rays. See a part of it at Symbols and their meaning 

Look this way: ID scans OK most say: "The use of fingerprint, retina and facial scans for routine commercial transactions is fast approaching....  'The results show the public doesn't consider this invasive,' said Alan Westin, president of Privacy And American Business.... [But] 'consumers would not like these technologies if the weaknesses were exposed in greater detail.'...

  "Public optimism also may stem from a lack of experience with the new systems' pitfalls.... 'Most of their experience with them has been through the movies where they're portrayed as reliable and infallible, but the reality is there are problems....  There will be significant frustration when there are false rejections or false positives." See No Place to Hide?

 

Face Recognition Cameras Stir 'Big Brother' Fears: "Mullen, who sees the system eventually being linked to the databases of other city, state and federal law enforcement agencies to track criminals and suspected terrorists, said: 'The system doesn't look at skin color or your hair or your gender. It takes human prejudices out of the equation.' Civil liberties groups are hardly reassured. They fear an erosion of personal privacy...." See A National Information System

December

Federal database spy site fading away: "As controversy grows over the Defense Department's shadowy Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, the project's virtual presence is steadily decreasing. If fully implemented, TIA would link databases from sources such as credit card companies, medical insurers, and motor vehicle databases for police convenience in hopes of snaring terrorists. ...The logo for the TIA project--a Masonic pyramid eyeballing the globe--vanished, a highly unusual step for a government agency. So did the TIA's Latin 'scientia est potentia' slogan, which means 'knowledge is power.'" See a portion of the deleted symbol, then read No Place to Hide? and the first three items on this page: Surveillance

repeat Surveillance. The DARPA Information Awareness Office: "The key to fighting terrorism is information. Elements of the solution include gathering a much broader array of data than we do currently, discovering information from elements of the data, creating models of hypotheses, and analyzing these models in a collaborative environment...." Notice the official symbol of this new government office under the U.S. defense department: the masonic, all-seeing eye in the pyramid. Also symbolizing the new world order, it covers the planet with its enlightening rays. See Symbols and their meaning 

Total Information Awareness (TIA) System: Here you see our government's new TIA symbol. It is just the triangle at the top of the pyramid -- without the all-seeing eye. Look up "triangle" on our symbols page.

Kroger Lets Shoppers Pay Via Fingerprint: "Suppose you endured the checkout line at the grocery store only to find that you were short on cash, or you'd forgotten your wallet.... Kroger Co., the largest U.S. supermarket chain, is offering some customers just that opportunity, testing finger imaging as a method of payment..." Rev. 13

EU agrees personal data exchange with US: "...there will be a huge increase in the exchange of personal data across the Atlantic. The agreement, which will be signed by the EU and the US in Copenhagen on Friday, foresees more co-operation between the EU member states and the US in "preventing, detecting, suppressing, and investigating criminal offences within the respective jurisdiction of the Parties, in particular by facilitating the reciprocal exchange of information, including personal data." See A National Information System

Human ID at a Distance: "The goal of the Human Identification at a Distance (HumanID) program is to develop automated biometric identification technologies to detect, recognize and identify humans at great distances."  God sees and judges all of us, but human leaders were never intended to have such intrusive powers, which -- in the hands of power-hungry leaders and totalitarian governments -- will lead to fear and terror, not peace and security. Gen 11:4-9

 

Subject to inspection: "Invite friends over, babysit your grandchildren or allow relatives to spend the night in Belleville and you risk an armed police officer turning up at your door to search your home and give you a ticket. ...Jim Reese said he was standing in his kitchen when he heard a noise at 7 a.m. and found a housing inspector and police officer standing in his living room. 'I wanted to know who walked in without permission,' he said. "They didn't answer me. They just started walking through the place.'" See Community Oriented Policing

 

Keeping Track of John Poindexter: "The head of the government's Total Information Awareness project, which aims to root out potential terrorists by aggregating credit-card, travel, medical, school and other records of everyone in the United States, has himself become a target of personal data profiling."   See A National Information System and the next item:

November

The DARPA Information Awareness Office: "The key to fighting terrorism is information. Elements of the solution include gathering a much broader array of data than we do currently, discovering information from elements of the data, creating models of hypotheses, and analyzing these models in a collaborative environment...." Notice the official symbol of this new government office under the U.S. defense department: the masonic, all-seeing eye in the pyramid. Also symbolizing the new world order, it covers the planet with its enlightening rays. See Symbols and their meaning 

 

You Are a Suspect: "If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you: Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.'

  "To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you — passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance — and you have the supersnoop's dream: a 'Total Information Awareness' about every U.S. citizen." New York Times, November 2002

 

U.N. Finds Novel Way to Keep an Eye on Afghans: "United Nations officials grappling with a flood of refugees returning to Afghanistan have found a new way of keeping tabs on them -- by taking photographs of their eyes. They are using the snapshots to build a database which enables them to prevent refugees from fraudulently claiming more than one U.N. aid package per person as they cross the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan....The method has been used on about 12,500 people since it was launched on October 1 and, if deemed successful, may be employed elsewhere in the world....

  "Iris recognition relies on the fact that no two irises are identical -- even when they belong to the same person. 'There are six billion people in this world and therefore 12 billion different irises,' Van der Harst said.... The image is fed into a computer which processes the information in the iris and converts it into a randomly generated number, which is assigned to that refugee." See No Place to Hide?

 

Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans: It "will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.

  "Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been permitted to spy on Americans without extraordinary legal authorization. But Admiral Poindexter... has argued that the government needs broad new powers to process, store and mine billions of minute details of electronic life in the United States. ... [He] said that the government needs to 'break down the stovepipes' that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence agency analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers.

  "In order to deploy such a system, known as Total Information Awareness, new legislation would be needed, some of which has been proposed by the Bush administration in the Homeland Security Act that is now before Congress. That legislation would amend the Privacy Act of 1974, which was intended to limit what government agencies could do with private information.

  "'A lot of my colleagues are uncomfortable about this and worry about the potential uses that this technology might be put, if not by this administration then by a future one,' said Barbara Simon... past president of the Association of Computing Machinery. 'Once you've got it in place you can't control it.'" See No Place to Hide?

October

Pupils urged to inform on problem parents: "Pupils as young as 13 are being encouraged to disclose sensitive information about their parents to the Government to help discover why they might be failing at school....The data, gathered without the consent of parents by the Connexions Service, which supplies careers and personal advisers to schools, could be shared with a number of government departments....

  "The methods used to collect this data, its storage and future use, is worrying child mental health experts, lawyers and privacy campaigners.... Terri Dowty, from Action for the Rights of Children, said: 'The equivalent of about three weeks' training can't possibly equip anyone to provide the level of containment necessary in such situations. It has frightening overtones of totalitarian regimes.' See Your friendly community spies

September

Schools turn to IDs, cameras as precautions: "Their doors are locked, their staffs are badged and their eyes are open. Three years after the nation's deadliest school shooting and one year after the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. territory, schools in the Milwaukee area have greeted their new year with additional security precautions. ...

  "'The sad reality is that today's school administrator has to prepare for anything, from bullying to school shooting to now schools as terrorist targets,' [says] Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services." Charts: The transformation of America

 

Police ask stores to take fingerprints: "Police are asking businesses to voluntarily participate in a program to take customers' fingerprints if they pay by check.... Police spokeswoman Christy Gilfour said the department is considering making the program mandatory....

  "Employees will be trained to take fingerprints. A series of town hall meetings will be scheduled to explain the program to business owners and the community. Wes Jurey, president of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, said the organization will help make Arlington's 10,000 store owners aware of the program's benefits over the coming weeks.... 'The systems range from an inkless pad in which the chemical easily rubs off the skin, to an electronic sensor that compares a customer's print to a pre-scanned fingerprint....

  "Dawson doesn't expect complaints from customers. 'I anticipate if you are not guilty of anything, it's not going to matter to you if someone takes your thumbprint.'" John 2:24-25

ID cards 'will sneak in fingerprint database': "But civil liberties groups say the proposal, which will be considered as part of the Government's consultation on whether to introduce the cards on a national basis, is a gross infringement of an individual's privacy and would turn innocent people into potential suspects." See No Place to Hide?

Girl to get tracker implant to ease parents' fears: "The parents of an 11-year-old girl are to take the extraordinary step of having her fitted with a microchip so that her movements can be traced if she is abducted. Danielle Duval will have the device implanted in her arm in the next few months, the scientist assisting the plan claimed yesterday. The miniature chip will apparently send a signal via a mobile phone network to a computer, which will be able to pinpoint her location on an electronic map."  Genesis 11:4-9

August

 Secret Service expands cybersecurity task forces: "Companies need not worry that they might risk exposing secrets about their systems or about successful attacks against their systems, say members of the government organization facilitating the meetings. That organization is the U.S. Secret Service, and it prides itself on secrecy." It does? See No Place to Hide? and John 2:24-25

 

NASA plans to read terrorist's minds at airports: "Airport security screeners may soon try to read the minds of travelers to identify terrorists. Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have told Northwest Airlines security specialists that the agency is developing brain-monitoring devices in cooperation with a commercial firm, which it did not identify." See Psalm 32:7 and No Place to Hide?

 

California drivers worry new monitoring system threatens privacy: "A new $37 million system will soon track drivers' movements along highways in Northern California -- whether they like it or not.... But despite government assurances, it's also raising fears that drivers' privacy will be invaded. Similar to systems in Houston and New York, the project will track electronic toll payment devices affixed to the windshields of more than 250,000 vehicles, using radio-based sensors mounted on highway signs every few miles." See No Place to Hide?

 

Visitors to US from 2004 must have microchip IDs in their passports: "Legislation signed into law by President Bush in May, will require all 28 states in the US government's visa-waiver programme to provide biometric data on all newly issued travel documents. ...The Government recently set up an interdepartmental committee to investigate the potential uses for biometric technology for the supply of other services." No Place to Hide?

July

Future of spying: Tiny flying bots: "Understanding the aerodynamics that allow insects and hummingbirds to fly is the key to an invention that researchers hope will create a little buzz and a lot of flap. ....a fly can lift its own weight, turn more quickly than any fighter jet, zip about even on torn wings -- and cap it all off by landing on the ceiling. 'Insects,' said Berkeley's Ron Fearing, 'have tremendous maneuverability.'" Gen 11:4-9

 

Students Monitor 'Civil Rights' Violations: "West Virginia Attorney General Darrell V. McGraw is sponsoring a project in which public school students will monitor and report civil rights violations committed by fellow students.... Among the types of harassment mentioned were 'racial, ethnic, sexual, religious and homophobic slurs.'

  "Each 'civil rights team,' as they are called, would be comprised of three students per grade and one or two faculty advisors....The West Virginia program is modeled after a similar program in Maine and is funded by the U.S. Department of Education." See Clinton's War on Hate Bans Christian Values and the next item:

 

Surveillance. Civil Rights Team Project: "The Civil Rights Division of the West Virginia Attorney General's Office, in collaboration with individual high schools and middle schools throughout the state, has embarked on a program designed to increase the safety of students and to protect their learning environments by reducing bias-motivated harassment and violence." See The UN Plan for Your Mental Health

June

Rebellion over plans for ID card: "...the fight against illegal working, identity theft, benefit fraud, terrorism and illegal immigration is helped by ID cards. ... But those opposed to the plan describe it as one of the biggest assaults on privacy and freedom since ID cards were abandoned at the end of World War II. 'Packaging ID cards as 'entitlement cards is not going to fool the public,' said Karen Bartlett." No Place to Hide?

 

Airlines Plan Quick System For Identifying Passengers: "Several airlines have begun working on plans for a passenger identification system that would rely on background checks, fingerprints, iris scans and high-tech IDs to verify individuals' identities and speed security screening at airports. The 'trusted traveler' program would give pre-screened passengers easier access through security checkpoints." No Place to Hide? and A Terrorist? Me?

 

New Technology For Catching Liars: "The world is becoming a trickier place for people who tell lies -- even little white ones. From thermal-imaging cameras, designed to read guilty eyes, to brain-wave scanners, which essentially watch a lie in motion, the technology of truth-seeking is leaping forward." No Place to Hide?

 

Will Computers Read Your Mind? "Cameras and Software Could Help Machines Interpret Human Emotions ...'We're teaching the computers to be more like human beings,' said Dave Schrader, an engineer with Teradata." A National Information System

May

Rampant trade of stolen credit-card numbers shows lack of security: "Tens of thousands of stolen credit-card numbers are being offered for sale each week on the Internet in a handful of thriving, membership-only cyberbazaars, operated largely by residents of the former Soviet Union, who have become central players in credit-card and identity theft." In a world that rejects God's guidelines, this lawlessness will surely increase:  The Re-establishment of Peacetime Society. It also prepares the public for a planned solution:

Surveillance. VeriChip Personal Medical Information Devices (picture): "A Boca Raton, Florida family became the first in the world to be 'chipped' at a south Florida medical office." A National Information System

First Humans to Receive ID Chips Technology... implanted under skin: "Eight people will be injected with silicon chips Friday, making them scannable just like a jar of peanut butter in the supermarket checkout line. The miniature devices, about the size of a grain... will be targeted to families of Alzheimer's patients--one of the fastest growing groups in American society -- as well as others who have complicated medical histories..... Applied Digital Solutions Inc., the maker of what it calls the VeriChip, says that it will soon have a prototype of a much more complex device, one that is able to receive GPS satellite signals and transmit a person's location....

  "'Who gets to decide who gets chipped?' asked Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. 'Parents will decide that their kids should be implanted, or maybe their own aging parents. It's an easier way to manage someone, like putting a leash on a pet.' Applied Digital... says it has a waiting list of 4,000 to 5,000...." No Place to Hide?

April

The latest way to pay is at our fingertips: "Shoppers headed for the West Seattle Thriftway Wednesday can leave their credit cards, debit cards and checks at home. They just need to make sure to bring their index fingers. The supermarket will be the first in Washington and one of the first in the nation to use a biometrics system -- finger scanning -- to tie consumers to their credit cards, electronic benefit cards and checking accounts." No Place to Hide? and John 16:33

Walk This Way: "Interest in surveillance and recognition technologies since the September 11 attacks has thrust the spotlight on the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA's) two-year-old $50-million Human ID at a Distance program. And while automated face recognition receives the most attention, DARPA is also funding efforts at a handful of universities to identify people through their body language." No Place to Hide?

 

National Security Becomes National Snoopery: "Using the Sept. 11 attacks and the threat of terrorism as justification, the federal government is invading the privacy of Americans on a massive scale, probing their use of telecommunications to uncover intimate information about U.S. citizens proven guilty of nothing..... 'Consumers should know that the information they give to America Online or Microsoft may very well wind up at the IRS or the FBI.'...

  "'What happens to that information four or five years from now?' he asked. 'The FBI doesn't throw anything away.'...

  "Despite the massive threat to the privacy rights of Americans, there has been little public outcry against the expanded government snooping, possibly because 'there is something that people just haven't grasped, though government investigators have,' Gidari said. 'A network economy yields so much more information about personal lives that can be collected and manipulated in ways most people don't understand.'...

  "'We endow government with tremendous power - power to arrest you, take away your property, take away your life, destroy your reputation, take your children away from you,' Dempsey said. 'I think those powers in the hands of human beings, acting under pressure, with the best of intentions, facing time deadlines in a world of limited resources, those kinds of powers need to be surrounded with a thicket of rules.'  ...

  "The aphorism 'If you build it, they will come' is apt, warned attorney Gidari. 'And `they' are the law enforcement authorities.'" See A National Information System

 

Robot cameras 'will predict crimes before they happen: "By learning behaviour patterns, computers could soon alert police when an unmanned camera sees 'suspicious' activity....  It works by examining images coming in from close circuit television cameras (CCTV) and comparing them to behaviour patterns that have already programmed into its memory. The software, called Cromatica, can then mathematically work out what is likely to happen next." No Place to Hide?

 

Look into the mobile phone, please: "...Motorola, Visionics and Wirehound have teamed up to do facial recognition on mobile phones. ...The FaceIt ARGUS system automatically finds faces in a field of view and searches them against a mug shot database." No Place to Hide?

March

Guess who's tracking you by cell phone? "The nation's cell phone service providers will soon know exactly where every one of their customers is, at all times, and privacy rights groups are asking what they plan to do with the information."  See A National Information System: EO #13011

January 2002

All 50 states agree to upgrade driver's licenses: "Officials from all 50 states have agreed to cooperate on upgrading driver's license security features, giving momentum to efforts to turn the licenses into de facto national identity cards. The state officials may also seek $70 million or more in federal funds to study issues like how they might include data such as fingerprints or digital photographs on the driver's licenses, which are carried by more than 200 million Americans." See A National Information System - Executive Order #13011

 

New Driver's Licenses Pit Privacy Against Security: "A new generation of driver's licenses that the federal government is developing with the states would contain electronically stored information such as fingerprints and could allow authorities to easily track citizens nationwide. Supporters claim that with careful use, these new licenses could alert authorities to an attempt by a suspected terrorist to board an airliner, withdraw cash or enter the country — all in-demand precautions after Sept. 11 But privacy experts argue that the plan is simply a way to bystep widespread public opposition to federal ID cards. ...

  "Already, 37 states store information on licenses electronically, often using bar codes or magnetic stripes, but few are known to have included fingerprints or imprints of retinal- or facial-scans." Revelation 13 and No Place to Hide?

December

"Threat of National ID" by William Safire (no link, New York Times, 12-24): "...in the dreams of Big Brother and his cousin, Big Marketing, nothing can compare to forcing every person in the United States - under penalty of law - to carry what the totalitarians used to call 'papers.' The plastic card would not merely show a photograph, signature and address, as driver's licenses do. That's only the beginning. In time, and with exquisite refinements, the card would contain not only a fingerprint, description of DNA and the details of your eye's iris, but a host of other information about you....
  "What about us libertarian misfits who take the trouble to try to "opt out"? We will not be able to travel, or buy on credit, or participate in tomorrow's normal life. Soon enough, police as well as employers will consider those who resist full disclosure of their financial, academic, medical, religious, social and political affiliations to be suspect. The universal use and likely abuse of the national ID - a discredit card - will trigger questions like: When did you begin subscribing to these publications and why were you visiting that spicy or seditious Web site? Why are you afraid to show us your papers on demand? Why are you paying cash? What do you have to hide?
  "Beware: It is not just an efficient little card to speed you though lines faster or to buy you sure-fire protection from suicide bombers. A national ID card would be a ticket to the loss of much of your personal freedom. Its size could then be reduced for implantation under the skin in the back of your neck."
See A National Information System
 

Too Late To Stop National ID. "We already have a modern computerized system in place that is far more effective than any identification and tracking system the Nazis or the Soviet Communists ever had." See A National Information System  and Psalm 32:7.

Most Americans Support Government Surveillance, Poll Says : "Despite the best efforts by the ACLU and other rights groups... the various anti-terrorist efforts by the president and the attorney general have strong public support," said pollster John Zogby. ... "We are in a moment where fear trumps other considerations... I never thought [that] I would live to see the day when Americans would want their cars stopped and checked, or their mail monitored, but we certainly had that day." The UN Plan for Your Mental Health

Posted in October

Forget iris identification, think financial behavioural analysis: "Body biometrics such as fingerprint and iris scans have too great false rejection rate to be successfully deployed as a reliable form of identification.... However, behavioural biometrics lets banks and credit card companies to alert the end user when the card is being compromised rather than user having to track down statements from months back." See Brave New World

Watching You: Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans: "Over the years, the federal government has instituted a variety of data collection programs that compel the production, retention, and dissemination of personal information about every American citizen. Linked through an individual's Social Security number, these labor, medical, education and financial databases now empower the federal government to obtain a detailed portrait of any person: the checks he writes, the types of causes he supports, and what he says "privately" to his doctor....

  "Having exposed most areas of American life to ongoing government scrutiny and recording, Congress is now poised to expand and universalize federal tracking of citizen life. The inevitable consequence of such constant surveillance, however, is metastasizing government control over society. If that happens, our government will have perverted its most fundamental mission and destroyed the privacy and liberty that it was supposed to protect."

  This kind of surveillance makes sense during a time of crisis. But today's high tech personal surveillance systems are tied to UN standards for politically correct thinking, mental health and global citizenship. The war simply speeds and justifies the implementation of a program already under way. See A National Information System: EO 13011 and  No Place to Hide?

Posted in August  

Surveillance cameras signal end of privacy: "It’s important to realize here that the protection of privacy is not simply a legal technicality – it is a basic principle of democracy. Obviously, if police installed surveillance cameras in every home, they would likely catch most criminals and potentially prevent a multitude of crimes. Further, we would have unassailable proof in all types of crimes, including domestic violence cases, and fantastic evidence for all sorts of different claims." Psalm 32:7

Court deals blow to privacy rights: "...there is no constitutional precept preventing the government from tapping any individual's phone line for any reason." See Who is Reading Your E-Mail?

D.C. Plans ID Card for Students : "District officials plan to begin taking digital photographs and fingerprints of schoolchildren this fall as part of a high-tech identification initiative designed to improve the search for missing children. ...information about the children would be collected at schools using laptop computers. It would be fed into a centralized computer system, and the children then would receive ID cards containing bar codes that can be scanned by authorities, officials said. Children from 2 to 14 initially would be eligible for the new IDs....

  "We want to take advantage of the latest digital technology to implement a process that will enable us to protect and assist the parents and children of the District of Columbia," Sherryl Hobbs Newman... said in an interview. "We should use the technology we're developing to get that information to whomever needs it."

  "... West Virginia officials envision a major expansion of the program in the coming years. Lopez said officials there are considering using the ID cards to improve security and track attendance at schools.... "I think it ought to be mandatory," Lopez said. "I just think it ought to go nationally. . . . That database could be used for many things."  Finding "missing children" is the excuse or justification for this intrusive system. The real purpose is control: data tracking, human resource management, etc.. Psalm 32:7

Johns Hopkins Lays Out 'Ask-Tell' Gun Program: "The Johns Hopkins Children's Center Monday is launching a national campaign that will encourage parents to ask other parents if they keep a gun in the house before sending their children over to play. The new campaign is called ASK, which stands for 'Asking Saves Kids.'  ...Earlier this year, a New York-based non-profit group called Pax launched an advertising campaign urging parents to ask if the home where their child is going to play has a gun." See Using Teen Violence to Justify Government Control

Posted in July  

Truly embedded chips: "Looking further ahead, when the implanted chips are programmed with telecommunications capability, they could open new connectivity and entertainment options.... Later, the implanted microprocessors will be upgraded to two-way capacity, transmitting internal data back into the appropriate network through a wireless feed. The medical monitoring opportunities are immense, but so are the tracking capabilities. It's the ultimate loss of personal privacy when your body is sending signals about where you are and what you're doing." Rev 13:16  We don't believe the "mark" is merely an imbedded microchip, but such technology may well be a part of it.

Who's Watching You in Your Hotel Room? "What? Hidden cameras in my hotel room? That’s like placing a hidden camera in my own home without my knowledge or consent. Once I’m in my hotel room, I’m in my home away from home.” ...So why on earth would a hotel want to jeopardize customer relations by risking the appearance of spying on its own guests? 

  "... Aimdiscount.com boasts "the best quality available in Wireless Hidden Camera Systems” that are "so successful because they appear to be everyday items.” Among its advertised "everyday items” containing cameras are an alarm clock radio, a smoke alarm, a wireless wall clock, a picture frame, a lamp, an artificial plant basket, a night light, and even a "wireless tissue box.”  Psalm 32:7

Floridans Protest Street Cameras: "Being watched on a public street is just plain wrong," said May Becker, who wore a bar code sticker on her forehead and had a sign that read, "We're under house arrest in the land of the free."  But when a nation loses its moral compass -- and when evil no longer disturbs the conscience -- the rising social chaos destroys personal freedom.   Chart: Total transformation

Prying Eyes: "...citizens are up in arms over a new traffic light surveillance system that not only captures the picture of their vehicles on camera, but their faces as well.... When the motorist is stopped at a traffic light, the camera takes his picture and the face recognition software maps out a three-dimensional image of the driver's face, matching that record to the one in the DMV database, to come up with a positive identification of the individual driving the car....  

  "But how did this happen, you might ask? How did we get to this point where what was once science fiction is now reality? Well, cast your minds back, if you will to three years ago when Image Data, a US company, received a grant totaling $1.5 million from the US Secret Service...." Surveillance

 

 Va. Beach mayor opposes plan to scan faces: "'Remote cameras feeding images into face-recognition software would undermine the city's family-friendly atmosphere, she said, echoing the sentiments of some visitors and locals....'I don't think we need to put everybody through this trauma....This is a question of invading the public's privacy.''' Psalm 32:7 and  A National Information System: Executive Order #13011

 

Digital Angel implant technology designed to thwart the evil spirits: A Nasdaq-listed company which claims its microchip can help find children who have been kidnapped has been attacked as being an agent of evil. A prominent US religious group has said the new technology is a prophecy of the coming of the devil, calling it the "mark of the beast". Known as a Digital Angel, the microchip works in conjunction with GPS – military satellites positioned around the globe – and testing begins next month in Palm Beach, Florida. If successful its maker Applied Digital Solutions will start implanting them inside humans between the muscle and the skin on the forearm next year. Rev 13:16

Colorado to 'map' faces of drivers: "First it was the photo-radar vans snapping pictures of Denver-area speeders. Now, some fear Big Brother's roving eye soon will be watching all of Colorado with the arrival of a new European import called "face recognition" ...  cameras that will map every driver's facial characteristics like a three-dimensional land chart. The danger, critics say, is that the technology could eventually be expanded to monitor the comings and goings of ordinary Coloradans."

High-Tech Security on Tampa Streets: "Tampa is using high-tech security cameras to scan the city's streets for people wanted for crimes, a law enforcement tactic that some liken to Big Brother.... European cities and U.S government offices, casinos and banks are already using the so-called face-printing system, but Tampa is the first American city to install a permanent system along public streets, The Tampa Tribune reported Sunday." We first noticed the cameras when visiting Australia in 1997. See World Heritage "Protection" -- UNESCO's War Against National Sovereignty  

Posted in June  

Part 3- Is Technology The Problem? "The problem is particularly acute because we often embrace new technologies with naive optimism before they are really understood. Privacy is being eroded because of cheap information, ignorance about new technology, technological glitches and more intrusive surveillance." See Who is Reading Your E-Mail?

Part 2- Who's Tracking You? "You are being tracked by just about anyone who thinks he can sell to you, steal from you or control you. This includes government agencies and big businesses; banks, credit reporting agencies and other financial information resellers; insurance companies, pharmacies and other health-related organizations; political and extremist groups; local retail outlets and marketers; employers and fellow employees...." See Who is Reading Your E-Mail?

Echelon spies reading your personal e-mails: "...ordinary individuals and companies are now being spied on, and they should routinely encode their e-mails and faxes if they want them to remain private. Sending an unencrypted e-mail, they say, is like posting a letter without an envelope." See also Who is Reading Your E-Mail?

 

Postal Service Has Its Eye on You: "Since 1997, the U.S. Postal Service has been conducting a customer-surveillance program, ‘Under the Eagle’s Eye,’ and reporting innocent activity to federal law enforcement....   

  "One thing that should set off alarms, the postal service says, is a customer objecting to filling out an 8105-A form that requests their date of birth, occupation and driver’s license or other government-issued ID.... But the 'suspicious' customers might just be concerned about privacy." See A National Information System

Posted in May  

 

Building a Better Bar Code: "...product information can be accessed as needed with the convenience of wireless communications. 'From distribution down to retail, from retail into the consumer’s hands, and then immediate feedback of that information through sensors back to the supply chain.' ...Could an Electronic People Code be far behind?" Rev 13:16-18 and No Place to Hide?

Forcing doctors to ask kids about guns: "Prevention of youth violence requires that pediatricians recognize violence-related risk factors and diagnose and treat violence-related problems at all stages of child development." See No Place to Hide?

 

EU condemned over planned 'snoop laws': "Be careful to whom you talk on the net or phone; soon law enforcement agencies could win sweeping powers to scrutinise the electronic communications of every European." Matt 24:12   

Posted in April  

Feds Buy Citizens’ Most Personal Information: "Such data include details as speeding fines citizens have paid, bankruptcies and spouses’ names. Credit agencies can retrieve all that with a single Social Security number. ... all of that intrusive data is available to the feds, who are not allowed to go out on their and dig up such information themselves."

Cells Phones To Have Location Tracking By 2005: 'Cell-phone manufacturers are under a federal mandate to equip mobiles with location-tracking technology beginning this October."

Big Blue's Big Brother Lab: "Imagine living in a world with sensors inserted everywhere, including sunglasses, so any time you meet new people their names appear before your eyes.... It was creepy." Gen 11:4-9

Jail Awaits 'Privacy' Rule Violators: "Those daring to buck the federal government's new medical-records 'privacy' regulation could be denied health care, pay heavy fines or even go to prison....  It was first proposed by Bill Clinton, and has now been adopted without change by President Bush. With its enforcement powers go severe penalties the secretary may impose on anyone who refuses to go along with the federal government's 'privacy' rule, which critics say is in reality an 'anti-privacy' rule."

Cyberbrother Is Watching: "The Finnish government has computerized every bit of information and government services and put the data into its giant database and made it available online. This mass of private and public information includes every automobile, business and piece of property in Finland."

'Privacy' Rules Open Door to Socialized Medicine: "The open sesame to American socialized medicine is not the reviled Unique Personal Identifier but the "privacy protection" lock that will make that key inevitable. Behind that supposedly secure lock is an electronic national data collection of Americans' personal medical records." See Executive Order #13011

Armey Says Congress May Act on Medical Privacy. Let's pray it does. See also A National Information System - Executive Order #13011

Elementary Biometrics: "...kids can now pay for lunches with their fingerprints. It's one of the first consumer applications of biometrics, an industry that offers an uneasy tradeoff, some argue, between efficiency and privacy."

Your Social Security Number to be Shared: "Not only your Social Security number...but any data they happen to have, even if customers 'opt out' to share with third parties."

New Flashlight Sees Through Doors As Well As Windows

Welcome to OnStar. How May We Invade You?

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Echelon: "...ECHELON may intercept as many as 3 billion communications everyday, including phone calls, e-mail messages, Internet downloads, satellite transmissions.... Some sources have claimed that ECHELON sifts through an estimated 90 percent of all traffic that flows through the Internet."  See also Who is Reading Your E-Mail?

Tossing medical privacy out the window. See also A National Information System -- Executive Order #13011.

 


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