Infinite Unknown

Barclaycard has announced it is investing a seven-figure sum in “contactless payment” technology Photo: Getty Images

The futuristic systems, like those used by Tom Cruise in the science fiction film Minority Report, are being developed by scientists for Barclaycard.

The company has announced it is investing a seven-figure sum in “contactless payment” technology.

This allows customers to use everyday items they carry around with them - such as mobile phones, key fobs or even their eyes or fingerprints - to make payments.

It means shoppers will no longer have to rely on cards.

Barclaycard, which is part of Barclays, has already introduced a new-style cash machine in the United Arab Emirates enabling people to use their fingerprints to withdraw money and shoppers in the UK may soon be able to use the same technology.

Continue reading »

Tags: biometrics, Fingerprints, Minority Report, Science, Scientists, Technology, U.K., United Arab Emirates

Don’t miss the “Key Points” at the end of the article.
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· Closer links needed to beat terrorism and crime
· Blueprint wants new force to patrol world flashpoints

A German and an Italian officer with the joint EU force Frontex check a lorry for illegal immigrants on the Polish border. The agency, which is seen as one model of future integration, patrols the EU’s frontiers. Photograph: Sven Kaestner/AP

Europe should consider sharing vast amounts of intelligence and information on its citizens with the US to establish a “Euro-Atlantic area of cooperation” to combat terrorism, according to a high-level confidential report on future security.

The 27 members of the EU should also pool intelligence on terrorism, develop joint video-surveillance and unmanned drone aircraft, start networks of anti-terrorism centres, and boost the role and powers of an intelligence-coordinating body in Brussels, said senior officials. Continue reading »

Tags: ACLU, biometric, biometrics, civil liberties, Czech Republic, DNA, EU, France, Germany, Government, New World Order, Police, Police State, Portugal, Slovenia, Surveillance, Sweden, terrorism, U.S., video surveillance

Faked document with picture of Bin Laden fooled UN agency, newspaper reports

A British passport

New microchipped passports designed to protect against identity theft by terrorists and criminals can easily be faked, it was claimed today.

Tests showed that personal information could be cloned and manipulated within an hour before being inserted into new chips, the Times reported.

The paper said it had exposed “security flaws” in the passport system by asking a researcher to clone the chips on two British passports and implant digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by reader software used by the UN agency that sets the standards for such e-passports.

The tests showed that bogus biometrics could be inserted in fake or blank passports, the Times alleged, saying the flaws also undermined assertions that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week could not be forged.

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Tags: biometrics, Home Office, microchipped, Osama Bin Laden, Passport, RFID, Technology, terrorists

This is a talk given at the Nassau Club in Princeton by Chris Hedges, former New York Times Middle East bureau chief:

Israel, without the United States, would probably not exist. The country came perilously close to extinction during the October 1973 war when Egypt, trained and backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the Suez Canal and the Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge American military transport planes came to the rescue.

They began landing every half-hour to refit the battered Israeli army, which had lost most of its heavy armor. By the time the war as over, the United States had given Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid. The intervention, which enraged the Arab world, triggered the OPEC oil embargo that for a time wreaked havoc on Western economies. This was perhaps the most dramatic example of the sustained life-support system the United States has provided to the Jewish state.

Israel was born at midnight May 14, 1948. The U.S. Recognized the new state 11 minutes later. The two countries have been locked in a deadly embrace ever since.Washington, at the beginning of the relationship, was able to be a moderating influence. An incensed President Eisenhower demanded and got Israel’s withdrawal after the Israelis occupied Gaza in 1956.

During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli warplanes bombed the USS Liberty. The ship, flying the U.S. Flag and stationed 15 miles off the Israeli coast, was intercepting tactical and strategic communications from both sides. The Israeli strikes killed 34 U.S. Sailors and wounded 171.

The deliberate attack froze, for a while, Washington’s enthusiasm for Israel. But ruptures like this one proved to be only bumps, soon smoothed out by an increasingly sophisticated and well-financed Israel lobby that set out to merge Israel and American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Israel has reaped tremendous rewards from this alliance. It has been given more than $140 billion in U.S. Direct economic and military assistance. It receives about $3 billion in direct assistance annually, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. Foreign aid budget. Although most American foreign aid packages stipulate that related military purchases have to be made in the United States, Israel is allowed to use about 25 percent of the money to subsidize its own growing and profitable defense industry. It is exempt, unlike other nations, from accounting for how it spends the aid money.

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Tags: biometrics, Bush administration, China, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Egypt, Gaza, George Bush, Government, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Military, NATO, OPEC, Palestine, Russia, Surveillance, Syria, U.S., War

The Dollar will be destroyed.

There will be a controlled collapse of the stock market and the economy.

Then there will be no more objections to a cashless totally controlled and monitored society anymore:

First the debit card and then the implanted microchip, that by the way causes cancer and opens the door to control your thoughts, feelings and behavior. This is the ultimate Mind Control.

That’s how it is all planned by the elite. This is called the New World Order. - The Infinite Unknown

Related articles:
- CASPIAN RELEASES MICROCHIP CANCER REPORT
- The Microchip: Health, Privacy, Civil Rights And Freedom Under Siege
U.K. to Begin Microchipping Prisoners
- Met Police officers to be ‘microchipped’ by top brass in Big Brother style tracking scheme
Every single Metropolitan police officer will be ‘microchipped’….
…there will not be any choice about wearing one.
- UK: Compulsory microchipping of dogs
- U.S. School District to Begin Microchipping Students
So far the RFID chips are only implanted in the schoolbag to monitor the students movements.
- The Microchip is here !!! - New World Order

Elites Seek Control Over Rising Cashless Society

Source: Rogue Government
06-24-2008
Lee Rogers

The terrorists in the federal government are continuing their push to implement a cashless economic enslavement system. According to a legislative notice from the U.S. Senate, a new Housing Bill (HR 3221) contains a provision that will require nearly every online credit card transaction to be reported directly to the Internal Revenue Service. The insanity of this is obvious and it is nothing more than a way to give the government a means to track and trace as many private transactions as humanly possible. Previously, Visa’s CEO has stated that it is their goal to establish a cashless society by the year 2012. As technology increases, a greater number of businesses are accepting credit card payments. It wasn’t too long ago that fast food restaurants wouldn’t accept anything but cash for payment, now almost all of them accept credit cards. We are also starting to see biometrics utilized as a way to facilitate transactions. The bottom line is that there is an agenda at play to setup a cashless system that will allow the elite to take total control over the global economy. These people want to eliminate privacy in mutual exchanges and this is another step in doing just that.

The following is taken off of the legislative notice from the U.S. Senate Bill summary describing this draconian reporting scheme within HR 3221.

The proposal requires information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee. Reportable transactions include any payment card transaction and any third party network transaction. Participating payees include persons who accept a payment card as payment and third party networks who accept payment from a third party settlement organization in settlement of transactions. A payment card means any card issued pursuant to an agreement or arrangement which provides for standards and mechanisms for settling the transactions. Use of an account number or other indicia associated with a payment card will be treated in the same manner as a payment card. A de minimis exception for transactions of $10,000 or less and 200 transactions or less applies to payments by third party settlement organizations. The proposal applies to returns for calendar years beginning after December 31, 2010. Back-up withholding provisions apply to amounts paid after December 31, 2011. This proposal is estimated to raise $9.802 billion over ten years.

Groups like Freedomworks and companies like EBay have already come out denouncing this provision. The bottom line is that the federal government has no right to demand this type of information. Not only that, but how does the IRS intend on securing this information that they are going to collect from all of these online transactions? The whole concept is ridiculous and an obvious invasion of privacy. This is just another control mechanism that is being put in place so the establishment can eventually have the capabilities to track and trace every single electronic transaction. Clearly, a totalitarian big brother system is being put into place, and these criminals in Washington DC are just trying to take it to another level by hiding this provision in a 600+ page bill. It is a disgrace.

A few months ago, Elliot Spitzer the former New York Governor was forced out because his financial transactions were tracked back to the purchase of prostitution services. The banks already have the ability to track and trace transactions with impunity. This provision will centralize control to track and trace almost all electronic financial transactions and that is not a good thing.

It is unfortunate that we have a bunch of control freak Nazis that want to do these things, but this is the agenda. The modern day priest class that is in control seeks the total destruction of economic privacy and they are doing an excellent job at doing just that. They’ve managed to get everybody addicted to this cashless society and now they are bringing in the enslavement apparatus to track and trace activity within it. At first all transactions will be conducted using credit and debit cards, then it will be by way of biometrics, then it will be an implantable microchip. Or who knows, maybe they’ll just skip biometrics and go directly to an implantable microchip. Either way, the agenda is painfully clear, and it is completely unacceptable. Hopefully this legislation will get defeated, but we shouldn’t be holding our breath either. HR 3221 looks to be on the fast track to getting signed into law.

Much more powerful than power is love.

Power guided by love would create an enlightened society, instead of the ultimate tyranny.

It is very important that…

…”No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” - Albert Einstein

The Infinite Unknown
June 25, 2008

Tags: Albert Einstein, biometrics, Congress, Credit Card, dictatorship, Facism, Government, IRS, microchip, microchipping, New World Order, Surveillance, terrorists, U.S.

The Bush administration has required agencies to increase their capability to share among themselves biometric information on people believed to pose a threat to national security.

A presidential directive issued June 5 requires the increased compatibility of methods agencies use to collect, store and share fingerprints, face and iris recognition data and behavioral characteristics to identify and screen “known and suspected terrorists.” The directive also applies to other categories of individuals the directive said would be identified soon who may also pose a threat to national security.

The National Security Presidential Directive 59/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 24’s purpose is to create a “framework” to ensure that agencies are using mutually compatible and legal methods for sharing biometric information, the document states.

The directive also explained that although existing name-based screening approaches are beneficial, biometric technologies can improve agencies’ ability to identify and screen people believed to threaten national security. Continue reading »

Tags: biometric, biometrics, Bush administration, DHS, George Bush, Homeland Security, national security, Surveillance, Uncategorized, White House

Former telecoms monopoly Deutsche Telekom over the weekend became the latest German firm to be rocked by revelations of spying on its employees.

Deutsche Telekom, Europe’s biggest phone company, confirmed on Saturday allegations in Spiegel magazine that it hired an outside firm to track hundreds of thousands of phone calls by senior executives and journalists in 2005-6.

It denied that the Berlin consultancy firm listened to the conversations, instead merely logging details on who phoned whom as well as the time and duration of the calls.

Spiegel said that “Operation Clipper” and “Operation Rheingold” were set up in order to identify the source of leaks of sensitive financial information to financial journalists.

Chief executive Rene Obermann, who was not in charge when the spying took place, said that state prosecutors and a law firm in Cologne were investigating the affair.

Less than 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Stasi secret police in communist East Germany, Germans are particularly sensitive about infringements into their privacy.

Other firms have also been accused of spying on their own workers.

The biggest such scandal involved Lidl, one of German’s biggest budget supermarket chains, which reportedly violated labour laws by by installing hidden cameras in its stores to systematically keep tabs on staff.

Lidl even recorded employees when they used the toilet, their conversations while on break, and kept track on who their friends outside work were, reports said in March.

Anti-terrorism surveillance measures introduced by the government such as installing secret cameras in terror suspects’ homes and including biometric data on passports have also riled civil liberties groups.

May 25 08:04 PM US/Eastern

Source: AFP

Tags: biometrics, civil liberties, Deutsche Telecom, Germany, Lidl, Privacy, Rene Obermann, Spiegel, Surveillance, video surveillance

Excerpts from the long but excellent article:

“Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts.”

“The security cameras are just one part of a much broader high-tech surveillance and censorship program known in China as “Golden Shield.” The end goal is to use the latest people-tracking technology — thoughtfully supplied by American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric — to create an airtight consumer cocoon:”

“Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.”

“This is how this Golden Shield will work: Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country’s notorious system of online controls known as the “Great Firewall.” Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder’s personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces.”

“Here is a small sample of what the company (L-1) does: produces passports and passport cards for American citizens; takes finger scans of visitors to the U.S. under the Department of Homeland Security’s massive U.S.-Visit program; equips U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan with “mobile iris and multimodal devices” so they can collect biometric data in the field; maintains the State Department’s “largest facial-recognition database system”; and produces driver’s licenses in Illinois, Montana and North Carolina. In addition, L-1 has an even more secretive intelligence unit called SpecTal. Asked by a Wall Street analyst to discuss, in “extremely general” terms, what the division was doing with contracts worth roughly $100 million, the company’s CEO would only say, “Stay tuned.”"

“It is L-1’s deep integration with multiple U.S. government agencies that makes its dealings in China so interesting: It isn’t just L-1 that is potentially helping the Chinese police to nab political dissidents, it’s U.S. taxpayers. The technology that Yao purchased for just a few thousand dollars is the result of Defense Department research grants and contracts going as far back as 1994, when a young academic named Joseph Atick (the research director Fordyce consulted on L-1’s China dealings) taught a computer at Rockefeller University to recognize his face.”
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Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn’t exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples. That was before the Communist Party chose it - thanks to its location close to Hong Kong’s port - to be China’s first “special economic zone,” one of only four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis.

The theory behind the experiment was that the “real” China would keep its socialist soul intact while profiting from the private-sector jobs and industrial development created in Shenzhen. The result was a city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture - the crack cocaine of capitalism. It was a force so addictive to investors that the Shenzhen experiment quickly expanded, swallowing not just the surrounding Pearl River Delta, which now houses roughly 100,000 factories, but much of the rest of the country as well. Continue reading »

Tags: Bejing, biometrics, CCTV, China, CIA, civil liberties, Congress, George Tenet, Golden Shield, Government, Homeland Security, human rights, IBM, ID, Internet, L-1, Lhasa, McDonald's, Police State, riots, Surveillance, Tibet, U.S., video surveillance, Wal-Mart

Some workers are doing it at Dunkin’ Donuts, Hilton hotels, even at Marine Corps bases. Employees at a growing number of businesses around the nation are starting and ending their days by pressing a hand or finger to a scanner that logs the precise time of their arrival and departure - information that is automatically reflected in payroll records.

Manufacturers say these biometric scanners improve efficiency and streamline payroll operations. Employers big and small buy them with the dual goals of curtailing fraud and automating outdated record keeping systems that rely on paper time sheets.

The new systems, however, have raised complaints from some workers who see the efforts to track their movements as excessive or even creepy.

“They don’t even have to hire someone to harass you anymore. The machine can do it for them,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO. “The palm print thing really grabs people as a step too far.” Continue reading »

Tags: biometric scanners, biometrics, Department of Investigation, Dunkin' Donuts, fingerprint, ID, Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, International Biometric Group, McDonald's, scanner

Will Homeland Security the Militarized Police State Shock You Into Submission?

This is perhaps one of the most kooky and creepy Security State tactics that I have come across: the EMD safety bracelet, which is being billed as the “last line of defence.” A company called Lamperd Firearm Training Systems (scroll down) is trying to commercialize this item as an “airline security product.” The company’s video that hawks this device talks about the current facial recognition system called biometrics, where cameras capture photos of people and compare those images to the images of “terrorists” in its “terrorist” database. No matter how sophisticated this technology, it can all too often allow a terrorist on board a plane, and, this technology can also have the effect of creating airport bottlenecks. Ahem. The solution? The “viable, workable answer” is an electronic ID bracelet. This bracelet will replace the need for a ticket and contain all necessary information about the person, and as a bonus, it can allow the passenger to be tracked through the terminal. Crew members would be empowered with radio frequency transmitters to subdue “hijackers.” The technology will override a person’s central nervous system and zap them down quicker than you can say “Homeland Security.“ The company assures us that being dragged through the bracelet process is a “small inconvenience in order to assure your safe arrival.” In fact, its studies show that most people would “happily opt” for wearing the bracelet to “insure their own security.”

Here’s the Lamperd video on YouTube - you must watch it. Here’s the patent for this device. The patent actually reads this:

Upon activation of the electric shock device, through receipt of an activating signal from the selectively operable remote control means, the passenger wearing that particular bracelet receives the disabling electrical shock from the electric shock device. Accordingly, the passenger becomes incapacitated for a few seconds or perhaps a few minutes, during which time the passenger can be fully subdued and handcuffed, if necessary. Depending on the type of transmission medium used to send the activating signal, other passengers may also become temporarily incapacitated, which is undesirable and unfortunate, but may be unavoidable.

Lamperd even posts a series of letters on its website showing interest in the product for use “outside of airport security,” which, of course, is the real reason for the product. Why it can be used for border control to subdue illegal aliens or by local law enforcement agencies to control the “criminal element!”

Posted by Karen De Coster at March 23, 2008 05:43 AM

Source: LRC

Tags: biometrics, central nervous system, EMD safety bracelet, Homeland Security, ID bracelet, Lamperd Firearm Training Systems, Technology