Department of Homeland Security - Press Release

For Immediate Release

Office of the Press Secretary
October 28, 2004

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced today the adoption of its first biometric facial recognition standard. The standard is designed to be consistent with international standards for biometrics used in such applications as travel documents. This standard will also be used to specify definitions of photographic properties and digital image attributes, and as a standards format for relevant applications, including human examination and computer automated face recognition.

“Secretary Ridge and I are pleased to release the Department’s biometric standard face recognition formats today,” said Dr. Charles McQueary, Under Secretary for Science and Technology. “This standard will help improve our long-term security by facilitating the interchange of digitally stored photographs, regardless of what equipment is used to take or to display the images.”

Homeland security professionals will use the standard as technical criteria upon which to design equipment such as cameras and software for facial recognition. The standard supports visual human facial comparison and computer automated comparisons for watch list checks and for computer identification and verification. It also facilitates the interchange of photographs across systems, and will assist in the future development of interoperable biometric applications.

“The Department, through the US-VISIT Program, has already moved forward with extensive work on biometrics and facial recognition standards. The adaptation of facial recognition standards is a first step in standardizing all types of biometrics which is essential for the success of Homeland Security programs,” said Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson.

This standard was developed by the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), a standards development organization accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Homeland Security and its partners will continue to work on a regular basis with INCITS to revise these standards as biometric technology evolves. The standard (INCITS 385) is available from INCITS and from ANSI.

* The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology division serves as the primary research and development arm of the Department, utilizing our nation’s scientific and technological resources to provide federal, state and local officials with the technology and capabilities to protect the homeland.

http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?content=4080


Informant: Anna Webb

MINISTERS were warned yesterday that they were ushering in an authoritarian "world of George Orwell" after saying they would push ahead with plans for a compulsory identity card for everybody in the country. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, explained how the cards would work, who would pay for them and what they would contain. However, he revealed that the cards would go much further than many of his critics feared, giving the security services a complete record of the card’s use, allowing them to see information, for instance, on when the card is checked to verify the holder’s identity. This could even happen on some occasions at visits to the doctor or the bank, if the cardholder is applying for a loan and needs to be identified formally. The cards are being introduced to combat benefit fraud and illegal immigration but critics fear they will infringe on the civil liberties of every law-abiding person in the country.

The Home Office will create a database of personal biometric data for all 59 million people in the UK. Each time a card is checked against this database - for instance, when accessing government-provided services such as healthcare - a record will be created. That record will be accessible to security services.

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1246122004


From:
Aftermath News Service
Top Stories - October 29th, 2004

Secret services to be given access to ID card database

The intelligence services will be given unprecedented access to the government database underpinning the controversial identity card scheme, the Home Office said yesterday, prompting accusations of Big Brother-style surveillance of people's everyday lives. The plan emerged as David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, announced "refinements" to his ID card proposals, saying that the central register containing the cards' information would provide a "full audit trail" of when and where they were used. This could include every time holders use public services - including hospitals, benefits offices or colleges - buy an expensive item or make large withdrawals from banks. The Home Office insisted that only the security services, such as MI5 and MI6, and not police or government officials, would be allowed to access the data. But a spokesman for Liberty, the civil liberties organisation, said: "It's very easy to say today that only intelligence services could access this information. But they can't say that would be the case in five years' time. Once the information is in the system, it's open to misuse." The Liberal Democrat MP, Bob Russell, of the Home Affairs Select Committee , said: "We've entered the world of George Orwell's 1984 20 years late."

The Home Office also announced yesterday that the Government had scrapped the idea of combining the ID card with passports and driving licences. Having assessed the "cost, implementation and risk considerations", it said it had decided to introduce a separate, free-standing card.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=576769


From:
Aftermath News Service
Top Stories - October 29th, 2004

A technological breakthrough can be used for sinister purposes.

In Amsterdam and Barcelona, patrons of exclusive bars can opt to have a microchip implanted under their skin. The chip allows them to enter the clubs unimpeded while also allowing management to keep a running record of their tab. The technology is the same as that used to track endangered animals in the wild or domestic pets in cities. Now the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of VeriChip technology for medical purposes. An electronic capsule the size of a grain of rice transmits a code to a scanner, allowing doctors to obtain a patient's medical history from an accompanying database. The technology could be used to track Alzheimer's patients who "wander" or allow doctors to know the blood type and medical allergies of patients who enter emergency rooms unconscious and need immediate surgery. The FDA's approval has alarmed human rights advocates, who speculate that the implants could have more sinister applications. They envisage an Orwellian future in which the implants could be used for surveillance and identification. "Once the technology is out there and is available it raises the very real possibility that people in a position to require or demand it will begin to do that," said Katherine Albrecht, who has campaigned against the devices. "In the post-9/11 world we are already racing down the path to total surveillance.

The only thing missing to clinch the deal has been the technology. This may fill that gap." (It is possible, however, that a microchip on a removable wristband - of the type recommended by blood transfusion specialists in Melbourne last week - might confer the benefits of the technology, while lessening the risks.)

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/25/1098667688192.html?oneclick=true


From:
Aftermath News Service
Top Stories - October 29th, 2004

Alle EU-Bürger werden künftig wie dringend Tatverdächtige oder Strafgefangene behandelt

BBA Austria heute - teert und federt sie!

Am Tag der österreichischen österreichischen Big Brother Awards, am heutigen 26. Oktober 2004, haben sich die EU-Innenminister darauf geeinigt, künftig alle Bürger wie dringend Tatverdächtige oder Strafgefangene zu behandeln.

Wer jetzt noch nicht kapiert hat, wohin die Reise geht, hat heute in Wien Gelegenheit, das Wissen darüber zu erweitern. Geboten werden bereits ab 19:30 Samba/Attac/ken vor dem Flex, dann regiert die von Hubsi Kramar angeführte Schauspieltruppe, dann kommen die Kapuzenmänner und kochen Teer begleitet von bösem Hip & Hop: Wiespät.


EU-Innenminister einigen sich auf Aufnahme von Fingerprints in EU-Pässen

Formeller Beschluss wegen Einspruch von Österreich, den Niederlanden und Finnland noch ausständig

Erster Fahrplan steht

Alle EU-Bürger müssen für einen neuen Reisepass in absehbarer Zeit ihre Fingerabdrücke abgeben.

Die Innenminister der 25 EU-Staaten einigten sich am Dienstag in Luxemburg im Grundsatz darauf, dass die Pässe einen Speicherchip mit digitalisiertem Foto und Fingerabdrücken erhalten sollen.

Der elektronisch ausgestattete Pass gilt als Voraussetzung dafür, dass EU-Bürger weiterhin ohne Visum in die USA einreisen dürfen.

Österreich, Finnland und die Niederlande machten in Luxemburg noch Vorbehalte geltend, weshalb ein formeller Beschluss vorerst aussteht.

Sobald die technischen Einzelheiten des Chip-Passes festgelegt sind, haben die EU-Staaten 18 Monate Zeit, um die digitalisierten Passbilder einzuführen.

Weitere 18 Monate bleiben ihnen, um auch die Fingerabdrücke aufzunehmen.

Deutschland will noch vor Ende 2005 mit der Ausgabe der neuen Reisepässe beginnen.

Mehr dazu:
http://futurezone.orf.at/futurezone.orf?read=detail&id=255068

relayed by Harkank

Quelle: quintessenz-list Digest, Vol 19, Issue 14

Massive infusions of omnipresent "Reality TV" are deliberately conditioning the dumbed-down sheep to the Big Brother global surveillance grid while at the same time it is dehumanizing, depersonalizing, degrading, demeaning and demoralizing television pablum for the masses. In other words, it is just more mind-control crap.

How to marry big brother

As humans, we have been gleefully watching people do stupid things for millennia. From the earliest Cro-Magnon lighting his beard on fire (to uproarious laughter from his fellow cave dwellers, no doubt) to the medieval court jester, and from the Barnum and Bailey Circus to the television-age addiction to "reality TV," we love to watch people flounder and fail. We like embarrassment; at least when it doesn't happen to us. Without a doubt, the headshrinkers could fill books analyzing our collective voyeurism; and in fact they have.

Such obsessive satisfaction in the misfortune of others, and the burgeoning use of technology to share in it real time, however, carries with it a political component, and it is not positive. Simply put, the current obsession with reality TV has immunized American society to the changes wrought by pervasive government surveillance.

http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20041024-110609-6216r.htm


From:
Aftermath News
Top Stories - October 25th, 2004

Captain America

Superhero of the Military-Industrial Complex

Remote-Controlled super-soldiers whose human-ness has been all but banished

By using high technology and cutting edge biomedicine, the military hopes to create an entire army of Captain Americas -- a fighting force devoid of "Steve Rogers" or any other "Joe Average," and made up instead of super-soldiers whose human-ness has been all but banished. Monkeys, with electrodes implanted in their brains, have already been taught to use thought-power to do such things as move a robotic arm. But why stop there? A few years back, DARPA scientists succeeded in creating a "ratbot" --a living, breathing rat with electrodes implanted in its brain that could be controlled using a laptop computer. Today, DARPA researchers, not exactly heading up the evolutionary scale but evidently proceeding toward larger sized natural fighting machines, are working on a remote-controlled shark. And how long will it be until some researcher gets the bright idea of a remote-controlled soldier; short-circuiting free will altogether? The technology isn't there yet, but what happens when it is? Even if you never read the comic book or watched the hopelessly low-production-value 1960s cartoon, chances are you've at least seen the image of Captain America -- the slightly ridiculous looking superhero in a form-fitting, star-spangled bodysuit. If you're still hazy on "Cap," he was Steve Rogers, a 4-F weakling during World War II who, through the miracle of "modern science" (a "super soldier serum") became an Axis-smashing powerhouse -- the pinnacle of human physical perfection and the ultimate American fighting-man. In the 1940s comic, Rogers had taken part in a super-soldier experiment, thanks to the interventions of an Army general and a scientist in a secret government laboratory. He was to be the first of many American super-soldiers, but due to poor note-keeping methods and the efforts of a Nazi assassin, he became the sole recipient of the serum. Today, however, the dream of Captain America turns out to be alive and well -- and lodged in the Pentagon. The U.S. military aims to succeed where those in the four-color comic book world failed. By using high technology and cutting edge biomedicine, the military hopes to create an entire army of Captain Americas-- a fighting force devoid of "Steve Rogers" or any other "Joe Average," and made up instead of super-soldiers whose human-ness has been all but banished.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=6421


From:
Aftermath News
Top Stories - October 24th, 2004

What's in a name?

Ask any CEO about the power of branding, and you'll get an earful. Most corporate chiefs would give anything to have the positive brand recognition of a Coke, a Kodak or a Google. The architects of the surveillance state are using brand management, too, but with precisely the opposite purpose: to escape negative recognition. A case in point is a provision in an intelligence reform bill that passed the Senate last week. It calls for a "trusted" government surveillance network. Few have forgotten the Defense Department's doomed surveillance proposal, Total Information Awareness. It would have comprehensively scanned the commercial activities and communications of all Americans in an attempt to weed out terrorists. It was lamely rebranded "Terrorism Information Awareness" before Congress terminated the program. But Total Information Awareness may not stay dead all that long. The Senate intelligence bill, now being reconciled with similar House legislation, calls for a new "trusted information environment." The bill is, at best, ambiguous about how widely it would sweep as it conscripts privately held data for surveillance purposes.

Of course, Congress cannot decree that such a network will be "trusted." That is up to the American people. If government investigators are going to put citizens' eBay listings and credit-card records in the same pool as information about Hamas leaders, one doubts that trust will be forthcoming. And calling this surveillance network an "environment" will not make it more palatable either.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/10/15/EDGAB99A971.DTL


From:
Aftermath News
Top Stories - October 24th, 2004