John Podesta is the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress in Washington and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton

William S. Sessions is the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

As technological advances turn the unimaginable into the everyday, ensuring the continued protection of civil liberties, privacy and security becomes ever more complicated.

A growing number of communities have installed – or are considering – public video surveillance systems. These efforts gained momentum after 9/11, both as anticrime and antiterrorism measures. Philadelphia is no exception. In a May 16 referendum, residents overwhelmingly approved the installation of a video surveillance system.

Many public surveillance systems employ the latest in high-technology features, creating powerful and intelligent networks of cameras. Residents generally welcome the perceived increase in their security, and often seem largely untroubled by any potential intrusion on their privacy rights or civil liberties. Most of us seem to accept the notion that individuals have no legitimate “expectation of privacy” once they leave their homes and step into the public streets. But even in public places, isn’t there a point where we would draw the line?

What if local governments used these systems to create “digital dossiers” on residents, tracking the time, date, and location of each individual’s movements? What if an individual were filmed each time he or she entered a psychiatrist’s office or an infertility clinic? Or an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? Or the meeting of a controversial religious or political group?

Even if we were not breaking any laws, wouldn’t we be concerned if our every movement were recorded and stored in a digital database, readily searchable by the government? What if that information could be shared with anyone who asked for it?

We believe it is possible to establish useful surveillance systems that also protect residents’ privacy rights and civil liberties – but communities should incorporate such protections into their systems from the outset, and remain vigilant to ensure they are both effective and operating within legal limits. […]

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/14803735.htm

You are mistaken.

Either the streets belong to the public or they belong to the state. If you allow state owned cameras to watch your every move when you are in public, then that space belongs to the state, and you are a prisoner.

We all would like to restore a pre-9/11 sense of security to our communities. But in our attempts to do so, we must be as smart as the new technology we seek to install. Like any law-enforcement tool or tactic, video surveillance systems should have clearly defined uses, employ specific procedures, and be subject to oversight. They should be adopted thoughtfully, evaluated continuously, and constrained by appropriate checks and balances.

We can be both safe and free.

My emphasis.

Aaahhhh. The Old America. The America of The Eagles and Bruce Springsteen. You all long for it now that you have rushed headlong into the fascist nightmare. You are beginning to understand at a gut level how wrong it has all gone.

Good.

Allow me to qoute:

DR. BRODSKY
Very soon now the drug will cause the subject to experience a death-like paralysis together with deep feelings of terror and helplessness. One of our earlier test subjects described it as being like death, a sense of stiflingand drowning, and it is during this period we have found the subject will make his most rewarding associations between his catastrophic experience and environment and the violence he sees.

Alex retching violently and strugglingagainst his strait jacket.

INT. ALEX’S ROOM – LUDOVICO – DAY

DR. BRANOM
Well, that was a very promising start. By my calculations, you should be starting to feel alright again. Yes? Dr. Brodsky’s pleased with you. Now tomorrow there’ll be two sessions, of course, morning and afternoon.

ALEX
You mean, I have to viddy two sessions in one day?

DR. BRANOM
I imagine you’ll be feeling a little bit limp by the end of the day. But we have to be hard on you. You have to be cured.

ALEX
But it was horrible.

DR. BRANOM
Well, of course, it was horrible. Violence is a very horrible thing. That’s what you’re learning now. Your body is learning it.

DR. BRANOM
You felt ill this afternoon because you’re getting better. You see, when we’re healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You’re becoming healthy that’s all. By this time tomorrow you’ll be healthier still.

What america needs is a healthy dose of The Ludivico Treatment. Each and every one of them. Then they will NEVER have the stomach to allow their government to murder other people en masse. Their problems will have been permanently ended. No need for surveillance cameras to stop terrorists, because there will be no one who wants to kill americans in retaliation. American towns and cities will be like they were in ‘The Rockford Files’, ‘The Honeymooners’…you can fly anywhere with the same ease as jumping on a routemaster bus. You can go anywhere without being watched. A free country full of free people. And proud of it.
Thats what the real america was like. That’s the america they want to bring back.

If you ever get the chance, I strongly reccomend that you watch the episode of ‘The Outer Limits’ called ‘O.B.I.T.’; it dates from the ‘real america’ era. You won’t be sorry that you took the time to track it down watch it.

(CNN) — A man using a fake identification card was able to enter the Homeland Security Department headquarters in Washington, he said, even though the United States government considers the type of Mexican-issued card he used invalid.

Retired New York City policeman Bruce DeCell, who had arranged to meet with DHS officials last week to lobby for document security, told CNN he purposely used a forged version of identification that Mexican consulates in the United States issue to their nationals living here illegally.

Undocumented Mexicans can use the cards at banks and other institutions that accept them. The cards are not valid for entry into federal government buildings.

DeCell is a board member of a group called “9/11 Families for a Secure America,” which he formed with others after losing his son-in-law in the 2001 terrorist attacks.

I wrote about these morons previously, but can’t find the link.

They are the imbeciles that believe biometric ID for all in the use will help ‘prevent another 911’. Why are they morons? Firstly, they are proposing something that will not prevent further attacks. Secondly, they are driven by pure pain, and not reason, and this does not give them the right to further ruin america and make everyone in it suffer just because they are suffering. It is very sad that they have lost loved ones, and the world would be a better place had it not happened, but their grief does not give them carte blanche to flush americans and their liberties down the toilet.

If anything what they should be calling for is an immediate cessation of all us imperialist running dog activities in the middle east. That is the ONLY way you can GUARANTEE that america will never be attacked again.

His group advocates stricter controls against illegal immigrants and wants to ban use of the “matricula consular” cards.

This is just total nonsense. Mexcans have nothing to do with americas flying carpet troubles…or maybe these people belive that Mexico ‘had something to do with 911’. You never know, these Fox watchers are amongst the most stupid creatures in the known universe.

“The card is an unsecure document that could facilitate terrorist money and travel,” he said.

I call bullshit. No card can predict your intent. No card can be ‘secure’. But you know this.

DeCell said a friend in California bought him the fake Mexican card for $20.

Cheaper than UKNIRID ay?!

“I sent him a passport-size photo and the spelling of my name, and he had the card made for me on the street,” he said.

Days before his meeting with DHS officials, DeCell was asked to furnish his name, Social Security number and birth date, so they could be compared by security personnel to a valid form of picture identification. The building security accepted his matricula card, even though it listed a false date of birth, he said.

Trained people are better at judging who is a threat and who is not than any computer. What these fools want is for machines to make all the judgements for us. This move is totally against human culture and history, and is actually dangerous. As we all know, bombers use legit ID to move around. When I say ‘all’ obviously I dont mean ‘all’.

He was allowed entry into the building after walking through a metal detector, according to a statement posted on his group’s Web site.

He was not a threat. Even if he was a terrrst with a fake ID (of the kind that did NOT do Madrid or ‘911’), on this occasion the system would have worked because they could see that he was ‘clean’. This proves that ID cards are ‘security theatre’ and are not needed to make government buildings or planes or anywhere safe. Had he carried REALID and been a REALTERRORIST then there would have been an asplosion.

“It’s obscene in a post-9/11 world that they did not match my name against the fake [date of birth],” DeCell fumed. “They’re spending a lot of money [on security] for nothing.”

The only obcenity here is that this group of grieving murderers of the american dream continue to spew their illogic and lies to a brainless press that doesn’t have the wit or nerve (out of misplaced sympathy) to challenge them and thier nonsense. The obcenity is that they are pushing for the ruin of america for no good reason instead of calling for the measures that will solve the real problem once and for all. They are actually doing the work of those who want to eliminate america and american style freedom from the face of the world.

That is the very definition of ‘obscene’.

Jarrod Agen, a Homeland Security spokesman, told CNN, “In response to this incident, we are following up on the allegations, and we seek to ensure that an incident like this does not occur again.

“At no time was there a threat to the DHS building or its personnel,” he said.

DeCell said he has used the card for years in airports and other sensitive locations, but was still astonished that he was able to use it to enter the headquarters of Homeland Security, the federal agency charged with determining secure IDs.

“It’s very frustrating,” he told CNN. “I’m an unpaid citizen who had a loss on 9/11, and they’re not doing what they need to do to prevent another 9/11. It’s very discouraging for me. […]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/12/dhs.fakeid/index.html

You are a sad fool.

The US said the deal was essential after the 9/11 attacks

The European Court of Justice has ruled illegal an EU-US agreement that allows European airline passenger data to be transferred to the US authorities.The court said the May 2004 agreement did not ensure privacy protection for European travellers.

European airlines have been obliged to give US authorities passengers’ names, addresses and credit card details.

The measure – opposed by the European Parliament – was designed to help prevent acts of terrorism.[…]

I nearly choked on my cornflakes when I read this. Amazing.

Now watch as Bliar twists and bends OUR law in an attempt to appease his US ringmasters. You know he will do it, and those opposed will be painted as lily-livered liberati collaborators.

Reds under beds are back in fashion.

Yesterday, in a discussion on “Britishness”, I heard a commentator say one of the characteristics she found so adoring about the British is that they are so apathetic that there will never be another civil war.

She will have plenty of time to reconsider her position on the Isle of Wight Gulag, comrades!

Blair and his bitches underestimate the British at their peril.

I am reminded, somehow, of John Selwyn Gummer, forcing his child to eat a beefburger to downplay the threat of BSE.

Let’s see Bliar frog-marching his sons into Basra without the correct equipment if he wants to demonstrate his resolve and conviction that his war is worth the sacrifices.

Goshdarn it, how I got here from there I don’t know. It’s Tuesday but it’s a Monday feel and my brain is confused.

Maryland is one of eight states with no so-called legal presence requirement — a law requiring applicants for licenses to prove they are in the country legally — according to the Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License, a pressure group that advocates for such measures and for increased document security features.

Since the Sept. 11 commission recommended tightened national standards for drivers’ licenses, legal presence requirements have been slowly spreading.

“The problem is, if you are issuing licenses to illegals, you don’t know whether there are terrorists among them,” said Gadiel.

There are about 595,000 foreign-born residents of Maryland, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and nearly 135,000 mother-tongue Spanish speakers without proficiency in English.

Under current law in Maryland, “the (Motor Vehicle Administration) may not deny a license to an individual because he or she is unable to prove lawful presence in this country,” according to a legal opinion from state Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr.

But the opinion also says the agency can ask for immigration-related documents as a form of proof of identity. “Although lawful residence status is not a pre-requisite for a driver’s license, the (Motor Vehicle Administration) could determine that official immigration-related documentation is helpful in establishing a person’s identification and, when other satisfactory documentation is unavailable, could require such information,” says the opinion.

The agency’s Web site lists “Valid out-of-country passport with visa,” and several other immigration-related documents as one of the so-called primary sources of identity. But there are more than a dozen other primary sources, including baptismal certificates and foreign drivers’ licenses. […]

http://www.postchronicle.com/news/security/article_21218745.shtml

The attack on the Twin Towers has manufactured a massive army of moronic shock troops who are pushing for authoritarianism left right and centre.

Driving lilcences are only there to prove if you have passed your driving test. That is all. When your examiner says you have passed your road test, and you pass your written test, then you are safe to drive. That is all all all Hassan Saba. Any secondary use of driving licences is totally wrong. The above ‘debate’ is synthetic.

Look at the apalling website of the ‘Coalition for a Secure Driving licence’. It is the very definition of absurd. Driving licences, ‘secure’ or ‘insecure’ whatever these buffoons think that means cannot control or predict the intent of someone. The grief of these sad people mixed with thier out of control fear of ‘terrorism’ is making them into idiots, and astonisingly, people are lisening to them like they have sense.

Google is not evil. It knows that the NSA and every other arm of uncle sham is gunning for its user data. Part of Google’s soultion to this problem is to remove its ability to read Gmail that is sitting on its servers. GPGmail will provide this solution.

GPGmail is Public Key Crypto that executes in your browser. Your keypairs are stored on your machine. All Gmail users will have effortless military grade Public Key encryption, the public key exchange being handled seamlessly by Gmail.

This means that anyone using Gmail to send or recieve email from another Gmail user will have their email encryped by default. Google will no longer be able to deliver plaintext email to whoever demands it, warrant or no warrant.

Revenue from contextual ads will continue; the users session still displays plaintext email. the new Gmail uses special anonymous routers to provide the ads while not revealing the identity of the user or his complete plaintext. Your email is broken up into pieces and each of these pieces is sent to a different ad server over SSL to retrieve the contextual ad.

In one stroke, the NSA is denied access to billions of emails and millions of users.

Google does good once again!

Dear Friend,

Yesterday the nation learned that American telephone companies are helping the government amass what one source called “the largest database ever assembled,” compiling call information on millions of consumers and businesses served by Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth. Take action now!

Scrambling to defend his program, President Bush told reporters “we’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” but that’s simply not true.

This illegal spying is not only directed toward terror suspects or international calls, as the Bush administration has frequently claimed. With the help of these phone companies, the government is tracking the calls and communications of millions of ordinary Americans. And that’s just plain wrong.

The government shouldn’t track when you call your mother, order pizza, or hold a conference call — and your phone service provider shouldn’t help them without a warrant or Congress’ approval.

Send these companies a message today. Sign our petition at http://action.aclu.org/dontspy and tell them you expect your phone records to be held in the strictest privacy.

We’ll be delivering these petitions directly to AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.

You’ll be hearing more about this consumer campaign in the days and weeks to come. The ACLU and its members will do whatever it takes to rally consumer voices against these abuses of power. There will be much more for us all to do.

This is obviously the wrong thing to do.

The RIGHT thing to do is have a ‘National Day of No Calls’ Where everyone vows not to use the phone except in an emergency for an entire day.

This should continue untill the telephone services install iron clad guarantees that they will not allow access to your call logs. Should they fail to do this, then everyone should move to Qwest, who refused to obey the NSA. Qwest should be financially rewarded for sticking up for their customers.

This is the sort of thing the ACLU should be organizing, not more pathetic and useless petitions, that do nothing but suck up the anger energy of all those whose privacy is being violated.

The ACLU has confimation that the US DHS has been sharing PNR information from EU flights despite assurances it would not do so.

With an NIR linked passport it will become possible for agencies such as the DHS to request NIR (i.e. 2011 Census, etc.) information on ‘suspected individuals’ via their passport details gathered at border controls and this is followed up by an NIR request either directly or via SOCA. Say for instance if you do not stay at the address they requested you provide (maybe because it was a poor hotel, or your hosts take you on a surprise road trip, …).

Nevermind the fact that these people will likely be keeping the data they can glean from passports anyway. So information sufficient to access your NIR entry (in perpetuity) will be in the hands of whichever agency the DHS wants to share it with, beyond the scrutiny and accountability of UK data protection laws. There will be people in these agencies (and DHS) willing to sell such information and the cloak of government secrecy (in the name of security) will help them.

These are just the people you’re asked to trust!!!

>> When I use a shop with the “swipe and dock” design card readers (such
>> > > as Tesco) that read your magstripe, chip and ask for a PIN, I despair
>> > > that so many consumers are being taught to accept having their cards
>> > > skimmed in this way.
>> > >
>> > >
> > The PIN is encrypted in the keypad. So do the reports say how it has
> > been recovered?

It is not encrypted in the keypad under the SDA system used in the UK. (There is a more expensive DDA system in which it is encrypted, using the card’s public key, but UK banks prefer not to pay an extra dollar for cards that are capable of public key crypto.)

The effect is that the PIN travels in the clear from the Tesco PIN pad to the swipe-and-dock reader on the side of the checkout girl’s PC. So it can be captured by the PC software, along with the transaction data (which even in the case of a chip[ transaction contains all the information you need to clone a mag stripe card). In consequence I will not use a card at Tesco.

It’s not even necessary to Trojan the keypad (and the Shell terminals were Linux-based, so might have been reflashed rather than had their hardware hacked – we’ll have to wait for the trial to find out).

The first such scam I came across was in Holland where a petrol station attendant got PINs by eyeball and for the card data from a network sniffer. That was in 1994. The same technology will still work fine today.

And I recall that when I predicted all this, a year or two ago, the APACS lady said I was speaking ‘tosh’…

You know, maybe someone should make a formal complaint to the police against APACS for fraud. Fraud is misrepresentation leading to prejudice, and 15 years of persistent lying about ATM system security – to enable their member banks to deny genuine claims from customers who have been the victims of crimes resulting from the banks’ own negligence – must surely fall within that definition.

Ross
[…]

This is yet another reason to not shop at Tesco.

Rumsfeld sued over Pentagon’s recruiting database

[…]

The Pentagon last year acknowledged it had created a database of 12 million Americans, full of personal data such as grades and Social Security numbers, to help find potential military recruits.

The Pentagon has defended the practice as critical to the success of the all-volunteer U.S. military, and said it was sensitive to privacy concerns.

[…]

Washington Post

So do you think they only compiled a database of ‘good guys’ or, rather, do you think they stopped profiling of people who were found not to be useful to the Pentagon?

Do you think that with the continuous testing and assessment in UK schools something similar hasn’t been (or couldn’t be) devised in the UK?

When they have NIR information do you think the government/security forces won’t be tempted to try something much larger?

Do you think the companies that will be paying for NIR information will simply bin it after verifying your ID or do you think they will ‘optimise their investment’?

Do you think we should even give them the chance to do this?

This story about physical data traces on hard disks was on the digg front page. (A known problem addressed by a number of programs). But it raises a few questions:

Will the server disks for the NIR have an audited destruction procedure?
Likewise all disks for companies and services accessing NIR information?
Will ‘free space’ on such disks be frequently and systematically erased?
Will there be enforcable methods for immediately erasing data in temporary files on all computers accessing NIR information?

Every time you answered ‘probably not’ is an opportunity for NIR information to be stored onto a hard disk and retrieved in a way similar to the article (and there are plenty of other ways). Every such answer is another reason not to register.

And when I say all computers I include your local NHS Trust, your banking & mortgage adviser, DVLA, car rental firms, IPS, travel agents, any company that verifies credit card purchases agianst NIR, law enforcement officers here and abroad (and companies with RIPA powers), etc, etc.

Reading the UK dance music press for research at work I was pleasantly surprised to see one letter complaining about a “dressy ‘up-West'” club that required photo ID on entry, which the door-staff would scan and keep ‘for their records’. The writer of this letter quite rightly refused to give up their ID and didn’t enter the club, they also ask that others do the same as clubs will soon see the light. Sadly they also say “I’m actually all for CCTV and ‘big brother’ devices”.

Another letter is about Lush Life, an artist flying to the UK who was detained at Heathrow for four hours without any contact with the American embassy (he was a US citizen) whilst immigration made a dossier of his career and details including scans of his album cover, record contract and several pages of his rhyme book, which would be kept on file.

I hope these people will connect the dots between NIR, biometric passports and ID cards before it’s too late.

Finally I came across this whilst trawling livejournal recently.

Pan, tilt, zoom

Each day, as you go about your life, it’s likely you’ll make a guest appearance on at least 300 different CCTV screens. Britain now has more security cameras than any other country, yet their impact on crime rates is negligible, while our fear of crime is still rising.

[…]  ‘This is one of the reasons CCTV grew so strongly here as against in other European countries,’ says Norris. ‘It was centrally funded.’ The other reason was a complete lack of regulation. In places like Germany or Scandinavia a right to privacy is written into the constitution. Here, the only legislation that affected CCTV was a relaxation of the planning laws. […]

The operation has led to 100 arrests

The use of metal detectors to catch people carrying knives is to be extended by British Transport Police across the UK, the BBC has learned.Operation Shield was launched in London two months ago to target those carrying knives on the Tube network and trains.

Police with stop-and-search powers and sniffer dogs use mobile airport-style scanners to check passengers.

Since it began, almost 10,000 people have been scanned, 100 have been arrested and 68 knives seized.

The initiative is already up and running in Liverpool. It is due to start in Birmingham this month and in north-east England in May, and will eventually be used UK-wide.

[…]

You must take notice.

Unless you are locked in your own home, with the curtains drawn, expect no privacy.

Unless you subjugate yourself to any minion in a uniform, to any mechanical invasion, expect no freedom.

Unless you fight against this evil, expect no sympathy.

A teacher accused of hitting a child with a ruler, but never prosecuted, has won a legal battle to have her DNA sample and fingerprints destroyed.

Philippa Jones, from Birmingham, was arrested in June last year following allegations she hit a boy aged eight.

The High Court said her DNA sample, fingerprints and photograph should have been destroyed within 28 days.

She will also receive £250 damages from West Midlands Police for false imprisonment and assault.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

What the question now is: Have they been destroyed and who can verify that they have?

I’m under no illusions about the police will have, in all probability, retained this womans fingerprints and DNA on their database despite her ‘victory’ in the courts. In situations like this, who is independent of the Police and has the authority to actually check the PNC that this womans records have been destroyed?

Warning on Euro licences
By David Rennie in Brussels
(Filed: 22/03/2006)

A new Europe-wide driving licence could become “an identity card by the back door”, a British Euro-MP warned yesterday.

Transport ministers are expected to approve the single driving licence for 25 nations at talks next week.

The document, the size of a credit card and replacing 110 types of licence in use in the member states, will be phased in over 20 years between 2012 and 2032.

Britain is backing the move as a practical anti-fraud measure which will make it much easier to check valid licences across Europe.

But Ian Hudghton, a Scottish Euro-MP, called for safeguards to prevent the licence becoming, in effect, part of a Europe-wide identity card system.

He welcomed measures to make Europe’s roads safer, including a single driving licence to prevent drivers banned in one country obtaining a licence in another.

But he added: “If we are to have a Europe-wide driving licence scheme there must be safeguards. Otherwise it could herald a European ID card system by the back door.

“Many people would be unhappy about the prospect of a single EU identity card, just as they are unhappy about the prospect of identity cards being introduced by Tony Blair’s Government.

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

So. They are trying to get an ID card throught the front door, AND the back door.

It’s positively pornographic.

Imagine the WASTE this will produce; it is a pure sign of what this is really all about; the contracts to produce and manage identiy systems across the western hemisphere.

There is absolutely no need for an EU driving licence, and of course, the next document they will want to produce is a unified EU Passport.

Why should there be an EU driving licence when passports from different countries are accepted without question? Because cars are a fantastic source of revenue; if they can consolidate the driving licences and all the car registrations in a new EU car registration structure, they will have a huge revenue resource. Any car in your country can be taxed and each member state will be able to fleece the driver as he crosses borders, whereas now, this cannot happen.

And finally, there is no need for any of this. All they need to do is to allow each authority access to the other authorities systems through a single interface. This would cost much less, whilst having the same effect of wiping out everyone’s jurisdictional insulation.

Snarfed from here.

Are you familiar with NAIS? Let me give you a little background. The USDA wants to register the GPS coordinates, name, address, phone, and other data on every farm, home, and other location that has even has a single animal, with a government Premise ID. For this privilege of mandatory registration, you will pay a fee of $10 or more, per year. Next, they intend to tag every single one of your animals with a RFID, or other tag. This will be mandatory. In addition to paying an annual fee and paying for tags for all of your animals, you would also be required to log, track, and report all “events,” such as the birth of an animal, death of an animal, animals leaving, or entering your property. All reports must be made within 24 hours, or you could face stiff fines. Do not expect them to keep your private information secure. In a little “Oops,” the USDA just released the social security numbers of 350,000 farmers.

Big producers, like factory farms, get to use a single batch ID for tens of thousands of animals,to keep their costs down. For them, NAIS is a minor bookkeeping entry that gives them big profits in the export markets to Japan and other countries. Small farmers and homesteaders, with their mixed-age flocks and herds, would be required to tag and track every single individual animal. NAIS is great for big corporate producers, and hellish for small farmers and homesteaders. The cost of NAIS in fees, tags, equipment costs, and time will bankrupt small farmers, and overwhelm people who raise their own food animals. In the end, the consumer will pay – NAIS could add almost a thousand dollars a year to the annual food budget for the typical family of four. By destroying small producers, NAIS will kill the Slow Food and the Buy Local movements, as local farmers are driven out of business.

NAIS is already mandatory in some states, starting this year, including Texas and Wisconsin. In other states, like Vermont, the agricultural commissioner and state vet have said they will tag and track every animal, right down to the back yard level. This means everyone, even Granny with her one laying hen, is going to have to get a $10 per year premise ID, a RFID tag for her chicken, and make government reports on its movements. Texas has implemented a $1,000 per incident per day, fine for non-compliance. What small farmer or homesteader can stand up to that kind of fire power? […]

USDA agents can come to your home, and kill all of your livestock, without a warrant or any legal appeal under NAIS. Once you are registered into the mandatory NAIS system, you effectively lose your rights to your own livestock. You become a serf for the state, worse than in Communist Russia. If you do not believe me, then please go to the USDA web site, and read the draft proposal for NAIS, which is already being implemented in stages, without public feedback or scrutiny. Check out the timeline – we all must start fighting it now, before it is too late. Together, we can stop this fascist move to take away our property and livelihoods. We can still protect our traditional rights to farm, if we act now. […]

Justice William O. Douglas,
U.S. Supreme Court (1939-75)
http://www.eco.freedom.org/el/20060301/walterjefferies.shtml

They have some real problems going on over there don’t they?

American’s wont’t accept a state issued national ID card, so the corporations who are set to fleece every sheepish supjecte have arranged to tag every animal in the USA.

Also, since only 23% of people have passports, they can’t pull the same ‘its not compulsory compulsion’ trick that they are trying here; 80% have passports in the UK, and so the ‘sheering point’ is more accessible.

Animal, Man, its all wool right?

BBC Online

Monday, 13 March 2006, 20:57 GMT

Oyster data is ‘new police tool’

Police are increasingly turning to Oyster travel cards to track criminals’ movements, according to new figures.

The smartcards, used by five million Londoners, record details of each bus, Tube or train journey made by the holder over the previous eight weeks.

In January, police requested journey information 61 times, compared with just seven times in the whole of 2004.

The Metropolitan Police said it was a “straightforward investigative tool” used on a case-by-case basis… […]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4800490.stm

This sounds entirely reasonable, except when you take a close look at the facts.

Oyster doesn’t need to record eight weeks of your journeys in order to do the job it has to do; charge you for using public transport.

Unless of course it has been designed to track you.

All they need to store is how much money you have left on your card, so that when it is swiped, you can be debited and let on the bus or underground. A clean, non orwellian system could do this, and would actually cost them less to run since they would not be storing up all those journey details and making infrastructure available to others to provide access to the data.

And as for ‘case by case basis’ in the MSQL era, case by case means looking at every journey with a search query, or looking at swipes in real time, as they are done, one by one, case by case.

Amazingly, they have not yet put cameras on every Oyster swipe point. Imagine that every time you tap to get on a bus, a camera stuck on top of the reader inside the drivers cabin, takes a photo of you. This would render anonymous Oysters useless, since your face would be linked to the number of your card.

Maybe a feature for ‘Oyster 2.0’.

Oyster is no “straightforward investigative tool”. Surveillance on this scale has never been possible before, and in the past, if you wanted to do it, you needed explicit permission and a real reason to follow someone as they went about their daily business…it used to be called ‘putting a tail on someone’.

Looking into the future, Oyster is going to allow you to buy newspapers and stuff whereever there is n Oyster terminal. They have five million users; a huge userbase to turn loose on the shops of London. They will of course, record all of those transactions as well. The problem is not that they can and will do this; the real problem comes when this is the only way that you can buy and sell anything anywhere.

A state issued currency card, that can be filled up from your bank account, or from other cards via a simple two slot terminal similar to those Chip and Pin machines that are now everywhere, will spell the end of financial privacy. The system operators (the Bank of England) will keep a record of every transaction you make. Barter and any type of trade that excludes money will be made illegal, since they will be ‘off system’. Don’t think this can happen? The outlawing of all other forms of currency in favour of the state currency has already been done at least once; in Las Vegas, people used to use casino chips to buy anything. These chips were all redeemable for cash at the issuing casino so they were as good as money for all purposes. When this chip economy got huge, it was outlawed because private transactions began to dissapear into the invisible chip economy. The response will be the same if a state issued currency card comes into being.