U.S. to Insist That Travel Industry Get Fingerprints

By Spencer S. Hsu and Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 22, 2008; Page A08

The U.S. government today will order commercial airlines and cruise lines to prepare to collect digital fingerprints of all foreigners before they depart the country under a security initiative that the industry has condemned as costly and burdensome.

The proposal does not say where airlines must collect fingerprints — at airport check-in counters, departure gates or kiosks somewhere in between. But the government estimates the undertaking will cost airlines $2.3 billion over 10 years, a U.S. homeland security official said.

The overall economic impact on companies, passengers and the government is expected to exceed $3.5 billion, industry lobbyists said, at a time when carriers are struggling with safety concerns, high fuel costs and passenger complaints.

Formal announcement of the plan to track the departure of foreign visitors, as part of the Homeland Security Department’s US-VISIT program, comes after an extended battle between the security agency and airlines.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff linked the effort to enforcing the nation’s immigration laws recently, saying airlines were obstructing the measure for commercial reasons.

“If we don’t have US-VISIT air exit by this time next year, it will only be because the airline industry killed it,” Chertoff said recently. “We have to decide who is going to win this fight. Is it going to be the airline industry, or is it going to be the people who believe we should know who leaves the country by air?”

Doug Lavin, regional vice president for the International Air Transport Association, which represents major U.S. and international carriers, said the government, not airlines, should collect fingerprints. “This is ludicrous,” Lavin said. “We can’t afford anything in the billions to support a program that should be a government program.”

Fingerprinting an estimated 33 million departing foreign passengers a year will result in “delayed departures, missed connections here and around the world,” Lavin said.

Launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, US-VISIT is intended to automate the processing of visitors entering and exiting the country, using fingerprints and digital photographs to help find criminals, potential terrorists and people who overstay visas and join the nation’s illegal immigrant population.

While the program has succeeded in recording nearly 100 million people entering the country since 2004, the DHS has struggled to implement the exit portion. Frustrated at the department’s slow pace, Congress last year set a June 2009 deadline for DHS to collect fingerprints from departing air passengers in a law to implement recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Otherwise, Congress said, the government cannot expand the Visa Waiver Program, under which residents of 27 friendly countries can visit the United States without a visa. Inclusion is a priority for nations including South Korea and Greece, and the tourism industry has also targeted South America for expansion.

The proposal will be open for a 60-day comment period. DHS could decide after that time where fingerprinting must be conducted, or it could leave the decision up to airlines, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the proposal has not been formally announced.

[…]

Washington Post

We all know that US-VISIT is a completely useless and bogus waste of time that violates millions of people.

We also know that the USVISIT ‘exit system’ is not in place.

USVISIT is a costly boondoggle. The penny has dropped about this, and Uncle Sham does not want to spend any more money on it.

Instead of building the infrastructure of the exit systems themselves, they are going to shift the burden on making it work to the airlines.

Like it says in this post, the exit system is currently VOLUNTARY. That is clearly insane, almost as insane as the USVISIT itself.

Pocket Satan Chertoff now says that, “If we don’t have US-VISIT air exit by this time next year, it will only be because the airline industry killed it,”. Once again, we have a government putting ‘border security’ (which this clearly is not, it is Security Theatre not real security) in the hands of private companies, and, quite absurdly, claiming that if the system is not in place, it is the fault of those companies, not the government. This is exactly what the UK government has done with fingerprinting at Heathrow Terminal 5.

If USVISIT is so very important, a key part of the US ‘security strategy’, and if the ‘terrorist threat’ was real, then to leave its complete implementation to the will of private companies is insane, and blatantly negligent.

The fact is that the living bag of bones Chertoff knows very well that USVISIT is a failure, that it has cost over $1.3 billion, apprehended only “1,200 criminals and immigration violators” and that any further money spend on this immoral, useless, wasteful, disgraceful, awful, satanic, abominable, monstrous, insane and stupid project would be indefensible, even to the expert and frictionless lie machine of ‘Homeland Security’.

Our only hope is that the airlines grow a backbone and stand up for the rights of their customers. Certainly, BA will be very reluctant to go along with this, after having been stung by their Terminal 5 fingerprinting fiasco, which is set to cost them some money, never mind the embarrassment.

The biometric fad, the most recent in a long line of snake oil solutions to non existent problems, is going to be consigned to the dustbin of technology history, along with 8 track tapes and other obsolete contraptions that seem absurd today. This fad is going to dies faster as more people wake up to what these tools really mean, and how corrosive they are to human society.

The East Germans know all about this.

And so do you.

One can only hope that the economic collapse of the USA will make it impossible for them to maintain this foolishness as their empire implodes and there is no money to run these insane programs. File under the spinoffs and benefits of Imperial collapse.

This is a comment on an article that appeared in The Telegraph about the highly offensive spying of Poole council on an innocent family, who were judged to be guilty before proven innocent:

Just ponder for a moment. Ten short years ago, nobody in the world would have thought that the once proud British people could, by self infliction, descend to a debt ridden proletariat, with possession and use of the instruments and trappings of a quasi Stalinist dictatorship, in the incompetent, arrogant hands of what are supposed to be servants of the public.

You have corrupt politicians, with their fingers consistently in the till, above the law, and ears ever deaf to the electorate which put them where they are. A current chancellor who lacks the fiscal competence to add up his wage slip, because he never had one before he got this job as a convenient stooge for the previous carrier of the budget box. A plethora of ‘employment’ Ministers, who have proved to be anything but employment ministers for the intrinsic population, crying ‘skills shortage, skills shortage,’ like demented parrots, justifying the cry for the bird seed of the ever cheaper labour of mass unskilled immigration, to sustain their bankrupt policies. An ‘elf Minister, presiding over the third largest ‘employment’ factory in the world, with a large proportion of the ‘employees’ putting their wages above patient care. An anti English Egyptian born ‘Kulture Minister’ performing like a latter day Beria, systematically eradicating the history and soul of everything a country, once in the vanguard of what freedom stood for. A Home Secretary divided by two, because the job is now too big for a single NULabour politician to cope with, with an avalanche of foreign laws imposed on the British, without referendum promised in two elections. A part time defence secretary, and a military with no kit, because the armed forces never did figure in Labour, other than as an accountants cost saving exercise. This trough fed entourage crowned with an unelected Prime Minister, who fiddles his TV License, and whose revealed former capabilities, with ten years of ‘growth,’ but nothing in the bank, are now staring everybody over there, squarely in the wallet. But by far and away the biggest crime of all, was the calculated erosion of educational standards for the masses, to the point where a sixteen year old state sink school ‘graduate,’ could not compete against the abilities of a nine year old from the former colony of Singapore. Education, Education, Education? More like Educashun, Educashun, Educashun, with a ‘so what’ ‘Minister’ most aptly demonstrating the zenith of NULabour teachings. If Britain continues down this path, it is guaranteed accelerated descent into a third world satellite banana republic of the EUSSR.

With this ‘leadership’ at the helm, it is little wonder that the sub Stalins of local government have got the green light to misuse anti terrorism legislation, to intrude on every aspect of your lives. You already have Zampolits of the rubbish police, chipping your dustbins. Now you have the state machine commissars tailing three year olds, presumably in a flasher mack driving a Russian Fiat copy. I assure you, that to the rest of the free world you have become a very sick joke. It would be comical if it were not tragic. You are now a United Kingdom in name alone. It is hoped that if you ever get the chance of another election, and your Ministers have not worked sufficient overtime to convert it to the Zimbabwe variety, you will remember when NULabour again makes promises in a manifesto, that, to avoid their obligations to the people, they went to the time and trouble of a court case to have it legally declared to be not worth the paper it was printed on. Be careful which library books you read, the fact that you are still reading books, instead of dosing your brain with state Television soap, may attract the unwelcome attention of a Kulture Zampolit.

Posted by Michael Barningham on April 11, 2008 12:25 PM

Judging by the comments to this article, we are quickly approaching the tipping point in the UK, where everyone will, seemingly, spontaneously cry, “enough is enough” and the whole system will be explosively reconfigured so that it looks more like the Real Britian^™ that we all knew and loved.

Privacy International’s recent complaint to the UK Information Commissioner has threatened to bring a halt to an imminent plan to fingerprint all domestic and international passengers departing from Heathrow’s Terminal 1 and Terminal 5, due to begin business on March 27th. The British media is reporting that in response to PI’s complaint, the Information Commissioner has advised that passengers should only accept fingerprinting “under protest” until our complaint is resolved.

The prospect of a complete shutdown of two Heathrow terminals has emerged since Privacy International’s complaint about passenger fingerprinting. The complaint, lodged with the UK Information Commissioner on March 9th 2008, argues that the scheme breaches the fundamental tests of necessity and proportionality under the UK Data Protection Act.

The complaint states: “We believe the BAA solution is disproportionately intrusive. Even if it were to be established that passenger switching (if indeed such a problem exists) was a terrorist threat (rather than merely a breach of airline terms and conditions on transferability) then the photo option would be less invasive and would involve fewer intrusive procedures and less personal data.”

The complaint alleged that the design of Terminal 5 was intentionally created to ensure that passengers, both domestic and international, were exposed to retail outlets to the maximum possible extent. It noted: “We are troubled by BAA’s justification that the new procedure will ensure that “all our passengers will enjoy the same great facilities and wide choice of shops and restaurants”. To diminish privacy rights in order to achieve greater sales revenue is a disquieting development in the evolution of thinking with regard to data protection.

Privacy International alleges that there is no basis in UK law for the establishment of mandatory fingerprinting, and that the claims made by the British Airports Authority (BAA) were based in fantasy or deception. “BAA’s claim that these measures are “required by government” appears to be of dubious substance. There certainly appears to be no legislative requirement for fingerprinting in these circumstances, and so we assume that the scheme is based on an informal arrangement with government. Indeed a spokesman for BAA is quoted in the Evening Standard (March 11th) saying: “the fingerprinting scheme was introduced in cooperation with the Home Office”.

The Information Commissioner’s Office has confirmed to Privacy International (see below) that it has never been approached by the Government, British Airways, BAA or any other party about this scheme.

This PI claim received further weight when the British newspaper, the Mail on Sunday, reported that the Home Office denied that it had set any requirement for passenger fingerprinting.

If the Information Commissioner is not satisfied that the fingerprinting scheme is justified he has the authority to present a cessation order, breach of which would be a criminal offence. If BAA is found in breach of UK law its contractual terms could then be in jeopardy.

See here for the complaint and the response from the Information Commissioner’s Office. Here are some excerpts:

Privacy International believes the Heathrow fingerprinting scheme breaches the fundamental test of Necessity for compliance with Data Protection. We are not aware of any published evidence indicating that passenger switching has become a significant security issue, nor are we aware of any evidence that it could be in the future.

BAA’s claim that these measures are “required by government” appears to be of dubious substance. There certainly appears to be no legislative requirement for fingerprinting in these circumstances, and so we assume that the scheme is based on an informal arrangement with government. Indeed a spokesman for BAA is quoted in the Evening Standard (March 11th) saying: “the fingerprinting scheme was introduced in cooperation with the Home Office”.

[…]

We are troubled by BAA’s justification that the new procedure will ensure that “all our passengers will enjoy the same great facilities and wide choice of shops and restaurants”. To diminish privacy rights in order to achieve greater sales revenue is a disquieting development in the evolution of thinking with regard to data protection. We would have hoped that the planning of Terminal 5 and its associated security procedures would have taken account of compliance with law. We would be interested to learn whether a Privacy Impact Assessment was conducted or whether due diligence was instituted with regard to the DPA.

We do not believe this scheme will be in any way voluntary or opt-in. Most passengers will have little or no choice over which terminal they use, and even where such an alternative exists it may be costly. We do not believe in these circumstances that passengers should be compelled to undergo fingerprinting.

We refer you to the advice provided by your office on the subject of fingerprinting of children in schools (23rd July 2007):

In view of the sensitivity of taking children’s fingerprints, schools should respect the wishes of parents and pupils who object to their (or their children’s) fingerprints being taken in school.

We see no reason why this “sensitivity” should not extend to the adult population, particularly where some people feel vulnerable or anxious about the procedure, or where strong convictions are held about such procedures.

[…]

It is, in our view, not acceptable for BAA to institute an intrusive system merely because of a “state of heightened alert” over airport security, particularly where no evidence is offered to justify fingerprinting. Nor in our view is it acceptable to advance architectural determinism or poor planning as a justification for the necessity for intrusive practices. The decisions that are made with regard to Terminal 5 will resonate across the travel industry, and so it is crucial to ensure that the justification, the legal compliance and the procedures are positioned properly in these early days. Vague claims of government requirements are not appropriate under these circumstances.

Nor, in our view, is it acceptable to define necessity and proportionality in a minimal or casual manner when the environment in question offers so much scope for the development of privacy friendly alternatives to fingerprinting.

http://www.privacyinternational.org/

This is a properly drafted response, from an organization that is actively working to solve problems.

Well done Privacy International, your cheque is in the post.

This is the sort of organization that is worth donating to and joining. They will not fob you off with cranky emails, admonishing you to not ‘pester them’ with matters like this, whilst on the surface, pretending to be working against these outrageous and Orwellian measures.

They also get things done, and actively attack problems instead of endlessly appearing on TV and in the newspapers, decrying all that is going wrong.

Send your checque to:

Privacy International
6-8 Amwell Street
London, EC1R 1UQ
GB

Lest we forget, here are our other posts on this subject:

ID Cards, the NIR and Heathrow Terminal 5
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=982

Richard Rogers: Architect of The New Authoritarianism
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=771

Heathrow Terminal 5: Architectural Disaster
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=767

More BBQ Biometric Propaganda: Terminal 5
http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=825

Terminal 5 fingerprinting; the howls begin
http://www.irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1015

The Guardian, once again, has a pro-corporate, pro-pharmaceutical propaganda piece in its toilet paper.

It goes like this:

Organic food ‘no benefit to health’
Eating fruit and veg is more important than whether produce is ‘green’, says expert

Jo Revill, Whitehall editor
Sunday March 30, 2008
The Observer

Parents who want their children to eat healthily should focus more on serving them extra fruit and vegetables and less on giving them expensive organic produce, according to one of the country’s leading nutrition experts.

Lord Krebs, former head of the Food Standards Agency, said families were becoming ‘deeply confused’ by conflicting messages about healthy eating.

The market for organic food reached more than £2bn last year, with most consumers from households with children under the age of 15. An average of £37m is spent each week on organic produce, mostly in south-east England.

[…]

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2269340,00.html

Without going into wether or not Lord Krebs is corrupt or not, or is a paid liar or not, or wether or not Monsanto, GSK or any other corporation is really behind this proclamation or not, we can say one thing for sure.

Organic food is better for you than non organic food.

And I can prove it.

Lets say you are someone with an infant child.

You have two glass ten litre beakers, marked ‘A’ and ‘B’, of distilled water in front of you and your baby.

I take a container of commercially available liquid pesticide, open the lid, and dip the tip of a thin sewing needle into the surface of the pesticide. I then dip that needle into the beaker marked ‘B’ and then stir the water vigorously.

I pour some water from beaker ‘A’ into a baby’s bottle marked ‘A’, and some water from beaker ‘B’ into a baby’s bottle marked ‘B’. I pour out 90% of the water in bottle ‘B’ and then replace the missing volume with water from beaker ‘A’.

Now.

Which bottle do you give your baby to drink?

Any sane person will give their baby bottle ‘A’. No parent with a single working brain cell will knowingly give their child the water in bottle ‘B’ which has been tainted by a miniscule amount of pesticide.

This is what Organic food is about, at the most basic level. Deliberately feeding people pesticide, at any concentration IS INSANE. It is better to eat food that has not come into contact with pesticides than it is to eat food that has come into contact with pesticides.

Organic food has not been sprayed with pesticides, and so therefore, it is better for you.

And that is THAT.

Then of course, there are all of the other ramifications of spraying crops, the pesticide entering into and remaining in the soil and rivers, the animals poisoned by it, etc etc. But I digress. Anyone who tells you that pesticide in small concentrations is safe to eat either works for one of the manufacturers of these poisons, is a paid liar for them, or they are stupid or ignorant.

Exactly the same demonstration can be made about organic meat.

Organic meat has not been injected with growth hormones, steroids and all manner of unnecessary and monstrous interventions. Would you feed your child a piece of meat that has trace amounts of animal growth hormone in it, or one that has no trace of such a thing?

The choice is obvious, and anyone who says that these trace amounts of drugs is harmless is is one of the above, a liar, a paid liar, ignorant or just plain stupid.

I would love to know how much money these journalists and newspaper editors are paid to regurgitate this nonsense unchallenged. Obviously they have no morals or human decency.

Thankfully, the majority of people are now waking up to why they should be eating organic food, and no, they are not so stupid as to conflate having a balanced diet with what organic food is all about. These imbeciles can publish all the papers they like, make all the proclamations they like in whatever newspaper or media they choose; we are ignoring them. Every time they publish a new paper or make another absurd proclamation, they become further discredited, and every time a trashpaper like the Guardian uncritically reprints their lies, they too become more discredited an look more foolish.

The same, tired religious dogma is trundled out:

However, according to Krebs, an eminent scientist and principal of Jesus College, Oxford, there is still no reliable, peer-reviewed evidence to show that there is any clear health benefit to eating this ‘green’ produce.

And we do not care. We do not care about the eminence of Krebs, Jesus College, Oxford, reliable peer reviewed evidence, his proclamations or anything else these suspicious characters, charlatans and religious fanatics come up with. Their credentials are meaningless. We are not eating poison because you say it is safe to do so. We are not going to give our children pesticide to drink because there is ‘reliable, peer-reviewed evidence’ saying it is safe. We are not going to sit around and wait to be told what is or is not beneficial or what is or is not safe to eat. You have lost all credibility, all authority, and no matter how you are announced in the newspapers the slavering ‘journalists’ intoning from your sacred scroll of hierarchical science power, we do not, and will not believe what you say.

Note how when the writer of this nonsense tries to balance out her article by quoting The Soil Association, she only quotes ‘A Sopkewoman’. No list of credentials, letters, academic associations…just ‘A Spokeswoman’ not even ‘an eminent Spokeswoman’. These sorts of cheap tricks no longer work; in fact, they can never work when the initial premise is so absurd, counterintuitive and blatantly false. What is in fact happening is that the more you are associated with these discredited bodies, the LESS you are believed, thanks to the decades of lying for money, bullshit and PR.

But you know this!

Organic food is better for you, better for the environment and better for the animals that are used as food.
Organic food is bad for evil scientists, bad for pharmaceutical companies and bad for fear-mongering journalists.

And that, my friends, is a proclamation you can trust!

Anonymous shill BBC Terrorist Journalist strikes again; this time its back to Heathrow Terminal 5 and the fingerprinting debacle:

Heathrow fingerprint plan probed

Plans to fingerprint passengers at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 are being probed by the data protection watchdog.
The Information Commissioner’s Office warned airport operator BAA it may be in breach of the Data Protection Act.

First of all, who is the author of this piece?

Under the plans, prints will be checked at the gate to try to ensure the person who checked in is the same as the person who is boarding the aircraft.

This is clearly a lie, since it has never been a problem before.

BAA said the data was encrypted straight away and destroyed within 24 hours, in line with the act.

This is nonsense. Encryption protects data while it is in transit over a public network. Since the Terminal 5 system is a closed one (unless they do the data processing off site, which is of course possible), encryption is meaningless to the security of the data. All someone has to do is get into the server room, install rsync or some other data mirroring tool, and all the data will escape, in real time. The 24 hour deletion becomes meaningless, as does the encryption.

These sorts of lie should never be repeated without challenge. PERIOD.

The investigation would not delay the opening for business of the £4.3bn terminal on Thursday, the airport operator added.

pfft!

Prosecution possibility

The move will allow domestic and international passengers to mingle in the terminal’s departure lounge.

And why is it desirable for the passengers to mingle? Why did the architects DELIBERATELY design a building where, against all common sense, domestic and international passengers are not segregated?

It cannot be so that they can shop more easily, since shops exist in both the domestic and international sections of airports all over the world. The only possible reason for this (other than incompetence) is that this building was designed deliberately broken, so that there was a ‘problem’ to be fixed by biometrics, causing a market for the machinery and a building that can be used to soften up the public to the idea of being fingerprinted.

The people who designed this building are guilty of a serious crime against humanity.

The idea behind the fingerprinting is to make it impossible for a terrorist to arrive at Heathrow on a transit flight, then exchange boarding passes with a colleague in the departure lounge and join a domestic flight to enter the UK without being checked by immigration authorities.

This is possibly one of the most offensive sentences I have ever read on a BBC website.

Fingerprinting cannot stop terrorists. It cannot detect terrorists. It cannot stop terrorists from entering any country. But you know that. Also, if you want to stop people from exchanging boarding passes with colleagues, then you BUILD A FUCKING WALL BETWEEN THE PASSENGER AREAS. You DO NOT fingerprint millions of innocent people.

This is so absurd, so illogical, so offensive, so counterintuitive, so ass backwards, that it can only be a line regurgitated verbatim from a PR company hired to do damage limitation.

That this BBC writer copied it faithfully is sickening, but then, this is exactly what we expect from the BBC, the biggest bunch of dirty, filthy, immoral, unprincipled, journalists for sale BASTARDS ever to sit behind a keyboard.

But Deputy Information Commissioner David Smith told the Mail on Sunday: “We want to know why Heathrow needs to fingerprint passengers at all.

“Taking photographs is less intrusive. So far we have not heard BAA’s case for requesting fingerprints.

There is no case for either fingerprinting or photographing passengers. The building should have been built correctly. International passengers already have to carry passports, and these are ‘secure’ and have been used for decades without any problems.

The question that needs to be asked is how was it that BAA consulted with the Home Office and you had no part in those discussions Mr Smith?

“If we find there is a breach of data protection legislation, we would hope to persuade them to put things right.

Wow, “if we find that a bank robbery had taken place, we would hope to persuade the criminal to put things right”

I want to smoke what that S.O.B. is smoking!

“If that is not successful we can issue an enforcement notice. If they don’t comply, it is a criminal offence and they can be prosecuted.”

Wow, they KNOW that it is a criminal offence, but they get a warning FIRST and then if they keep doing it, they get prosecuted! Bank robbers take note, you have SEVERAL CHANCES TO CHANGE YOUR BANK ROBBING WAYS before they actually prosecute you!!!!

Data ‘encrypted’

BAA said the Border and Immigration Agency had been keen on a “reliable biometric element” when plans had been announced for common departure lounges for international and domestic flights.

That has nothing to do with checking into a flight. This is about a badly designed building, and nothing more. It does however, support the idea that this is a softening up exercise, and demonstrates how they want you to keep scanning in all over the place. Think about it. BAA scans you to get onto the plane TWICE, and immigration scans you to check you out of the country. That is three times in one day where before only a criminal charged with an offence would be fingerprinted and photographed.

Fingerprinting was selected as the most robust method by BAA, the BIA and other government departments, it said.

If that is true, then they are the most stupid people on this planet. A WALL is actually the most robust way of segregating passengers.

A BAA spokesman said: “The data is encrypted immediately and is destroyed within 24 hours of use, in accordance with the Data Protection Act. It does not include personal details nor is it cross-referenced with any other database.”

If it is not cross referenced with with any other database, how do they know that you are the passenger? They must record what ticket you have and place that information next to your prints and photo in their database, otherwise, your ‘terrorist colleague’ could hand you a domestic boarding pass and sneak you into Britain.

Since your fingerprint and face are written next to your ticket details, that means your flight details (stored on the SABRE system) are connected to you.

Anyone with direct access to BAAs fingerprint database will then be able to use this connection to find out everything about you, as this info is stored by SABRE, including your credit card details, which would provide another bridge to detailed knowledge about you via VISA MASTERCARD AMEX etc etc.

That is how it REALLY works you imbeciles; once you connect a plane ticket to your prints it can be used to find out everything about you. BAA, if they are talking about encryption in this way, are clearly incompetent when it comes to IT, and so they absolutely cannot be trusted with anything like this. It is probably being outsourced in any case, and if it is the case, a spokesperson from that company should have been trotted out to explain how they have managed to create dry water.

The Home Office said BAA was not required to involve fingerprinting in its security arrangements at Terminal 5.

BACKPEDALLING!

We all know that the Home Office was consulted when they were planning this!!! ROTFL!

“Our primary concern is that the UK border is secure and we won’t allow BAA to have a common departure lounge unless they ensure the border is secure,” said a spokesman.

So now you entrust the border security of the UK to BAA, and leave the responsibility to THEM to get it right, instead of mandating that passengers are segregated?

THAT my friends, is the definition of INSANITY.

Let me get this straight.

If they find that this airport is breaking the law, they are going to stop fingerprinting people and continue letting passengers mingle. The airport design is broken, they may prosecute if they do not fix it, but by cutting out the offending part, they have a huge illegal immigration hole through which people can pour, but border security is not the Home Office’s responsibility, its BAA’s responsibility.

That is the level of competence that has ruined this country.

Richard Rogers is going to be hit with a lawsuit methinks, since it was HIS IDEA to create this abomination in the first place.

“They presented us with this plan, which we are happy secures the border. The design of the plan is a matter for BAA.”

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7310158.stm

Now BAA will pass responsibility up the line to the architects.

This building will have to be retrofitted to physically separate the two types of passenger, domestic and international. All fingerprinting snake-oil will have to be removed and destroyed, and someone will have to pay for it all.

Start running NOW Richard!

And here are the other posts on this subject we have written, and thanks to the lurker who emailed this!

+++++++ UPDATE!! +++++++

The Telegraph have also drunk the Kool-Aid on this one, repeating verbatim the same damage control press release above:

The Information Commissioner’s Office warned airport operator BAA that the security measure, designed to stop terrorists getting into the country, may breach the Data Protection Act.

[…]

You see? ‘Designed to stop terrorists’. It is the same lie, verbatim.

Under the plan all four million domestic passengers using Terminal 5 annually will have their fingerprints taken when they first go through security.

They will then be checked again at the gate. BAA said the measure was required because of the way Terminal 5 is designed, with domestic and international passengers sharing lounges and public areas after checking in.

Without fingerprinting, terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants could arrive at Heathrow on a transit flight, then exchange boarding passes with a colleague in the departure lounge and join a domestic flight to enter the UK without being checked by immigration authorities.

[…]

Note the order in which this is put, terrorsts heads the list. It is utter garbage of course, and we can substitute accordingly:

“Without physically segregated passenger lounges, terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants could arrive at Heathrow on a transit flight, then exchange boarding passes with a colleague in the departure lounge and join a domestic flight to enter the UK without being checked by immigration authorities.”

You see? Much better!

A leading barrister has already informed BAA that he will refuse to give his fingerprints, describing the process as an “Orwellian” abuse of civil liberties.

Nigel Rumfitt QC, a specialist in serious crime including terrorism, said it was a move towards a “database state” and Britain would become a nation that “restricts the internal movement of its citizens”.

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/23/nheathrow123.xml

At last, people with some balls are saying “enough is enough”.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come – G. Edward Griffin – Freedom Force International

This is a lecture, where G. Edward Griffin says everything we have said on BLOGDIAL for the past seven years is repeated point for point.

You should watch it.

Then check out his website:

http://www.freedom-force.org/

Where you can read his ‘Freedom Creed’:

THE CREED OF FREEDOM

Intrinsic Nature of Rights
I believe that only individuals have rights, not the collective group; that these rights are intrinsic to each individual, not granted by the state; for if the state has the power to grant them, it also has the power to deny them, and that is incompatible with personal liberty.
I believe that a just government derives its power solely from the governed. Therefore, the state must never presume to do anything beyond what individual citizens also have the right to do. Otherwise, the state is a power unto itself and becomes the master instead of the servant of society.

Supremacy of the Individual
I believe that one of the greatest threats to freedom is to allow any group, no matter its numeric superiority, to deny the rights of the minority; and that one of the primary functions of just government is to protect each individual from the greed and passion of the majority.

Freedom of Choice
I believe that desirable social and economic objectives are better achieved by voluntary action than by coercion of law. I believe that social tranquility and brotherhood are better achieved by tolerance, persuasion, and the power of good example than by coercion of law. I believe that those in need are better served by charity, which is the giving of one’s own money, than by welfare, which is the giving of other people’s money through coercion of law.

Equality Under Law
I believe that all citizens should be equal under law, regardless of their national origin, race, religion, gender, education, economic status, life style, or political opinion. Likewise, no class should be given preferential treatment, regardless of the merit or popularity of its cause. To favor one class over another is not equality under law.

Proper Role of Government
I believe that the proper role of government is negative, not positive; defensive, not aggressive. It is to protect, not to provide; for if the state is granted the power to provide for some, it must also be able to take from others, and once that power is granted, there are those who will seek it for their advantage. It always leads to legalized plunder and loss of freedom. If government is powerful enough to give us everything we want, it is also powerful enough to take from us everything we have. Therefore, the proper function of government is to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its citizens; nothing more. That government is best which governs least.

Heathrow airport first to fingerprint

By David Millward and Gordon Rayner

Millions of British airline passengers face mandatory fingerprinting before being allowed to board flights when Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opens later this month.

For the first time at any airport, the biometric checks will apply to all domestic passengers leaving the terminal, which will handle all British Airways flights to and from Heathrow.

The key here is domestic flights; that you are being treated like a criminal to travel in your own country.

These measures are extra and unnecessary and are the result of the collaboration of the architect and the vendors of fingerprinting technology.

The controversial security measure is also set to be introduced at Gatwick, Manchester and Heathrow’s Terminal 1, and many airline industry insiders believe fingerprinting could become universal at all UK airports within a few years.

These are not ‘security measures’ they are Security Theatre none of these measures can predict how a person is going to behave, and in order to stop bad behavior, that is what fingerprinting has to do, and it cannot do that.

This is a measure to control and track the movement of people, pure and simple. It is being introduced to soften up the public to the idea of universal fingerprinting. Since no one who goes through this airport is being checked against a criminal register, you will always be able to get onto your plane at Terminal 5, after having been fingerprinted. This will reduce the apprehension that many people have about being fingerprinted. The trap will be sprung however, when they instantly check your identity against the NIR when you ‘finger in’ and you are not allowed to board a plane because you have not paid your Council Tax.

That is the ultimate aim of all of this, and they can afford to throw away millions of scans in the first years of operation because what they will be gaining is a change in perception, and that is worth the lost data. In any case, they will start storing the fingerprints eventually and since no one will care, it will simply just be announced and that will be that. Even if people do care, no one in the UK seems to have the will to resist this garbage.

All four million domestic passengers who will pass through Terminal 5 annually after it opens on March 27 will have four fingerprints taken, as well as being photographed, when they check in.

To ensure the passenger boarding the aircraft is the same person, the fingerprinting process will be repeated just before they board the aircraft and the photograph will be compared with their face.

First of all, you have the right to refuse to do this.

Secondly, we have written about this before in detail.

BAA, the company which owns Heathrow, insists the biometric information will be destroyed after 24 hours and will not be passed on to the police.

They might not do this NOW but they could easily do it in the future at any time, and also, if the police demand it, they will comply instantaneously.

It says the move is necessary to prevent criminals, terrorists and illegal immigrants trying to bypass border controls.

This is an absolute LIE and they know it. See the two BLOGDIAL posts for a full explanation.

The company said the move had been necessitated by the design of Terminal 5, where international and domestic passengers share the same lounges and public areas after they have checked in.

Without the biometric checks, the company says, potential criminals and illegal immigrants arriving on international flights or in transit to another country could bypass border controls by swapping boarding passes with a domestic passenger who has already checked in.

They could then board the domestic flight, where proof of identity is not currently required, fly on to another UK airport and leave without having to go through passport control.

The truth of this is that Terminal 5 was built with this deliberate design flaw by Richard Rogers; instead of using walls to control passengers like every other airport, they made the deliberate decision to create a single area for all passengers, and then to use biometrics to segregate the domestic and international passengers.

This building was designed in this way specifically because they believed it was possible to do it and maintain immigration controls through biometrics instead of walls. They deliberately intended to have millions of people fingerprinted. This is why, in the two BLOGDIAL posts above, I call this one of the worst buildings ever made.

Most other airports avoid the problem by keeping international and domestic passengers separate at all times, but the mixed lounges exist at Gatwick, Manchester and Heathrow’s Terminal 1.

And all of a sudden, there is a need for this security theatre at Gatwick and Terminal 1? For decades people have been traveling through these airports without problems, despite the experience becoming increasingly unpleasant over the years, and the immigration controls have been enforced properly.

The fact of the matter is that fingerprint technology vendors have hoodwinked the government and industry. They have almost successfully pulled off one of the greatest hoaxes the world of business has ever seen. They have nearly succeeded in the greatest snake-oil transaction that has ever been.

Gatwick and Manchester currently deal with the problem by photographing all passengers as they pass through security, and checking the picture against their face at the departure gate.

This is less intrusive than being photographed AND fingerprinted. The fact of the matter is though that it is better to use walls; ARCHITECTURE to control people and enforce immigration laws.

Terminal 1 will soon introduce fingerprinting.

Civil liberties campaigners have raised concerns about the possibility of security agencies trying to access the treasure trove of personal data in the future, adding that fingerprinting “will make innocent people feel like criminals”.

Correct. It really is a treasure trove. Think about it: They be able to capture every travelers (British or not):

• fingerprints
• photograph
• passport details
• destination
• other itinerary data
• traveling companions

and through connection with other databases,

• credit card details
• spending habits
• home address

If you believe that the police do not want access to this, and to take it further, the MI5 will not have realtime back door access from day one of operations, you are COMPLETELY DELUSIONAL. This data is worth the weight of all the airplanes in the British Airways fleet. There is no way that they are going to passively sit back and let it evaporate.

There are also fears that fingerprinting will add to the infamous “Heathrow hassle” which has led to some business travellers holding meetings in other countries because they want to avoid the sprawling, scruffy airport at any cost.

Its already happening, and this fingerprinting nonsense, Fascist in nature and intent, is already putting off americans and others.

Although fingerprinting is carried out at some foreign airports – most notably in the US – as part of immigration checks for international arrivals, Heathrow will be the first to fingerprint domestic passengers before they board their flights.

Britain always seems to be the country trying hard to look toughest without understanding the real nature of the problems and the forces involved. Britain brings in ID cards; they are the worst, most invasive, most Fascist in the whole world. Britain brings in fingerprinting at airports; it is the only one fingerprinting for domestic flights, a totally unnecessary, stupid, over the top measure.

Britain is better than this, and the British are smarter than this.

Even if domestic passengers have a passport with them, they will still have to go through the biometric checks.

Which demonstrates that all of this is total Security Theatre. They are not interested in correctly identifying people so that the immigration rules are adhered to; were that the case, British Citizens carrying British Passports with them would be allowed to board domestic flights without being fingerprinted. It also shows that they do not trust the new Biometric Passports as a way to verify the identity of the holder.

Think about how ridiculous this is. These are the same vendors who say that the biometric fingerprint scanning identifies the holder and secures the passport, but when it comes to Terminal 5, this is suddenly not good enough, and the passport is useless for the purpose of identification!

Dr Gus Hosein, of the London School of Economics, an expert on the impact on technology on civil liberties, is one of the scheme’s strongest critics.

He said: “There is no other country in the world that requires passengers travelling on internal flights to be fingerprinted. BAA says the fingerprint data will be destroyed, but the records of who has travelled within the country will not be, and it will provide a rich source of data for the police and intelligence agencies.

Correct.

“I grew up in a society where you only fingerprinted people if you suspected them of being criminals. By doing this they will make innocent people feel like criminals.

It will turn them into suspects. It will violate them on an unprecedented scale.

The real question here is, “What are you prepared to do to bring back the society that you grew up in”.

“There will also be a suspicion that this is the thin end of the wedge, that we are being softened up by making fingerprinting seem normal in the run-up to things like ID cards.”

This is not a suspicion, it is a plain fact. This IS the thin end of the wedge, and it is one of several wedges that are going to meet together to slice the british public into mincemeat.

Mr Hosein claimed automatic fingerprint technology is only 90 per cent accurate at best, and clear fingerprints can be difficult to obtain.

True, but irrelevant. Even if it worked 100% of the time, the principle of it is wrong.

Simon Davies, of campaign group Privacy International, suggested a photograph alone would be a perfectly adequate – and much cheaper – way of identifying passengers.

“If they are photographing people anyway, why can’t that be used as a means of identifying them, rather than taking biometric data?” he said. “It would probably be 50 times more reliable at a 50th of the cost.

True, but what they will counter with is the studies showing that staff do not check photographs in IDs properly. “Only a machine can be trusted” they will say.

“Fingerprint recognition technology is far from perfect, and the experience in the US has shown that the information can only be used retrospectively, not in real time, as it takes so long to match a fingerprint to the one held on the database.

“I think once again we are seeing the introduction of technology whose benefits are illusory.”

The only thing that is not illusory about this is the money made by the vendors. Follow the money, and every time you come face to face with the real culprits, and on this particular trail, you will pass by Richard Rogers before you come face to face with the devil.

A spokesman for British Airways said: “We are supportive of the use of fingerprinting at Terminal 5. We need to make sure the right people get on the right flights and this will definitely help us to ease check-in and boarding procedures.”

They would say that wouldn’t they? What are they going to do, call it all off?!

BAA said the fingerprinting scheme was decided upon after consultation with the Home Office, and the company is keen to reassure passengers that their fingerprints will not be made available to any outside agency.

WTF?

“Fire is hot, but you can put your hand in it and not be burned”.

As I have been saying, this is a softening up exercise.

A spokesman said: “The data will be destroyed after 24 hours. It will not be made available to the police or anyone else. This is purely for border and immigration control.”

Immigration control is being re-imagined as a part of the police force. They are even calling it ‘Border Control Police’.

They cannot even lie convincingly.

International passengers will not be fingerprinted, as they must show a passport when they check in and before they board their flight.

So now, a passport is OK for identification!!
It is only BRITISH passports that are not good enough to identify the holder!!

YOU CANNT MAKE STUFF LIKE THIS UP!!!

However, the fingerprinting of domestic passengers is expected to be the first step in the increasing use of the technology for people coming to and from Britain.

Within the next few weeks BAA will announce plans for voluntary fingerprinting under a so-called “trusted traveller” scheme.

Actually, the whole thing is voluntary. You can refuse to submit to it, and they accommodate you. This article is incorrect in saying that it is mandatory.

Those willing to have their fingerprints and passport information stored would be able to bypass immigration queues by placing their finger on a scanner instead of waiting to have their passport checked.

And people WILL DO IT, which is the shocking thing.

The move follows a trial of the technology, known as “miSense”, at Heathrow last year.

non-sense more like!

In the long term, fingerprinting could become even more widespread when the Government introduces tighter embarkation controls next year, which have not yet been specified but could range from having to show passports more often before boarding or using biometric checks.

Officials began talks with the aviation industry within months of an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airlines in August 2006.

You see? an ALLEGED plot, not even a real one (not that that is a reason to give up your liberty). They do not even have to blow up the planes to push these measures through.

At the time, the Home Office refused to rule out the use of fingerprint and biometric checks as part of routine embarkation controls, and some industry insiders believe universal fingerprinting may be brought in when biometric passports are introduced in 2012.

One option could be to routinely check fingerprints against the criminal record database – a step which is currently only taken when immigration officers have a reason to be suspicious.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/07/nheathrow107.xml

And there you have it. At the end, an admission that they want to be able to run your prints against the criminal database every time you travel. This is not about immigration, this is about controlling the ordinary person. As the system marches on, and like US-VISIT, they catch only 1000 people at a cost of FIFTEEN MILLION dollars each, pressure will grow for the system to be used to catch any criminal of any kind, meaning that they will broaden the definition of criminal to people who have parking tickets, fines, ‘CCJs’ and any manner of ‘offense’ no matter how trifling.

We already know these systems are not about catching ‘terrorists’.

What else can I say, other than, “you have been warned”.

By the end of the year in 2133, it had become obvious to some of the more experienced observers of human history that the “Raman Boom” was leading mankind toward disaster. Dire warnings of impending economic doom started being heard above the euphoric shouts of the millions who had recently vaulted into the middle and upper classes. Suggestions to balance budgets and limit credit at all levels of the economy were ignored. Instead, creative effort was expended to come up with one way after another of putting more spending power in the hands of a populace that had forgotten how to say wait, much less no, to itself.

The global stock market began to sputter in January of 2134 and there were predictions of a coming crash. But to most humans spread around the Earth and throughout the scattered colonies in the solar system, the concept of such a crash was beyond comprehension. After all, the world economy had been expanding for over nine years, the last two years at a rate unparalleled in the previous two centuries. World leaders insisted that they had finally found the mechanisms that could truly inhibit the downturns of the capitalistic cycles. And the people believed them-until early May of 2134.

During the first three months of the year the global stock markets went inexorably down, slowly at first, then in significant drops. Many people, reflecting the superstitious attitude toward cometary visitors that had been prevalent for two thousand years, somehow associated the stock market’s difficulties with the return of Halley’s Comet. Its apparition starting in March turned out to be far brighter than anyone expected. For weeks scientists all over the world were competing with each other to explain why it was so much more brilliant than originally predicted. After it swooped past perihelion in late March and began to appear in the evening sky in mid-April, its enormous tail dominated the heavens.

In contrast, terrestrial affairs were dominated by the emerging world economic crisis. On May 1, 2134, three of the largest international banks announced that they were insolvent because of bad loans. Within two days a panic had spread around the world. The more than one billion home terminals with access to the global financial markets were used to dump individual portfolios of stocks and bonds. The communications load on the Global Network System (GNS) was immense. The data transfer machines were stretched far beyond their capabilities and design specifications. Data gridlock delayed transactions for minutes, then hours, contributing additional momentum to the panic.

By the end of a week two things were apparent-that over half of the world’s stock value had been obliterated and that many individuals, large and small investors alike, who had used their credit options to the maximum, were now virtually penniless. The supporting data bases that kept track of personal bank accounts and automatically transferred money to cover margin calls were flashing disaster messages in almost 20 percent of the houses in the world.

In truth, however, the situation was much much worse. Only a small percentage of the transactions were actually clearing through all the supporting computers because the data rates in all directions were far beyond anything that had ever been anticipated. In computer language, the entire global financial system went into the “cycle slip” mode. Billions and billions of information transfers at lower priorities were postponed by the network of computers while the higher priority tasks were being serviced first.

The net result of these data delays was that in most cases individual electronic bank accounts were not properly debited, for hours or even days, to account for the mounting stock market losses, Once the individual investors realized what was occurring, they rushed to spend whatever was still showing in their balances before the computers completed all the transactions. By the time governments and financial institutions understood fully what was going on and acted to stop all this frenetic activity, it was too late. The confused system had crashed completely. To reconstruct what had happened required carefully dumping and interleaving the backup checkpoint files stored at a hundred or so remote centers around the world.

For over three weeks the electronic financial management system that governed all money transactions was inaccessible to everybody. Nobody knew how much money he had-or how much anyone else had. Since cash had long ago become obsolete, only eccentrics and collectors had enough bank notes to buy even a week’s groceries. People began to barter for necessities. Pledges based on friendship and personal acquaintance enabled many people to survive temporarily. But the pain had only begun. Every time the international management organization that oversaw the global financial system would announce that they were going to try to come back on-line and would plead with people to stay off their terminals except for emergencies, their pleas would be ignored, processing requests would flood the system, and the computers would crash again.

It was only two more weeks before the scientists of the world agreed on an explanation for the additional brightness in the apparition of Halley’s Comet. But it was over four months before people could count again on reliable data base information from the GNS. The cost to human society of the enduring chaos was incalculable. By the time normal electronic economic activity had been restored, the world was in a violent financial down-spin that would not bottom out until twelve years later. It would be well over fifty years before the Gross World Product would return to the heights reached before the Crash of 2134.

AFTER THE CRASH
There is unanimous agreement that The Great Chaos profoundly altered human civilization in every way. No segment of society was immune. The catalyst for the relatively rapid collapse of the existing institutional infrastructure was the market crash and subsequent breakdown of the global financial system; however, these events would not have been sufficient, by themselves, to project the world into a period of unprecedented depression. What followed the initial crash would have been only a comedy of errors if so many lives had not been lost as a result of the poor planning. Inept world political leaders first denied or ignored the existing economic problems, then overreacted with a suite of individual measures that were baffling and/or inconsistent, and finally threw up their arms in despair as the global crisis deepened and spread. Attempts to coordinate international solutions were doomed to failure by the increasing need of each of the sovereign nations to respond to its own constituency.

In hindsight, it was obvious that the intemationalization of the world that had taken place during the twenty-first century had been flawed in at least one significant way. Although many activities-communications, trade, transportation (including space), currency regulation, peacekeeping, information exchange, and environmental protection, to name the most important-had indeed become international (even interplanetary, considering the space colonies), most of the agreements that established these international institutions contained codicils that allowed the individual nations to withdraw, upon relatively short notice, if the policies promulgated under the accords no longer served the interests of the country in question. In short, each of the nations participating in the creation of an international body had the right to abrogate its national involvement, unilaterally, when it was no longer satisfied with the actions of the group.

[…]

It all sounds very familiar doesn’t it? It is snarfed from Rama II, by Arthur C. Clarke.

If you change some of the dates and the technical details, it could apply directly to today; banks collapsing thanks to bad loans, no one believing a mega crash can happen, etc etc.

We must remember that the author is the man who not only wrote 2001 A Space Odyssey but he also invented the telecommunications satellite. Insightful does not begin to describe the imaginative powers of this man, which is why I have always been curious about the strange disconnect between his obvious intelligence and his skepticism about UFOs being Alien Spacecraft. It is clear to anyone who has done their research that Aliens do come here and have been coming here. Arthur Clarke is not someone to make a pronouncement without doing his research, and so how can we explain his irrational skepticism?

That was a major digression. The reason why I posted this is that this man is good at predicting the future, and I do not like what he is predicting; World Government, INEPT World Government, population control, the disappearance of the family; in fact, every New World Order wet dream is portrayed by Clarke as inevitable, and mostly desirable. The passages where he does this stick out from the story (in Rendezvous with Rama) like spikes on a cactus. They are jarring, so much so, its like they have been peppered into the story as an afterthought.

In any case, whatever writers and futurist predict, the future is not set, and there is no reason to assume that the future will be cashless, Fascist and bad. The future could be Cashed, free and sustainable, and Clarke and his NWO=GOOD Science Cult Papacy buddies proved mercifully wrong. One thing we all agree on, as demonstrated in the above passage; government cannot control the market, and no matter what happens, there WILL be crashes in the absence of hard money and real economic freedom.

By John E. Dunn
Techworld
27 February 2008

Criminals have assembled a huge database of hacked FTP server logins belonging to some of the worlds leading companies, a security company has revealed.

Finjan said it had stumbled upon a database containing account usernames, passwords and server addresses for a staggering 8,700 FTP servers, many of which were being used by US Fortune 100-level enterprises.

The hacked servers could be used to distribute crimeware by injecting iframe tags into any webpage stored on the compromised FTP servers. Indeed the server accounts were themselves being traded by a web application able to rank and price them according to their Google page rank for re-sale to other criminals.

The company found the database while examining what appears to be a sophisticated Russian crimeware hub built using a newer version of the Neosploit crimeware toolkit, sophisticated enough to offers its criminal users a SaaS (software as a service) interface for carrying out attacks.

The company didnt name the domains involved for obvious reasons, but the range of sectors and countries reads like a whos who of big business. FTP details for telecoms, media, online retail, and government agencies were all present, across every leading economy and beyond.

Using the Alexa.com domain ranking, Finjan found 10 of the top 100 domains in the database, 100 of the top 500 domains, and 50 of those between 500 and 1,000.

Breaking these down by location, 2,621 were in the US, 1,247 in Russia, 392 in Australia, 354 in Asia/Pacific. The rest were covered Eastern Europe, with only a handful in western European countries such as Germany and the UK, which accounted for 80 and 78, respectively.

“With this new trading application, cyber-criminals have an instant ‘solution’ to their problem of gaining access to FTP credentials and thus infecting both the legitimate websites and unsuspecting visitors, said Finjans Yuval-Ben Itzhak.

[…]

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=11561

I could have used substitution here to make this an article about ID cards and how ‘criminals’ are going to create tools to trade in the ‘identities’ of people, but this article was just too juicy as it stood.

Back in the day there were the forerunners of these tools, like ‘cc master’ (at least thats what I think it was called; it was something around on the old [1994/5] BBSes that you could play with if you wanted to get your machine virus’d). Now of course, they are running everything on the internets as services, like bugmenot, only much more serious.

The same thing is going to happen with ID details. Underground supermarkets are going to be created where you can buy the ‘identity’ of just the sort of person you need to commit a crime, and this will include fingerprints that will be used in software that uses playback exploits to fool the back ends that are being attacked. Even without that, simple Social Engineering will be made possible by collecting and studying the detailed identity records of some sheep, that can be inserted into a script for reading out, and all of this will be done in a slick service that you pay to access.

Imagine, you pay a subscription to a service that generates scripts for you to read over the telephone. You log in. You select your gender and accent type. The system then generates some scripts for you to read, and sets up VOIP calls for you to activate with a click of your mouse. The scripts are filled with the personal details of someone (bought on a DVD) and the call is made to their bank or building society, and the script provides you with a spiel that lets you transfer money to your own account.

You are paying for the right to use these identities and the related generated scripts; if you have success or not thats down to your mad skillz as a social engineer. Recommended Reading, ‘The Art of Deception’ by Kevin D. Mitnik.

The more scripts you read and the better you get at it, the more money you collect. Snarfed profiles are charged by how many people have used them; fresh, unused profiles are the most expensive (like fresh leads; they are for closers). Identities that have been passed around alot are nearly worthless, so you can read scripts generated for these in their thousands for only a few euros.

“I’m here from downtown, and I’m here on a mission of mercy….”

True!

From Mr Peter D. Hahn.

Sir, Your editorial “Liechtenstein loot” (February 19) correctly points to the complexities and sophistication of tax evasion among those wealthy enough to afford it. I can’t claim higher morals because I have never had the wealth to consider such a strategy, but I am deeply troubled by the FT’s seeming endorsement of Germany’s techniques.

Germany’s encouragement and payment for stealing property is something no state should ever engage in except if it means securing the life of its citizens (such as in the prevention of terrorism or drug dealing).

Had a tax inspector, an employee or another individual obtained the information and provided it to the German authorities without payment, I would surely support such efforts to prosecute those who have committed an injustice and avoided paying. However, the German government’s payment for such information is certainly a greater injustice.

The state that justifies immoral behaviour in pursuit of taxes is the state that can too easily justify spying on its own people for any disagreeable behaviour and here the Germans have a historical record that should suggest extraordinary restraint. This is governance at its worst.

Peter D. Hahn,

FEM Fellow,

Corporate Finance and Governance,

Sir John Cass Business School,

London EC1Y 8TZ

[…]

FT.com

What is happening in Britain today is so fundamentally wrong, so insane and un-British that there are very few people who do not see these wrongs for what they are.

Peter Hahn is merely the latest.

Every day we see more voices turning to the sound of BLOGDIAL. That is a good thing. It means that we are reaching a tipping point.

The other day I was in a cab heading to a fine restaurant in Soho, and the driver promised me that there was going to very soon be a mass uprising in the UK, because the people had been pushed too far.

Those words warmed my heart better than any Cognac ever could

This is the 1000th post on the WordPress powered BLOGDIAL, the 16,595th post in total, and our seventh year of publishing.

Thank you to all the people who posted on this blog over the years.

Thank you to all the lurkers who emailed tips, rants and praise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEcBjpsP1bU

How much further can Olbermann take it before he says, “One night in desperation a young man gets a gun”?

At the end of the day, if he really believes what he is saying, and he (and everyone else) sees that nothing is going to change, and in fact, we are going to continue to be attacked unless ‘something is done’, then where is there left to go Keith?

Too bad your depth perception is gone Keith; that disqualifies you for ‘the juba role’ ay?!

EU plans to require biometrics of all non-European visitors

By Stephen Castle
Sunday, February 10, 2008

BRUSSELS: All non-Europeans would need to submit biometric data before crossing Europe’s frontiers under sweeping European Union proposals to combat illegal migration, terrorism and organized crime that are to be outlined this week.

The only reason why this is being opened as a possibility is USVISIT.

And yet, the EU appears to be furious that the Great Satan wants more passenger data.

The plans – arguably the biggest shake-up of border management in Europe since the creation of an internal travel zone – would apply to citizens of the United States and all other countries that now enjoy visa-free status.

They would, however, allow EU citizens and “low risk” frequent travelers from outside the bloc to pass through automated, fast-track frontier checkpoints without coming into contact with border guards. Voluntary programs for prescreening such visitors, who would register fingerprints and other data, would be stepped up.

‘Voluntary’. A page right out of Tony Bliar and his venal musical chairs Home Secretaries and their ID Card farce.

The proposals, contained in draft documents examined by the International Herald Tribune and scheduled to go to the European Commission on Wednesday, were designed to bring the EU visa regime into line with a new era in which passports include biometric data.

No debate, no consultation, no warning, no rationale, just ‘this is the way it is going to be’. Pure dictatorship, pure fascism. Who has designed this system, why is it being put in place after centuries of people moving without problems and decades of free travel without Fascist measures?

The commission, the EU executive, argues that migratory pressure, organized crime and terrorism are obvious challenges to the Union and that the bloc’s border and visa policy needs to be brought up to date.

This is not a rationale, this is a complete lie.

for decades, ‘terrorism’ has been going on in europe, and in the case of Italy, the home of Fascism and Franco Frattini, the terrorism was callously engineered by the Italian government to…terrorize the good people of Italy. Terror is no pretext to abuse the people of europe in this way. Migratory pressure can be controlled by the ID cards that all EU citizens are already compelled to carry. These measures will not stop people coming to Italy in boats or walking into europe. It will only impact the law abiding and good people; in fact, this plan is a clever scheme by equipment vendors to create a market for themselves where millions of people will be forced to consume their services through contract with governments. Organized crime? Italy is the world capitol for organized crime, and yet, you could not have a more beautiful and well ordered country, where the people have a high standard of living, a high ‘index of happiness’ as do many counties of europe. This simply is not needed, and when they say that, “visa policy needs to be brought up to date” this code for, “we have to keep up with the americans”.

It also wants a new European Border Surveillance System to be created, to use satellites and unmanned aircraft to help track the movements of suspected illegal migrants.

All of this will cost money, contractors will make a fortune on it, it will not stop illegal working, or ‘terrorism’

If approved by the commission this week, the measures would need the approval of all EU states.

The United States routinely requires European citizens to submit fingerprints when crossing its borders and the commission’s document notes that America plans to introduce an electronic travel-authorization system for people from countries like Britain, France and Germany that are in its Visa Waiver Program.

And it is all pure evil, and we and many smart people have been saying so for years.

The commission’s proposals cover the Schengen zone, Europe’s internal free-travel area named after the village in Luxembourg near where the original agreement between five countries was signed on June 14, 1985. Twenty-four countries are now members.

It is unclear whether Britain and Ireland, which along with Cyprus are not members of Schengen, would opt into the program.

Each year more than 300 million travelers cross EU borders, but there is no obligation for countries inside the Schengen free-travel zone to keep a record of entries and exits of non-European third-country nationals in a dedicated database. Moreover, if the visitor leaves from another Schengen country, it is often impossible to determine whether or not the visitor overstayed his or her visa.

And that is the way it should be. Everything has been working without these measures, and these measures will not be effective, because, A) Terrorism is a false pretext, B) only law abiding people use passports, C) organized crime will not be impacted in any way.

The proposals, drafted by the European commissioner for justice and home affairs, Franco Frattini, suggest that non-Europeans on a short-stay visa would be checked against a Visa Information System that is already under construction and should be operational in 2012.

Fratinni the Fascist, strikes again. This evil bastard is, “…responsible for Freedom, Security and Justice.” What a joke. This evil man has consistently been for the erasure of freedom, measures that do not improve security, and that are unjust. He wants to censor the internet. Lets leave it right there. This is a very bad man.

Frattini also is calling for a new database to be set up to store information on the time and place of entry and exit of non-European nationals, using biometric identifiers. Once a person’s visa expired, an alert would go out to all national authorities that the visitor had overstayed his or her allotted time.

Fratinni is an imbecile. This database he is proposing will not catch a single illegal worker that does not use a passport, and these people number in the millions. Perhaps next he will advocate the re-opening of the concentration camps to store all the undesirables; by making this database, he will be putting in place the infrastructure to make it easy to do, just like his predecessors and inspiration the Nazis did. How can such a beautiful country produce such an ugly man?

Travelers from countries with a visa requirement would need to provide biometric data at European consulates before leaving their home country. Those arriving from nations not requiring visas, like the United States, would also need to submit fingerprints and a digitalized facial image.

Border control that is proportionate is what is required. There is nothing wrong with border controls as long as they are reasonable and do not interfere with the flow and freedom of people. For decades air travel has been a great boon to everyone. If there is a problem of too many travelers, this cannot be solved by fingerprinting everyone over the top Security Theatre and launching spy planes and surveillance drones.

But the European Union would try to make the system more user-friendly for Europeans and some categories of bona fide visitors by granting them the status of “registered traveler.” They would be able to have their biometric travel documents scanned and checked by machines.

Once again, none of this will stop illegal migration, illegal working, ‘people trafficking’, terrorism, organized crime or any of the things Fratelli claims he wants to stop. These are measures that will only work on the harassed law abiding public.

All Europeans should be able to use such a system when EU countries complete the task of issuing passports with two biometric identifiers, by 2019 at the latest. The 27 EU countries started issuing passports with a digitalized facial image in August 2006 and, in June 2009, will add the holder’s fingerprints. European residence permits will also contain the same identifiers.

All nonsense, and all measures designed to increase the cost of issuing and maintaining passports; this is the real reason why these measures are being proposed; vendors will have the opportunity to roll out several layers on top of the existing passports, each one being worth billions of euros.

Think about it, RFID chips mean the chips themselves manufactured in the tens of millions, the readers on a scale of tens of thousands, then there are the maintenance contracts. The same goes for fingerprinting; readers will need to be rolled out in the tens of thousands. Digital photograpy, whole new generations of equipment. Then the databases and associate software and hardware it will be run on. It is a contractors wet dream. Fratelli and the unelected, unaccountable EU commission are the people who are going to dish out this candy.

Non-Europeans could gain the same, fast-track status providing they have not overstayed previous visas, have proof of sufficient funds to pay for their stay in Europe and hold a biometric passport.

And of course, the illegals, who have no money, always overstay the visas they never apply for, will go around this system.

All non-European nationals would be asked to make an electronic application, supplying key data, before their arrival, allowing them to be checked against anti-terror databases in advance.

Migrants on foot? How many times do we have to repeat it?

The draft documents also highlight weaknesses in Europe’s efforts to guard its borders. One paper points out that, in the eight EU countries with external borders in the Mediterranean Sea and southern Atlantic, frontier surveillance is carried out by about 50 authorities from 30 institutions, sometimes with competing competencies and systems.

and nothing that Fratelli is offering will make it better. And he knows it.

The plans foresee increased use of satellites and unmanned surveillance aircraft to monitor unauthorized movements, and a computerized communication network to share information.

‘computerized’

Just like Buck Rogers!

Frattini also wants to see a bigger role for the agency that coordinates cooperation over external borders, known as Frontex. Although the agency has been criticized in some southern European nations for failing to match the scale of the challenge over illegal migration, the commission argues that it has achieved impressive results.

In 2006 and 2007 more than 53,000 people were apprehended or denied entry at a frontier and at least 2,900 false travel documents were seized. In addition, 58 people suspected of links to illegal trafficking have been arrested.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/10/europe/union.php?page=2

In other words, it has been just about as effective as USVISIT; billions spent to capture a handful of passports, and under one hundred criminals.

Pathetic.

Sadly we cannot expect anyone in Europe to take a common sense stance, put their foot down and say, “this is impossibly stupid”.

An ugly future, built by ugly people.

Poll shows growing opposition to ID cards over data fears

· 25% now strongly against their use, says ICM survey
· Majority concerned about sharing of personal details

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Wednesday February 6, 2008
The Guardian

The number of people strongly opposed to the introduction of a national identity card scheme has risen sharply, according to the results of an ICM poll to be published today.

Those campaigning against ID cards said last night that the poll, with results showing that 25% of the public are deeply opposed to the idea, raises the prospect that the potential number of those likely to refuse to register for the card has risen. If the poll’s findings were reflected in the wider population, as many as 10 million people may be expected to refuse to comply.

The ICM survey also shows that a majority of the British people say they are “uncomfortable” with the idea that personal data provided to the government for one purpose should be shared between all Whitehall-run public services.

The poll, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, shows that British public opinion is deeply split over the introduction of identity cards, with 50% against the idea and 47% in favour.

Recent disputes over the further delays to have hit the project have strengthened opposition to the scheme, with those who think it is “a very bad” idea rising from 17% last September to 25% now. This compares with only 12% who think that pressing ahead with ID cards, which will cost around £93 per person when combined with a passport, is a “very good idea”.

In the aftermath of the government’s recent embarrassing losses of confidential personal data, public opinion appears to have turned sharply against the idea of sharing information within Whitehall and the creeping introduction of the “Big Brother” state.

A majority – 52% – say they feel uncomfortable with allowing “personal information that is provided to one government department to be shared between all government departments that provide public services”.

However, the poll does show that clear support exists among the public for setting up a central identity register and collecting personal travel details on everyone coming in and out of Britain. It also reveals some support for the creation of a separate database about every child, including details about their parents and carers.

That ‘support’ is there because they have not asked the right question. If it is put to people that their details will end up being used as if they had an ID card and the NIR was implimented, they would all swing against it. That is obvious.

Phil Booth, of the No2id campaign, said: “With a quarter of the country deeply opposed to ID cards, and a clear majority reluctant to have their personal information shared even for public services, the government needs to fundamentally rethink its database state.

“These figures suggest that millions will simply refuse to comply.”

He said the results showed that between 10 million and 15 million could refuse to register for the card.

[…]

The first ID cards will be introduced in December this year for foreign nationals resident in the country.

That is discrimination, and it will not happen. Like we have said so many times, if you do not force everyone to have an ID card, mandating that a small group (brown skinned foreigners) to have them means that everyone who looks like a foreigner will be harrassed. This is clearly not doable.

It will follow a pilot scheme to be run in London from April to test the technology. The prime minister, Gordon Brown, has confirmed that legislation will have to be introduced before it becomes compulsory for British nationals to register for the ID cards scheme.

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/story/0,,2253081,00.html

That is not going to happen. Clearly.

What is most interesting about this is how people are going to react to the abominable temple to soft Fascism, Heathrow Terminal 5.

Millions of people are going to turn up there, and in a harassed state, will probably consent to being fingerprinted. That Concentration Camp like processing will go on and on, until they have the fingerprints and matched passport details of many tens of millions of people. Then, they can say, “we already have your details from your passing through Treblinka Terminal 5, as you can see, the world has not ended. If we give you ID cards, you will not have to have your prints taken wherever you travel; you will just have to swipe your card – we will speed you through if you have one”.

Two years down the line, at the current rate of throughput (67 million annual passengers, 11% travel to UK destinations, 43% are short-haul international travellers, and 46% are long-haul.) means that they will have at least 60 million records stored in their system, erring on the small side. Many of these entries will be of completely innocent British travellers, at least 11% of whom were traveling inside their own country.

Like I said before this building is designed to soften the public to the idea of being fingerprinted and surveilled, and it was done completely deliberately. Once millions have been violated by this monstrous building, it will be that much easier to slide ID cards between the metal contacts that, if they were to touch, would blow up the scheme in the face of that chunky mass murderer Gordon Brown.

Terminal 5 propaganda is already moving ahead at full steam, and of course, there is no mention of fingerprinting in this PR drivel.

I wonder what a mass refusal to be fingerprinted at Terminal 5 would look like? Or a mass stay away campaign, where people from all over the world refuse to arrive in or pass through Terminal 5 in protest at this evil Fascist police state temple, this foul abattoir where peoples dignity is ground up into hamburger, this Nazi inspired brainwashing tool where people are reduced to the level of numbered cattle.

The fact is that it is illogical to be against ID cards and the NIR but to then allow yourself to be fingerprinted at Terminal 5. All the objections to ID cards and the NIR overlap perfectly with the objections to that disgusting warehouse, and so, who is going to be first in the mass media to point out the problem with this bad building, and what are they going to do should people finally wake up and say, “I am a human being my life has value; my dignity and sense of decency demands that I will not to submit to this”.

The Ideals of Liberty, Long May They Reign!

When we submit our ideas and inner thoughts to the judgment of others, we stake ourselves upon both the common passions and therefore the criticisms of those who consider our opinions, be they right or wrong.

Thus, in my opinion, the present disposition of this government toward the People, in matters of their ability to both determine and maintain their own lives within the confidence of Liberty, is that of complete and abject opposition. Under the disease of widespread complacency, We have surrendered our combative Right of Dissent and indeed the Right of Defense against any and all onslaughts of Our Freedom by the very institution designed and pledged to protect such Freedom.

We have, to Our own demise and degradation, provided allowance after allowance to those, whose primary purpose is to govern solely at Our Pleasure and by Our Consent, and they have taken full advantage of Our lack of the Spirit of Opposition to fundamentally change the manner in which they govern this confederation of State Republics. At one time in this country, those who would be called, by election, to represent and serve this People did so in a manner forced upon them by Our Consent and the Consideration of the stated Honor of Office. That Honor of Office has now been debased to the point that Corruption is commonplace and there are few that could exculpate either their intentions or deeds. Those who hold Office, which once held Honor Intact, now seek no enforcement of the Sentiments of the People, but devise legislation based upon their own consent and opinions, or worse, those of external corporate influences.

Many of our Politicians would have the People believe that their government is completely disposed and indeed determined to have all Grievances of the People redressed, and that they abide by the traditional Order of the Constitution to assure such Compliance to the Law of the Land, yet they continually subvert the very Document by which they Govern under such Despicable Pretenses. They prefer Our Silence to Our Consent and would, if it left to their own devises, leave no quarter to our Rights and no ear to Our Complaint. They exercise their Pretended right to both Power and Authority over the lives and livelihoods of the People; indeed they endeavor to scheme and create all manner of regulation, under the posed Power of Law, to inhibit the possibility of real and effective dissent to their rule.

They are well aware of the Sentiments of the People and yet still, with that knowledge, they have chosen to continually ignore those Sentiments and govern by the counsel of their own Consent and Will instead of Proper Legislative Discretion and the Good and Proper Will of the People. If we continue to acknowledge their right and power to make laws binding upon us and its assumed sovereignty over us to determine Our fate and the direction of Our Nation, then we will suffer the fate of others who have been bent into the mold of compliancy.

What manner of People have we become to allow such cavitations of reckless power and authority to rule over us? What have We become that we now assume to only hold the place of servant to the will of the State with the designs of Arbitrary Power?

Once again, We find ourselves in the Struggle for American Liberty and I, for one, am glad that Dr. Paul is leading the fight. Though it may be long and arduous, in the end we must prevail over the forces that seek to subjugate this nation.

Chester M. Mcateer

[…]

An Amazon comment attached to the forthcoming Ron Paul Manifesto

For the record, only the foolish and ignorant accept as binding the laws of these monstrous despots and no decent person assumes that they have sovereignty over us.

But you know this!

18-29 7%
30-34 18%
45-59 31%
60+ 44%

Young people of america, those numbers should frighten you.

They are the demographic of the people who voted John McCain to victory in Florida.

They are the generation that squeezed the sweet juice out of the orange that was america, and that wants to leave you with the empty orange peel to smell as your legacy. You will not even have the seeds to plant new trees for yourselves. They had america at its best, at its most free. They used it up, squeezed it dry and now that its all over, they want you to clean up the mess for the rest of your lives.

Indeed, they want you to give up your very life. That is how little they think of you.

These are the people who are voting for a man that wants to draft you into the army; 25% of the people voting in florida will be eligible for military service under new legislation, and John McCain has guaranteed you that there will be more wars, and that america will be in Iraq for up to 100 years.

That means you and your children will be paying with your blood.

You will also be paying with your labor. There is no money for you in the social security program as it stands, and the old people of today, the 45% of voters in Florida want someone in charge who is going to ‘take care of the seniors’. What this means is that you are going to be enslaved in a system that uses all of your work to finance social security and the endless wars that have guaranteed to come by all the candidates save one.

This is not fear-mongering, but common knowledge, being shouted from the rooftops by people who normally stay in the background. The crisis is real, and there are only two ways out for you; Revolution or retreat.

You can stay put, pay as you have been paying and run headlong into disaster and senseless death with all the other people who are not awake, or you can foment revolution and stop the insanity from taking place. There is a deadline that once passed, means that there is nothing left for you to try, as the end has come. That deadline falls after November 2008.

I say to you, that if you have any sense at all, you should resolve right now that you will not provide any money for this insanity, no matter what the outcome. You must refuse to pay into or cooperate with an insane system that is heading towards disaster. It’s every man for himself, and all of us together. Run as fast as you can after November if the result is not Ron Paul as president. It is clear that Geriatric America is going to weigh down on you like nothing we have ever seen before, as they drink your blood and steal your money from you while they sit down in a geriatric fog, doing nothing other than commanding you by proxy.

These words may sound harsh, but they are less shrill than the sound of bombs dropping or ricochet bouncing around you tens of thousands of miles away from home.

There is a way to take care of everyone and stop the insane wars and unburden the young. This is not about disenfranchising people, or euthanasia, disrespect for the elderly or being cruel in any way. The old are a treasure in many ways and they are horribly treated, especially in america. This may go some way to explaining why they vote the way they do; they are shunted off into homes like discarded chairs and abandoned – its no wonder they vote for people who promise to look after them. Perhaps if american families were more like Italian and Indian families, i.e. large and cohesive not prone to abandon their parents. there would be less of a problem of abandoned old people. But I digress. If you thought any of that whilst reading the above, you can count yourself as one of the sleeping.

The future is uncertain, and unwritten. The fact that we have any hope at all in a time like this shows that the human spirit is not yet totally demolished by this unimaginable evil that has been unleashed in the world. We can still win. But we also have to understand the dynamics of what is happening, and should all the heroic efforts fail, fighting against the geriatric tyranny will be as useless as trying to use a soup spoon to bail out water from a burst Hoover Dam.

This is the reality; everyone has been warned about what is going to happen next; financial ruin and horrific wars on behalf of bankers and ‘elites’. Do you want to be a willing part of it by staying put and paying for it all to take place as if it is perfectly reasonable?

Make your plans for escape and final resistance now. Whatever shape they may take, you cannot reasonably be expected to go along with this madness. Other generations had their own war to resist, like VietNam, and in the end, the changes that particular generation desired did not come about. You cannot possibly want this to be your fate also; having seen the passion, the eloquence and the real sacrifices made by those people in the 1960s, our goal should be to succeed completely in the arena that they failed in. Our challenges are greater than theirs – they fought against a single war; we are fighting against a future of wars AND financial oblivion AND the elimination of the United States itself.

The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

The stakes are so high that failure is not an option. We must win either by solving the problem completely or escaping completely. There is no half measure, no compromise or work-around that will suffice. We have reached a point of physical impossibility, like trying to push a marble faster than the speed of light in normal space. We are at a point beyond which it is impossible to go without breaking all the laws of morality and nature.

If you do not take a stand and make a move, your very existence guarantees the horrors that are promised to you as your legacy. Every time you shop, every hour you work, every morsel you eat will prop up this monstrous system they are building.

We are all very lucky. We have recent history to guide us, a hero to lead us out of the crisis, the means to communicate at zero cost, and all the tools to make it happen. No other generation had this much power at their fingertips. If we blow it, or if it doesn’t work, or if something happens to stop us, it is unlikely that a better time will come around; certainly once the wars start, the country is dismantled and the money is gone we will not be starting at anywhere near such a good initial position – as bad as everything is today. It will be harder by orders of magnitude to fix everything if we miss this window, and certainly the once in 200 years personality will not be there to lead the cause, barring a miracle. Perhaps that is what it will take; a miracle in the face of an impossible scenario.

This really feels like the last chance, the last gasp. Looking at the candidates, their diseased ideologies and false posturing are a glimpse into the nightmare we will enter should we accept their governance in the event of a disastrous outcome.

I am not putting up with it, I can tell you that.

You should not tolerate it either.

Everyone will choose what they are going to do either way; what no one will be able to say is that they did not know, or that they were not warned, or that they were not given the opportunity to rectify the situation.

Back to work.

This is the sound of america waking up.

It is a beautiful sound.

These are the Real Americans™ that we all knew and loved.

They live!

Chavez: Pull Reserves From US

Chavez Urges Latin American Allies to Move Reserves Out of US

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his Latin American allies on Saturday to begin withdrawing billions of dollars in international reserves from U.S. banks, warning of a looming U.S. economic crisis.

Chavez made the suggestion as he hosted a summit aimed at boosting Latin American integration and rolling back U.S. influence.

“We should start to bring our reserves here,” Chavez said. “Why does that money have to be in the north? … You can’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

To help pool resources within the region, Chavez and other leaders launched a new development bank at the summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Nations of Our America, or ALBA.

The left-leaning regional trade alliance first proposed by Chavez is intended to offer an alternative, socialist path to integration while snubbing U.S.-backed free-trade deals.

Chavez noted that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia in recent days, saying “that has to do with this summit.”

“The empire doesn’t accept alternatives,” Chavez told the gathering, attended by the presidents of Bolivia and Nicaragua and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage.

Chavez warned that U.S. “imperialism is entering into a crisis that can affect all of us” and said Latin America “will save itself alone.”

Rice left Colombia on Friday after a trip aimed at reviving a free trade deal that has stalled in the U.S. Congress. She sidestepped an opportunity to confront Chavez, who accused Colombia and the United States of plotting “military aggression” against Venezuela.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega joined Chavez in his criticism of U.S.-style capitalism, saying “the dictatorship of global capitalism … has lost control.” Three days earlier, Ortega had shouted “Long live the U.S. government” as he inaugurated an American-financed section of highway in his country.

The ALBA Bank is “being born with the aim of boosting development in our countries,” Venezuelan Finance Minister Rafael Isea said Saturday as he and other officials gathered at the bank’s Caracas office for an inaugural ceremony.

Isea has said the bank will be started with $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

Chavez welcomed the Caribbean island of Dominica into the ALBA — an acronym that means “dawn” in Spanish — joining Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba. Attending as observers were the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, along with officials from Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti and St. Kitts and Nevis.

Chavez said a new fund created by Venezuela and Iran to support projects in third countries would have links to the ALBA Bank.

[…]

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080126/venezuela_alba_summit.html

These people are not very smart.

They should have done this years ago before the Iraq invacion (yes ‘invascion’), when it would have made a huge impact. Now that we have a man who could actually become their greatest ally, they want to accelerate the destruction of the USA and trigger the neocon Final Push at the very point at which the whole world could be saved by Ron Paul. Yes, I typed that.

Peanut brained imbeciles!