US Government Begins Rollout Of Its 'Driver's License For The Internet'

by Tim Cushing

An idea the government has been kicking around since 2011 is finally making its debut. Calling this move ill-timed would be the most gracious way of putting it.

A few years back, the White House had a brilliant idea: Why not create a single, secure online ID that Americans could use to verify their identity across multiple websites, starting with local government services. The New York Times described it at the time as a "driver's license for the internet."

Sound convenient? It is. Sound scary? It is.

Next month, a pilot program of the "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace" will begin in government agencies in two US states, to test out whether the pros of a federally verified cyber ID outweigh the cons.

The NSTIC program has been in (slow) motion for nearly three years, but now, at a time when the public's trust in government is at an all time low, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST -- itself still reeling a bit from NSA-related blowback) is testing the program in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The first tests appear to be exclusively aimed at accessing public programs, like government assistance. The government believes this ID system will help reduce fraud and overhead, by eliminating duplicated ID efforts across multiple agencies.

But the program isn't strictly limited to government use. The ultimate goal is a replacement of many logins and passwords people maintain to access content and participate in comment threads and forums. This "solution," while somewhat practical, also raises considerable privacy concerns.

[T]he Electronic Frontier Foundation immediately pointed out the red flags, arguing that the right to anonymous speech in the digital realm is protected under the First Amendment. It called the program "radical," "concerning," and pointed out that the plan "makes scant mention of the unprecedented threat such a scheme would pose to privacy and free speech online."

And the keepers of the identity credentials wouldn't be the government itself, but a third party organization. When the program was introduced in 2011, banks, technology companies or cellphone service providers were suggested for the role, so theoretically Google or Verizon could have access to a comprehensive profile of who you are that's shared with every site you visit, as mandated by the government.

Beyond the privacy issues (and the hints of government being unduly interested in your online activities), there are the security issues. This collected information would be housed centrally, possibly by corporate third parties. When hackers can find a wealth of information at one location, it presents a very enticing target. The government's track record on protecting confidential information is hardly encouraging.

The problem is, ultimately, that this is the government rolling this out. Unlike corporations, citizens won't be allowed the luxury of opting out. This "internet driver's license" may be the only option the public has to do things like renew actual driver's licenses or file taxes or complete paperwork that keeps them on the right side of federal law. Whether or not you believe the government's assurances that it will keep your data safe from hackers, keep it out of the hands of law enforcement (without a warrant), or simply not look at it just because it's there, matters very little. If the government decides the positives outweigh the negatives, you'll have no choice but to participate.

National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (PDF)

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I bet this was one of the TPP items and the reason they don't want to tell us about TPP. What's the saying in the U.S., You have to pass it to find out what's in it. In a police state this is to be expected, sadly.

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FBI begins installation of $1 billion face recognition system across America

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by RT

Birthmarks, be damned: the FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reached a milestone in the development of their Next Generation Identification (NGI) program and is now implementing the intelligence database in unidentified locales across the country, New Scientist reports in an article this week. The FBI first outlined the project back in 2005, explaining to the Justice Department in an August 2006 document (.pdf) that their new system will eventually serve as an upgrade to the current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across America .

"The NGI Program is a compilation of initiatives that will either improve or expand existing biometric identification services," its administrator explained to the Department of Justice at the time, adding that? the project, "will accommodate increased information processing and sharing demands in support of anti-terrorism."

"The NGI Program Office mission is to reduce terrorist and criminal activities by improving and expanding biometric identification and criminal history information services through research, evaluation and implementation of advanced technology within the IAFIS environment."

The agency insists, "As a result of the NGI initiatives, the FBI will be able to provide services to enhance interoperability between stakeholders at all levels of government, including local, state, federal, and international partners." In doing as such, though, the government is now going ahead with linking a database of images and personally identifiable information of anyone in their records with departments around the world thanks to technology that makes fingerprint tracking seem like kids' stuff.

According to their 2006 report, the NGI program utilizes "specialized requirements in the Latent Services, Facial Recognition and Multi-modal Biometrics areas" that "will allow the FnewBI to establish a terrorist fingerprint identification system that is compatible with other systems; increase the accessibility and number of the IAFIS terrorist fingerprint records; and provide latent palm print search capabilities."

Is that just all, though? During a 2010 presentation (.pdf) made by the FBI's Biometric Center of Intelligence, the agency identified why facial recognition technology needs to be embraced. Specifically, the FBI said that the technology could be used for "Identifying subjects in public datasets," as well as "conducting automated surveillance at lookout locations" and "tracking subject movements," meaning NGI is more than just a database of mug shots mixed up with fingerprints -- the FBI has admitted that this their intent with the technology surpasses just searching for criminals but includes spectacular surveillance capabilities. Together, it's a system unheard of outside of science fiction.

New Scientist reports that a 2010 study found technology used by NGI to be accurate in picking out suspects from a pool of 1.6 million mug shots 92 percent of the time. The system was tested on a trial basis in the state of Michigan earlier this year, and has already been cleared for pilot runs in Washington, Florida and North Carolina. Now according to this week's New Scientist report, the full rollout of the program has begun and the FBI expects its intelligence infrastructure to be in place across the United States by 2014.

In 2008, the FBI announced that it awarded Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions, one of the Defense Department's most favored contractors, with the authorization to design, develop, test and deploy the NGI System. Thomas E. Bush III, the former FBI agent who helped develop the NGI's system requirements, tells NextGov.com, "The idea was to be able to plug and play with these identifiers and biometrics." With those items being collected without much oversight being admitted, though, putting the personal facts pertaining to millions of Americans into the hands of some playful Pentagon staffers only begins to open up civil liberties issues.

Jim Harper, director of information policy at the Cato Institute, adds to NextGov that investigators pair facial recognition technology with publically available social networks in order to build bigger profiles. Facial recognition "is more accurate with a Google or a Facebook, because they will have anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen pictures of an individual, whereas I imagine the FBI has one or two mug shots," he says. When these files are then fed to law enforcement agencies on local, federal and international levels, intelligence databases that include everything from close-ups of eyeballs and irises to online interests could be shared among offices.

The FBI expects the NGI system to include as many as 14 million photographs by the time the project is in full swing in only two years, but the pace of technology and the new connections constantly created by law enforcement agencies could allow for a database that dwarfs that estimate. As RT reported earlier this week, the city of Los Angeles now considers photography in public space "suspicious," and authorizes LAPD officers to file reports if they have reason to believe a suspect is up to no good. Those reports, which may not necessarily involve any arrests, crimes, charges or even interviews with the suspect, can then be filed, analyzed, stored and shared with federal and local agencies connected across the country to massive data fusion centers. Similarly, live video transmissions from thousands of surveillance cameras across the country are believed to be sent to the same fusion centers as part of TrapWire, a global eye-in-the-sky endeavor that RT first exposed earlier this year.

"Facial recognition creates acute privacy concerns that fingerprints do not," US Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) told the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law earlier this year. "Once someone has your faceprint, they can get your name, they can find your social networking account and they can find and track you in the street, in the stores you visit, the government buildings you enter, and the photos your friends post online."

In his own testimony, Carnegie Mellon University Professor Alessandro Acquisti said to Sen. Franken, "the convergence of face recognition, online social networks and data mining has made it possible to use publicly available data and inexpensive technologies to produce sensitive inferences merely starting from an anonymous face."

"Face recognition, like other information technologies, can be source of both benefits and costs to society and its individual members," Prof. Acquisti added. "However, the combination of face recognition, social networks data and data mining can significant undermine our current notions and expectations of privacy and anonymity."

With the latest report suggesting the NGI program is now a reality in America, though, it might be too late to try and keep the FBI from interfering with seemingly every aspect of life in the US, both private and public. As of July 18, 2012, the FBI reports, "The NGI program ... is on scope, on schedule, on cost, and 60 percent deployed."

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TSA Begins Random Road Inspections in Tennessee

PORTLAND, Tenn. ? You're probably used to seeing TSA's signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

"Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate," said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.

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tennessee and the performing arts club

there is much discussion about capitalism, what it should be and stuff. capitalism implies private ownership of industry. that is what exists and private owners outwardly present a batter of constructs and variations of communism, socialism. democracy so absurd i include it only to include the word.

tennessee in the context of the tsa is a prison corporation, ie 'arbeit mach frei'. auschwitz was directly relevant (aus - out, witz - joke). during a collossal global financial transaction involving banking and insurance known as ww2 new actors of history were programmed for this war. following ww2 actors of history (including captains of industry) were changed over in britain and america as was noticed and complained about at the time.

in the case of tennesse as a corporation, the same applies to the tsa. tennesse as a corporation is a fiction, as land no one owns it. it doesn't matter that the state would assert a border fence is proof they own it or what it is, it was there before the incumbant, they can prove only occupation.

the fence or some other territorial marker would be proof of war and that was part of the racket. tennessee for example was the main base of electricity production. local people paid for the electricity they were working to provide for themselves. that strange logic was not my creation, it is mad. in the case of other states buying electricity from tennessee that is interstate commerce, what the fbi have the task of protecting and it is warfare as are the fbi wholesale. that warfare is in a form that deceives many and is an efficient use of slave labour.

the borders are divisions, dividing people up forcing competition. as the empire collapses it is like time reversal, a state could falter and the entire slave population leave, ruin long range military plans. the human livestock is penned in that nothing of value can leave without permission from the protectors of the racket, not large amounts of anything of value human livestock included.

tennessee also has a vw car plant going in, vw the signature of reich 3. at one point the occult mafia via their music industry encouraged people to steal the vw (vvv) logo and owners were issued with spares. symbolic at the time perhaps of a transfer of official programming to reich 4.

in britland the police non-emergency number has been changed to and i quote:
"!!!!! 101 !!!!!"

as in V V V, i take it to mean p*ss off but subliminally it is perhaps meant to connect with fear, room 101 (V) in the 1984 plan rolling. one of the early integrated circuits widely used was called the 555 timer, as divided and ruled it is for the slaves their time, labour, ignorance and fear on which the dictatorship feeds.

at higher level constructs, these are just divisions of the larger company, the cia's job and formed out of german and british military counter intelligence they will be working on keeping borders secure in minds and on the ground.

in all this no one seems to be mentioning free food, free water, free shelter, free minds. bbc division V use it when taking over nations but as the empire tries to haul into reverse gear the truth catches up and in the case of central banking and libya the truth was often ahead of the lies.

that said, the bbc are able to generate waves on twitter via the captive minds of their audience.

http://theintelhub.com/2011/10/20/tsa-takeover-of-america-army-of-tsa-agents-conduct-random-searches-throughout-tennessee/

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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And So It Begins -- The First Major European Bank Has Been Bailed Out And More Bailouts Are Coming

by Michael Snyder

And so it begins.? The first major European bank bailout of 2011 has now happened.? French/Belgian banking giant Dexia has failed and both governments have pledged to participate in a rescue plan.? But Dexia will not be the last major European bank to fail.? Even now, governments all over Europe are feverishly developing plans to bail out major national banks in the event that the current financial crisis goes from bad to worse.? Instead of learning the lessons of 2008, most major European banks have continued to pile up huge mountains of debt, leverage and risk.? Now the bill for that stupidity is about to be passed on to the taxpayers of those nations.? But with most nations in Europe already drowning in debt, are bank bailouts really the right course of action?? What is it going to happen to Europe if dozens of major banks start failing and trillions of euros are needed to bail them all out?

Dexia is the first victim of the new credit crunch.? It got to the point where Dexia simply could not get access to the funding that it needed in the credit markets.

We are starting to see this all over Europe.? Nobody wants to loan much money to European banks right now because it is unclear what is going to happen next in Europe and it is uncertain which banks are stable and which are on the verge of collapse.

This is so similar to what happened back in 2008.

But Dexia is not going to be "the next Lehman Brothers" because the governments of France and Belgium are stepping in to save Dexia from collapse.

A recent article in the Financial Post described how the rescue of Dexia is likely to proceed....

Dexia will effectively be broken up, with the sale of healthier operations while toxic assets, including Greek and other peripheral euro zone government bonds, will be placed in a state-supported "bad bank."

The details of the plan will be negotiated over the coming days, but authorities are making it clear that Dexia is not going to be allowed to collapse.? Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer is assuring everyone that Dexia is going to have access to plenty of liquidity....

"We will loan Dexia as much as it needs"

It appears that the "too big to fail" doctrine is alive and well in Europe.

Sadly, this is not the first time that Dexia has been bailed out.? France and Belgium also bailed out Dexia back in 2008.

But this was not supposed to happen.

Just three months ago, Dexia received "a clean bill of health" from regulators during European Union bank stress testing.

It just shows how credible those "stress tests" really are.

So are more European bank bailouts coming?

It certainly looks that way.

An article in the Financial Post on Tuesday stated the following....

European finance ministers agreed on Tuesday to prepare action to safeguard their banks as doubts grew about whether a planned second bailout package for debt-laden Greece would go ahead.

Of course when they talk about the need "to safeguard their banks" they are talking about those that are deemed "too big to fail".? Just like in the United States, banks that are "too small" don't get bailed out at all.

But western governments are very protective of the big banks.? The big banks are allowed to take gigantic risks, and if they succeed they make tons of money and if they fail then the taxpayers bail them out.

With big trouble on the horizon in Europe, authorities are already getting ready to bail out the major banks.? A Bloomberg article from last month acknowledged that the German government has been very busy getting ready to bail out their major banks in the event that a Greek default becomes a reality....

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is preparing plans to shore up German banks in the event that Greece fails to meet the terms of its aid package and defaults, three coalition officials said.

As you read this, there are already signs of trouble at major German banks.? For example, Deutsche Bank has just announced that it is eliminating 500 more jobs.

The fundamental problems that Europe is facing are not being solved and the financial crisis is getting progressively worse.? With each passing day, more bad financial news comes pouring in.

For example, Moody's slashed Italy's bond ratings by three levels on Tuesday.

A reduction of just one level is very serious business.? For Moody's to hit Italy that hard is a really big deal.

Italian banks have also been targeted by the credit rating agencies.? The other day, S&P slashed the credit ratings of seven different Italian banks.

If Italy goes down, it is going to be an absolute nightmare.? The Italian economy absolutely dwarfs the Greek economy.? The EU has been really struggling to bail out Greece, and there is no way in the world that they would be able to bail out Italy.

So if nations such as Italy or Spain start collapsing, will the U.S. Federal Reserve step in to help bail them out?

You never know.

The sad truth is that the Federal Reserve can do pretty much whatever it wants and nobody can stop them.

As I wrote about the other day, the Federal Reserve has agreed to join with other major central banks to lend hundreds of billions of dollars to major European banks in October, November and December.

As the past few years have shown, wherever big, global banks are in trouble, the Federal Reserve is sure to step in and help.

And many big banks in Europe are definitely headed for trouble.? Right now, European banks are holding more than $4 trillion in European sovereign debt.

A lot of that debt is bad debt.? Today, troubled European nations Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain owe the rest of the world about 3 trillion euros combined.

That is a whole lot of debt out there, and many big banks are so leveraged that just a 5 percent reduction in the value of their holdings could wipe them out.

Hold on to your hats folks.

So what should we be watching next?

Well, Greece continues to be a huge problem.

The IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Union are very frustrated with Greece right now.

On Monday, it was revealed that Greece is not going to hit the deficit reduction targets set for it by the "troika" either this year or next year.

European officials have been particularly displeased that Greece has been getting all of this aid money and yet has not been strictly adhering to the austerity measures that they agreed to.

However, the reality is that the austerity measures that Greece has actually bothered to implement have hit the Greek economy really hard.? The more Greece reduces government spending the more the Greek economy seems to slow down.

Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos recently announced that the Greek economy is projected to shrink by 5.3% in 2011, and Greek debt continues to spiral out of control.

Meanwhile, severe economic pain continues to spark huge protests all over Greece.? Scenes of riot police firing tear gas and protesters throwing stones at police have become so common in Greece that most of us don't even pay much attention anymore.

But all of us should pay attention to what is happening in Greece.

Eventually these kinds of economic riots will spread throughout the rest of the western world as well.

And every day Greece just seems to get closer and closer to default.

At this point, global financial markets seem to consider a Greek default to be inevitable.? The yield on 2 year Greek bonds is now over 65 percent.? The yield on 1 year Greek bonds is now over 135 percent.

Greece is toast without more bailout money.

But now major politicians all over Germany are declaring that Germany is done contributing money to the European bailout fund.

And without Germany, the rest of the eurozone is not going to be able to continue the bailouts.

So the clock is ticking.

Once the current bailout fund has dried up, the bailout game will be over.

What will happen then?

Will that be what sets off a massive financial collapse in Europe?

Could we actually see the end of the euro?

For a long time there was speculation that it would be weak nations such as Greece that would leave the euro.

But now it appears increasingly likely that if someone is going to leave the euro it might be Germany.

Most German citizens would be in favor of such a move.? One recent poll conducted for Stern magazine actually found that 54 percent of all Germans would favor leaving the euro.

But if Germany left the euro it would absolutely implode.? German economic strength is the primary thing holding the euro up at this point.

In any event, it is going to be very interesting to watch what will happen to Europe over the coming months.

Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain are all steadily marching toward collapse.

Germany says that it is done bailing out other members of the eurozone.

Dozens of major European banks are teetering on the brink of disaster.

People get ready - a storm is coming.

Time is running out for Europe and there is no help in sight.

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