Tag Archives: biometric ID

South Asia Increasingly Under Biometric Surveillance

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Wired.com has a piece on the collection of biometric data on hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan.

According to NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan commander Lt. Gen. William Caldwell (as reported to Wired’s Danger Room) the idea is to screen applicants for Army positions to keep out people with ties to the Taliban or criminal histories. But with biometric files are being compiled on Afghans at the rate of 20-25 per week, the process is likely to include a large number of ordinary citizens, especially as there’s now a  plan in the works that aims to have biometric ID’s for some 1.65 million Afghans by May 2011 through the “population registration division” of the Afghan Ministry of the Interior. Apparently, Caldwell is taking a leaf out of the book of General Petraeus, who used biometric monitoring to keep on top of the Iraqi resistance. It’s also modeled on monitoring during the siege of Fallujah, when the only way to get in and out of the place was with an ID card that needed an iris scan.

Right now, there are apparently two biometric projects in the country, one run by the Afghans accounting for about a quarter of a million files and the other by the Americans, which has nearly half a million, but  so far, there’s not been much integration between the two. The Afghan involvement is a change from the past, when Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has shut down  biometric monitoring at checkpoints by NATO as a violation of Afghan sovereignty.

Meanwhile,  neighboring India has already launched the first biometrically verified universal ID on a national scale. While not compulsory, it will be needed to access certain social and financial services, and is intended for the entire population of 1.2 billion. Biometric IDs were first used in India in 2002 to check corruption involved in accessing services and rations meant for the poor.

Earlier this year (July 2010), Afghanistan and Pakistan concluded a trade agreement that included the exchange of biometric data as part of the deal.

Biometric ID Advocate Disses Full Body Scanner As Useless

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A leading Israeli security expert thinks the new full body scanners are a waste of money, reports the Vancouver Sun :

“A leading Israeli airport security expert says the Canadian government has wasted millions of dollars to install “useless” imaging machines at airports across the country.

“I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada.”

Unfortunately, Sela seems to think the “trusted traveler” program is better:

“Sela testified it makes more sense to create a “trusted traveler” system so pre-approved low-risk passengers can move through an expedited screening process. That would leave more resources in the screening areas, where automatic sniffing technology would detect any explosive residue on a person or their baggage.”

Unfortunately for privacy advocates, this is a move from the frying pan to the fire. “Trusted traveler” is the name for the biometric ID program. Just recently, on April 14, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the US and Germany would be integrating their respective biometric travel programs.

Since it began in June 2008, the trusted traveler program has expanded rapidly from an initial 3 airports. Last fall, it reached 20 airports.

UK Foreign Office Warning to Travelers About Israeli Passport Forgery

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I didn’t have time to complete this post from a week ago, but with the really bizarre story of the Polish plane, I thought I should revisit it, as is:

At the end of March, Haaretz (March 31) reported that the British Foreign Office issued a travel advisory last week to citizens traveling to Israel and Palestine, “hours” after it decided to expel an Israeli diplomat.

“The risk applies in particular to passports without biometric security features,” the warning on the [UK foreign office] Web site said. “We recommend that you only hand your passport over to third parties including Israeli officials when absolutely necessary.”

This follows confirmation last week that killers of a Hamas operative in Dubai used forged passports from multiple countries, including the UK, Australia, France, Ireland, and Germany.

An editor at the Guardian notes that this is the lowest point in Anglo-Israeli relations since 1988, when an Israeli diplomat was expelled for being an agent of the Mossad.

Current relations with Israel are already strained, because senior Israeli officials visiting the UK have been threatened with arrest for alleged war crimes.

[Note:

The Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in January in a hit that Dubai police have said they are 99 percent certain was the work of Israel’s spy service, Mossad. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied this.

Dubai has named 27 alleged conspirators in the pursuit and killing of the Palestinian, and has claimed that they used fraudulent British, Irish, French, German and Australian passports to enter and depart from Dubai. More than half of the people identified share the names of foreign-born Israeli nationals].

Earlier, UK foreign secretary David Miliband had said there were “compelling reasons” to believe Israel was responsible and had called the use of 12 forged British passports “intolerable,” according to an earlier report by the BBC (March 23).

Meanwhile, Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, confirmed there would be no diplomatic retaliation, but expressed disappointment at Miliband’s decision. Israel has previously said there is no proof it was behind the killing at a Dubai hotel.

Israel claims the Australians are also going to follow suit, says this report:

“Official Israeli sources told The Australian newspaper that there is a high chance that Australia will follow Britain’s lead and also expel a high ranking Israeli diplomat. “It appears that Israeli officials have received indications in Canberra that Australia is preparing to expel a diplomat,” it said in the newspaper.”

Meanwhile, according to The Australian (March 31) ECAJ president Robert Goot told The Australian: “I think it would be an extreme reaction or possibly an overreaction (to expel an Israeli diplomat). The Jewish community would hope the Australian government might adopt a more nuanced position, depending on the outcome of the (Australian Federal Police) investigation.”

That’s not likely, now that former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky has told ABC Radio that the spy agency had used Australian passports for previous operations before last month’s hit on a top Hamas commander in Dubai that has been blamed on Israel. (see the Sydney Morning Herald (Feb 26, 2010)

Israel has previously dismissed claims from Ostrovsky, who has detailed various accusations against the country in his books. He said Mossad prefers to use “false flag” passports, as Israeli papers frequently invoke suspicion in the Middle East.

“They need passports because you can’t go around with an Israeli passport, not even a forged one, and get away or get involved with people from the Arab world,” he said.

“So most of these (Mossad) operations are carried out on what’s called false flag, which means you pretend to be of another country which is less belligerent to those countries that you’re trying to recruit from.”

Ostrovsky said Mossad had a “very, very expensive research department” dedicated to manufacturing the fake documents which simulates different types of paper and ink.

The Australian newspaper also said Ali Kazak, a former Palestinian representative to Australia, had warned in 2004 that a Mossad agent in Sydney had obtained 25 false Australian passports.

According to The Age (Feb 26, 2010), in Dec 2004, a second secretary in the Israeli embassy in Canberra was recalled because he was suspected of ties to passport fraud in New Zealand, where in March 2004 two suspected Mossad agents were convicted for fraudulently trying to get local passports. The New Zealand case eventually led to the downgrading of diplomatic ties and the canceling of Israeli PM Moshe Katsav’s visit.

The same report notes that Mossad used forged Canadian passports in 1997 in a bungled plot to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshal.

Then, as now, the Israeli prime minister, who has to approve all assassination attempts, was Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ron Paul: Fight Draconian Biometric ID In US

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A message from Ron Paul and the Campaign for Liberty:

“This is getting to be like a bad movie. You know the ones where the villain, dead and buried more times than you can count, somehow mysteriously reappears in a place you don’t expect him? Well, here comes… a new fight over a biometric national ID card — and if you don’t have the card, you can’t work.

Right now, freedom-stealing statists Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), banding together with other statists from both parties, are scheming to sneak a massive power grab into a new “immigration reform” bill.

This bill is a statist’s dream — “amnesty” for illegal immigrants and a biometric ID card for virtually everyone else.

That’s right. Instead of controlling the border and enforcing the rule of law, these statists want to control you.

That’s why it’s vital you sign the petitions to your Senators IMMEDIATELY. http://www.chooseliberty.org/NationalId3.aspx?pid=3

You see, a National ID scheme — complete with biometric tracking technology — is embedded in the new “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill” being pushed by Senators Graham and Schumer, as well as other Big Government members from both parties.

And if passed, the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill” would require a new National ID card that would:

*** Include biometric identification information, such as fingerprints, retinal scans or scans of veins on the back of hands. Depending on the technology used, the ID card could easily
be used as a tracking device;

*** Be required for all U.S. workers regardless of place of birth, and make it illegal for anyone to hold a job in the United States who doesn’t obtain the ID card;

*** Require all employers to purchase an “ID scanner” to verify the ID cards with the federal government. Every time any citizen applies for a job, the government would know –– and you can bet it’s only a matter of time until “ID scans” will be required to
make even routine purchases, as well.

Of course, the most dangerous part of the bill is the biometric tracking technology which would allow federal bureaucrats to track our every move.

Allowing our government to have this much “prying power” in our lives will ultimately result in the TOTAL loss of freedom.

This is exactly the type of battle that often decides whether a country remains free, or continues down a slide toward tyranny.

Government goon squads with all our personal information — information they do not need and constitutionally should not have — is a recipe for disaster for our nation.

You see, once “well-meaning” government bureaucrats know exactly how we live our lives, it won’t be long until they try to run them.

In fact, it will only be a matter of time until they spend their workdays making sure you and I don’t go anywhere we “shouldn’t,” buy anything we “shouldn’t,” read anything we “shouldn’t,” eat
anything we “shouldn’t” or smoke anything we “shouldn’t.”

You see, this fight isn’t really about immigration. Whatever you think of that fight, it’s simply being used as cover.

If there is good news in this fight, thanks to the help of grassroots citizens like you, it’s that we’ve been able to render the Big Government politicians’ REAL ID nearly toothless in more than two dozen states.

Now, the statists are growing nervous. They know Americans are FED UP with their mad rush to take over our health care system, expand Federal Reserve power and regulate and control every aspect of our lives.

We’re FED UP with trillion dollar deficits. We’re SICK AND TIRED of radical schemes like Cap and Tax.
We’re done with their out of control spending on foreign affairs and nation building all over the globe.
They also see that our anger is producing results. Many of their schemes are failing.

Rallies are growing in strength. Candidates are rising up in state after state to say “Enough!”
So the statists are trying a bipartisan “backdoor” scheme to impose more control on American citizens.
They’re hoping that after months of Big Media mouthpieces decrying the “poisonous and partisan politics” in Washington, the American people will jump for joy at the sight of a Democrat from
liberal New York and a Republican from conservative South Carolina “working together to solve our immigration mess.”

Well, you and I know better. After all, liberty activists can hardly find two Senators with
bigger vendettas against the liberty movement than Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Lindsey Graham. Senator Graham himself has very publicly denounced the limited government R3VOLUTION launched by Dr. Ron Paul. He’s stated that we’re not welcome in HIS party. And now, he’s proving why the one who should not be welcome in any party that values freedom is LINDSEY GRAHAM.
That’s why it’s up to you and me to FIGHT back.

Unfortunately, the only way to DEFEAT a new National ID card is to contact Americans from coast-to-coast and explain EXACTLY what’s at stake.

They’re not going to get the real story from the media. It’s up to you and me to reach them.
Already, I’ve prepared email blasts, blog posts and other internet activities to alert liberty-loving Americans to the National ID scheme included in the new “Comprehensive Immigration
Reform Bill.”

But that’s not all. Campaign for Liberty staff tells me if I pull out all the stops, there’s an additional twelve million folks I can reach through our mail and phone programs. And finally, if I can raise the resources, I’d also like to run hard-hitting newspaper, radio and TV ads in New York and South
Carolina, explaining to the citizens of those states exactly what Senators Schumer and Graham are up to.

With all the battles we’ve faced over the past several months to save AUDIT THE FED and stop ObamaCare, I simply don’t have the resources to do everything. So please sign the petition and chip in with a quick contribution of $5, $10 or even $25 IMMEDIATELY!

http://www.chooseliberty.org/NationalId3.aspx?pid=3

You see, this isn’t a fight we can afford to lose. Passage of the National ID card would virtually guarantee the last vestiges of freedom we enjoy as Americans would be seriously
jeopardized.

And if you and I don’t defeat it, who will? There is already a strong, “bipartisan coalition” developing,
and the American people barely know what’s going on.

So I have to ask you — in addition to your signed petition — can I count on you to help out with a $5 or more donation?
http://www.chooseliberty.org/NationalId3.aspx?pid=3

Sincerely,

John F. Tate

President

P.S. Embedded in Senators Lindsey Graham’s and Chuck Schumer’s “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill” is the groundwork for a National ID card — complete with biometric tracking technology
— for everyone with a job in America. If passed, it would require every American to obtain the card to
work legally in the U.S. — and you can bet it will only be a matter of time until they’re required even for simple purchases.

So please sign the petition and help out with a quick contribution of $5, $10, $25 or whatever you can afford right away.

http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/4099816:6090536223:m:3:187725201:99DF108C4BE0121D524C70E176DF1CFF

India Begins First Biometric Census

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India launches the first biometric census today, reports the BBC.

“India is launching a new census in which every person aged over 15 will be photographed and fingerprinted to create a biometric national database. The government will then use the information to issue identity cards.

Officials will spend a year classifying India’s population of around 1.2 billion people according to gender, religion, occupation and education. The exercise, conducted every 10 years, faces big challenges, not least India’s vast area and diversity of cultures.

Census officials must also contend with high levels of illiteracy and millions of homeless people – as well as insurgencies by Maoists and other rebels which have left large parts of the country unsafe.
President Pratibha Patil was the first person to be listed, and appealed to fellow Indians to follow her example “for the good of the nation”. “Everyone must participate and make it successful,” she said in Delhi.

‘Unstoppable’
This is India’s 15th census and the first time a biometric element has been included.”

If only it were an April Fool’s prank. Unfortunately, it’s the real thing.

The master mind behind it is Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of IT outsourcing giant Infosys, hero of the Gideon’s Bible of globalization, Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” (a book I confess I’ve given a small thrashing to), and the man who coined the irritating meme in the first place.

As this Times article points out, less than 7% of the Indian population of over a billion (that is, around 75 million) pays income taxes. There’s also rampant corruption, a thriving black market, endless bureaucracy, and documentation requirements that make cross-state travel a time-consuming burden.

The ID is supposed to end all that. What it will begin, we can only guess.

As we blogged a while back, even the UK, the Anglophone world’s police-state petri dish, crammed to the gills with CCTV and traffic cameras, managed to squash this frightening initiative when it was introduced there.

Unfortunately, Europe has taken to it, with Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Spain among the 100 countries that use compulsory national identity cards.

But India, it need hardly be said, is not Europe. Besides the civil liberties dangers, the costs are heavy. In the UK, they were estimated to have been between 10-20 billion pounds. In India, they are said to be around 3 billion pounds (other figures I’ve seen are $6.6 billion and 300 billion rupees), an enormous burden on the public treasury. And the number is only an estimate, which, like all government estimates of future costs, is almost 100% certain to be over optimistic.

The other major mandate that Nilekani claims is that the new ID will help bring services and subsidies to the poor and prevent their theft or loss. This would be more reassuring if Nilekani didn’t count among former clients of Infosys such experts at combining doing good with doing well as Goldman Sachs.

The Times article describes the card thus:

“A computer chip in each card will contain personal data and proof of identity, such as fingerprint or iris scans. Criminal records and credit histories may also be included.

Mr Nilekani, who left Infosys, the outsourcing giant that he co-founded, to take up his new job, wants the cards to be linked to a “ubiquitous online database” accessible from anywhere.”

Nilekani is head of the newly-created Unique Identification Database Authority of India (IDAI) and he has received 19 bids for its first project from vendors including Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL, IBM, and his own company, Infosys.

For every rupee of IT spending on the project, industry experts estimate, around 60 per cent of this will go to hardware vendors (see Biometrics4You)

Update:

Biometrics4You lists other aspects of the initiative:

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI – the central bank of India) has announced plans to roll out new guidelines to help financial institutions use biometrics at ATMs in rural areas without access to banking. The Orwellian term for this is un-banked or under banked...as though there were some optimal level of banking every square foot of the earth should have.

Illegal Immigrant Workers

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David Kramer, at Lew Rockwell blog:

“You know what an “illegal” immigrant worker is, don’t you? It’s someone who voluntary decides to move from one piece of land on the planet Earth to another piece of piece of land on the planet Earth because he or she knows of a person at that second piece of land on the planet Earth who wants to voluntarily exchange with him or her a medium of exchange for his or her labor services—but wasn’t given permission to by a third party with a gun (i.e., the government).”

Government to Introduce Biometric ID in India

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“While Brits are longing for less surveillance in their electronic snoop state, the government in India seems to want to take Bharat Mata farther down that road. Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of India’s tech giant, Infosys, and now the head of the Government’s Unique ID project, is proposing an
Indian biometric ID.

What’s incredible is he thinks it’s feasible to extend this to the whole population. Apart from the logistics, the level of technology, and the cost (1.5 lakh crores – a number I’ll translate later), there’s the vulnerability to abuse, considerations which deterred Britain from going ahead with its own biometric ID scheme.

They don’t seem to bother Nikelani – one of “Flat Earth” globalist Tom Friedman’s favorite people. He discussed the objections in an interview with CNN-IBN’s Karan Thapar, published in the Hindu.

Here’s a short excerpt:

“Karan Thapar: You said a moment ago that you would create checks and balances. I put it to you that you can never create sufficient and the reason say is this — In the UK, in the US and in Australia, because the authorities couldn’t respond to public concerns about misuse, they have effectively put on the backburner consideration of similar schemes for those countries. Now if developed countries cannot tackle the problem of misuse, then how can India, where 35 per cent of the people are illiterate and 22 per cent live below the poverty line? How can India claim that we can tackle these problems?

Nandan Nilekani: What these developed countries have put on hold is giving national ID cards to people. But both the countries, US and UK have a number. For example in the US, you have the social security number, in the UK there is the national insurance number. They already have a numbering system, which is what we are going to propose.

Karan Thapar: Except for the fact that is is nowhere near as extensive or as complete in terms of the biometeric details as what you are proposing in India. The national insurance in Britain has been around and developing slowly but it doesn’t have any details that could lead to an invasion of privacy. It doesn’t have any details that can be misused for profiling. Yours could have both?

Nandan Nilekani: As I said, these are legitimate concerns and I think we have to address them in the public as well as in the laws and so on. But notwithstanding these concerns, the social benefit, the inclusivity that this project will provide for the 700 million people in this country who are outside the system is immense enough to justify doing this project…”

My Comment

Notice, once more, that’s it’s “social uplift” that’s the excuse for the expansion of the state, the same reasoning given for the sale of IMF gold. And as suspect in this case as it is in that. It seems as if public officials hardly get a wink of sleep cooking up schemes to help the poor.

Consider that the British biometric scheme was put on the backburner because it cost too much. The London School of Economics calculated that it would cost between 10 and 20 billion pounds, and Britian is about 1/20 the size of India. Now figure how mind-boggling the Indian scheme is likely to be be…..in every respect.