A god of Electronic Fortresses?

The Road to Artificial Omniscience and the mark of the beast Daniel 11:38a "But instead he will honor a god of fortresses... Revelation 13:16-17 And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name... Children could be monitored for signs of criminal behaviour THE DAILY MAIL [LONDON] - March 27, 2007 All children could face compulsory checks to discover if they are at risk of turning into criminals, the Prime Minister announced today. The controversial proposal came as part of a wide-ranging review of crime and security policy published by 10 Downing Street. It said the checks could take place at existing important stages in a child's life, such as the move from primary to secondary school. The Government's plan to prevent crime said: "Establish universal checks throughout a child's development to help service providers to identify those most at risk of offending. "These checks should piggyback on existing contact points such as the transition to secondary schools." The document did not outline at what age the checks should begin, nor did it detail whether police or probation officers would be involved in the process. It was also unclear whether the check would involve a personal interview with a child, or if it would simply comprise a review of school and police records. Other proposals set out in the policy review included: - - - • Developing technology could also lead to the introduction of "crowd scanners" able to detect bombs, and the use of "automatic facial recognition" to spot criminals on CCTV images. The review also appeared to advocate further expansion of the DNA database when it suggested including "all suspected offenders who come into contact with the police". Currently anyone arrested for a recordable offence in England and Wales must give a DNA sample - which remains on record even if they are not charged, or are acquitted. Read Full Article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444860&in_page_id=1770 Terror Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years THE WASHINGTON POST - By Karen DeYoung - March 25, 2007 Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world -- field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip -- arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects. Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives. But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. "The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control," said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean. "Where am I going to be, where is my successor going to be, five years down the road?" TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to "horror stories" of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged. The watch lists fed by TIDE, used to monitor everyone entering the country or having even a casual encounter with federal, state and local law enforcement, have a higher bar. But they have become a source of irritation -- and potentially more serious consequences -- for many U.S. citizens and visitors. - - - - Read Full Article http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032400944_pf.html Labour will force everyone to give fingerprints at ID card interview centres British Government Ministers plan to force all adults to attend fingerprint scanning units so their biometric details can go onto an identity card database MATHABA NEWS - March 19, 2007 Patrick Hennessy, the Political Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, revealed that from 2009, everyone will have travel miles at their own expense to attend one of 69 "interview centres", whose locations are revealed today for the first time. "People without their own transport, such as the elderly and the less well off, will be hit hardest by having to make round trips that in some cases will be more than 100 miles. Somebody living in Cambridge would be forced to make a 62-mile round trip to Bury St Edmunds, while people in Blackpool would have to travel 54 miles to Blackburn and back. In Stranraer, residents face a 128-mile round trip to Kilmarnock", Hennessy wrote. "The revelations are the latest blow for the Government's crisis-hit ID card scheme. Ministers claim the scheme, which will see the first cards issued in two years' time, will cost £5.4 billion, although experts at the London School of Economics say the total bill could be £19.3 billion. Biometric passports, which hold similar personal details to ID cards, will be issued later this year. There will then be a two-year period during which people will be able to apply for a passport without also being forced to apply for an ID card." He revealed that from 2010, all passport applicants, even if they are simply renewing their old one, will also have to apply for an identity card. - - - - Read Full Article http://mathaba.net/news/?x=550837 Students at Philadelphia's sixty high schools issued contactless campus ID cards Access, attendance tracking, lunch programs drive the implementation provided by Scholarchip CONTACTLESS NEWS - Andy Williams, Contributing Editor - March 15, 2007 Colleges have been using campus card ID systems for years. But with increasing security concerns, similar products are moving into public schools. One example: Philadelphia, Penn.’s school system where high school students at 60 schools have been provided a contactless ID card needed to gain admission to school property, track attendance, and, in some cases, buy lunch in the cafeteria. - - - Students are encouraged to wear the lanyard-attached badge around their necks, however, many are still simply carrying them on their persons, said Ms. DiLella. "We want them to get used to wearing the cards because they’re going to be used (eventually) for classroom attendance." The smart ID badge is tapped when a student enters school grounds. Attendance is taken in a classroom in the normal fashion and the results are compared with the records generated when the students first enter the school. In addition, the badges can be read by portable, PDA-style readers. So, if a student is in the hallway, the badge can be read by an administrator to determine where the student should be. To accomplish this, the card contains the student’s picture and also his class schedule. Other information can be added, such as any special health needs and whether he’s on free or reduced lunch, which can be read by a POS device in the cafeteria. The next step is implementing electronic attendance at the classroom level. She said some schools would like to put readers in classrooms so students can walk by, thus registering their physical attendance in the class. But that’s not something the district is looking at as a whole because it’s expensive and would require readers in each classroom. "The (first) challenge is making sure teachers have computers," she said. "If a child is marked as tapping in (when he first enters the school) when the teacher gets to her class for the day, it shows he's present." She then manually identifies that the student is in the classroom. If he’s not, a notation is made on the computer. "We opted right now not to have devices hanging on the door," she said. Inevitably, they would be subject to vandalism. "So the teacher will be doing it. This system does help tremendously in finding kids and keeping track of them." - - - - http://www.scholarchip.com/ Read Full Article http://www.contactlessnews.com/library/2007/03/15/students-at-philadelphias-sixty-high-schools-issued-contactless-campus-id-cards/ European retailer embeds RFID chips in shoes IDG NEWS SERVICE - By John Blau - March 2, 2007 San Francisco - One of Europe's largest shoe companies plans to embed wireless chips in shoes sold at hundreds of stores across the continent. Under a deal announced Friday, Checkpoint Systems will provide Reno with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and store tagging systems. The tagging specialist will deliver wafer-thin RFID chips designed especially for shoes from its Asian production facilities, in addition to systems that allow check-out clerks to quickly and easily deactivate tagged products. By having the tags integrated into it shoes, Reno aims to curb theft for both boxed products and those on display, as well as shoes customers try on in the stores. Reno has been using RFID technology to track product shipments from its factories to its stores for several years but has not yet used the technology to track individual products inside each store. - - - - Read Full Article http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20070302/tc_infoworld/86485;_ylt=AtUWmI62SiQSlRUWP9p7dEAjtBAF U.S. Can't Account for 600,000 Fugitives ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Beverley Lumpkin – March 26, 2007 WASHINGTON - Teams assigned to make sure foreigners ordered out of the United States actually leave have a backlog of more than 600,000 cases and can't accurately account for the fugitives' whereabouts, the government reported Monday. The report by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general found that the effectiveness of teams assigned to find the fugitives was hampered by "insufficient detention capacity, limitations of an immigration database and inadequate working space." - - - - Read Full Article http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8O400T01&show_article=1 Problem children target defended BBC NEWS – September 3, 2006 -- The minister in charge of a plan to identify potential troublemakers even before birth has defended the move, saying state intervention "can work". Social exclusion minister Hilary Armstrong spoke out as ex-MP Tony Benn likened the plan to "eugenics, the sort of thing Hitler talked about". Ms Armstrong says the government has to intervene earlier to prevent problems developing when children are older. Tony Blair will outline the strategy in a speech in the regions on Tuesday. Alcohol problems The prime minister says it is possible to spot the families whose circumstances made it likely their children would grow up to be a "menace to society". He said teenage mothers and problem families could be forced to take help to head off difficulties. --- Read Full Article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/5309890.stm Lawmakers Working to Limit RFID Door Cards INFOWORLD - Matt Hines - March 1, 2007 RFID door cards raise security concerns, legislation in the works. There's already an RFID security brouhaha brewing in Washington, and if some people have their way, it won't be the last legal fight waged in the nation's capital over use of the wireless technology. The IT security community is buzzing with interest over a legal spat that broke out on Feb. 27, one day ahead of the start of the Black Hat DC 2007 conference. Officials with Seattle-based IOActive were forced to cancel a planned presentation at the government-themed security trade show in which an expert from the company was to have detailed a technique for hacking data transmitted by HID's popular proximity identification cards used by millions of people nationwide. Chris Paget, IOActive's director of research and development, had planned to show off an RFID "cloning" device that could be used to steal access codes from HID-brand proximity cards, store them, then use the stolen codes to fool an HID card reader. According to show organizers, HID quashed the session by threatening to file a patent infringement suit against IOActive over the use of HID's source code in the demonstration. Despite the Black Hat lecture's cancellation, U.S. lawmakers say the debate over use of similar RFID security technologies in the government space is far from over. IOActive claims that its initial experiment in hacking the HID system was partially spawned by the firm's physical proximity to government IT assets protected by the devices. The security service provider maintains that its offices are located in a building that uses HID's cards for physical access that also houses "components of the nation's critical infrastructure." Such concerns have pushed some lawmakers to introduce new bills seeking to limit the use of RFID-based systems in the government sector. Among those backing legislation is California State Senator Joe Simitian, a Democrat who is currently pushing five related bills in his home state. - - - To help illustrate the seriousness of the situation to his colleagues in California's senate and state assembly, Simitian conducted a test in 2006 through which a security expert was hired to visit the state's capitol building in Sacramento and hack an RFID card system used to gain entry to the building's garage. The cards used in that test were made by Motorola. "We're at the state capitol building in the post-9/11 environment, and we've spent millions to improve security, but in the space of several minutes, someone with a laptop can compromise the badge system," Simitian said in an interview with InfoWorld. "The main problem is that the issues aren't widely understood. That's why we've come back with five bills -- because I want to ensure I get to tell this story in every venue that I can; if we can sit down and explain the issue to people, they get it, but it's a hard, complex technical issue." - - - Simitian said that HID was involved in negotiating the terms of the bill vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger but said that the firm still refused to give the legislation its blessing. The lawmaker labeled HID's move to stop the IOActive Black Hat briefing as proof of its "embarrassment" over the ease with which its products can be defeated. As the son of a computer programmer and the recipient of several awards from the IT security industry, including an honor bestowed at the RSA 2007 conference earlier this month, Simitian said he hardly considers himself as conservative when it comes to promoting new technologies. He has a hard time understanding why Schwarzenegger and others have blocked laws that require "practical" security measures for the use of RFID. - - - - Posted by John Dunn Read Full Article http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,129487/printable.html Drones could defend airports USA TODAY - By Mimi Hall - March 26, 2007 The Homeland Security Department and the military this summer will test whether drones flying 65,000 feet above the nation's busiest airports could be used to protect planes from being shot down by terrorists with shoulder-fired missiles. Dubbed "Project Chloe" after a character on Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's favorite TV show, 24, the anti-missile strategy is the latest to be explored by government leaders looking to thwart potential missile threats at commercial airports. Other methods are being considered, but Homeland Security officials say they may be too costly or impractical. - - - - Read Full Article http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-03-22-unmanned-drones_N.htm

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