FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping

From CNN

CLARKSBURG, West Virginia (CNN) -- The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people's physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.

The FBI wants to use eye scans, combined with other data, to help identify suspects.

But it's an issue that raises major privacy concerns -- what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans.

The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information -- from palm prints to eye scans.

Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is "important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in."

CNN Article

Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms

We've been cut off for a few days, as loyal listeners would have noticed. The windmill that runs our generator was busted by high winds, but we've borrowed a gas powered generator while we repair the damage.

The CIA and our Habits and Social Lives

The Pentagon’s plans for psychological operations or PSYOP in the global information environment of the 21st century are wide ranging and aggressive. These desires are outlined in the 2003 Pentagon document signed by Donald Rumsfeld in his capacity as the Secretary of Defense called the Information Operation Roadmap.

The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system".

Facebook's first round of venture capital funding ($US500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome 'The Diversity Myth', he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC.

The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company's key areas of expertise are in "data mining technologies".

Breyer also served on the board of R&D firm BBN Technologies, which was one of those companies responsible for the rise of the internet.

Dr Anita Jones joined the firm, which included Gilman Louie. She had also served on the In-Q-Tel's board, and had been director of Defence Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defence.

She was also an adviser to the Secretary of Defence and overseeing the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for high-tech, high-end development.
It was when a journalist lifted the lid on the DARPA's Information Awareness Office that the public began to show concern at its information mining projects.

Wikipedia's IAO page says: "the IAO has the stated mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone, in a centralised location, for easy perusal by the United States government, including (though not limited to) internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver's licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data.".

• Starbucks as a entity was originally set by a black cell organisation by the C.I.A to covertly launder money. The plan was establish ONE in every major city in the u.s.a..this way the c.i.a could transfer illegally gained funds easily and quickly throughout the country. The administrators never anticipated that the organisation was going to make money and originally tried to keep it low key by making extremely poor quality coffee that repel a usual customer base. To date operation 'star buck' is now unofficially one of the c.i.a's most profitable branches of revenue. Every you buy a star bucks coffee, you are unwittingly supporting brutal and inhumane para-military tactics, as well as funding political regimes that impinge upon basic human rights.


• Facebook has 20 million users worldwide, is worth billions of dollars and, if internet sources are to be believed, was started by the CIA.


• The social networking phenomenon started as a way of American college students to keep in touch. It is rapidly catching up with MySpace, and has left others like Bebo in its wake.
  But there is a dark side to the success story that's been spreading across the blogosphere. A complex but riveting Big Brother-type conspiracy theory which links Facebook to the CIA and the US Department of Defence.


• The CIA is, though, using a Facebook group to recruit staff for its very sexy sounding National Clandestine Service.


• Checking out the job adsdoes require a Facebook login, so if you haven't joined the site - or are worried that CIA spooks will start following you home from work -check them out on the agency's own site.


• The US military has retained the services of a commercial privacy invasion outfit to assemble detailed dossiers on all American high school children and college students, according to a report in the Washington Post. Direct-marketing database outfit BeNow Inc will manage students' information for the US Department of Defense (DoD), in order to sidestep federal regulations limiting the amount of citizens' personal data that government agencies are permitted to retain.


• The Defense Department has been working with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.
  
  
  
  
  

Your humble host has been called a luddite, a cranky old fart and other things put in terma that will not be repeated here. I'll be getting into some exploration of our society and the issues that surround our use or not of technology and how naked we are through our use of seemingly innocent services.

From if:book.


The UK is one of the most watched over societies on earth with CCTV cameras in abundance, and the whole world is waking up to how much retrievable evidence the likes of Google have on us all thanks to our laptops and cellphones. (This spooky walking iphone was seen at the New York Halloween parade last week).



But is the invasion of privacy making our culture more secretive or less? Networks like FaceBook appear to be turning the once wild web into a cosy global village where all know each other's business and keep an eye out for our digital neighbours and group members.



Privacy and the implications of social networking and user generation on our culture were key topics in a discussion about new technology on the UK internet TV company Doughty Street TV this November 5th, hosted by the Institute of Ideas.



Reading has always been a solitary activity where the individual's imagination roams at will. There's been a strange reversal now that book groups and recommendations from chat show hosts - Richard & Judy in the UK, Oprah in the USA - create a tiny pool of recommended bestsellers in the vast and frightening ocean of the unread. Who are the free thinkers now, websurfers or bookbrowsers?

The Happiest Dissent On Earth

The world to come, perhaps? Georgian riot police dressed as mickey mouse, or is that his banished cousin Mortimer?