by Madison Ruppert
November 11, 2011
Contributing Writer
from
ActivistPost Website
Madison Ruppert is the Editor
and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database
End The Lie and has no affiliation
with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other
organization/cause. If you have questions, comments, or corrections
feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com |
Big Brother is on the march in the United States
and as I have previously shown, once one delves into the depths of this
system it is nothing short of astounding to the point where
Orwell wouldn’t even believe it was possible.
Previously my articles have focused mostly on
the Department of Homeland Security’s
role in this and how their programs are
criminalizing Americans who have done absolutely nothing wrong while eroding
our freedoms and liberties to a dangerous degree.
However, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by the
Center for Constitutional Rights along with the National Day Labor
Organizing Network and the Benjamin Cardozo Immigrant Justice Clinic, it has
now emerged that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is an equally
large player in the high-tech police state in which we find ourselves.
An article by Sunita Patel and Scott Paltrowitz on
CommonDreams
points out,
“Big Brother is already upon us.”
This is a point that I attempt to make at every
possible juncture as it is crucial for Americans to realize that an
Orwellian high-tech police state is not something on the distant horizon but
something in which we already live.
The
documents obtained reveal that the FBI,
“views massive biometric information
collection as a goal in itself” as a part of the Next Generation
Identification (NGI) system.
The NGI system aims to collect fingerprints,
palm prints, iris scans, identifying marks, scars, tattoos, facial
characteristics and voice recognition.
These are not necessarily collected from arrested suspects but also from
mobile biometric scanning devices and fingerprints left anywhere and
everywhere.
This biometric information can then be used in conjunction with
facial recognition technology and threat
assessment algorithms that can be deployed in an airport or even on an
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), better known as a drone.
These drones can then track you, record your movements, who you meet with,
and just about anything else.
Tie this in with the Future Attribute
Screening Technology (FAST) being tested by the Department of Homeland
Security and you have a record of not only incredibly detailed biometric
information but also social habits, daily schedules, etc.
All of this can be conducted without the subject’s knowledge or consent
which makes this technology even more powerful as intelligence agencies can
conduct surveillance on many individuals without any need to worry about
being detected.
The most important aspect for anyone to grasp about these issues is that all
of this technology can easily be tied together and collected in a
centralized database in which astounding amounts of information from a
variety of sources can be collated and analyzed.
The highly personal information stored in the NGI system is already
accessible by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice,
Department of Defense, U.S. Coast Guard, and through the FBI’s Criminal
Justice Information Services division (CJIS) more than 75 potential foreign
nations.
The CJIS has already carried out a test on latent finger and palm prints in
which they collected more than one million palm prints from crime scenes or
literally any other location in which palm prints could be recovered.
They have also scheduled a pilot program for iris scanning and developed
plans for deployment of biometric collection equipment across the nation to
collect scars, marks, tattoos and facial measurements for facial
recognition.
The NGI program will utilize so-called “FBI Mobile,” a type of technology
first deployed by the military in warzones that is used to collect biometric
information in the field without even having to arrest the subject.
The precursor to the NGI program was called
Secure Communities (S-Comm) which was
launched in 2008.
S-Comm links the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) databases with the FBI’s criminal database.
With this system, any time a local, state, or tribal law enforcement officer
carries out a routine criminal background check, the subject of the
background check’s information is transferred to the DHS database.
S-Comm was implemented in a highly deceptive manner, at first offering an
opt out policy which would allow local agencies to opt out of receiving
information while still requiring to send all information. Later, the FBI
decided that S-Comm participation was mandatory, while waiting to disclose
this fact to states and the public.
Furthermore, the FBI and DHS have both prevented states and local agencies
from imposing limits on how the FBI uses the data they gather.
In a somewhat disturbing statement, senior ICE official Gary Mead told local
advocates at
a New York debate that governors did not
have the right to restrict information sharing because letting the FBI share
the information is the “price of admission” for joining “the FBI club.”
In
a fact sheet published on the NGI and S-Comm,
the following disturbing fact is highlighted: “Many details about the scope,
impact and process of the NGI and the legal basis for the FBI’s policies are
still unknown and have not been scrutinized by the media or the public.”
It also reveals that one of the major driving forces, like most of the
government’s actions, is profit. Specifically, a billion dollar contract
with Lockheed Martin issued in 2008 to work on the NGI with the FBI.
This is the same Lockheed Martin which represents part of the 0.01% of
America that are acting in an even more parasitic manner than the 1% -
the war profiteers that rake in record
profits while killing Americans and innocent people abroad.
It might seem alarmist or sensationalist, but when the authors of the
CommonDreams piece say,
“This ubiquitous world-wide surveillance of
anyone and everyone should serve as a wake up call (sic) for what the
future may hold” they are simply reflecting reality.
They point out that we are being brought,
“closer to an extensive and inescapable
surveillance state, where we blindly place our hands on electronic
devices that capture our digital prints, stare into iris scanning
devices that record the details of our eyes, and have pictures taken of
different angles of our faces so that the FBI and other federal agencies
can store and use such information.”
Of course these images taken at different angles
can be compiled into
a 3-Dimensional model of the face which can
then be used for faster, more accurate facial recognition, even by drones
flying at an altitude at which they are essentially invisible to the
unsuspecting individual on the ground.
There is another major consideration ignored by the FBI and DHS:
the fact that major mistakes are made by
federal agencies.
One apt example is American citizen Mark Lyttle,
a man who was deported and transferred to five different countries in four
months when an administrator incorrectly typed “Mexico” as Lyttle’s place of
birth.
Lyttle, who suffers from mental disabilities which made him unable to
understand the criminal proceedings and following deportation, spent months
living on the streets, in shelters, and in prisons in Mexico, Honduras,
Nicaragua and Guatemala, all because an administrator typed the wrong
birthplace.
Thankfully, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
took up the case and filed lawsuits in
federal courts in Georgia and North Carolina on behalf of Lyttle.
Or there is the case of American born lawyer and former Army lieutenant
Brandon Mayfield who was erroneously accused of the 2004 train bombing in
Madrid after which he was held by police for two weeks.
All of this was based on a supposed match between Mayfield’s fingerprints
and latent prints found at the scene, of course this match was later found
to be inaccurate.
The entire fiasco lasted two and a half years and in 2006 the Oregon lawyer
was
awarded $2 million by the U.S. government
along with a formal apology to him and his family.
Then there is the case of a Massachusetts man, John Gass, who had his
driver’s license revoked because a facial recognition system found that his
authentic license was fraudulent.
These types of egregious and hardly negligible mistakes are only going to
become more prevalent as the FBI employs new facial recognition and
biometric technology.
This was shown by a study published by the Center for Catastrophe
Preparedness and Response at New York University entitled, “Facial
Recognition Technology - A Survey of Policy and Implementation Issues”
by Lucas D. Introna and Helen Nissenbaum.
The study found that when facial recognition technology is used among large
populations, like the massive federal database, incorrect identifications
will indeed occur due to the lack of variation among faces.
The Gass case proves that this is already a problem and the database is in a
relatively infant stage compared to how massive the NGI collection of data
will be once information on every American has been gathered.
This is especially true when one considers that since sharing information is
“the price of admission” into the “FBI club” many foreign governments and
federal agencies will be handing over sensitive personal information of
their citizens.
George Orwell couldn’t have possibly imagined the scope and pervasiveness of
the invisible surveillance state we currently find ourselves in, though his
infamous
1984 gives a glimpse of what a much more low-tech version of
today’s world would look like.
The technology is growing to the point where many people do not even know it
exists or how they are being tracked and monitored.
Hopefully by spreading information like this far and wide we can actively
combat the Big Brother surveillance state before it grows to the point that
there is no possible way to turn back.
If you care about the future of America and the world, I beg of you, spread
this information far and wide as bringing massive awareness to this subject
is the only way to halt the growth and hopefully reverse the trend.
Only by bringing this real Big Brother technology out into the mainstream
can we wake up the majority of the populace to the fact that these are not
silly conspiracy theories but indeed heavily documented and irrefutable
facts.
To read more about the NGI and S-Comm programs, see these
additional FOIA documents.