U.S. Malls will Track People’s Cellphones on Black Friday

November 23, 2011 1 Comment

CNNMoney.com
November 23, 2011

Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year.

Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year’s Day, two U.S. malls — Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. — will track guests’ movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.

The day Malls began spying on shoppers. Or at least the day they announced it.

While the data that’s collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers’ paths from store to store.

The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria’s Secret? Are there unpopular spots in the mall that aren’t being visited?

While U.S. malls have long tracked how crowds move throughout their stores, this is the first time they’ve used cell phones.

But obtaining that information comes with privacy concerns.

The management company of both malls, Forest City Commercial Management, says personal data is not being tracked.

“We won’t be looking at singular shoppers,” said Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, vice president of digital strategy for Forest City. “The system monitors patterns of movement. We can see, like migrating birds, where people are going to.”

Still, the company is preemptively notifying customers by hanging small signs around the shopping centers. Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones.

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Secret Raytheon Military Contract Rolls out Internet Clamp Down

July 9, 2010 1 Comment

It would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks to spy on the Internet for “attacks” on infrastructure.  The irony is that the only people who have the power and technology to cause a massive attack of the scale it is being promoted, are the very same people who are clamping down on the Internet to establish censorship and control.  The program’s name (Perfect Citizen) could not be more deceiving.

WSJ

The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed “Perfect Citizen” to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.

The surveillance by the National Security Agency, the government’s chief eavesdropping agency, would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, though it wouldn’t persistently monitor the whole system, these people said.

Defense contractor Raytheon Corp. recently won a classified contract for the initial phase of the surveillance effort valued at up to $100 million, said a person familiar with the project.

An NSA spokeswoman said the agency had no information to provide on the program. A Raytheon spokesman declined to comment.

Some industry and government officials familiar with the program see Perfect Citizen as an intrusion by the NSA into domestic affairs, while others say it is an important program to combat an emerging security threat that only the NSA is equipped to provide.

“The overall purpose of the [program] is our Government…feel[s] that they need to insure the Public Sector is doing all they can to secure Infrastructure critical to our National Security,” said one internal Raytheon email, the text of which was seen by The Wall Street Journal. “Perfect Citizen is Big Brother.”

Raytheon declined to comment on this email.

A U.S. military official called the program long overdue and said any intrusion into privacy is no greater than what the public already endures from traffic cameras. It’s a logical extension of the work federal agencies have done in the past to protect physical attacks on critical infrastructure that could sabotage the government or key parts of the country, the official said.

U.S. intelligence officials have grown increasingly alarmed about what they believe to be Chinese and Russian surveillance of computer systems that control the electric grid and other U.S. infrastructure. Officials are unable to describe the full scope of the problem, however, because they have had limited ability to pull together all the private data.

Perfect Citizen will look at large, typically older computer control systems that were often designed without Internet connectivity or security in mind. Many of those systems—which run everything from subway systems to air-traffic control networks—have since been linked to the Internet, making them more efficient but also exposing them to cyber attack.

The goal is to close the “big, glaring holes” in the U.S.’s understanding of the nature of the cyber threat against its infrastructure, said one industry specialist familiar with the program. “We don’t have a dedicated way to understand the problem.”

The information gathered by Perfect Citizen could also have applications beyond the critical infrastructure sector, officials said, serving as a data bank that would also help companies and agencies who call upon NSA for help with investigations of cyber attacks, as Google did when it sustained a major attack late last year.

The U.S. government has for more than a decade claimed a national-security interest in privately owned critical infrastructure that, if attacked, could cause significant damage to the government or the economy. Initially, it established relationships with utility companies so it could, for instance, request that a power company seal a manhole that provides access to a key power line for a government agency.

With the growth in concern about cyber attacks, these relationships began to extend into the electronic arena, and the only U.S. agency equipped to manage electronic assessments of critical-infrastructure vulnerabilities is the NSA, government and industry officials said.

The NSA years ago began a small-scale effort to address this problem code-named April Strawberry, the military official said. The program researched vulnerabilities in computer networks running critical infrastructure and sought ways to close security holes.

That led to initial work on Perfect Citizen, which was a piecemeal effort to forge relationships with some companies, particularly energy companies, whose infrastructure is widely used across the country.

The classified program is now being expanded with funding from the multibillion-dollar Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, which started at the end of the Bush administration and has been continued by the Obama administration, officials said. With that infusion of money, the NSA is now seeking to map out intrusions into critical infrastructure across the country.

Because the program is still in the early stages, much remains to be worked out, such as which computer control systems will be monitored and how the data will be collected. NSA would likely start with the systems that have the most important security implications if attacked, such as electric, nuclear, and air-traffic-control systems, they said.

Intelligence officials have met with utilities’ CEOs and those discussions convinced them of the gravity of the threat against U.S. infrastructure, an industry specialist said, but the CEOs concluded they needed better threat information and guidance on what to do in the event of a major cyber attack.

Some companies may agree to have the NSA put its own sensors on and others may ask for direction on what sensors to buy and come to an agreement about what data they will then share with the government, industry and government officials said.

While the government can’t force companies to work with it, it can provide incentives to urge them to cooperate, particularly if the government already buys services from that company, officials said.

Raytheon, which has built up a large cyber-security practice through acquisitions in recent years, is expected to subcontract out some of the work to smaller specialty companies, according to a person familiar with the project.

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Spy tech ‘monitors conversations’ launched in Europe

July 6, 2010

By Daniel Tencer

Privacy rights advocates and civil liberties campaigners in Europe are raising the alarm about a new surveillance system that

The Shadow Government has Eyes and Ears everywhere. Click image and learn the details

monitors conversations in public.

The surveillance system, dubbed Sigard, has been installed in Dutch city centers, government offices and prisons, and a recent test-run of the technology in Coventry, England, has British civil rights experts worried that the right to privacy will disappear in efforts to fight street crime.

The system’s manufacturer, Sound Intelligence, says it works by detecting aggression in speech patterns.

“Ninety percent of all incidents involving physical aggression are preceded by verbal aggression,” the Sound Intelligence Web site says. “The ability to spot verbal aggression before it turns into a violent outbreak delivers valuable time to security personnel and enables speedy intervention.”

According to the UK’s Sunday Telegraph, the city of Coventry recently finished a six-month test run of the system, which involved the installation of seven microphones around a crime-prone nightlife district. A spokesperson for the city said the system is “no longer in use.”

The Herald in Scotland reported last month that the system has also been tested in London, Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester.

“In Hackney in London, the system detected up to six crimes a night, including fights and guns being fired,” the paper reported.

Sigard’s use is more widespread in the Netherlands, where the system’s manufacturer is located. According to the Sound Intelligence Web site, the system has been installed in Amsterdam’s train station, as well as police headquarters, and has also been installed inside a number of prisons and the city centers of Dordrecht and Groningen.

Sound Intelligence says that the technology focuses principally on tone of voice, and is not designed to listen to the content of conversations. But opponents say the technology is open to abuse.

“There can be no justification for giving councils or the police the capability to listen in on private conversations,” Dylan Sharpe of the UK’s Big Brother Watch told the Sunday Telegraph. “There is enormous potential for abuse, or a misheard word, causing unnecessary harm with this sort of intrusive and overbearing surveillance.”

In a sarcastic editorial, the Herald argued that crime could be eliminated altogether if the government were to install Sigard technology in all homes and offices.

Let’s install surveillance cameras and microphones in every room of every new home that is built. Make it a condition of planning consent. … It won’t just leave terrorists with no place to hide, it’ll expose criminals wherever they’re holed up or plotting. Isn’t this the logical extension of what is already happening, of what we’re allowing with barely a squeak of protest?

The police could be at the door, handcuffs at the ready, before a drunken man can punch his wife or say “domestic violence”. … Cameras in the home would eradicate child abuse. Burglary, too, would be obliterated since the thief would know the police had a ringside seat. Think of the benefits. Peace would reign in every household, the crime rate would plummet and prisons would no longer be overcrowded.

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Where’s Jimmy? Just Google His Bar Code

May 18, 2010

Fox News

Scientists currently tag animals to study their behavior and protect the endangered, but some futurists wonder whether all humans

tracking chip

VeriChip Tracking Chip

should be tagged too.

Scientists tag animals to monitor their behavior and keep track of endangered species. Now some futurists are asking whether all of mankind should be tagged too. Looking for a loved one? Just Google his microchip.

The chips, called radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, emit a simple radio signal akin to a bar code, anywhere, anytime. Futurists say they can be easily implanted under the skin on a person’s arm.

Already, the government of Mexico has surgically implanted the chips, the size of a grain of rice, in the upper arms of staff at the attorney general’s office in Mexico City. The chips contain codes that, when read by scanners, allow access to a secure building, and prevent trespassing by drug lords.

In research published in the International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, Taiwanese researchers postulate that the tags could help save lives in the aftermath of a major earthquake. “Office workers would have their identity badges embedded in their RFID tags, while visitors would be given temporary RFID tags when they enter the lobby,” they suggest. Similarly, identity tags for hospital staff and patients could embed RFID technology.

“Our world is becoming instrumented,” IBM’s chairman and CEO, Samuel J. Palmisano said at an industry conference last week. “Today, there are nearly a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent. There are 30 billion radio RFID tags produced globally.”

Having one in every person could relieve anxiety for parents and help save lives, or work on a more mundane level by unlocking doors with the wave of a hand or starting a parked car — that’s how tech enthusiast Amal Graafstra (his hands are pictured above) uses his. But this secure, “instrumented” future is frightening for many civil liberties advocates. Even adding an RFID chip to a driver’s license or state ID card raises objections from concerned voices.

Tracking boxes and containers on a ship en route from Hong Kong is OK, civil libertarians say. So is monitoring cats and dogs with a chip surgically inserted under their skin. But they say tracking people is over-the-top — even though the FDA has approved the devices as safe in humans and animals.

“We are concerned about the implantation of identity chips,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the speech, privacy and technology program at the American Civil Liberties Union. He puts the problem plainly: “Many people find the idea creepy.”

“RFID tags make the perfect tracking device,” Stanley said. “The prospect of RFID chips carried by all in identity papers means that any individual’s presence at a given location can be detected or recorded simply through the installation of an invisible RFID reader.”

There are a number of entrepreneurial companies marketing radio tracking technologies, including Positive ID, Datakey and MicroChips. Companies started marketing the idea behind these innovative technologies a few years ago, as excellent devices for tracking everyone, all the time.

Following its first use in an emergency room in 2006, VeriChip touted the success of the subdermal chip. “We are very proud of how the VeriMed Patient Identification performed during this emergency situation. This event illustrates the important role that the VeriChip can play in medical care,” Kevin McLaughlin, President and CEO of VeriChip, said at the time.

“Because of their increasing sophistication and low cost, these sensors and devices give us, for the first time ever, real-time instrumentation of a wide range of the world’s systems — natural and man-made,” said IBM’s Palmisano.

But are human’s “systems” to be measured?

Grassroots groups are fretting loudly over civil liberties implications of the devices, threatening to thwart their  development for mass-market, human tracking applications.

“If such readers proliferate, and there would be many incentives to install them, we would find ourselves in a surveillance society of 24/7 mass tracking,” said the ACLU’s Stanley.

The controversy extends overseas, too. David Cameron, Britain’s new prime minister, has promised to scrap a proposed national ID card system and biometrics for passports and the socialized health service, options that were touted by the Labour Party.

“We share a common commitment to civil liberties, and to getting rid — immediately — of Labour’s ID card scheme,” said Cameron according to ZDNet UK.

These controversies are impacting developers. One firm, Positive ID, has dropped the idea of tracking regular folks with its chip technology. On Wednesday, the company announced that it had filed a patent for a new medical device to monitor blood glucose levels in diabetics. The technology it initially developed to track the masses is now just a “legacy” system for the Del Ray Beach, Fla., firm.

“We are developing an in-vivo, glucose sensing microchip,” Allison Tomek, senior vice president of investor relations and corporate communications, told FoxNews.com. “In theory it will be able to detect glucose levels. We are testing the glucose sensor portion of the product. It will contain a sensor with an implantable RFID chip. Today’s patent filing was really about our technology to create a transformational electronic interface to measure chemical change in blood.”

Gone are the company’s previous ambitions. “Our board of directors wants a new direction,” says Tomek. “Rather than focus on identification only, we think there is much more value in taking this to a diagnostic platform. That’s the future of the technology — not the simple ID.”

The company even sold off some of its individual-style tracking technology to Stanley Black and Decker for $48 million, she said.

These medical applications are not quite as controversial as the tracking technologies. The FDA in 2004 approved another chip developed by Positive ID’s predecessor company, VeriChip, which stores a code — similar to the identifying UPC code on products sold in retail stores — that releases patient-specific information when a scanner passes over the chip. Those codes, placed on chips and scanned at the physician’s office or the hospital, would disclose a patient’s medical history.

But like smart cards, these medical chips can still be read from a distance by predators. A receiving device can “speak” to the chip remotely, without any need for physical contact, and get whatever information is on it. And that’s causing concern too.

The bottom line is simple, according to the ACLU: “Security questions have not been addressed,” said Stanley. And until those questions are resolved, this technology may remain in the labs.

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Brazil Also Violates Civil Liberties

May 10, 2010

By Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
May 11, 2010

Brazil is well-known by its Samba, wonderful beaches and friendly relaxed people. It is often compared to more developed countries for its size, population and resources. But there is one more way in which Brazil is similar to the so called developed world: It also violates civil liberties. Different from say, the United States or England, police here do not harass citizens that much. However, the violation of their liberties and rights is still done quietly. Brazil is a country with very limited access to information and people here know very little about their rights and duties. This panorama is fertile ground for government abuse and corruption.

The giant of South America has been known to have some of the greatest impunity throughout the years. Corruption runs rampant from north to south and east to west. In a recent survey, it was determined that Brazil is among the first countries in corruption and impunity. Although much of this corruption amounts to politicians providing and receiving large sums of money for political favors, there is more beyond regular bureaucracy corruption. The former Portuguese colony is rapidly adopting globalist measures of population control, much like the United States, England, Australia and New Zealand.

Throughout the last 12 months, a few newspapers have revealed in the back of their pages and in tiny one column articles, the almost compulsory nature of the vaccination campaign against the H1N1 flu, which although it has been proven to be a sham, continues to be implemented countrywide. Fortunately, some people have been made aware of the dangers of the vaccine, and the campaign has not had the results first expected by government health authorities. According to Zero Hora newspaper, only 670,000 elderly got vaccinated instead of the 1.4 million expected in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Less than 50 percent have taken the regular flu vaccination. However, this does not mean Brazil can escape from the control of the World Health Organization. The vaccinations continue to be carried out for different population groups all over the country.

Brazil also uses a form of fluoride in the water supply, a practice largely adopted for its supposed benefits on people’s teeth, but that has also been found to be pseudoscience. Recently this publication interviewed a head chemist at SEMAE, a government organization that cares for the quality of water in the town of Sao Leopoldo, Brazil. With a Master’s Degree in chemistry, she not only admitted she never saw a study that confirmed the claim fluoride, in any form, is beneficial to people, but also confessed that fluoride is put in the water based on the belief it helps to promote oral health. When asked about the dangers sodium fluoride and substances of the like pose to people, she said she never learned anything about that in college or training courses she attended. In fact, fluoride causes tooth decay, mouth cancer and several neurological disorders in addition to lowering intelligence.

The country is in advanced stages of implementing National Identification Cards as well as using Airport Body Scanners. These last two technologies are already being used or will be in force in less than 10 years. In the case of the radiation emitting body scanners, there are several of them in national and international airports. According to the newspaper Zero Hora, from the state of Rio Grande do Sul, beginning in May 2010, travelers who board planes in the cities of Guarulhos, Rio de Janeiro, Recife and Manaus, may be selected as candidates for walk through one of the full body scanners. This measure is taken even though in more developed countries, the use of the scanners raised concern not only for the radiation they emit, but also due to the fact people’s bodies are seen completely naked in the images the machine generates.

According to many civil rights and privacy groups the use of scanners is a gross violation of privacy laws. The images generated from the scanners are saved in hard drives and kept for further use in surveillance. Although authorities in Brazil deny the capacity of the scanners to provide such images, Angelo Gioia, from the Federal Police in Rio de Janeiro, admitted it is a more invasive method of surveillance. Currently, Brazilian laws allow for searches of people when there are founded suspicions of illegal activities, but do not regulate the use of this kind of scanners. Goia believes there should not be any limits when it comes to security. The cost of every body scanner is $170,000. Body scanning technology operates based on the use of millimeter waves over a body to measure the energy reflected back to render a 3D image.Millimeter wave scanners produce,30 to 300 gigahertz electromagnetic waves, something close to what a cellphone emits. The promoters of Airport Body Scanners always cite the huge benefits they provide in preventing safety hazards such as guns, explosives, etc. But the truth is that a pat down or bomb sniffing dogs are as useful or more accurate. Just as it has been done in other countries, in Brazil the use of this technology is presented as an added convenience, so more people receive it and adopt it willingly. Little is talked about the violation to the right to be private as persons and in our property. Added to the convenience, there is another factor injected in the adoption of the scanners: Fear. The threat of terrorism is the extra ace under the sleeve always ready to be pulled out in case people complain or find the scanners to be an inconvenience.

How much terrorism is there in Brazil? Compared to other countries like Ireland, Israel, Palestine, Pakistan or Great Britain, the answer is: nothing. The country has never suffered a major terrorist attack in modern history. The closest to terrorism are the occasional shootings between drug lords and military police in small neighborhoods of Rio or Sao Paulo. So why does Brazil need the scanners? It does not. As in many other countries, the adoption of this technology is all about submission and loss of liberties. In fact, history shows that the most incredible terror attacks have been of the false-flag kind. Trend forecaster and founder of the Trends Research Institute, Gerald Celente, a notable guest in main stream media outlets such as CNN and NBC, believes 2010 will be the year of multiple government sponsored attacks. “It’s the crash of 2010 as we predicted it,” says Celente. “The global economy collapse in March of 2009 when they inflated the markets with fiat money.” Celente predicted the current crisis, falling stock market, civil unrest in Greece and the collapse of Iceland, Argentina, Portugal, Spain as well as the crisis in the United States and the United Kingdom. “Anyone who believes this kind of stuff is beneficial, deserves what they get.” Gerald Celente warns people on what will happen once this kind of policies are fully implemented. Watch this clip at 5 minutes and 30 seconds.

When it comes to the National Identification Card in Brazil, information about it is very scarce. Most people here visit Federal PolicRFIDe offices all around the country to renew their driver licenses or identification and do not inquire or wonder about the new technology used in those documents. In other countries where it has been implemented, the National ID card is rejected by informed citizens as well as pro privacy groups because it contains all information related to the bearer of the card: Social Security number, physical address and a unique identification number that unlocks a wide variety private information such as bank accounts, savings, workplace, voting record, and so on.

In Brazil, the new National ID Card, provides a unique ID number according to the state the person lives in. In the south, people will have ID’s with a unique 10 digit number, in Brasilia, 7 digits, Sao Paulo 9 digits, and so on. The issuance of the new card will begin in October 2010, and it is estimated that every citizen, naturalized and legal immigrants will be part of the database by 2020. According to technology expert Chris Paget, Radio Frequency Technology, the type used in National ID Cards, has been used for years in credit and checking cards. “There have been hundreds of millions of cards issued with RFID. The problem is that people do not know that technology is contained in the cards, and therefore they don’t do anything to protect it” It sounds strange to say the least, that the technology that is supposed to keep us safe, needs to be protected itself. Right now, anyone with an RFID reader can pin point credit and checking cards and obtain enough information to clone it and use it in a transaction. So, why do countries what to literally count and have such a tight control of their citizenry? Dr. Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director of CASPIAN Consumer Privacy believes there is a massive push for governments to identify and number all of their citizens, and in the process, use technology created by mega corporations which then, would be in control of personal information such as identification number, banking accounts, social security, pension fund accounts, credit card numbers and so on. “We are seeing this in China, where 1 billion people have been issued National ID Cards with radio frequency devices. They are doing the same in Mexico, 1.2 billion people in India…”

According to historian Daniel Estulin, the use of National ID cards along with other technologies is a push for creating a cashless society. “No more money will be needed, because you will have credit assigned to your identification number. The problem is you are not going to be the one deciding how many credit to put on the card. The government will.” Estulin as well as Albrecht recognize the existence of government databases for jobs, credit and crime, and warn the use of National ID Cards will allow for the creation of a worldwide complete database where everyone will be included.

In Brazil, the issuance of the National ID Card will begin as a pilot project in every region. The card will be similar to a Credit Card, with a chip containing information such as the CPF or Cadastro de Pessoa Fisica, voter registration number, fingerprint, or an iris scanned image which will be accepted by the system known as AFIS or Automatic Fingerprint Identification System. This system is recognized worldwide, and is the one utilized by governments in all 5 continents. The resulting number will be a standardized RG or Registro Geral. With this local, regional and national database, Brazil will be one of the last giants in the planet to succumb to the plan to submit to a global registration program where corporations know each and every human being, no matter where they live.

Sources:

Immigration Proposal Creates National ID Card, fingerprint database

http://realagenda.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/dems’-immigration-proposal-creates-national-id-card-‘fingerprints-database/

A Fluoretacao da Agua: O Maior Caso de Fraude Cientifica do Seculo

http://realagenda.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/a-fluoretacao-da-agua-o-maior-caso-de-fraude-cientifica-do-seculo/

Cnet News

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-10423199-247.html

Gerald Celente, Trend Forecaster

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVonJr9XvK0&feature=player_embedded#!

Shadow Government Film, RFID

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfpdbxh-8-o

Shadow Government Full Documentary

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=56a_1265516934

Zero Hora Newspaper, Friday May 7th, 2010

“Identidade terá novo modelo em outubro.” Page 54

Zero Hora Newspaper, Friday May 7th, 2010

“Aeroportos terao scanner de corpo.” Page 57

Automatic Fingerprint Identification System

http://www.interoptest-berlin.de/pdf/DERMALOG_Company_Profile.pdf

European Health Council Unveils H1N1 Fraud

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2664587/health_council_of_europe_unveils_h1n1.html?cat=5

Russia Today. Get Ready for the European Double Dip

http://rt.com/Business/2010-05-07/ready-european-double-dip.html

RFID Reader

http://www.cypress.com/?docID=15592

National ID Card

http://epic.org/privacy/id-cards/

CASPIAN Consumer Privacy

http://www.nocards.org/

Daniel Estulin

http://www.danielestulin.com/el-hombre-tras-los-libros/

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