The backgrounds of the members of the team that President-elect Donald Trump is picking to shape the Department of Homeland Security suggests he will aggressively pursue surveillance using the latest technological advancements.
Trump, on the campaign trail, suggested that his law-and-order agenda would include mass surveillance of certain targets. “I want surveillance of certain mosques,” Trump declared at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama. “I want surveillance,” he added, “I will absolutely take [sic] database on the people coming in from Syria.”
If his personnel choices are any indication, Trump’s Homeland Security Department will favor a range of technological solutions, including threat-detection algorithms, facial-recognition technology, and an expansion of “verifiable” identity solutions both in real life and online.
Several people on Trump’s transition team are linked to a firm called Safran, a French defense contractor that has marketed expansive facial recognition and biometric software for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. As The Intercept previously reported, Morpho, a division of Safran, has touted a “Google” style search tool for capturing and storing the identities of potential terrorists using facial recognition technology. The concept has been criticized by privacy experts for denying due process rights to those ensnared in the terrorist database for simply having certain facial features.
Michael Dougherty, one of the Trump officials handling the Homeland Security Department handoff, has worked to lobby policymakers as the president of the Secure Identity & Biometrics Association, a position he left to join the Trump team. The association represents several facial recognition firms, including Safran’s Morpho division.
Lora Ries, another transition team member, is a former registered lobbyist for L-1 Identity Solutions, a facial recognition firm that is now a subsidiary of Morpho. Brad Buswell, a former executive at Morpho Detection, a subsidiary of Safran that provides explosive-detection equipment for the Transportation Security Administration, was also tapped to work for the Trump transition on the Homeland Security Department.
John Sanders, the head of the geospatial intelligence startup Pramantha Solutions, is also on the team. Sanders sits on the board of Evolv, a security firm that markets a technology that combines existing CCTV cameras, facial recognition, and “open source, propriety sources” of information.
That the entire Trump Department of Homeland Security transition team hails from the private sector seems to be intentional, given the remarks of Trump’s pick to lead the agency.
Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly discussed the need to harness technology during his confirmation hearings last week, suggesting that the new administration would prioritize work with technology firms.
“I was watching something Ash Carter started when he took over at the Defense Department. He started to reach out to the commercial world — Silicon Valley, that kind of thing, to engage them,” Kelly said during the hearing. “More cooperation amongst the private sector and the federal sector, the state sector, would go a long way.”
In some ways, Trump would simply be taking the baton passed to him by Obama.
During Obama’s tenure, the Department of Homeland Security’s Directorate of Science and Technology consistently supported research into surveillance methods. A Washington State hockey rink, for instance, was the testing ground for an agency-funded experiment on facial recognition software in crowded environments.
The Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Administration, the agency’s in-house research institute, identified biometric entry-exit visa programs and predictive threat modeling that relies on complex algorithms as technological gaps that need to be filled.
The focus on identity technology is borne out in the agency’s most recent budget, which allocated $65 million to update the agency’s biometric database. HSARPA is also involved in the development and promotion of several other controversial technologies, including algorithmic prediction and Wide Area Surveillance, a surveillance method that uses multiple plane-mounted cameras to provide continuous coverage of a large geographic area with the ability to replay events.
First developed by the military in battlefields such as Iraq, Wide Area Surveillance has provoked outrage and protest when the public became aware of its use in Compton and Baltimore. Wide Area Surveillance was also deployed during the 2014 Boston Marathon, according to the agency’s FY2016 budget request. The system uses a secret network of cameras, including high definition equipment mounted to small Cessna airplanes, to provide a constant view surveillance of every individual walking on the sidewalk, every car driving on the street, and nearly almost any movement detectable from the sky. The system stores an archive, with the ability to rewind and track an individual.
During Obama’s term, the Department of Homeland Security also significantly expanded the availability of facial recognition technology to nonfederal law enforcement. According to budget documents in 2014 the Homeland Security Information Network, an information-sharing system set up by the agency’s Office Of Intelligence & Analysis, created the “Multi-State Facial Recognition Community” that provided end users access to biometric search tools for “18 current participating states and fusion centers with the single click of a mouse.”
I was implanted with a biochip that enables torture and murder at the will of criminal law enforcement agents to cover their own crimes. Judges think its okay to murder, rape, sodomize and torture innocent citizens. I can’t wait until Judge W. Taylor, Hampton, VA, gets his biochip. Then we will see how well he handles multiple heart attacks, gang rape and sodomy, and grand larceny. Virginia state police and newport News police are the largest group of serial raping murderers in our nation. When judges approve the crimes and aid and abet them, they should be removed from the bench. We should elect our judges to make sure when they become corrupt, they can be removed from the bench for cause.
When the attack or invasion happen it will be under Trump.
Snowden sounds very “adversarial”. I am all for it!
// __ acTVism Munich (Jan 17, 2017): Edward Snowden talks about FBI’s COINTELPRO, CIA’s MK-ULTRA and Black Lives Matters
youtube.com/watch?v=8XLMyrkjcMg
~
RCL
However, they still own the discourse, so they can talk all the sh!t they want:
// __ Edward Snowden has the fingerprints of a foreign spy, By Rachelle Bergstein January 21, 2017
http://nypost.com/2017/01/21/edward-snowden-has-the-fingerprints-of-a-foreign-spy/
~
RCL
The Intercept covered a case of false facial recognition in the past. Here’s how you do it…
a) Ask a police friend to run your face through the database.
b) Make a note of the top ten best matches.
c) Rob a bank or whatever you like near the home or workplace of someone on the list (it’s probably best to watch them first so they don’t come up with an embarrassingly solid alibi like in the Intercept’s case)
d) Their own wives will say that’s them on the video – it’s a slam dunk case.
e) Enjoy your earnings!
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/how-a-facial-recognition-mismatch-can-ruin-your-life/
What “the method of to your madness” is not taking into consideration is that:
a, b) they know you have a “police friend”, all police know their access to those databases is being monitored, they know who has accessed this very page, their friends and their friends of friends . . .
c) “Rob a bank . . .” are you serious? by yourself? Well, I would assume you meant it in a metaphoric way; still, way too “Hollywood”
d) or not! Well, as one of the excellent jokes compiled in
amazon.com/Plato-Platypus-Walk-Into-Bar-ebook/dp/B004Q3RTT2/
their own wives may keep searching that database …
e) I would suggest you try at least a dry run before you advice other people and even tell them about any kind of “enjoyment”
RCL
As a reminder Hermann Goering said at the Nuremberg Trials .
“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
Benito Mussolini
There is no evidence in the historical record that Mussolini ever said that.
You make a statement, but like so many others provide no proof !
There are many web sites that attribute this quote to him. Until you can prove otherwise the quote belongs and is attributed to him ! ! !
Just because you can’t find the a historical record doesn’t mean he didn’t say it ! !
He never said it. You should try to prove he did with at least a legitimate link. You can’t, because it’s made up, and unattributable to him.
Prove it ! Just because you say he didn’t say doesn’t make it so .
Don’t you know how to look up quotes your self . There are many sites, Google them .
But you have it diametrically backward. The responsibility lies with you to use a citatation as the author deploying the so-called ‘quote.’
You can begin here: Google corporatism mussolini quote
Like I said before just google Benito Mussolini quotes . You will get a list of many sites that attribute this quote to him. Do your own research ! Don’t try to have me do it for you ! !
For those discussing ‘health’ stuff downthread, there are large drug store chains, as well as electronic medical records venders, that sell your Rx data now (including your birth date, zip, real name of physician, etc.).
They do not only sell our Rx data, but, of course, the government/NSA, as the middle man, is getting “in transfer” all the data in those transactions. In addition to “legally” having access to all that data. One of the reasons why I totally lost respect towards USG is because, as it has even been made “official”, “legal”; they are keeping detailed and individual records of everyone’s health. They even have large banks of DNA samples, of course, without any kind of consensual agreement or any of that. “Our duly elected representatives” just make it “legal”.
Now, you may wonder how exactly our moral and civic convictions relate to your health? As it happened with the Catholic Church, the powers that be in all Western countries seem to be into a trans-governmental, trans-humanistic agenda and they need all that data for societal crowd control and individual targeting. Nowadays, they don’t need to institutionalize unsuspecting people for their “psychic driving” experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute (part of McGill University in Montreal/Canada) they have so much data and ready access to you that they can basically cage you in a virtual prison even though you are out there. All Western countries are colluding in this kind of MK-Ultra 2.0:
// __ Stop 007 – Who I am
youtube.com/watch?v=o1rLEAjACz8
~
https://ipsoscustodes.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/zersetzung-made-in-u-s-a/
~
Also, after they got everybody to carry around their cell phone, the next “logical step” will be doing away with cash. They have been working on it for some time already! Give them 5 to 10 years.
RCL
Correct. Is it the Netherlands that has gone completely cashless? This is a loss of sovereignty for all of us. If the Gov does not approve of your purchase perhaps it wont go through or worse,cut you out of all transactions and wipe your account. Buy silver and gold, the kind you hold physically, this current economic house of cards will fall and we’ll be trading goods,services and finally silver when the previous behaviors are insufficient.
I meant to say: “Our duly elected representatives” just make it “legal” which in our days also means –secret–.
There is invaluable and endless power in this technology. I suspect the masses will either face this with complacency or even welcome it – as Goering said:
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
He’s speaking about the instigation of war, but instigating surveillance exploiting the same human weaknesses works just the same.
I certainly would not trust facial recognition or biometrics.
Many times in my life I have been told that I am the spitting image of somebody else.
Until facial recognition gets beyond that, I’m just an ugly white guy.
but it is not just about “facial recognition” but the correlation of all those streams of “personally identifiable ‘information’”, all you have ever said over the phone and written on fora, indexed in ways they can easily, contextually zeitgeist . . .
If you heard and understood their slogan: “sniff it all, collect it all, know it all, process it all, exploit it all, partner it all, … all, all, all, . . . ” ™; you would realize that they know more about you, all your “spitting images” and you spitting images’ entangled “yous” in all parallel universes than you will ever be able to grasp
I know, I know, it sounded way too stars-wars-like. Yet, this is the childish stuff those idiots never grew out of:
// __ Inside the mind of NSA chief Gen Keith Alexander, by Glenn Greenwald
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa-mind-keith-alexander-star-trek
~
RCL
Bang on target again RCL
The police state is here without any doubt!
1984 is upon us!
This sort of cooperation is absolutely vital in order to strip the citizens of all their rights. Too many people blithely assume that government can do this alone. However, governments are poor at marketing and can create push-back by being too aggressive.
Take smart phones – the most effective surveillance devices ever devised. The private sector has persuaded people to shell out large sums of money to acquire them. Such a model, where people give away their rights, or even pay to get rid of them, is much better than a model based on coercion.
Actually, Cuban police underpinning a dictatorship for more than half a century summons you to openly discuss with you their repression plan, which considering their scarce situation, they do a pretty good job at documenting in very explicit ways all they do.
Also, in the Cuban police state they don’t have such [email protected] as FISA courts and “secret” interpretations of laws. They have laws which they show to the four winds about (I am not kidding you!): about “disseminating news that disturb peace of earth” (they mean you are just questioning them ;-)), they would put people behind bars for showing a big sign that said “down with ‘whom you know'” and another one for “being too fat during times of scarcity” …
In China they don’t even pretend to have a legal system. Imagine some sort of neighborhood watch enforcing the law! They have told me they don’t even have the mechanism or basic understanding to grant a foreigner Chinese citizenship, that when you tell the Chinese about it, they go like: “what do you mean? … why do you want to be Chinese if your aren’t?” ;-)
// __ China’s Andy Rooney Has Funny Opinions On How Great China Is
youtube.com/watch?v=6SBxuHTlw98
~
// __ Legal Trouble in China
youtube.com/watch?v=x-9hGNJsyx8
~
By the way, probably, partially because I am like 1/8 Chinese (great grandparent), I had a great time in China, even though I noticed at times weird sh!t and I don’t like their communist government a bit.
You find all of that way too “unAmerican”? You will see how things will get in “‘the’ land of ‘the’ ‘free’ and ‘the’ ‘brave'” . . .
~
RCL
Facial recognition may be junk science. So is polygraphy, but that hasn’t stopped it from being used. If this goes forward, one thing I thought of, as a protest, is to disguise myself in public.
facial recog is JUNK SCIENCE
// __ that thing they used to call “privacy” . . .
A good friend of mine who lived, went to school in China was telling me the adjective “alone” in Putonghua literally means to them “being around people you don’t know” (instead of being by yourself, whatsoever not surrounded by other people)
Of course, “being by yourself” is also relative. Some people break up with their loved ones (even family) but would not discard their cell phones and when you are taking a sh!t even if your cell phone may not ring at this very moment, some plumber set up the pipes connecting that very toilet to the citywide water and sewage system . . .
Even your own thoughts are not entirely yours. Teens tend to collectively develop their own individuality. Children are not supposed to be told about, be forcefully tormented with such concepts as “the human condition” and “the banality of evil”. I just couldn’t understand my mother and thought she was a little out of it (which in a sense she partially was ;-)) and dumping her frustration on her eldest son. Now I am thankful to her in deed and spirit. Later in life I read Charles Chaplin’s autobiography and Primo Levi’s “Survival In Auschwitz” (which title in Italian actually is: “If this is a ‘man’/humanity . . .”). Both books helped me understand myself …
Still, there is this functional illusion which we associate with our own selves, free will, individuality which we used to call “privacy”. Glenn has a piece about how technology has done away with it as we knew it and the societal consequences of such “new developments”:
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/28/new-study-shows-mass-surveillance-breeds-meekness-fear-and-self-censorship/?comments=1#comments
But, since through technology, politicians and police know more about us than we ourselves individually would, I wonder about such very obvious cases in which they could have definitely done better (among many other ones):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton
I know those people were just plainly, psychopathically crazy, what I am talking about is how could such things “technically” happen for such a long time if police know so much about all of us and they seem to believe themselves to be smart (“intelligence” this and that).
Many wonder how could Literature Nobel Prize writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn have masterfully written such detailed stories. OK, part of it are the stuff of genius and brain power; and, of course, in those times people didn’t have cell phones, computers, facebook, reggaeton . . . Yet, he also related to us (as Snowden did), that he never told absolutely anyone about any of it (not even his best friends who were not friends with Stalin to any extent either) and that he always wrote his own notes on paper in semi cryptic ways. Now, Solzhenitsyn was living in a gulag, at times almost mortally ill in hospitals, during the Russian Stalinist era under the direct watchful eye of the no-nonsense KGB. So, under such conditions people still had that thing they used to call “privacy”!!!
Not owning a cell phone (I don’t (yes, girlfriend has given me various elaborate ultimata and my response to her has been “there are plenty of niggahs out there”)) and paying always with cash (I almost do) would not be enough. For example, in check out lines they have cameras running face recognition software (and facial reaction (even lip syncing what you say?)) and they know who is paying with cash and exactly what (you will soon, most likely, be eating and sh!tting) . . . I guess the only way you could have be left alone is by renouncing to be yourself, almost by renouncing to be, which is a bit crazy in its own ways.
I have always been curious about the case of Galileo stature genius:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana
and the more recent case of Petra Pazsitka (who doesn’t even have a wikipedia page):
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/german-murder-mystery-solved-when-victim-turns-up-alive-31-years-after-disappearance-a6668201.html
http://www.news.com.au/world/disappearing-without-a-trace-is-harder-than-it-looks–but-it-is-possible/news-story/fbd518fdae307a0f7b8c73ca17ad2a1c
George Orwell, as title for his “1984”, initially thought of using “The last man in Europe” (who didn’t summit to living in a totalitarian, 24×7 surveillance police state: “Winston Smith”) . His editor suggested a “more commercial”, less offensive, directly predicting title. I think Petra Pazsitka is the last woman/person alive in the “developed world” who could make any claim about privacy. Yes, part of it is that we don’t know sh!t about “Mrs. Scheneiders”. She chose not to become an instant celebrity. How could someone live in Germany without paying taxes? Never, ever needing any kind of social services? (yes, it has come to that!) Then, again, I/we may never know. It is called “privacy”. Unfortunately, that burglar messed with a cosmic design. I wonder how long it had been taken for techno sh!t to wonder about “that ‘unregistered’, ‘unpatterned’ lady wondering around and conducting an unusual life style”
I, myself have chosen to do whatever I want, even while knowing well that “they are watching”. In fact, like teens, misbehaving exactly because. I wonder if that could meaningfully qualify as “privacy” in our times.
RCL
Not only will they do away with cash, but also with handwriting (even if neurologist have emphasized the importance of dexterity), so the likelyhood of having people and work like Solzhenitsyn’s will be reduced even more.
// __ Handwriting is dying a slow death, By Adriana Balsamo-Gallina
https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-09-14/handwriting-dying-slow-death
~
Solzhenitsyn also said: “For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”
~
RCL
Great reporting.
Ah, California, the great police state.
Welp, aren’t we glad that the Dems are in charge? The helos are going crazy in my area, but Rep Schiff got a bill passed re helo noise. I availed myself of our privilege to report the disturbance via the incorporated city in which I live plus the L.A. complaint hotline. I think that when I see a large flying insect out my second story bedroom window – the latest iteration of drones is in the air.
This is terrifying shit. It doesn’t sound like the US anymore.
Thanks to organizations like EFF & EPIC for the great and important work that they do.
Citizens must adopt anti-surveillance measures in public venues.
Disguise yourself with clothing and makeup to alter your appearance enough to foil basic guidelines as much as possible. Try to imitate a celebrity to confuse data banks. Change your routines and routes. I wonder if we could adopt those black robes and scare the hell out of everyone?
Finally some good news ;-0
And that is why I have been growing my hair out to cover my face like cousin IT on the Adam’s Family.
are you given them a challenge? ;-)
you will have to “cover” your gait, gestures, height, recurrent patterns, credit cards …
RCL
And that is the one and only reason why the “conservatives” push to ban the burka.
Now with all this surveillance, I’m sure Compton and Baltimore have become safe, friendly places to wander around at night, right?
Philip K Dick would be proud.
I as a child watched the sky and stars with innocent wonder, there was nothing man made in space. Now the reflection of satellite “stars” can be seen passing overhead and grant me the wish of a childhood Dick Tracey or adolescent Star-Trek communication device or with photography and algorithms decipher my facial features. The sky can look back and know my name and in the absolute extreme could kill me. What awaits us because we possess such powers of technology and surveillance that at great economic costs to maintain can be turned either outward towards our enemies or pass the tipping point and be turned inward towards ourselves and our Constitution? How do we find the path through the global once in a lifetime technological, social and economic changes we are currently experiencing to glean the better and sift out the bad future?
This technology is already being foisted on the public in ways that will not be perceived as immediately threatening.
I recently had a routine annual health screening. While checking in for my appointment I was asked to participate in a new program promoting the use of palm scanners. The sales pitch included verbiage about identification errors, which are a legitimate concern in medical environments where such errors cause mistakes with high potential for dire consequences. It also included the patented fear mongering I’ve come to expect. That bit of the pitch was framed using the possibility that I might some day be transported, unconscious and unattended, to an ER and have no way for them to identify me.
At that point, I interrupted the sales pitch to inform the woman that all the ERs near me were in other health organizations, so unless they were planning on sharing my biometric data with competing groups – something I highly doubted they would do because the health care business is just as proprietary as any other – that was simply not going to happen. It was rather, in truth, was a false profession of public service rendered for the sole purpose of obtaining a higher percentage of participants.
I then asked her if she was aware of how often data was hacked and stolen in the US. Medical data. I told her about an online website where such thefts are reported, then gave her a couple of examples that may have directly affected me. Then asked her why anyone would give an ultimate identifier – one that cannot be changed if stolen and is therefore foolproof once obtained – to people who have proven themselves incapable of keeping it safe? Then I told her I was prepared to walk out the door if this was mandatory, or if they had plans to ever make it so.
All of this happened in a voice just loud enough for everyone else in the waiting room to hear it all. And more than a few seemed interested.
We should be prepared for this to emerge in many aspects of our lives and we should resist the sales pitches which will be couched, as always, in the soothing terms of keeping you in some nonexistent safety cocoon. Because once that information is out there, it will be obtained by the people who most highly desire to control everything you say and do.
…is, has and will.
Great point.
I went for an eval a couple of years ago. I wasn’t happy with the appointment – they suggested a doctor who wasn’t the specialist that I needed – an unforced error of a different kind.
When I asked for a copy of the eval, this doctor thought it pertinent to mention that I did not want to give information to somebody that wasn’t necessarily going to treat me (at the beginning of the app’t) because I was concerned about the safety and privacy of my medical files.
If you make your response in pamphlet form, I’ll run off a few copies. And by the way, Pedinska, this is the perfect response for the IoT, where in everything that I read; it’s inevitable and it’s coming, even without safeguards. I worry about companies trying to force people to use devices, such as the utility companies.
Get an authoritarian in power and the crap rolls down the hill quickly.
We should not only resist the sales pitches, but resist the ability of any locality, state, and the Feds to go this far afield. This creeps me out.
The linked story about Compton clearly states that the field test failed.
You mean they are still working on optimizing the parametrization of the model. Give them just months
Mathematical models don’t “fail”.
RCL
The car with the people who stole somebody or some people’s necklace(s) drove out of range of the cameras.
The ostensible reason for the cameras in the first place failed.
Ostensible is subjective.
The quality of the input determines its output, does it not?
I am not arguing your point, just mine.
theIntercept at its best!
I wonder what the “emphasis” would be about if this is rampant already anyway.
Here in NYC the NYPD started a massive “city ID” program under which even “illegal” immigrants (who would be non-existent if they were not part of the cogs of “business as usual”) are “encouraged” to get one of those cards “for free” in order to avoid being harassed by them.
Oh, the NYPD is so nice, socially conscious! Of course, they do that to reduce false positive in their surveillance apparatus!
// __ Village Voice: 2016-06-28 NYPD Watchdog Shatters Bratton’s ‘Broken Windows’ — Now What?, by NICK PINTO
When sixteen-year-old Rhamar Perkins escaped police officers who were trying to arrest him for jumping a subway turnstile in Brownsville last week, the NYPD scrambled an all-night manhunt, complete with helicopters. The mobilization was eventually called off when Perkins turned himself in to the precinct four and a half hours later, but the incident — an all-out effort to catch a boy who skipped out on a $2.75 fare — makes for a pretty tidy illustration of what policing in New York City looks like in 2016.
. . .
villagevoice.com/news/nypd-watchdog-shatters-brattons-broken-windows-now-what-8796746
~
RCL