Scientist unveils new Orwellian pre-crime technology

Technofascism Blog

“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself–anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face…; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime…”
-George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5

“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 6

via The Buffalo News.

Imagine using the same technology to locate a lone bomber before he carries out his terrorist act and to identify a troubled veteran or first responder ground down by tragedies and violence.

Stop imagining.

How? “The computer system detects resentment in conversations through measurements in decibels and other voice biometrics,” he said. “It detects obsessiveness with the individual going back to the same topic over and over, measuring crescendos.”

As for written transmissions scrutinized by the computer program, it can detect the same patterns of fixation on specified subjects, said Guidere, who has worked for years screening mass data that involves radicalization and ideological indoctrination.

Read Full Article

Wellness Enforcement Officer… OPEN UP!!

“Member Engagement” health insurance turns your entire life into a pre-existing condition + Could create new bond/futures market.

On its face, this might seem like a good idea.  Why should I have to pay for someone else’s million dollar liver transplant due to alcohol abuse, or lung cancer surgery after 30 years of smoking? They ruined their own organs willfully.

Unfortunately however, the only way to enforce a “member engagement” system  will be with a new bureaucracy of “health and wellness” lifestyle investigators, monitors, administrators, and medical testing regimes to ensure compliance… to engage the member. Get it?  We’re the members. The insurance companies are preparing to engage us, so brace yourselves.

Once your private medical information is out there, you can’t get it back, and here is a perfect illustration of why it should be kept private and not shared among providers (except as authorized), insurance agencies, or the government.  This type of game-changing, rule-changing behavior by the insurance industry puts nearly everyone at risk for claims denial based on the their subjective assessment of your lifestyle.  It will open the floodgates for a new wave of denials by turning lifestyles into pre-existing conditions.  Death panels?  Of course.  But they they’ll be called wellness assessment panels or something.

If this continues, we’ll be under total nanny state lifestyle micro-management in the name of health and wellness.  It may be privatized or run by a new federal agency. Either way, mandatory health insurance with “member engagement” will have the same result.  Who do you trust, the government or the corporations?  It doesn’t matter because the corporations control the government.  They’ll be working together, to ensure compliance.  Why do you think they made all this federal grant money available to implement electronic health records, while also making it mandatory to buy health insurance?

Did you just hear her say you have to complete a BIOMETRIC SCREENING? This gets scarier every time I watch her read it off the teleprompter but let’s not get off topic.

Member Engagement could create new financial bonds, futures, and derivatives markets, and probably a lot of other smoke and mirrors gambling investment vehicles I’ve never heard of (kind of like investing our savings and retirement money in sub-prime mortgage and derivative markets then going bankrupt).  What does this have to do with me?  Stay with me for a minute…

If the Wall Street bankers can determine the investment value of owning our individual insurance policies, using health and lifestyle data, as opposed to owning group plans as a whole, it could enable the sale of financial contracts based on the health of individuals, that is how likely someone is to need a million dollar surgery before being hit by a bus, and thus whether that individual’s plan will be profitable or costly to administer.  I’m sure the investors and traders are already salivating over this.  Hey, if they can trade penal bonds (not penile), they can trade anything.

To the bureaucrats and social workers that will try to ram this system down our throats– put this in your pipe and smoke it:

I live a healthy lifestyle and rarely see doctors, which is none of your business.  I have no intention of submitting to unnecessary medical testing or sharing information about my lifestyle with you.  If my doctor thinks a procedure or treatment is reasonable and legitimate, s/he will submit a claim with the appropriate billing code. The insurance company will then pay the claim or I will sue them.   It’s obviously not a perfect system now but at least patients have the recourse of a law suit if claims are denied, and the insurance companies are forced to compete in the free market. This Orwellian new insurance model will lead to discrimination law suits if it goes where I think it’s going.

Apple patenting AI trojan for use in mobile devices [updated]

While many of my pals have I-phones, I have no intention of getting one.  The interface is slick and it has all the features a person could ask for in a mobile device (and more), but the inability to remove the battery sends shivers up my spine.

Steve Jobs proudly displays the latest NSA bugging device

In this patent application, Apple claims it has software that essentially turns a mobile device into a biometric trojan horse, identifying users by their biometric data (heartbeat pattern, accelerometer vibration patterns, voice print, and face recognition), logging keystrokes, saving packet data, etc. all under the thin guise of protecting the device from unauthorized use.

Now let’s not kid ourselves, law enforcement agencies can already install a trojan on most if not all major models of mobile devices via firmware updates, but as usual Apple is thinking different.  This is bigger.  Machine vision, biometric identification, accelerometer analysis, GPS, voice recognition…. all these streams of data amount to much more than a traditional eavesdropping device.

Apple’s patent turns the devices into literal sensory organs for an AI threat assessment system like the NSA Main Core.  Humans would not even begin to be able to integrate all these input data streams, but AI software can.

Not only has Apple devised the ultimate intelligence trojan, they’ve also designed a personalized weapon targeting system.  If a mobile device identifies a human target, A missile or beam weapon strike can be confidently delivered to the target using the device’s biometric identification and GPS locator, confirmed by satellite.

The sheer number of mobile devices and sensory data available, and the abililty to integrate these streams centrally using AI systems creates a biometric surveillance cloud for the ruling oligarchs to have Total Information Awareness* over their subjects, the human cattle.§

As communications device manufacturers and telcos grow, they will inevitably be approached by intelligence agencies with offers they can’t refuse.  Either they cooperate and profit from compromising the security of their platforms, or misfortune may befall them.  It’s the easy way or the hard way.

The big story here is that Apple is going out in the open with it, attempting to profit from the intellectual “property” they’ve developed, most likely at the command of shadow government intelligence agencies.

The brazen nature of filing a patent for an intelligence agency AI trojan is significant.  As we move past the point of no return toward the New World Order, the shadow government devils will come out of the shadows, until ultimately when their drone armies are sufficiently powerful, they will wage a new World War on some manufactured threat in an effort to reduce our numbers and enslave us, in what they believe will be a utopian “re-wilding” of the Earth.

We need to stop deluding ourselves. When they bring this AI extermination grid online it’s going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.    Just do something, whatever you can. At the very least, stop  feeding it.  We still have the power to disable this thing using the free market and whatever is left of our free will.

Don’t take that job for Raytheon or Lockheed Martin.  Don’t sell your research to DARPA.  Don’t enlist in the military. Don’t support the corporations that are building the extermination grid.  Do use your powers for good and not evil.  Do work toward self-sufficiency and strengthen your family and local community.  Do protect your children from brainwashing.

Here’s the patent application:

What is claimed is:

1 . A method for identifying an unauthorized user of an electronic device, [This means the software will be running all the time.] the method comprising: determining that a current user of the electronic device is an unauthorized user; gathering information related to the unauthorized user’s operation of the electronic device in response to determining, wherein the unauthorized user’s operation comprises operations not related to the authentication; and transmitting an alert notification to a responsible party in response to gathering.

2 . The method of claim 1, wherein determining further comprises: determining the identity of the current user; comparing the determined identity to the identity of one or more authorized users of the electronic device; and detecting that the determined identity does not match the identity of at least one of the one or more authorized users.

3 . The method of claim 1, wherein determining further comprises: identifying a particular activity performed by the current user that indicates suspicious behavior. [device will be profiling your behavior]

4 . The method of claim 3, wherein the particular activity comprises one or more of hacking the electronic device, jailbreaking the electronic device, unlocking the electronic device, removing a SIM card from the electronic device, and moving at least a predetermined distance away from a synced device. [like an electronic house arrest tracking device]

5 . The method of claim 1, wherein gathering further comprises gathering one or more of screenshots, keylogs, communications packets served to the electronic device, and information related to a host device coupled to the electronic device.

6 . The method of claim 1, wherein the alert notification comprises a general message indicating that an unauthorized user has been detected.

7 . The method of claim 1, wherein the alert notification comprises at least a portion of the gathered information.

8 . The method of claim 1, further comprising: gathering information related to the identity of the unauthorized user in response to determining; and gathering information related to the location of the electronic device in response to determining.

9 . The method of claim 1, further comprising: restricting at least one function of the electronic device in response to determining.

10 . The method of claim 1, further comprising: transmitting sensitive data from the electronic device to a remote storage; and erasing the sensitive data from the electronic device.

11 . An electronic device operable to detect an unauthorized user of an electronic device, the electronic device comprising: a processor operable to: receive an input from a current user of the electronic device; determine the input is not associated with an authorized user of the electronic device; and record usage information of the electronic device in response to determining; and communications circuitry operable to transmit the usage information to a remote device.

12 . The electronic device of claim 11, further comprising: a microphone operable to record the voice of the current user; and wherein the processor is further operable to: compare the recorded voice with voice prints of authorized user of the electronic device; and determine that the recorded voice does not match the voice print of any authorized user of the electronic device.

13 . The electronic device of claim 11, further comprising: a heartbeat sensor operable to detect the heartbeat of the current user; and wherein the processor is further operable to: compare the detected heartbeat with heart signatures of each authorized user of the electronic device; and determine that detected the heartbeat does not match the heart signature of any authorized user of the electronic device.

14 . The electronic device of claim 11, further comprising: an input device operable to receive an authenticating input for authenticating a user of the electronic device; and wherein the processor is further operable to: determine that a predetermined number of successive incorrect authenticating inputs have been received.

15 . The electronic device of claim 11, further comprising: a camera operable to take a photograph of the vicinity of the electronic device; and positioning circuitry operable to determine current location information of the electronic device; and wherein the processor is further operable to: geotag the photograph by associating the photograph with the current location information.

16 . The electronic device of claim 11, further comprising: an accelerometer operable to record a vibration profile of the electronic device; and a signal processor operable to compare the recorded vibration profile with a library of vibration profiles to determine a current mode of transportation of the electronic device.

17 . A system comprising: an electronic device comprising; an input device operable to receive a password provided by a user; a camera operable to take a photograph of the user; a processor operable to: determine that a predetermined number of incorrect passwords have been successively received; direct the camera to take a photograph of the user; and generate an alert notification in response to the processor determining, wherein the alert notification comprises information related to the identity of the user and the photograph of the user; and communications circuitry operable to transmit the alert notification to a remote device.

18 . The system of claim 17, wherein: the camera is operable to take a plurality of photographs of the surroundings of the electronic device; and wherein the processor is further operable to: analyze each of the plurality of photographs to identify distinguishing landmarks in the photographs; and determine the location of each photograph based on the identified distinguishing landmarks.

19 . The system of claim 17, wherein the alert notification is transmitted via one of text message, facsimile, VoIP application, instant messaging application, on-line profile application, on-line blog application, and a cloud server.

20 . Machine-readable media for identifying unauthorized users of an electronic device, comprising machine-readable instructions recorded thereon for: determining that a current user of the electronic device is an unauthorized user; gathering information related to the unauthorized user’s operation of the electronic device in response to determining, wherein the unauthorized user’s operation comprises operations not related to authentication; and transmitting an alert notification to a responsible party in response to gathering.

21 . The machine-readable media of claim 20, further comprising machine-readable instructions recorded thereon for: determining the identity of the current user; comparing the determined identity to the identity of one or more authorized users of the electronic device; and detecting that the determined identity does not match the identity of at least one of the one or more authorized users.

* Total Information Awareness project was publicly scrapped.  However it would be naiive to assume that intelligence agencies gave up on being “totally aware” of everyone’s private information.

§ Nice job.  I hope you’re happy with yourselves.

See also: Report: Apple testing RFID swipe support in iPhone prototypes

Commercial face recognition software claims 90% accuracy

Source: Daily Mail/Vigilant

A software company is developing revolutionary software which provides the ability to identify people from photographs posted on the internet.

Face.com has produced technology that can identify individuals on social networking sites and online galleries by comparing their image against a known picture of them.

It means detailed profiles of individuals can be built up purely from online photographs and critics have said it could lead to exploitation…

Iris scanners to create the LEAST secure city in the world.

NO.

Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls “the most secure city in the world.” In a partnership with Leon — one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million — GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live — not to mention marketers.

Just hold it right there.

As I’ve written about previously, biometric authentication is inherently insecure.  I guarantee you in 15 years this article in “Fast Company” magazine is going to sound sophomoric.  I had boss at an e-commerce job once who read Fast Company.  Biggest ^$$-hole you’d ever want to meet.

If they weren’t trying to sell us on the benefits of a biometric city-wide slave-tracking grid, this would be comical.  It’s all for the human cattle and NOT for the criminals. Criminals will have little difficulty spoofing biometrics (see my previous post, and below). It’s a rather trivial task, when considering the reward to hackers if they can steal your identity (permanently) in a system that relies on biometric authentication.

Mark my words, if they do implement this it will be a disaster.  I have a feeling that many Mexican people are not going to submit to being tracked like farm animals though.

If they tried to implement this in the US, we’d probably have more people here voluntarily participating than in Mexico, since this country full of drugged morons who subject themselves to endless hours of brainwashing every day in front of the TV.

Eventually, they’ll try to force everyone onto it.   It will be nearly impossible to “opt out.”  Even if you wear sunglasses all the time, between the gait (walk) analysis, voice recognition, finding your address, place of business, etc, they’ll be able to piece together who you are.   Automated systems could easily do this by tracking you in public with high-res cameras (constantly scanning your irises) and correlating this with publicly available data.

Just because a biometric system doesn’t know your name currently, doesn’t mean it can’t identify and track you until it does figure out your name later.

More about biometric spoofing: FIDIS. (click thru for pics, emphasis mine)

Experiments with spoofing

The Dutch Forensic Institute has done extensive tests with the various biometric systems. Several fingerprint systems and an iris system have been tested for possibilities of tampering. In most case it appeared to be easy if a person allowed to enrol into the system is cooperating. Some biometric features can also be copied without this person’s awareness and consent (for example fingerprints taken from a glass).

A low cost (Panasonic) iris scanner in our laboratory could easily be faked with a photograph of a person revealing the iris (). Punching a hole in the place of the iris turned out to be sufficient to mimic the light absorption exhibited by a real iris and fool the system into falsely accepting the photo as a real iris. It is claimed that high end scanners do not have this disadvantage: [which is where the contact lens comes in]

A fundamental problem with biometric authentication

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just sit down at your computer and have it recognize you?  Remembering usernames and passwords to authenticate you to various computer resources can be quite a pain.

IT help desks across the world see a constant stream of password reset requests due to forgotten passwords, but this is precisely the appeal that password authentication has over biometric authentication.  You can change your password and hold a multitude of different user accounts without necessarily revealing your identity.

Biometrics, meaning measurements (metrics) of the biology (you)– fingerprint, iris, retina, face recognition, voice recognition, brain wave, DNA, or any number of features that are unique to individuals, can be used for identification.  Biometric authentication has one fatal security flaw however that prevents using it in high security systems: Individuals can’t change their biometrics.  Once an attacker gets your fingerprint, iris, retina scan, voice print or other hash in a standardized format, they can use it to impersonate you.

Here are some ways biometric authentication can be defeated, unless used in conjunction with a password.  This is obviously for informational purposes only, as a security assessment of these technologies. I don’t recommend you do any of these things.

Fingerprint readers [Difficulty: moderate]
Pull someone’s fingerprint off a used beverage glass or can.  CNC machine or create a photoresist mold of said fingerprint from a scan of the print, or from a fingerprint hash obtained from an existing authentication database.  Cast it in silicone.  Attacker wears the cast over her fingertip, spoofing the victim’s print.

Iris scanners [Difficulty: moderate]
Shoot a high res photo of someone’s iris or obtain the raw biometric hash from an existing system.  Create a contact lens with this image printed on it.

Retina scanners [Difficulty: hard]
Because the retina is on the back of the eye, it’s not something that could be easily “skimmed” in public.  In the sci-fi novel Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson), there were laser iris scanners that could scan an iris from a distance.  Even though that technology doesn’t exist yet, one could use an existing hash of the retina scan to create a combination contact lens with a hologram of the retina and the victim’s iris print built into one.  This holographic technology already exists and is only getting cheaper.

Voice print [Difficulty: moderate]
Voice print authentications systems use various algorithms to match a user’s voice to a known “voice print” hash or pre-recorded phrase.  A shotgun microphone can remotely record the sound of a person logging in, or phrases can be pieced together using phonemes (short sounds) taken from pre-recorded samples of the victim’s voice.  The voice can be played back over a speaker to the authentication system.  There are two-factor voice print systems that ask the user to read a dynamically generated word, but again using sample based techniques, it’s possible to synthesize a person’s voice dynamically.

DNA reader [Difficulty: hard]
The only way one could defeat current DNA sequencing technology would be by stealing some tissue (or pre-cloning it) from the victim, which would be used to spoof their identity. DNA sequencing is too slow and expensive to be used for authentication currently, however recent microfluidic lab-on-chip technologies have provided dramatic speed increases.

In any of these systems, if it’s physically accessible, one can bypass the scanner input subsystem and pass the raw, forged sensor data to the host software. If one already has the hash data from an existing database, no snooping or device fabrication is required.

Let’s just keep one thing in mind about biometrics.  We’re talking about identification, not authentication. If, as a society, we ever decide to rely solely on biometrics for authentication, we will have an epidemic of identity theft.  You can easily come up with a new password, completely independent of your identity. There’s no practical way to change your biometric data.

Say we live in a society that relies on biometrics for authentication to sensitive resources, and a criminal does actually steal your biometric data, they could wreak absolute havoc in your life.  Since you can’t change it, more and more criminals could use your identity as your biometric hash spreads thru the underground networks, the way social security numbers do today.

Let me tell you, identity theft is real.  I once got a phone bill for over $1000 due to identity theft.  Took me 6 months to clear that mess up.  Passwords are a pain but a strong password is the only thing standing between you and having your phone disconnected over fraudulent charges.

Also if you don’t have one, you should get a paper shredder.

A U.S. Biometrics Agency

FAS Secrecy News
March 29th, 2010 by Steven Aftergood

As of last week, there is now a U.S. Government national security agency called the Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA).  It supersedes a Biometrics Task Force that was established in 2000.

Though nominally a component of the Army, the biometrics agency has Defense Department-wide responsibilities.

“The Biometrics Identity Management Agency leads Department of Defense activities to prioritize, integrate, and synchronize biometrics technologies and capabilities and to manage the Department of Defense’s authoritative biometrics database to support the National Security Strategy,” according to a March 23 Order (pdf) issued by Army Secretary John M. McHugh that redesignated the previous Biometrics Task Force as the BIMA.

Biometrics is generally defined as “a measurable biological (anatomical and physiological) [or] behavioral characteristic that can be used for automated recognition.”

“Biometric data [are] normally unclassified,” according to a 2008 DoD directive (pdf).  “However, elements of the contextual data, information associated with biometric collection, and/or associated intelligence analysis may be classified.”

“Biometrics-enabled Intelligence [refers to] intelligence information associated with and or derived from biometrics data that matches a specific person or unknown identity to a place, activity, device, component, or weapon that supports terrorist / insurgent network and related pattern analysis, facilitates high value individual targeting, reveals movement patterns, and confirms claimed identity.”

“Biometrics is an important enabler that shall be fully integrated into the conduct of DoD activities to support the full range of military operations,” the 2008 directive stated.

“Every day thousands of [biometric] records are collected and sent to the Department of Defense (DOD) Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) to store and compare against existing records,” a 2009 DoD report (pdf) said. “The technology is improving such that a submission from theater [e.g., in Afghanistan] can be searched in the DOD ABIS and a response sent back to theater in less than two minutes.”

“Realtime positive identification of persons of interest enables Coalition forces to target, track, and prosecute known or potential adversaries,” the DoD report said.