Friday, February 4, 2011

Superbowl attendees subject to advanced pat-downs, e-surveillance

c/o Blacklisted News

Waking Up Orwell multimedia blog will emerge from BeatTheChip.org

Blog opts to continue as darker, more expansive dystopian news foray, Waking Up Orwell

BTC -  New media developments continue outside of BeatTheChip.org.   Plans to merge breaking news of national identity found on BeatTheChip.org will soon become part of another blog, Waking Up Orwell. Waking Up Orwell will continue to cover a wider variety of blog topics such as: corporate and government privacy violations, police brutality, surveillance abuses and national-to-international cybersecurity power grabs.  The transition is an attempt to keep the news direction relevant with or without a national identity angle.

"There's too much going on in the world.  BeatTheChip started as a narrow focused blog exclusively featuring news about Real ID and national identity developments.  Over three years, it's run over the scope; becoming more of a digital privacy and civil rights/civil liberties blog," said the site's main blogger, Sheila Dean.

Waking Up Orwell (WUO) was originally produced as a radio program covering a broader range of dystopian news originating from BeatTheChip.  WUO will continue as a multimedia focal point for a variety of coverage, including netcast productions and original writing.   WUO's radio production is rumored to resume in March of 2011 to the dismay of competition and Facebook.

"Yes, the one man show is getting the band back together,"said Dean who has endured censorship, online network hacks, treacherous hipster politics of community radio and the overarching news egos of broadcasting fat men to produce the program in the past.

Overall, the blog exhibits ambition to set about a more rounded news making standard for online users. Economic performance is grounding prospects for the new media launch.  WUO hopes to stay the course by monetizing the blog and program indefinitely.    However, safety nets are in place for  economic or programming woes.


"If things get bad, I'll just have to move back in with Blogger.com," said Dean.


For now twitter news feeds @BeatTheChip are now available at Waking Up Orwell Daily on paper.li.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

REVIEW: National Identification Systems, Essays in Opposition

Essay anthology gives context on the use, history of national identity conventions

BTC - The public is the constant witness of electronic data streaming 24/7 on the Internet. The next line of temptation for governments is to initiate power plays with cyber information and attempt to organize it into a convenient remote controlled system of rulership over the inidividual.

It may be that our base, human ethical ecology doesn’t have the bandwidth to assume such responsibility without successive, spontaneous revolutions happening. Social networking technology and the Internet are speeding up the natural process of a nation’s people dumping bad government and taking their power back. If we were to pen a verse text respecting sacred Internet cows and their boundaries, it might read like,
And ye shall know your despots by the manner they handle Internet users and their personal information.
A Wikileaks cable uncovered the role of Egyptian dictator Mosni Mubarak's role in allowing harbor for illegal torture of US rendered prisoners.  The last straw snapped for Egyptians when Mubarak interrupted mobile communications and the Internet. Mubarak opting for an aggressive Internet kill switch is more than simply grounding Egyptians without electronic amenity. His actions now define despotism to the generations.  The net was the last bastion for Egyptian freedom of speech. Civil unrest simply errupted from the cold space of the web directly onto the hot streets of Cairo. After that, the revolution was live in real time and the web caught up later.

Egyptians have endured 30 years of dictatorship rule and a normalized “state of emergency" status to control the people. Egyptian youth lately were seen flippantly displaying their national IDs and passports to televised media, demonstrating dissent, and bonafide evidence of an oppressive totalitarian government.

National Identification Systems: Essays in Oppositon, a heavily sourced 2004 essay anthology, has been astonishingly precognitive of the times we now live in. The text gives first gives historical context of what national identity articles have been used for and then delves into its current applications and the projected effects in public affairs. It would be a profoundly effective text for professors and adjuncts to use in curriculum about why and how national identity is used to capture and restrict power of the individual.

Here's an example of how the book illuminates current events. The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), a national digital authentication initiative, is moving ahead with hires for a national program office.  One essayist, Sunni Maravillosa, explores national identity authentication in society in the chapter titled, “National ID without Big Brother”.  After reading this, one might gather the purpose of the national program office is to provide government oversight or regulation to an existing organic national identity system designed for business.

Other important topics include the prospective use of nanotechnologies, microchips, biometric devices, computers and efforts to centralize digital data; which leads back to the identified person.

The anthology’s expository tour of government methods, history and social context is a comprehensive critical view of national identity systems in government. It is recommended reading for any identified person seeking the long view.

National Identification Systems: Essays in Opposition is available through McFarland publishing. [800-253-2187]

Remind anyone of the Real ID Act?

ALSO AVAILABLE from  McFarland
American Zombie Gothic, The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

REDUX: national ID news from Egypt, Africa, Japan and the EU

FROM EGYPT
"In a sign of their new-found confidence, many protesters held up their national ID cards or passports to news cameras, a show of bravery just days after police were detaining and raiding the homes of activists.
:::MORE FROM THE FINANCIAL TIMES HERE:::

Here is second life for news that matters. 
NORTH AMERICA
EUROPE

ASIA
On Japan's national ID number system proposal  --The government was to announce, possibly on Friday, a set of basic principles for the proposed introduction of a national identification number system as a means of tracking individual citizens' social security, income and asset information for welfare and taxation purposes.

Real ID hubs not yet defunded for 2011

BTC -  In a legislative recalculation, a proposal to retroactively defund appropriations for the Real ID hubs did not pass as previously anticipated, according to Jim Harper at the Cato Institute.

The defunding proposal was expected to pass as part of an annual budget bill drafted by Democrats before the 112th session commenced.  In an effort to fight overall budget expenditures, Republicans worked instead to pass a temporary spending measure over a year long budget.

Congress is expected to resume discussion of the annual budget in March.

Monday, January 31, 2011

Schneier on Real ID Implementation in 2011

"This might be the first government IT project ever that came in under initial cost estimates. Perhaps the reason is that the states did not want to implement REAL-ID in 2005, so they overstated the costs.


As to fraud reduction -- I'm not so sure. As the difficulty of getting a fraudulent ID increases, so does its value. I think we'll have to wait a while longer and see how criminals adapt."  - Bruce Schneier, Security technology expert 
:::MORE HERE::: 

Related News:

Transcript of DHS Secretary Napolitano's speech at George Washington University 

Idaho Nullification Effort Delayed, but Not Stopped

Sunday, January 30, 2011

REDUX: A STEP OVER THE LINE

BTC - Voting is not a matter of national security.  It's in your longterm interests to make sure it doesn't suddenly become an issue of national security.  I think that's how coups happen.

c/o Ken Bonner at The Daily Sentinel  on Real ID, NSTIC and the burgeoning surveillance state.
It’s not about party affiliation — it’s about control.
:::MORE HERE::: 

Here is second life for news that matters. 

Texas Senate passes GOP-backed voter ID bill

“This session we have real problems that require real leadership. The people of Texas want us to work on those issues, not focus on narrow, partisan games. Voter ID is not an emergency and should not be our first priority." 
- Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis in the Digital Journal  
"Why is Voter ID an emergency?" 

Why Texas is behaving so badly.