"Ready Lane" pilot debuts RFID speed pass @ TX border

Security concerns for IDs with microchips New ‘Ready Lanes’ incentive for border crossers

c/o El Paso Times

It’s been a week since the launch of the “Ready Lane” pilot program, an experiment to expedite traffic at the Ysleta-Zaragosa International Bridge.

The special lanes are for drivers whose travel documents come equipped with high-tech Radio Frequency Identification chips.

So far, border officials are pleased with the results. They say around 30 percent of the vehicles that cross the bridge every day now use the two reserved lanes.

“I do believe this is the way of the future,” said William Molaski, Customs and Border Protection port director in El Paso.

In a way, the “Ready Lane” program is an incentive for people to update their travel documents and comply with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, a federal mandate to strengthen border security and expedite international travel by standardizing authorized documents.

But as the U.S. government pushes for wider adoption of the new RFID-enabled documents, privacy advocates and computer security experts remain uneasy about the technology.

“The problem with RFID is that it can be queried surreptitiously without your consent. That’s the basic problem,” said Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert that has researched RFID vulnerabilities. “I think (RFID-equipped documents) are a bad idea, but nobody asked me.”

:::MORE HERE:::

RELATED NEWS:

Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative compliance under scrutiny by Real ID lobbyist, Janice Kephart

Happy Holidays from BeatTheChip

BTC - We are a couple of days off for the Holiday Season.   Lets show you some really cool gift items; which are actually good at any time into the New Year.

http://www.zazzle.com/orwell_1984_hat_embroidered_hat-233550593182550611

Here's a really cool hat. 

Here's a really cool book by Gene Healy. It should prove useful as a Libertarian counterpunch, because a bunch of uppity Chicago people are going to try our patience in the new year.

Here's another really super cool book from a Green perspective, by David Swanson.
You can buy it at 7 Stories  Press.

There is an awesome *free* new weight loss plan I'm trying out myself in January.

You can get yours @ Witness Against Torture online under FAST FOR JUSTICE.
Fast is just "fats" reorganized.  Think about it.

Please have some much earned decompression time to think about other things that really matter (family, love, staying warm & fed) and things that don't matter at all (toys, snowfights, sledding, SeaWorld).

When the RFID market propaganda moves in on the Aussies

"People aren't very interested in it any more. It's done now. It's more just an easability [sic] thing. You go up, you swipe, you open. Essentially when I take the dog for a walk I don't have to take the keys with me."- Mr. Joe Wooler,  an Aussie walking about with an RFID chip embedded in his flesh.

(Did we just BEAT THE CHIP?) 

BTC-  Every now and then the internal chipping market for RFIDs will turn up in a PR piece.  Usually it's a feature of a hip, young individual adopting an embeddable RFID chip for streamlined convenience and ease of operability.  This spotlight perspective might be that digital privacy is a thing of the past and that "privacy is dead" so why not let technology work for you?

Such is the case of Joe Wooler, Aussie, tech patsy and convenience dupe who made headlines by adding RFID into the folds of his skin and his lifestyle.

You can imagine most everyone else just thought injecting a rice sized microchip into your arm was an oddity until a few underground documentaries, like Zeitgeist,  hitched the internalized RFID to an economics wagon, the panopticon and the dark prospect of global governance.  The US the market for the rice sized chip sunk like a lead Zepplin after Contemporary Christian culture found its placement consistent with "the mark of the beast".

Mark of the beast?

How about mark of Fluffy or Whiskers? A lot of people inject RFID microchips into their animals so they can be found.  It's not the greatest prospect for the animals' health.  They have been linked to cause cancer in dogs.  It may not be the best for human use.

One of the strongest outcriers worldwide against digitizing parts of the human body and of synthetic humanity is an Australian public interest group called We The People Will Not Be Chipped. They released a well researched documentary on IBM's role in fostering Verichip's multiple rebrandings and other nefarious prospects on embeddable chips called One Mainframe to Rule Them All.

More people are becoming wise to the mobb of passive electronic tracking available due to the internet and other mobile devices.  Our argument is that our biology hasn't caught up to our capacity for advanced technology.   Social networking is really pushing boundaries of respectable concealment.   There's something to be said for the matriarchs and patriarchs of Internet culture using Anonymity masks and pseudonyms.  These are inventive charachters close to the genesis of successive, evolving technologies.  Their wisdom should not be discarded due to government or technological trends.

Plenty of people still may not know or be aware of the dangers they face in losing their privacy c/o RFID technology.

Until then, this blog and hundreds of independent, successive campaigns will sustain a mission to inform the public about the dangers of a comprehensive digital dragnet for the identified person.

REDUX: Comfort and JOY as TSA gets an audit for Christmas!

Here is second life for news that matters:

Appeals Court Holds that Email Privacy Protected by Fourth Amendment 

FBI defends raids on Texas data centers

DHS Seized Domains Based On Bad Evidence

WMATA bag searches make transit less safe, not more
+ "Dragnet Searches on DC Transit Prompt Local Advocates to Mobilize"

Auditors question TSA's use of and spending on technology

Net Neutrality passes with FCC regs

Article 13 and PFC Bradley Manning

"PFC Bradley Manning, unlike his civilian counterpart, is afforded no civil remedy for illegal restraint under either the Federal Civil Rights Act or the Federal Tort Claims Act."

DIY GOVERNMENT:

Downsize D.C. Now that Real ID's hubs have been defunded, let's REPEAL REAL ID!!

EFF's Constructive Direct Action Against Censorship

Bank of America's whistleblowers need you to volley for more protections

Co.UK: Scrapping ID cards "a momentous step"

"The ID card was launched with fantastic claims about supposed benefits. In truth, it represented the worst of government. The first duty of government is to ensure its citizens are protected, but ID cards could never have done that. They would have been a distraction from the real work that needs to be done in countering terrorism, illegal immigration or benefit fraud." 

- Damian Green, GUARDIAN Co.uk

:::MORE HERE:::

NO2ID statement on the Royal Assent to the Identity Documents Act 2010

Issued c/o NO2ID's Phil Booth

NO2ID is, of course, glad to see with the passing of the Identity Documents Bill the death of the ID Cards scheme and the monstrous National Identity Register that it created.


However, while NO2ID welcomes evidence that all copies of the Register are being destroyed, powers retained from the original Identity Cards Act still allow the Home Secretary to potentially enact the same enforced data-sharing across government that NO2ID has campaigned against from the beginning *. To dismantle the ID Cards scheme but leave powers it rested upon in place leaves the people of Britain vulnerable to a resurrection of the scheme.

Also, with biometric identity cards for the UK now a thing of the past, it is a shame that residents and workers from outside the EEA must undergo the same experience and are being used to justify the continued existence of much of the technical infrastructure of ID cards: the Biometric Residence Permit ** remains in place, unchanged. Do the principles that led to the scrapping of ID cards for EU citizens not apply to those other legal residents?


This partial abolition is an excellent first step, but the Government should now take the courage to override the deep laid bureaucratic plans, and finish the job. NO2ID will not stop until the database state powers that would allow mass surveillance and official trafficking in personal information are erased for good.”

*[To wit, the enforced sharing of your full name and any other names by which you are or have been known; your gender; your date and place of birth; your biometrics (which could still include your fingerprints); the address of your principal place of residence in the United Kingdom; the address of every other place in the UK or elsewhere where you have a place of residence; the times at which you were resident at different places in the UK or elsewhere; your current residential status and all previous residential statuses; information about numbers allocated to you for identification purposes and about the documents to which they relate - which could mean your driving licence, National Insurance or even your NHS number. We note the latter was specifically *excluded* from the 2006 Act.]

**Variously billed by the Home Office as "ID cards for foreigners" as if it were part of the National Identity Scheme, but in fact introduced under the UK Borders Act 2007. 

REDUX: Loss of Privacy = New Favorite Blog

BTC - This is exactly why I love the INTERNET.  Please check out my new favorite blog Loss Of Privacy on Paper Li.

I totally poached this irresistible YouTube Wikileaks coverage from Loss Of Privacy.  You should also check out Ryan Calo's interview on REVOLUTION with Brian Solis, if you stop over. Leave it to the backpackers to make a statement.



Here is second life for news that matters:

WaPo: Monitoring America

Wikileaks gets its own app

TSA X-ray's fully loaded gun, allows .40 caliber PISTOL on domestic flight 

Godzilla government vs. Rep. Rush over NetNeutrality


MEDIA: Congress determining journalistic license on their own

"And now, a story that shows how incestuous, compromised and internally conflicted the world of defense information is" — including WIRED's Dangeroom blog.

The torture of Brad Manning

BTC - We deserve better.  The armed service members in this country deserve better.  However- the sad truth is that Pvt. Bradley Manning is experiencing the US institution of torture and rendition consistent with being classified as a "terrorist".

This is what the United States military has been reduced to: extorting us towards crushing debt to pay for torture and incarceration of our own citizens when THEY TELL THE TRUTH.

Be reminded, we may demand a different standard than, "shut up, lay down and take it without making any noise".

Daniel Ellsberg, a pioneer in the art of the leak led a revolution in public awareness.  This was before news organizations were infiltrated by cold war era military plants.

It's all we can do to to just stay dedicated to blowing the whistle; until The People come down like rain on the worst form of  governance in our name in US history.

Without further ado, Mr. Daniel Ellsberg, says it again.





Try to stay sane.  DO SOMETHING!

RELATED NEWS:

Assange out on bail, stayed in London with limited freedoms

CSPAN Coverage of Wikileaks, The Espionage Act & The Constitution