States, advocates wrestle identity taxation without adequate representation

A trend to push conservative civil libertarians towards Democratic representation is evolving for challengers of the national identity agenda. The trend affects states who endorse the surveillance industrial complex and whose interests create competition among Republicans maintaining career partisan allegiances. Opposing the Real ID card program has an ability to create division amongst Republicans, the weaker party among Legislative, Judicial and Executive branches.

North Carolina identity activist Jim Palmer of NCard.info was asked by Rep. Mitch Gillespie (R) to seek support on the anti-Real ID effort from state level Democrats.

"Mitch Gillespie is so unconcerned, he is willing let all of our personal and private data be put into a centralized database including our biometric facial features that can and will be hacked. Since 2005, over 263 million personal records have been breached," said Palmer whose back and forth with Rep. Gillespie resulted in his dropping the issue via e-mail.

Gillespie's retort was telling about the balances of power currently dominated by Democrats.

"This thinking shows you don't understand anything about the political process. I will remove you from my contacts. You need to contact Sen. Queen in the future, " said Gillespie, who later quailed " ..maybe a democrat will get elected."

The fight to secure drivers licenses in North Carolina has been visceral. There are at least 2 North Carolina grassroots organizations that are single issue focused on Real ID and identity surveillance. It does seem like the North Carolina Democrats took up opposition to the national ID issue so that any worthwhile legislative effort would be sure to drop dead. Earlier this year, Rep. Cole adopted NCard's trusts, stringing them along. In the end Cole was found stalling, using his "support" as a placeholder for representation during the legislative session.

Economic development dominates legislative concerns in a state with one of the highest unemployment rates of the nation. An immigration reform carrot holds less sway with North Carolina's citizens than it would in a border state like Texas, where an Enhanced Drivers License seems more pragmatic. Economic leverage from banking interests and local unemployment rates propel the difference.

BIOMETRICS, IDENTITY FRAUD & LOCAL MOTOR VEHICLE DIVISIONS

Palmer claims national financial pressures have created a spike of internal DMV fraud. Fraudulent activity may seem like a way to pay down debts and stay afloat in a time of high unemployment for some.

"As the economy worsens, DMV employees around the country are getting tempted from offers of $250 – $1500 for a fake id. Some have gone as far as changing the information on an existing license such as image, height and weight. So much for biometrics helping in cases like that and it opens the door for those named on the license for id theft,"says Palmer.

Biometrics and drivers license divisions seem to have a simpatico relationship. Some claim biometrics actually help stop immigrant identity fraud. However, those opposed to the current Real ID program believe border fence and corrupt anti-immigration advocates are creating false solutions to real problems in order to keep the broken system in place. The benefits of dirt-cheap wage labor, without the fuss of human rights or health insurance benefits, maintains local profitability for businesses. The same businesses who rely on current immigration trends to just stay afloat. If that makes the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative's demand for pro-biometrics propaganda look good, that's what gets in the mainstream news.

With so much to lose, key political challengers become targets for media hit pieces.

TROUBLED CHAMPIONS IN THE CAROLINAS

While Anti-Real ID representation is getting the cold shoulder from some state level Republicans, transpartisan national champions of the anti-Real ID effort appear to have been targeted for smears in the Carolinas.

North Carolina Senator John Edwards (D) opposed the national ID card program. After a presidential bid in 2008, it became apparent he had more power in Washington and nationally than the local bankster cronies running North Carolina. It is no accident that he has been weakened politically by media sharks who continue to call up an outed affair.

For those with open eyes - politicians are known to have numerous dalliances, sometimes deviant sex, with anyone from prostitutes to government aides if they allow self delusion to set in. Sexual indiscretion and power are potent cocktails for anyone who assumes a lot of responsibility. The stage is perpetually set for political entrapment. When it's no longer expedient to keep each other's secrets, indiscretion is political capital. Threat of ruin is a threat of force.

As part of the 2008 post-election coverage, the press refreshed Edwards' outed affair as news. Edwards became the target for a media campaign feeding frenzy. It is our assessment that the North Carolina Senator provoked a political enemy enough to convene with a smear campaign. If the only obstacle to material compliance in North Carolina on a federal ID card program was Senator John Edwards, opponents might have found a way to ground him.

The problem with politicians today is they have no moral high ground left. They do what they want, have political opponents assassinated, employ lawyers to uphold thinly veiled double standards between themselves and the public and allow the corporations to shot call in their offices. Even the idealists believe U.S. politicians are little more than mobsters with a good haircut. It's low living at the highest levels of power. This is why every 2-4 years you have a chance to elect someone different.

Case in point, Jim Palmer asserted that North Carolinians who care about their identity have an opportunity to elect someone who stands strong on the issues other than Mitch Gillespie regardless of party.

In 2009, extramarital affairs do not oust people from elected positions. What does oust the "monogamy-challenged" is public funding of private indiscretion and further entrapment by the press. This is currently consistent with the media beating conservative Governor Mark Sanford is sustaining after the outing of his affair. At last report, Sanford had returned the money.

Smear campaigns are the last line of fire before all out floor skirmishes take place over controversial issues, such as national identity. We, the people, have representation from elected officials who are corruptable, human and sometimes too politically weak to take up the charge. If there is no one left qualified to represent us, the dedicated must persist in finding someone who will represent them.

North Carolina private identity advocate Jim Palmer is doing just that.

"[It's been] another Session with Mitch [Gillespie] ignoring the voice of We the People. Perhaps he won’t be reelected. My fingers are crossed. My emails are being sent out across the district."

One Crime solved per 1,000 UK surveillance cameras

BTC - On the student drag close to where I live, new cameras are sitting on top of street lights. They don't even try to conceal it with aesthetics. It's like being in the presence of an aggressive cockroach guarding the garbage. An immediate reflex is to shriek and then try to find a way to kill it (the cameras).

Here's more from Scott Henson's, of Grit's for Breakfast.

I've argued many times before that surveillance cameras in public spaces provide little crime fighting bang for the buck, often citing Britain's example. Now out of the UK comes this news, via the BBC, showing how little crime fighting benefit that nation has seen from its massive investment in CCTV:

Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed.

The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.

In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers.

David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: "It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent."

The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV

He added: "CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness.

"It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.

US cities investing in public video surveillance should take heed of this new report. Proponents of CCTV often admit that cameras don't reduce crime, but instead argue that they help solve them after the fact. But Britain's example shows that's not true, either. In that light, there's little sense in throwing good money after bad to follow the Brits' lead. In a tight budgetary environment, cities should shelve CCTV programs and shift resources toward priorities that measurably affect crime.

Continuity of Government and a 2012 film

Fiction based on actual policy based on occult science seems to be the stuff of Daniel Pinchbeck's 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl or from the upcoming film 2012.

You may have seen an advertisement on TV recently for the Institute for Human Continuity, which strikingly mimics current wheels of underground government disaster planning.

An obscure but a very real shadow government was created in the 1970's to carry on human existence based on nuclear and apocalyptic disaster planning. It is known simply as Continuity of Government or COG .

So, who cares about public governance if the world cracks in half? Some of the people who seem to care the most have worked for Haliburton, Lockheed Martin, KBR and are eugenics propulsion leagues who believe that to do a better job of living with themselves now, people who aren't them need to die.. like yesterday. Whoever is left- and left in charge - gets to rule the world. That is COG and your shadow government.

The buying and selling of goods to keep COG mongols, like Dick Cheney, in both money and power are dependent on 2 things: an actual disaster and the threat of an actual disaster. For example, H1N1 is known as "swine flu", but the vaccines are pork barrel derived. The World Health Organization projects whopping numbers of people contracting the disease. Most of them essentially staying home in bed with soup and sickness. Pork flu actually targets minorities in poorer communities so it won't be affecting robust white men in affluent financial districts. Even if it did, they wouldn't be the ones dying; just women, children and brown folks. H1N1 vaccine profiteers achieve COG approved commerce by substantiating a pandemic disaster and preparations for the threat of a pandemic disaster.

2012 awareness, intended or not, is now being connected with disaster consciousness, profit by destruction and the electronic larceny of an urban world. You are present in the midst of all of this: living, seeking knowledge, relating to family, finding love and purpose. As usual Washington and the federal government has their plan for what they want from you. Identity is a relevant and hot commodity for those in governance. It commands the power to create a situation of perpetual compromise for the individual.

Case in point, you are ill advised to trust the U.S. government with your identity on the auspices that they are trustworthy authorities during federal disasters. People miss the compassion and warmth naturally anticipated from their fellow man during times of federal disaster. Especially when they are met by the immediate occupancy of XE/Blackwater mercenaries handling domestic transit. I would prefer to drown in non-potable water than risk being mangled by a corporate military police temp with ZERO accountability for how they handle a civilian during a disaster. Ask those now living with the aftermath. After Katrina, bureaucrats lied and Americans died. Blackwater was on the scene manhandling locals.

In a life threatening situation, the 4th Amendment might as well be the Torah, and privacy a holy scroll. Nothings is more sacred than an individual's power to determine and establish their identity to themselves and others, as they deem necessary.

Identity cards have a property of smallness which lend to conditions of micromanagement. People tend to dispense identity like pez for bean counters at local WalMart in-store banks. [Which card was that?] The demand on that smallness turns and steers lives in controlling ways much like a bit in the mouth or a rudder on a boat. A practice test in personal liberty tolerances may be to live a few days without providing a plastic card for what you need to live. [Send reports of your experiences to beatthechip@gmail.com.]

It takes energy to moderate a liveable standard for *exactly* who you are. Everyday demands on your identity bring pressure tests to the limits of privacy. Machines have the ability to size you up in seconds and immediately deliver that information to an imperfect human being. When you lack control over who gets your information and how, it can be maddening.

The circuitous nature of mundane living doesn't add the call to think about what happens to the individual during dire situations of critical mass survival. The current pop-culture obsession with 2012's celebrated turnover of the Mayan calendar inspires these considerations to surface more often. The apocalypse itself has a lot of fans due to the collective suffering felt by so many people. End time believers need justification for their One True Path. The hope is that all suffering will end soon, including and especially one's personal suffering on December 31, 2012.

We wondered if it's any coincidence that the deadline for federal identity compliance benchmarks lands on December 31, 2009.

We fed a line of correspondence to Reality Sandwich's, Dan Pinchbeck to get a contrasting and potentially higher minded perspective about freedom, responsibility and identity if & when "the big machine" breaks. If he bites we will bring the story.

SNEAK PREVIEW: The gut tells me he isn't as concerned about FEMA as we are.

BORDER BEAT: Appropriations for Wall & Databases

<:: Crazy, evil, expensive & obsolete

border surveillance machine

Notes from Scott Nicol of

No Border Wall

Building More Border Walls is Not Effective Immigration Reform

The biggest news is that Congress is on the verge of approving more [appropriations for the Border Wall Fence]. The Senate version of the DHS appropriations bill has more (lots more!) border walls, while the House version does not. If it is not stripped in conference Boeing and Kiewit will be set to make billions of $ more. Ciro Rodriguez is on the conference committee, but it is hard to tell if he has the strength to stand up and demand that the Senate's wall-building amendment be stripped.

Also, thousands of pages of FOIA requested documents on the wall were released (heavily redacted) online. Check out governmentdocs.org.

From Scott Henson's

Grits for Breakfast

DPS spending millions on TDEX database while drivers license lines lengthen

$33 million for TDEX

Steve McCraw [BTC- McCraw is Texas Governor Perry's appointed DPS agency head; who is also Texas State head of DHS. No insider trading there, right?] also used the commission meeting to promote spending $4.1 million in asset forfeiture funds on the TDEX database - Texas' version of a Total Information Awareness intelligence system that's been one of the Governor's principle homeland security hobby horses. The $4.1 million makes up for a program shortfall experienced in the last biennium, said McCraw, who added that the Lege put up $12 million for the next biennium and the Governor's Criminal Justice Division would spend another $17 million in grants on the project for a total of $33 million over the next two years.

McCraw called TDEX a "great investment for our department," but Commissioner Carin Barth pointed out that spending money on TDEX meant the asset forfeiture money couldn't go for other priorities like Tasers and body armor. To this writer, $33 million seems like a lot of scratch for a database that's been highly controversial but which, to my knowledge, has never actually contributed to solving a criminal case.

By contrast, I'll bet $33 million would go a long way toward reducing delays at DPS' drivers license offices.[Or delays at the U.S. Mexican border - let's not beat around the Bush here.]

Chertoff Group escalates public-private surveillance profiteering

Chertoff boasts, "Among the six of us we pretty much have all of those things in DHS, in DOD, and the Department of Justice, law enforcement, and finally, in the intelligence community. So we have pretty much every element of homeland security covered."

Former Bush Security Chiefs Find Terrorism Obsession Can Be Profitable

Tom Barry | August 25, 2009

Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)

Contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are spewing billions of dollars into private industry, largely to companies that also rely on Pentagon military contracts. In this new variation of the military-industrial complex a new revolving door is now in full swing.

Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, the two Republican stalwarts who served as the first two Department of Homeland Security secretaries, are now busy attracting defense, homeland security, and intelligence contracts in the country's rapidly expanding high-tech security complex.

Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania governor who was appointed by President Bush to direct the newly created DHS, has parlayed his government service into a lucrative career in business since he stepped down as DHS chief in November 2004. Soon after leaving DHS, Tom Ridge became president and CEO of Ridge Global, a global strategic consulting firm. He also has joined numerous corporate boards and advisory groups, including major military and homeland security contractors. (See Box: Ridge's Post-DHS Security Businesses).

Chertoff Group Covers Homeland Security

Michael Chertoff, former secretary of the DHS, has taken his portfolio over to the private sector. Homeland security is business—an estimated $200 billion in annual revenues—and the newly formed Chertoff Group is seeking a major stake in this booming industry.

As the latest homeland security consulting firm, Chertoff Group will be competing with two other security companies formed by top Republican Party figures: Ashcroft Group founded by former Attorney General John Ashcroft; and Guiliani Group, formed by former New York City mayor and presidential candidate Rudolf Guiliani. Although not specifically focused on homeland security, Ridge Global, formed by the first DHS secretary Tom Ridge, also has a piece of the expanding global security industry.

Chertoff Group describes itself as "a security and risk management advisory firm that counsels corporate and government clients addressing threats related to terrorism, fraud, cyber security, border protection, and supply chain security."

The Chertoff Group has a leg up on its competitors. The revolving door between government and industry has brought a half-dozen former high government officials of the Bush administration into the Chertoff Group.

Not only does it count on the political and business connections of Chertoff, the new firm has a roster of five other former government officials that can translate government experience and inside information into lucrative industry contracts.

Chertoff boasts, "Among the six of us we pretty much have all of those things in DHS, in DOD, and the Department of Justice, law enforcement, and finally, in the intelligence community. So we have pretty much every element of homeland security covered."

::: MORE HERE:::

Former Delaware State CIO and Cabinet Secretary Joins LexisNexis Special Services Inc.

BTC - Lexis Nexis is reputedly the TSA's data aggregate of choice. Who is running it makes a difference. I smell .. BIDEN.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LexisNexis® Special Services Inc. announced that Thomas Jarrett, the state of Delaware’s first Chief Information Officer (CIO) and a former Vice President and President of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), has joined the company as Director of Business Development. Mr. Jarrett will be responsible for helping LexisNexis Special Services Inc (“LNSSI”) market solutions that leverage public records data and advanced analytics technology to enhance the abilities of state and local law enforcement, revenue and social services agencies.

India's Brahman Call for national DNA biometrics

c/o FRONTLINE India

A national DNA databank can help an investigator handling a blind crime, but human rights concerns and a huge backlog of cases are major hurdles.

A recent case in the U.S. highlights how a well-managed national DNA databank can come to the rescue of an investigator handling an otherwise blind crime. It relates to the disappearance of Laura Garza, a 25-year-old Brooklyn woman, in December 2008. (According to a MySpace notice, she is yet to be traced.) She was last seen alive in the company of one Michael Mele (23), who was arrested a few days after Laura went missing for an entirely unrelated offence of lewd sexual behaviour in public and in the immediate presence of a child. Mele was found to have a criminal record for sexual deviance, and traces of DNA picked up from his car (in which he travelled with Laura) and the damaged carpet of his house cooked his goose. Laura or her remains, if Mele did murder her, are yet to be traced. But all evidence points to Mele’s participation in the episode. There are any number of such clueless cases having been solved by the police in many parts of the world, and courts have been convinced with the DNA evidence adduced by the prosecution.

However, two major problems make the use of DNA evidence a tortuous exercise: a huge backlog of cases awaiting laboratory results and human rights concerns of the ever-enlarging DNA databases. In these days of extreme mobility, it does not make sense to construct and manage a narrow database of only local criminals and suspects.

Both the U.K. and the U.S. have nationwide databases of DNA profiles, in addition to local ones. Notwithstanding India’s population of more than a billion, it seems expedient to attempt such a database in India. Nandan Nilekani’s Unique ID number project can possibly throw up ideas for the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for designing a national DNA database. :::MORE HERE:::

PTI

Media gauntlet on POTUS privacy puts Obama in the hotseat

BTC - The POTUS does not have privacy. The Washington Post has made it a point to expose Obama's every move through a widespread national database virulently available to ...anyone.

How's that for pressure? My thought here is that maybe the Post's database will go away if the federal Government can find a way to keep that from happening to us. I have a suggestion: REPEAL THE REAL ID ACT.

As I have said in the past, the American people do not share the benefits, the immunity or the power of the United States Presidency or of elected officials. We need the dignity of our privacy.

Is having stalkers cool?

It's disturbing and creepy. If someone we knew were singling us out this way, we would go get a court order to restrain them for such behavior. Why the hell should we tolerate it from our government, whatever their excuse is?

Indiana may be eating the chip...

Big article in the Courier-Journal.com

INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Mitch Daniels last week announced changes in the state's new driver's license policy, which goes into effect Jan. 1 and is meant to bring Indiana into compliance with the federal Real ID law.

Under the previously announced policy, all Hoosiers seeking a driver's license or state identification card would be required to meet the federal Secure ID standards. But Bureau of Motor Vehicle spokesman Dennis Rosebrough said there were some objections to the new policy, so the BMV made some changes. ::MORE::

National ID & Health Care Rhetoric

For those who are, and have been concerned, about the truth about a National ID and healthcare, CQ Politics has gone to ask the tough questions about what's REALLY in the bill.

Vetting the Health Care Rhetoric

Claim: The government would have "real-time access" to individual bank accounts and create a "national ID health card."

Source: Conservative groups opposed to the Democrats' health care overhaul have asserted this in chain e-mails and at rallies across the country. Many claims emanate from the Family Security Matters Web publication.

FALSE. A section of the bill would require insurers to make it easier for patients to calculate the cost of their care by providing information about the prices of treatments in the doctor's office. The House bill also would allow — but not require — insurers to issue patients a "machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card," similar to the insurance cards most people with coverage already carry. The card would not be issued by the government.