An SPP/NAU update ..

Introductory Comment by Connie Fogal, leader, CAP/PAC

The REAL ID practice is coming to birth in various Canadian provinces as a
result of federal and provincial commitment to a North A merican integration
under provincial buy in to the 2001 Smart Border Declaration and the 2005
Security and Prosperty Partnership Agreement. The new liberty stripping
identification is being slipped into Canadian drivers' licenses incrementally
in various provinces without a peep of dissent from media or any provincial or
federal opposition parties.

The best the NDP and the Greens have mustered to date in opposition to the
integration of North America is to work for renegotiation on NAFTA ( a uselss
and deceptive action). They are totally silent on the police state apparatus
coming into effect (of which biometric identifiers in drivers' licenses is one
part).

They are silent on the attack on Canadian liberty by our antiterrorist act,
and they refuse to acknowledge the deliberate stifling of dissent by that
act,and they refuse to expose the real role of the September 11, 2001
explosions in three New York buildings one of which was never hit by a plane as
being the justification for the deliberate ultimate elimination of free
citizenry under a police state apparatus.

At least in the USA there are some elected forces who can read and who
understand the writing on the wall, and who still have the jam to defend their
people.

Connie Fogal, leader CAP/PAC

CANADIAN ACTION PARTY/PARTI ACTION CANADIENNE
Subject: Fw: Homeland Security blinks on Real ID



http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9909928-38.html?tag=nefd.lede
April 2, 2008 6:52 PM PDT

Homeland Security blinks on Real ID: No hassles on May 11

WASHINGTON--In the long-running Real ID staring match, the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security ended up being the first to blink.

Homeland Security announced Wednesday that all 50 states and the District of
Columbia will be technically Real ID-compliant by the May 11, 2008 deadline--
even though many states actually have rejected the concept and have zero plans
to embrace a national ID card.

This means Americans will face no new hassles when using their drivers licenses
to enter federal buildings or fly on airplanes starting on May 11. That's a
good thing.

But the way this turned out is so odd it's worth repeating. States including
New Hampshire, Maine, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Washington, and Montana have
enacted laws saying "hell no we'll never comply with Real ID." And Homeland
Security officials carefully ignored those public votes of condemnation,
instead pretending that those states really intend to acquiesce by the next
major deadline of December 31, 2009. (See our special report on Real ID from
earlier this year.)

"Now they've got 18 months to actually finish the process of being able to
issue the cards that will meet the requirements," Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff told a small group of reporters and bloggers here on
Wednesday. "We will have to watch this because the one thing that will be
important is for a state not to be dilatory in completing the process."

That may have been a more serious threat a few years ago, when Chertoff was
beginning his defense of the Real ID Act, which became law as part of a must-
pass tsunami relief and Iraq emergency appropriations bill in 2005.

Now, however, state officials realize that Homeland Security is more likely to
back down than not. The first sign of this came when the agency decided to
treat a request for an extension past May 11 as a formal agreement to comply
with all Real ID rules. The second came when Homeland Security retreated to its
fallback position: even a symbolic gesture on the part of a governor amounted
to full compliance.

A good example of this dynamic is what happened in the last few days involving
Maine, a state that has rejected Real ID in no uncertain terms, and was the
only will-have-trouble-at-airports state as of this morning. Its legislation
approved last year says that it "refuses to implement the Real ID Act and
thereby protest the treatment by Congress and the president of the states as
agents of the federal government."

Maine nevertheless asked the feds not to penalize its travelers. Stewart Baker,
Homeland Security assistant secretary for policy, replied in a letter that if
Maine "is prepared to commit" to embracing Real ID by 5 p.m. on April 2, "we
will grant an extension conditioned upon performance of these commitments."
(The commitments Baker requested include using a Homeland Security identity
verification system, using facial recognition technology so someone can't get
two licenses, and so on.)

In response, Gov. John Baldacci, a Democrat, wrote back to Baker saying in
part:

I will seek legislation to halt Maine's current practice of issuing licenses
to those not present lawfully in the United States.

I will submit legislation, which includes a funding source and
appropriations, that will adopt three changes in Maine's licensing processes:

Maine will enter into an agreement with USCIS and utilize the Systematic
Alien Verification for Entitlements Program to verify DHS documents presented
by non-citizens.

Maine will begin capturing and maintaining photographs of each individual
applying for a license or state identification card, even if no license is
issued.

It worked. Maine got a green check mark, and its licenses will continue to be
valid for federal purposes after May 11--even though Baldacci was, for the most
part, merely promising to introduce legislation. And the Maine legislators, who
soundly rebuked the Bush administration by nearly unanimous votes last year,
will be the ones to vote on it.

Last month, Montana took a similar approach. Its governor, Brian Schweitzer, a
Democrat, has repeatedly denounced Real ID and even called on his counterparts
(PDF) in other states to oppose it. But Homeland Security dutifully accepted a
relatively hostile letter from Schweitzer--saying he will never "authorize
implementation of the Real ID Act"--as good enough.

Now that the May 11 deadline has become effectively meaningless, the next major
deadline is December 31, 2009, at which point Homeland Security currently says
it will require "certification that the state has achieved the benchmarks set
forth in the Material Compliance Checklist."

In political terms, that's a long time--and a new presidential administration--
away. Some opponents of Real ID are already predicting that no state will
actually comply with the deadline, or, alternatively, the next administration
will find a way to quietly dispose of Real ID without much fanfare.

"DHS is not in power here," said Jim Harper, the director of information policy
studies at the free-market Cato Institute. "The states are in power. DHS has
done all it could, but from a position of weakness...DHS put the best face it
could on its capitulation to states with backbone. A lot more states will
recognize that they own this issue, they control this debate."

News.com's Anne Broache contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

Another beautiful Jay Rockefeller plan hit the front page of CNN ..

FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping


FBI expected to award $1 billion contract to help collect data on people
Privacy advocate says it's the first step toward a "surveillance society"
FBI says it's needed to help track terrorists and other criminals
Palm prints and optical eye scans likely to become more common

CLARKSBURG, West Virginia (CNN) -- The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people's physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI wants to use eye scans, combined with other data, to help identify suspects. But it's an issue that raises major privacy concerns -- what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans. The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information -- from palm prints to eye scans. Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is "important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in."

But it's unnerving to privacy experts. "It's the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Project. The FBI already has 55 million sets of fingerprints on file. In coming years, the bureau wants to compare palm prints, scars and tattoos, iris eye patterns, and facial shapes. The idea is to combine various pieces of biometric information to positively identify a potential suspect.

A lot will depend on how quickly technology is perfected, according to Thomas Bush, the FBI official in charge of the Clarksburg, West Virginia, facility where the FBI houses its current fingerprint database. "Fingerprints will still be the big player," Bush, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, told CNN. But he added,

"Whatever the biometric that comes down the road, we need to be able to plug that in and play."

First up, he said, are palm prints. The FBI has already begun collecting images and hopes to soon use these as an additional means of making identifications. Countries that are already using such images find 20 percent of their positive matches come from latent palm prints left at crime scenes, the FBI's Bush said.

The FBI has also started collecting mug shots and pictures of scars and tattoos. These images are being stored for now as the technology is fine-tuned. All of the FBI's biometric data is stored on computers 30-feet underground in the Clarksburg facility. In addition, the FBI could soon start comparing people's eyes -- specifically the iris, or the colored part of an eye -- as part of its new biometrics program called Next Generation Identification. Nearby, at West Virginia University's Center for Identification Technology Research, researchers are already testing some of these technologies that will ultimately be used by the FBI. "

The best increase in accuracy will come from fusing different biometrics together,"

said Bojan Cukic, the co-director of the center.

But while law enforcement officials are excited about the possibilities of these new technologies, privacy advocates are upset the FBI will be collecting so much personal information. "People who don't think mistakes are going to be made I don't think fly enough," said Steinhardt. He said thousands of mistakes have been made with the use of the so-called no-fly lists at airports -- and that giving law enforcement widespread data collection techniques should cause major privacy alarms.

"There are real consequences to people,"

Steinhardt said. You don't have to be a criminal or a terrorist to be checked against the database. More than 55 percent of the checks the FBI runs involve criminal background checks for people applying for sensitive jobs in government or jobs working with vulnerable people such as children and the elderly, according to the FBI.

The FBI says it hasn't been saving the fingerprints for those checks, but that may change. The FBI plans a so-called "rap-back" service in which an employer could ask the FBI to keep the prints for an employee on file and let the employer know if the person ever has a brush with the law. The FBI says it will first have to clear hurdles with state privacy laws, and people would have to sign waivers allowing their information to be kept. Critics say people are being forced to give up too much personal information. But Lawrence Hornak, the co-director of the research center at West Virginia University, said it could actually enhance people's privacy. "It allows you to project your identity as being you," said Hornak. "And it allows people to avoid identity theft, things of that nature." There remains the question of how reliable these new biometric technologies will be. A 2006 German study looking at facial recognition in a crowded train station found successful matches could be made 60 percent of the time during the day. But when lighting conditions worsened at night, the results shrank to a success rate of 10 to 20 percent.

As work on these technologies continues, researchers are quick to admit what's proven to be the most accurate so far. "Iris technology is perceived today, together with fingerprints, to be the most accurate," said Cukic. But in the future all kinds of methods may be employed. Some researchers are looking at the way people walk as a possible additional means of identification. The FBI says it will protect all this personal data and only collect information on criminals and those seeking sensitive jobs. The ACLU's Steinhardt doesn't believe it will stop there.

"This had started out being a program to track or identify criminals," he said. "

Now we're talking about large swaths of the population -- workers, volunteers in youth programs. Eventually, it's going to be everybody."

George Orwell rolls over in his grave ...

The Daily Kos has run a very detailed look at :

Michael Jackson (DHS): "Some good has come of 9/11". I'm prompted to repost it because of a front-page story in today's WaPo; the report describes how the DHS keeps Orwellian records on travelers at home and abroad (see the diary by catfishkatfish). The DHS program I discuss here, "US-VISIT", is especially worrying because it appears to have few Congressional critics.

It ends with THIS kicker:

On this score, it's disturbing to find that Michael Chertoff still pressing for the introduction of special passport-like identification cards for Americans traveling to Canada and Mexico. It's doubly worrying that Chertoff declined to say whether or not he wants those ID cards to incorporate RFID chips—which would make it easy to track the movement of citizens at home and abroad

You can read the whole piece at the link (and you might find it unsettling if you DO). You can bet anyone who thinks that they are on the no fly list (or worse) who finds out about this article, will be reading it!!

US-VISIT:

Another Orwellian Homeland Security program