Senate Bill S510 Makes It illegal to Grow, Share, Trade or Sell Homegrown Food

Senate Bill S510 Makes It illegal to Grow, Share, Trade or Sell Homegrown Food

April 24, 2010

Food Freedom - Since the story first broke, a lot has happened. One reason for this could be that food is being poisoned. Collecting rainwater is now illegal in many states. Your intake is being controlled. For more information, visit the following articles as well:

Raiding organic food stores. A sign of new times?

Collecting rainwater now illegal in many states as Big Government claims ownership over our water

Why do people in America refuse to take active interest in their future?

S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US. It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.

“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.” ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower

It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during British rule, only S 510 extends control over all food in the US, violating the fundamental human right to food.

Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it passes. S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton introduced HACCP (Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Points) purportedly to deal with contamination in the meat industry. Clinton’s HACCP delighted the offending corporate (World Trade Organization “WTO”) meat packers since it allowed them to inspect themselves, eliminated thousands of local food processors (with no history of contamination), and centralized meat into their control. Monsanto promoted HACCP.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton, urged a powerful centralized food safety agency as part of her campaign for president. Her advisor was Mark Penn, CEO of Burson Marsteller, a giant PR firm representing Monsanto. Clinton lost, but Clinton friends such as Rosa DeLauro, whose husband’s firm lists Monsanto as a progressive client and globalization as an area of expertise, introduced early versions of S 510.

S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human survival grounds.

1. It puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, in the event of contamination or an ill-defined emergency. It resembles the Kissinger Plan.


2. It would end US sovereignty over its own food supply by insisting on compliance with the WTO, thus threatening national security. It would end the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1994, which put US sovereignty and US law under perfect protection. Instead, S 510 says:

   COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS

   Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.
   

3. It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into “the United States.” Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, “entry of food into the US” covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and “entering into” it by virtue of being produced.


4. It imposes Codex Alimentarius on the US, a global system of control over food. It allows the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the WTO to take control of every food on earth and remove access to natural food supplements. Its bizarre history and its expected impact in limiting access to adequate nutrition (while mandating GM food, GM animals, pesticides, hormones, irradiation of food, etc.) threatens all safe and organic food and health itself, since the world knows now it needs vitamins to survive, not just to treat illnesses.


5. It would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US, putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals, threatening US security. See Seeds – How to criminalize them, for more details.


6. It includes NAIS, an animal traceability program that threatens all small farmers and ranchers raising animals (see next story). The UN is participating through the WHO, FAO, WTO, and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in allowing mass slaughter of even heritage breeds of animals and without proof of disease. Biodiversity in farm animals is being wiped out to substitute genetically engineered animals on which corporations hold patents. Animal diseases can be falsely declared. S 510 includes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), despite its corrupt involvement in the H1N1 scandal, which is now said to have been concocted by the corporations.


7. It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening to do to all local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat production – put it in corporate hands and worsen food safety.


8. It deconstructs what is left of the American economy. It takes agriculture and food, which are the cornerstone of all economies, out of the hands of the citizenry, and puts them under the total control of multinational corporations influencing the UN, WHO, FAO and WTO, with HHS, and CDC, acting as agents, with Homeland Security as the enforcer. The chance to rebuild the economy based on farming, ranching, gardens, food production, natural health, and all the jobs, tools and connected occupations would be eliminated.


9. It would allow the government to mandate antibiotics, hormones, slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs. This would industrialize every farm in the US, eliminate local organic farming, greatly increase global warming from increased use of oil-based products and long-distance delivery of foods, and make food even more unsafe. The five items listed — the Five Pillars of Food Safety — are precisely the items in the food supply which are the primary source of its danger.


10. It uses food crimes as the entry into police state power and control. The bill postpones defining all the regulations to be imposed; postpones defining crimes to be punished, postpones defining penalties to be applied. It removes fundamental constitutional protections from all citizens in the country, making them subject to a corporate tribunal with unlimited power and penalties, and without judicial review. It is (similar to C-6 in Canada) the end of Rule of Law in the US.

For further information, watch these videos:

Food Laws – Forcing people to globalize
State Imposed Violence … to snatch resources of ordinary people
Corporate Rule
Reclaiming Economies
Oak snake image at Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park, Florida

Cell Phones and a Cashless Society

Visa to Bring NFC Mobile Payments to the iPhone

May 4, 2010

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com - A joint press release from Visa and DeviceFidelity has appeared on the MarketWatch website which reveals that the two companies have developed a protective case for the iPhone that will enable users "to make payments by simply waving their iPhone in front of a contactless payment terminal."

According to the announcement, the product has been certified by Apple and works with both iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G devices. In February, Visa announced it would be running a series of NFC payments trials using DeviceFidelity's MicroSD format NFC device. The lack of a MicroSD slot in the iPhone meant that iPhone users would have been excluded from participating in these tests, however — until now.

"Market trials of the payment-enabled iPhone are scheduled to start this summer," the press release concludes.

The announcement includes a link to video content featuring the device in action and interviews with Dave Wentker, head of mobile contactless payments at Visa, and Amitaabh Malhotra, COO of DeviceFidelity. At the moment, however, the link is not live and, unusually, the press release is not available on either Visa's or DeviceFidelity's website and does not seem to be available from any other news sources.

We'll have more details as soon as possible. In the meantime, here is the full text of the press release:

Visa Inc. and DeviceFidelity, Inc. are working to allow Apple iPhone(TM) users to make payments by simply waving their iPhone in front of a contactless payment terminal. The new technology, developed by DeviceFidelity and certified by Apple, combines a protective iPhone case with a secure memory card that hosts Visa's contactless payment application, called Visa payWave. The technology will work for both iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G devices.

iPhone users will be able to make Visa mobile payments in retail stores, at fast food restaurants, in taxis, during sporting events (such as at baseball games), and also make purchases at vending machines that have contactless payment terminals.

Thousands of merchants throughout the U.S. have already upgraded their payment terminals to allow consumers to make Visa mobile payments.

The technology will also work with a majority of smart phones that have a slot for a memory card. By simply inserting the card into the memory slot on their phone, mobile users can transform their existing mobile phones into a Visa payment device. Visa has already rolled out a similar technology in Malaysia and Japan, where consumers can make mobile payments in stores and restaurants.

The mobile payment application can be password protected and utilizes advanced security technology to uniquely identify each contactless transaction. In addition, all Visa mobile payments are backed by Visa's global processing network and analyzed for potential fraud in real-time. If a mobile device is lost or stolen, account holders should contact their issuer, as they would if their card was lost or stolen. The issuer can immediately deactivate the account. Market trials of the payment-enabled iPhone are scheduled to start this summer.

NFC Handsets and Business Models — One Down, One to Go?

April 30, 2010

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com - NFC silicon suppliers Inside Contactless and NXP both say they now expect to see a range of Android NFC phones arriving on the market from the end of this year with, says Inside's Loic Hamon, a "vast portfolio of phones next year for sure."

For years, 'lack of handsets' and 'lack of a business model' have been put forward as the twin obstructions to the adoption of NFC technology. Now that we seem set to have a wide range of phones available in less than a year's time, attention is set to turn to the need for effective business models.

Will mobile network operators, banks and other key players now finally find a way to work together to put the necessary infrastructure in place to kick start the arrival of commercial NFC services?

RFID, GPS Technology and Electronic Surveillance

Clubs Busted for Selling Liquor Without Scanning Licenses

Under the new law, bars must electronically ID anyone who appears age 35 or younger.

May 1, 2010

The Salt Lake Tribune - It can be illegal for a bar to serve a drink to young adults in Utah.

The violation comes when the bar fails to run an electronic scanner on driver licenses of anyone who looks 35 years old or younger. The penalty for failing to electronically verify licenses is akin to serving alcohol to a minor.

Peggy Bowen, owner of Chuckles Lounge in Salt Lake City, said her bartender asked three young adults, all older than 21, to show their driver licenses, but because the club did not use its electronic device, "we were told we broke the law."

The club regularly uses an electronic scanning device, she said. But on Feb. 18, the bartender only checked the licenses visually.

"I don't like it; I think it's unfair, but I don't have the money to fight this," said Bowen. "Now everyone who looks under 60 gets their licenses scanned."

Bowen paid $1,158 in fines and court costs.

This offense will stay on her record, serving to increase the severity of penalties if any other violations occur, including the possibility of losing her liquor license. She has had no other violations during the nearly 10 years her club has been in business, according to state records.

Bowen's club is among four bars in Salt Lake City and an Ogden club that have been busted for failing to use a scanning device during undercover stings. All paid fines rather than contest the charges. Other cases are pending.

The little-known penalty is part of landmark legislation that did away with Utah's private club law in July. Then Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. had made elimination of the private clubs one of his priorities to boost the state's $6 billion-a-year tourism industry.

In exchange for dropping membership requirements, lawmakers required bar owners to install electronic devices and to retain the data for seven days to aid in police investigations of alcohol-related crimes.

The law requires only clubs to use scanning devices. Grocery stores, restaurants serving liquor and state-controlled liquor outlets have no similar requirements to electronically check licenses.

Bob Brown, owner of Cheers to You in Salt Lake City, said bar owners readily agreed to install the devices as a compromise to get the legislation passed. But he said he is shocked at the severity of the penalty, which had not been determined before lawmakers passed SB187.

Lawyers with the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control determined that under administrative rules, the scanner violation for bars is "serious," giving the offense the same gravity as allowing a minor onto the premises or serving alcohol to underage drinkers ...

Christian Persecution

Christian Preacher in UK Arrested on Hooligan Charge After Saying He Believes Homosexuality is a Sin

May 1, 2010

Daily Mail - A Christian street preacher has been arrested and charged with a public-order offence after saying that homosexuality was sinful.

Dale Mcalpine was handing out leaflets to shoppers when he told a passer-by and a gay police community support officer that, as a Christian, he believed homosexuality was one of a number of sins that go against the word of God.

Mr Mcalpine said that he did not repeat his remarks on homosexuality when he preached from the top of a stepladder after his leafleting.

But he has been told that police officers are alleging they heard him making his remarks to a member of the public in a loud voice that could be overheard by others.

Mr Mcalpine, 42, who earns about £40,000 a year in the energy industry, was arrested and taken to the local police station in the back of a police van after preaching in the Cumbrian town of Workington on April 20.

After seven hours locked up in a cell, he was charged with using abusive or insulting words or behaviour contrary to the Public Order Act 1986.

Mr Mcalpine — who has delivered open-air sermons and handed out leaflets in Workington for years, and has never been in trouble with the police — said the incident was one of the worst moments of his life.

‘I felt deeply shocked and humiliated that I had been arrested in my own town and treated like a common criminal in front of people I know,’ he said.

‘My freedom was taken away on the hearsay of someone who disliked what I said, and I was charged under a law that doesn’t apply.’

He said he was not homophobic and has gay friends, but he feels compelled by his faith to urge people to abandon all types of sins so they can seek salvation.

‘If you are preaching hate and calling on people to harm others, it is right that is against the law,’ he said. ‘But I would never do that. If we have a free society, I should be allowed to preach the Gospel as generations have before me.’

Christian campaigners said last night they were alarmed that the police seemed to be using legislation originally introduced to deal with violent and abusive rioters and football hooligans to curb free speech.

Neil Addison, a barrister and expert on religious law, said:

‘People should be able to express their opinions freely as long as their conduct is reasonable. In fact, it is part of the duty of the police to protect free speech.’

Mike Judge, a spokesman for the Christian Institute, which is supporting Mr Mcalpine, said:

‘Dale is an ordinary, everyday Christian with traditional views about sexual ethics. Some people will agree with him, others will disagree. But it’s not for the police to arrest someone just because others may disagree with what is said’ ...

How Long Until Christians Are Blackmailed for Daring to Speak?

May 1, 2010

Peter Hitchens - Revolutions do not always involve guillotines or mobs storming palaces. Sometimes they are made by middle-aged gentlemen in wigs, sitting in somnolent chambers of the High Court.

Sometimes they are made by police officers and bureaucrats deciding they have powers nobody knew they had, or meant them to have.

And Britain is undergoing such a revolution — quiet, step-by-step, but destined to have a mighty effect on the lives and future of us all.

The Public Order Act of 1986 was not meant to permit the arrest of Christian preachers in English towns for quoting from the Bible. But it has. The Civil Partnerships Act 2004 was not meant to force public servants to approve of homosexuality. But it has. The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 was not meant to lead to a state of affairs where it is increasingly dangerous to say anything critical about homosexuality. But it did.

And the laws of Britain, being entirely based upon the Christian Bible, were not meant to be used by a sneering judge to declare that Christianity had no higher status in this ancient Christian civilisation than Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.

But it has come to that this week.

How did it happen that in the course of less than 50 years we moved so rapidly from one wrong to another?

Until 1967, homosexuals could be — and were — arrested and prosecuted for their private, consenting, adult acts. This was a cruel, bad law that should never have been made. It led to blackmail and misery of all kinds. Those who repealed it did so out of humanity and an acceptance that we need to live in peace alongside others whose views and habits we do not share.

No such generous tolerance is available from the sexual revolutionaries.

Now, as the case of Dale Macalpine shows, we are close to the point where a person can be prosecuted for saying in public that homosexual acts are wrong.

And officers of the law, once required to stay out of all controversy, get keen official endorsement when they take part in open political demonstrations in favour of homosexual equality.

We have travelled in almost no time from repression, through a brief moment of mutual tolerance, to a new repression. And at the same time, the freedom of Christians to follow their beliefs in workplaces is under aggressive attack.

Small and harmless actions, offers of prayer, the wearing of crucifixes, requests to withdraw from duties, are met with official rage and threats of dismissal, out of all proportion.

How long before Christians are being blackmailed by work colleagues for daring to speak their illegal views openly?

Daily the confidence of the new regime grows. The astonishing judgment of Lord Justice Laws last week, in which he pointedly snubbed Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, and mocked the idea that Christianity had any special place in our society, is a warning that this process has gone very deep and very far.

The frightening thing is that it has not stopped, nor is it slowing down. What cannot be said in a Workington street will soon be unsayable anywhere.

And if Christianity has officially ceased to be the basis of our law and the source of our state’s authority (a view which makes nonsense of the Coronation Service) who, and what — apart from the brute power of the manipulated mob — is to decide in future what is right, and what is not, and what can be said, and what cannot?

This process, if not halted, will lead in the end to the Thought Police and the naked rule of power.

Britain's Coal Industry and Global Warming

Britain's New Government Must Push Clean Coal

May 12, 2010

Reuters - Britain's new Conservative-led government must ensure clean coal plants are built alongside gas, renewables and nuclear to make the deep carbon cuts needed to limit climate change, Joan MacNaughton, senior vice-president of power and environmental policy at Alstom Power said.

David Cameron's Conservatives, who struck a deal with the Liberal Democrats on Wednesday to form Britain's first coalition government since 1945, said in their election manifesto they would set limit on emissions from Britain's power stations.

Existing coal-fired power plants typically produce around three times more climate warming carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced than gas plants, making gas a relatively cheap, quick way of trimming carbon emissions and prompting a dash for gas in the 1990s.

Unless the proposed cap is low enough to also affect gas plants, the planned Emissions Performance Standard could prevent the commercial use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment which must be fitted to avert dangerous climate change.

"If you set the Emissions Performance Standard at a level that unabated gas can meet, then you build unabated gas stations," MacNaughton said in an interview.

"Then you are left with the problem of emissions from unabated gas and with emissions actually growing from gas fired power generation when the overall goal has got to be to take the emissions out of power," she said.

The outgoing Labour government, which MacNaughton served under as Director General for Energy at the Department of Trade and Industry, has said no new coal plants can be built in Britain without fitting CCS technology to coal plants.

Stiff opposition to new coal plants in Europe, and rising operating cost for existing ones because of carbon penalties under the EU emissions trading scheme, has driven utilities to build almost exclusively gas plants over the last two decades.

Although building gas instead of coal helps reduce emissions significantly, it will not be enough to and there is not enough incentive to fit expensive CCS technology to gas plants in the early stages.

"If you have no coal new build then the market for CCS is pushed off to the right - it certainly is delayed by some considerable time because the economics for CCS work better on coal," MacNaughton, who led the UK Labour government efforts on the energy aspects of the Gleneagles G8 Program of Action.

"You get to you intermediate CO2 reduction targets quicker but then you have locked in a lot of that unabated gas," she said.

Alstom is a major supplier of steam turbines to all types of power plant, with about a third of the world's nuclear power plants using Alstom equipment, and also has a wind turbine arm based in Spain and several CCS projects around the world.

MacNaughton said that although the previous Labour government had passed some pioneering legislation paving the way for widespread use of CCS in Britain, its long-running competition to award funding.

Climate scientists say global carbon emissions must be cut by 50 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change.

Such a drastic cut will likely require developed countries to nearly eradicate carbon emissions from power generation -- using wind, solar, nuclear and carbon-free fossil fuel technologies -- with thousands more CCS units fitted to coal-fired plants in other parts of the world.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that at least 3,400 big CCS plants will need to be running by 20up and across the globe by 2050.

Several companies, including Alstom, are developing CCS projects to stash carbon produced from fossil fuels underground in the hope of selling the technology to countries like China and India which are expected to continue burning coal for decades.

MacNaughton said the old UK government had shown great leadership in passing pioneering legislation for CCS use in Britain but that plodding progress on awarding funding for full commercial scale projects had allowed projects in other parts of the world to race ahead.

The new government must act quickly to get Britain's CCS program moving.

"Climate change has got to be tackled and the sooner you start the better," MacNaughton said.

"The longer we leave it the more we have to do and the more expensive it is."

Bank Failures in the U.S.

Commercial Real Estate Pushes $7.4 Billion in FDIC Losses in One Day

Hard to hear the CRE collapse with investment banks finally being called out in the court of public opinion. $3 trillion CRE market will keep Fridays busy for the FDIC.

May 2, 2010

mybudget360 - The $3 trillion commercial real estate market is still in a state of economic turmoil. Many people might have missed the big news on Friday given the massive spotlight on Goldman Sachs.

Friday, the FDIC closed down 7 banks at a stunning cost of $7.4 billion to the FDIC. As we have mentioned, the FDIC deposit insurance fund (DIF) is already depleted,yet the FDIC has front-loaded premiums to make sure they have a buffer to combat the continuing bank collapses.

The Friday bank failures will cost the FDIC the most since the collapse of IndyMac almost two years ago. IndyMac collapsed because of toxic residential loans including option ARMs. Many of the banks collapsing now are deep in the commercial real estate game and that is the next thing to go bust.

Commercial real estate prices have fallen a stunning 42 percent from their peak only a few years ago ...

Electronic Underpants Help Caregivers Cope With Incontinence

Electronic Underpants Help Caregivers Cope With Incontinence

Simavita says its system, which uses a wireless moisture sensor embedded in an absorbent pad, is improving care and lowering costs in 20 nursing homes across Australia.

April 30, 2010

RFID Journal — Electronic underpants that monitor and detect incontinence, and then wirelessly transmit alerts to nursing-home staff members, could soon be in use around the globe.

Australian firm Simavita unveiled the electronic undergarments earlier this year, which it hails as a world's first, claiming the product will make the lives of incontinence sufferers easier, while also improving staff efficiency at senior-care centers, and reducing the overall costs of elderly care.

The company's Smart Incontinence Management System (SIMsystem) employs wireless ZigBee-based moisture-detecting sensors embedded within a customized continence pad worn by aged-care residents.

According to Simavita, an estimated 80 percent of senior-care residents suffer from incontinence, costing the Australian government up to $1.5 billion annually to manage. But in trials, the company reports, the SIMSystem saved up to $2,000 in labor costs per bed, per annum.


The SIMsystem features specially designed underpants with a moisture-sensing strip connected to a transmitter.

Philippa Lewis, Simavita's chief executive, says an aging population, coupled with workforce shortages, has put significant pressure on governments and communities worldwide to develop solutions to improve the quality of senior care.

"To date," Lewis says, "the only way clinicians have been able to accurately assess the patterns and type of incontinence has been via a rigorous and demanding manual method. This requires a caregiver to check, change and weigh the incontinence pad. This is labor-intensive, produces inaccurate results from which to prepare care plans, and is extremely challenging and embarrassing for any elderly person."

As the population continues to age, and as the cost of aged care continues to rise, Lewis believes it will become necessary to develop technology that delivers labor efficiencies and improves care for seniors.

The SIMsystem, she says, offers significant benefits for the elderly and caregivers alike. For employees, it provides more accurate information regarding incontinence, leading to fewer attendances, less paperwork regarding compliance, reduced health and safety risk from manual handling, and greater time available for direct care of residents. For nursing homes, it delivers reduced labor costs, improved staff productivity, reduced laundry costs, lower pad consumption, and evidence for accreditation and funding purposes.

And for residents, it means fewer unnecessary intrusions, more personalized care and improved quality of life ...

Copenhagen Climate Treaty & Climategate

Cap and tax is nothing more than an elaborate plan to redistribute the world's wealth using environmental scare tactics as the propellant and the U.N. as its transfer mechanism, while making some people bloody rich. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is nothing more than a political body with scientific trappings designed to promote that goal. - TheCTConservative, Hide The Decline II - The Sequel, April 29, 2010

Climate Scientist, Heated Up Over Satirical Video, Threatens Lawsuit

April 26, 2010

FOXNews.com - The Penn State climate professor who has silently endured investigations, hostile questioning, legislative probes and attacks by colleagues has finally spoken out. He says he'll sue the makers of a satirical video that's a hit on You Tube.

Their response: Bring it on.

Michael Mann, one of the central figures in the recent climate-data scandal, is best known for his "hockey stick graph," which was the key visual aid in explaining how the world is warming at an alarming rate and in connecting the rise to the increase in use of carbon fuels in this century. E-mails stolen from a university in England were released online, revealing exchanges between climatologists and a reference to a "trick" that Mann had used to get the graph to portray what global warming scientists wanted to see.

The parody video, titled "Hide the Decline," had more than 500,000 viewers on YouTube and received national attention when Rush Limbaugh played it on his radio show. It features a cat with a guitar, a talking tree, and a dancing figure sporting the image of Professor Mann. It's the use of his image that Mann is complaining about, arguing that the video supports "efforts to sell various products and merchandise."

"The guy is crazy to threaten legal action," said Jeff Davis, the President of No Cap and Trade, a large organization that includes the group Mann is threatening to sue, Minnesotans for Global Warming. "A lawsuit would give us full discovery -- and there's a lot to look at in his work."

The revelations of the leaked e-mails brought into question the methodology used to prove the Earth is getting hotter, and the phrase "hide the decline" became a catchphrase for questioning a human role in global warming.

Mann faced investigations both by Penn State and in England. While both found his work acceptable, critics have nevertheless charged that the probes were superficial and have prevented a closer analysis of the science upon which his view of global warming is based.

In his letter Mann threatened legal action, claiming the spoof video "illegally used his image and defamed him."

Neither Mann nor Penn State responded to requests for comments. Mann's lawyer, Peter J. Fontaine of the Washington D.C. law firm of Cozen O'Connor, told FoxNews.com:

"We don't comment on any pending legal matters for clients."

Davis and No Cap and Trade said they welcome the lawsuit. The group is eager to conduct an in-depth probe of Mann's work and "finally look at how it was done."

"We understand why Michael Mann is eager to silence public discussion of the hockey stick scandal, but truth is an absolute defense."

According to Davis, the video was created in the wood-warmed RV that is the "world headquarters " for Minnesotans for Global Warming and its three members, who jokingly think that Minnesota could use a little more heat.

When the letter first arrived, they quickly pulled the video from You Tube and their website because they couldn't afford to defend against a lawsuit. But, as word spread of the legal threat to the jokesters, a number of groups, including No Cap and Trade, rallied to their defense. They even backed a newer version of the video titled "Hide the Decline II" (video above) and re-posted on You Tube and the No Cap and Trade site.

"It is hard to believe in global warming when you live in Minnesota. During last winter we all wished we had some global warming," Elmer Beauregard, a nom de plume of one of the members of the group, said at a press conference announcing the new video on Tuesday.

Hide the decline = re-funding for next year!! ... gotta keep those federal funds flowin' in. Notice most of the "jobs saved or created" are in the government sector, hmmm? - BAGGERZEN, Hide The Decline II - The Sequel, April 30, 2010

RFID, GPS Technology and Electronic Surveillance

Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline

April 28, 2010

Electronic Frontier Foundation - Since its incorporation just over five years ago, Facebook has undergone a remarkable transformation. When it started, it was a private space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it transformed into a platform where much of your information is public by default. Today, it has become a platform where you have no choice but to make certain information public, and this public information may be shared by Facebook with its partner websites and used to target ads.

To help illustrate Facebook's shift away from privacy, we have highlighted some excerpts from Facebook's privacy policies over the years. Watch closely as your privacy disappears, one small change at a time!

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2005:

No personal information that you submit to Thefacebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2006:

We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook; that is why we give you control of your information. Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your school, your specified local area, and other reasonable community limitations that we tell you about.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2007:

Profile information you submit to Facebook will be available to users of Facebook who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (e.g., school, geography, friends of friends). Your name, school name, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Facebook network unless you alter your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa November 2009:

Facebook is designed to make it easy for you to share your information with anyone you want. You decide how much information you feel comfortable sharing on Facebook and you control how it is distributed through your privacy settings. You should review the default privacy settings and change them if necessary to reflect your preferences. You should also consider your settings whenever you share information.

Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa December 2009:

Certain categories of information such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available to everyone, including Facebook-enhanced applications, and therefore do not have privacy settings. You can, however, limit the ability of others to find this information through search using your search privacy settings.

Current Facebook Privacy Policy, as of April 2010:

When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. ... The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” ... Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.

Viewed together, the successive policies tell a clear story. Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it's slowly but surely helped itself — and its advertising and business partners — to more and more of its users' information, while limiting the users' options to control their own information.

Facebook Credits: The World's First Major Virtual Currency?

April 29, 2010

BNet - Facebook is projected to do over a billion dollars in revenue this year, more than some small countries, and its 400 million strong userbase is larger than the population of most big ones.

So why shouldn’t the social network have its own private currency? In the future, we may pay for some goods not with dollars, yen or euros, but with Facebook Credits.

Credits wasn’t the biggest news last week for Facebook, which announced an aggressive initiative to make itself the consumer web’s connective tissue that CEO Mark Zuckerberg called “the most transformative thing we have ever done.”

Creating a new virtual economy is a pretty big deal too, but Credits, which allow people to buy units of a virtual currency that can then be spent on various applications across Facebook, remained in the background. That’s because the program is still in private beta — independent payment companies control most of the $1 billion virtual goods market.

But most of those virtual goods are sold on Facebook itself, on games like Zynga’s FarmVille, in which players can buy special items for their farms and gifts for friends. Selling these in-game items, which help gamers get ahead more quickly, has turned into a big business very quickly, but Facebook isn’t far behind; the company looks impatient to start taking a cut. Credits would do just that, giving Facebook a solid 30 percent of the pie.

That’s not the best deal for companies like Zynga and Playdom that sell the virtual goods, and it’s a terrible one for the current payment processors, but it’s starting to look like Facebook might push out the competition, according to Inside Social Games:

At its f8 developer conference this week, company chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told Bloomberg that “‘there’s just going to be one currency that people use on all apps.” Later that day, Facebook’s Deb Liu was presenting about Facebook’s Credits plans, and she was asked if Facebook would continue to allow people to use third-party virtual currency services like Social Gold. She replied: “It’s still too early to tell, Credits is still in beta.”

Together with Zuckerberg’s statement, that sounds like it could be simply “no.” Another possibility is that third party virtual currency services can continue to exist, but will just be much less used than Credits, at least partially due to incentives Facebook will give to developers who use Credits — like free marketing.

At the same conference where the new Open Graph was announced, Zuckerberg told press that Credits aren’t about the revenue for Facebook. Journalists may be math-disabled, but even they can figure out what a 30 percent cut of a billion dollars is. (Hint: It’s a lot of money.)

But Facebook hasn’t yet come off as the bully. That’s partially because Facebook’s various representatives haven’t yet said anything firm, but mainly because the new model, even with its huge cut of each transaction, could ultimately be great for the social game and app companies that would have to switch to Credits.

The advantage is a lower barrier to adoption for users, who would have the advantage of only having to pay into a single system, and being able to take their pool of Credits to any app. The difference doesn’t seem immediately important, but there’s plenty of evidence from the iPhone that users care about convenience — anecdotally, the iPhone has triple the average revenue per user that Facebook apps do. (Apple, by the way, also takes 30 percent.)

So if Facebook can create a similar system, they’ll open the way for virtual goods to become a lot bigger than a billion dollar market, and possibly for other apps besides games to successfully tap into the virtual economy. Exactly how far this would go, nobody knows, because if Facebook succeeds with its plans, it will have created the world’s first major virtual economy.

RFID, GPS Technology and Electronic Surveillance

Orwellian Big Brother Tax Collection Commercial Airs in Pennsylvania

May 2, 2010

Infowars.com - We’re not living in an Orwellian Police state; it’s all just a conspiracy theory. However, that’s not what Pennsylvania’s government is telling their citizens. In what can only be described as a mafia-style intimidation tactic, the Pennsylvanian government is telling citizens there that they “know who you are”. The video shows a satellite image zooming in on and individual’s home while a computerized voice informs him that they know who he is and that he owes $4,212 in back taxes. The voice then proceeds to tell him that they can make it easy for him if he pays quickly. The ad then closes with a threatening message: “FIND US BEFORE WE FIND YOU”.

What is more disturbing than the ad itself is that governments are now finding it suitable to announce to us that we are living in an Orwellian police state and that we are all being monitored. “Pay up, or we will find you. We know where you live. We are watching you.” This commercial is a chilling confirmation that we are living in an Orwellian nightmare.

A Value-Added Tax and the Poor

A Value-Added Tax and the Poor

April 23, 2010

New York Times - Bruce Bartlett is more worried about middle-class and poor families not paying taxes than I am. But his latest Forbes column — about a value-added tax, or VAT — makes an important point:

[O]ne important benefit of a VAT insofar as those with low incomes is concerned is that they would be contributing something to the general cost of government. Everyone benefits from things like national defense, and everyone ought to pay something for it. But as it is, 47% of those filing federal income tax returns have either a zero or negative tax liability; that is, they pay nothing but still get a tax “refund.”

… The odd thing is that conservatives are the ones most likely to complain that the poor aren’t pulling their weight, yet they fail to see that a VAT is probably the only way of getting them to help finance the general cost of government. It’s extremely unrealistic to think we are ever going to impose income taxes on very many of those now paying nothing.

Given the rise in income inequality over the last three decades and the decline in tax rates for the affluent, these upper-income families probably need to bear a big share of the burden of deficit reduction. But they can’t come close to paying off the deficit by themselves. One way or the other, taxes need to rise on middle- and lower-income families, too (unless you favor making huge cuts to Medicare and Social Security).

A consumption tax, or VAT, seems a promising way to make this happen. Not only would it raise revenue. It would also encourage people to save more money — a bit of encouragement Americans could use.

SNL's Goofs on Public Employees in Awards-Show Spoof; One in Rhree San Francisco City Workers Made More Than $100K Last Year

SNL's Goofs on Public Employees in Awards-Show Spoof

Maybe we really are all anti-statists now.

April 26, 2010

Weekly Standard - As with many SNL skits, it's a bit on-the-nose and runs too long, but I applaud the spirit and smiled a couple times. An able-bodied host on 100-percent disability introduces a surly DMV worker who takes pride in going full days without helping anyone, an elevator inspector working two government jobs and pulling disability for a fear of cats, and a school custodian whose union contract stipulates he doesn't have to "clean" schools.

"In these times of anti-tax hysteria and threats of government of budget cuts, it's important to remember that people with government jobs are just like workers everwhere, except for the lifetime job security, guaranteed annual raises, early retirement on generous pensions, and full medical coverage with no deductibles, office visit fees, or copayments."

Doesn't SNL know what "demonizing" public servants can lead to? Don't they know words matter? [See The Public Sector Does Not Operate in the Real World of Profit and Loss.]

In totally unrelated news, one in three San Francisco city workers made more than $100K last year.

9 out of 10 Americans Say It is Moderately to Extremely Important for the Federal Government to Secure the Border

A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted May 1-2 shows that 9 out of 10 Americans say it is moderately to extremely important to them for the federal government to take steps this year to secure the border against illegal immigration. Similarly, 61 percent of Americans say they are very concerned that illegal immigrants are putting an unfair burden on U.S. schools, hospitals, and government services.- Terence P. Jeffrey, Gallup Poll: 9 Out of 10 Americans Say Secure the Border This Year, CNSNews.com, May 5, 2010

Anger Over Arizona Immigration Law Drives U.S. Rallies

May 1, 2010

AP - Angered by a controversial Arizona immigration law, tens of thousands of protesters — including 50,000 alone in Los Angeles — rallied in cities nationwide demanding President Barack Obama tackle immigration reform immediately.

"I want to thank the governor of Arizona because she's awakened a sleeping giant," said labor organizer John Delgado who attended a rally in New York where authorities estimated 6,500 gathered.

From Los Angeles to Washington D.C., activists, families, students and even politicians marched, practiced civil disobedience and "came out" about their citizenship status in the name of rights for immigrants, including the estimated 12 million living illegally in the U.S.

Police said 50,000 rallied in Los Angeles where singer Gloria Estefan kicked off a massive downtown march. Estefan spoke in Spanish and English, proclaiming the United States is a nation of immigrants.

"We're good people," the Cuban-born singer said atop a flatbed truck. "We've given a lot to this country. This country has given a lot to us."

Public outcry, particularly among immigrant rights activists, has been building since last week when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the legislation last week. Supporters say the law is necessary because of the federal government's failure to secure the border, but critics contend it encourages racial profiling and is unconstitutional.

"It's racist," said Donna Sanchez, a 22-year-old U.S. citizen living in Chicago whose parents illegally crossed the Mexican border. "I have papers, but I want to help those who don't."

Organizers estimated about 20,000 gathered at a park on Chicago's West Side and marched, but police said about 8,000 turned out.

The event resembled something between a family festival — with food vendors pushing carts through the grass — and a political demonstration with protesters chanting "Si se puede," Spanish for "Yes we can." A group of undocumented students stood on a stage at the Chicago park and "came out" regarding their immigration status ...

LAPD Officials Expect Crowd of Up to 100,000 at Immigration March on Saturday

May 1, 2010

The Los Angeles Times - The Los Angeles Police are preparing for as many as 100,000 marchers to rally for immigration rights in downtown Los Angeles during the annual May Day event Saturday.

LAPD officials are preparing for a surge in the number of participants in the wake of an outcry over a controversial new Arizona law that requires police to check the legal status of people they suspect of being illegal immigrants.

Deputy Chief Jose Perez Jr. said that police initially estimated no more than 60,000 people would participate in the May Day march to Los Angeles City Hall. But Perez said those numbers were revised after organized labor and immigrant rights groups informed authorities they expect far more people ...

Dems Spark Alarm with Call for Biometric National ID Card

Dems Spark Alarm with Call for Biometric National ID Card

April 20, 2010

The Hill - A plan by Senate Democratic leaders to reform the nation’s immigration laws ran into strong opposition from civil liberties defenders before lawmakers even unveiled it Thursday.

Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure.

The proposal is one of the biggest differences between the newest immigration reform proposal and legislation crafted by late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment.

It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases.

“The cardholder’s identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier stored within the microprocessing chip on the card to the identifier provided by the cardholder that shall be read by the scanner used by the employer,” states the Democratic legislative proposal.

The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties defender often aligned with the Democratic Party, wasted no time in blasting the plan.

“Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy — one that combines the worst elements of the DMV and the TSA,” said Christopher Calabrese, ACLU legislative counsel.

“America’s broken immigration system needs real, workable reform, but it cannot come at the expense of privacy and individual freedoms,” Calabrese added.

The ACLU said “if the biometric national ID card provision of the draft bill becomes law, every worker in America would have to be fingerprinted.”

A source at one pro-immigration reform group described the proposal as “Orwellian.”

But Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), who has worked on the proposal and helped unveil it at a press conference Thursday, predicted the public has become more comfortable with the idea of a national identification card.

“The biometric identification card is a critical element here,” Durbin said. “For a long time it was resisted by many groups, but now we live in a world where we take off our shoes at the airport and pull out our identification.

“People understand that in this vulnerable world, we have to be able to present identification,” Durbin added. “We want it to be reliable, and I think that’s going to help us in this debate on immigration.”

Implementing a nationwide identification program for every worker will be a difficult task.

The Social Security Administration has estimated that 3.6 million Americans would have to visit SSA field offices to correct mistakes in records or else risk losing their jobs.

Angela Kelley, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said the biometric identification provision “will give some people pause.” But she applauded Democrats for not shying away from the toughest issues in the immigration reform debate.

“What I like about the outline is that Democrats are not trying to hide the ball or soft-pedal the tough decisions,” Kelley said. “It seems a very sincere effort to get the conversation started. This is a serious effort to get Republicans to the table.”

Reform Immigration for America, a pro-immigrant group, praised Democrats for getting the discussion started but said the framework fell short.

“The proposal revealed today [Thursday] is in part the result of more than a year of bipartisan negotiations and represents a possible path forward on immigration reform,” the group said in a statement. “This framework is not there yet.”

Democrats and pro-immigration groups will now begin to put pressure on Republicans to participate in serious talks to address the issue. The bipartisan effort in the Senate suffered a serious setback when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) pulled back from talks with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) [for more on Graham, see Politicians March to the Tune of the Controlling Elite].

“We call on Republican Senators to review this framework and sit down at the negotiating table in good faith,” Reform Immigration for America said in a statement. “This is a national problem that requires a federal solution and the input of leaders in both parties.”

Durbin said Democratic leaders are trying to recruit other Republican partners.

“We’re making a commitment to establishing a framework to work toward comprehensive immigration reform, and I think it’s a good framework and now we’re engaging our friends on the other side of the aisle to join us in this conversation,” Durbin said.

Fall of America and Rise of a New World Order By 2010? (Excerpt)

According to Nick Sandberg ("Blueprint for Total Control," 2001):

The master plan of the global elite is to get all humanity microchipped; however, despite the progress our planet has made along the road to becoming a world consumerist superstate, most people are still highly resistant to the idea of having a chip implanted under their skin. Therefore, there is a progressive strategy that will be gradually implemented to lead us, step by step, into permitting this nightmare future to come about.

It may unfold in three concurrent stages:

1. Firstly, cash will be gradually eliminated.
2. Secondly, all personal and financial data will be placed on individual "smartcards" or national ID cards.
3. And, thirdly, smartcards or national ID cards will be themselves gradually eliminated to be replaced by microchip implants.

For the past fifteen years we have been slowly led towards giving up cash in favor of electronic money, and in the last five years, the heat has been turned up. The increased promotion of credit cards, debit cards, mail order, phone and Internet banking, and Internet shopping have all helped to bring about a society where the need for cash transactions is greatly reduced. Yet many people still like carrying cash, meaning more will have to be done if it is to be eliminated completely.

National ID Cards and REAL ID Act of 2005 - The Real ID Act of 2005 was approved by both the House and Senate (the bill passed unanimously, 100-0, in the Senate on May 10, 2005) as part of the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief (H.R.1268) and signed into law on May 11, 2005 by President George W. Bush. On March 1, 2007, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff extended the deadline for state compliance with the REAL ID Act from May 11, 2008 to the end of 2009. On January 11, 2008, it was announced the deadline has been extended again, until 2011, in hopes of gaining more support from states.

Applied Digital, Verichip, RFID Implantable Microchip


According to Nick Sandberg ("Blueprint for Total Control," 2001) and Serge Monast ("NASA's" Project Blue Beam," 1994):

By first removing cash and then by introducing problems into electronic money systems while simultaneously promoting microchip implants as a safe and acceptable alternative, the global elite will lead us slowly into accepting personal implant technology.

The phasing out of cash most likely will begin with some kind of worldwide economic disaster—not a complete crash, but enough to allow the New World Order to introduce some kind of in-between currency before they introduce their electronic cash to replace all paper money. The in-between currency will be used to force anyone with savings to spend or turn in their cash, because the global elite understand that people who have money are not dependent upon them and might be the very ones who will mount an insurrection against them. If everyone is broke, no one can fund a war of any kind; paper currency will cease to exist; this will be one of the first signs.

Feds Answer to Illegal Immigration is a Biometric National ID

Democrats' Answer to Illegal Immigration is National ID

April 30, 2010

The New American - ...Giving new meaning to the saying “a day late and a dollar short,” on April 29, Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) unveiled their own proposal for reforming federal immigration policies and procedures. The 26-page document is less a proposed bill than a very broad outline for changes the senators and members of their party will push for in Congress ...

The fourth of the eight proposals is perhaps the most pernicious. The proposition has a high propensity for overreaching in direct proportion to its vagueness. The exact wording of the suggestion calls for “improved technology” that will assist ICE in determining eligibility for work in the U.S. While that sounds innocuous enough, later in the document, under the section entitled, “Ending Illegal Employment Through Biometric Employment Verification,” Reid, et al, set forth their chilling scheme to require all Americans to carry a 21st Century version of the Social Security Card. The national identification card will be embedded with biometric data detectable by federal agents. Specifically, the Reid plan will mandate that within 18 months of the passage of immigration reform legislation, every American worker carry the “fraud-resistant, tamper-resistant, wear resistant, and machine-readable social security cards containing a photograph and an electronically coded micro-processing chip which possesses a unique biometric identifier for the authorized card-bearer.”

As if that isn’t enough to freeze the blood of any ally of freedom and our constitutional republic, the Senate sponsors insist that the new identification card will contain the following information, as well:

(1) biometric identifiers, in the form of templates, that definitively tie the individual user to the identity credential;

(2) electronic authentication capability;

(3) ability to verify the individual locally without requiring every employer to access a biometric database;

(4) offline verification capability (eliminating the need for 24-hour, 7-days-per-week online databases);

(5) security features that protect the information stored on the card;

(6) privacy protections that allow the user to control who is able to access the data on the card;

(7) compliance with authentication and biometric standards recognized by domestic and international standards organizations.

Read it and weep, lovers of liberty! ...

Breakdown of the Reid-Schumer-Menendez Immigration Reform Proposal

Schumer, Graham Use Immigration to Push National Biometric ID Card

March 9, 2010

Infowars.com - Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Lindsey Graham have joined forces in an effort to force a biometric ID on the American people. The new national ID scheme is part of a comprehensive immigration bill now in the Senate.

Schumer and Graham want every American worker required to have a biometric ID card in order to work.

“Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

Schumer and Graham, who face an “uphill effort to pass a bill,” plan to meet with Obama this week in order to update him. An administration official told the Journal the White House has no position on the controversial ID card.

Previous efforts to force a national ID on the American people have ended in failure. Shortly after September 11, 2001, Congress took up the idea of requiring every citizen to have a national ID card. Before the election of 2004, the revisited the issue.

Section 403(c) of the Patroit Act specifically requires the federal government to “develop and certify a technology standard that can be used to verify the identity of persons” applying for or seeking entry into the United States on a U.S. visa “for the purposes of conducting background checks, confirming identity, and ensuring that a person has not received a visa under a different name.”

Prior to September 11, 2001, the government pushed for a national biometric identification system. Both the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1995 (PRWOA), a welfare reform law, and the Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996 (ICFRA), an immigration reform law, called for the use of “technology” for identification purposes.

In 2005, Congress passed the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, or REAL ID.

“States were originally given until May 2008 to comply with the law, but widespread resistance resulted in the Federal Government changing that deadline not once, not twice, but three times,” notes the Tenth Amendment Center. “More than two dozen states have passed resolutions or binding laws opposing the act, rendering the Bush-era law nearly null and void in practice. Bottom line? Nullification works.”

Senator Graham does not believe his biometric national ID scheme will violate the privacy of Americans.

“We’ve all got Social Security cards,” he said. “They’re just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That’s all I’m saying.”

Graham is the only Republican to publicly announce support for a law requiring Americans to hold a biometric national ID card and he wants at least one other GOP co-sponsor to launch the effort.

According to the Journal, biometric data for the card would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next change jobs. Employers would be required to purchase a scanner.

A biometric ID system is not about securing the border or preventing terrorism. It is about tracking citizens.

“By far the most significant negative aspect of biometric ID systems is their potential to locate and track people physically. While many surveillance systems seek to locate and track, biometric systems present the greatest danger precisely because they promise extremely high accuracy. Whether a specific biometric system actually poses a risk of such tracking depends on how it is designed,” explains the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Earlier this month, a biometric ID card was introduced at a large technology show in Hanover, Germany. The card will mandatory for all Germans on November 1, 2010.

“The card has three functions: 1. biometric identity verification, 2. electronic identity verification, 3. authenticated electronic signature,” Fox News reported on March 2.

The Right Way to Mend Immigration

March 19, 2010

Charles E. Schumer and Lindsey O. Graham - Our immigration system is badly broken. Although our borders have become far more secure in recent years, too many people seeking illegal entry get through. We have no way to track whether the millions who enter the United States on valid visas each year leave when they are supposed to. And employers are burdened by a complicated system for verifying workers' immigration status.

Last week we met with President Obama to discuss our draft framework for action on immigration. We expressed our belief that America's security and economic well-being depend on enacting sensible immigration policies.

The answer is simple: Americans overwhelmingly oppose illegal immigration and support legal immigration. Throughout our history, immigrants have contributed to making this country more vibrant and economically dynamic. Once it is clear that in 20 years our nation will not again confront the specter of another 11 million people coming here illegally, Americans will embrace more welcoming immigration policies.

Our plan has four pillars: requiring biometric Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; fulfilling and strengthening our commitments on border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization for those already here.

Besides border security, ending illegal immigration will also require an effective employment verification system that holds employers accountable for hiring illegal workers. A tamper-proof ID system would dramatically decrease illegal immigration, experts have said, and would reduce the government revenue lost when employers and workers here illegally fail to pay taxes.

We would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card. Each card's unique biometric identifier would be stored only on the card; no government database would house everyone's information. The cards would not contain any private information, medical information or tracking devices. The card would be a high-tech version of the Social Security card that citizens already have.

Prospective employers would be responsible for swiping the cards through a machine to confirm a person's identity and immigration status. Employers who refused to swipe the card or who otherwise knowingly hired unauthorized workers would face stiff fines and, for repeat offenses, prison sentences.

We propose a zero-tolerance policy for gang members, smugglers, terrorists and those who commit other felonies after coming here illegally. We would bolster recent efforts to secure our borders by increasing the Border Patrol's staffing and funding for infrastructure and technology. More personnel would be deployed to the border immediately to fill gaps in apprehension capabilities.

Other steps include expanding domestic enforcement to better apprehend and deport those who commit crimes and completing an entry-exit system that tracks people who enter the United States on legal visas and reports those who overstay their visas to law enforcement databases.

Ending illegal immigration, however, cannot be the sole objective of reform. Developing a rational legal immigration system is essential to ensuring America's future economic prosperity.

Ensuring economic prosperity requires attracting the world's best and brightest. Our legislation would award green cards to immigrants who receive a PhD or master's degree in science, technology, engineering or math from a U.S. university. It makes no sense to educate the world's future inventors and entrepreneurs and then force them to leave when they are able to contribute to our economy.

Our blueprint also creates a rational system for admitting lower-skilled workers. Our current system prohibits lower-skilled immigrants from coming here to earn money and then returning home. Our framework would facilitate this desired circular migration by allowing employers to hire immigrants if they can show they were unsuccessful in recruiting an American to fill an open position; allowing more lower-skilled immigrants to come here when our economy is creating jobs and fewer in a recession; and permitting workers who have succeeded in the workplace, and contributed to their communities over many years, the chance to earn a green card.

For the 11 million immigrants already in this country illegally, we would provide a tough but fair path forward. They would be required to admit they broke the law and to pay their debt to society by performing community service and paying fines and back taxes. These people would be required to pass background checks and be proficient in English before going to the back of the line of prospective immigrants to earn the opportunity to work toward lawful permanent residence.

The American people deserve more than empty rhetoric and impractical calls for mass deportation. We urge the public and our colleagues to join our bipartisan efforts in enacting these reforms.

Charles E. Schumer is a Democratic senator from New York. Lindsey O. Graham is a Republican senator from South Carolina.

Climate Bills and a Green Economy

EIA: Climate Bill Analysis to Take Up to 8 Weeks

April 30, 2010

Reuters - The U.S. Energy Information Administration will take up to eight weeks to analyze the stalled Senate climate bill after receiving most of its details from the office of Senator John Kerry, a spokesman said on Thursday.

Elements of the bill, which is aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, were delivered to the EIA both verbally and by hard copy.

"We received details. It's not a copy of legislation, but it was specific enough to allow us to go forward with our modeling efforts," said Jonathan Cogan spokesman for the EIA, the independent statistics arm of the Department of Energy.

Because of the way it was delivered, some stakeholders, such as environmentalists and utility lobbyists, are openly wondering if the bill is complete, despite six months of work on it by Kerry, a Democrat, and Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, an independent.

Kerry also has been careful not to commit any of the bill's details to paper but some of its key features have been leaked by sources.

Previously, government agencies have found the impact of climate legislation on consumers to be negligible. The EIA found last August that a bill passed in the House of Representatives would raise household costs about $134 in 10 years.

Details of the Kerry plan on how to tackle emissions from the transportation sector, and how permits to pollute would be distributed to power companies, are still unclear.

Kerry said earlier this week that the bill was being sent for analysis after a political dust-up with one of its key supporters prevented its official unveiling.

The bill was to have been revealed on Monday but Graham pulled his support in anger after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid talked about tackling immigration reform this year.

Sending the bill to the agencies for analyses before it has been publicly revealed could help lawmakers with time running short before elections in November. Barring any changes in the legislation that would set back the EIA, that could put the climate bill on the Senate floor in June at the earliest, but more likely in July. That assumes political differences are ironed out and Kerry moves forward with the bill.

The Congressional Budget Office is also likely to conduct its analysis of the bill.

Scenarios: Impact of Oil Spill on Climate Bill

April 30, 2010

Reuters - A massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is unfolding just as the Senate was on the verge of considering climate change legislation that included an expansion of offshore oil drilling.

The bill, which aims to reduce U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to global warming, already faced many political difficulties in the Senate.

Some senators hate the bill's plan to establish a new Wall Street trading system for pollution permits. Their opposition may have only deepened with this week's blistering cross-examination of Goldman Sachs Group Inc executives by a congressional committee. Federal prosecutors are investigating the investment bank's actions in trading mortgage-related products.

And just a few weeks ago, a horrible coal mine disaster in West Virginia made some wonder whether the climate bill should include billions of dollars to help fund coal industry efforts on "clean coal."

Against that backdrop, the sunken, leaking oil rig is spewing 5,000 barrels of crude oil a day and the slick is moving toward the state's shores.

Here are some possible impacts of the environmental disaster on climate change legislation hung up in the Senate ...

The Gulf Coast oil spill could breathe new life into the core goal of climate change legislation: Helping foster the development of clean alternative energy sources, including solar and wind power. This week, the Obama administration approved construction of the Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, which would be the first U.S. offshore wind farm. The oil spill could bolster public support for such projects and help efforts to reduce the U.S. carbon footprint, the second largest in the world after China ...

[Or] the oil spill becomes one more impediment to passing a comprehensive climate bill this year, so Senate Democrats shift their attention to immigration reform as their next, big initiative in this election year.

"Immigration has pretty formally jumped the queue here," said the Senate Democratic source, who added that if the Senate complete only one more major initiative after Wall Street reform, immigration will "be the bill we do this year."

Analysis: Climate, energy bill could be harmed by Gulf spill
A historic environmental protection bill is in danger after a massive oil spill put a new focus on the perils of offshore drilling, a feature that was supposed to win wider support for the legislation. The bill, supported by President Barack Obama, calls for new offshore drilling — a concession by environmentalists. But with the tragedy off the Gulf Coast growing daily, even conservationists who have waited a decade for the legislation are now saying it will fail if offshore drilling remains in the bill.
Gulf of Mexico oil spill sparks new US drilling ban

Cell Phones and a Cashless Society

TazCard, a Computerized 'Credit Card' for Making Payments, Buying Tickets, and Serving as an ID and Loyalty Card

April 28, 2010

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com - TazCard, a stand-alone NFC device which communicates via USB and Zigbee instead of a mobile network connection, is set to launch by the end of 2010 with a target price of €150 — and a very different approach to building NFC ecosystems.

TAZCARD: 'Think iPod Touch, not iPhone', says TazTag's Eric Fouchard.

Similar in area to a standard credit card, the TazCard is a Java-based handheld device able to support a wide range of NFC applications including payments, ID, ticketing, loyalty and other services. TazCards feature a 3.5-inch (9cm) touch screen and a biometric fingerprint sensor plus near field communication, USB and ZigBee communications interfaces.

TazCards do not, however, include a mobile network interface — although it will be possible to add mobile functionality as an optional extra. Instead, the device uses USB to connect to the internet from a PC; NFC for contactless proximity applications; and ZigBee rather than the mobile internet to access and download information services and applications in the field.

Zigbee is a wireless technology, developed originally to meet the needs of low-cost, low-power wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) networks. Zigbee devices can communicate with each other over a range of up to 30m and can be connected together using mesh networking technology so that multiple Zigbee 'nodes', each costing in the region of US$10, can transfer information from one to another over longer distances.

In practical terms, this means that the TazTag operates in a similar way to an iPod Touch, which has Wifi and USB interfaces but no mobile connection, rather than an iPhone. It means also that there is no role for a mobile network operator in a TazCard ecosystem — and also that, like the iPod Touch, the TazCard is designed to be a product that consumers purchase as an extra rather than a replacement for an existing device, and for which there's no need to take out a data plan.

"The TazCard is not a competitor of phones, it's a companion," says Fouchard. "Some people would prefer to have only one device... fine. But our customers are all agreed on one point: A highly secure device, without a third party as an operator, gives them what they need to provide new services today."

How would an NFC ecosystem that does not include a mobile network operator work in practice? A mobile connection is not needed to use an NFC device to make a card transaction, whether that is for a payments, transport ticketing or an access control application, but most tag reading applications do use the mobile networks. Here, when the user reads a tag, typically a hyperlink stored on the tag is transferred to their mobile phone, enabling the user to easily access a website to view information or download a coupon or voucher. And, when a customer signs up for a new NFC service, the mobile connection can also be used to download the application over-the-air to their handset.

In both of these applications, the same functionality could be provided by Zigbee, Fouchard explains. For instance, a shop assistant could use a TazCard to read NFC tags on products, then check stock availability, reserve the item for the customer and read his retail loyalty card — all using a store's Zigbee network rather a mobile network.

Why not use WiFi or Bluetooth?

"WiFi and Bluetooth are very sensitive to security issues," says Fouchard, "but the major problem is the power consumption of these technologies — too high!" And, for Bluetooth, "it's not a network technology, just a point to point, so you can't have the same uses" while "WiFi is already used for computer networks so it is too difficult to manage the network too."

"The TazCard is a part of a complete ecosystem dedicated to contactless applications," says Fouchard, "we have many products for infrastructure ready to go. Our strategy is to offer a highly secure NFC/Zigbee device, a developer community and products for infrastructure."

A Java-based software development kit is available now from TazTag and the first TazCards will be available in test quantities from June 2010. The first commercially available devices are due before the end of the year and, Fouchard told NFC World, mass production is expected to begin in 2011.

TazTag has also partnered with Sagem Orga and with Inside Contactless on the development of TazCard technology and a prototype device featuring an Inside Contactless Microread NFC controller and a single wire protocol-enabled SIM card, developed by Sagem Orga and running Inside's Java-based test payment application, has now also been developed.

"We believe this device will enable card issuers to provide their customers with a viable NFC bridge — a key success factor towards market adoption of mobile NFC payments," says Jean-Christophe Tisseuil of Sagem Orga, which is working on a number of innovative solutions for bridging the NFC handset gap.

Last year, the company signed a deal with Twinlinx, developer of the MyMax Bluetooth-enabled NFC sticker, under which Sagem Orga will offer MyMax to its customers under its own SIMply Mobile Wallet brand name. And, at the Mobile World Congress in February, the company announced the development of an NFC-enabled key fob containing a WiFi-enabled SIM that could be used to deliver NFC functionality to 100% of today's mobile phones.

"Maybe the market will be first for VIP customers of transportation companies and banks, but I believe that many people will be ready to pay a little to secure their credit cards," Fouchard concludes.

Flashback: Atmel and TazTag Collaborate on NFC Wallet

Originally Published on March 19, 2009

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com - The smart card chip manufacturer and the French start-up are working together to bring to market the TazCard, a 6mm thick card-sized smart object with a touch screen, fingerprint sensor and NFC, USB and ZigBee interfaces that could be used for access control, ticketing, couponing and payment applications.

TAZCARD: TazTag's multi-function NFC wallet is to be secured with an Atmel security module.

Atmel and TazTag have announced they are collaborating on the development of all-in-one contactless solutions to store and protect personal data. As a first step, TazTag is using the Atmel AT98SC016CU turnkey security module in its TazCard, a secure multi-function NFC wallet the size of a thick bank card that incorporates a touch screen, fingerprint sensor and NFC, USB and ZigBee communications interfaces.

First announced at the CES show in January, the TazCard has the potential to be used in a wide range of applications including access control, ticketing, couponing and payment. A Java Software Development Kit is available for developers interested in exploring the possibilities.

"The choice of an Atmel security module became obvious when we decided to secure our nomad contactless smart object," says Eric Fouchard, CEO of TazTag. "The cooperation between a fingerprint sensor and the AT98SC016CU safely protects the access to personal data and the applications in the TazCard."

"Our AT98SC turnkey security solutions are the right choice when it comes to securing portable compact devices with energy constraints," added Olivier Debelleix, Atmel's marketing manager for embedded security. "We are excited to bring our security expertise to this original and modern communicating application."