Israel face-recognition start-up ‘secretly tracking Palestinians’

MEMO| Middle Eastern Monitor

A start-up known as “Israel’s most high-profile biometric recognition firm” is playing a key role in monitoring Palestinians at checkpoints in the occupied West Bank, reported Haaretz.

According to the article, Anyvision Interactive Technologies “is taking part in two special projects in assisting the Israeli army in the West Bank”.

One project “involves a system that it has installed at army checkpoints that thousands of Palestinians pass through each day on their way to work from the West Bank.”

In a statement in February, the army said “27 biometric crossings” had been established in the West Bank, as part of a “wide-ranging” effort to “upgrade” the checkpoints in question.

The second project, however, “is much more confidential”, reported Haaretz, and “includes facial recognition technology elsewhere in the West Bank, not just at border crossings”, as “cameras deep inside the West Bank try to spot and monitor potential Palestinian assailants”.

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The Pentagon’s New Laser-Based Tool Uses Your Heartbeat to Track You

Singularity Hub

The government’s hefty arsenal of surveillance tools just welcomed a powerful new member. Rather than monitoring an external device—a bug or a smartphone—or even the exterior features of your face, the new tech aims straight for your heart. Literally.

First reported by MIT Technology Review, the US Pentagon is developing an infrared laser that captures a person’s unique “cardiac signature” from as far as 200 meters—the length of just over two football fields—away, as long as you’re still. According to Steward Remaly of the Pentagon’s Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO), even longer ranges may be possible with higher intensity lasers.

Although chilling, the tech builds on previous ideas.

Contact infrared sensors have long been used to monitor a person’s pulse, in a clinical setting or when traversing high altitudes. Here, the devices shoot infrared light into a finger and measure how much blood flow alters the refraction. Unlike this classic setup, the Pentagon’s new tech—dubbed Jetson—uses laser doppler vibrometry that detects minute movements on the skin caused by heartbeat.

Currently under development by Ideal Innovations, Inc., a veteran-owned biometrics, forensics, and scientific company based in Arlington, Virginia, the goal of Jetson is to positively identify an individual within five seconds using a “heartprint.”

“Existing long-range biometric methods that rely on facial recognition suffer from acquiring enough pixels at a distance to use the face matching algorithms and require high performance optics to acquire visual signatures at significant distances,” explained the CTTSO. “The Jetson effort…is a ruggedized biometric system that will capture cardiac signatures to aid in the positive identification of an individual” from a distance with little lag time.

Jetson is just the latest attempt at surveillance from a distance. Rather than old-school technologies such as fingerprinting or retinal scans, this new generation of surveillance technologies uses biometrics to monitor your every move—be it face, speech, heartbeat, or even brain activity—from a distance.

The tech may sound extreme, but Jetson is using the same playbook as biometrics for security. And to project where surveillance is going, it pays to look at biometrics research as the canary in the coal mine. Using your finger or face to unlock your phone is just the convenient side of things—what makes your biometric signature secure as a passcode is also what makes you identifiable as an individual. 

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Facial recognition: Britain faces a dystopian future

George Harrison
spiked.com

Automated facial recognition (AFR) is the state’s latest, and most invasive, surveillance technology.

Since 2015, three police forces – South Wales, Metropolitan and Leicestershire – have made use of AFR in controversial live trials. Now, South Wales Police have been taken to court by office worker Ed Bridges, who started a crowdfunding campaign when he felt his privacy had been violated by AFR.

Bridges’ legal challenge has been backed by civil-rights organisation Liberty, which argues that the indiscriminate deployment of AFR is equivalent to taking DNA samples or fingerprints without consent. According to Liberty, there are no legal grounds for scanning thousands of innocent people in this way. It also claims the technology discriminates against black people, whose faces are disproportionately flagged by mistake, meaning they are more likely to be stopped by police unfairly.

In London, AFR has been put on hold while the Metropolitan Police carries out a review. The Met is also facing a legal challenge of its own from Big Brother Watch, another civil-liberties group. Director Silkie Carlo, a vocal critic of AFR since its inception, told spiked: ‘People are right to be concerned when they can see us moving towards a police state. The result of this technology is that the normal relationship between innocence and suspicion has been inverted.’

One camera, placed in a busy, inner-city location, can scan the faces of up to 18,000 pedestrians per minute, automatically logging the features of anyone unlucky enough to walk past. A computer immediately checks these faces against a database of wanted mugs and lets nearby officers know if there’s a match.

I have previously warned on spiked against the illiberal use of this technology, and the flaws inherent in AFR policing have since become even clearer. Around 50 deployments have taken place so far in Wales alone, including during the Champions League final in Cardiff in June 2017. On that occasion, the cameras scanned 2,470 people – 92 per cent of whom were wrongly identified as criminals.

The trials do not exactly inspire confidence in the accuracy of this technology. But even if AFR worked perfectly, its use would still violate our right to privacy and turn us all into suspects. In previous live AFR trials, it was unclear what would happen to members of the public who refuse to be scanned. Well, now we know: anyone who doesn’t consent to being turned into a walking ID-card will be treated like a criminal.

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US airports will scan 97% of outbound flyers’ faces within 4 years

futurism

 

If you board a flight out of the United States four years from now, chances are the government is going to scan your face — an ambitious timeline that has privacy experts reeling.

That’s according to a recent Department of Homeland Security report, which says that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans to dramatically expand its Biometric Exit program to cover 97 percent of outbound air passengers within four years.

Through this program, which was already in place in 15 U.S. airports at the end of 2018, passengers have their faces scanned by cameras before boarding flights out of the nation. If the AI-powered system determines that the photo doesn’t match one on file, CBP officials can look into it.

The goal of these airport face scans is purportedly to catch people who have overstayed their visas, but civil liberties expert Edward Hasbrouck sees them as potentially giving the government increased control over American citizens.

“This is opening the door to an extraordinarily more intrusive and granular level of government control, starting with where we can go and our ability to move freely about the country,” he told Buzzfeed News. “And then potentially, once the system is proved out in that way, it can literally extend to a vast number of controls in other parts of our lives.”

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Air Travel Is About to Get Even MORE INVASIVE with Facial Recognition

Dany Tagggert
The Organic Prepper

 If you don’t feel like your privacy rights are already being violated enough, rest assured, things are going to get a lot worse in the near future.

We are being watched at every turn – the US has truly become a surveillance state, with cameras on every corner, Smart devices spying on us, and our own computers and phones tracking our movements.

Airports have been particularly invasive since the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in 2001. Since then, air travel has become quite unpleasant.

Invasive screenings, body scanners, and property searches are a major cause of irritation and inconvenience for those of us who are just trying to get from one place to another. And now, they’re adding another way to invade your privacy.

Facial recognition systems are coming to an airport near you.

 

Unfortunately, some airports are already using facial recognition systems, and more will be soon. While some say this will make getting through security screenings faster, others aren’t too thrilled about using their face as a boarding pass, and privacy concerns abound.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is suing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in an effort to stop the unwarranted searches of the biometric data of American citizens.

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The European Union's MANDATORY National Biometric ID Card Will Affect 512 Million People

 

Mass Private I

A recent European Union (EU) announcement about national ID's will destroy millions of people's privacy and create a near global biometric database.

An article in State Watch News revealed that the EU has agreed to create a MANDATORY national biometric ID card.

"Measures being negotiated as part of the EU's 'Security Union' are moving ahead swiftly, with the Council and Parliament reaching provisional agreements on new rules for immigration liaison officers, the EU's Visa Code and the introduction of mandatory biometric national identity cards; and the Council agreeing its negotiating position on the new Frontex Regulation."

Earlier this week the Nepal government announced their plans to roll-out a national biometric ID card that will affect 30 million people.

Last month, I wrote an article warning people about the global effort to restrict everyone's right to travel. But what is happening across Europe and Asia should send chills down everyone's back.

If you combine what is happening in Europe with America's national biometric ID card, Real-ID it becomes painfully obvious that everyone's right to travel freely is in jeopardy.

512 million people will be forced to give up their privacy.

A European national biometric ID card is all but a certainty.

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How Amazon's Ring & Rekognition set the stage for consumer generated mass surveillance

Jevan Hutson
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

If every home on a street, in a neighborhood, or in a town had a Ring surveillance system, the individual cameras, taken together, could construct an extremely intimate picture of daily public life. By integrating facial recognition and contracting with local and federal law enforcement agencies, Amazon supercharges the potential for its massive network of surveillant consumers to comprehensively track the movements of individuals over time, even when the individual has not broken any law. Fully realized, these technologies set the stage for consumer generated mass surveillance.

Amazon's Ring surveillance system dominates the growing video doorbell market. Ring, acquired by Amazon last April, is a system of home surveillance doorbell cameras which operate on an integrated social media platform, Neighbors. Neighbors allows users to share camera footage with other users and law enforcement agencies, as well as report safety issues, strangers, or suspicious activities. The platform aggregates user-generated reports and video data into a local activity maps and watchlists. Similar community platforms where neighbors can report suspicious persons or activity, such as NextDoor, are notorious for racial bias and profiling. This problem will surely be made worse by Amazon's desire to automatically classify persons as "suspicious" through sentiment analysis and other biometric data collection. 

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One Card To Rule Them All

Truthstream Media

The Baton Rouge Gunman and “Targeted Individuals”: US Naval Academy Graduate Educates Americans on Non-Consensual Neuro-Experimentation

Comment: This article is a couple of years old but worth digging out for its relevance to the rising awareness of targeted individuals and its relationship to false flag events.

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Ramola D
The Everyday Concerned Citizen

Whistleblower David Voigts, former Naval Officer and systems engineer with a background in Surface Warfare, Electronic Warfare, and Nuclear Engineering, who has been walking cross-country for “Targeted Individuals” since mid-spring this year, spoke out recently, both in a Wheel of Freedom interview, and on Facebook (covered here)  to condemn the hidden Military/Intelligence programs of non-consensual neuro-experimentation currently underway in the United States of America and worldwide, which he suspects has been operative in the case of the Baton Rouge shooter, Gavin Long.

In a Facebook post on July 18, David Voigts, who is currently in Seymour, Indiana, wrote: 

“This is why I’m walking across the country with a huge sign on my back. The US has developed a human-machine interface weapon that spoofs the nervous system. It is being misused to torture American citizens. This shooting in Baton Rouge is one of the outcomes.”

Gavin Long, who adopted the name Cosmo Setepenra, and wrote books on self-improvement, was the young 29-year-old ex-Marine and Iraq war veteran reportedly killed by police in Baton Rouge after he reportedly shot at six police officers, killing three and wounding the others, following the recent reported deaths of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile at the hands of police.

News reports on investigations into his background as well as recordings of talk show interviews reveal that he had mentioned being targeted and was a member of Freedom from Covert Harassment and Surveillance, a group advocating for those being covertly targeted, assaulted, non-consensually experimented on, and hyper-surveilled in a variety of ways in their communities, including with experimental military directed-energy weapons, biometric and physical surveillance devices, synthetic telepathy, and remote bio-hacking neuroweapons. 

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Bilderberg and the Digital New World Order

Truth Stream Media

HART: Homeland Security’s Massive New Database Will Include Face Recognition, DNA, and Peoples’ “Non-Obvious Relationships”

EFF

Why do we know so little about it?   

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly building what will likely become the largest database of biometric and biographic data on citizens and foreigners in the United States. The agency’s new Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART)database will include multiple forms of biometrics—from face recognition to DNA, data from questionable sources, and highly personal data on innocent people. It will be shared with federal agencies outside of DHS as well as state and local law enforcement and foreign governments. And yet, we still know very little about it.

The records DHS plans to include in HART will chill and deter people from exercising their First Amendment protected rights to speak, assemble, and associate. Data like face recognition makes it possible to identify and track people in real time, including at lawful political protests and other gatherings. Other data DHS is planning to collect—including information about people’s “relationship patterns” and from officer “encounters” with the public—can be used to identify political affiliations, religious activities, and familial and friendly relationships. These data points are also frequently colored by conjecture and bias.

In late May, EFF filed comments criticizing DHS’s plans to collect, store, and share biometric and biographic records it receives from external agencies and to exempt this information from the federal Privacy Act. These newly-designated “External Biometric Records” (EBRs) will be integral to DHS’s bigger plans to build out HART. As we told the agency in our comments, DHS must do more to minimize the threats to privacy and civil liberties posed by this vast new trove of highly sensitive personal data.

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Banks opting to scan fingers and faces for account access

Michael Corkery
AP

The banking password may be about to expire — forever.

Some of the nation's largest banks, acknowledging that traditional passwords are either too cumbersome or no longer secure, are increasingly using fingerprints, facial scans and other types of biometrics to safeguard accounts.

Millions of customers at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo routinely use fingerprints to log into their bank accounts through their mobile phones. This feature, which some of the largest banks have introduced in the last few months, is enabling a huge swath of the American banking public to verify their identity with biometrics. And millions of additional customers are expected to opt in as more phones incorporate fingerprint scans.

Other uses of biometrics are also coming online. Wells Fargo lets some customers scan their eyes with their mobile phones to log into corporate accounts and wire millions of dollars. Citigroup can help verify 800,000 of its credit card customers by their voices. USAA, which serves members of the military and their families, identifies some of its customers through their face contours.

Some of the moves reflect concern that so many hundreds of millions of email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers and other personal identifiers have fallen into the hands of criminals, rendering those identifiers increasingly ineffective at protecting accounts.

"We believe the password is dying," said Tom Shaw, vice president for enterprise financial crimes management at USAA, which is based in San Antonio. "We realized we have to get away from personal identification information because of the growing number of data breaches."

Long regarded as the stuff of science fiction, biometrics have been tested by big banks for decades, but have only recently become sufficiently accurate and cost effective to use in a big way. It has taken a great deal of trial and error: With many of the early prototypes, a facial scan could be foiled by bad lighting, and voice recognition could be scuttled by background noise or laryngitis.

Before smartphones became ubiquitous, there was an even bigger obstacle: To capture a finger image or scan an eyeball, a bank would have to pay to distribute the necessary technology to tens of millions of customers. A few tried, but their efforts were costly and short-lived.

Today, the equation has changed. Many models of the iPhone have touch pads that can scan fingerprints. The cameras and microphones on many mobile devices are so powerful that they can record the minute details needed to create a biometric ID. 

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TSA Long Lines Part Of Scheme to Move Americans to Mandatory “Biometic Background Pre-Check System”?

Comment: The whole point of these measures is to make it progressively more and more difficult for the average person to travel...All that is except the 0.1%...

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Marc Slavo
SHTF

In a very classic sense, it is a strategy for acquiring more power.

Problem. Reaction. Solution.

Though the TSA has never been effective at catching or reducing terrorism, it has become very good at inconveniencing Americans.

Rifling through their things, herding them through x-ray machines reminiscent of Nazi policies, forcing people to withstand increasingly long lines, with many people even losing out on flights. All in the name of security.

After wait times across the country have made headlines and left airport travelers stranded and fed up, Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson, whose agency overseas the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), is calling for a solution based in… what else… greater security.

Secretary Johnson is using the 2016 travel crisis to push for more sign-ups in its Pre-Check program, in which applicants undergo a rigorous background check and pay an $85 fee for speedy TSA screenings. Johnson dubbed it “the E-ZPass of airports.”

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Biometric Military Tattoos Explore ‘Human Circuit Board’

Breitbart 

 

The tattoo could also be used to relay information about a soldier’s environment, such as whether he or she is being exposed to biological agents.

According to TechCrunch, the tattoos are part of a new trend of “biowearables.” Chaotic Moon CEO Ben Lamm said, “This is not something that can be easily removed like a Fitbit. It can be underneath a flack jacket, directly on the skin to be collecting this data and being reported back.”

The tattoo’s general purpose is to monitor body temperature, hydration, and the stress level of individual soldiers, but it could also detect biological agents in the air or “pathogens in a soldier’s body.” That information would be uploaded to military networks “via Bluetooth or location-based low-frequency mesh networks like those used for apps like Jott or Firechat.”

Chaotic Moon’s biowearables are temporary, which reduces the cost and the “invasive” nature of putting on the soldier’s body for monitoring purposes. For example, the tattoos would replace options of actually embedding a chip under a soldier’s skin. 


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Paris Attacks: A Perfect Pretext For NATO To Mobilize in Syria and Iraq

21st Century Wire 

To anyone who is really paying attention, the real agenda behind this ‘terror’ event in Paris – is a NATO-sponsored intervention in Syria and northern Iraq.

Also, for the time being, the following will now be buried: any talk of preserving privacy rights in the west, any debate on mass surveillance and bulk data collection, any vocal opposition against mandatory biometric ID’s in Europe, any criticism of Israel’s continued squeeze on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the overdue Iraq War Inquiry in Britain, and of course – any political opposition to an increased western military presence in Syria, Iraq (and any where else).

RT America reports:

Numerous reports are linking the devastating terrorist attacks in Paris, which left over 150 civilians dead in the French capital, to the Islamic State. But what would such a connection mean for France and, potentially, for NATO? Journalist and international analyst Patrick Henningsen (21st Century Wire ) talks with Sean Thomas about the global impact of the Paris attacks…

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Forget your bank PIN: Halifax trials technology where customers are recognised by their heartbeat

Comment: Missed this one from earlier in the month...Welcome to Technocracy.

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The Telegraph
 

Halifax is believed to be the first British bank to trial technology which will allow customers to prove their identity through the analysis of their heartbeat.

Strings of passwords, login codes, PIN numbers and memorable words that we are all required to recall could be consigned to history.

Instead, bank customers of the future could wear slender bracelets which measure the intricate "cardiac rhythms" unique to every person.

The technology has been developed by Canadian firm Bionym.

As with today's existing contactless card technology, the bracelet, called a "Nymi", will communicate with a checkout till or cash machine to allow the customer to pay for goods or draw money.

The firm claims that this new "cardiac signature" will be a highly secure form of proof of ID: more secure than other forms of biometic identification such as eye-scanning or facial recognition technologies.

"In a world passwords and pin numbers, the Nymi Band will allow you to wirelessly prove that you are you to the world around you," Bionym claims. 

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New regs say passengers cannot fly without biometric ID card

Police State USA

The ability to travel in the United States is about to become more restrictive as the TSA announces it will soon be enforcing new identification standards in American airports. 

Beginning in 2016, passengers attempting to pass through a federal TSA checkpoint will be subject to the requirements of the REAL ID Act. To that end, the TSA will put higher scrutiny on travelers’ identities, and will only accept a federal passport or a “REAL-ID” card, which is issued by the states to meet federal requirements. Passengers will not be allowed to fly through an American airport without submitting to the advanced federal specifications.

Both federal passports and REAL-ID cards require a number of unique personal identifiers to be stored together in government databases, including his or her full name, date of birth, Social Security Number, scanned signature, and other identifiers. Both cards require biometric data: a front-facing digital photograph of the passenger’s face, which is ultimately used with a facial recognition database.

“It is a choice,” flippantly explained David Fierro, the Public Information Officer for the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles. “If you use a passport when you’re traveling you don’t have any problems. If you use your driver’s license as identification, you’ll need to either apply for the Real ID card or get a passport.”

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Skin deep tech: Cicret bracelet aims to turn your arm into 'new tablet'

 

Still from youtube video (Cicret App & Bracelet)

Reading emails on your skin may sound wacky, but not for the French designers working on a bracelet that projects your smartphone content onto your arm. To turn the surreal Cicret device into reality, the designers are seeking funding.

A video explaining how the device works has gone viral, racking up 4,222,427 views on YouTube at the time of this article’s publication. The Cicret website says the designers are still working on the prototype of the waterproof bracelet that promises to "make your skin your new tablet."

"Don’t trust any website selling it yet," they warn. 

The Cicret, activated with a twist of the wrist, is equipped with an embedded memory card, processor, accelerometer, micro USB port, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. But the key part is the so-called "pico-projector" and an array of proximity sensors. The pico projector projects the interface onto your arm. When you put your finger on the interface, you stop one of eight proximity sensors. The sensor sends the information back to the processor in your Circet bracelet. 

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RFID implants into humans coming sooner than you think

Natural News

British researcher Mark Gasson had a tiny chip injected underneath the skin on his hand in March 2009. The chip, according to reports, was just a bit more advanced than the versions pet owners use to track them, and it turned Gasson into a walking swipe card, essentially.

"With a wave of his wrist," Business Insider (BI) reported, "he could open security doors at the University of Reading laboratory, where his experiment was being conducted, and he could unlock his cell phone just by cradling it."

A year after that initial implant, Gasson infected it with a computer virus, one that he could pass onto other computer systems if the building's computer networks had been programmed to read his chip. As he moved about his workplace, he spread the virus and corrupted computer systems, leaving those areas of the building inaccessible to his colleagues.

At the time of that experiment, Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and author of the book The Future of the Mind, told Fox News that demonstrating the ability to spread the computer virus was an "important point" because "we're going to have more chips in our body and clothing."

An ominous warning, indeed.

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IBM Develops a New Chip That Functions Like a Brain

New York Times

Inspired by the architecture of the brain, scientists have developed a new kind of computer chip that uses no more power than a hearing aid and may eventually excel at calculations that stump today’s supercomputers.

The chip, or processor, is named TrueNorth and was developed by researchers at IBM and detailed in an article published on Thursday in the journal Science. It tries to mimic the way brains recognize patterns, relying on densely interconnected webs of transistors similar to the brain’s neural networks.

The chip’s electronic “neurons” are able to signal others when a type of data — light, for example — passes a certain threshold. Working in parallel, the neurons begin to organize the data into patterns suggesting the light is growing brighter, or changing color or shape.

The processor may thus be able to recognize that a woman in a video is picking up a purse, or control a robot that is reaching into a pocket and pulling out a quarter. Humans are able to recognize these acts without conscious thought, yet today’s computers and robots struggle to interpret them.

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