The Real ID

[align=left]The Real ID
Marketplace Money | May 20 2006
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In the future, a single card may be your ticket to everything. You'll use it to access your bank account. Without it, you can't travel on a plane or collect social security. Bob Moon reports on the battle over "Real ID."
KAI RYSSDAL: Just about a year ago, Congress passed and the President signed new federal standards for getting state-issued ID cards. Things like driver's licenses. Those standards kick in in two years. To get your card, you'll have to show up in person with proof of identity. And without one it'll be tough to do almost anything: Clear airport security. Or open a bank account. But as Marketplace's Bob Moon reports, critics worry the new system will make one thing easier: Turning your private information into somebody else's business.[/align]
BOB MOON: The American Civil Liberties Union is one of many critics worried that the government is mandating a slapdash idea with no controls that could soon spiral out of control:
[ Phone rings. "Pizza Palace, may I take your order?" ]
The ACLU is circulating this cautionary dramatization on the Internet, suggesting in the not-too-distant future, not only government, but even the smallest of businesses, could find it simple to track your every move:
[ ORDER TAKER: "I show your national identification number as 6102049998-dash-45-dash-54610 - is that correct?"
CUSTOMER: "Uh, yes..."
ORDER TAKER: "Thank you Mr. Kelly. I see you live at 736 Montrose Court, but you're calling from your cell phone. Are you at home?"
CUSTOMER: "Uh, I'm just leaving work, but I'm..."
ORDER TAKER: "Oh, we can deliver to Bob's Auto Supply. That's at 175 Lincoln Avenue, yes?"
CUSTOMER: "No! I'm on my way home! How do you know all this stuff?"
ORDER TAKER: "We just got wired into the system, sir."
CUSTOMER: "Oh..." ]
The privacy warnings are coming not just from the ACLU, but across the political spectrum. New Hampshire Republican Senator John Sununu denounces the law signed by President Bush as "bad policy" that imposes billions of dollars in new costs on states. The free-market Cato Institute warns that a national ID would "promote a surveillance society that we should all dread."
Ohio State University professor Peter Swire says the rush to create this new system actually weakens security.
PETER SWIRE: "There's no protections for consumers against the identity theft this will actually increase. It's really a badly thought out bill, and they should go back to the drawing board."
Privacy advocate Bill Scannell agrees.
BILL SCANNELL: "The lowest employee within the DMV located anywhere in this nation will be able to access not only your driver's license information, but your birth certificate, your passport and any and all accompanying documents that you've shown to prove that you are who you say you are."
Scannell is equally worried that the data businesses could collect by scanning the ID might be used to discriminate against certain people -- a concern also raised in that pizza-ordering dramatization from the ACLU:
[ ORDER TAKER: "The total is $67 even."
CUSTOMER: "Sixty-seven dollars?!"
ORDER TAKER: "Well, that includes the delivery surcharge of $15 to cover the added risk to our driver of traveling through an orange zone."
CUSTOMER: "I live in an orange zone?"
ORDER TAKER: "Now you do. Looks like there was another robbery on Montrose yesterday." ]
Richard Varn thinks that idea is ludicrous. He's a senior fellow at the Center for Digital Government, a research and advisory group. Varn points out such crime data is available today, along with systems that can pinpoint callers. He says if businesses were going to digitally discriminate, they'd be doing it already.
RICHARD VARN: "They don't do it because no one would buy their stinking pizzas if they did something so dumb in a marketplace, somebody else would pop up and say, 'Hey, I'm not going to charge you a premium for your neighborhood. Come to, you know, Papa John's, and we'll deliver your pizza anywhere for the same price.' These folks act as if the market doesn't exist, the Constitution doesn't exist, there's no laws against any of this stuff, and therefore, just because you get a more secure ID, the world will go to hell. Well, that's not true."
Varn is a former information chief for the state of Iowa. He argues improving the reliability of ID isn't just a matter of security, but of convenience that helps everyday business.
RICHARD VARN: "I want the day when I can just walk in with my state-of-Iowa-issued driver's license and swipe it through the reader at the United counter and I can walk onto the plane, because they know who I am, it's a trusted driver's license ID. And when I'm out fishing, out in a trout stream, I want the game warden to walk up and just say, 'Well, who are you, show me your driver's license,' and they'll look up what permissions that I have to fish and hunt, and if I have them, he'll walk on, and make my life easier."
Opponents argue the new Real ID law will actually have the opposite effect of making life more difficult as such checks proliferate. Privacy advocate Bill Scannell argues it's not worth the threat to civil liberties -- and certainly not worth the billions it's expected to cost.
BILL SCANNELL: "Why don't we do less-expensive things that provide real security?"
Opponents are having some success pushing state leaders to resist implementing the new program, which is mandated by the federal government to be in place two years from now.
In New York, I'm Bob Moon for Marketplace.

I would definately refuse such a card, as it will all go into a supermassive federal database. I'll starve if I have to. I will never sumbit to these fucken fascists.

YES I DO HAVE SHIT TO HIDE!! SHIT THAT IS NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS!!

yes, imagine anne frank, it would have been impossible for her and her family to hide, with rfid especially...

i guess that's good for freedom though, it would have been so much easier to find her quicker and kill her...

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Originally Posted by Great Spirit

YES I DO HAVE SHIT TO HIDE!! SHIT THAT IS NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS!!

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that why your mommy took your door off your room

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Originally Posted by Bong30

that why your mommy took your door off your room

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Not this clown again......

we can trust IBM, they're going to give us the same love they gave the nazis...i'm sure it was just an accident ibm gave them the computers to calculate how much to feed the jews to barely keep them alive before murdering them, in order to make sure they were safe from the communists who hated their freedom.

IBM researcher slams UK ID card scheme

Manek Dubash, Techworld | May 20 2006

IBM researcher Michael Osborne, whose job is research into secure ID cards, slated the UK government's ID cards scheme on the grounds of cost, over-centralisation, and being the wrong tool for the job.

Based in Big Blue's Zurich research labs, where the scanning tunnelling microscope was invented and won its inventors a Nobel Prize, Osborne said that the problem is neither the cards nor the fact that the scheme is intended to use biometric technology.

The big issue is that the UK government, plans to set up a central database containing volumes of data about its citizens. Unlike other European governments, most of whom already use some form of ID card, the central database will allow connections between different identity contexts - such as driver, taxpayer, or healthcare recipient - which compromises security. Centrally-stored biometric data would be attractive to hackers, he said, adding that such data could be made anonymous but that the UK Government's plans do not include such an implementation.

Osborne added that biometric technology is still immature. "It's not an exact science", he said. In real world trials, some 10 per cent of people identified using iris recognition failed to enrol - which means the system didn't recognise them. Even fingerprinting is no panacea, as four per cent failed to enrol. Scale that up to a whole population - the UK contains nearly 60 million people - and the problem of biometric identification becomes huge, he said.

Osborne also criticised the government for the potential cost of the system. He said that it will cost a lot more than anyone thinks, pointing out that a project of this size hasn't been tried before, so the government's projected costs are not necessarily accurate.

Finally, Osborne also used a dozen criteria, including whether or not such as system is mandatory or time-limited , to show that on all but two, the UK Government's scheme fails - even before controversial civil liberties issues are considered.

And as for whether ID cards are the right tool to defeat terrorists in the first place, security expert Osborne said: "ID cards won't solve the problem because terrorists don't care about identification - and they'll have valid IDs anyway. The issue is the central database.

"But no-one knows if it'll work, or if it'll be accurate enough - it's more about perceived security than actual security."

Osborne suggested an alternative, which involved keeping the data on the card. With such a system, only the template is downloaded and identity processing happens on the card using Java and local data rather using centralised storage and processing.

He added that since terrorists wanted to be identified, having an ID card was unlikely to be a deterrent. "However, in some previous studies, some criminals were found to be deterred by the need to possess an ID card."

Osborne's remarks were made in a personal capacity during a visit to the Zurich labs, and did not reflect IBM's corporate viewpoint.

How IBM helped the Nazis
IBM and the Holocaust By Edwin Black, Little Brown, ISBN 0-316-85769-6, Hardback, £20
Book review by Peter Reydt
27 June 2001
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

IBM and the Holocaust tells the story of the involvement of this major US corporation in the establishment of Hitlerâ??s Third Reich and the destruction of European Jewry.

Author Edwin Black shows how technology developed in America by Herman Hollerithâ??a punch card and punch card sorting systemâ??enabled the Nazis to organise their war machine and carry through the efficient and systematic genocide of the Jews. At the time of the Nazi dictatorship, IBM had a near worldwide monopoly over the technology and the production of its vital ingredientâ??the punch cards.

Edwin Black is not new to the subject of the Holocaust. His parents were both Jews of European decent and survivors of the Holocaust. Black first encountered the punch card technology at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, where he saw a Hollerith card sorting machine on exhibition. He explains that it was then that questions started to nag at himâ??what role did this machine play for the Nazis? What was the role of IBM? This became the starting point for his investigation. In 1998, he began to pursue these questions vigorously, recruiting a team of researchers, interns, translators and assistants, until it comprised more than 100 people.

In his introduction, Black explains â??I was fortunate to have an understanding of Reich economics and multi-national commerce from my earlier book, The Transfer Agreement, [which dealt with the secret pre-war agreement between Zionism and the Nazis that enabled a limited number of Jews to leave Germany for Palestine] as well as a background in the computer industry, and years of experience as an investigative journalist specialising in corporate misconduct. I approached this project as a typical if not grandiose investigation of corporate conduct with one dramatic difference: the conduct impacted on the lives and deaths of millions.â?� (p15)

Black explains that ultimately, IBM helped the Nazis carry through their policy of genocide. Without this assistance, Hitlerâ??s regime would not have been able to carry through its extermination plan with such efficiency. IBMâ??s machines were used at all stages of the persecution of the Jews. They collected the necessary information to identify the Nazisâ?? victims, first to enforce the bar on Jews working in certain academic, professional and government jobs and later to carry out mass evictions from their homes and into the ghettoes.

IBM technology was used to organise the railways, so that millions of Naziâ?? victims could be transported to the concentration camps, where they were immediately led into the gas chambers. There were Hollerith departments at nearly every concentration camp, which registered the arrival of inmates, organised the allocation of slave labourers, and even kept tallies on the deaths of prisoners.

IBM was involved in virtually every aspect of the Third Reichâ??s operations. The book explains that the company leased, serviced and upgraded more than 2,000 IBM multi-machine sets throughout Germany, and thousands more throughout Nazi occupied Europe. IBM developed custom-designed cards used by the Nazis; with as many as 1.5 billion punch cards being produced in Germany annually.

The punch card technology first developed by Hollerith, a German-American living in Washington, was used to enable the US Census Bureau to count the 1890 census. Decades prior to the development of computers, Hollerith technology enabled the fastest tabulation of the US population ever undertaken. Through a series of punch holes, each card recorded information on an individualâ??s gender, religion, nationality and occupation. Processed, and reprocessed, through sorting and counting machines the cards â??could render the portrait of an entire population or could pick out any group within that population... Every punch card would become an informational storehouse limited only by the number of holesâ?�. (p25) Within years, Hollerithâ??s machines were being used to take censuses across the world. The technology also developed into an early computing system, being used for financial accountancy by some of the largest US corporations.

Hollerith established a near-world wide monopoly, leasing rather than selling his machines, but sold up in 1911 and the company was merged into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. Under the stewardship of ex-sewing machine salesman Thomas Watson, CTR was transformed in the International Business Machines Corporation. Watson, a ruthless businessman, established a paternalistic hierarchy in the company. Watson spoke of the â??IBM familyâ?� that included not only his workers, but also their wives and children, who would also be trained in the â??IBM spiritâ?� and would be well looked after and integrated into his empire.

In 1922, with hyperinflation in Germany leading to the collapse of the currency, Watson took over Dehomag (Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft) that had used the punch card technology under licence. This German subsidiary would later play a crucial role in IBMâ??s business alliance with the Third Reich. By 1933, when Hitler came to power, Watson had transformed the formerly ailing German company into IBMâ??s flag shipâ??producing more than three times above its quota.

But there was the promise of even more to come. â??Nazi Germany offered Watson the opportunity to cater to government control, supervisions, surveillance, and regimentation on a plane never before known in human history. The fact that Hitler planned to extend his Reich to other nations only magnified the prospective profits. In business terms, that was account growth. The technology was almost exclusively IBMâ??s to purvey because the firm controlled about 90 percent of the world market in punch cards and sorters.â?� (p46)

Black stresses that Watson was not a fascist, but a ruthless profiteer. The strong German state under an authoritarian leader offered great potential for moneymaking, and that was what Watson identified with. In fact, as the chairman of IBM, one of the most prestigious companies in the USA, Watson was a well-respected businessman, a supporter of Roosevelt and special advisor to the president. Watson was elected chairman of the Foreign Department that also made him chairman of the American section of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). This, in essence, made Watson Americaâ??s official businessman to the rest of the world. He became installed as president of the entire ICC in 1937 and arranged the organisationâ??s next conference in Berlin.

Right from the start, IBM developed business solutions for the Third Reich. In April 1933, the Hitler regime began a census of all Germans, partly aimed at identifying Jews. The first step was to register data about the citizens of Germanyâ??s largest state, Prussia, which Dehomag was commissioned to undertake. The procedure that was established in this census gives an example of how the co-operation between Dehomag and the Nazis would work in practice in the fields of statistical and data collection.

To cater to the specific requirements of Germanyâ??s statistical programmes, the closest collaboration between Dehomagâ??s technicians and the Nazi authorities was necessary. Every project required specific customized applications. First, Dehomag was specifically informed about the task to be undertaken. Then mock-ups of punch cards were produced with pen and pencil marking the columns and holes to carry the needed information. Production of the punch cards only began if both Dehomag and the German reporting agencies were happy with the result. The company then manufactured and sold the cards, often pre-printed with project names. Once a project was undertaken, the company trained the personal to carry out the work.

With the expansion of its enterprise, Dehomag needed constant technical innovations and developments. Far from intervening in its German subsidiary to halt its collaboration with the Nazi persecution, IBM in New York carefully supervised the whole process and also would make sure that all technical requirements were provided. Dehomag technicians were constantly sent to the US for training.

Whilst IBM was famed in the US, little was known about its German activities. The internal structure of Dehomag was organised in such a way that as far as the Nazis were concerned it was a German company, whilst overall control remained with IBM. This also meant that the mother company could circumvent the American trading restrictions with Germany, once the war had begun.

Nonetheless, Watson not only fully exploited the profit making possibilities offered by Nazi Germany, he also became a political spokesperson for the German Reich. Black explains that Watson believed the world should extend â??a sympathetic understanding to the German people and their aims under the leadership of Adolf Hitlerâ?�. (p43)

For his role, Watson was awarded the specially created Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star to â??honour foreign nationals who made themselves deserving of the German Reichâ?�â??a medal ranking second in prestige only to Hitlerâ??s German Grand Cross. Only when the war started did it become necessary for Watson to return his medal.

In 1937, the Nazi regime ordered another nationwide census. This one was decisive for Hitlerâ??s war preparations and â??for the Jews it would be the final and decisive identification stepâ?�. (p139) In accordance with the Nuremberg race laws, it meant tracing any Jewish ancestry. IBM bought in 70 card sorters, 60 tabulators, 76 multipliers and 90 million punch cards for the 3.5 million Reich Mark contract (worth about $14m today).

In advance of the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, IBMâ??s Viennese subsidiary, under the supervision of Adolf Eichmann, was working to collate comprehensive demographic information about the country on punch cards. This meant the Hitler regime knew exactly where the Austrian Jews were that were to subject to the forced expulsion programme.

When German troops invaded Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, IBM was already there and was helping to run strategic operations such as the State Railway, whose system could be easily taken over by the Nazis.

After several postponements, the nation-wide census ordered in 1937 was finally carried out in May 1939. Some 750,000 census-takers were involved, covering all of the Greater Reichâ??s 22 million householdsâ??80 million citizens in Germany, Austria, the Sudentenland, and the Saar.

This was Dehomagâ??s biggest undertaking. It included a so-called â??supplemental cardâ?� to record each householdâ??s racial ancestry. This enabled the identification of a total of 330,530 so-called â??racial Jewsâ?� in the Greater Reich. This was then broken down by gender, and was further divided between â??full-Jewsâ?� and other shades of Jewish ancestry, with all those recorded in this way also being identified by their address.

This pattern would be repeated over and over again. In virtually every country that the Nazis occupied, an IBM subsidiaryâ??normally already doing business thereâ??would collect national and racial statistical information for the Nazis, which could then be used to identify Jews and other undesirables.

Dehomag even knew in advance that Hitler was preparing for war, as the company had been approached on how to protect its functioning in the event of an attack. With the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, IBM profits leapt as a result of Germanyâ??s activitiesâ??especially with the roundups in Poland and the East.

Whether it was in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Scandinavia, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands or France the Nazi war machine relied upon IBM technology. It helped to organise the allocation of military equipment and personnel just as efficiently as it assisted in identifying Jews and facilitated their transportation to the death camps by train. Although it is true that even without the collaboration of IBM, Hitler fascism would still have carried through its policy of genocide, it is equally true that without it, the Nazis could not have proceeded with such ruthless efficiency.

After the war, IBM was able to retrieve its German assets, machines and profits alike with astonishing ease. At the end of 1946, Dehomag was valued at more than 56.6 million Reich Marks ($230m today) with a gross profit of 7.5 million Reich Marks ($30m). Its machines had been salvaged, its profits preserved and its corporate value protected.

The reasons for this were threefold. Firstly, Dehomagâ??s interests were well looked after by the Nazi policy of custodianship of enemy property. That meant that a custodian was designated by the Reich Economics Ministry to run foreign businesses, so as to keep the companies profitable and productive. Since it was forbidden to transfer money out the country, Dehomagâ??s profits were kept in the company bank accounts, where they remained frozen during wartime but were easily collected thereafter.

Secondly, the Hollerith technology continued to be used by the Nazis, even after their military fortunes began to change. Since the cards could provide damning evidence of the Nazisâ?? atrocities, when the Allies advanced and German positions in the occupied territories, the Nazis would destroy them. But they transported the machines out of reach of the advancing armies.

Thirdly, the Allied powers also had an interest in keeping the machines intact. Already in December 1943, the United States government concluded that strategically it should save Hitlerâ??s Hollerith machines because they held the keys to a smooth military occupation of Germany. To this end, all the Allied powers used Dehomag to conduct economic surveys, collect industrial statistics and carry out censuses.

â??Dehomag emerged from the Hitler years with relatively little damage and virtually ready to assume business as usual. Hence, when the war ended, IBM New York was able to recapture its problematic but valuable subsidiary, recover its machines, and assimilate all the profitsâ?�. (p398) In 1949, Dehomagâ??s name was changed to IBM Germany.

Whilst Black received co-operation from many sources, IBM rebuffed his requests to conduct interviews and denied access to its documents. Black says that since World War II, the company has refused to co-operate with anyone researching its involvement with the Nazi regime. However, he did obtain hundreds of IBM documents via an academic archive.

IBM has attempted to dismiss Blackâ??s allegations, insinuating that they are a type of black propaganda, published as part of a â??coordinated campaignâ?� by Holocaust survivors. Publication of â??IBM and the Holocaustâ?� coincided with a class-action lawsuit, filed in a New York in February this year, which accuses the company of being an accomplice in the Holocaust, and demands that IBM open its archives and pay compensation. The company continues to deny any responsibility, claiming that its German subsidy was taken over by the Nazis before the war.

Black rejects these assertions and shows, moreover, that IBM did not lose administrative control of Dehomag until 1942. â??Weâ??ve gone after the men in the camps, weâ??ve gone after the German companies. The final frontier of Holocaust accountability is the United States,â?� Black has stated.

I highly recommend the reading of the book. Not because it gives new insights into the political reasons for the establishment of fascism in Germany, Black does not attempt to make such an appraisal, nor does he claim to, largely attributing IBMâ??s involvement with the Third Reich to the unscrupulous nature of Watson as an individual.

Nevertheless, Blackâ??s research into the involvement of such a major corporation does help in understanding how the Nazis were able to carry through their genocide. In doing so, he sheds more light on the role of international capital in one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century.

See Also:
An assessment of Peter Novickâ??s The Holocaust in American Life
[29 June 2000]
Fascism and the Holocaust
[WSWS Full Coverage]

they can and will conduct further terrorist attacks against their own country to further this agenda. they may make it mandatory.

the new breed of credit cards are on the way too, which may function in much the same way.

@BONG30 just fuck off narc,uve never smoked weed in ur life you work for bush,

my advice is to utilize the ignore function...some people can't add anything to a topic other than ad hominem attacks...so i say fuck it, ignore them...

calling someone a nutjob doesn't prove the 19 freedom hating muslims who don't know how to fly conspiracy theory...

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Originally Posted by gromorebud

@BONG30 just fuck off narc,uve never smoked weed in ur life you work for bush,

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Thanks man. I know they work for the US government. Psycho4Bud will kick me off again if I make any more "accussations" when in fact he is one too!

Oh the power of intuition! lol.