Tracking Device Allows Insurance Cartel to Monitor Humans as if they are Lab Rats

[charrington]

Progressive's "Snapshot"

How would you like to cut your car insurance bill by 25 percent to 30 percent? Sure, everyone would love that. But this newest insurance discount comes with a catch that not all drivers would agree to. You may have seen Progressive's TV ads promising big discounts for safe driving. One commercial, featuring a perky spokeswoman named Flo, says "are you a safe driver? Yes. Discount! Do you own a home? Yes. Discount! Are you gonna buy online? Yes. Discount!  Aren't discounts great? Yes!" Now, Progressive is taking it further, offering drivers in Ohio, Kentucky, and 20 states a program called "Snapshot,"  that provides discounts up to 30 percent. (It is not yet available in Indiana or Florida).

The Catch: There's one catch. You have to let Progressive install a gadget under your dash to monitor and transmit your driving habits. Company spokesman Richard Hutchinson told us, "This is a new approach to auto insurance. It allows you the consumer to share your driving to get a discount." He says after the first 30 days, your rates will go down, as much as 30 percent,  if Snapshot finds you:

    * Drive at reasonable speeds, without jackrabbit starts
    * Avoid hard stops
    * Don't drive late at night

Will Bad Driving Raise Your Rates? Too much "big brother" for you? Don't worry: Hutchinson claims your rates won't go up if your driving is a bit more aggressive, or if you make too many hard stops.  You simply won't get the discount. "It's only a discount." he said. "And its a purely voluntary program. So you don't have to do it if you don't want to." In addtion, Progressive says it won't share the data unless required for an accident or legal case. But Pennsylvania officials have raised privacy concerns, and as of July 15, Progressive had pulled the program from that state for now.

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/money/consumer/dont_waste_your_money/progressive:-lower-rates-if-they-can-spy

[Monkeypox]

Hey Progressive:

[Kilika]

(is that a Folsom Prison era Johnny Cash?)

"It's only a discount." he said. "And its a purely voluntary program. So you don't have to do it if you don't want to."

Of course it is. They wouldn't force something on people now would they? Next thing you know all companies are offering this new "volunteer" program, and then "volunteer" changes to policy and is no longer offered as an option, but part of your "standard coverage".

[ryanwv]

That is really damn crazy. It just goes to show that a lot of people will push things are far as you let them. The advantage point to put a stop to this kind of thing is that a private company on the `open` market is offering it. If the majority of consumers reject having a camera put in their cars then the offer should go away sooner or later. Now, if it becomes popular then be warned that some Federal government agency might get wind of it and try to make it required for all states.

[NWOSCUM]

Hell, most new cars have black boxes in them anyways.  This is just another step into tyranny.

[Paranoid Puppet Master]

What's wrong with driving at night? (Curfew?)

[Overcast]

Progressive's "Snapshot"

How would you like to cut your car insurance bill by 25 percent to 30 percent?

I cut mine by 200% by going with a company OTHER than progressive, lol

[Optimus]

Device lets insurer track miles, speed, braking behaviors
Brian J. O'Connor / Detroit News Finance Editor



It sounds like Big Brother, but a high-tech gizmo that tracks your driving could bring you a big discount on car insurance.

Progressive Insurance is unveiling its Snapshot discount program in Michigan this week. The program involves installing a monitoring device on your vehicle that records how much you drive, how fast and when — and how hard — you hit the brakes. Depending on how those factors add up, drivers can get up to a 30 percent discount.


From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20101222/BIZ/12220337/Device-lets-insurer-track-miles--speed--braking-behaviors#ixzz18y98lUXl

[Damascus]

Wounder what the Mice people will say about the privatization of tyranny. Add this to on star and if you miss a payment your car will be disabled.

[Dig]

John Coleman Committee of 300 1991...

In "The Technotronic Era" Brzezinski talks about "the masses" as if people are some inanimate object— which is possibly how we are viewed by the Committee of 300. He continually refers to the necessity of controlling us "masses." At one point, he lets the cat out of the bag:

"At the same time the capacity to assert social and political control over the individual will vastly increase. It will soon be possible to assert almost continuous control over every citizen and to maintain up-to-date files, containing even the most personal details about health and personal behavior of every citizen in addition to the more customary data.

"These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities. Power will gravitate into the hands of those who control information. Our existing institutions will be supplanted by pre-crisis management institutions, the task of which will be to identify in advance likely social crises and to develop programs to cope with them. (This describes the structure of FEMA which came much later. )

"This will encourage tendencies through the next several decades toward a TECHNOTRONIC ERA, A DICTATORSHIP, leaving even less room for political procedures as we know them. Finally, looking ahead to the end of the century, the possibility of BIOCHEMICAL MIND CONTROL AND GENETIC TINKERING WITH MAN, INCLUDING BEINGS WHICH WILL FUNCTION LIKE MEN AND REASON LIKE THEM AS WELL, COULD GIVE RISE TO SOME DIFFICULT QUESTIONS."

Brzezinski was not writing as a private citizen but as Carter's National Security Advisor and a leading member of the Club of Rome and a member of the Committee of 300, a member of the CFR and as a member of the old Polish Black Nobility. His book explains how America must leave its industrial base behind and enter into what he called "a distinct new historical era."

[Freedom_Or_Death]

It's not something forced on anyone, and for people who drive by the speed limit and completely within the rules of the road, I can see how this can be a good thing for them, especially if it can save them money which everyone needs in this economy.

I only see this being tyrannical when/if they make these things mandatory.  I don't see much wrong with it now, being optional.

[Monkeypox]

It's not something forced on anyone, and for people who drive by the speed limit and completely within the rules of the road, I can see how this can be a good thing for them, especially if it can save them money which everyone needs in this economy.

I only see this being tyrannical when/if they make these things mandatory.  I don't see much wrong with it now, being optional.

Jesus Christ...

[Freedom_Or_Death]

 

[freedom_commonsense]

You do realise insurance is mandatory in a lot of places?

[Freedom_Or_Death]

You do realise insurance is mandatory in a lot of places?

Did you read the whole article?  Not just the selective snipit posted here, but the whole thing?  This is part of a discount program people have the option of taking.  It's not mandatory as soon as they get insurance. and until it becomes mandatory, the whole cry about "this is tyranny" is nothing more than disinformation and a ridiculous ad hominem argument.

Now, you can go on and say "Jesus Christ" or what ever other catch phraise you want, but the fact still remains, this thing is completely optional, and in no way manditory, at the present time. 

Now, if you can prove that everyone MUST get this device, I will agree with you that this is tyrannical... and until that time, 

[Dig]

DARPA Bounces Smart Radar Off Buildings To Track Individual Urban Vehicles From the Sky
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/darpas-street-level-radar-sees-around-corners-track-vehicles-sky
By Clay Dillow
Posted 03.24.2010 at 1:07 pm

Tracking from Above It's difficult to use radar in urban environments because of all the structures that get in the way. But by bouncing highly sensitive radar off of buildings' facades, DARPA hopes to lock onto individual vehicles from UAVs and track them through urban streets even when buildings block line of sight. Zemlinki

Radar is great for tracking objects in the wide-open sky or even at sea, but when you try to take it to street level you run into some obstacles -- literally. Radar requires a good line of sight, and obstructions like buildings or terrain features can render radar useless. But now, using a handful of unmanned aircraft and technology that allows them to intelligently reflect radar off buildings, DARPA is developing a system that should be able to track individual vehicles even as they dart between skyscrapers and other structures.

Dubbed Multipath Exploitation Radar, the system works by using buildings as mirrors, bouncing radar off of surfaces to "see" around corners and keep tabs on vehicles even without direct line of sight. First the MER system uses LIDAR -- optical surveying tech that is already packed on many aircraft -- to create a 3-D map of a city. That model of the city allows the system to calculate which reflective angles can best keep an eye on a particular vehicle even when it is obscured by a structure.

Using Ku-band radar, the MER is sensitive to even slight differences between similar vehicles, ensuring that the target car isn't lost in the mix of traffic even when the signals are bouncing off of buildings. That's a key component of MER that can't fail if the system is to work in crowded urban environments. And it will have to; DARPA thinks that once a LIDAR model of a city is made, MER can cover a swath of terrain more than 600 square miles in size.

But MER has some obstacles of its own to overcome before it starts seeing through buildings. The key challenge is maintaining a lock on the target as the radar re-orients itself from line-of-sight to reflection and back, perhaps multiple times very rapidly as a car speeds through urban streets. In the meantime, the ever-ambitious DARPA is looking into developiong an algorithm that would allow MER to track several vehicles in different areas at once.

DARPA Wants Roving 'Smart Cameras' That Understand What They See
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/darpa-wants-smart-cameras-understand-what-they-see
By Clay Dillow
Posted 03.17.2010 at 5:16 pm

Smarter Cameras DARPA wants cameras that can interpret what they're seeing Hustvedt

The problem with surveillance cameras is that they can see but they can't think, which means there always has to be a human on the other end making cognitive sense of what's right in front of the camera. But if we meshed machine vision with visual intelligence, DARPA argues in a solicitation for its new "Mind's Eye" program, we could remove the human element from myriad tasks.

In essense, DARPA wants a smart camera that not only sees what's in front of it, but thinks about what's going on and even what might happen next.

For humans, taking in our surroundings and applying learned concepts to them is innate. We can use our imagination to apply learned concepts to potential scenarios that haven't even taken place. These things are so easy to do we don't even think about them, but they're very difficult to duplicate in machines.

Machines, DARPA argues, can't piece the entire mosaic of space together, perceiving only the "nouns" in a given setting. "The focus of Mind's Eye is to add the perceptual and cognitive underpinnings for recognizing and reasoning about the verbs in those scenes, enabling a more complete narrative of action in the visual experience."

Applications for such technology abound, but specifically DARPA mentions the need for a smart camera that can "report on activity in an area of observation." The agency sees such visual devices deployed on fixed surveillance platforms, "camera_equipped perch-and-stare micro air vehicles" and unmanned ground vehicles. But if the technology is such that it can do all the things DARPA wants it to, we think they can do even better.

How Bat Sonar Could Improve Human Cameras
The complex algorithm which bats employ to identify plants could make for the most advanced facial recognition software yet
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/out-blue-darpa-seeks-means-manipulate-lightning
By Matt Ransford
Posted 03.24.2008 at 5:07 pm

Bats Seth Tisue

This past week we happened to cover both dolphin echolocation and facial recognition. Today comes a report on a study that may bring the two concepts a little closer together. German researchers have devised a computer algorithm which is able to identify plant species using sonar echoes, in the same way bats are able to find fruit and insects. If the technology is one day sufficiently refined, it could ultimately be used for facial recognition.

Bats rely on echolocation to find their way around and to hunt prey and forage for fruit. In order better to understand how the bats identify which plants bear the fruit they prefer, the researchers at the University of Tübingen devised a software routine that could analyze the echo response time and frequency of sound waves reflected off isolated plants. Each presented a distinct signature, based on the size and number of branches and leaves. The team was able to achieve nearly 100 percent accuracy once the study was complete.

Not only will the findings be valuable for the science of bats and echolocation, but the applications for humans are potentially great as well. The distinct advantage of a sonar identification system over a visual-based system is that it would be able to operate in low light or total darkness.

Tested: Face-Detecting Cameras
New cameras can spot a face in a crowd—and focus on it
http://www.popsci.com/gear-gadgets/article/2007-07/tested-face-detecting-cameras
By Aimee Baldridge
Posted 07.12.2007 at 2:00 am

The goal of autofocus is to make something in the picture come out sharp. But if you're taking a photo of people, it's not their hands you want in focus. Recently, camera makers have been adding the ability to detect faces in a scene, track them if they move, and optimize both focus and exposure to make everyone look their best. But not all face-detection systems are equal, as I discovered after testing several compact cameras on patient friends who posed by indoor light, as well as on passersby rushing through Times Square.

How it Works

All face-detecting cameras compare the scene before them to a built-in library of features derived from images of real people, such as the distances between eyes, patterns of light and shadow, and skin colors. So far, no models can identify a face in profile, and they don't function well in low light, such as in bars or candlelit rooms. But they're not easily fooled: In our tests, none were thrown off by variations in skin tone or by accessories like eyeglasses.

[Damascus]

So is on star, you wait, the efficiency of the privatization of tyranny will astound you. They have to start out as opt in before they make it mandatory. But I'm sure there are some idiots somewhere that will like it. Just like some idiots enjoy the pat downs by the TSA.

[Dig]

The treasonous batshit pieces of globalist dog poo poo paranoid morons know they are committing wholesale crimes against humanity. That is why they do not dare deal with the legal issues instead they just spew psychopathic ramblings similar to kserial killers when they stand over the victim and relish at their word. Just look at this genocidal maniac of liberty and freedom:

Bosses in the Bedroom
http://exceptionmag.com/business/working-life/0001722/bosses-bedroom
Working Life By Lewis Maltby | April 15, 2010

Privacy is dead. Get over it. So says Scott McNealy, former president of Sun Microsystems.

He's right. Workplace privacy is dead and buried. Employers can and do read e-mail, eavesdrop on telephone calls, monitor Internet access and watch workers with hidden cameras (even in bathrooms and locker rooms). Virtually all of this is legal. Technically, employers aren’t supposed to listen to personal telephone calls, but it happens all the time and you have no way of knowing. Some judges have found bathroom cameras to be an invasion of privacy, but other judges allow it.

As bad as this is, it’s getting worse. Bosses are now spying on workers’ home lives. Millions of workers carry company-issued cell phones. Every one of these phones is equipped with GPS. The technology required to track cell phones is readily available and not very expensive. The cost of tracking an employee 24/7 is only $5 a month. Employers often keep GPS tracking a secret or tell the workers they can turn off the GPS when they go home and continue to track them. The National Workrights Institute (NWI) has already begun receiving complaints about GPS.

Even more serious are the problems created by company-issued laptops. Employers usually tell workers it’s OK to use them for personal purposes as well as business. It’s presented as a perk—now you don’t need to buy your own computer.

What employers don’t tell you is that the company’s computer technicians look at your private documents when the computer comes in for upgrading or repair. Not only are your personal e-mail, photographs and financial records revealed, but the techs tell your boss about anything they don’t like. If you say something negative about the company, tell risqué jokes or make controversial comments about politics or religion, it can cost you your job.

If you think your boss wouldn’t fire you for something like this, think again. Heidi Arace was fired by PNC Bank for telling an off-color joke by e-mail. Nate Fulmer lost his job because he criticized organized religion on his personal website.

The ultimate nightmare comes from webcams. If your company-issued laptop has a webcam, bosses can turn it on whenever they want. If they do it at night, they’ll probably see the inside of your house, maybe your bedroom. A suburban Philadelphia school district was recently caught turning on the webcams in laptops issued to students. Some were in the students' bedrooms.

Unionized workers have some protection against these abuses. While the law on GPS is still emerging, many labor lawyers believe GPS tracking is a mandatory subject of bargaining. Union members also are protected against arbitrary termination. It would be highly unlikely an arbitrator would uphold the termination of a worker who turned off the GPS when they went off duty. Nor would an arbitrator allow an employer to fire a union worker because they said something on their personal blog the boss didn’t like.

But for the rest of us, these practices are legal. Congress has been asleep at the switch when it comes to protecting privacy for the past 20 years. The last federal privacy law was enacted in 1986 and doesn’t even mention electronic communications other than telephone calls. Since then, advancing technology and employer abuse have eliminated any semblance of privacy at work. It’s time for Congress to wake up and take action before our private lives become an open book to employers as well.

Lewis Maltby is president and founder of the National Workrights Institute (NWI), a human rights organization committed to workplace issues, and author of the new book, Can They Do That?: Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace.

[Dig]

Human Terrain Systems and Military Intelligence
http://www.puppetgov.com/2010/04/16/next-u-s-army-clarifies-hts-role-human-terrain-systems-and-military-intelligence/
Posted by PUPPETGOV on Apr 16th, 2010
By JOHN STANTON~Counter Punch

There has been a lot of debate over the years about HTS’ part in the US Army’s intelligence operations function. Critics and neutral observers have known for some time that HTS is an information collections program. HTS proponents have denied that fact at every turn. At long last, that debate is finally over. The US Army’s Human Terrain System is, in fact, an intelligence gathering effort, one of many in the US Army’s impressive toolkit. A February 2010 budget request document defines and places HTS’ role as one of “intelligence support”. It further states that “this effort also provides unique capabilities needed to find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, and disseminate (F3EAD) critical information pertaining to targets of interest…”

Another US Army budget document indicates this: (54) Human Terrain System – Military Intelligence Program (MIP) (SAGs:121) $17,521 million.

Evidently, someone from HTS management had a hand in writing the short plug for funding justification. Who knew that the HTS Teams were “highly acclaimed”. The question for many is: Acclaimed for What?

“Human Terrain System – Military Intelligence Program (MIP) $17,521 million. Funds the Human Terrain System (HTS) to provide necessary training, graduate-level education, and program management of highly acclaimed HTS Teams. These HTS team members have the requisite skills and abilities to deploy and embed with combat units for up to one year, providing social and cultural decision-making insight to operational commanders and their staffs.”

According to the Wikipedia editors and HTS management this is not the case. Wikipedia’s entry includes a statement that claims HTS does not “conduct military intelligence operations or kinetic targeting.” It’s the same over at the official HTS.mil website.  “HTTs do not proactively seek or collect actionable intelligence from the local civilian population…Team members are legally prohibited from performing active intelligence collection…The role of the HTT is neither to directly assist in lethal targeting of insurgents nor the collection of actionable military intelligence.”

But that’s not the case according to another US Army budget documents. The Department of the Army Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 Supplemental Request and FY 2011 Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) Request dated February 2010 details the intelligence activities HTS is involved in. Quoting directly (in italics):

Description of Operations Financed: Intelligence support to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) provides sustainment and operation of Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities already operating in theater, such as Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems (TUAS), Constant Hawk Full Motion Video (FMV) platforms, DCGS-A, Imagery work stations, and MASINT Ground sensors. This effort also provides unique capabilities needed to find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, and disseminate (F3EAD) critical information pertaining to targets of interest in OIF. Unique capabilities provided in this category include sustainment associated with critical Intelligence initiatives coordinated closely with OSD MIP and ISR Task Force. Other key activities include continued support to the Human Terrain System (HTS) teams currently in theater, Army Document and Media Exploitation (DOMEX), and sustainment of deployable TS/SCI-level communications systems such as the Joint Mobile Intelligence Communications System (JMICS).

HTS Intel Operatives

These resources are used also to selectively augment the Army intelligence workforce using government civilian or contracted personnel, as appropriate, to meet the vastly increased demand for actionable intelligence in theater. Analysts working within existing DOD and Intelligence Community (IC) organizations provide real-time or near real-time analytic products in direct support of commanders engaged in the execution of their OIF missions. This is accomplished through the collection, analysis, and fusion of multiple sources of information, including Human, Signals, Measurement and Signature, and Imagery Intelligence (HUMINT, SIGINT, MASINT, and IMINT) and Counterintelligence. Note: Classified details of the FY 2011 OCO request in support of the Army Military Intelligence Program are contained in Volume 1a of the DOD Military Intelligence Program Congressional Justification Book (MIP CJB).

Intelligence Operations and Support. Provides critical intelligence operational support capabilities to support Information Dominance Center (IDC) operations, ensuring deployed forces have real time access to sophisticated analytical and data mining tools. Also supports modification and upgrade of IDC hardware and software and the operationalization of advanced technologies. Provides tactical overwatch to deployed forces, affording engaged combat units 24/7 situational awareness and response to time-sensitive requests for information in direct support of combat forces. Army DOCEX Program provides direct support to combatant commanders, training of Soldiers and joint service personnel preparing to deploy to OIF / OEF, reach-back translation support deployable systems enhancement and tools integration.

Provides Analytic Tools and Technology for Operational Networks; identifies requirements from deployed analytic systems in the field of information technology. Blue Force Tracking provides situational awareness to Tactical HUMINT Teams (THT) through use of the Handheld Digital Reporting Devices, audio communications, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) real time videos, area maps and alert capability to warn Soldiers of threats in the CENTCOM theater of operations. Tactical Battlefield Visualization provides for sustainment of the three-dimensional, color representation of manmade and natural features and terrain. Increases situational awareness and understanding of complex terrain in the form of intelligence presentations and daily products critical for tactical planning and execution of operational missions. Provides support to deployed Human Terrain Teams in OIF/OEF in response to current CENTCOM Joint Urgent Operational Needs Statements. In addition, aids in Improvised Explosive Device detection and prevention and the integration of military forces into Army and coalition force military operations.

Genesis of HTS Program: Defense Science Board?

On 1 February 2007 the Defense Science Board (DSB) released a little noticed report titled 21st Century Strategic Technology Vectors. In the report the DSB recommended that military planners and warfighters explore, prepare/exploit the Human Terrain in which the US military operates. They also suggested that social science groups work closely with US Combatant Commanders. To do this, the DSB suggested a, then, radical approach: tap into the non-kinetic social sciences network for analytical data and marry future findings and applications to the military’s warfighting toolkit. In a piece titled Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience: Dual Use Discipline for Understanding & Managing Complexity and Altering Warfare (non-footnoted version at Cryptome) the author notes the following from the DSB study conducted in the summer of 2006.

“Human, Social, cultural and behavior (HSCB) modeling…pushes the boundaries of DOD’s comfort zone the farthest. However, it is an area that DOD cannot afford to ignore. The DOD needs to become much more familiar with the theories, methods, and models from psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, cognitive science, political science and economics in order to be able to identify those with real potential to add value to DOD’s toolkit. Coupling these to quantitative and computational modeling and simulation techniques from mathematics, physics, statistics, operations research, and computer science could lead to powerful new tools that represent complex human and social systems…One promising starting point for the application of HSCB models is to complement the more familiar physical network modeling with human/group behavioral models.

HSCB models are designed to help understand the structure, interconnections, dependencies, behavior, and trends associated with organizational entities. Macro HSCB models address nation states, socio-cultural regions, economies, and political systems. Micro HSCB models deal with religious and ethnic tribes, militias, insurgent and terrorist networks, and military units at the tactical level. Integrated models try to tie together the macro and micro models.

A formidable challenge in modeling social and behavioral phenomena is to integrate and make coherent micro-macro models at multiple levels of data, granularity, and analysis, and across multiple disciplines of the social sciences, and to acquire and structure data that can be used to guide and test the models.”

New Casualties Reported:  Incidents from 2008

“You are missing some people who got wounded.  One US Army Lieutenant was shot in the chest after one month in the field”, said a source. “Three HTS members were riding in an armored vehicle that rolled over after the driver took evasive action. The driver of the vehicle was listening to music on his I-Pod when the incident took place. The vehicle rolled over three times.  As a result, one of the occupants had a broken neck and other serious injuries. Another had broken ribs one of which went through this liver.”

Known HTS casualties now stand at 12 (including HTS hostage released).

* Paula Loyd-killed/died of wounds
* Nicole Suveges–killed
* Michael V. Bhatia–killed
* Lt Brian Brennan–(both legs amputated)
* Wesley Cureton–wounded, status unknown
* Scott Wilson–wounded, status unknown
* D. Ayala–guilty of manslaughter
* A. Salam, Afghani National killed by Ayala
* Issa Salomi–Hostage, released March 2010
* Name Unknown—shot in chest
* Name Unknown—wounded in vehicle rollover
* Name Unknown—wounded in vehicle rollover

RELATED:

www.clisolutions.com

[Dig]

DARPA Plans Upgrades to SPHERES Satellites: Smart Visual Navigation, Force-Field Thrusters
Little hover-spheres will steer themselves around obstacles inside and outside the ISS, wirelessly share power, and more
By Clay Dillow
Posted 04.20.2010 at 12:40 pm

The MIT-designed SPHERES (that's Synchronized Position, Hold, Engage, and Reorient Experimental Satellite) aboard the ISS -- those little globes that fly around like tiny satellites even though they are confined to the station's interior -- are in line for some big upgrades from DARPA. And in true DARPA fashion, the hardware updates are bold: aside from designing the next generation of spheres, DARPA wants the current models to be fitted with vision-based autonomous navigation and force fields.

SPHERES was created by DARPA so researchers on the ground -- chiefly a group of grad students at MIT -- would have a real-world test bed for formation flying algorithms. But anticipating other research opportunities, the SPHERES were built with expansion ports that allow new hardware to be installed on the CO2 propelled satellites. Now DARPA is ready to start plugging in said experimental hardware to see what works, with the eventual goal of taking SPHERES outside of the ISS.

DARPA's first order of business: a vision-based nav system that will let two SPHERES create 3-D models of other objects in space and perform relative navigation maneuvers based solely on their own vision. To wit:

The target object should be assumed to be moving and possibly tumbling, and its state will not be a priori known to the observer SPHERES (except through their own sensors). Once a 3D model of the object is constructed, the two observer SPHERES will perform relative navigation (as demonstrated through some test maneuver) solely by sensory reference to the target object and its 3D model.

But if visual navigation and 3-D mapping doesn't tickle the technophile in you, this next obejective should: DARPA wants to deploy electromagnetic force fields between two orbiting SPHERES so they can reorient each other without resorting to their thrusters. And as long as you're configuring that hardware, DARPA says, "another goal of this program thrust area is to demonstrate wireless power transfer through resonant inductive coupling," so two SPHERES orbiting in tandem can share power between them.

DARPA's third objective simply wants engineers on the ground to start shaping the vision for the next generation of SPHERES, which will operate both inside and outside the ISS, coming and going through the smaller Kibo lab airlock. Topping the list of requirements: "Ability to operate both inside and outside of ISS," "substantial maneuvering capability," and "safety features enabling semi-autonomous operations in the proximity of ISS."

To top it all off, DARPA wants to tap the collective wisdom of the crowd to develop cluster flight algorithms for the SPHERES, purportedly to raise awareness of super-neato science, technology, and mathematics opportunities among high school and college students, but also to see if crowd-sourcing complex systems even works (and, presumably, for the algorithms).

Noticeably absent from the upgrades to the floating spheres is a means to train a Jedi knight on the peculiarities of the Force. But with a meager $4 million in grants to spread across the varying and ambitious goals of the SPHERES project, perhaps the light saber tech will have to wait.

[Dig]

The Transnational Homeland Security State and the Decline of Democracy
When Empire Hits Home, Part 4
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18676
by Andrew Gavin Marshall

[Dig]

Hey American Sub-Elite morons who believe whatever the US Court of Appeals and TIME magazine tells you...

Get up off your asses and haul it to Huntington ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Huntington Library logs
Nazi Legal Papers
Justifying the Extermination of
Millions of Innocent Citizens
with the National Archives
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0825/huntington-library-nazi-papers-national-archives/
By The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 -- 3:12 pm

Documents that historians say laid the legal groundwork for the execution of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust were turned over to the National Archives on Wednesday. The private, nonprofit Huntington Library formally handed the Nuremberg Laws to archive officials during a news conference at The Huntington's sprawling complex of libraries, museums and botanical gardens in this Los Angeles suburb. The Huntington has had charge of the four pages since Gen. George Patton deposited them there at the end of World War II. Patton, who disobeyed orders when he spirited them out of Germany, grew up in San Marino and was friends with Huntington officials. U.S. Archivist David Ferriero said he hoped to put the Nuremberg Laws on display in Washington by Sept. 15, the 75th anniversary of their signing by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi officials. "It's important to me as the archivist to have these on display from the 15th of September, the day they were signed," Ferriero said.

[Dig]

People Tracking – It’s a Good Thing
http://www.securitymagazine.com/Articles/Feature_Article/d2ddc0684fa0f010VgnVCM100000f932a8c0____
by Bill Zalud
November 21, 2006

People tracking in emergencies. A system lets incident commanders immediately gather the information needed to accurately pinpoint people and situations.

Shannon Torrez is a troubled person. The Missouri resident just weeks ago kidnapped an 11-day-old baby, later found safe. At about the same time, a New York hospital reported an alleged baby snatcher stalking the facility’s maternity ward.

Infant abductions, especially from healthcare facilities, are rare but tragic incidents that can destroy families and harm businesses that protect the little ones and their relatives. It is also one of the first areas in which “people tracking” solutions have played a significant role as systems including sensors and detectors, “read” tags and bracelets to alert to a moving infant. Healthcare security executives enlarged the business model to also include wandering patients and assisted-living residents who suffer from dementia, Alzheimer’s or similar conditions and are at risk of wandering off.


NEW TECH TWISTS

Tracking deliveries after hours. An outsourced monitoring system combines security video, door access and two-way audio to protect facilities and assets but allow after hours deliveries at retail and other operations.


Intelligent security video adds a new twist to people tracking in healthcare environments.

“Traditionally, intelligent video technology has been used in security applications,” Ray Rudy of Arteco told Security Magazine. “However, as these systems become more advanced, there are new uses that are helping people in ways far beyond security. Within healthcare and senior citizen settings, intelligent video is being used to detect events and alert personnel to safety issues. With its network capabilities and analytics, intelligent video is a solution to a variety of serious issues, including patient and resident falls, and injuries that result from falls.”

Security cameras are strategically mounted in rooms for wide coverage and digital areas of interest created around the patient beds using analytics software. If a patient gets out of bed or should slip, fall or wander away, the system detects this event as abnormal behavior and immediately alerts the personal hand-held communication device of on-duty staff.

“We provide these administrators with cost-effective measures to improve performance and avert safety and security problems,” said Rudy.

Beyond healthcare, solutions have exploded as enterprises use radio frequency identification, global positioning, cellular radio, intelligent security video, visitor badging, access controls, recognition software and even cutting edge wayfinding navigational tools to track employees, visitors and people in vehicles.

The beginning of people tracking in hospital settings continues, of course. There are simple door-activated warning sensors as well as sophisticated, computer-based networks sometimes tied into nurse call systems to quickly alert staff of a wandering patient or potential infant abduction. Elements can include: door-ajar alerts, door lock activators, staff alert graphic display panel, elevator deactivation, voice annunciators, lightweight ankle or wrist detectors, loitering notification and escort bypass functions.

Some hospital systems can operate on two different digitally encoded frequencies, to virtually eliminate the problem of false alarms that many systems cause with stray radio signals.


ULTRASOUND TRACKING

Patient tracking to avoid falls. At assisted living facilities, if a patient gets out of bed or should slip, fall or wander away, a tracking system detects this event as abnormal behavior and immediately alerts staff.


Another approach, ultrasound indoor positioning systems automatically track precisely by room the real-time location of people in complex indoor environments. Using wireless detectors and “tags” linked to a digital file containing vital statistics and information about the person being monitored, such tags transmit a unique identification signal using ultrasound waves to detectors that use digital signal processing algorithms, which transmit signals via an existing LAN to a central computer that stores the information about the tag’s room-location and the time of receipt of the signal.

Retail operations also find business reasons for people tracking tech. For example, at ASIS International in late September, loss prevention directors viewed a new approach from ADT Security Services called Unattended Delivery, a video-based service that provides a secure way for retailers to track delivery people and goods after hours, reducing store delivery costs.

It consists of an integrated mix of technologies including access control, video surveillance, remote monitoring, intrusion detection and two-way voice to monitor after-hour deliveries. Delivery drivers are issued access control badges, which grant limited access to a retail establishment after hours. The access control system triggers a deliver notification to a monitoring center, where a person can remotely monitor and record activities via video surveillance cameras installed in the store. Two-way voice capabilities allow the monitoring team to communicate with the delivery driver, if needed.


Tracking vehicles and people. Inexpensive cameras on security officer cars can patrol a parking lot and track and identify vehicles by the car’s license plate.


Look for even more people tracking applications coming out of video analytics. According to GE Security’s Robert Siegel, “At our GE Global Research Center, developers are creating such analytics in products such as digital pan-tilt-zoom cameras and digital video recorders. These technologies will let operators track a specific human, in either a live or recorded setting. The system teaches itself all the attributes necessary to distinguish a selected individual, even in the presence of other people. The system will watch only that person and even hand-off the target from one camera to another, passing the individual from camera-to-camera as a person leaves one field of view for another.”

Recognition systems also play a role in tracking people and identifying vehicles. An example is mobile license plate recognition system helping the University of Southern California Transportation – Parking Enforcement expedite parking enforcement on campus. CarCatcher licensed by InPlay includes a recognition software engine that can be applied for a wide range of license plate recognition applications. For the University of Southern California, the mobile system enables parking enforcement officials to monitor an entire campus in a very short amount of time. CarCatcher scans license plates, matching them to a list of scofflaws provided by the university.


LINKING PEOPLE AND CAR PLATES

Tracking gets smarter. Under development are intelligent security video systems that can track an individual even among a crowd of people.


“In the first 20 minutes of our initial test run of the system, we caught three offenders with over $1,700 in unpaid citation fees,” said Kenneth Marshall, assistant manager transportation services – administration, University of Southern California Transportation – Parking Enforcement. “Return on investment from these systems is incredible given the increased efficiency in collections with less manpower. In addition, universities often see a decrease in parking violations once students become aware that the campus is patrolled by the automatic license plate reading system.”

The system uses a laptop computer in conjunction with an off-the-shelf camera system. Cameras mount temporarily or permanently to any vehicle, and can be quickly exchanged between vehicles. Once installed, the driver can cruise the parking lots at any speed. The software automatically sounds an alarm when a plate matches categorized “hot lists.” Multiple lists can be used, and the system offers the flexibility to match alarms to the urgency of individual lists.

Long-range radio frequency, integrated into traditional electronic access control systems, also provides people tracking capability.

According to Jerry Cordasco of Compass Technologies, to provide for building emergencies like fire, terror and hostage situations, businesses, schools and others are developing “mustering” practices. “Unfortunately mustering is not ideal practice that can assure first responders that a building is completely free of occupants,” he said.

Employing standard access-control cards and readers means everyone evacuating a building would theoretically present their badges while running out the door. People just don’t do that in an emergency. In most cases evacuees won’t bother to go to an outside-the-building mustering station, either. So first responders will still have no idea how many people remain in the building.

With RFID, badges are active tags, continuously being read by the RF readers. Technology exists to read multiple tags simultaneously at high speed. Even with a throng of people pushing out the door, the RF reader can pickup real-time information from all tags with a high degree of accuracy: near-100 percent with long-range readers.


SideBar: Tracking People to Avoid Falls

The Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations names the reduction of risk of falls, and implementation of a fall reduction program, among their 2007 Assistant Living National Patient Safety Goals. The financial impact of fall injuries is staggering. In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control reports that direct medical costs for all fatal and non-fatal falls totaled $19.4 billion. This is expected to rise to $32.4 billion by 2020.

[Dig]

LATEST SURVEILLANCE LEAVES NOTHING TO CHANCE
We Will Know Who You Are We Will Know Where You Are We Will Know What You Do
http://www.apfn.org/thewinds/archive/government/survey10-97.html

    ABC News recently aired a story about a high-tech inventor who has produced a type of radar device destined to be reduced in size to a microchip. Projected to eventually cost less than fifty cents a copy, the invention, the ABC report claimed and demonstrated, is capable of "seeing" through walls and detecting biological signs of life on the other side such as heartbeat and respiration.

   Touted as a significant breakthrough, especially in the area of search and rescue involving such as bombed buildings and structural collapses due to earthquakes, the device would be able to ascertain the presence of victims invisible due to concrete rubble. The advantage, says its inventor, is that the chip would be able to tell, by the biological signature, if the victim were alive or even whether it was human or otherwise--a dog, for instance.

   As with every new and amazing invention, there is always a segment of the government that possesses a consummate talent for the covert misuse of it. Every living biological organism, it is well known, has its own peculiar genetic and bioenergetic signature, much the same as a physical fingerprint. The aforementioned device is capable of taking great advantage of that "bio-fingerprint." Imagine, for instance, the ability to use the microchip radar to first map an individual's biological signature and then deposit the digitized information of that unique signature into a computer database. This could be done, for instance, while passing through the ubiquitous metal detectors in any airport. Once that signature is on file, it is not an unreasonable stretch of logic to imagine an unmarked van carrying the radar chip and a copy of the database passing any home or building with the ability to not only determine that there are people occupying the dwelling, but who they are--and--whether or not they should, according to the officials conducting the "survey", even be there.

   If this scenario, to some, appears to proceed from a Buck Rogers comic strip or the pen of George Orwell, it should be noted that surveillance and tracking technologies by government agencies has been taking a series of quantum leaps.

In a publication issued by the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the U.S. Army's War College, entitled, The Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflict Short of War much reference is made to developed technology aimed at not only detection but tracking and identification. The work, released in June of this year, is authored by Steven Metz, Ph.D., Associate Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College and co-authored by James Kievit. The work, published in booklet form, details current problems faced by the military of the world's only remaining super power, and includes a fictional scenario that takes place in the second decade of the twenty-first century--approximately 2010.


PERVASIVE VIOLENCE PREDICTED

    "During the Cold War," the document says, "the most strategically significant form of conflict short of war--then called 'low-intensity conflict'--was revolutionary insurgency in the Third World." This, the document claims, was the result of Maoist type involvement that "sought to overthrow fragile, pro-Western regimes. It also makes the ominous prediction that "while war or near-war may be no more common than in past decades, general, low-level violence will be pervasive."

    "The Gulf War," the authors submit, "was widely seen as a foretaste of RMA [Revolution in Military Affairs] warfare, offering quick victory with limited casualties. As a result, most attention has been on the opportunities provided by RMA rather than its risks, costs, and unintended side effects." (emphasis supplied)

    In reference to U.S. involvement in Latin American affairs and other developing nations, Metz and Kievit candidly acknowledge that, "admittedly no Third World insurgency directly endangered the United States..." which apparently was no deterrent to U.S. involvement in the internal affairs of those nations.

    Among those things mentioned as requiring "conflict short of war" is "peace enforcement" and the ability to protect American lives anywhere in the world by keeping very close electronic tabs on their whereabouts and activities. An equally portentous claim, however, is that "behavior modification is a key component of peace enforcement." As outlined in two previous WINDS articles, the United States' doctrine of "behavior modification" as taught to leaders of third world nations has previously included instruction on terrorizing or even torturing those whose behavior the U.S. desired to modify. (See America's School of Death and Who are the Real Terrorists?). Behavior modification, by practical U.S. definition, encompasses everything from inducing a slight change in ideas to having no behavior at all. The latter is commonly referred to as death.


WE WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU

    Where do these new surveillance and tracking techniques enter into the Strategic Studies presentation? Their publication discusses contingencies in dealing with threats to Americans, especially nonmilitary personnel, during heightened international tensions and times of impending conflict, including hostage-taking possibilities. In cases where civilian personnel could be potentially involved in a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) or hostage-taking crisis, plans have been proposed for the tracking and identification of "victims".

    Supposedly under the category of "only to be used voluntarily":

   "In the near future every American at risk could be equipped with an electronic individual position locator device (IPLD). The device, derived from the electronic bracelet used to control some criminal offenders or parolees, would continuously inform a central data bank of the individuals' locations. Eventually such a device could be permanently implanted under the skin, with automatic remote activation either upon departure from U.S. territory (while passing through the security screening system at the airport, for example) or by transmission of a NEO alert code to areas of conflict. Implantation would help preclude removal of the device (although, of course, some terrorists might be willing to remove a portion of the hostage's body if they knew where the device was implanted). The IPLD could also act as a form of IFFN (identification friend, foe or neutral) if U.S. military personnel were equipped with appropriate challenge/response devices. Finally, such a device might eventually serve, like Dick Tracy's wrist radio, as a two-way communication channel permitting the NEO notification to be done covertly." (See footnote on the Mark of the Beast under SUGGESTED READING).
MASTERS OF SLIDING DEFINITIONS

    With a government whose dictionary is so fluid as to take the shape of whatever container into which it is placed, does it not become obvious that the re-definition of words has become a political art? Alternate interpretations of certain words is apparently all that is required to rationalize the use of any technology, in any manner, and upon whomever the government chooses. Could not the term "at risk" in the above quotation be just as easily transfigured to mean anyone having a "bad hair day"? Is it not, after all, politicians and the government they run that have given us the extensive use of sliding definitions?

    The following questions raised by the authors themselves within the SSI publication would seem to be worthy of careful consideration by those who entertain their own questions about the use that would be made of such technology by an out-of-control intelligence community

"...The individual position locator raises several thorny issues:
Would Americans overseas be forced to wear (or have implanted) such a device or would its use be voluntary?
If forced, would it apply equally to those employed overseas and tourists? [This, of course, could never conceivably include involuntary domestic surveillance].
Will Americans accept the fact that the government might, by access to the NEO locator database, know every move they make?
If a locator device could be remotely activated, how could Americans be sure that activation was only effective outside the United States?
How would they know that 'wrist radios' were not used to monitor personal conversations?"

    In an apparent attempt at candor the RMA document actually appears to express a desire to curry favorable public opinion by their responsible and thoughtful consideration of American sensibilities to such matters. Rather than abandon the potential control over U.S. citizens that such advanced technological methods would give them, they would, it seems, prefer to obtain public approval for the use of their wonderful Orwellian toys.

    In a further revelation of surveillance techniques available to the government the SSI discusses "the second emerging technology with direct application in NEOs...the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). UAV's will be able to conduct rapid reconnaissance....As demonstrated by Israel, UAV's can also play a significant role '...a remotely piloted plane followed a car carrying fleeing terrorists back to their base, so that it could subsequently be demolished by air attack.'"


THEY WILL ALTER PUBLIC PERCEPTION

    The military, this little booklet infers, is working on the development of the "aerial capability to broadcast and alter television signals." They claim that electronic manipulation of such signals would "remove a key and essential weapon from the terrorist arsenal--media coverage." This technology would give them the power to create any illusion they desire about anyone they choose--and make it appear as if that person himself is doing it. The authors imply that by the use of such technology for "domestic applications" they could manipulate TV broadcasts in such a way as to create great "public skepticism regarding television appearances...." Claiming that television is "one of the American politician's greatest communication tools", they lament the fact that such artificial manipulation would likely reduce the impact politicians could have on public opinion. This latter consideration amazingly was presented as an undesirable effect of the technology.

    In further reference to "bugging" or surveying the population, the Strategic Studies Institute claims that "new computer software...could 'quickly discover and expose critical associations that would otherwise go undetected'"--that is, as a result of these surveillance techniques they can very efficiently find out with whom an individual is associating and why. And what "sliding definition" can here be applied to "critical associations"?

    "Deception, while frequently of great military or political value," the document continues, "is thought of as somehow 'un-American.'" The question here is begged; by whom is it considered "un-American"? especially considering the results of a national poll published by Prentice Hall, New York, N.Y. 1991, entitled The Day America Told the Truth (See The WINDS article, "The Invisible Hand"). In that poll it is revealed that "91% of us lie regularly....The majority of us find it hard to get through a single week without lying. One in five can't make it through a single day--and we are talking about conscious, premeditated lies....Lying has become a cultural trait in America...embedded in our national character. Americans lie about everything -- and usually for no good reason." Does this revelation perhaps make it more accurate to say that telling the truth "is thought of as somehow "un-American?"

    More commentary is contained within the little RMA publication about this nation's value system:

"American values also make the use of directed energy weapons against suspected narcotrafficking aircraft technologically feasible but morally difficult, perhaps unacceptable."

    A "directed energy weapon," the SSI document explains, is a device capable of totally disabling an aircraft's navigational and even its electrical system, without physically touching it, thereby virtually assuring a crash.

"The advantage of directed energy weapons over conventional ones is deniability [no bullet holes--the plane just fell out of the sky]. Against whom is such deniability aimed? Certainly not the narcotraffickers, who [are most likely dead or] will quickly recognize that interception by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) of military planes leads to loss of their aircraft. Instead, deniability must be aimed at the American people, who do not sanction the imprisonment, much less execution, of individuals without a trial (and execution is how they will perceive it--the argument 'we only disabled the aircraft, it was the crash which killed the pilot' will carry little weight)....The American public may perceive the DEA or military involved in such actions to be as bad or worse than the narcotraffickers."


THEY MUST CHANGE AMERICAN ETHICS

    The authors conclude their presentation of what would or would not be considered moral by U.S. citizens by indicating that, "American values and attitudes thus form significant constraints on full use of emerging technology, at least in anything short of a perceived war for national survival. Overcoming these constraints to [engage] in conflict short of war would require fundamental changes in the United States--an ethical and political revolution may be necessary to make a military revolution."

    Question: how and by whom will this "ethical and political revolution" be created and implemented?

    Reference is also made to "spiritual insurgents attempting to forge new systems of identity and personal meaning" within the U.S. From past experience it has been shown how blurred become the issues when the government and the individual separately define freedom of religion. It has been made, of late, an extremely mobile goal post whose position changes, not at the authority of the Constitution, but of those who consistently disregard it.

   During this discussion of military operations "short of war", could not one quite reasonably substitute for the word "terrorist" any individual or group of whom the U.S. government disapproves?


A NEW METHOD OF ASSET FORFEITURE

Electronically Reduce the Bank Balance to Zero

    Narcotraffickers, the SSI document claims,

"are even more likely than terrorists to rely on radios, cellular telephones, fax machines, and computers. This greatly increases their vulnerability to electronic intelligence gathering and disruption. For example, remote intrusive monitoring of the financial computer networks of offshore banks [read that: any banks] could identify the deposits associated with money laundering. If desired, such accounts could be electronically emptied."

    Translation: any American can have his bank account reduced to zero under any pretext or "sliding definition" of any imaginary offense governmental authorities care to manufacture. How is this congruent, one could ask, with the fifth amendment's clause of "due process"? One seemingly need only be suspected of a crime to forfeit possessions or money. The previous claim about electronic methods of seizing the assets of individuals never given "due process" seems to contrast with this nation's attitude towards others when they play our game against us.

"Electronic terrorism--the sabotage of communications and computer systems in retaliation for official policy [of stealing other's assets?]--will also be a tool of our enemies....As a National Security Decision Directive signed by President Bush noted, 'Telecommunications and information processing systems are highly susceptible to interception, unauthorized access, and related forms of technical exploitation....The technology to exploit these electronic systems is widespread and is used extensively by foreign nations and can be employed, as well, by terrorist groups....'"

    Metz and Kievit quote Martin C. Libicki from his book on electronic surveillance entitled, < The Mesh and the Net in which Libicki makes reference to a military capable of collecting "more and more data about a battlefield [any field?], knitting a finer and finer mesh which can catch smaller and stealthier objects" and could "pinpoint intruders into U.S. territory."--or anyone, citizen or not, who would be "illegally" traveling within areas of the U.S.

    As to developments for "peace keeping" operations, "advances in electronics and robotics could also prove useful in peace operations, allowing commanders to separate forces with a 'no man's land' populated by remote sensing devices or robotic patrols and enforced with stand-off precision strike weapons, thus reducing peace keeper casualties and improving the chances that the peace keeping force will remain long enough for a political resolution of the conflict." Mindless machines will apparently be slated to perform the indiscriminate killing now conducted by "peace keeping operations". One defense consultant interviewed on the television documentary series "Fields of Armor" claimed that a battlefield or restriction sector ("no-man's land") addressed by such technology would be rendered as "uninhabitable as a nuclear strike zone".

    Recalling that this portion of Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflict Short of War is a future tense fictional scenario, the document appears to regress to the "past" when describing an ongoing problem with American involvement in world politics. The embroiling of U.S. forces in the affairs of foreign nations and "horrific ethnic struggles...usually began as part of a multinational peace keeping or peace enforcement operation, but rapidly turned violent when American forces were killed or held hostage....On the ground, enemies would not directly fight our magnificent military forces, but relied instead on mines, assassination, and terror bombings."


ISOLATIONISTS

(Those Who Believe Americans Should Mind Their Own Business)

   This not only sounds as if the U.S. did not learn anything from the Vietnam "conflict", it appears that they don't plan on it until forced to do so by inevitable circumstances.

"The costs of these imbroglios were immense. A bitter dispute broke out in the United States between supporters of multinational peace operations and isolationists."

    This seems to indicate that the authors of this war game of the mind have some awareness that certain segments of the American population, those they refer to as "isolationists", are informed of historical precedent and unwilling to repeat its errors.

"...Domestic political acrimony was not the only long-term cost of these operations: many of our troops assigned to operations in tropical areas brought back new resilient diseases which then gained a foothold in the United States. Debate was fierce over the new law requiring long-term quarantine of troops returning from Third World operations."

    Was this not the action of the former Soviet Union when they refused to allow their soldiers to return from foreign lands?--different circumstances; same result.

    The U.S. seems to be like a bear that keeps poking its nose into a hornet's nest. It knows that the insects don't produce honey, it just apparently likes getting stung. Why does this country continue to raid the nests of others--continue to interfere in the affairs of other nations? Is it because of deep humanitarian concerns for the welfare of the citizens of those sovereign nations? Ask the estimated 4,000 victims of the raid on Panama, intended to extract a single "drug dealer" (remember? Operation Just Cause?); or the 500,000 Iraqi children that have starved to death because of UN sanctions. Nope; can't do that--they're dead--a result that seems to consistently follow U.S. involvement in "peace keeping" operations everywhere. Can a child or mother or father discern the difference between the bullet that kills them, whether it emerges from the muzzle of an enemy's weapon or from the righteous weapon of someone who is concerned for their welfare?


IT'S ALL ON PURPOSE

    It appears valid at this juncture to propose a series of rhetorical questions: do those running the United States political/military machinery have any awareness of the laws of cause and effect? Do those individuals comprising that machinery, those soldiers whose lives are moved about as pawns at the whim of the political strategists, have any spiritual power left to assume responsibility for their own actions? Or have they become as the Protocols label them--the "mindless masses" abdicating their powers of conscience to their masters as was heard so frequently at Nuremberg? That same document that affixes the label "mindless masses" proclaims that,

"The intensification of military armaments and the increase of police forces are all essential for the completion of [our] plans. The end result which we seek is that in all nations of the world there should, other than ourselves, be only the masses of the common worker, a few millionaires devoted to our interests, police and soldiers."

    In order to create this money-driven police state, they must manufacture a justification for those police and soldiers. Americans, especially, would not accept such an authoritarian situation without the alternative being far worse--without the disease being more undesirable than the cure--they think. The method for bringing about this modernized adaptation of martial law is clearly stated in the same vilified document:

"We must create upheavals, discords and open hostility. By this we shall gain a double advantage. First off, we will be able to keep all countries under our control. They will submit to this control because they well know that we have the power to create disorders or to restore order whenever we like." (ibid).

The purpose for this is, of course, to:
Habituate the public into accepting this country's role as the natural leader in world "peace" operations because it is, after all, the only remaining super power--and a "kind and benevolent" one at that.
Create such an intense national weariness at the continual conflict, especially that which will take place within America's own borders, as to cause U.S. citizens to accept nearly any apparently viable remedy--whatever the cost in personal liberties.
To destroy all nationalism in the minds of Americans by creating such crises as to make them surrender not only their guns, for the sake of increased security, but their liberties as well.

    Nationalism, specifically in this country, is targeted by the globalists because it is possibly the greatest known barrier to the powers steering the New World Order. Is this nation, because of the impotence of being too large and too powerful, in danger of becoming as Richard Nixon warned, a "poor, pitiful giant"?--a "victim" of its own cause and effect proceeding forth from its own political policies? Does it not appear that that is precisely the desire of those shepherding this country over the precipice of national ruin?
 

SUGGESTED READING:
   Many fundamentalist Christians have long believed that such an "electronic leash" fulfills the scriptural prophesy of Revelation 13:18. Enlightening information on this subject can be found in a WINDS publication entitled Shillum in chapter four, under the heading "The Mark of the Beast."
"The New System's War Against Civilians"--concerning the developing technology of "non-lethal weapons."
Parent Training of Children Axed by NII- -An article about the National Information Infrastructure.

Written 10/06/97

[Optimus]

It's not something forced on anyone, and for people who drive by the speed limit and completely within the rules of the road, I can see how this can be a good thing for them, especially if it can save them money which everyone needs in this economy.

I only see this being tyrannical when/if they make these things mandatory.  I don't see much wrong with it now, being optional.

It's still Big Brother.

Did you read the whole article?  Not just the selective snipit posted here, but the whole thing?  This is part of a discount program people have the option of taking.  It's not mandatory as soon as they get insurance. and until it becomes mandatory, the whole cry about "this is tyranny" is nothing more than disinformation and a ridiculous ad hominem argument.

Now, you can go on and say "Jesus Christ" or what ever other catch phraise you want, but the fact still remains, this thing is completely optional, and in no way manditory, at the present time.  

Now, if you can prove that everyone MUST get this device, I will agree with you that this is tyrannical... and until that time,  

It's conditioning people to accept that big brother is watching and to allow yourself to be tracked and monitored and big brother will reward these lab rats with a hunk of cheese, or in this case, a discount. See the catch here? If you want to participate in this "voluntary" program, it is MANDATORY to have this device in your car.

Progressive's "Snapshot"

How would you like to cut your car insurance bill by 25 percent to 30 percent? Sure, everyone would love that. But this newest insurance discount comes with a catch that not all drivers would agree to. You may have seen Progressive's TV ads promising big discounts for safe driving. One commercial, featuring a perky spokeswoman named Flo, says "are you a safe driver? Yes. Discount! Do you own a home? Yes. Discount! Are you gonna buy online? Yes. Discount!  Aren't discounts great? Yes!" Now, Progressive is taking it further, offering drivers in Ohio, Kentucky, and 20 states a program called "Snapshot,"  that provides discounts up to 30 percent. (It is not yet available in Indiana or Florida).

The Catch: There's one catch. You have to let Progressive install a gadget under your dash to monitor and transmit your driving habits. Company spokesman Richard Hutchinson told us, "This is a new approach to auto insurance. It allows you the consumer to share your driving to get a discount." He says after the first 30 days, your rates will go down, as much as 30 percent,  if Snapshot finds you:

    * Drive at reasonable speeds, without jackrabbit starts
    * Avoid hard stops
    * Don't drive late at night

Will Bad Driving Raise Your Rates? Too much "big brother" for you? Don't worry: Hutchinson claims your rates won't go up if your driving is a bit more aggressive, or if you make too many hard stops.  You simply won't get the discount. "It's only a discount." he said. "And its a purely voluntary program. So you don't have to do it if you don't want to." In addtion, Progressive says it won't share the data unless required for an accident or legal case. But Pennsylvania officials have raised privacy concerns, and as of July 15, Progressive had pulled the program from that state for now.

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/money/consumer/dont_waste_your_money/progressive:-lower-rates-if-they-can-spy

[Damascus]

Pavlovian train much? 

[Monkeypox]

Did you read the whole article?  Not just the selective snipit posted here, but the whole thing?  This is part of a discount program people have the option of taking.  It's not mandatory as soon as they get insurance. and until it becomes mandatory, the whole cry about "this is tyranny" is nothing more than disinformation and a ridiculous ad hominem argument.

Now, you can go on and say "Jesus Christ" or what ever other catch phraise you want, but the fact still remains, this thing is completely optional, and in no way manditory, at the present time. 

Now, if you can prove that everyone MUST get this device, I will agree with you that this is tyrannical... and until that time, 

I'm sorry, but this is obviously just a start.  They may be made mandatory someday, or they may not.  But what if they slowly jack their rates up and then you get a HUGE discount - 50%, 75% - for using it?  It isn't "mandatory", but it might as well be.  It'll come to the point where only a minority isn't enrolled in the program, then they'll probably drop the option because not enough people are choosing it.  Don't like it?  Go to another company.  Oops, they're all doing the same thing.

And if you think the insurance companies won't be sharing the data with the Government...

[Dig]

Pavlovian train much?  

Now you get it, that is exactly the plan for you, me, and the other 7 billion humans...head in the sand much?

All new data mining systems must comply with the "Self-Organizing" principals of the Universe (A philisophical idea run amuck). These data mining systems require protocol to comply with the following principals:

Strong dynamical non-linearity, often though not necessarily

involving Positive feedback and Negative feedback
Pavolovian dog training, nudging, behavioral modification, mind control

Balance of exploitation and exploration
Very interesting to find the phrase "exploitation and exploration" here. This is an arbitrary balance which is impossible to control as there become less and less elites in control of they system. Undoubtably, it will always "evolve" into 100% exploitation.

Multiple interactions
This seems to be why there is no limit to the billions of cameras being distributed in every product we buy, the RFID explosion, and nanotech sensoring systems.

MORE:

Self-organization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning. This globally coherent pattern appears from the local interaction of the elements that make up the system, thus the organization is achieved in a way that is parallel (all the elements act at the same time) and distributed (no element is a coordinator).
Overview

The most robust and unambiguous examples[1] of self-organizing systems are from the physics of non-equilibrium processes. Self-organization is also relevant in chemistry, where it has often been taken as being synonymous with self-assembly. The concept of self-organization is central to the description of biological systems, from the subcellular to the ecosystem level. There are also cited examples of "self-organizing" behaviour found in the literature of many other disciplines, both in the natural sciences and the social sciences such as economics or anthropology. Self-organization has also been observed in mathematical systems such as cellular automata. Sometimes the notion of self-organization is conflated with that of the related concept of emergence.[citation needed] Properly defined, however, there may be instances of self-organization without emergence and emergence without self-organization, and it is clear from the literature that the phenomena are not the same. The link between emergence and self-organization remains an active research question.

Self-organization usually relies on four basic ingredients [2]:
Strong dynamical non-linearity, often though not necessarily involving Positive feedback and Negative feedback
Balance of exploitation and exploration
Multiple interactions

History of the idea

The idea that the dynamics of a system can tend by itself to increase the inherent order of a system has a long history. One of the earliest statements of this idea was by the philosopher Descartes, in the fifth part of his Discourse on Method, where he presents it hypothetically.[citation needed] Descartes further elaborated on the idea at great length in his unpublished work The World. The ancient atomists (among others) believed that a designing intelligence was unnecessary, arguing that given enough time and space and matter, organization was ultimately inevitable, although there would be no preferred tendency for this to happen. What Descartes introduced was the idea that the ordinary laws of nature tend to produce organization[citation needed] (For related history, see Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes). Beginning with the 18th century naturalists, a movement arose that sought to understand the "universal laws of form" in order to explain the observed forms of living organisms. Because of its association with Lamarckism, their ideas fell into disrepute until the early 20th century, when pioneers such as D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson revived them. The modern understanding is that there are indeed universal laws (arising from fundamental physics and chemistry) that govern growth and form in biological systems.

Originally, the term "self-organizing" was used by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment, where he argued that teleology is a meaningful concept only if there exists such an entity whose parts or "organs" are simultaneously ends and means. Such a system of organs must be able to behave as if it has a mind of its own, that is, it is capable of governing itself.“   In such a natural product as this every part is thought as owing its presence to the agency of all the remaining parts, and also as existing for the sake of the others and of the whole, that is as an instrument, or organ... The part must be an organ producing the other parts—each, consequently, reciprocally producing the others... Only under these conditions and upon these terms can such a product be an organized and self-organized being, and, as such, be called a physical end.” The term "self-organizing" was introduced to contemporary science in 1947 by the psychiatrist and engineer W. Ross Ashby[3]. It was taken up by the cyberneticians Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Stafford Beer and Norbert Wiener himself in the second edition of his "Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" (MIT Press 1961).

Self-organization as a word and concept was used by those associated with general systems theory in the 1960s, but did not become commonplace in the scientific literature until its adoption by physicists and researchers in the field of complex systems in the 1970s and 1980s.[4] After Ilya Prigogine's 1977 Nobel Prize, the thermodynamic concept of self-organization received some attention of the public, and scientific researchers started to migrate from the cybernetic view to the thermodynamic view.

[...]

Self-organization in mathematics and computer science
 
Gosper's Glider Gun creating "gliders" in the cellular automaton Conway's Game of Life.[9] As mentioned above, phenomena from mathematics and computer science such as cellular automata, random graphs, and some instances of evolutionary computation and artificial life exhibit features of self-organization. In swarm robotics, self-organization is used to produce emergent behavior. In particular the theory of random graphs has been used as a justification for self-organization as a general principle of complex systems. In the field of multi-agent systems, understanding how to engineer systems that are capable of presenting self-organized behavior is a very active research area.
Self-organization in cybernetics

Wiener regarded the automatic serial identification of a black box and its subsequent reproduction as sufficient to meet the condition of self-organization.[10] The importance of phase locking or the "attraction of frequencies", as he called it, is discussed in the 2nd edition of his "Cybernetics".[11] Drexler sees self-replication as a key step in nano and universal assembly. By contrast, the four concurrently connected galvanometers of W. Ross Ashby's Homeostat hunt, when perturbed, to converge on one of many possible stable states.[12] Ashby used his state counting measure of variety[13] to describe stable states and produced the "Good Regulator"[14] theorem which requires internal models for self-organized endurance and stability. Warren McCulloch proposed "Redundancy of Potential Command"[15] as characteristic of the organization of the brain and human nervous system and the necessary condition for self-organization. Heinz von Foerster proposed Redundancy, R = 1- H/Hmax , where H is entropy.[16] In essence this states that unused potential communication bandwidth is a measure of self-organization. In the 1970s Stafford Beer considered this condition as necessary for autonomy which identifies self-organization in persisting and living systems. Using Variety analyses he applied his neurophysiologically derived recursive Viable System Model to management. It consists of five parts: the monitoring of performance[17] of the survival processes (1), their management by recursive application of regulation (2), homeostatic operational control (3) and development (4) which produce maintenance of identity (5) under environmental perturbation. Focus is prioritized by an "algedonic loop" feedback:[18] a sensitivity to both pain and pleasure.

In the 1990s Gordon Pask pointed out von Foerster's H and Hmax were not independent and interacted via countably infinite recursive concurrent spin processes[19] (he favoured the Bohm interpretation) which he called concepts (liberally defined in any medium, "productive and, incidentally reproductive"). His strict definition of concept "a procedure to bring about a relation"[20] permitted his theorem "Like concepts repel, unlike concepts attract"[21] to state a general spin based Principle of Self-organization. His edict, an exclusion principle, "There are No Doppelgangers"[22] means no two concepts can be the same (all interactions occur with different perspectives making time incommensurable for actors). This means, after sufficient duration as differences assert, all concepts will attract and coalesce as pink noise and entropy increases (and see Big Crunch, self-organized criticality). The theory is applicable to all organizationally closed or homeostatic processes that produce endurance and coherence (also in the sense of Reshcher Coherence Theory of Truth with the proviso that the sets and their members exert repulsive forces at their boundaries) through interactions: evolving, learning and adapting.

Pask's Interactions of actors "hard carapace" model is reflected in some of the ideas of emergence and coherence. It requires a knot emergence topology that produces radiation during interaction with a unit cell that has a prismatic tensegrity structure. Laughlin's contribution to emergence reflects some of these constraints.
Self-organization in networks

Self-organization is an important component for a successful ability to establish networking whenever needed. Such mechanisms are also referred to as Self-organizing networks. Intensified work in the latter half of the first decade of the 21st century was mainly due to interest from the wireless communications industry. It is driven by the plug and play paradigm, and that wireless networks need to be relatively simpler to manage than they used to be.
Self-organization in human society
 
Social self-organization in international drug routes

The self-organizing behaviour of social animals and the self-organization of simple mathematical structures both suggest that self-organization should be expected in human society. Tell-tale signs of self-organization are usually statistical properties shared with self-organizing physical systems (see Zipf's law, power law, Pareto principle). Examples such as Critical mass (sociodynamics), herd behaviour, groupthink and others, abound in sociology, economics, behavioral finance and anthropology.[23]

In social theory the concept of self-referentiality has been introduced as a sociological application of self-organization theory by Niklas Luhmann (1984). For Luhmann the elements of a social system are self-producing communications, i.e. a communication produces further communications and hence a social system can reproduce itself as long as there is dynamic communication. For Luhmann human beings are sensors in the environment of the system.{p410 Social System 1995} Luhmann developed an evolutionary theory of Society and its subsytems, using functional analyses and systems theory. {Social Systems 1995}.

Self-organization in human and computer networks can give rise to a decentralized, distributed, self-healing system, protecting the security of the actors in the network by limiting the scope of knowledge of the entire system held by each individual actor. The Underground Railroad is a good example of this sort of network. The networks that arise from drug trafficking exhibit similar self-organizing properties. Sphere College is a project that seeks to apply self-organization to adult education. Parallel examples exist in the world of privacy-preserving computer networks such as Tor. In each case, the network as a whole exhibits distinctive synergistic behavior through the combination of the behaviors of individual actors in the network. Usually the growth of such networks is fueled by an ideology or sociological force that is adhered to or shared by all participants in the network.[original research?]

[Dig]

Homeland Security Uses 4,058 Agencies to Spy on Americans

Today we read that Janet Napolitano’s Homeland Security is now going to begin battling Global Warming (while, by the way, NASA says global warming can save us from the new ice age!).

If you think Homeland Security is expanding into areas it shouldn’t, and intruding too far into your life, you’re right. But wait until you hear just how right you are. They have created a vast network to spy on you and your neighbors. How vast? Breitbart.com has the details:

    The government is using for this purpose the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators, the daily added.

    The system collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of US citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing, the report noted.

    The government’s goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, noted the paper, which has conducted its own investigation of the matter.

    According to the report, the network includes 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counter-terrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions.

But don’t worry, the data will be safe over at the FBI.

    In addition, the FBI is building a ...
MORE
http://www.economiccollapse.net/homeland-security-uses-4058-agencies-to-spy-on-americans

[Damascus]

I wounder if you could pay people to give up their rights? Say $1000 dollars for the first amendment, $2000 for the second, and maybe $3000 for the rest, as most people never read that far. Oh and don't let that trivial fact of inalienability dissuade you, as people don't even know what that means either.

[Dig]

I wounder if you could pay people to give up their rights? Say $1000 dollars for the first amendment, $2000 for the second, and maybe $3000 for the rest, as most people never read that far. Oh and don't let that trivial fact of inalienability dissuade you, as people don't even know what that means either.

You could, but people have no right to give up their rights. The are bestowed by our creator not by ourselves. Anyone buying them has been conned, they own nothing.