Michelle Pilecki: Why You Might Want to Microwave Your Passport -- and Other Underreported Stories - The Huffington Post: "Thanks to Foreign Policy for the international flavor of the Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2006, including the tidbit about the biometric passport with the easy-to-hack 'security' chip that leaves the owners vulnerable to identity theft. So far, the only 'solution' is to destroy the chip by zapping it."

Yahoo News - Schumer warns on no-swipe credit cards
AP reports, "No-swipe credit cards that use radio waves to relay their data put consumers at increased risk of identity theft, Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday."

Why you should care about biometrics - ZDNet UK
ZDNet provides a primer on biometrics: "Biometrics can be described as either the study of biological measurements, or the use of those measurements to identify people or verify them. Voice, fingerprints, hand geometry, face, signature, iris and gait can all be measured and used for identification and authentication."

Wired News has a few laughs at how popular ideas about mark tech have changed over the years. All in good fun, or sacrilegious?

BBC News - Blair goes on ID card offensive
BBC News reports, "Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he will push on with ID cards - insisting that as with CCTV and DNA the issue is one of 'modernity' not civil liberties."

Freedom and the Internet
Amnesty International is asking bloggers to show their support for the plight of fellow bloggers jailed for what they wrote in their online journals. The organization says freedom of expression and privacy "are under threat from governments that want to control what their citizens say, and what information they can access."

Yahoo News - Biometric device used to pay for meals
AP reports, "Colleges and high schools have used fingerprint scanners to stop non-students from sneaking into dining halls and gyms. Now elementary schools are joining in, hoping that biometric devices are a good way to keep lines moving and pay for meals."

BBC News - Air passengers 'could be tagged'
BBC reports, "Electronically tagging passengers at airports could help the fight against terrorism, scientists have said."

Yahoo News - TrueMe Gives Passwords the Finger
PC Magazine reports, "You can forget your passwords but you can't forget your appendages. You can steal a user ID but you can't steal a finger—at least not that easily. That is the beauty of biometric authentification. On Monday, Pay By Touch announced both software and hardware that will allow users to authenticate themselves to any secure Web site using their index fingers."

My Way News - House Passes Bill to Make Voters Show ID
AP reports: "The House voted Wednesday to require Americans to show proof of citizenship in order to vote, and the Senate moved to build a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border as Republicans sharpened attacks on illegal immigration before the midterm elections."

Comment: Not directly MOTB related, but compulsory ID laws are always of interest.

Security Sales & Integration - Viisage and Identix Merger Spawns L-1 Identity Solutions: The marriage of Viisage Technology Inc. and Identix Inc. has received the blessings of both shareholders and the boards of directors of both firms. The merger of both firms has resulted in a single entity now called L-1 Identity Solutions Inc., known on the New York Stock Exchange as “ID.”

My Way News - Kids Buy Lunches With Scans of Fingers
AP reports: "Rome City Schools is switching to a scanning system that lets students use their fingerprints to access their accounts."

BetaNews - Infineon Snags RFID Passport Contract:

The US Government has awarded German-based chipmaker Infineon with a contract to provide a portion of the millions of RFID chips that will make their way into next-generation passports, the company said Monday.

Once again, this is not the mark of the beast (Rev 13:16-18), it's just the next generation of travel documents, but you can clearly see from this report and others like it that there is a lot of money to be made in rolling out the infrastructure for RFID based identity verification programs.

The Australian - RFID to track inmates:

The contract will be awarded this week for the construction of the first prison in Australasia to use radio frequency identification to track prisoners. The ACT government has allocated $128.7 million for the establishment of ACT's first prison, the Alexander Maconochie Centre, named after the 19th century penal reformer. The RFID system will provide real-time tracking of prisoners and prison officers, ACT Corrective Service senior manager Roger Holding says.

Biometrics Goes to School
Associated Content - The Use of Biometric Identification by Universities:

No longer existing solely in the realm of science fiction or spy fantasies, biometrics has emerged as a growing trend in the world. This applies not only to our work and private lives, but to our educational institutions as well. Biometrics has taken hold in many of our colleges and universities, used alone, or more often with, student identification cards. Some have used biometrics for years, and others are beginning to implement their own systems.

I expect this trend in ID verification to continue to show up in new areas, not just schools and travel documents. We are living in an age when it is more important than ever to establish who is who. Are you you?

Yahoo News - U.S. to roll out electronic passports
AP reports, "Despite ongoing privacy concerns and legal disputes involving companies bidding on the project, the U.S. State Department plans to begin issuing smart chip-embedded passports to Americans as planned Monday."

Comment: Again, just a reminder that this is not the mark of the beast (Rev 13:16-18), just some interesting tech trends we are watching. The Book of Revelation specifies several conditions that must exist before the mark of the beast is imposed and none of them exist right now, so you should have no fear about getting a chipped passport. Well, have no spiritual fear, there may be ID theft concerns, but that is beyond my area.

Yahoo News - Expert issues warning about e-passports
AP reports, "Electronic passports being introduced in the U.S. and other countries have a major vulnerability that could allow criminals to clone embedded secret code and enter countries illegally, an expert warned."

This is not to say that they won't go forward with the new RFID passports, it's just a very flawed system.

CNET - HP Unveils RFID's Future Competitor
This report from CNET is about a new type of memory chip that is smaller than a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip and it holds much more information. The new chip is called a Memory Spot and has the potential to bring the age of pervasive computing into full bloom. According to the report:

The Memory Spot has a 10 megabits-per-second data-transfer rate and can store up to 4 megabits of data, although the demonstration chips stored only 256 kilobits. The chip has an integrated antenna, which is why it is so much smaller than an RFID chip, which gets most of its size from the separately attached antennae. It receives power through inductive coupling from a special read-write device that extracts data from the memory on the chip. [...] Taub demonstrated picture albums with the nearly-invisible chip attached to the borders. When a reader touched the chip, audio from the picture was played. Taub next waved the reader over the chip on a medicine bottle and the attached computer received the dosage, direction, and all other pertinent information from the prescription.

It's important to note here that this technology is new, there are no applicaitons yet for it and no infrastructure, but it has the potential to bring a rich digital dimension to almost any object or person.

Yahoo News - Insurers to test implantable microchip
AP reports, "In a new test program, Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey plans to implant patients suffering from chronic diseases with a microchip that will give emergency room staff access to their medical information and help avoid costly or serious medical errors, the insurer said on Friday."

ZDNet reports (Biometric ID card plan under British review) that the British plan for national biometric ID cards is going forward.

SFGate - The Last Days of Privacy
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Within the next four months, a major Bay Area supermarket chain plans to introduce a payment system that uses biometric fingerprint authentication to verify customers' identities. Under this system, shoppers in checkout lines won't need to use cash, checks, debit cards or credit cards. Instead, they can place their fingers on scanners that read fingerprints, and once the device links to their bank or credit card accounts, they can buy groceries, get cash back and do everything else shoppers do.

This report is about a biometric payment technology called Pay By Touch and it also discusses ID theft and the trade-off between privacy and convenience. While this system is not the Biblical "mark of the beast" (Rev 13:16-18) it is a reflection of the wider trend in making payments and identity verification more secure.

Financial Times - US monitors global financial transfers
The Financial Times (UK) reports, "Tens of thousands of electronic searches have been conducted under a secret US programme to monitor global financial transfers for signs of terrorist activity, the official in charge of the programme has told the Financial Times."

Comment: This is a trend that is certain to continue. There must be a capability to monitor financial transactions and impose transparency on governments as well as individuals.

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression.
- Justice William O. Douglas

News.com - Facing biometrics' limits
CNET reports, "It may be championed as the highest level of security, but biometrics isn't ready for wide deployment as a consumer application, a new report says. According to Financial Insights, a subsidiary of research company IDC, biometric deployment will grow significantly over the coming years, but its upward climb will be limited for use within a bank's internal security network."

Yahoo News - China walks out of encryption meeting
AP reports, "An international dispute over a wireless computing standard took a bitter turn this past week with the Chinese delegation walking out of a global meeting to discuss the technology. [...] At stake is a leg-up in technology research and billions of dollars in licensing fees and component sales for laptops, mobile phones, handheld computers and other wireless devices that connect to wireless networks around the world, including hotels, coffee shops and universities."

Yahoo News - Banking on credit cards at the ballpark
AP reports, "The Texas Rangers hope to boost hot dog and beer sales this summer not only with a better team but with an innovation at the concession stands — swipe-free credit-card terminals."

Yahoo News - Curiosity, humor surround June 6, 2006
AP reports, "There's a devilishly odd nexus of theology, mathematics and commercialism on the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year."

Comment: This news report is noteworthy because it contains a helpful primer on the history and interpretations of the Biblical "mark of the beast." There is much that the report leaves out, so here are a few questions you may wish to consider in your study of this important prophecy: Who imposes the mark of the beast? What happens to people who do not accept the mark of the beast? What happens to people who do accept the mark?

My Way News - Report on NSA Brings Surveillance in Focus
AP reports, "If the National Security Agency is indeed amassing a colossal database of Americans' phone records, one way to use all that information is in 'social network analysis,' a data-mining method that aims to expose previously invisible connections among people."

My Way News - Visa, Nokia Launch Phone Payment Project
AP reports, "Visa International and Finnish cell phone maker Nokia Corp. (NOK) jointly released the world's first credit card payment pilot system in Malaysia, allowing consumers to shop and pay using their mobile phones."

Yahoo News - PayPal Offers Text Message Payment
AP reports, "Customers of the PayPal online payment service can now use their cell phones to instantly send money, buy items or donate to charities [...] Every customer is assigned an identification number needed for each order."

The usual disclaimer applies, this is not the mark of the beast, don't be afraid of PayPal, we are just watching the trends. I feel like I need to say this, you would be would amazed at some of the e-mails I get on this subject from people afraid of commerce tech. I don't want to inspire fear, just watchfulness.

InformationWeek - Brief: Cell Phone Users Pine For Biometrics: "A survey of US cell phone users revealed that most of them want biometric protection and wireless banking transaction capability in their mobile phones. "

Compulsory identity cards promised by 2010 - IT Week
IT Week (UK) reports, "Biometric identity (ID) cards moved a step closer last week, but organisations interested in using the technology still face some uncertainty, as new legislation means the cards will remain voluntary for longer than first planned."

Washington Post - Use of Implanted Patient-Data Chips Stirs Debate on Medicine vs. Privacy
The Washington Post reports, "Some doctors are welcoming the technology as an exciting innovation that will speed care and prevent errors. But the concept alarms privacy advocates. They worry the devices could make it easier for unauthorized snoops to invade medical records. They also fear that the technology marks a dangerous step toward an Orwellian future in which people will be monitored using the chips or will be required to have them inserted for surveillance."

NYT- A Card We Should All Carry
How would you go about selling national ID cards to the U.S.? This op-ed in The New York Times has the answer to that question.

My Way News - Britain's Lower House Passes ID Card Bill
"Britain's lower chamber of Parliament voted on Monday to require all citizens who want a passport to have a national identity card as well - a compromise on a measure that originally required all Britons to carry a national ID card."

Yahoo News - 2 Workers Have Chips Embedded Into Them
AP reports, "Tiny silicon chips were embedded into two workers who volunteered to help test the tagging technology at a surveillance equipment company, an official said Monday."

NYT - High Tech, Under the Skin
RFID chips as fashion. Interesting development.

Yahoo News - Is It Time To Say Goodbye to Paper Money?
News Factor reports, "Since the late 1990s, when the expansion and adoption of the Internet created a bona fide Mecca for retailers and shoppers, people have looked forward to the day when physical cash would no longer be the mainstay of payment transactions. [...] the continuing success of the online payment service PayPal, as well as the recent adoption of so-called e-cash by 15 million people in Japan, has bought the electronic-money movement new momentum."

Google's Dangerous Kowtow to China
Google won liberty points last week for fighting a federal subpeana to turn over massive amounts of search data to the U.S. government. They earn demerits this week for agreeing to censor their search engine to satisfy Beijing's desire for social and political control (BBC - Google move 'black day' for China). What happened to Google's "do no evil" motto?

My Way News - Google Rebuffs Feds on Search Requests
AP reports, "Google Inc. (GOOG) is rebuffing the Bush administration's demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet's leading search engine - a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance."

My Way News - AP: National ID a 'Nightmare' for States
AP reports, "An anti-terrorism law creating a national standard for all driver's licenses by 2008 isn't just upsetting civil libertarians and immigration rights activists. State motor vehicle officials nationwide who will have to carry out the Real ID Act say its authors grossly underestimated its logistical, technological and financial demands."

Prophecy News :: A team blog.: "Yahoo News - Computer chips get under skin of enthusiasts
Reuters reports, 'Forgetting computer passwords is an everyday source of frustration, but a solution may literally be at hand -- in the form of computer chip implants...The computer chips, which cost about $2, interact with a device installed in computers and other electronics. The chips are activated when they come within 3 inches of a so-called reader, which scans the data on the chips. The 'reader' devices are available for as little as $50 (29 pounds).' "