Welcome to the US May I Take your Fingerprint and Photo? |
Article is yet to be rated |
|
| Author:
| Prothis
|
|
| Submitted: |
31-Jan-2004 10:28:26 |
| Imported From: |
zZine (original author: Prothis)
|
| Yes! It was just in the beginning of January that the White House made one of the most controversial actions since the beginning of the War in Iraq. From this moment forward, almost all citizens that visit the United States will be obliged to answer quest
|
|
Curiously, those 27 countries are the ones whose politicians most ferociously supported the war in Iraq (with a few exceptions like France and Germany). Those countries include Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
But what is even stranger is that among those countries there are a few whose requirements are not similar. Countries like Australia will be included in a special VISA program whose requirements are still a bit shady. Paul Bremer said that this was for the good of America and for the good of the world.
Some other, but even more troubling, international measures the US visit plan has required other countries to do, include all airlines (even the ones from the excluded 27 countries) having an armed agent on board of every flight that goes into the US. Since the US should have no political power to make other countries follow their ;requirements;, this has generated a huge controversy towards even US's closest allies. For example, England has said that the requirements are ;absurd; and that they permanently refuse to have any armed agents on Board their US flights.
Some US allies, though, were so furious towards US visit that they took even harsher measures. Fighting fire with fire, Brazil has created a law that states that every American, and only the Americans, who attempt to enter legally Brazil, will suffer the same IDing process that any Brazilian would suffer if they attempted to do the same in America. After having her fingerprints and photo taken, a US citizen who was going on holiday in Brazil said ;I think it's only fair that we have to do this, after all they are our friends and we made them do this too!;. The Mayor of Rio de Janeiro even said: ;All Americans are invited to cone here to see the Carnival!;.
But all is not against ;US Visit;, in fact Australia's government has agreed with the plan and has willingly accepted to participate and cooperate with it in every way. Even though they are part of the shady VISA program and that they have been called a ;Marshal of the United States; (In the war of Iraq), Australia's headman just went along with the US.
Now you may be asking these questions:
1. Where does this information go?
2. Why did the US do this?
3. How did they do this and when?
4. Will those 27 country's passengers ever be requires to suffer the US visit process?
5. How do I know if my country will put armed agents on board their flights?
6. What did Lil'Bush do or say about this?
7. Will it be actually safer to travel to the US under this plan?
Oh, Well, I don't know all the answers but I will try to answer according to what I know and what I think.
1. Unlike what you think, the information gathered goes much beyond the fingerprints, the photo and all the background check. The gathering actually starts in your won country according to Paul Bremer. He said that a lot of information is gathered during the VISA application process when it is filled in your country. The infamous comments section will be taken under serious consideration and will also be stored when you pass through the US visit process. So now that we know that an enormous quantity of personal, if not private, information is gathered, all we don't know is where it is stored! According to a notorious law called the ;Patriot Act 2; (which I will deepen further in the article), all gathered personal information, and when I mean all I really mean all, like the affair a husband is having and which a private eye reported to the police, and also the size of the bra a woman under investigation uses. All this which can varies from useless to useful, public to private, minimal to maximum importance information.
All this information is stored in the infamous ;PA2 database; which will be accessible to ALL federal, state, governmental and local agencies for further research. This would allow a cop to obtain ;dirty; information about a politician and then black-mail him, and other unethical uses. I wouldn't be surprised if the PA2 database would grow to more than one server due to the excessive amount of information and data collected. So you can either choose between going to the US or keeping your privacy. It's your call;
2. Two words: September 11! I know this is getting tired, but would the US do something like this if 9/11 hadn't happened? Did Lil'Bush explicitly say in his campaign speeches that he would fight terrorism with his own bills? Did he say Saddam and Osama were terrible men, which should be hated and arrested even at the cost of the semi-destruction of two countries? NO! 9/11 is the cause of the PA1and PA2, the cause of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cause of a scandal towards the building of a new WTC (a.k.a. Liberty Tower according to David Childs and the Copycat architect), the cause of the increase of federal searched, the cause of billion dollars being spent for national security bills, the cause of demonstrations of unity from around the world all against terrorism but all against the war in Iraq.
For some time now Lil'Bush has been eager to create some kind of visible project to protect America from foreign threats. That brainstorm of the administration's most genius scientists resulted in the ;brilliant; idea of implanting ;thermochairs; in every American plane. Basically they would detect increases of the body's normal temperature possibly caused by the anxiety of making a terrorist attack. Of course people who are afraid of heights or flying, people who have a cold or are sick, people who are excited and even fat people would be considered national security threats. It just wouldn't work so they put their little heads and thought of this as the ;PA2's dark side; (more about it further in the article).
3. This is a tricky question because there are only assumptions as to how this was pulled through, but the one I find more plausible is the ;PA2's dark side; one. Ok, what is ;PA2's dark side;? The dark side is a set of dangerous bills/laws that give even greater powers to the president and to authorities relating to national security and many other things. The immensity of the powers that this law gives are the same as its unclearness. The problem with the dark side is that no on really knows what they are and what they do, because they were approved during the confusion of Saddam's capture, so I believe not even C-SPAN wanted to broadcast it, but if it did I'm sure no on was watching. But when we thought Lil'Bush was torturing Saddam with his own weapons of mass destruction, he was just supporting the bill that would turn him to God in matters of national security, and not even the mass media cared, all they cared about was the quality of Saddam's medical examination video.
Well what have these laws done? Well we cant say that these laws did anything, or else we will be hunted by the government, because the usual suspect related to PA2, John Ashcroft, said that Us visit was just a part of the PA2 implementation. He assumed that nobody had read the entire PA2 so he tried to say that this was all PA2 stuff. He assumed wrong. PA2 does make a reference to a plan much like US visit but the implementation is different. The PA2 plan had no name and only investigated and used investigative techniques on the persons who had flight irregularities and other standards like baggage problems, VISA problems, etc, etc, etc. The US visit is much larger and doe not follow these standards. Well what does this mean? This means that what we have just seen is a small piece of action compared to what the dark side can offer, and that they want to hide it from us.
4. No, unless, and this is the bitchy part, unless you do not have what is said to be a passport with a biometric signature. For now these passengers are safe and only need the usual passport, answer some questions and ant max have their baggage opened. But US visit authorities assured that this status will not remain like it is in the future, for the increase of hostility will also enlarge and they will be forced to approve the biometric signature requirement. Well the problem is that many of those 27 countries do not support a biometric passport program. What will this do then? It will reduce the 27 countries list and increase the amount of information stored in the PA2 database.
5. This differs from country to country but the best way is to watch the news because due to the immensity of this project, if that happened to be approved then I'm sure the news would tell it. But if I'm wrong then the best way is to either call or go to the nearest airport and ask.
6. Lil'Bush did a wonderful thing for his career and re-election campaign, which was staying out of this ;hole; and blame it all on John Ashcroft and Paul Bremer. Yes, Lil'Bush avoided the linking of his name to the dark side of PA2 and US visit. It is the perfect thing to do if you are an unpopular leader desperately trying to get re-elected. It would have been the perfect plan except for one little campaign point, one little speech made the most aware people understand that Lil'Bush was overwhelmingly supporting PA2 techniques and US visit. That campaign point is the one where Lil'Bush eagerly supported the legal entrance of immigrants into the US to avoid the illegal entrance and smuggling of immigrants. Of course that wasn't what Lil'Bush was saying nor what he wanted. This campaign point is actually a beta-test of huge proportions for the US visit, that should (according to Lil'Bush) be implemented by the time when all ports and airports are under the US visit jurisdiction. By increasing the legal entrance of immigrants to the US Lil'Bush is aiming for the rapid increase of the content of the PA2 database. A slick move, but not slickly enough.
7. Honestly? I think I depend on the country's attitude towards the implementation, but I am more inclined to say no because security should be done before the flight takes place and in a way that does not conflict with one's privacy or security. To determine the security of a flight depends also on the mentality of the country and many other things so I don't think a couple of armed agents are going to change that. But it's impossible to say;
Now that I have cleared out many of your doubts I have one question: How does it get processed? The information I mean. I know that it is gathered, sent to a server, and stored. Or is it? If you take a look at it with greater detail you see that it is not like that but that it is like this: data is gathered, data is sent to server, server looks checks for stored data, server sends data, data is shown, information is added to data, data is sent to server, data is sent to server. You might think it is strange but I will explain you see there is only one kind of program that can interacts with the server in these ways and that is a client. So you have a client, a network and a server. The problem knows how the client works and that can bee known by just having a view of the client's screen. I have seen how the client works and this is it. The client works for windows, and consists of a video screen on the top left corner of the window that is used to take pictures. Next to it there is a screen where the images of the fingerprints are taken. Then there is a text box that is used to fill in with additional information such as past felonies, etc. the at the bottom there is a very big screen that can change colors from green to red and contains the person's basic info.
Changes from Green to Red; Yes, you got it! That is the part of the client, which interacts with the server. How? Well let's give you an example. The data is this: [name], [age], [country], [sex], [etc], [photograph], [fingerprints], [background] (I will explain rest your mind for now). That data is sent from the client (whose screen is neither green nor red but white), through the network, to the server. The server then uses the [name], [sex] and [country] parameter to try and find similar matches to the information. If none are found then the [background] parameter is sent as ;green;. If there is one found and it includes harmless information concerning the individual like no past felonies, then the [background] parameter is sent as ;green; but also containing that information. But if the information that is found isn't harmless for example that the individual has past felonies, the server sends the [background] parameter as ;red; and containing the information. The client receives the information and it is shown in the screen (the information and the color).
Now according the felony the security checking man (which operates the client) can determine if the individual is allowed or not into the US. If the individual is allowed or not allowed that info is added to the [background] and sent along with the color the server determined. The data is sent again and this time gathered in the server.
What's so troubling about this? The problem is that a big ethical problem can rise up just by using some programming skills and some social engineering skills. How? Well by skillfully using social engineering one can implement a Trojan into the network of the clients and download an example of the client onto to his own computer. Then by debugging it and reprogramming it to be a 2-way communication client he will be able to obtain and modify any information in the server and use it in many ways to suit his happiness. This can happen because the client can by default communicate with the server and the server communicates with him. The server has orders to respond to the client's commands and orders and those orders can be changed by a bit of programming skills, much like an SQL injection.
So you must see that if one of these clients gets in one's hands it can cause a huge amount of havoc.
Again you can either choose: United States or Privacy! Your call;
This article was written by: PaPaParleone
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
|
|
You must be logged in to vote on an article
|
About Us | Privacy Policy | Mission Statement | Help
|