Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/no need to argue/US Card 2

Text File | 1994-10-08 | 7KB | 147 lines

excerpted from THE SPOTLIGHT JUNE 13, 1994

Danger in the Mail

Don't look now, but Uncle Sam has some shiny new shackles with your
name on them. Indeed, sources in the U.S. Postal Service recently
revealed that they're all set to deliver your very own personalized
federal ball and chain directly to your mailbox. And you read it here
first. If your slave-bracelet comes, don't expect a hefty steel ball
and clumsy, clanking chains. Those days are gone. We're closing in on
the 21st Century--high-tech restraints are the order of the day.

So instead of a postman straining under the weight of a
neighborhood's worth of iron, you'll see nothing more ominous than a
mailbag filled with official looking personalized envelopes.

There will be one for every member of your family. You will find a
harmless-looking Smart Card contained in each envelope.

The Smart Card could well be called the "U.S. Card." And if it
performs as announced by the Postal Service, it will restrain you as
surely as a pair of handcuffs and dispossess you as certainly as a
phalanx of marshals with padlocks.

Without the card, you won't be able to own property, receive
government benefits, get medical attention, conduct bank or credit
card transactions . . . you name it, and you can't do it. Your life
will be completely controlled by the device, if the Clinton
administration adopts the Postal Service's proposal.

And, as I wrote two weeks ago, Executive Orders are reported to be
drafted to adopt the cards. Without congressional approval.

MEDIA COLLABORATION
Have you heard about the U.S. Card on the
networks? Or in your local newspaper?  I bet you haven't.

It's not exactly a secret, although the national security powers try
to obscure its origins by moving the ghastly project around between
different government agencies to make it "plausibly deniable."

The computer press has reported on it. The respected industry journal
PC Week covered the story on its front page--and even tracked down
the leads about Clinton's drafted Executive Orders to force the cards
on Americans. The White House gave PC Week a terse "no comment."

And somehow PC Week missed one of the most revealing comments made by
the U.S. Card's boosters at the Postal Service: They told several
people that they were prepared to mail 100 million of the cards in a
matter of months.

As alarming and sickening as this prospect seems, you have to marvel
at the irony of it all. The Clinton administration, which says it's
determined to "break the cycle of dependency" among welfare
recipients, is preparing to reduce every American to total
dependence--and near-total surveillance--through these infamous
cards.

THE U.S. CARD
The U.S. Card, described here two weeks ago, is raising eyebrows
throughout the computer community. Frankly, among computer-literate
citizens, the U.S. Card is raising more than eyebrows. It's causing
people's hair to stand on end. It is a super Smart Card--a Tesserea
card, prototype by the Defense Department and perfected by the
distributed-systems experts of the Postal Service, the Treasury
Department, the IRS and quite possibly the National Security Agency.

The word tesserea is Latin. It means a piece of a mosaic". It is the
name given by ancient Roman conquerors to identity chits they issued
to conquered peoples and slaves. It was adopted as the code-name for
the Smart Card development project by--apparently--the Defense
Messaging Agency. The Tesserea cards developed in that program years
ago were clearly the precursors of the all-encompassing, mandatory
device proposed by the Postal Service and other federal agencies now.

'FRONT END' OF TYRANNY
In computer parlance, the U.S. Card functions as a "front-end". The
"back end" of the tyranny will be every bit of personal information
about you, wherever in the world the data may be.

This is called "client/server" computer technology, and it has been
perfected over many years by both businesses and governments. For all
intents and purposes, it works flawlessly. Nearly a million bank cash
machines use client/server technology --when was the last time your
local bank cash machine made a mistake? (And was the mistake in your
favor? Or the bank's?)

The U.S. Card was proposed as a national identity card and "signature
verification" device by the U.S. Postal Service at the
"CardTech/SecureTech" conference held in Crystal City, Virginia. The
Postal Service's proposal (which was echoed by the IRS what a
coincidence!) calls for the card to "mediate" the information about
you in every government database. It will be like a magic key, which
opens every government database with information about you.

Of course, without your magic key, you're out in the cold. You won't
be able to file tax returns, collect your pensions or social
security, conduct bank or credit card transactions or interact with
the government in any way.

'MAGIC KEY'
And here's another troubling fact. If federal computer systems are
already integrated to this extent--where one card can unlock" every
piece of information about you--then what makes you think you have
the only key?

Of course you won't have the only key. And potentially everything you
own and all your assets, benefits and entitlements can be withheld"
from you with the push of a few buttons at the Treasury Department,
IRS, or who-knows-where.

The Postal Service spokesman who eagerly described the U.S. Card to a
"cleared" audience at the CardTech conference said that the databases
are ready to be integrated under the card.

To me, that means the databases are integrated now. It can take well
over a year to integrate a couple of big databases. If the Postal
Service is ready to start mailing 100 million of these cards within
months, then the databases are integrated now.  They work
together--for Big Brother --now. They are being used now.

OVERSEERS WITH MISGIVINGS
The Postal Service took special care to choose a friendly forum to
introduce its proposed U.S. Card and the computer systems that make
it work. It's no accident they chose the CardTech conference. The
CardTech/ SecureTech confab is hardly an assembly of civil
libertarians.

On the contrary--if the globe is becoming a plantation, then most  of
the CardTech folks want to be the overseers.

The conference is for government and corporate specialists in
computer security, personal tracking and surveillance. If Americans
are going to be branded or tattooed or implanted with transmitters or
otherwise permanently marked and monitored by the government--like
slaves in days of old --the folks who attend the CardTech conference
generally want to be the ones selling the branding irons.

Even so, people at the conference expressed reservations about the
U.S. Card. Not technical reservations, mind you. They know the U.S.
Card will work as advertised. They expressed political reservations.

Those people buy and sell folks' privacy for a living. I guess it's
one thing to sell branding irons, but quite another thing to accept a
brand yourself. It's up to you.