Free Republic

A federal law passed in February 2012 to help middle class families by creating jobs and cutting payroll taxes included a section mandating the creation of a nationwide interoperable broadband communications system for law enforcement and first responders. The system, which is being created under the direction of the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), seeks to create a nationwide broadband network capable of being used for a variety of law enforcement purposes including remote surveillance, mobile biometric applications like field fingerprint scanning and facial recognition, as well as automated license plate reading. The system is currently in a pilot phase...

Republican leaders in Congress are once again plotting with Democrats to stab the American people and the U.S. Constitution in the back, on multiple key issues. Under the guise of getting “something” in exchange for providing amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants (and future Democrat voters) in Obama's illegal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the establishment wing of the GOP is pushing a radical longtime goal of the bipartisan Deep State: mandatory national biometric ID cards for all Americans. Privacy and liberty are under serious threat, critics warned.   The Orwellian national ID scheme, known as “E-Verify,” is...

Starting in 2016, the Transportation Security Administration will require all airline passengers to present a REAL ID compliant identification card or a passport in order to board a flight. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 20-30% of Americans live in jurisdictions that are not REAL ID compliant, meaning their driver's licenses will no longer be accepted during security checks at the airport.

Just as you were wrapping your mind around the idea that under Obamacare and the accompanying changes in the health-care system, your medical records will be floating around in some online repository, available to far too many people, you’re being told you’ll soon have a National Identity Card and a Western Hemisphere-compliant travel document whether you want it or not, if you plan to drive in the United States. The federal government says it soon will be enforcing its demands that state-issued driver’s licenses and ID cards comply with Department of Homeland Security standards. DHS announced just before Christmas a...

From massive NSA spying, to IRS targeting of the administration's political opponents, to collection and sharing of our health care information as part of Obamacare, it seems every day we learn of another assault on our privacy. Sadly, this week the Senate took another significant, if little-noticed, step toward creating an authoritarian surveillance state. Buried in the immigration bill is a national identification system called mandatory E-Verify. The Senate did not spend much time discussing E-Verify, and what little discussion took place was mostly bipartisan praise for its effectiveness as a tool for preventing illegal immigrants from obtaining employment. It...

<p>A more than 800-page bill for immigration reform, which the Senate has begun debating, carries a measure privacy advocates worry could lead to the creation of a biometric database of every adult in the United States.</p>

Ron Paul is robo-calling his supporters to sign a petition against the inclusion of a National ID card in immigration reform negotiations. From the petition: Right now, freedom-stealing Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), banding together with other statists from both parties, are scheming to sneak a massive power grab into a new “immigration reform” bill. If passed, it would require every American to obtain a National ID card to work legally in the U.S. – and you can bet it will be only a matter of time until they’re required even for simple purchases. Ron Paul calls...

The Obama administration is set to propose a new system for authenticating people, organizations and infrastructure on the Web. The online authentication and identity management system would be targeted at the transactional level -- for example, when someone logs into their banking website or completes an online e-commerce purchase. Making such a system effective, however, will require creating an "identity ecosystem," backed by extensive public/private cooperation, said White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt, delivering the opening keynote speech at the Symantec Government Symposium 2010 in Washington on Tuesday. "This strategy cannot exist in isolation," he said. "It's going to take...

White House Preparing National Online ID Plan The proposed system for authenticating people, organizations and infrastructure on the web at the transactional level will require an identity ecosystem. By Mathew J. Schwartz InformationWeek June 25, 2010 08:00 AM The Obama administration is set to propose a new system for authenticating people, organizations and infrastructure on the Web. The online authentication and identity management system would be targeted at the transactional level -- for example, when someone logs into their banking website or completes an online e-commerce purchase. Making such a system effective, however, will require creating an "identity ecosystem," backed...

The US State Department now issues a Passport Card as well as the Passport Book, which every one is familiar. Here are some interesting comments about it from the U.S. Department of State web site: "We began production of the U.S. Passport Card on July 14, 2008. As of March 2010, more than 2,700,000 Passport Cards have been issued to U.S. citizens." "The passport card is the wallet-size travel document that can only be used to re-enter the United States at land border-crossings and sea ports-of-entry from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda. The card provides a less expensive, smaller,...

MUMBAI (Reuters) – As India gears up to build the largest biometric database in the world with the aim of providing most of its 1.2 billion citizens a Unique Identification (UID), perhaps the biggest challenge is smudged fingerprints. The UID Authority of India will issue the first UIDs linked to a person's demographic and biometric information between August and February, and issue about 600 million such IDs over the next five years to help verify citizens quickly and cheaply. It will be a boon for companies and government agencies alike. It would give millions of Indians the means to open...

Salute to my fellow American Patriots! We suffered a blow yesterday in the battle for America's future. The Demons have succesfully weasled their Communist health policy without regard to their political future. They don't have to care! Want to know why? Amnesty This is going to be the most crucial battle we will have to fight. If the Demons get Amnesty through before November elections, they will have won it all. Millions of illegal aliens (seeking free healthcare, education, and all kinds of fantastic freebies) will have the right to vote, and who are they gonna vote for? We have...

Senator Lindsey Graham, ever the faithful follower of uber-RINO John McCain, scored three RINO initiatives in just one week. Reminiscent of the "the band's getting back together" scenes from the movie "Blues Brothers", Graham and McCain reached back to the good old days of bipartisan shafting of conservative judicial nominees and offered the Democrats another "Gang of Fourteen"--this time to shaft the public with a bipartisan Obamacare bill. The offer must have been tempting to the Democrats who remember how "bipartisan leadership" from Graham and McCain spiked conservative guns when the Republicans were in the majority in the Senate. But...

A national ID card using biometric data such as fingerprints is at the center of an immigration reform bill being hammered out in the U.S. Senate – a measure that once again probably will pit advocates of homeland security and tough immigration enforcement against civil libertarians, employers and immigrant rights groups. The new effort by Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., will revive the “Real ID” debate that has festered for years with little effect on illegal immigration. Under their plan, a universally required card would be encoded with all sorts of information regarding the holder, as...

Lindsey Graham to President Obama: Time to ‘step it up’ By: Glenn Thrush March 10, 2010 04:31 AM EST President Barack Obama is summoning two key senators to the Oval Office on Thursday for an update on immigration reform efforts — but one of them, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), thinks Obama should be the one giving the update. Graham, less than thrilled at the notion of providing the equivalent of a book report to the headmaster in chief, said Obama’s lack of direction on immigration reform is hampering Graham’s efforts to recruit additional Republicans to the cause. “At the end...

The Wall Street Journal reports that lawmakers are working on a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. The "national ID" thing again. Let's do a little quick catching up, with a reprint of a 2001 article; Too late to stop national ID. "Imagine a state in which you must register your name and address with the authorities, just so they can find you in case you break the law. In an age when bills vaunting protections for privacy abound, and when surveys of consumers rank privacy as a top concern, could that...

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker. The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood. A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday. "I don't think she was familiar with his...

Exactly one week after the highly-publicized arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates stirred a national discussion on race relations, legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was detained by police officers in a "low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood" in Long Branch, New Jersey. Makes one wonder why it took so long for this to get reported, and if news outlets that were convinced Gates's arrest was racially motivated will see the delicious irony in a white rock star being questioned by police just because he was "wandering around the neighborhood." The Associated Press sure didn't (h/t Clarence Page): Rock legend Bob Dylan was...

Despite the advances in technologies and solutions, the concern that remains central to the objective of providing security to the nation is the question of “who is who?” The federal homeland security laws directed toward enhancing the security of the United States — and the federal government’s confidence in the adequacy of such efforts — is, at the most basic level, grounded in the process of identity determination and the use of powerful databases to accurately determine individual identity to best evaluate threat and risk. Much of government’s effort to protect the borders, minimize the risk to infrastructure and ensure...