“Fast forward to 2020, barely seven years after that initial launch. The use of biometrics has almost become commonplace, and likewise, the limitations and vulnerabilities of these technologies are coming to the forefront.”
The quote above tells you where the industry wants to go and how they are going to get there. Many people have a basic understanding of biometrics. Commonly, fingerprinting and FRT (Facial Recognition Technology) are the best known of all the biometrics. More and more people are starting to learn about biometrics such as iris scans and palm/hand vein geometry. There are dozens of biometrics. What they have in common is they are all measurements of the body. Your DNA is a biometric. These unique measurements for each person literally becomes the number of man.
There are other biometrics, such as ear lobe biometrics, that you might not ever think of. Biometrics can be measurements of physical characteristics such as the distance between your lips, nose, ears, and eyes for FRT. There are also behavioral biometrics such as your gait; your gait is the way in which you walk. Your gait is measurable and is unique to you. Biometrics are unique to each person and are all based on measurements. International organizations exist to ensure that international standards conform to certain standards such that global biometric sharing can occur. The term used to describe international standards and global biometric sharing is global interoperability. This fact about biometrics is especially disturbing. One can be identified and tracked anywhere in the world regardless of whether you are in Paris, Texas or Paris, France.
What governments want, including our own, is to have all of our biometrics stored and maintained in a centralized database. This is not to say there will not be smaller databases maintained for different purposes including for healthcare, education, and immigration. The granddaddy of all databases will be federal databases in each country including the United States. In the United States we have the FBI’s $1 billion Next Generation Identification database which includes many biometrics including voice recognition. We do have other federal biometric databases used by the DoD (Department of Defense), DHS (Department of Homeland Security), and others. States and counties have their own databases of your biometrics.
How far will government go to collect your biometrics without your knowing about what government is doing?
We are going to answer this question in our next article. We promise you that you will be astonished to find out the lengths our government will go to in order to collect you biometrics.
It is important to know that biometrics in and of themselves do not establish your identity. It is only when a biometric is linked to biographical information such as your birth certificate that biometrics establish your identity. We are not verifying birth certificates in the United States. So even if we linked a biometric to your birth certificate or any birth certificate, until the birth certificate is verified as being authentic and belonging to the person presenting it, the identity of the individual is still in question.
The biometric industry has known for years that fingerprinting and FRT were easily compromised and/or spoofed, but the industry does not care if your biometrics are compromised as much as they care about collecting, retaining, and sharing your biometrics.
One way we like people to think about their biometrics and the manner in which they are collected and used is to imagine your biometrics being the keys to your house. You would not take the keys to your house and make copies that you would throw all over your front yard. This is what you are doing with your biometrics with one big exception. You can easily replace the locks to your house rendering all the keys spread on your front yard useless. Further, one cannot go out and collect all of their biometrics that are in databases in the simple way one could pick up all of the keys in their front yard. No matter how a person looks at it, they should be protecting their biometrics, not giving them to any entity that wants them absent a warrant, or the person having knowledge and giving their consent.
Never, ever forget that biometrics are the linchpin to a surveillance state. There are too many people who speak about the surveillance state only to fail to understand why biometrics are the linchpin to a surveillance state. The Constitutional Alliance supports others that speak about the surveillance state. That being said, talking about the surveillance state and not making biometrics as a central part of discussion is like talking about the organs in our body while not mentioning our heart.
The Constitutional Alliance has pointed out, many times, that a person can be seen getting into a car or entering a home, but that does not mean the person is the owner of the car or the home in question. A person can be eavesdropped on while on a cell phone, but that does not mean the person on the phone is the person who owns that cell phone account. FRT and voice recognition would be necessary to know who is driving the car, entering the home, or using the cell phone.
Unless your biometrics, including your DNA is linked directly to your birth certificate, the biometrics are just a series of measurements or numbers that identify you as a number, not a name. Your name would still be in question until the biometrics are linked to your birth certificate or other acceptable form of identification.
Why am I repeating the importance to linking one’s biometrics to their birth certificate?
The simple answer is that the biometrics industry, and government, want to collect your biometrics at birth and affix them to your birth certificate. That is not speculation.
The concept of collecting and storing your biometrics at birth has been around for decades. Only now is it feasible, and the political will exists to attach your biometrics to your birth certificate. We all should be resisting collecting any of our biometrics including our DNA at birth, because now we all understand that biometrics is the linchpin of the surveillance state in every country. Our federal government already has a DNA database called CODIS (Combined DNA Index System). It is not beyond the realm of possibility that at some point going forward, perhaps because of some national emergency, or just a corrupt government, a DNA database will be used to pick winners and losers.
You cannot reconcile a free society with a surveillance state. FRT and other technologies are now used against the citizens of countries who are exercising their God given right to dissent against what their government is doing. There is a chilling effect of domestic surveillance. People are far less likely to protest, support certain political candidates, or do anything that government would oppose once the people know their biometrics are captured and placed in law enforcement databases.
Going forward as countries are not able to deal with all the challenges they are facing, governments will want and will have a way to control the people who stand up in opposition to government for failing to resolve challenges/problems.
In the United States we have not dealt with education, healthcare, immigration, mounting national debt, trade deficits, unfunded and underfunded pension programs, the cost of entitlement programs, and on and on. There are many other problems/challenges our country is facing that are being kicked down the road. All the balls we are juggling will eventually begin to hit the ground, and when they do, the surveillance state will show its true face, and be used to control the people. Facial recognition is already being used when people have a permit, are lawfully protesting, and exercising their First Amendment rights.
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The Constitutional Alliance is the only national organization that focuses on biometrics and the surveillance state. Many people/groups release information about surveillance but we assure you they do not explain why biometrics is the linchpin of a surveillance state.