Technofascism blog

via New World Order in Brazil.

Brazil‘s government, behind the facade of open democracy, continues to advance its way as one of the most autoritarian police states in the world.

Brazilian population will be forced very soon to have in their cars identification chips (RFID), besides GPS locators and blockers.

According to several news , the brazilian government hurries to show until november of 2010 the GPS tracker that will be legally required to be in all new cars from February of 2011.

It is unclear how this will work but in this article of the Folha de Sao Paulo says the Denatran (Transit National Department) will oversee the center, and that it will be operated by Serpro (organ of government for data processing). This means that the brazilian government can access the location of any car registered in any country!

The article in the Folha de Sao Paulo also says:

To circumvent the criticisms of those who claim lack of privacy, which has led the discussion to the judicial arena, the Minister Marcio Fortes says there will be two options: the tracker and blocker. This will make the car stop in a given situation, for example if the thief stops at traffic lights, and will be mandatory. In the other hand, the GPS tracker will be contracted or not by the user.

The implications of this? Imagine this in the hands of a corrupt and totalitarian government, which decides to label as terrorists those who disagree with its actions? Brazilian should unite and reject this law, modeled on the American war on terror, using security as pretext for the removal of our freedoms and privacy.

Chip Identification RFID in Cars

I had read some time ago in Portugal that the cars would be required to have RFID chip (radio frequency) identification and was stunned by that. What was my surprise to learn that since 2006 we have a law that creates the Siniav, or National System for Automatic Vehicle Identification, which will require the installation of identification chips in all cars and maintain a network of reading antennas, which will identify every vehicle.

Resolution of No 212 of 13 November 2006, says:

SINIAV consists of electronic boards installed in the vehicle, antennas, readers, data processing centers and computer systems.

And goes on saing that militar vehicles are not required to use but all other motor vehicles will have to be equipped with the chip:

§ 2 The use of military vehicles are exempt from this requirement.

Article 2 No motor vehicle, electrical, trailer and semi-trailer can be licensed on roads open to traffic without being equipped with the electronic board of this resolution.

The full resolution can be downloaded here.

According to the engineer Dario Thorbe, data is encrypted and confidential, and will be accessible only the traffic department and eventually the police. Ahhhhh, ok then, now I feel so safe!

Again the state using the pretext of security for the people to accept totalitarian measures. Gradually we are seeing around us the government, putting in place tools that will allow a micro-managing the lives of all citizens. Close to what we have at some time in Brazil, 1984 will be pretty easy.

via RivieraReview.

After covering the town with video cameras, assurances were made that it was for cracking down on violent crime. Head Prosecutor for Nice, Eric de Montgolfier, has now authorised automatically sending fines for parking offenses caught on camera.

The scheme starts on 1st November and with Avenue de Verdun, Boulevard Carlone, and Boulevard Gambetta. Whereas in other countries, parking inspectors are forced to trudge through the rain to catch offenders, in Nice they will be able to put up their feet and drink a nice cup of tea whilst firing off fines. Of course this eliminates any sort of discretion, or “common sense”, but rather continues the drive to maximise revenue through penalising minor offenses. As the number of CCTV cameras expands, we can expect this to roll out city-wide.

via Mail Online.

Cancer is a man-made disease fuelled by the excesses of modern life, a study of ancient remains has found.

Tumours were rare until recent times when pollution and poor diet became issues, the review of mummies, fossils and classical literature found.

A greater understanding of its origins could lead to treatments for the disease, which claims more than 150,000 lives a year in the UK.

Despite slivers of tissue from hundreds of Egyptian mummies being rehydrated, just one case of cancer has been confirmed. This is even though tumours should be better preserved by mummification than healthy tissues.

Fossil evidence is also sparse, with just a few dozen – mostly disputed – examples, Nature Reviews Cancer journal reports.

Even the study of thousands of Neanderthal bones has provided only one example of a possible cancer.

And references to cancer-like problems in ancient Egyptian texts are more likely to have been caused by leprosy or varicose veins.

Researcher Michael Zimmerman, a visiting professor at Manchester University, said: ‘The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as indicating their rarity in antiquity. This indicates that cancer-causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialisation.’

The ancient Greeks were probably the first to define cancer as a specific disease and to distinguish between benign and malignant tumours.

But researchers said it was unclear if this signalled a real rise in the disease, or just a greater medical knowledge.

The 17th century provides the first descriptions of surgery for breast and other cancers, while the first reports of distinctive tumours occurred in the past 200 years or so.

They include scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps in 1775 and nasal cancer in snuff users in 1761.

Co-researcher Professor Rosalie David said: ‘There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer.

‘So it has to be down to pollution and changes to diet and lifestyle.

‘The important thing about our study is that it gives a historical perspective to this disease.

‘Data from across the millennia has given modern society a clear message – cancer is man-made and something that we can and should address.’

Dr Rachel Thompson, of the World Cancer Research Fund, said a healthy diet, regular exercise and maintaining a healthy body weight can help prevent a third of common cancers.

‘So perhaps our ancestors’ lifestyle reduced risk from cancer,’ she added.

via Houston Chronicle.

Radio frequency identification — the same technology used to monitor cattle — is tracking students in the Spring and Santa Fe school districts.

Identification badges for some students in both school districts now include tracking devices that allow campus administrators to keep tabs on students’ whereabouts on campus. School leaders say the devices improve security and increase attendance rates.

“It’s a wonderful asset,” said Veronica Vijil, principal of Bailey Middle School in Spring, one of the campuses that introduced the high-tech badges this fall.

But some parents and privacy advocates question whether the technology could have unintended consequences. The tags remind them of George Orwell’s Big Brother, and they worry that hackers could figure a way to track students after they leave school.

Read full article at Houston Chronicle.

via Danger Room.

Citizens of Nevada, you can now relax. The Nevada National Security Site, home to tens of millions of cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste — and location of over a thousand Cold War nuclear weapons tests — is now being guarded by robots. The first of a planned trio of Mobile Detection Assessment Response Systems, or MDARS, is currently patrolling some of the more remote sections of the 1,360 square mile facility.

The camera-equipped MDARS can scoot around pre-determined paths on its own, alerting flesh-and-blood guards when it encounters an intruder or a broken lock. In development by the Navy and General Dynamics since the early 1990s, the diesel-fueled sentry bot can operate for up to 16 hours, and reach a top speed of 20 mph. The U.S. military has experimented with using the MDARS machines to patrol some of its Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada. The bots have even been tested with automatic weapons — though I doubt that’s the plan at the nuke site.

The Nevada complex, about 65 miles away from Las Vegas, is best known for its iconic nuclear weapons test-shots. Today, it boasts locations to conduct “controlled chemical releases in the open environment to simulate emissions from nuclear weapons production plants,” according to the NNSS website. And the place hosts the “Big Explosive Experimental Facility” — BEEF, for short. It’s “currently used for weapons physics experiments and shaped charge development.”

Going robo at the Nevada site is a cost-cutting move, the National Nuclear Security Administration claims. Using the MDARS will save about “$6 million in infrastructure investments for equipment such as cameras, towers, lights, trenching and burial of cables to support towers and motion detection units to support protection of remote sensitive areas,” according to an administration statement. “Additionally, the robots will result in an annual cost avoidance of $1 million in protective force expenditures and equipment maintenance.” So rest easy, Nevadans. Not only are your mechanical guardians keeping you safe. They’re making sure your tax dollars are well spent, too.

via Arikia Millikan – Technology – The Atlantic.

Now, I am always connected to the Web. The rare exceptions to the rule cause excruciating anxiety. I work online. I play online. I have sex online. I sleep with my smartphone at the foot of my bed and wake up every few hours to check my email in my sleep (something I like to call dreamailing).

But it’s not enough connectivity. I crave an existence where batteries never die, wireless connections never fail, and the time between asking a question and having the answer is approximately zero. If I could be jacked in at every waking hour of the day, I would, and I think a lot of my peers would do the same. So Hal, please hurry up with that Google implant. We’re getting antsy.

In yet another attempt to gain public acceptance for the coming technological tyranny, the EU has recently funded the University of Bergen in Norway to create a website that collects people’s opinions on three emerging techno-fascist technologies: biometric id, human augmentation, and global tracking systems.

The TechnoLife project’s website claims that they

“will place a number of media objects in different (public) domains and use these as focal points of discussion. The idea here is simply that images and more emotionally laden content may better serve as triggers of debate than standard ethical principles or analysis. We develop a number of tools for that purpose, the most important being a number of short movies. Other possible “triggering objects” may include news stories, images and gadgets such as mobile phone applications.”

To trigger a negative reaction as the stimulus for a debate, the Technolife project has created movies that deliberately portray the three above-mentioned technologies in a negative light.  These shock films are intended to invoke a negative reaction in the viewer who would then presumably log into the TechnoLife website and post their concerns.

And what will the TechnoLife project do with these concerns: “The outcomes of the deliberative phase, involving a number of different concerned groups will be presented to EU policy makers” with the objective to “Develop methods to represent ethical issues of the three technological fields to end-users (policy makers, scientists and NGOs) at early stages of S&T and policy development” and to “Develop ethical frameworks that can be used to take better account of the ethical concerns understood in relation to social and technical imaginaries in the three technological fields.”

Or, after translating into plain non-academic English, the TechnoLife project will present the objections of concerned citizens to EU policy makers so they can then spin the technology in a direction that is more acceptable to the general population.

Of course, nowhere on their website is there even the hint that these technologies could be prevented from being deployed.  TechnoLife’s research is narrowly focused on how to gain public acceptance for the coming surveillance and control systems.

So, if you would like to be “triggered” into providing your concerns to the TechnoLife project, here are their three movies which are guaranteed to make you wish you could jump into a time-machine set for the 18th century.