The Moral Busy Bodies Are at it Again©
Posted: Friday, October 14, 2011
by Arlene Wright-Correll
http://www.learn-america.com
We better want what we are getting because we are getting it and this time it comes under the name of Identity Ecosystem which is one of Obama’s newest plans to keep us safe from those creepy identity theft people who inhabit cyberspace or so he says.
In late July 2011, in a 19–10 vote, the House Judiciary Committee passed H.R. 1981, the cleverly titled “Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.” Like most bills that start out with good intentions things tend to creep in as bad if not worse than the “baddies” our government and our elected politicians say they are trying to protect us from.
According to the Obama administration’s “Identity Ecosystem,” it would allow internet users to submit their credentials to a government or corporate agent in order to verify and catalog their identity. We would each be given a universal ID stored in a “smart” card to access a variety of online goods and services, such as shopping banking and paying bills.
In the beginning neither consumers nor corporations will mandated to participate in the Identity Ecosystem. However, once enough corporations take part in the new program, it will be like letting the nose of the camel into the tent and it will be practically impossible for the average consumer to avoid registering as well.
Once your information is in the Identity Ecosystem database it will be shared amongst a variety of institutions: governmental, financial, and corporate. Now the fun begins because the potentials for abuse are many. The next time you send out an email speaking against a government policy the government could shut you out of the system. If you are a suspect in a crime they could also do it quite easily. Can you imagine how easy it would be rescind your verified credentials and tell your bank, credit card holders, eBay.com, Amazon.com or any other corporation to stop doing business with you until the matter is resolved?
Right now on Google and Amazon it is so easy to keep track of what purchases you and I make so just use your imagination to think of what a field day any corporation could have with the information they will be able to get from the Identity Ecosystem database.
We need to remember that corporations and our government have lousy track records of keeping our personal and private information personal and private!
Does anyone recall 2006, when the Department of Veteran Affairs announced that the personal data of over 17.5 million veterans had been potentially compromised when a laptop containing their information was stolen from the home of an employee? The department offered to keep track of the credit of each person for one year at the cost of $160.5 million to taxpayers. Veterans can thank their lucky stars that the laptop was later recovered with the data not having been compromised.
Who can forget 2007 when
The drama continues as we remember 2009 when Heartland Payment Systems announced that their database of millions of credit card numbers had been compromised by a small group of hackers.
Even as recent as February 2011, Aaron Barr, the CEO of HBGary Federal, a security firm with business ties to the federal government, threatened to unmask members of Anonymous, claiming that he had the identities of important members. In response, Anonymous hacked HBGary Federal’s website the next day, stealing hundreds of documents and e-mails. Anonymous then stole the report which HBGary Federal was planning to sell to the FBI and released it for free! They also hacked into Aaron Barr’s Twitter account, posting his home address and Social Security number.
Besides all these bogie men stories I have just written about lets think bigger and more personal since we all know the threats posed by a universal internet ID to one’s privacy and financial security are seriously grave. We need to realize that Obama’s Identity Ecosystem would also seriously endanger anonymity and free speech, while giving the government the ultimate weapon for controlling an unruly populace and only they will be able to say who is an unruly populace.
America’s key component of any free society has always been its ability to openly discuss ideas which may be unpopular with government and corporate officials without fear of retribution. This Identity Ecosystem could easily remove the protections enshrined in our First Amendment and discourse over the internet would be greatly inhibited. Protesters of any kind and over anything would be unable to organize, and dissidents and activists would be targeted by those in power and they would be locked out of the system.
Just think about how you feel when a storm knocks out your electricity or like I felt last night when our local telephone company crew accidentally cut through our telephone lines knocking out now only our phones, but our computers and even our television. This would be a minor inconvenience compared to what can happen to each and everyone of us should the Identity Ecosystem become a reality.
Is it too late to stop it? I do not know, but I sure as heck sent my Senator a letter telling him I was against it. Have you if you do not like the idea?
No government in the world and especially in these United States of America has the right to know every single purchase, transaction and communication that you or I make and neither does any corporation. With the Identity Ecosystem, the concept of having a private sphere of one’s life will be thrown out the window.
Right now it seems that the internet may be the last bastion of democracy and the government knows this. When are we going to wake up and realize that it doesn’t really matter what party controls the White House or Congress, because the objective of our bureaucratic government remains the same: total control—of the nation, of the internet, and ultimately of you and me.
Evil triumphs when good people do nothing.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)"Is it too late to stop it?" I am sorry Arlene, but man's ignorance have and will cause dramatic changes. I even listen to the politicians over and over again saying: "Too much government involvement." Then I think, we the people are the government. Seems they have a diplomatic way of saying: "we are ignorant." I truly believe, we allow our so-called political leaders to stay in office too long and become complacent. Retire old with all our tax money for years of filibustering.no it is now too late.
find out who your senator is and write to him either by email or snail mail. One letter apparently has the voice of 1000 to them.
send the link to my article to all your friends
Let get active because if we are not part of the solution we are part of the problem and we have got to forget about old party habits and vote every encumberant out in 2012 and then do the same thing in 2016 and then in 2020 until they get the message they have 4 years to do what they promise and then they are history!!!Will do.
The Australian government is bringing in some net controls as well, basically for the same reason. There is no I.D. card involved - at this stage. Australians have rejected them in the past. Every measure should be taken to protect children, of course, but even if a government is benign when they bring in these types of measures, it paves the way for misuse or abuse in the future. The way it is meant to work here is that pages that trigger a type of firewall. All well and good except trials have shown that legitimate pages can trigger the firewall.
An interesting fact you might be interested in: the US Ambassador and the US Secretary of State have both objected to the Australian plan saying the internet must remain free.
The only people who will be locked out will be the ordinary citizen and the small business. There are ultimately no defences against hackers and those inclined will make available whatever is meant to be unavailable in the first place including child pornography and paedophilia sites.
As you say, it is up to us, the average citizen, to ensure it does not happen regardless of which side of politics we vote for.
Much better to inform and encourage parents and responsible people to protect the young by having their own firewall in place and by not letting children surf the net without supervision.
You are correct.
Thanks for the scary info. I guess I'd better watch myself.You are welcome.
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