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White House Plans to Launch Internet ID System, Further Eroding Civil and Political Rights

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We're informed that the "Identity Ecosystem will provide people with a variety of more secure and privacy-enhancing ways to access online services. The Identity Ecosystem enables people to validate their identities securely when they're doing sensitive transactions (like banking) and lets them stay anonymous when they're not (like blogging). The Identity Ecosystem will enhance individuals' privacy by minimizing the information they must disclose to authenticate themselves."

Government Computer News tells us that the "identity ecosystem" isn't envisaged as a "national Internet ID to track online activities." The devil's in the details and what little we do know should set alarm bells ringing.

The program office will "support and coordinate interagency collaboration" and "promote pilot projects and other implementations." Which agencies are we talking about here? What pilot projects and "other implementations" are being alluding to? We don't know.

We do know however, that the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security have forged a Memorandum of Agreement which will increase Pentagon control over America's telecommunications and electronic infrastructure.

In fact, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation disclosed in October, DHS has been tracking people online and that the agency even established a "Social Networking Monitoring Center" to explicitly do so.

Documents obtained by the civil liberties watchdog group revealed that the agency has been vacuuming-up "items of interest," systematically monitoring "citizenship petitioners" and analyzing "online public communication."

Wouldn't an "identity ecosystem" greatly facilitate online spying, despite administration claims to the contrary?

While the system is "voluntary" and individuals will not be compelled to sign up, the secret state is lusting after a sure fire means to identify the billions of computers, smart phones and other digital devices that plague us.

And even if you choose not to "opt in," well, plans are already afoot by advertising pimps and their partners in the national security state "to collect the digital equivalent of fingerprints from every computer, cellphone and TV set-top box in the world," The Wall Street Journal recently disclosed.

As with all other aspects of the "War on Terror" threatscape, the closer one looks at the Obama regime's "identity ecosystem" the less warm and fuzzy it becomes.

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Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research,, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press and (more...)
 
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