Wow, Jarhead and I must have been visited by the same muse. He’s right though, everyone IS being watched. The government has rolled out quite the surveillance operations lately. I know we’ve talked about the drones. But have you kept up on the state-of-the-art face recognition project that is nearing completion? The FBI has cheerfully spent a billion dollars or so of our money on their Next Generation Identification program.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reached a milestone in the development of their Next Generation Identification (NGI) program and is now implementing the intelligence database in unidentified locales across the country, New Scientist reports in an article this week. The FBI first outlined the project back in 2005, explaining to the Justice Department in an August 2006 document (.pdf) that their new system will eventually serve as an upgrade to the current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across America .
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The FBI expects the NGI system to include as many as 14 million photographs by the time the project is in full swing in only two years, but the pace of technology and the new connections constantly created by law enforcement agencies could allow for a database that dwarfs that estimate. As RT reported earlier this week, the city of Los Angeles now considers photography in public space “suspicious,” and authorizes LAPD officers to file reports if they have reason to believe a suspect is up to no good. Those reports, which may not necessarily involve any arrests, crimes, charges or even interviews with the suspect, can then be filed, analyzed, stored and shared with federal and local agencies connected across the country to massive data fusion centers. Similarly, live video transmissions from thousands of surveillance cameras across the country are believed to be sent to the same fusion centers as part of TrapWire, a global eye-in-the-sky endeavor.
So, once the cameras get your faceprint, the FBI can use public data from social networking accounts, they can get your name and track your movements.
As of July 18, 2012, the FBI reports, “The NGI program … is on scope, on schedule, on cost, and 60 percent deployed.”
Anonymous has suggestions for possible ways around the automated facial recognition software, including laser pointers, masks, and makeup. My favorite was the instructions for how to make an IR LED hat that looks normal to humans but 
blinds cameras. All you need are 6 IR LED’s, some wire and a 9 V battery, modify your favorite headgear, and away you go, as nothing more than a bright blob to cameras. It appeals to my geek-streak, and it’s very OPSEC friendly, because humans would have to get pretty close to see the LED’s, and even then might not fully understand what they are seeing. (Humans can’t see Infrared light.) Be careful about changing the battery though, since you can’t tell if your LED’s are working unless you look at it with something digital.
Do we have any readers in a city big enough to have some of the Trapwire cameras? What are your thoughts? I’m super glad that I live out in no-where Iowa. It’ll be a long time before significant numbers of cameras make their way out to my city.
Anyway, every move has a counter move, just keep up with what’s out there, as best you can. If you need help with that LED hat, you let me know.
- Calamity Jane
can you post an instructional on how that headgear works and how to assemble it?
the Powers that Be are nervous along with everyone else but they stand the most too lose If and when the Economy disintegrates….
Heightened security and Stricter crackdowns are just setting the stage and conditioning the people for a more Police State.
The leaders in government know they can’t contain a full blown insurrection and revolution but small fires can be quickly stamped out and contained if caught in time. Fight Fire with fire disinformation to the neighbor and anyone else listening or watching……OPSEC seems to be the most important thing.
all os us have heard the story of children turning in there parents in communist countrys. And parents being carted off never to be seen again don’t think were far from that here remember Loose Lips sink ships The less that know your plans the better and family could be your worst nightmare in regards to that….
…well do you wire the diodes in series, series parallel, or all parallel?
i was working on a project to put flashing red LEDs on the kitty cats collar, so we’d stop tripping over her in the dark. they stopped making the LM-3909, before i could finish it.
I just use tinfoil. :p
Check out the article from The American Dream blog reference surveillance in the US. Just posted today…
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/19-signs-that-america-is-being-systematically-transformed-into-a-giant-surveillance-grid
Welcome to Stalinist Russia . We have arrived , and not 1 person has petitioned , not 1 demonstration has taken place ………………we the people must like it . Just sayin
You wanna screw up the nazi police state? Just stop useing Twitter/facebook/linkin/shopcard/plastic. Just Stop. DON’T give them what they want. Free yourself AND your children. DITCH THE E-CRAP. We don’t need it. We need food and water,love and music. We DO NOT need electronics. The FBI/CIA/NSA/BATFE/ECT. depends on YOU to give them what they need to make of you slaves.
Aye !!!!!
Here, Here!
I seem to remember reading, or maybe saw it on a tv show but large sunglasses are supposed to be the best thing for defeating facial recognition software.
Probably they will soon label anyone wearing sunglasses as suspicious.
With the patriot act ………they dont need a reason or due process ……..all it takes is literally somebody in one of the alphabet soups to have it out for you . just sayin
I believe this idea (project) is useless, if the “powers” to be are building something of this magnitude, I would think the cameras would have IR filters on them to block the IR spectrum.
unless they hide some of them well …..in a riot ….they will be coming down by the mobs . Here in AZ , you read about the speed cameras being shot now and then as it is .
Read the book “No Place to Hide” for an understanding of how the government uses data aggregator to collect and analyze data. Your credit/debit card purchases, your travel, your address are all stirred up in a pot to develop a picture that they can misinterpret. In addition they use face recognition and now license plate scans to keep track of everywhere you go.
The go read the book “I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did”. It covers how social network and other sites collect data on your online activities. Visit a site such as W.W. Grainger then notice how many Grainger ads you see on other sites.
Super informative SHTF
The typical visit to a mall has individuals photographed 200 times in two hours.
Be aware and prepare!
Respectfully, Yoda
“Yoda’s Little Known Tactics To Avoid Being A Target”
http://www.magnifiedview.com
My employers are using the cameras and the facial recognition software to identify potential security risks prior to them entering the work site. Something else to consider; here in the southwest near the international border, in both Texas and New Mexico, DHS in conjunction with NMSP and TxDPS are using the facial recognition and biometric identification along the interstate and federal marked highways, so if you’re traveling through, be weary that you’re vehicle and its occupants are being recorded, analyzed and identified as to alert the security services to potential security risks. Yes kids; Orwell was absolutely correct about the levels of surveillance and the level it reaches into the lives of human beings. So my question is as follows: When will the government be issuing the telescreens without the off buttons on them to people around here? Because our local cable provider is terrible and there’s no competition here, so the jerks have their monopoly and they love it.
I live in “podunk” Iowa too…small town of 220…no cameras here. Just a few rednecks with shotguns. Love it.
Ronnie, Hate to break this to ya but; Every Bank Cam is a derct line to the FBI . Most new package /7/11 type stores have (federal) survalence too. Hell the feds just” gave” Clakson Ky (pop. 189) two MILLION dollars to install CCTV with wireless broadcast in the 1/4 acr. city park!– Get a set of 10 power glasses and look at the nearest cell tower,those cameras (on the tower) have 40x zeiss optics( the newwer ones are 100x) .If you see a camera that IS federal survalence. Realy; go to downtown “podunk” and count the cameras. ALL OF THEM link to the grid. You know like the Bank/atm/7/11/walmart/ grocery store/gun store/cop shop. ALL OF THEM. Sorry if you din’t want to know that –but its true.
Millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions faces are photographed every hour & supposedly being collected for …. what??? There is NO way that I will stoop to the paranoid level or thoughts of wearing a hat with infrared Christmas lights on it. Those guys in the Youtube link weren’t so worried about revealing their identities.
A certain level of OPSEC may be wise but please spare me with all of this utter nonsense. I have nothing to hide, therefore I do not worry. If ”they” want to raid my pantry & get my food because ‘they’ saw me enter Walmart more than 3 times in a week buying groceries, fine – go for it, I’ll even unload my gun & smile while ‘they’ take it. Funny thing is, the ones that try to hide the most become the targets.
What people who are so deeply concerned about the construction of surveillance cameras everywhere need to do is focus their efforts staying ahead of the curve instead of reacting to what is already in place.
One of the very first jobs I had was being a laborer at the construction site & I worked my ass off. The head laborer gave me the best lesson I have ever learned in my life – he said “if you are keeping up with the guys, you are already behind”.
The “Cloud” innovation & technology could very well evolve into the biggest boon for the black hat government people for those of you who are running for cover. Read & learn what is NOW possible then extrapolate and you’ll find they are already there …
Ooga Booga ….
having friends who deal with some of these various cameras, I can state that the vast majority of these camera installation are not interconnected to anything. Sure some cities have a downtown camera systems and most camera systems are recorded, but most are strictly local. My borders patrol friends conplain on how difficult it is to see much with their multi million dollar cameras. They can see movement and bodies but little else. That being said I dont have a facebook page and never will. Too many people put too much info out into the ozone freely without any government snooping.
Smokechecktim,
I click on your name to get to your blog & when the window opens it comes up as a possible Phishing site & my computer gives me a warning to not go further. Just a little FYI.
I already wear sunglasses around town, mostly to keep myself from being blinded from the sunshine, maybe I’ll start wearing a hat ;). Not sure it will matter much in the end, as long as you’re not a terrorist, which I certainly hope nobody on here is, the goverment will probably have bigger fish to fry than the typical prepper with shotguns and lots of food. Maybe if it is some kind of police state setup we’ll all get lucky and have an EMP go off and destroy the records! :D
A friend of mine once hacked the cctv server for our city, said there were something like 400 between traffic cams and bank cams and weather cams, wonder how hard it would be for some 3 letter government entity to override the feed for their own use in any major city?