JUNE 25, 1998, 4 PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME, TELE-CONFERENCE ON NATIONAL I.D. SYSTEM
Today's tele-conference, sponsored by the Center for Technology Policy at the Free Congress Foundation, was an inspiring event. More than one-hundred representatives of various national, state and local organizations met in order to plan strategy for opposing the creation of a de facto National Identification Card System as proposed by the Department of Transportation on June 17, 1998. (Please see June 18 and 19, 1998 postings below). There was consensus on several points:
One especially interesting piece of information surfaced with regard to imminent passage of Smart Card legislation in New Jersey, which will be called "Access New Jersey." This legislation will create a New Jersey state driver's license with an imbedded computer chip. Vastly more information can be stored in an imbedded computer chip as opposed to a magnetic strip or even a three-dimensional PDF bar code. Computer chips can easily be imbedded in a plastic card, since such chips are less than 1/200 the thickness of a human hair. Information proposed for inclusion in the "Access New Jersey" card would be:
It is important to distinguish Smart Card technology, already widely used in European credit cards, from the more familiar magnetic strips currently used on American credit cards and state driver's licenses. Not only can these imbedded computer chips hold vastly more information than magnetic strips, they make remote tracking of an individual much easier. Even unsophisticated, commercially-available sensors can be mounted to read embedded chips from a distance of three feet; thus any person who walks through a six-foot wide entrance to a building, airport or other passageway can be instantly indentified and tracked. More sophisticated sensors can read these cards at much greater distances, and active (rather than passive) imbedded computer chips can be read by satellite.
If you value your liberty, please resist implementation of this technology whenever possible.
* AN INSIDE JOB AT COMMERCE? SATELLITE SECRETS LEFT DEPARTMENT WITH OFFICIAL...New June 25, 1998
Read an Investor's Business Daily story of intrigue at the Commerce Department, where former special general Ira Sockowitz walked out with 136 files--a total of 2,800 pages--dealing with top secret satellite and encryption technology, data vital to U.S. security. What makes the story especially important is that Sockowitz worked under fellow Commerce employee Ginger Lew, a confidant of John Huang. Huang is the central figure in the growing Chinagate scandal.
* ENCODED CIRCUIT BOARD MISSING FROM CHINESE ROCKET...New June 24, 1998
"The story has legs," as they say in the news business. Today's New York Times article, "House Hears About Encoded Circuit Board Missing From Chinese Rocket," confirms that in February, 1996 the Chinese did most likely nab an encryption card from a Loral satellite carried aboard a Long March rocket after it crashed into a village near the launch site. The encryption card held codes that would enable the Chinese to intercept military communication from American satellites.
One month ago, when Matt Drudge interviewed a Loral employee who reported that the encryption card had come up missing, skeptics scoffed that it had probably been destroyed in the crash. Now we know that the Chinese military barred American investigators from the crash site for five hours, that the control box containing the encryption card was recovered intact, yet the encryption card itself was mysteriously missing.
At yesterday's meeting of the House National Security and International Relations committee, witnesses from the State Department, the Department of Defense and the Commerce Department testified that the National Security Agency changed the algorithms on the encryption codes immediately following the February, 1996 launch. Last month National Security Advisor Sandy Berger insisted that national security could never be jeopardized by a Loral launch, because the encryption cards are "sealed in a black box" and carefully guarded. Continuing Berger's state of denial, yesterday Clinton administration witnesses testified that the loss of the encryption card had only a "minimal impact" on national security.
* CHINESE PULL THE STRINGS ON THE CLINTON TOUR ...New June 24, 1998
Today's London Telegraph article makes it abundantly clear who holds the trump cards in the Clinton/People's Republic of China relationship. As William Safire pointed out in this Monday's column, "The unspoken truth haunting this summit is that China's leaders have something on this President."
* U.S. AND CHINA NEARLY CAME TO BLOWS IN 1996; TENSION OVER TAIWAN PROMPTED REPAIR OF TIES...New June 22, 1998
Yesterday the Washington Post published the best article to date detailing exactly what happened in early 1996, when Chas. W. Freeman Jr., former Assistant Secretary of Defense, reported an implied Chinese threat to nuke Los Angeles if the United States dared defend the island of Taiwan.
* CHUNG ALLEGES DNC SOUGHT ILLEGAL FUNDS...New June 20, 1998
An article in today's Washington Post reports that Johnny Chung has accused Democratic National Committee Finance Director Richard Sullivan of soliciting illegal campaign contributions during President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.
* CHINA FORCES CONDEMNED PRISONERS TO DONATE ORGANS ...New June 18, 1998
Harry Wu briefs Congress on forced organ donations in China--prisoner shot in the back while an ambulance idles nearby waiting to transport the corpse for harvesting of corneas, skin, kidneys, heart, liver, and lungs.
* U.S. KNEW CHINESE MILITARY USED COMMUNICATION SATELLITES ...New June 13, 1998
Investigative reporter Jeff Gerth reports in today's The New York Times that for the past two years the People's Liberation Army has routinely used American communication satellites for sending encoded messages to its various divisions--so much for President Clinton's assurance that technology transfer is strictly for civilian use. Gerth also reports that a comprehensive Pentagon report on this issue was sent to hundreds of senior policy-makers at the White House, State Department and other agencies.
* IT DIDN'T START WITH LORAL ...New June 2, 1998
Carl Limbacher's article, "It Didn't Start With Loral," appears in the June 1, 1998 issue of The Washington Weekily, and it is a real blockbuster. A tremendous amount of new information on Clinton's transfer of supercomputer technology to the People's Republic of China, as well as an astounding account of Chinese government smuggling of AK-47's and shoulder-fired "Red Parakeet" surface to air missiles--intended for marketing to American street gangs.
* BILL GATES TRIVIA ...New June 2, 1998
A bit of Bill Gates trivia, more thought-provoking than most...
* CLINTON'S IMPENDING FALL ...New June 2, 1998
Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe has written a terrific column that begins:
The president lies. He manipulates. He is corrupt. He uses his friends and maligns his foes. He drags the White House into swamps of sleaze, fouling American politics in ways none of his predecessors would have dared.
He is cheap and shameless and cannot be trusted. Even his defenders know it, know it more acutely with each new scandal. No one wonders any longer about the shape Bill Clinton's ''legacy'' will take. There is nothing left to wonder about. His legacy is an Augean stable of dishonesty and dissipation, of access-peddling and egregiousness, of high crimes and misdemeanors.