Ian GrantConsumers who buy RFID-enabled goods should have an automatic veto against their personal details being collected and associated with the device, says the European Data Protection Supervisor.

Responding to the European Commission’s communication on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in Europe, Peter Hustinx said self-regulation might be enough to start with, but that new privacy legislation may be needed.

He called for the commission to give clear guidance on how to apply the current legal framework to the RFID environment. He said there should be European Community legislation to regulate RFID usage in case the existing legal framework failed.

Such measures should lay down the opt-in principle at the point of sale as a precise and undeniable legal obligation, he said. He called for the identification of best available techniques to enable manufacturers to build in privacy in their system designs.

U.S. State Department Approves RFID Passports Amidst Privacy Concerns

With the original incarnation slammed over security concerns, a new breed of RFID-enabled passports received the U.S. State Department’s stamp of approval last Monday. The new passports are set to launch this spring for U.S. citizens entering the United States through land and sea checkpoints.

Readable at up to 20 feet, the next-generation design is supposed to help increase passports’ security and reduce the omnipresent lines found at entry points around the country.

Compared to the previous generation of RFID passport – dubbed “e-Passports” – the new generation of RFID passports contain security features that are far more protected, with many of its developments based on the 4,000+ responses received by the State Department on a public request for comment in December 2006. New security features include:

• A “randomized unique identification” system that produces a different ID each time the chip is accessed
• A digital signature that can help identify when the passport’s data has been altered
• A metallic insert in the passport’s spine and front cover that blocks radio signals when the cover is closed.

While many critics continue to express privacy concerns, the new security features are sufficient to pacify at least some of the passport’s vocal critics. “At the moment, the security protections in U.S. passports are pretty good,” said Ari Juels, Chief Scientist and Director of Massachusetts-based RSA Laboratories, in a December 14 statement to the Los Angeles Times.

The new passport design will use “vicinity read” RFID technology, as opposed to the previous generation “proximity read” technology, which need to be swiped at a scanner and were only readable from a few inches.

However, while the new passports are a definite improvement, critics stress that they are far from perfect. Critics have particularly attacked the new passports’ increased range, which many claim will help facilitate identity theft. In one example, mobile security company Flexilis found the passport’s metallic shielding inadequate, allowing for the passport’s transmitter to be read even when it is closed.

To demonstrate this, Flexilis posted a YouTube video demonstrating a proof of concept where a trashcan armed with an explosive charge detonates as a dummy equipped with the “shielded” passport passes by. The threat, it says, is that terrorists could use the passports’ increased range to selectively identify Americans in foreign lands, possibly taking action against them that may include bodily harm.

Despite the new passports’ flaws – which the Los Angeles Times says are nothing to lose sleep over – most everyone agrees that the changes are a much-needed improvement over the current RFID passport, which gained pariah status among security circles for notoriously weak security features.

Solar-powered Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

Savi Technology, a unit of Lockheed Martin, has announced it recently began deploying solar-powered Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) readers and signposts located at a major U.S. Army supply facility in Kuwait. The solar-powered signposts activate RFID tags attached to vehicles or pieces of equipment. The tags then report the assets’ positions to nearby RFID readers, which relay the information to Savi Site Manager software that automatically updates the assets’ latest location.

According to Savi, use of solar energy provides an energy efficient and environmentally friendly power source for users’ RFID hardware, and also eliminates the need to install electrical infrastructure in remote areas where there is no fixed reader infrastructure. The tools installed in Kuwait enable the facility to track more than 25,000 tags per day. Plans are also underway with the U.S. Department of Defense to expand the use of solar-powered applications to other areas in the Middle East and beyond.

Solar-powered signposts

Savi Networks also operates a solar-powered RFID-based network in Colombia. There, Savi RFID signposts and readers are used to track the status and security of containerized cargo shipments managed by Emprevi Ltda., a Colombia-based provider of logistics and security services for major importers and exporters. Savi Networks, a joint venture in which Savi Technology holds a majority interest, installed solar-powered panels at strategic supply chain checkpoints, including source factories and port facilities, to monitor in-transit goods manufactured in and exported from Colombia.

http://fleetowner.com/news/savi_solar_powered_radio_frequency/

Trevor Darnborough, whose company, Darnbro, filed for a patent on securing RFID tags to clothing, hopes other schools will be interested.

By Thomas Claburn

Ten schoolchildren in the United Kingdom are being tracked by RFID chips in their school uniforms as part of a pilot program.

If the program proves successful as a way to hasten registration, simplify data entry for the school’s behavioral reporting system, and ensure attendance, Trevor Darnborough, whose company, Darnbro, filed for a patent on securing RFID tags to clothing, hopes other schools will be interested, according to the Doncaster Free Press.

The chipped children are enrolled at Hungerhill School in Edenthorpe, England, a secondary school for ages 11 to 16.

David Clouter, a parent and founder of Leave Them Kids Alone, a children’s advocacy group, condemned the plan. “With pupils being fingerprinted and now this it seems we are treating children in a way that we have traditionally treated criminals,” he told the Doncaster Free Press.

“The system is not intrusive to the pupil in the slightest,” Hungerhill teacher Graham Wakeling told the Doncaster Free Press. He also said that all the patents of the children in the trial supported the tracking effort.

Video surveillance is already commonplace in the United Kingdom, and a growing number of schoolchildren are fingerprinted for administrative and security reasons. Since 2001, nearly 6,000 pupils have been fingerprinted in the United Kingdom, the Daily Mail reported earlier this month, with 20 new schools embracing the practice every week.

In a blog post about the report, security expert Bruce Schneier quipped, “So now it’s easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you’re elsewhere.”

By Mary Catherine O’Connor

Selling newspapers in London is a tough game, but The Evening Standard is using RFID to gain a competitive edge. The popular daily paper, targeted at commuters who ride the London Underground subway system, sells between 200,000 and 300,000 copies per day, at a cost of £0.50 ($1.12) apiece. It must compete, however, with a bevy of free dailies (known as “freesheets”) with a combined daily circulation of around 900,000.

In an effort to expand its readership, entice readers to buy the paper more frequently and gather insights into the buying habits and interests of its readers, the Standard has launched an RFID-based loyalty/debit card. The paper’s managing director, Andrew Mullins, hopes readers will become enamored with the Eros Reward Card because of the discounts it offers on the newsstand price (the paper does not offer home delivery), as well as other perks, such as free song downloads from iTunes.

The card was rolled out this week at London’s Waterloo Underground station, Mullins says. Staffers have been signing up users, providing new enrollees an Eros card and using Web-enabled wireless PDAs to record their names and e-mail addresses. By the time the commuters reach their home or office, an e-mail message should already have arrived from the Standard, providing a link to a registration page where they can use their bank or a credit card account to load value on their Eros account.

The discount is determined by the specific amount loaded onto the card. For instance, loading £4 ($8.10) on the card provides a savings of £1 ($2.02), with the cardholder paying £0.40 ($0.81) apiece for 10 copies of the paper. Loading £34 ($68.82) on the card yields a per-paper cost of £0.34 ($0.69), a savings of £16 ($32.39) on 100 copies.

In addition to getting free music downloads, the card user also qualifies for discounts at select area restaurants and merchants. In exchange for the deals, readers must provide some personal information and agree to receive promotional e-mail messages from the Standard, but Mullins considers this a quid pro quo arrangement.

“There is a value exchange and a trust exchange,” Mullins explains. “You only give someone your information if you trust them, and the value exchange here is considerable. We might send an e-mail to cardholders that alerts them when they are running low on credits, and then also suggest that they buy the paper the next morning because we have a great feature on so-and-so.”

“We won’t start spamming [Eros card holders] from a whole bunch of advertisers,” Mullins adds, “which is tempting in the short term but disastrous in the long term.”

The Eros card employs the same technology as the Oyster card, an RFID-based fare payment card used by more than 10 million British commuters in the city’s subway and bus system. The high-frequency (13.56 MHz) passive inlay inside the Eros card contains a Mifare chip from NXP Semiconductors. The card contains a magnetic stripe onto which the customer’s account ID number is encoded; that number is also printed on the face of the card.

Unlike the Oyster card, however, the financial transaction is performed remotely with Eros. That is, the amount of money in the Eros account is stored on a server, and the transaction is performed through a payment network, via a message sent from the reader terminal containing the account ID encoded to the card’s RFID chip. In contrast, when a commuter uses an Oyster card, the interrogator deducts the fare’s value from an amount stored on the card.

The Evening Standard worked with several technology vendors to develop the card, Mullins says. TS3 Services Ltd., its lead integration partner, provided the application software that enables online registration and maintains the database card IDs and the value assigned to each card. TS3 Services also installed the RFID-enabled payment terminals—manufactured by Sagem—at the 15 newspaper vendors accepting the Eros cards, in and around the Waterloo station.

The company worked with Conchango, a business consultancy in the financial services industry, to develop an interface between the Eros software and the payments network to process transactions when cardholders load value onto their cards. Starting next month, the Standard plans to roll out the service to more than 30 subways stations and surrounding vendors.

According to Mullins, the Standard hopes the discounts will entice readers to use the Eros card to purchase the paper with a quick pass of the card over the reader, rather than buying another periodical using a MasterCard or Visa contactless card. Both credit card organizations are rolling out their respective RFID payment cards (PayPass and payWave), which banks in the United Kingdom are beginning to issue (see MasterCard Rolls Out Contactless Carpet in the U.K.). These cards are heavily marketed to commuters as a method of paying for inexpensive items, such as newspapers or coffee, without having to dig for bills or coins.

George Ou

The California legislature recently banned employers from mandating RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) implants for their employees.  While I’m glad I’m covered in my state, why isn’t this ban being implemented at the Federal level to cover every citizen?  I’m not suggesting that we ban the devices; I’m suggesting that no one should be forced to stick on of these in their body just to get a job.  I’ve covered the issue of RFID many times before and I’m not fundamentally opposed to RFID technology or RFID implants, but I do oppose the idea that anyone should be forced to implant one in their body and it would be just as offensive if my employer asked me to tattoo a bar code on to my forehead.

Verichip RFID implants are worthless from a security standpoint because they’re essentially passing clear text data over the radio waves and it can easily be cloned. If it’s cloned, you’ll have to undergo knife treatment to get a new one unless the chip is reprogrammable.  Even if Verichip stopped using clear text authentication and switched to strong NSA Suite B grade crypto, I wouldn’t want it inside my body.  Is any material item in this world worth life or limb?  If someone wants my access device and password at the point of a gun, I’d give it to them.  I don’t want them to have to cut it out of my body.

Last summer there were some issues raised about the privacy and safety of RFID enabled passports.  While the scenarios were arguably remote and the privacy concerns overblown because someone can copy the same information from a regular passport, there is no reason to have the RFID in the passport since an optical or contact based system would have the same effectiveness.  RFID in the traditional sense gives you more flexibility and convenience because of its long wireless range but the usable range for RFID passports is literally a few millimeters away.  RFID in the Passport implementation is effectively a contact based solution that has none of the flexibility but all of the security liabilities of a wireless solution.

What about the argument that we need RFID implants for our children?  I have two kids and I can tell you that RFID isn’t going to make me feel any better. First of all, that RFID implant isn’t going to be a “LoJack” device for children and you’re not going to be able to track them down if they’re abducted unless you’re within a few feet of the child. Second, having the RFID implant might mean the abductor will cut it out of your child to take out the implant.  I might consider an external device hidden in a watch or something that has an active transmitter with some effective range but implants are simply out of the question.

As critical of RFID as I am, I’m not so sure why some people are so anti-RFID that they don’t even want the devices to exist in the first place.  RFID implants can make sense in medical areas. If it makes it easier for emergency workers to identify a patient’s special needs, that’s great so long as the consumer gets to voluntarily place it in their own body.  There’s also new technology being developed for diabetics where the RFID sensor can wirelessly report glucose levels without you having to prick your finger every day.  RFID inventory tracking and logistics can simplify and automate many things so we must distinguish between good RFID devices and bad ones.

By David Gutierrez

The Delray Beach, Fla.-based company VeriChip Corp. has announced plans to implant 200 Alzheimer’s patients in Palm Beach County with radio-frequency identification chips as part of a pilot study to test the new technology.

The VeriMed microchip is approximately the size of a grain of rice and contains a 16-digit patient identification number, which is available to anyone who scans the device with the right technology. This number can then be entered into a database to retrieve a patient’s medical information. The FDA has approved the chip for human implantation.

According to VeriChip’s CEO Scott Silverman, the VeriMed chip will eventually provide peace of mind to the families of Alzheimer’s patients by providing a safety net in case a patient should get lost.

“When an Alzheimer’s patient gets lost, once their arm is scanned, it would identify who they are and that they are an Alzheimer’s patient,” Silverman said.

The chip is not a GPS device, Silverman emphasized, and cannot be used to track people in whom it is implanted. All the participants in the two-year study are volunteers, and Silverman expressed pleasure with the study’s reception so far.

“We had an excellent turn-out at the educational seminars and virtually 100% enrollment,” he said. “This overwhelming acceptance underscores the value of the VeriMed system not only for Alzheimer’s patients, but their caregivers as well.”

But privacy and patients’ rights advocates have criticized the project, charging that it strips Alzheimer’s patients of their dignity.

The organization Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), owner of the web sites spychips.com and antichips.com, has accused VeriChip of testing a potentially unsafe technology on the “most vulnerable” segment of the population, questioning whether Alzheimer’s patients are truly capable of giving their consent to be involved in such a study. CASPIAN has warned that the chips may cause adverse tissue reactions, problems with medical devices, electrical hazards and may place patients at risk of having their private information stolen.

Consumer health advocate Mike Adams added, “These Alzheimer’s patients are being used as guinea pigs as part of a campaign that intends to eventually microchip the entire population. Today, it’s senior citizens, pets and children… in the near future, it will be everyone.”

Evan Schuman

McDonalds is experimenting with the ultimate line-buster in South Korea, where customers purchase food on their cell phones, which then ring when the order is ready.

But this trial is much more an RFID effort than a traditional mobile experiment. Most of the phone’s communications capabilities and its display are barely used, with customers having to download a McDonalds application into their phone.

“At each table, there is an RFID reader and a menu that has built-in RFID chips. Customers plug the reader into their mobile phones and point them at the item on the menu that they wish to eat or drink,” said a story in The Korea Times.

“The bill is charged through the mobile phone. When the meal is ready, the system sends a short message to the phone so the customer can pick up the ready tray at a designated counter.”

The trial is being managed by McDonalds and South Korea’s SK Telecom, which has dubbed the effort the “Touch Order” menu. It was unveiled at McDonald’s Shinchon branch in western Seoul near Yonsei University.

The McDonalds trial is interesting, if for no other reason than it is demonstrating yet another way to deploy mobile commerce. Some use the phone’s calling capabilities and screen while others leverage the phone’s digital camera to do some 2D barcode-selling.

Payments can be handled through the cell phone’s number—as McDonalds is apparently doing in the South Korea trial—or through an embedded RFID chip, which turns the smartphone into something akin to a contactless credit card.

The McDonalds trial does this one step better, using an RFID interface through a physical plug-in but not at all for payment.

By TODD LEWAN

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients’ medical records almost instantly. The FDA found “reasonable assurance” the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005’s top “innovative technologies.”

But neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had “induced” malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.

“The transponders were the cause of the tumors,” said Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist, explaining in a phone interview the findings of a 1996 study he led at the Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, Mich.

Leading cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and, while cautioning that animal test results do not necessarily apply to humans, said the findings troubled them. Some said they would not allow family members to receive implants, and all urged further research before the glass-encased transponders are widely implanted in people.

To date, about 2,000 of the so-called radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip Corp. The company, which sees a target market of 45 million Americans for its medical monitoring chips, insists the devices are safe, as does its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, of Delray Beach, Fla.

“We stand by our implantable products which have been approved by the FDA and/or other U.S. regulatory authorities,” Scott Silverman, VeriChip Corp. chairman and chief executive officer, said in a written response to AP questions.

The company was “not aware of any studies that have resulted in malignant tumors in laboratory rats, mice and certainly not dogs or cats,” but he added that millions of domestic pets have been implanted with microchips, without reports of significant problems.

“In fact, for more than 15 years we have used our encapsulated glass transponders with FDA approved anti-migration caps and received no complaints regarding malignant tumors caused by our product.”

The FDA also stands by its approval of the technology.

Did the agency know of the tumor findings before approving the chip implants? The FDA declined repeated AP requests to specify what studies it reviewed.

The FDA is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, which, at the time of VeriChip’s approval, was headed by Tommy Thompson. Two weeks after the device’s approval took effect on Jan. 10, 2005, Thompson left his Cabinet post, and within five months was a board member of VeriChip Corp. and Applied Digital Solutions. He was compensated in cash and stock options.

Thompson, until recently a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, says he had no personal relationship with the company as the VeriChip was being evaluated, nor did he play any role in FDA’s approval process of the RFID tag.

“I didn’t even know VeriChip before I stepped down from the Department of Health and Human Services,” he said in a telephone interview.

Also making no mention of the findings on animal tumors was a June report by the ethics committee of the American Medical Association, which touted the benefits of implantable RFID devices.

Had committee members reviewed the literature on cancer in chipped animals?

No, said Dr. Steven Stack, an AMA board member with knowledge of the committee’s review.

Was the AMA aware of the studies?

No, he said.

—

Published in veterinary and toxicology journals between 1996 and 2006, the studies found that lab mice and rats injected with microchips sometimes developed subcutaneous “sarcomas” - malignant tumors, most of them encasing the implants.

- A 1998 study in Ridgefield, Conn., of 177 mice reported cancer incidence to be slightly higher than 10 percent - a result the researchers described as “surprising.”

- A 2006 study in France detected tumors in 4.1 percent of 1,260 microchipped mice. This was one of six studies in which the scientists did not set out to find microchip-induced cancer but noticed the growths incidentally. They were testing compounds on behalf of chemical and pharmaceutical companies; but they ruled out the compounds as the tumors’ cause. Because researchers only noted the most obvious tumors, the French study said, “These incidences may therefore slightly underestimate the true occurrence” of cancer.

- In 1997, a study in Germany found cancers in 1 percent of 4,279 chipped mice. The tumors “are clearly due to the implanted microchips,” the authors wrote.

Caveats accompanied the findings. “Blind leaps from the detection of tumors to the prediction of human health risk should be avoided,” one study cautioned. Also, because none of the studies had a control group of animals that did not get chips, the normal rate of tumors cannot be determined and compared to the rate with chips implanted.

Still, after reviewing the research, specialists at some pre-eminent cancer institutions said the findings raised red flags.

“There’s no way in the world, having read this information, that I would have one of those chips implanted in my skin, or in one of my family members,” said Dr. Robert Benezra, head of the Cancer Biology Genetics Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Before microchips are implanted on a large scale in humans, he said, testing should be done on larger animals, such as dogs or monkeys. “I mean, these are bad diseases. They are life-threatening. And given the preliminary animal data, it looks to me that there’s definitely cause for concern.”

Dr. George Demetri, director of the Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, agreed. Even though the tumor incidences were “reasonably small,” in his view, the research underscored “certainly real risks” in RFID implants.

In humans, sarcomas, which strike connective tissues, can range from the highly curable to “tumors that are incredibly aggressive and can kill people in three to six months,” he said.

At the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, a leader in mouse genetics research and the initiation of cancer, Dr. Oded Foreman, a forensic pathologist, also reviewed the studies at the AP’s request.

At first he was skeptical, suggesting that chemicals administered in some of the studies could have caused the cancers and skewed the results. But he took a different view after seeing that control mice, which received no chemicals, also developed the cancers. “That might be a little hint that something real is happening here,” he said. He, too, recommended further study, using mice, dogs or non-human primates.

Dr. Cheryl London, a veterinarian oncologist at Ohio State University, noted: “It’s much easier to cause cancer in mice than it is in people. So it may be that what you’re seeing in mice represents an exaggerated phenomenon of what may occur in people.”

Tens of thousands of dogs have been chipped, she said, and veterinary pathologists haven’t reported outbreaks of related sarcomas in the area of the neck, where canine implants are often done. (Published reports detailing malignant tumors in two chipped dogs turned up in AP’s four-month examination of research on chips and health. In one dog, the researchers said cancer appeared linked to the presence of the embedded chip; in the other, the cancer’s cause was uncertain.)

Nonetheless, London saw a need for a 20-year study of chipped canines “to see if you have a biological effect.” Dr. Chand Khanna, a veterinary oncologist at the National Cancer Institute, also backed such a study, saying current evidence “does suggest some reason to be concerned about tumor formations.”

Meanwhile, the animal study findings should be disclosed to anyone considering a chip implant, the cancer specialists agreed.

To date, however, that hasn’t happened.

—

The product that VeriChip Corp. won approval for use in humans is an electronic capsule the size of two grains of rice. Generally, it is implanted with a syringe into an anesthetized portion of the upper arm.

When prompted by an electromagnetic scanner, the chip transmits a unique code. With the code, hospital staff can go on the Internet and access a patient’s medical profile that is maintained in a database by VeriChip Corp. for an annual fee.

VeriChip Corp., whose parent company has been marketing radio tags for animals for more than a decade, sees an initial market of diabetics and people with heart conditions or Alzheimer’s disease, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The company is spending millions to assemble a national network of hospitals equipped to scan chipped patients.

But in its SEC filings, product labels and press releases, VeriChip Corp. has not mentioned the existence of research linking embedded transponders to tumors in test animals.

When the FDA approved the device, it noted some Verichip risks: The capsules could migrate around the body, making them difficult to extract; they might interfere with defibrillators, or be incompatible with MRI scans, causing burns. While also warning that the chips could cause “adverse tissue reaction,” FDA made no reference to malignant growths in animal studies.

Did the agency review literature on microchip implants and animal cancer?

Dr. Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate and RFID expert, asked shortly after VeriChip’s approval what evidence the agency had reviewed. When FDA declined to provide information, she filed a Freedom of Information Act request. More than a year later, she received a letter stating there were no documents matching her request.

“The public relies on the FDA to evaluate all the data and make sure the devices it approves are safe,” she says, “but if they’re not doing that, who’s covering our backs?”

Late last year, Albrecht unearthed at the Harvard medical library three studies noting cancerous tumors in some chipped mice and rats, plus a reference in another study to a chipped dog with a tumor. She forwarded them to the AP, which subsequently found three additional mice studies with similar findings, plus another report of a chipped dog with a tumor.

Asked if it had taken these studies into account, the FDA said VeriChip documents were being kept confidential to protect trade secrets. After AP filed a FOIA request, the FDA made available for a phone interview Anthony Watson, who was in charge of the VeriChip approval process.

“At the time we reviewed this, I don’t remember seeing anything like that,” he said of animal studies linking microchips to cancer. A literature search “didn’t turn up anything that would be of concern.”

In general, Watson said, companies are expected to provide safety-and-effectiveness data during the approval process, “even if it’s adverse information.”

Watson added: “The few articles from the literature that did discuss adverse tissue reactions similar to those in the articles you provided, describe the responses as foreign body reactions that are typical of other implantable devices. The balance of the data provided in the submission supported approval of the device.”

Another implantable device could be a pacemaker, and indeed, tumors have in some cases attached to foreign bodies inside humans. But Dr. Neil Lipman, director of the Research Animal Resource Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, said it’s not the same. The microchip isn’t like a pacemaker that’s vital to keeping someone alive, he added, “so at this stage, the payoff doesn’t justify the risks.”

Silverman, VeriChip Corp.’s chief executive, disagreed. “Each month pet microchips reunite over 8,000 dogs and cats with their owners,” he said. “We believe the VeriMed Patient Identification System will provide similar positive benefits for at-risk patients who are unable to communicate for themselves in an emergency.”

—

And what of former HHS secretary Thompson?

When asked what role, if any, he played in VeriChip’s approval, Thompson replied: “I had nothing to do with it. And if you look back at my record, you will find that there has never been any improprieties whatsoever.”

FDA’s Watson said: “I have no recollection of him being involved in it at all.” VeriChip Corp. declined comment.

Thompson vigorously campaigned for electronic medical records and healthcare technology both as governor of Wisconsin and at HHS. While in President Bush’s Cabinet, he formed a “medical innovation” task force that worked to partner FDA with companies developing medical information technologies.

At a “Medical Innovation Summit” on Oct. 20, 2004, Lester Crawford, the FDA’s acting commissioner, thanked the secretary for getting the agency “deeply involved in the use of new information technology to help prevent medication error.” One notable example he cited: “the implantable chips and scanners of the VeriChip system our agency approved last week.”

After leaving the Cabinet and joining the company board, Thompson received options on 166,667 shares of VeriChip Corp. stock, and options on an additional 100,000 shares of stock from its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, according to SEC records. He also received $40,000 in cash in 2005 and again in 2006, the filings show.

The Project on Government Oversight called Thompson’s actions “unacceptable” even though they did not violate what the independent watchdog group calls weak conflict-of-interest laws.

“A decade ago, people would be embarrassed to cash in on their government connections. But now it’s like the Wild West,” said the group’s executive director, Danielle Brian.

Thompson is a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, a Washington law firm that was paid $1.2 million for legal services it provided the chip maker in 2005 and 2006, according to SEC filings.

He stepped down as a VeriChip Corp. director in March to seek the GOP presidential nomination, and records show that the company gave his campaign $7,400 before he bowed out of the race in August.

In a TV interview while still on the board, Thompson was explaining the benefits - and the ease - of being chipped when an interviewer interrupted:

“I’m sorry, sir. Did you just say you would get one implanted in your arm?”

“Absolutely,” Thompson replied. “Without a doubt.”

“No concerns at all?”

“No.”

But to date, Thompson has yet to be chipped himself.

—

On the Web:

http://www.verichipcorp.com

http://www.antichips.com

http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/

Daily Mail

Bank customers could soon enter their PIN codes at cash machines just by looking at the numbers in the right order.

The system is designed to beat fraudsters looking over your shoulder to see which keys you press.

The technology, called EyePassword, is being developed in America - and High Street banks in Britain are already interested in using it.

It works by shining an infrared light on your eye. This stays in the same spot on your eye no matter where you look.

As you gaze at the cash dispenser key pad, your pupil moves. When your eye comes to rest on a number, a camera compares the position of your pupil with the fixed light in your eye.

The system is then able to work out which direction your pupil has moved in and how far and, therefore, which number you are looking at.

EyePassword has a three per cent error rate and it can take six times longer to enter your pin.

But Lloyds, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland have expressed an interest in the technology.

However, its inventor, Manu Kumar, of California’s Stanford University, warned: “There are lots of issues to be resolved, probably the biggest one being cost.”

Computer security specialist Dr Jeff Yan, of Newcastle University, said cash dispensers using EyePassword could cost £5,000, £3,000 more than a conventional ATM.

By Tom Shelley

Last month’s ‘appeal’ to identify technologies that could prevent child abduction has moved forward rapidly

In a letter published last month, prompted by the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, design engineer Peter Fitzsimmons challenged Eureka readers to come up with a device to track lost children. Several readers have written with suggestions – two RFID-based ideas, one of which is in production, are highlighted here.
At the same time, two competing satellite-based systems – one British, one French – have also been launched recently.
Maidstone-based Blue Tree Services launched its OurKids child tracking system in the UK and Ireland earlier this year. The device comes in two parts: children wear the Blueranger unit, supplied with a belt similar to a money belt or with a pocket that can be attached to any item. Parents track their child’s movements through BlueMap software either on the internet or via a hand-held PDA. The latter shows its location as well as that of the monitored units.
The portable units use GPS and the cell phone network to send positioning information – accurate within 4m – to secure servers. These then relay information, which shows the unit location within the UK or Europe.
The company says: “Although it has been possible for people to carry alarms for some time, these were either linked to a physical location or allowed for only single location requests. With OurKids, continuous tracking avoids the problems associated with not having a ‘position fix’ at critical moments – there is always a ‘breadcrumb trail’.”
The units incorporate a movement sensor, which detects whether it is being worn –and not left in backpack at a friend’s house – or if it has suffered a shock such as a fall.
Parents can also set up boundaries through GPS mapping. The system alerts them if the child moves beyond a predetermined area. Height can also be set as a parameter – perhaps to ensure the child isn’t taking part in a dangerous Quidditch match? Other features include an emergency alarm, which lets children tell parents if they are in trouble.
Managing director Mike Smuts said: “We have seen a huge demand for this product from across all sectors of society. This is a robust and easy to wear product. It’s good to know that parents can allow their children a little more freedom and at the same time manage their independence.”
French firm Car Telematics has a long waiting list for its Kiditel device according to the BBC. It will be released in the UK soon, and can be put in a pocket or bag. The GPS tracking device beams satellite images of a child’s location to the home computer. It has an SOS button, which sends an SMS and position coordinates to a predefined mobile number if the child is in trouble. A parent can call the child back to find out what the problem is.
Development director Franck Spinelli told the BBC that the Kiditel was popular with parents of young children.
Neither of these devices would prevent a kidnapping, and there would be nothing to stop the abductor disposing of the device once found on the child. However, both systems could give police vital information on the child’s whereabouts before he or she went missing.
Reader Paul Clarke proposed an RFID solution, which could overcome these difficulties. Citing the current level of integration of CCTV systems, he says: “If there was a similar initiative to link the RFID systems used by shops to catch shoplifters, it would be possible to search for an RFID tag that could be surgically implanted under a child’s skin or inserted into the fabric of their clothing.
“Potentially this could be an international initiative that would mean that if an abductor attempted to take a chipped child into a store that subscribed to the service, store detectives would be notified and by cross-referencing with CCTV footage one could determine the identity of the individual [abducting a child].”
Surgically implanting an RFID chip under a child’s skin seems a little Orwellian, though putting it into the fabric of clothes seems more acceptable. Are parents likely to go to such extremes to ensure kids are safe, or is it a step too far?
However, as reader Roger Bamford pointed out, one US firm has already designed a human-implantable RFID chip. VeriChip has developed a passive RFID microchip, inserted under the skin by injection, which contains a unique 16-digit identifier. The number on the chip – which can be read with a proprietary scanner – could be used to access medical records, or determine whether someone has the authority to enter a secure area, the company says.
Verichip has also designed wearable active RFID chips, designed for use within care homes or hospital wards. The chips sound an alarm if patients – for instance, those with Alzheimer’s – leave a designated area. It can even lock an exit as a patient approaches it. The chips can also be used to prevent the abduction of newborns by raising the alarm if the baby is removed from the ward.

www.verichipcorp.com/

www.bluetreeservices.co.uk

www.kiditel.com/en/

Newsbuster

The Bush administration tells us the main reason for warrantless wiretapping and searches is, warrantless searches and spying are necessary in order to keep us safe from the terrorist. They imply if we don’t have anything to hide it should not matter if they conduct warrantless searches and that no mater what political party happens to be in power, now or in the future, that this newly granted authority will not be misused. This same line of thinking is parroted mainly by the conservative, bootlicking pundits, bloggers and by what has become known as the graduates of the Joseph Goebbels School of Broadcasting and Propaganda on talk radio.

The intelligence communities involvement in warrantless searches by intercepting and monitoring generated signals (energy) such as email, faxes, etc., has a long history that is steeped in ongoing fraud and conspiracy.

Back in 1981 I was involved in a secret government black budget program to intercept and monitor (without a warrant) people’s thoughts. Basically what they were doing was they were intercepting and monitoring the signal (energy) that is generated by the brain, when a person has thoughts. That was documented to some degree through ABC News 20/20, when they stumbled onto their black budget project.

When Geraldo Rivera was at ABC News 20/20 back in the 70’s he interviewed some people that went to a land development in northwest Arkansas, called Holiday Island Suburban Improvement District (Holiday Island was at one time or another connected with, McCulloch Properties, Pratt Properties, Pratt Holding Company, MCO Properties, MCO Resorts, MCO Holdings, and others, see section below titled MCO Properties and Charles Hurwitz).

The people Geraldo interviewed on 20/20 claimed they signed some papers at Holiday Island that they had not read, lost everything they had including homes if they owned homes, cars, businesses, they even lost their identity, as they had no records in government databases, such as drivers licenses, birth certificates, marriage licenses, etc., after having signed papers at Holiday Island, and they also claimed they never got their day in court, and all they were left with was their Bibles. The people that were being interviewed also claimed they could work but didn’t get to keep their pay if they were paid by check, and that people from Holiday Island kept doing things to them that made them paranoid. Bagabonds without a home is what I think Geraldo referred to the Holiday Island victims as, Geraldo tried to confront someone that was connected with Holiday Island, about all this. Their comment was, no comment.

Wireless Surveillance
Microchipped Guinea Pigs

At one time Holiday Island had a fair amount of people touring their property, from all over the country. One would naturally assume that the people Geraldo was interviewing on 20/20, that claimed the people from Holiday Island “kept doing things to them that made them paranoid”, came from various parts of the country. That means that whoever it was, doing things to these people, as they claimed, had a large network of people working with them or for them.

In 1981 they were still presenting documents at Holiday Island for those people that they singled out, that was written in a secret code or foreign language, (note the people Geraldo interviewed claimed they signed papers at Holiday Island that they had not read) and they told people, something along the lines that implied it was to verify who you are. No one said, if you sign this your giving up your rights, freedoms, liberties, access to the courts, property, privacy, volunteering into a black-op experiment to monitor your thoughts, and you agree to keep this secret, etc., etc.

People would naturally be very suspicious and think it very odd to say the least, if they were signing papers written in English, to buy property, and then someone came up with a paper for them to sign that was written in some sort of secret code or foreign language, that they could not make out by reading it. There would be very few people that would ever sign such a paper, under those circumstances, of their own free will and accord and no reasonable person would expect, under normal conditions, that anyone presented with such a paper or document would sign it.

At one time Holiday Island would give you $50.00 and a night’s lodging in a motel if you agreed to take a tour of their property. What I recall was, the paid for motel office was not opened for the most part, as if they didn’t want any other guests or business. The motel didn’t appear to have anyone else staying there or very few people if any, even though it was in the middle of tourist season. The motel was located in the tourist town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

They isolated their patsy that they singled out for a reason. More than likely, so they could implant them with a microchip. Then they continued their fraud and conspiracy to cover that up, in case they were ever exposed, by hypnotizing their victim, so they would sign a paper the next day at Holiday Island, that was written in a foreign language or some sort of secret code that I referred to above, and was substantiated through ABC’s 20/20, on the show in question, when the people they interviewed stated that “they had signed papers at Holiday Island that they had not read”.

You might find it interesting to know that shortly after having visited Holiday Island in 1981, I noticed a mark that looks like a scar, that was caused by a fairly deep cut, on my right hand, below my little finger. But I never cut myself there.

Adventures With The Spooks

My experience and adventure in dealing with Holiday Island and those connected with it, are somewhat different, than the people that were interviewed by ABC News 20/20, regarding that land development in Arkansas, in part for the following reasons. When I went to Holiday Island in 1981 I had forgotten that I saw the ABC News show about Holiday Island. Driving back to Kansas from Holiday Island I remembered that Holiday Island was documented by ABC News 20/20. Once they realized that I knew that, they more than likely were somewhat spooked.

Shortly after having visited Holiday Island I found a note in my apartment saying something along the line that the objective was to create paranoia and it was signed CEPO. Rather that was the actual name of the program or operation they were using, or rather CEPO was being used as a cover in case they were ever exposed, I don’t know.

It was several years later while looking things up on the internet I came across someone with a private business, that claimed in his qualifications that he had at one time worked as a contractor in a CIA program called CEPO and that program had to do with detecting rather or not a person was telling the truth. Regardless of that, I thought they were monitoring my thoughts, from almost the very beginning, from the way they were acting and what they were doing, It wasn’t that hard to figure out they were trying to screw with my mind by what they were doing and the means they had to do it with.

If you think about what I just said, it fits in with what the people Geraldo interviewed said, when they claimed that “the people from Holiday Island kept doing things to them that made them paranoid”. That’s makes sense, because if someone knew your every thought and knew your every move because they were intercepting and monitoring your thoughts and decided to use psychology on you, it would naturally make you paranoid as they played with your mind, played on your fears, etc., as they tried to control and manipulate you.

As far as the vanishing documents that disappeared out of the government databases, the only way I have ever heard of (from experts) to get to get records (such as birth certificates, etc,.) out of government databases, like the Holiday Island victims claimed on ABC News 20/20, is to expatriate (to leave one’s own country, banish, exile, to withdraw (oneself) from residence in or allegiance to one’s native country, also : to renounce allegiance to one’s native country) from America.

The people that would have benefited the most and had the means to make the Holiday Island victims files vanish out of the governments databases, would have been the CIA. If they were ever exposed, they could then claim that the people they were intercepting while monitoring their thoughts without a warrant, were not really American citizens and they had a document that was signed by the alleged victims to prove it, and therefore, they were not violating constitutional protected rights of American citizens. Being the CIA has never been required to reveal their methods, they would not have to explain how they obtained the document from the alleged victims.

The number one suspect behind this illegal, unethical, secret operation that I write about and that was substantiated through ABC News 20/20 when they stumbled onto them, would be the CIA and their network.

From known facts, the most reasonable, logical explanation for what happened to Holiday Island victims was, the CIA was using American citizens to test their thought monitoring technology on, in an experiment or program. They were using the land development to work out of and were using the land sale transaction as a cover for their operation.

The New World Order Network

Whatever Holiday Island was at the time, or the companies that owned or controlled it, they were not afraid of the Arkansas government or the Federal Government coming after them, even after having been investigated by the Federal government and after having been exposed on national television by ABC News 20/20 when they stumbled on to them and documented Holiday Island back in the 70’s. That should tell you something.

It should be obvious by now, that the CIA and their network were not afraid of the oversight committees (a dog and pony show for the American people) that was set up in the 70’s to watch over the intelligence community around the same time this black budget program appears to have first come online.

So you have the CIA with its documented sordid past of being involved in, overthrowing governments, assassinations, drug running, spying on Americans, conducting human experimentation, corroborating  with Nazi war criminals, working with mobsters, money laundering, and here recently being involved in the medieval practice of torture, sneaking around in society for 30 or so years, while having technology to monitor people’s thoughts, building up a network, while hiding behind a cloak of secrecy,

They used their thought monitoring technology to build up their network, by screwing with people’s minds and terrorizing them in order to manipulate them to do their bidding. Blackmailing others they found useful to further their cause, along with a segment of evil like minded defects they chose to let in their plot.

These people prey on society like a dangerous spreading cancer. Although their network that I and others talk about and warn you about seems to be made up of a wide cross section of the population, some of the most useful individuals that make up their network, that they use to mold society to their liking, are judges, politicians, civil servants, military officers, a segment of the intelligence community, and of course the press.

Later on in order to legitimize their covert operation and bring online their technologies for the surveillance society, they (the secret network within the Government and their comrades) staged and/or let 9/11 happen. Then they passed dangerous, draconian legislation trampling the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the rule of law and started a Global Never Ending War on Terror, that in truth, in fact, in reality, rests and is based on a foundation of lies and fraud.

These people are best described as double traitors. Not only are they traitors to their own country, they are also traitors to the human race that they seek to control, enslave, and exterminate.

Common sense should tell you that they never would have tried to pull off the made for tv attack on September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center had they not of had an embedded network in place to make sure the event happened, the personnel  in place to suppress and cover up what really happened, and the means to put out prolonged propaganda in the form of spin and disinformation in order to keep the public distracted, misinformed, dumbed down, confused and terrorized by their continual fear mongering.

Considering the fact that the illegal Iran Contra affair, (known as the secret government within the government) was trading guns for drugs and went on for five years before it became known and it involved 1000’s of participants, it should not be difficult to fathom what I said above about having a secret network in place to cover for the real criminals that had most to gain from such an event.

Media Black-Out

What Holiday Island is today, the companies that owned it or were connected with it, or who owns it today, etc., etc. I don’t know, but when that story first broke on ABC News 20/20, in the 70’s, it must of been the buzz, in the political circles of Arkansas, as you can imagine.

Several years back I called what I was led to believe was the producers office for ABC News 20/20 and told them about the show in question and had them check their files to find out when it was aired. After a few minutes the person came back on the phone and said, she could not find information on it because she didn’t know what that show was categorized under.

In the mean time, you have Mrs. Clinton running for president and the controlled media spiking this story, in their attempt to fool the American public into thinking they are going to get something different and better, rather than the conservative neocons if they vote for Mrs. Clinton. In reality, if Mrs. Clinton becomes President the American people are going to get another person with very strong CIA ties, that is of the same ilk as Bush - Cheney.

Then there was the time I tried to contact ABC News about Holiday Island. As I remember it sometime around August or September of 1981 and I was planning on calling American Broadcasting Corporation in New York in regards to Holiday Island, being 20/20 did a report on them. I called information (or what I thought was information) to get their New York phone number and information told me the number was something like 212- blank, blank, blank, 2020. I thought it somewhat odd at the time, that they would have a main phone number that ended with 2020, plus it spooked me at the time because I thought the people connected with Holiday Island knew I was trying to give ABC News more information on Holiday Island and they were trying to prevent that from happening. So I called back, told information again what I was wanting and this time they gave me a different phone number for ABC. After that number was dialed and connection was made a lady answered by saying “American Broadcasting Corporation.” I then changed my mind and decided to give the lady I was talking to the name of the Holiday Island agent I dealt with when I was there in July of that year and asked to speak to him. After I did that the lady seemed startled and said “you want to talk to who.” I then told her his name again and she said “ah, ah, ah,” then she snapped off “just a minute.” Then there was a oddball click that I have never heard before then silence then another click then more silence. Anyway after all that happened, I hung up because I believed they had intercepted that call and I was not really talking to anyone from the American Broadcasting Corporation.

The lady may have gotten somewhat confused when I asked to speak to the agent from Holiday Island because if these implants work like I think they do, what they were using to pick up the generated thought signals of others has a strong, sensitive receiving mechanism and at the time there was someone standing in close proximity to me. That’s what may have confused her, because she was also picking up his generated thoughts even though he wasn’t chipped. If that’s true, that would mean that not only did those that they chip have their rights violated, but also anyone that was in close proximity to them.

In Typical Clinton Fashion Hillary Denies, Denies, Denies

On July 18, 2006 I posted a article on the internet titled “Warrantless Spy Program Monitoring People’s Thoughts”. On July 21, New York Daily News published a article titled “Hil frets chips will be put in kids’ brains”. The article quotes Mrs. Clinton “At the rate that technology is advancing, people will be implanting chips in our children to advertise directly into their brains and tell them what kind of products to buy”. The New York Democrat said the country was performing a “massive experiment”…..

I can’t help but wonder, what would the odds be of Hillary Clinton talking about such obscure subjects as implanting chips in people’s brains, virtual slaves and massive experiments being performed on Americans, just hours after that post appeared?

I won’t be surprised if one day someone discovered that their secret network (secret society) uses the press to pass coded directions or information to their fellow comrades in their network. I’ve read main stream news articles on how they could do that through the press. That would not be the first time in history that something like that happened.

Why Am I Now The Only One Talking About This?

Did the people interviewed on 20/20 in regards to the program in question, die mysteriously, and under questionable circumstances, like so many other people that the Clinton’s were associated with? Arkan-cided is what some people call it, or CIA-cided like others say, because there is not really any difference between the two. Perhaps the reason other people are not talking about this matter any more is, they were driven insane by the unregulated mind manipulators and their candy store of hidden technology. Perhaps some of their early victims may have been recruited into their network, that I talk about and that is why they are not talking any more?

The only people that would truly consider me a threat of any kind, would be the network or maybe a better term would be secret society that I write about and try to warn you about.

Bush Administration Warrantless Spy Program - A Trojan Horse

Regardless of what The Bush Administration says on alleged changes to their Warrantless Wiretapping, the facts remain that the Eschalon Spy Program has been around long before the War On Terrorism began, intercepting, phone calls, faxes, email, without a warrant. Also the Israeli back door into the phone system, that was documented on Fox News when they did a 4 part series on the largest spy ring ever uncovered in America, can be used to spy on Americans. So you might ask yourself, being Bush and his comrades already are monitoring and intercepting phone calls, email and faxes, what were they really up to?

I would say, based on my experience and on what other people have said along these lines, along with other factors, that the Bush administration through their warrantless wiretapping program are more than likely trying to legitimize what their secret network has been doing all along. That is, monitoring people’s thoughts without a warrant, by intercepting generated signals.

I am trying to point out, through this article, that these people, no mater who they are, have already misused this technology against American citizens and this has gone on in administration after administration and the dangers that can cause to a free society.

If they could sneak up on those Holiday Island victims that were documented by ABC News 20/20, (and others) through stealth, and monitor their thoughts. the question begs to be asked, will they be able to some day sneak up on the rest of the American people, somehow? If they are ever able to do that, it won’t mater how repressive the government gets. If they know your every thought and move, it would make it rather futile to resist, unless there was a way to cloak your thoughts or something along those lines. Being they already have a documented history of trying to sneak up on other people, one would assume that would be their preferred method of operation to implement their technology.

Perhaps with advancements in this 30+ year old technology that they have, they will be able to turn people into virtual human slaves? That may not be as far out as you think considering that the Washington Post has published a article titled “Mind Games” that claims the military is working on such types of technology.

In official documents such as Air Force 2025, they admit they want a micro chipped society. The cutting edge of this technology now appears to have evolved toward smart dust devices that are tiny wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS) that can detect everything from light to vibrations. Thanks to recent breakthroughs in silicon and fabrication techniques, these “motes” could eventually be the size of a grain of sand, though each would contain sensors, computing circuits, bidirectional wireless communications technology and a power supply. If their telling us about all that, what else aren’t they telling us about and hiding behind a cloak of national security?

The security they talk about is in reality, security for themselves, their friends, their embedded political cronies and network, for they can use thought monitoring technology to enrich themselves, in the hopes of enslaving America and then ultimately the world, through their contrived wars, emergencies, dangers and fear mongering, before more people wake up to their evil scams, crimes, fraud, conspiracies and treason.

If they were truly worried about terrorist attacking America again, they never would have left the borders wide open for the last 6 years and let millions and millions of illegal, undocumented people from all over the world enter this country. Anyone with even a little bit of common sense should be able to see that.

The people that George Bush and his ilk truly perceive as being the most dangerous, are individuals like me, that are putting out info bombs like this article, trying to wake up others to the truth by exposing The New World Order and their crimes, frauds, conspiracies and treachery.

Why I Write About This

Basically I am just corroborating what has already been documented to some extent, through ABC News 20/20 and the people they interviewed, and expanding on what they didn’t tell and/or didn’t know at the time, when the stumbled on to what has all the hallmarks of a secret black budget, illegal, covert, unethical, operation.

Hopefully by me writing about this, and telling what I know, it will encourage others that have knowledge about this matter to step forward. I also hope that other truth seekers also research this matter for themselves and hopefully help expose what’s going on and/or expand on this research, because this is one of the most vital issues of are time and has enormous implications. Hopefully by exposing their evil plot it will ultimately help make the world a safer, better place, not only for us now here, but also for future generations yet to come.

I am just an average Joe, that loves life, it’s wonders, beauty, freedom, liberty, privacy and our beloved Republic, and expect good, honest government, and do not like or appreciate other people’s sorry attempt to get me caught up in their ongoing frauds and conspiracies against myself and/or others, by keeping quite about this.

What qualifies me to tell you what I think about all this and give you my opinion about this, is the fact that I saw the ABC News 20/20 show documenting what I consider to be a slam dunk, government, black budget operation dealing with the subject at hand - That I was at Holiday Island in 1981 - And that I have off and on over the last 26 or so years had to deal with these people, their network, secret society, or whatever you want to call them.

To those of you that have linked to or reposted this article, in it’s various forms over the last year or so, let me say thank you. Good job! To those of you that have read this article and have not heeded this warning, you’re playing into The New World Order’s hands. Don’t say you have not been warned!

Documentation & Links
Note: Click on image if it doesn’t enlarge

Exhibit #1 Sworn affidavit, by me, from 1997, stating that I saw a program on ABC News 20/20 that dealt with a land development in Arkansas, MCO Properties, and about what other people had documented and said about Holiday Island, etc.

Exhibit # 2 Letter from MCO Properties stating they had destroyed the records pertaining to this matter dated 1981.


Exhibit #3 This is the notice to rescind all documents whatsoever, because fraud has been instituted upon me, in regards to this matter etc., etc., and was sent certified mail to CIA in 1995, and signed by them as having been received.

Exhibit #4 Letter sent from MCO Properties March 30, 1987, to my attorney after I had him send a Freedom Of Information Act request to them. At first they again indicated that they did not have any documents, after they did a search, so I again instructed my attorney to request documents they had. MCO Properties wrote back saying “Enclosed please find all documents, dating back to 1981, pertaining to Mr. Welsh”. I wonder what their definition of all means, as there were several documents that I believe, they never sent back. For instance, the property report for that time period. The property report that I saw had listed as officers and/or directors, psychologists and/or psychiatrists. I never got to read the whole property report when I took a tour of Holiday Island, because the agent I was dealing with was whining, complaining, and trying to rush me, while I was reading it. The property report also had some court cases listed where people had sued them. Also absent was a document that they wanted me to sign that had a part in it that said under the Truth In Lending Law I had certain rights, The agent I was dealing with instructed me to draw a line through the sentence that mentioned the Truth In Lending Law, saying that it didn’t apply, Congress did away with it is what I believe he said, and he asked me to initial it. The Truth In Lending Law Is still on the books. Also absent was what the people that were interviewed on ABC News 20/20, more than likely referred to, when they stated that they had signed papers there that they had not read, and what I referred to as having been written in some sort of secret code or foreign language. When presented with that paper (shortly before that, they all of a sudden came up with a different ink pen for me to use) the agent said something along the line that he had never seen a document like that before, and he called Fred over to the table I was sitting at to explain it. Like I said, Fred indicated to me it was to verify who I was. Those are just some of the documents that I believe, they never sent back.


Here is more research, done by other people and why the above article (see section on MCO Properties and exhibits, along with Holiday Island being documented by ABC News 20/20) may very well be the story of the century and the real CIA “Family Jewels”.

It appears from the following research that others have done that MCO Properties and some of the people connected with it had a relationship to, BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) the worlds biggest banking scandal, the saving and loan scandal, the CIA, junk-bond broker Michael Milken, McCulloch Oil Corporation, Maxxam, Simplicity Patterns, Kaiser Aluminum, Pacific Lumber Company, United Savings Association of Texas, to name just a few.

Excerpted from History of Milken/Hurwitz relationship Part 1:
In 1977, MCO bought 51% of Pratt Properties, Inc. from Loren Pratt and all of the land development assets of McCulloch were combined into a subsidiary called Pratt Properties. The real estate developments of McCulloch acquired in the 1960’s (Fountain Hills, Lake Havasu City, Holiday Island and Pueblo West) probably went into this subsidiary.

In December 1982, UFG and USAT engaged in a land sale transaction with Nu-West Florida. A Board member of Nu-West was Loren Pratt who had been, until late in this period, Vice-President of McCulloch Properties and the director of Pratt Holding Company in Fountain Hills. (Pratt Properties had become MCO Properties in 1980, and was a wholly-owned subsidiary of MCO Holdings.) It is not clear whether Pratt was an officer of any part of the MCO/Hurwitz empire at the time of the land deal. Because so much of the empire was real estate-oriented, and so many opportunities for cross-over existed between the twin worlds of real estate and securities (i.e., deeds, mortgages, etc.), the opportunity for self-dealing was great.

MCO Properties and Charles Hurwitz

LA Times - A Donor Who Had Big Allies
DeLay and two others helped put the brakes on a federal probe of a businessman. Evidence was published in the Congressional Record.

Jail Hurwitz Web Site

“Teflon CEO” Hurwitz Evades Federal Regulators Over Collapse Of Maxxam S&L

Google - Hurwitz MCO Properties

Google - Hurwitz MCO Resorts

Also See

Grand Jury Info to be Shared with CIA

How the Anti-Terrorism Bill Puts CIA Back in the Business of Spying on Americans

CIA expands its watchful eye to the US
It will gather intelligence at home to curb terrorism. Critics see era of Big Trenchcoat.

Having the intelligence community watch over grand juries is equivalent to having the fox guard the hen house and is another New World Order power grab, to keep themselves safe from the citizens.

Mind Games
New on the Internet: a community of people who believe the government is beaming voices into their minds. They may be crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that.

Super-soldiers may get brain-chip
US military experts are attempting to create an army of super-human soldiers who will be more intelligent and deadly thanks to a microchip implanted in their brains.

Scientists believe the implant will vastly improve the memory of troops so that they can recall every detail of their training and become more effective fighters.

Researchers at the University of Southern California’s bio-engineering department have created the chip, which acts in exactly the same way as the hippocampus the part of the brain that deals with memory.

The brain scan that can read people’s intentions
A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and read their intentions before they act.

The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists’ ability to probe people’s minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.

Patent Number 3951134: Apparatus and method for remotely monitoring and altering brain waves (30+ year old technology)

Volume 3 of Air Force 2025,
It is stated [By the year 2025:] “The civilian populace will likely accept implanted microscopic chips that allow military members to defend vital national interests.” — Chapter 4 of Information Operations: A New War-Fighting Capability: Final Report by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Smart Dust
“Smart dust” devices are tiny wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS) that can detect everything from light to vibrations. Thanks to recent breakthroughs in silicon and fabrication techniques, these “motes” could eventually be the size of a grain of sand, though each would contain sensors, computing circuits, bidirectional wireless communications technology and a power supply.

Dust Networks
Embedded wireless sensor networking for monitoring and control.

Gov’t settles with CIA brainwashing survivor
Janine Huard, 79, accepted an offer to end her class-action lawsuit against the federal government, which jointly funded the experiments with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Huard was a young mother of four suffering from post-partum depression when she checked herself into McGill’s renowned Allen Memorial Institute in 1950.

On and off for the next 15 years, she was one of hundreds of patients of Dr. Ewan Cameron subjected to experimental treatments that included massive electroshock therapy, experimental pills and LSD.

Neural Interfaces
A Neural Interface is any type of data link between the human nervous system and an external device, such as an electronic or hybrid computer or machine.

Suspension of American Constitution By Iran Contra Gang - Oliver North
Oliver North questioned over plans to suspend American Constitution by Jack Brooks. (1 Minute 7 Seconds)

Student Bill Clinton ’spied’ on Americans abroad for CIA
As a member of America’s tight-knit association of retired intelligence officers, he has access to highly privileged information. “It’s an incredible network”…

Obstruction of Justice - The Mena Connection
On August 23, 1987, two teenage boys stumbled upon a drug smuggling operation that was sanctioned by federal officials and protected by local law enforcement. The boys, Kevin Ives, 17, and Don Henry, 16, were murdered. Their bodies were laid across nearby railroad tracks and mutilated by a passing train.

Obstruction of Justice - The Mena Connection (Mena, Arkansas) tells what really happened and gives vivid detail into the cover-up and the state and federal officials who orchestrated it (Video 54 Minutes)

The Clinton Chronicles
The crimes of Bill Clinton, including his involvement with the Mena drug smuggling by the CIA and others, and the cover-ups. (Video 1 Hour 21 Minutes)

“Bush - Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951” - Federal Documents’
After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen “enemy national” relationships that continued until as late as 1951, newly-discovered U.S. government documents reveal.

Although the additional seizures under the Trading with the Enemy Act did not take place until after the war, documents from The National Archives and Library of Congress confirm that Bush and his partners continued their Nazi dealings unabated. These activities included a financial relationship with the German city of Hanover and several industrial concerns. They went undetected by investigators until after World War Two.

Bush family funded Adolf Hitler
Have you ever wondered how Adolph Hitler a mediocre painter of Austrian origin transformed himself into Germany’s Fuhrer during the 1930s and 1940s?

The Nazi phenomenon was no historical coincidence, and far less a philosophical whim made real by just one man. Nazism had its followers, many of them exceptionally wealthy, veritable alchemists of the financial world back then.

According to research carried out over the last few years, Wall Street bankers (amongst others) financed Hitler’s rise to power whilst making large profits at the same time. What is yet still more deplorable is the fact that relatives of the current U.S. president were amongst this group of individuals.

If Only I Were A Dictator, by George W. Bush
George W. Bush in his own words.

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (Online)

Meet the Bush Family
Before George Bush Jr., there was George Bush Sr. And before him there was Prescott Bush, US financier to the Nazis until the FBI shut him down.

George Bush Sr. was Director of the CIA during the Jimmy Carter years. How did he get that job?

Bush Sr. claims he was not in the CIA before becoming Director, but evidence shows that he was not only in the CIA, but also actively involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion and yes, the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

If you think George Bush Jr., Dick Cheney and Donald Rumseld are the problem, you’re just looking at the tip of a very large iceberg. (22 Minutes 6 Seconds)

TerrorStorm
TerrorStorm delivers a powerful sucker punch to the architects of global terrorism and how they stage false-flag events to achieve political and sociological ends.

Alex journeys from the depths of history from the Gulf of Tonkin, the attack on the USS Liberty to the Madrid and 7/7 London bombings and robustly catalogues the real story behind the government induced fable.

“A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”

What some (of many) other people say along these lines

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy”
James Madison (American 4th US President (1809-17), and one of the founding fathers of his country, 1751-1836)

Ex-Washington Investigative producer for ABC’s World News Tonight James Bamford wrote two books on the National Security Agency.

Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, convened a Jan. 20 hearing on the warrantless spying. Among those called as witnesses was James Bamford. Bamford is quoted as telling the committee “Today, the NSA is the largest intelligence agency on earth and by far the most dangerous if not subjected to strict laws and oversight. It has the ability to virtually get into someone’s mind.”

Morton H. Halperin, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC was quoted in the AP News wire story, titled - National security takes precedence over personal liberties, rights in time of crisis, September 17th 2001, “The intelligence agencies have a long list of things they want done. They’ve been waiting for an event to justify them.”

In the official government document; Volume 3 of Air Force 2025, it is stated [By the year 2025:] “The civilian populace will likely accept implanted microscopic chips that allow military members to defend vital national interests.” - Chapter 4 of Information Operations: A New War-Fighting Capability: Final Report by the U.S. Department of Defense.

American journalist, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Arthur Krock wrote in The New York Times on October 3, 1963, (50 some days before they murdered President Kennedy, in what The House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979, concluded when they stated “there was a probable conspiracy in the assassination of President Kennedy.) in a article titled, The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam, The C.I.A.’s growth was “likened to a malignancy” which the “very high official was not sure even the White House (”I will smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” — John F. Kennedy) could control … any longer.” “If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a coup to overthrow the Government] it will come from the C.I.A. and not the Pentagon.” The agency “represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone.”

President Woodrow Wilson said in The New Freedom (1913) “Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”

“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.

We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers, which are cited to justify it.”
President John F. Kennedy - Address to newspaper publishers, April 27, 1961

Rhodes Scholar, Carroll Quigley, professor of history at the foreign service School of Georgetown University (1910-1977) (William Jefferson Clinton’s admitted mentor) wrote in The Anglo-American Establishment, From Rhodes to Cliveden, 1981, Books In Focus, NY, NY on pg. 49; Of the Secret Societies goals, and methods of operation, Quigley writes, “The goals which Rhodes, and Milner sought, and the methods by which they hoped to achieve them were so similar by 1902 that the two are almost indistinguishable. Both sought to unite the world, and above all the English-speaking world, in a federal structure around Britain. Both felt that this goal could best be achieved by a secret band of men united to one another by devotion to the common cause, and by personal loyalty to one another. Both felt that this band should pursue it’s goal by secret political, and economic influence behind the scenes, and by the control of journalistic, educational, and propaganda agencies…”

Rockefeller Admitted Elite Goal Of Microchipped Population
Hollywood director and documentary film maker Aaron Russo has gone in-depth on the astounding admissions of Nick Rockefeller, who personally told him that the elite’s ultimate goal was to create a microchipped population and that the war on terror was a hoax, Rockefeller having predicted an “event” that would trigger the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan eleven months before 9/11.

Note: I don’t know Russo, but Winthrop Rockefeller was Governor of Arkansas 1967-1971, so Nick Rockefeller, should know what he is talking about, when he says, their ultimate goal was to create a microchipped population.

The illegal Iran Contra affair, the secret government within the government, (enter John Poindexter of Iran Contra fame, Director, Information Awareness Office of DARPA, for Bush administration… (Total Information Awareness - a prototype system — is our answer) was trading guns for drugs and went on for five years before it became known and it involved 1000’s of participants. Don’t tell me that a large group of people can’t keep things like this quiet for a long time, especially with the technology they have, with the help of their comrades in the press and others connected with their network.

Caveat Emptor

When reading this article please keep in mind that what I have written here I believe to be true, but like I said their does not appear (for obvious reasons) to be a lot of documentation available to me at this time to go along with all of what I allege. Please also keep in mind that to some degree some of what I have written here are my personal opinions and beliefs.

By Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News 

 A German hacker and security consultant, Lukas Grunwald, has again demonstrated how Governments are enforcing insecure technology that puts our security, identity and privacy at risk, while claiming to provide the exact opposite.

Biometric passports containing the highly controversial RFID chips have been shown to be even more vulnerable than first thought as Grunwald managed to crash two passport readers and states it could be possible to reprogram readers to approve forged or expired passports. The exploit will also allow someone to access, hijack and clone a passport holder’s fingerprint, a truly shocking revelation.

It is also possible to create false fingerprints to fool the system but officials bury their head in the sand and remain silent on the issue.

RFID enabled biometric passports were specifically introduced, or so we are told, to prevent passport forgery and increase national security but as Grunwald has discovered, they actually reduce security and provide hackers and identity thieves with a new set of tools to compromise our welfar and allow hackers to override the computer system.

Grunwald stated: “The whole passport design is totally brain damaged, from my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They’re not increasing security at all.”

Last year he demonstrated how easy it is to clone passports.

“If you’re able to crash something you are most likely able to exploit it, I predict that most of the vendors are using off-the-shelf (software) libraries for decoding the JPEG2000 images,” says Grunwald, meaning all airports are susceptible to the hack.

The U.S. State Department had no comment, a telling sign.

By Adam Thomas

The Department of Defense is planning to implant microchips in soldiers’ brains for monitoring their health information, and has already awarded a $1.6 million contract to the Center for Bioelectronics, Biosensors and Biochips (C3B) at Clemson University for the development of an implantable “biochip”.

Soldiers fear that the biochip, about the size of a grain of rice, which measures and relays information on soldiers vital signs 24 hours a day, can be used to put them under surveillance even when they are off duty.

But Anthony Guiseppi-Elie, C3B director and Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Bioengineering claims the that the invivo biosensors will save lives as first responders to the trauma scene could inject the biochip into the wounded victim and gather data almost immediately.

He believes that the device has other long-term potential applications, such as monitoring astronauts’ vital signs during long-duration space flights and reading blood-sugar levels for diabetics.

“We now lose a large percentage of patients to bleeding, and getting vital information such as how much oxygen is in the tissue back to ER physicians and medical personnel can often mean the difference between life and death,” said Guiseppi-Elie. “Our goal is to improve the quality and expediency of care for fallen soldiers and civilian trauma victims.” The biochip also may be injected as a precaution to future traumas.”

Clemson scientists have formulated a gel that mimics human tissue and reduces the chances of the body rejecting the biochip, which has been a problem in the past.

The researcher predicts the biochip is five years away from human trials, and the DoD could start implanting microchips in soldiers bodies soon after.