Trump Travel Ban Mandates Biometric Tracking

President Trump’s Executive Order 13769 — the one that’s got people rioting in the streets — directs the Department of Homeland Security to protect the nation by temporarily banning people from seven countries from coming to the US.

The order also directs Homeland Security and the State Department to hurry up and implement the Biometric Entry-Exit Tracking System. I wonder why the protesters are not making more of a hoopla about this. They call Trump a Nazi, but they’re not marching against his digital identity tracking decree. Maybe their backers are in favor of tracking chips for all.

Why did the supposed anti-globalist, freedom loving Trump insert the biometrics clause into the Executive Order? Is it because he’s naive? Is he trying to appease Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, who is set to be confirmed as Attorney-General? Is it because the independent, bi-partisan 9/11 Commission recommends it and Trump is a big sympathizer of the 9/11 families? Or is he really on the dark side?

Fans and foes of biometric tracking

The push for biometric tracking is not new. It has come up in Congress seven times since 1996. It has always been met with resistance from Republicans, despite being recommended by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Government Accountability Office, Office of Inspector General, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Now that President Trump included it in EO 13769, will digital tracking finally be forced on the American people? According to the executive order, the Secretary of Homeland Security will continue to provide periodic reports to the President until the system is fully deployed and operational. But similar language has been part of 8 U.S. Code § 1365b – Biometric entry and exit data system, since 2004, and not much has been done.

Currently, people who apply for a visa or the Visa Waiver Program, must provide biometric fingerprint data to enter the States, but they don’t have to do it when they leave.

The immigration reform law that passed through the Senate on 2013, promoted by the bi-partisan “Gang of Eight,” contains a mandate for an electronic exit system. It also requires all aliens who want to become registered provisional immigrants to submit to biometric data collection as determined by the Secretary. The House of Representatives refused to consider the bill so it died.

What’s the best way to scan you?

There are several options when it comes to biometrics. In addition to the fingerprint method there are iris and retina scans, and digitized passport pictures. Retina scans are the most accurate and the most invasive. They require a bright light and camera be focused into the eye so a picture can be taken of the retina in the back of the eyeball. “Most people don’t want to do that,” explains Kevin W. Bowyer, an expert on NEXUS, an iris scanning system used by Canada.

Apparently there is some difficulty in getting biometric data from babies, too, since their fingerprints are small and still growing, and it is hard to shine intrusive light into their eyes. The obvious answer is to just chip the squirmy things from day one.

Universal biometric tracking is inching forward. Electronic passports and personal ID cards will be used until nanotechnology and biology blend into the perfect data collection and storage system.

Until then, personal information will have to be stored on a remotely readable computer chip attached to the traditional passport booklet so that it becomes a kind of super smart card. Digital image facial recognition software is used to verify the identity of the person carrying the passport. The chip records the passport holder’s arrivals and departures, and generally facilitates authentication much more accurately than traditional visual comparisons.

Sen. Sessions is a big advocate of biometric screening. He blames “special interest interference and bureaucratic dragging of feet and pressure from activist groups and business groups” for blocking favorable legislation.

Is it catching?

I would like somebody to ask Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump if they think biometric monitoring of foreign travelers will acclimate the general population to being electronically tracked. Before you know it, the US government might be offering an incentive for everyone to opt into the digital national Id program, followed soon thereafter with threats, fines, and jail for those who decline.

Proponents believe these tracking programs hold great promise. Within the last 16 years, the US State Department revoked 9,500 visas because of terrorism connections. The officials said they have no idea whether those 9,500 individuals have left or not, a problem that can be solved with mandatory biometric exit tracking.

An obvious problem with collecting the biometric data of foreigners in the name of security is that it is only a matter of time before the practice spreads. Biometeric tracking has already been touted as the answer to immigration control, employment verification, and REAL ID–the federal law that forces states into the national government’s personal biometric data collection system through the driver’s licensing systems.

Biometric data collection is also creeping into your personal life through E-Verify, the “voluntary” federal system enacted to control illegal workers. Every state applies E-Verify differently. Some states passed laws that make it mandatory for certain businesses, other states require all employers to use E-Verify, and a handful aren’t interested in participating at all.

No means of escape

When Illinois tried to pass a law to protect the privacy of all employees in its state despite the federal mandate, the Department of Homeland Security sued and the Illinois US District Court sided with them, ruling that the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) takes precedence. Now, everybody is obediently using E-Verify.

So far the data collected is text only, but another effort combines E-Verify and Real ID data in the RIDE program, which allows employers to view State ID and driver’s license photos during the verification process.

Ron Paul and the Dissenters

Liberty minded citizens and members of Congress, such as former Sen. Ron Paul, are against any kind of scheme that incorporates biometric tracking. Groups like Downsize DC, the Rutherford Institute, the American Policy Center, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, the Republican Liberty Caucus, the U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation, Conservative Republican Women, and the Campaign for Liberty agree with him.

“Every time any citizen applies for a job, the government would know — and you can bet its only a matter of time until ‘ID scans’ will be required to make even routine purchases, as well,” Dr. Ron Paul warned, adding that this scheme was a key portion of the infamous so-called ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’ bills both parties have tried to ram through.

Paul warned that such laws are on the slippery slope toward tyranny. The term “security” has been appropriated to trick people into thinking Congress was finally going to secure the southern border, when in reality, such laws create an all-out police state for Americans with data being collected on gun ownership, medical records, political affiliation, and virtually anything else at the stroke of a President’s pen, he said.

But who will benefit?

A company called Aware already provides Web-based biometric solutions to the U.S. Department of Defense and the Marine Corps.

3M Cogent, Inc. has a Border Management System capable of reading chipped passports. They call it “identity management,”

The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees recently announced a Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) that rapidly registers and verifies the identities of refugees and ensures that the “right people receive assistance.” UNHCR is tasked with the protection and support of an estimated 33.9 million refugees who are moving across the borders of 125 countries.

The UN’s breakthrough

The United Nations selected Accenture to produce a breakthrough biometrics system that quickly captures and stores fingerprints, iris data and facial images of individuals, providing undocumented refugees with their only personal identity record. Accenture already had the Unique Identity Service Platform (UISP) which creates a single identity for each individual in a population. The new system gives refugees a permanent identity record stored in a central database in Geneva.

“I can be someone now,” one Chadian refugee was recorded as saying. “I am registered globally with the UN and you’ll always know who I am.”

Everybody’s doing it

Canadians have been using an iris recognition program called NEXUS for a decade, and it seems to be going well. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians who travel a lot willingly sign up for the iris scanning, hoping to get across the border more quickly. Strange then, that the Globe and Mail is now reporting a backlash against President Trump’s push for biometric screening, citing potentially devastating impacts for industries that rely on a quick flow of people and goods across the border.

Biometric scanning is used in Israel. When Israelis arrive at an airport, they go to a kiosk, insert their identification card and are subject to hand scan, facial recognition, and iris identification.

1.2 billion Indians also, have voluntarily registered in a national biometric ID program that stores their iris and fingerprint data. The Indian government lures poor people in rural villages into the program by offering things like “no-frills” bank accounts, said Dakota Gruener, executive director of ID2020, a UN people tracking program that aims to register everyone on the planet by 2020.

Estonia is on the people tracking program. Every child is issued a unique ID number the moment they are born and “all data is encrypted and stored in a system similar to a blockchain. Consumers decide which entities may access their records,” according to Gruener. All that is left to do is brainwash the consumers into giving away the rest of their rights in the name of convenience and safety.

BanQu, provides digital identities to refugees in Africa and the Middle East using facial recognition. The company plans to sell its technology to banks, to help people get access to credit and other banking services.

The New American discussed the problematic aspects of the UN push toward biometric tracking in an article on Nov 9, 2015. It says:

In an effort to bring every last person into the “system,” so to speak, governments, globalist forces, and the United Nations want to make sure that every human being on the planet has a government-issued identification card, complete with biometric data.

In the UNs utopian scenario, anybody who wants to build, farm, hunt, or exist will need to be biometrically tracked for the good of mankind.

Plenty of US leaders are pushing for biometric tracking and will gladly fall in with these UN plots if the people let them get away with it. The problem is, these programs are introduced so incrementally, and with much assurance for the public good, that they are impossible to stop unless the people wake up and stand together.