by Muada Shakur
The flood of movie aimed at the public recently seemed to center around visions and interpretations of the future of society and hi-tech social controls. Even more interesting is that these movies all seem to be uniform in their visions of what the future holds. That should tell us that the purpose for introducing these films is to prepare the public mind for the changes in society that are about to take shape. The computerized worlds of "Virtuosity", "Demolition Man", "Fortress", "Johnny Neumonic", "Cyborg", and "The Net" all share the common theme of tighter social controls.
As the scriptures in the book of Revelations tells us (Rev.13:15-18) about the last days being controlled by a beast that would control all buying and selling, and all people who worshipped the beast had it's mark in their forehead or in their right hand. The theory of many as well as myself is that this beast referred to is a colossal computer located in Brussels at SWIFT (Society for World Interbank Financial Communications). Founded in 1973 by 239 Rothschild controlled banks in 15 different countries, it created a global network of automated financial transactions or electric money, for banks and corporations. It is nicknamed the "beast" and is prepared to give every living person a number once the super information highway is connected to every home. From there the info highway will be connected to the global info highway.
The mysterious Department of Information Technology (DIT), located downstairs in city hall, makes almost no information available to the Richmond public about it's function and daily operations. If you go down there and ask what they do, they'll ask you to leave your name, if you don't want to leave your name they will promptly call security on you like they did to me. When I went back down there to show a friend where it was to ask him what he thought it was, security showed up again. This time threatening to call 5-0 if we came back. I wonder if I was a whiteman in a suite if I would have been treated Differently? I'll leave that up to your imagination.
Funny how the Dept. of" Info" wouldn't give me any "info", but called security when I wouldn't give them any about me. Specifically it was a Black woman who is the receptionist that called security that makes it so bad.
The info I did find on DIT was not readily available to Richmond residents. DIT houses the city's mainframe computer. It was established in 1985 to provide government agencies with a central management source for telecommunications, and a central data base that shares files between such agencies as DMV, social services, Dept. of Taxation, Dept. of Transportation, Dept. of Health, Dept. of Corrections, and Virginia Employment Commission to name a few. According to a publication called the Edge 9/26/94, it's applications range from voice, data, and image transmission to accessing the Internet information superhighway. MCI provides the communications for the $2.2 million communications network, the subject of Edge's article on DIT.
The DIT city data base has a file on everyone in Richmond, which must in turn be linked to a national data base, then ultimately linked to a global data base in the near future if it isn't linked already. Every city and state has a central mainframe data base.
The National data base was proposed as an answer to "illegal" immigration and would register all U.S. citizens with a national I.D. card. The national I.D. card would use the social security # as the national I.D. #. I would have to say the s.s.n. already serves that function and was always leading up to this point. It was proposed by Barbara Jordan of the Federal Commission on Immigration Reform (Rich Times disp.10/1/94). Opponents of the national data base predict scenarios similar to the movie" the Net" where people would be wrongly labeled as illegal. It's criminal that people who were forced out of their land down into Mexico are now called illegal immigrants when they try to come back onto their native land.
In Congressional Testimony 3/14/95 on immigration issues it was revealed that the social security administration 6 years ago verified 140 million names and s.s.n. submitted by Citibank and other private companies. Also revealed was TRW's service called "Social Search" which claims to be a "state-of-the-art locating tool that puts our expansive data bases to work for you. All you need are the social security numbers of those your trying to locate and you can reach those hard to find individuals who may have moved or changed their names".
More data bases are linked now having the ability to share or cross check files from sources such as drivers license, vehicle registration, voter registration, birth record, land deeds, and census records. State and federal government have created over 500 programs to compare information from 2 or more sources (Technology Review May 1985).
The ability to share or cross check all of these various files amounts to an electronic tracking system or a computerized spy network on your private affairs. Four years ago the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) laid the blueprints for a multi-million dollar computer center for it's Deposit Tracking System (DTS). This system allows the IRS to monitor every bank account in the U.S. DTS is promoted as protection for depositors against bank failures and crimes such as drug money laundering. DTS was a Treasury Dept. idea in 1989. It was expanded on by Rep. Bruce Vento, a Democrat from Minnesota, in the FDIC Improvement Act that came as a result of the S&L scandal. In this Act Vento recommended an 18 month study of the cost and privacy implications of tracking all deposits.
Former executive director of the Independent Bankers Association of America, Diane Casey, said that DTS "would virtually eliminate personal financial privacy." FDIC proposed budget for DTS includes a $30.5 million dollar facility with $20 million dollars in maintenance cost. Financial data bases already kept on citizens are routinely analyzed by FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) on their "supercomputers". FinCEN is an intelligence collection program of the National Security Council formed in the 80's for domestic law-enforcement. DTS only needs an executive order signed by the president to go into effect, if it isn't already. (Insight Sept.25-Oct.2 1995)
Virginia's Division of Forensic Science, headed by Paul Ferrara, makes uses of the states DNA data base at a cost of $350,000 a year. Having collected over 107,000 blood samples and profiled 5,300 for DNA, they have supposedly matched 5 suspects. Each profile has an 8 digit code which the computer uses to match the profiles. Scientists say that sweat or saliva can be swabbed from a crime scene and cloned into a complete DNA sample. They soon expect to clone samples from a stamp on a letter. (Style Weekly 9/19/95
Storing DNA files in a state data base is too obviously a setup for the genetically violent criminal theory that wealthy whites began with the Eugenics practice in the early part of this century. Eugenics is the practice of race purification and was part of the Nazi theories of inferior and superior people based on the genetic heritage. The 2nd conference on genetics and crime was held Sept.22-24 1995 at an Aspen Institute retreat in Queenstown, Maryland. It was organized by David Wasserman of the Univ. of Maryland's Institute for Public Policy . The NIH also provided the conference with another grant, $133,000. The Black community erupted on the first conference and accused the NIH and the conference participants of searching for a genetic link between Blacks and violence. A Dr. Goodwin had made the remark of comparing Black people living in the inner city to Rhesus monkeys. Activists and critics of the conference called him a Nazi and the conference Nazi science.
(W.Post 9/22/95)
The Betac Corp. is a small government contractor in Alexandria, Va. that specializes in national security work. Betac introduced the heat print to replace fingerprinting altogether. Betac's hi-tech infrared cameras capture the subjects "aura" then turns it into a digital code that is fed into a special computer program with links to the FBI data base. Betac claims the "aura" or thermogram is unique to each person's vascular and blood vessel patterns. The infrared cameras proposed are to be mounted in stores, street corners, building entrances, constantly panning the scenes with links to a data base of the stored thermograms of the population, Dave Evans of Betac claims would greatly advance law enforcement. Even wider commercial applications are expected such as a Visa or Mastercard with an encoded facial thermogram in credit cards or smartcards with links to the credit company's "aura" data base. (Washington Technology 2/10/94)