By Nancy Thorner -
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. – Ben Franklin.
There was Jimmy Carter's Iran incompetence, Hillary/Obama's Benghazi ineptitude, and now President Biden's junior high antics at Kabul.
Thousands of Afghans are struggling to ensure the physical safety of their families after the Taliban took control of the country have an additional worry. It is that biometric databases and their own digital history can be used to track and target them.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of “chilling” curbs on human rights and violations against women and girls. On Monday, August 16, 2021, Amnesty International said thousands of Afghans – including academics, journalists and activists – were “at serious risk of Taliban reprisals.”
After years of a push to digitize databases in Afghanistan and introduce digital identity cards and biometrics for voting, these technologies can now be used to target and attack vulnerable groups.
Involvement of Human Rights First group
As the Human Rights First group wrote on Twitter on August 16: “We understand that the Taliban is now likely to have access to various biometric databases and equipment in Afghanistan.”
“This technology is likely to include access to a database with fingerprints and iris scans, and include facial recognition technology,” the group added.
"The database could also be used to create a new class structure – job applicants would have their bio-data compared to the database, and jobs could be denied on the basis of having connections to the former government or security forces,” he added.
"The U.S.-based advocacy group quickly published a Farsi-language version of its guide on how to delete digital history – that it had produced last year for activists in Hong Kong – and also put together a manual on how to evade biometrics. Tips to bypass facial recognition include looking down, wearing things to obscure facial features, or applying many layers of makeup, the guide said, although fingerprint and iris scans were difficult to bypass."
“With biomeetric data, it is much more difficult to hide, obfuscate your and your family’s identities, and the data can also be used to flesh out your contacts and network,” said Welton Chang, chief technology officer at Human Rights First.
“Even five years ago, the Taliban was using government biometric systems to target members of the security forces, checking their fingerprints against a database, according to local media reports.”
On Monday, August 16, 2021, just hours after the militants rolled into the capital Kabul, there were fears that this was already happening. Check this link: "Fearing Taliban Purge, Afghan Citizens Scramble to Delete Digital History, Evade Biometrics."
Mandatory Digital Health Passport in U.S. more than a Pipe Dream
In Thorner's article posted at Illinois Review on Monday, August 16, 2021, “Mandatory Digital Health Passport More than a Pipe Dream”, it was noted that Illinois has already set up an on-line Digital Covidi-19 vaccination passport system to function as a Digital Heath Passport.
The objectives mirror those that Bill Gates has been promoting since the start of the COVID-19 lockdown. In an essay written by Gates in April 2020, he lays out his support for the draconian measures taken in response to the virus and, like an old-timey mob boss, he makes his case for the adoption of mass tracking and surveillance technology in the U.S. by saying that “For now, the United States can follow Germany’s example .”
As suggested by Brendon Smith in his article of 8/9/2021, “We will not comply, A Plan against Medical Tyranny:
"The mainstream media has consistently attacked the claim that governments would enforce vaccine passports as conspiracy theory. Now they are openly admitting that the plan is to institute vaccine passports and they are vigorously defending it. They are discussing with avid fervor how they might be able to FORCE or compel each and every person to take the jab, even if they don't want it and even if the jab serves no purpose.
- Force the masses to take the vaccine.
- The vaccine to force masses to get passports
- The passport is to force masses to get the social credit score.
- The social credit score is to force the masses to obey government
- Then the government can deny the masses food, medicine, housing and travel.
Covid digital health passports to track Americans
Are you ready to get your “immunity passport” or “digital health passport” from big brother government or some multi-billion-dollar corporation?
The Covid passports (biometric databases) have a lot more than medical history on them.
The Afghanistan people are finding out what their biometric databases are leading to: It is a Taliban that is operating much like the Stasi in Germany. [Stasi was the official state security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany, GDR). The Stasi has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies ever to have existed.]
Might the digital Covid passport gaining popularity in the U.S., which operates much like the biometric database in Afghanistan, be used in the future to track down Americans who are considered the enemy of the current administration?
Such a thought is not out of the question, especially in states and cities run by liberals as a way to force the masses to obey government.
I met the Stasi in East Germany many years ago. They abused by camera. I met them more than one time.
Ora Et Labora
Carl Lambrecht
Wow, Nancy, this is really scary. I hope conservatives and libertarians who are downplaying the threat of vaccine and mask mandates will read this and think it through. We’re standing on the very edge of a disaster.