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Foreign countries uneasy about newly-signed US security law
by Joseph Earnest January 16, 2012
Newscast Media HOUSTON, Texas — Before the end of 2011, while most people were preparing for the holiday season, a new security law was signed by Barack Obama that authorizes the military to arrest and indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay. Opponents of the National Defense Authorization Act say the bill is too broad and quite vague in its definitions.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said, "The law contributes to wider exterritorial use of American criminal and anti-terrorist legislation in relation to citizens of third countries."
Russia worries that the law will result in illegitimate deprivation of liberty, tortures and cruel treatment of imprisoned persons. Russia has had a history of its spies infiltrating the US, so its concerns are legitimate.
The American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU together with humans rights groups opposed the bill hoping Obama would veto it, since they fought so hard to get him elected into office. They reasoned that future presidents could interpret it differently, and that the act is a sweeping expansion of executive power. Obama argued that the only way to ensure continued military funding was to sign the bill.
In support of the bill, Senator Lyndsey Graham said, "I don't believe fighting al Qaeda is a law enforcement function. I believe our military should be deeply involved in fighting these guys at home and abroad."
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has already developed technology that uses biometrics to filter out the bad guys. DHS claims that this particular technology is specifically for border control, prevention of identity theft, and identifying terror suspects. Watch video below:
Video by Homeland Security Demonstrating The Use of Biometrics
From the video above, it is easy to see how the National Defense Authorization Act could at some point in the future, be fused with the biometrics program, requiring travelers to get an RFID chip (Radio Frequency Identification) with all the biometrics and personal information on it. Very controversial in nature, the RFID chip is as small as a grain of rice and can be implanted on any part of the human body or stored in card. The chip is then scanned to reveal the identity of its host.
Even acts of identity theft will not go unchecked, whereby people assume false identities or break into other people's e-mail accounts, bank accounts, or credit card records and impersonate the real owner of the e-mail account or bank records, in order to commit crimes by compromising or manipulating data that belongs to the true owner of the account.
As shown in the video above, identity theft is one of the fastest growing and most committed crimes that the federal government is battling, and is handled by the Justice Department, while the newly-signed law, the NDAA will be handled directly by the US military. We can only speculate how much latitude future presidents will have in interpreting the new law, or implementing biometrics to complement it. The NDAA can be read or downloaded here. (pop-up)
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