- Diebold is a major business partner of Higher One Bank,
a company that's about to privatize Student ID & Financial Aid Disbursment
services (via a unified Mastercard debit card/campus services card) at
Southern Oregon University & Portland State University.
-
- Higher One Bank is a darling of the emerging "contactless"
ID industry which is relentlessly pushing for the implementation of at-a-distance
electronic readabliity of Identification as well as the encoding of personal
physical traits into chips contained on the cards.
- 1. Furthering the Diebold invasion
-
- If the 2004 election wasn't enough to get you adamantly
Diebold-bashing, their key involvment in a local campus corporatization
scheme will assuredly have you swelling the ranks. The new id/debit/campus
services card being forced upon SOU and PSU students is masterminded by
Higher One Bank, whose list of 5 primary business alliances on their website
includes, you guessed it, Diebold. They plan to make their card systems
"interoperable" so as to create "a simple, one-card solution
for students, faculty and staff, allowing campuses to extend the functionality
and convenience of their financial services into an off-campus environment
."
-
- http://www.higherone.com/H1_press_Diebold.html
- http://www.higherone.com/H1_alliances_home.html
-
- 2. Avisian: Cheerleader for Big Brother, and Higher One,
too!
-
- "Here are three examples for biometric implementations
that can let you realistically begin deployments on your campus...they
can likely attach to your current campus card infrastructure."
- - - - from www.cr80news.com, publication of Avisian
-
- Biometrics - Electronic capture and analysis of biological
characteristics,
- such as fingerprints, facial structure or patterns in
the eye.
-
- The websites of Avisian publications seem to consistently
take interest in the business dealings of up & comer Higer One Bank;
their processing of $93.5 million in financial aid this fall was today's
top story at www.cr80news.com. If you search Avisian's other news websites
such as www.contactlessnews.com and www.rfidnews.com, you'll find a number
of other articles tracking the rise of Higher One in the industry (see
examples listed at the article's end), as well as a vendor profile at
-
- http://www.rfidnews.org/vendors/28.php.
-
- What makes this interest particularly frightening is
the technological vision that Avisian is avowedly promoting. Their own
website states that:
-
- "For more than a decade, the AVISIAN team has been
'seeing forward' with respect to identification technologies. The founders
have long believed that key advances in this arena held the promise for
profound enhancement of individual security, convenience, and privacy.
Focused work with RFID, smart cards, and traditional ID technologies, form
the basis of AVISIAN's core business lines..."
-
- The "smart cards" they refer to contain microchips
which store significant amounts of information on the card itself rather
than using a magnetic stripe (which stores very little data) to access
information stored within a network. The ID industry has already succeeded
in integrating this technology with RFID technology (Radio Frequency IDentification),
another kind of circuit attached to a small antenna that can receive and
send information. Differences in technology vary the distance from which
the circuit can be read from a few inches to twenty or more feet away,
as well as vary the amount of information the circuit can transmit. They
are already implementing variations of smart card scanning technology such
as contactless, proximity, and vicinity, though this researcher has had
a difficult time discovering which ones implement the RFID systems.
-
- The potential combination of readability from a distance
and storing large amounts of sensitive info on a the card leads to scary
enough possibilities (identity theft, government tracking & stalking,
etc.), but the demented vision of AVISIAN doesn't stop with that. They
are also tireless promoters of biometric technology, which compares a person's
physiological features with digitally stored information. Articles on the
CR80 news website indicate that the practical combination of contactless
tech and biometrics is not far away, and the US has pushed other countries
to utilize machine-readable biometric passports. The tenor of most of AVISIAN's
"news" clearly shows them taking the stance of forcing people
to accept corporate implementation and storage of highly invasve forms
of physical analysis and behavior control.
-
- Although the ID Card being promoted for SOU, as far as
I can gather, has not initially been planned for biometric or contactless
applications, the spread of corporatized universal card systems on campuses
could definitely be utilized as a foot in the door towards the general
acceptance of these technologies for student information (over time, contractually
integrated into the increasingly "friendly" one-card systems).
With all these untapped, lucrative markets poised for total invasion by
ID tech, it makes since, then, that AVISIAN PR hacks would go to bat for
Higher One in discrediting their opposition at Portland State. An article
at CR80news.com places quotes around 'opposition' and 'controversy' to
discredit the protest's authenticity, and suggests that a particular Higher
One spokesperson's response to the students "...can serve as a good
reminder for all vendors and campus card administrators on how to constructively
address the inevitable VOCAL MINORITY" [italics in original]
-
- http://www.cr80news.com/weblog/2004/09/21/portland-state-l
aunches-new-card-amid-student-opposition/
-
- AVISIAN's mouthpiece Contactlessnews.com already lays
out a strategic method to assimilate the unsuspecting campus inhabitants
into allowing biometric information into the card systems. A far beyond
creepy article entitled " 'Bolt-on biometrics' for the College and
University Campus" suggests that "On campus, the reality is that
biometric implementations are likely even more immediate...Here are three
examples for biometric implementations that can let you realistically begin
deployments on your campus...they can likely attach to your current campus
card infrastructure." A small chart at the beginning encourages this
approach:
-
- *Choose a small test population that has immediate benefit
from the biometrics.
-
- * Use that experience to help formulate your institutional
biometrics policy
-
- * Position the card program as the "enrollment"
station for establishing biometric identity
-
- * Prepare the card program to utilize biometrics for
other applications.
-
- The planning and partnerships necessary to foist invasive
ID tech on students is ready to deploy, and in some cases is already in
place. Higher One is placing radio chips, albeit to open doors, in cards
at Portland State
-
- http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/display.v/
ART/2004/09/13/414508212041b
-
- Howard University in Florida made a deal with Siemens
to obtain "Smart-card" hybrid security/privilege/cash cards.
Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania has implemented contactless smart cards
systems. Johnson & Wales University uses hand geometry scanners, as
do others.
-
- http:www.rfidnews.org/news/2003/04/10/sam-houston-
state-university-chooses-higher-one/
- http:www.cr80news.com/news/2002/07/26/higher-one-
announces-partnership-with-blackboard-inc
-
- http://www.cr80news.com/news/2003/03/03/cbord-and-
higher-one-announce-new-partnership-to-
provide-a-wider-range-of-offerings-to-higher-education-institutions/
-
- http://www.contactlessnews.com/news/2004/05/17/higher-
one-to-provide-customized-disbursement-
banking-and-debit-card-services-to-university-of-wisconsinla-crosse/
-
- In Texas, 28,000 Students Test An Electronic
Eye
-
- By Matt Richtel
- 11-20-4
-
- SPRING, Tex. - In front of her gated apartment complex,
Courtney Payne, a 9-year-old fourth grader with dark hair pulled tightly
into a ponytail, exits a yellow school bus. Moments later, her movement
is observed by Alan Bragg, the local police chief, standing in a windowless
control room more than a mile away.
-
- Chief Bragg is not using video surveillance. Rather,
he watches an icon on a computer screen. The icon marks the spot on a map
where Courtney got off the bus, and, on a larger level, it represents the
latest in the convergence of technology and student security.
-
- Hoping to prevent the loss of a child through kidnapping
or more innocent circumstances, a few schools have begun monitoring student
arrivals and departures using technology similar to that used to track
livestock and pallets of retail shipments.
-
- Here in a growing middle- and working-class suburb just
north of Houston, the effort is undergoing its most ambitious test. The
Spring Independent School District is equipping 28,000 students with ID
badges containing computer chips that are read when the students get on
and off school buses. The information is fed automatically by wireless
phone to the police and school administrators.
-
- In a variation on the concept, a Phoenix school district
in November is starting a project using fingerprint technology to track
when and where students get on and off buses. Last year, a charter school
in Buffalo began automating attendance counts with computerized ID badges
- one of the earliest examples of what educators said could become a widespread
trend.
-
- At the Spring district, where no student has ever been
kidnapped, the system is expected to be used for more pedestrian purposes,
Chief Bragg said: to reassure frantic parents, for example, calling because
their child, rather than coming home as expected, went to a friend's house,
an extracurricular activity or a Girl Scout meeting.
-
- When the district unanimously approved the $180,000 system,
neither teachers nor parents objected, said the president of the board.
Rather, parents appear to be applauding. "I'm sure we're being overprotective,
but you hear about all this violence," said Elisa Temple-Harvey, 34,
the parent of a fourth grader. "I'm not saying this will curtail it,
or stop it, but at least I know she made it to campus."
-
- The project also is in keeping with the high-tech leanings
of the district, which built its own high-speed data network and is outfitting
the schools with wireless Internet access. A handful of companies have
adapted the technology for use in schools.
-
- But there are critics, including some older students
and privacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, who argue that
the system is security paranoia.
-
- The decades-old technology, called radio frequency identification,
or RFID, is growing less expensive and developing vast new capabilities.
It is based on a computer chip that has a unique number programmed into
it and contains a tiny antenna that sends information to a reader.
-
- The same technology is being used by companies like Wal-Mart
to track pallets of retail items. Pet owners can have chips embedded in
cats and dogs to identify them if they are lost.
-
- In October, the Food and Drug Administration approved
use of an RFID chip that could be implanted under a patient's skin and
would carry a number that linked to the patient's medical records.
-
- New York Times
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