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Entries in The Maldives (1)

Monday
Nov272017

NIDS...WHY JAMAICA?

My web sister Madison Maragh, on her program Jamaica Live, delved deeply into the Jamaican government's pushing of an amendment to institute NIDS.  NIDS is a national identification system to be implemented on the island of Jamaica sometime after 2019.  Acting Chief Technical Director in the Office of the Prime Minister  Jacqueline Lynch-Stewart,  will mandate all civil service employees to pilot the program beginning January 2019. 
NIDS is not simply an ID system to secure the people of the island nation.  This ID system was created by Dermalog, a German Biometrics company, that has contracted with the Phillipines' government to issue biometric driver licenses, Singapore's government for Immigration and & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) using their BioScreen technology to capture thumbprints of persons entering and departing their country.  Singapore has made it compulsary for foreign travellers to scan their thumbprints.  Cambodia has required it's citizens to accept a Dermalog national ID card and ePassport that requires all ten finger prints to be scanned.
The Maldives is the first to have the full Dermalog national ID system in full swing and now Jamaica has begun the process to link it's people, like the Borg in Star Trek Next Generation,  to a central computer system.  The Jamaican government will require not only prints of all ten fingers (eight fingers and both thumbs) but, foot/toe prints, vein pattern of the hand, and blood type to be recorded.  That, of course, is not all but, these are the most invasive aspects of this system. 
Jamaica Live host Madison Maragh raised a most serious point concerning the housing of this most important and deeply personal information.  She questioned where the information would be stored and Jamaica's ability to protect it in today's world of information security breaches. Blood type and vein patterns collected is disconcerting as we must be aware that the body parts of Black people are highly prized around the world.  I wonder could this also be a reason for having and storing such information since Jamaica has a population of over 90 percent Black people. 
Another point Madison brought up was why the rush to get people registered.  Why the rush?  I decided to follow the money.  There is always a money trail.  Always.  The initial design is funded by a Technical Co-operation grant from the Inter American Development Bank through the Koren Povery Fund totaling  $790,000  which is headquartered in Washington D.C.  (Korean Poverty Fund???) This grant will fund several consultancies but, the one that stands out the most to me is to the Develop the Communications and Behavior Change Strategy consultants.   This is, in my opinion, is the psy war ops team to cause the majority of the people to accept this invasive and unnecessary numbering of the people. 
The cost of this project is estimated at approximately $9 billion USD.   In 2011 Jamaica's total external debt was over $14 billion USD with a Gross Domestic Product of only $9,200 per person as of 2012.  Bloomberg reported in October 2016 that Jamaica received  $1.7 billion USD to add to the outstanding $14 billion USD.  I am sure there is a lot more to this story and the phoney claim by Prime Minister Holness that this will fight corruption is truly not one of them.  One pattern to observe surely is that this NIDS program is being implemented in countries with dark skinned people and not Germany the home of Dermalog.