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'War on Terror' Allies Form Information Consortium

Wowsers writes us with a story from The Guardian about FBI interest in connectivity between its own database resources and those abroad. It's spearheading a program labeled 'Server in the Sky', meant to coordinate the police forces of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to better fight international crime/terrorist groups. The group is calling itself the International Information Consortium. "Britain's National Policing Improvement Agency has been the lead body for the FBI project because it is responsible for IDENT1, the UK database holding 7m sets of fingerprints and other biometric details used by police forces to search for matches from scenes of crimes. Many of the prints are either from a person with no criminal record, or have yet to be matched to a named individual. IDENT1 was built by the computer technology arm of the US defence company Northrop Grumman. In future it is expected to hold palm prints, facial images and video sequences."

6 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Server in the Sky? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Honestly. Wtf? Server in the Sky? That cannot be serious.

    I can't think of a name more likely to inspire fear/conspiracy theories. Why not call it the Big Brother Server? Or the Stalin Server? Or the Anal Rapist server?

    'night all - enough scotchx for me :-)

    1. Re:Server in the Sky? by Ucklak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So we have the program "Star Wars" and now we have "Skynet".
      Before you know it, they will want to 'recycle' people when they turn 30 and
      there will probably be a 'Green' company to provide high energy biscuits to people and the company name will be "The Soylent Biscuit Company".

      Has imagination left mankind?

      --
      if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
  2. Why not Interpol? by Mikkeles · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Given that this is really crime rather than military intelligence and the like, I wonder why this isn't done through Interpol. It seems especially silly as most (all!?) of the nations that contain the source of the current generation of terrorists are excluded.

    --
    Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
  3. U.S. government has killed 11,000,000 people... by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The U.S. government has often used its "cooperation" with the governments of other countries to corrupt those governments. See, for example, Coups Arranged or Backed by the USA. Most or all of that corruption happened for profit, such as kickbacks of U.S. government foreign aid. When the governments of Israel or Pakistan buy weapons from U.S. manufacturers using money from "foreign aid", that is embezzlement of taxpayer money.

    The Cooperative Research History Commons is very valuable for those wanting to do their own research.

    The poorly edited but very interesting free movie Zeitgeist explains in three parts that 1) People who believe in myths are easily manipulated. 2) It is common that people are manipulated through fear. 3) The U.S. monetary system is controlled for the profit of a few individuals. (Also see The Creature from Jekyll Island, an excellent but not perfect book about financial corruption.)

    The U.S. government has killed directly or indirectly caused the death of an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the Second World war, partly by invading or bombing 25 countries.

  4. Re:I wouldn't worry too much about the FBI by I8TheWorm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the computer technology arm of the US defence company Northrop Grumman
    What are you talking about?!? I just did a contract for NG a couple of years ago where I wrote a reporting system for a yet unclassed ship in C# using CR! How could the brilliant minds that come up with that architecture for military vessels be associated with failure?

    disclaimer: I needed the money
    --
    Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
  5. Greenbaum "Spirit in the Sky" by toddhisattva · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The song is already a Jihadi song, you only need to change one word!

    "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman bin Greenbaum:

    When I die and they lay me to rest
    Gonna go to the place that's the best
    When I lay me down to die
    Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
    Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
    That's where I'm gonna go when I die
    When I die and they lay me to rest
    Gonna go to the place that's the best

    Prepare yourself you know it's a must
    Gotta have a friend in Muhammad
    So you know that when you die
    He's gonna recommend you
    To the spirit in the sky
    Gonna recommend you
    To the spirit in the sky
    That's where you're gonna go when you die
    When you die and they lay you to rest
    You're gonna go to the place that's the best

    Never been a sinner I never sinned
    I got a friend in Muhammed
    So you know that when I die
    He's gonna set me up with
    The spirit in the sky
    Oh set me up with the spirit in the sky
    That's where I'm gonna go when I die
    When I die and they lay me to rest
    I'm gonna go to the place that's the best
    Go to the place that's the best