This is an ACSA Special Report entitled:

"They take their damn time, don't they?"
               -- Jack Shulman referring to Congressional lawmakers on ID THEFT Law.

ACSA's identity theft prevention campaign, started single handedly by our chairperson Jack Shulman in 1995, bears fruit in the form of an amended "FACT ACT" signed into law by President Bush for immanent enactment.

THE US DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY, at long last issues a report on proposed technology measures to combat electronic theft of identity.
 
Read the entire, February 2005 Department of the Treasury Report:  
  "The use of Technology to Combat Electronic Identity Theft"  >

Starting back in 1995, Dr. Jack A. Shulman, head of the ACSA, started to raise an ungodly stink about electronic theft of identity to the government and the business community.  Jack had more than once experienced theft of identity first hand, and having had his own business attacked by thieves using identities they had stolen, he decided he'd had quite enough.

Dr. Shulman initiated a series of very noisy and highly public steps at ACSA between 1995 and 2005 to attempt to bring about change in the way personal identity is protected and authenticated, while protecting personal privacy and personal liberties.

He quite literally nagged the entire US Government, Banking Industry, Federal Reserve, Credit Industry, Departments of Justice, Treasury and DHS Law Enforcement Personnel, the Press, the Governors and Attorney Generals / Consumer Protection agencies of the 50 states and anyone else he could find.  He sent written demands they cooperate and move towards implementing biometric and PIN protection of everyone's identity nationwide.  He constructed demonstration THUMBCARD.com systems on the internet for them to review as visualizations, he approached every Credit Card company head, and hundreds of bank heads.  He sued Citibank, after his own business, CompAmerica, experienced reverse identity theft (a case where an individual stole property, was employed as a specialist by Citibank, and tried to pretend the theft was just a case of stolen identity). He hounded the banks who had improperly attacked his credit at the times his own identity was misused by others, taking several to court and convincing others to consider taking steps to properly authenticate the use of their products and services, both in person and online. He also demanded that the FDIC do its job and protect US Citizens from theft of identity at their bank accounts, as would seem to be a constitutionally afforded right.

From 1997 to 2005, ACSA accelerated Dr. Shulman's process and placed constant pressure as well on the US Department of the Treasury, the Senate and the House, the Credit Card Associations, and the Major US and UK Banks, to cause an upgrade in the technology that processes checks, credit cards, financial records such as mortgages, personal information, and your personal identity were recorded, stored, and authenticated.  ACSA moved as well to get implementation of proper Law Enforcement pursuit of the criminals, narcotics and terrorist-connected individuals who have been involved in abuse of personal identities through theft and impersonation, partly because the War on Terror demanded it, and partly because Identity Theft by web fraud and phishing has become rampant.

To date, the enormous noise being created bore some fruit in the form of passive systems developed by the Credit Card Banks to help prevent fraud.  But the worst development took place, when ACSA's Investigation Team of scientists and experts, CAME TO CONCLUDE THAT 90% OF THE THEFT OF ELECTRONIC AND OTHER IDENTITY INVOLVED EXECUTIVES IN THESE BANKING SYSTEMS AND A CRIMINAL CHANNEL TO MAJOR BANKS IN NY AND CALIFORNIA, AN UNWRITTEN LAW THAT MADE CERTAIN THAT CRACKS IN THE SYSTEM ALLOWING ELECTRONIC AND PHYSICAL THEFT OF IDENTITY WERE LEFT OPEN.  Criminals, it seems, are using confidential kickback relationships between their outside criminal theft of identity rings and inside Banking officials, corruption that runs all the way up to the senior most management of the top Banking-Oil Industry-Credit Card Syndicates that control the US Banking Industry.  Crime of the worst kind, theft of identity is so lucrative, that the very persons responsible for maintaining privacy, who run the Banks, have apparently been seduced by the dark side of their own industry. Credit Card and Bank Account specific Identity Theft has become big business and has apparently compromised our very banking industry with corruption. It's allegedly evolved into an "Inside Job", which may even explain the many "lost consumer record tapes" of personal information being reported stolen by so many major banks recently.

In response to this mess, ACSA stepped up it's campaign efforts. The steps taken by ACSA included:

a) Multiple written analyses of the problem of Identity theft: solutions based on PIN and biometric authentication and Merchant revenue losses from fraud were prepared and transmitted to the Counsel for the United States Federal Reserve, the United States Secret Service, the United States Attorney General, the Master Card and Visa Card Associations, Discover Card, American Express, JCB, and other card issuers, including over 500 major banking and financial institutions.  Dialogs between ACSA and each organization's heads were established.

b) Written requests that were prepared with the above information, and presented to the Presidents of the United States, Secretary Greenspan of the Federal Reserve, each member of the House and Senate, the Banking Commissions of the Senate and House, the FBI,  and the Governors of each of the United States, as well as their State Attorneys General. Detailed statistics were included, along with testimony from hundreds of victims.  In addition, hundreds of various incidents taken from Dr. Shulman's own company, CompAmerica's, experience at coping with robbery attempts by persons using stolen identity credentials, credit cards and forged checks was broadly shared with all Law Enforcement Agents, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Consumer Protection Divisions of the State Attorney Generals.

c) Widely proliferated copies of the online articles on ACSA's website were sent to or provided to public readers, including "Credit Cards, a license to steal from Merchants, by anonymous", and have been read by nearly 500 million+ visitors around the world.

d) In 2001, after ACSA came to believe that a substantial part of funding for the 9/11 Disaster, the USS Cole attack and a large number of other terror activities around the world: as a result of Identity Theft. The weak security in use today, made it easy for Central Asian Narco-Terror groups to set up shop around the world, providing themselves easy money. Using identity theft and stolen credit cards and forged checks against merchants, they were able to extend seed-capital from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, using simple electronic thefts from Merchants.  Methods of identity theft expanded to use the byproduct of modern Sypware, Adware and Keystroke Loggers.  In order to demonstrate how such theft could be defeated by a fully secure PIN and Thumb/Finger print scanning system with suitable encryption, and self authentication, Dr. Shulman developed the Working Demonstration Model: THUMBCARD.COM, a managed electronic e-Wallet, e-Banking system that allows "single thumb or finger stroke" purchases by consumers from retailers with a 100% safety rate, and a 1 in 5 Billion false rejection rate, with a 100% "no hack succeeds" design that prevents any unauthorized party from misusing even a single identity. THUMBCARD remains a testimonial to one person's willingness to fight the system to accomplish what, ultimately, is quite an accomplishment. By creating a competitive venue, Dr. Shulman succeeded in getting the "fat, dumb and happy" Banking Industry to get off it's backsides and consider taking steps to protect the MERCHANTS who use credit slides and to help protect Consumers from Theft of Identity. He developed a comprehensive protocol now being considered for standardization, which uses a measure known as "absolutely positive authentication, without invasion of privacy" or "APAWIP" for short.

e) Background White Papers in the form of press releases and news issues were sent to the major wire services (few of whom carried them) monthly, to the major newspapers (few of whom paid any attention to them) quarterly and to the major foundations and academic institutions' business schools in the USA (many of whom paid attention to them and wrote back in support).  Copies were provided throughout the US Government.

f) Dr. Shulman commissioned, out of his own pocket, the development of biometric mice, keyboards and pads, built in the Pacific rim, which used optical and mini scanners for thumbprint scanning, he wrote software to maintain secure connectivity with such devices on the Internet, and engaged the Technology Transfer Division of the US National Security Agency for permission to commercially adapt Eigen Facial Scanning Software.  His intellectual property relationship with a major software company has widely published Encryption and Compression algorithmic information for processing and compressing thumb and hand prints, including the new 10-point system, and for securing the methodology to prevent any form of spoofing and phishing.

g) ACSA directly contacted and spoke with nearly every major procurement branch of the US Government regarding authentication of contractors, and contracting personnel, engaged in projects which effect national security or whose activities require encryption to prevent them from being monitored across the internet, so as not to allow malicious foreign interests from interfering with US Government activity.

h) ACSA investigated and ascertained that NASA had used insufficient security and authentication in verifying backgrounds of it's own contractors connected with at least two shuttle missions: Challenger and Columbia.  By allowing a single contractor with questionable ties which would have shown up had same not used a false identity in travels to Balkan and Central Asian nations, to effect unsecured, unconfirmed onboard maneuvering engine control and fire sensor programming changes to both of the tragic Shuttle Missions, which programming was in control of the Challenger and Columbia at the time they broke up during launch or reentry, NASA had made a tragic and horribly naive mistake.

While not probative from a prosecution perspective, without the assistance of the internal security of the Office of the Inspector General at NASA, the ACSA study of personnel profiles and the relationship of the accidents to the actual systems that failed, has statistically established that a single programming contractor was involved in sabotaging both Shuttle missions.  Through the use of probabilistic theory, applications of statistics, and logical inference, ACSA established that that programmer, through private athletic events said person attended, had been in a position to be recruited to engage in sabotage and espionage by interests in Central Asia who are connected to the terror group Al Qaeda and the ISI (Pakistan's intelligence service which created Al Qaeda). ACSA demonstrated that it could be proven  mathematically that sabotage was the cause for both shuttle accidents.

An ACSA mathematician, taking all numerical circumstances and logic into consideration has found a 98.8 percentile of probability that this one programmer defeated safety measures and allowed the dangerous escape of engine fuels to happen, leading to both so-called Shuttle Accidents, while the given causes explained by NASA have less than a 20.5% likelihood, mathematically.  The reports generated for NASA and presented in part on this website, have been tacitly ignored by NASA, which ACSA has stated it believes is living in a state of denial regarding what caused, and who caused, both shuttle disasters.  Conflict of Interest between procurement officers at NASA and the owners of consultancies in the vicinity of NASA had blinded NASA to a single programmer who, working on both missions, apparently inserted programming that had been developed by outside criminal hacking experts with considerable experience with IBM's AP101 onboard computers, and said programming was literally able to HACK the shuttles into self destruction, a fact entirely ignored by the Government and NASA Investigators to this very day, preferring perhaps to believe failed "O-Rings" and "Foam Impact" caused the tragedies. 

ACSA has also established that a certain west coast based "enlightenment" group, a paper thin disguise for a white collar crime organization, from San Francisco, California was also more than 90% likely as a candidate to have helped orchestrate the effort that gave the contractor the chance to perform the sabotage, as it maintained consultants marketing usage of the Shuttle program who may have bribed procurement and other officials in the public sector to make arrangements that led to the tragedies.

ACSA has reported to NASA that simple biometric technology, had it been in use, would have prevented the tragedy by exposing a pattern of hiding payoffs and payments to officials and involving the programmer who allegedly sabotaged the two Shuttles.

ACSA engaged in many other efforts aimed at exposing how a simple solution like Biometrics + PIN would prevent misuse of individual bank and credit accounts, while also preventing critical infrastructures from being compromised by preventing individuals from using fake identities to engage in financial activities leading to sabotage of National Security.

In June 2005, ACSA Announced it's "ADOPT BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION EVERYWHERE BY JUNE 2007" initiative, and began campaigning among the technology companies to adopt the products making it possible as "standard offerings", so that PC owners could protect themselves by subscribing to Biometric+PIN Authentication Requirements.  These measures would be for the purposes of protecting and affirming the use of their own bank accounts and credit carts, and were accompanied by activities in the commercial computer industry to seed technology so that the general public would have low cost Finger Scanners on their PCs so as to enable their own control and protection of their identity-specific daily life activities.

This initiative is being followed up, as we write this, with further correspondences, publication, buttonholing, report issuance and embarrassment of corrupted officials in Banking and Finance, so as to accelerate the rate that such protection of your identity is adopted.

ACSA will continue to publish information about this effort regularly, as both its commitment to your privacy, and its commitment to the protection of your identity without invasion of your privacy.  Remember ACSA's 5 Points to safety in Biometric Authentication:

1)  no one else can use a combination of your fingerprint and your PIN Code,

2) they still need your username and passwords elsewhere, it is too complicated to steal them all. 

4) If someone tries to make you give it up at an ATM or BANK or at HOME, remember: you're insured and

5) Give up your information, leave the scene alive, and report it immediately,

6) Change everything changeable immediately, and remember: your finger print is still safe and still prevents others from TRYING TO IMPERSONATE YOU, your identity will always remain protected.

[Editorial Comment- Jack Shulman was recently heard to comment: "This was the most difficult effort I've ever seen or been involved in. It took over 10 years to get the beginnings of Federal Legislation.  We didn't even stand a chance during the Clinton Administration, which had very little understanding of, nor receptivity to, protecting the rights of victims of identity theft.  The Visa and Master Card associations were open, but reluctant to act.  The Banks paid lip service to our calls.  And the Treasury simply gave us blank stares and insisted that it all had to be settled by civil suit.  Fortunately, our lawmakers have finally opened the doors to PROTECT OUR PRIVACY by making it materially impossible for others to gain access to our records by protecting them with BIOMETRIC and PIN Security. I guess they realize we're not going to vote them back into office if they don't.  When I was a young programmer, I wrote the code for one of the very first Credit Card processing systems on Lexington, Avenue in NYC, NY.  It had all the protection confirmation of identity, but the Banks refused to implement the measures I'd designed for prohibition of identity theft, which back then required a challenge system, PIN and many times, a telephone call to the card bank.  They said "it's too expensive".  Apparently, now, the public clamor is beginning to cause Banks to realize they are going to lose their customers if they don't adopt protective technologies more than the passive systems provided for monitoring and detecting fraud, as are in use today.  But we're not quite there yet, even after 10 years of my raising a stink about the fundamental, unrequited victimization of Americans, an effort that cost me greatly, as I had to be a real pain in the A to virtually every major bank, credit card company, and 3/4 of the US government.  The Banking and Financial Services Industry, the Treasury, and Credit Card and money transfer industry are apparently materially controlled politically by the three major banks in the USA, Citibank, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase: and the common ownership of those three banks are simply not open to incurring the retooling cost of a system which historically goes back almost all the way to Alexander Hamilton.  Meanwhile, I had the unhappy experience of being advised that top executives in these and other banking and card systems were in cahoots with the identity thieves. In a modern, internet driven, theft-of-identity-vulnerable society, were we to allow them to continue to get away with this murder of consumer credit reputations and theft of identity, we'd be co-conspirators as would these banks and their owners.  So, having thanked the Almighty that the President signed the beginnings of change in the form of the FACT ACT, with proposed technologies to combat identity theft the first and largest order of business, we are waiting with baited breath to see exactly how long it will take these arrogant, frequently disdainful, very resistant-to-change banking industry execs to comply with new privacy and identity protection law. It's time for a change, one which will simultaneously eliminate 99% of identity theft, and virtually eliminate all check and credit card fraud.  But, apparently, if the sources are correct, at least some of these Banking bigwigs are fattening the fattened calf with payola from the identity theft rings.  Let us hope those criminals are rapidly brought to justice and even more rapidly put out of business by these so-called 'new' technologies."]

------
Article written by Walter William Steinmetz™, exclusive to the ACSA.
.