A Modern Woman's Perspective On The Kingdom of God on Earth


May 4, 2015

The Mark of the Beast Is Closer Than We Think

     I know that there are those out there in the blogosphere who reject the idea that technology is bad for us.  They will point to the added convenience and "instant" communication aspects of all of our technological gadgets.  And I realize that I will be called a dinosaur and "out of touch" for not embracing every new app or innovation that comes down the pike.
     I may not be the most savvy techie or eager to be the first in my crowd to own the latest version of anything that begins with an "i", but there's a very good reason.  You see, I can tell where this is all headed, and it's a place I don't want to go.  And you don't even have to be a "conspiracy nut" to get a pretty good picture of what our future holds.
     Great Britain's The Telegraph recently printed a news story by Sophie Curtis about the direction that PayPal wants to take us.  Ever heard of "Natural Body Identification"?  Apparently, it is "a new generation of embeddable, injectable and ingestible devices that could replace passwords as a means of identification."  If you believe the tech giants, there is a massive problem of compromised passwords; with naive and unsophisticated tech users still employing easily hacked passwords such as "123456", or "letmein".
   
Slide taken from Jonathan LeBlanc's presentation, "Kill All Passwords"
     But Paypal's global head of developer evangelism (that's rather strange terminology, don't you think?), Jonathan LeBlanc, thinks monitoring internal body functions like heartbeat, glucose levels and vein recognition can eliminate the need for people to come up with the perfect unhackable password.  It's just the way he wants to do it, that has me creeped out.
     He wants to consider developing devices such as brain implants, wafer-thin silicon chips that can be embedded into the skin, and ingestible devices with batteries that are powered by stomach acid.  Now, he's quick to point out that by talking about new biometric verification technologies, PayPal is not necessarily signaling that it’s thinking about adopting them.  Rather, it hopes to position itself as a "thought leader".  Is that supposed to comfort us?
     They want us to think that it is all about the "evolution" of the password;  that concept will be changing, and all PayPal wants to do is be at the forefront of the developments for that change.  After all, PayPal was a founding member of the FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance, which is an industry consortium launched in February 2013 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication devices and the problems users face creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords.
     PayPal also wants you to know that they were the first to implement fingerprint payments with Samsung ... it's all about removing "the friction" from shopping and making it easier and safer for consumers.   If you believe that, I've got the proverbial beachfront property in Arizona that you might be interested in.
     By now, it should be quite clear that we are edging closer and closer to being controlled as to how we buy and sell.  And if that doesn't ring a bell, then please rush to your nearest Bible and read Revelation 13:16-17.
     Furthermore, there are tech users that are far more savvy than me and they point out the obvious flaw in biometric security devices, namely "there is no advantage whatsoever to using a biometric signal. In fact, it's easier to make a secure key from a series of random numbers and letters because those can be changed. Biometrics CANNOT BE CHANGED - once compromised, they are forever useless. It's like having one password for everything that is the same --- how does that increase security? It doesn't --- it lessens the security."
     Another person showed the flaw in PayPal's argument with this comment:  "This is about tagging you with a tracking device so that the powers that be can better analyze your movement and behavior. It has nothing to do with security or verifying your identity when it actually counts, as in a financial transaction."
     Even I can see the logic in these two arguments against so-called "natural body identification" and biometric verification technologies.  Not that I think it will slow down the "evolution" of ID Security devices.  The time is coming for "the Mark", folks, whether we like it or not.  Just stay alert and aware of the latest innovations, and resist the temptation to bow down at the altar of technology.

Revelation 13:16-17   "And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark,"

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