Barcode/The Enquirer and The Star/THE MOB!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_(magazine)
Excerpt:
Star was founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1974 as competition to the tabloid National Enquirer with its headquarters in New York City. In the late 1980s it moved its offices to Tarrytown, NY and in 1990 Murdoch sold the magazine to The Enquirer's parent company American Media Inc. (Murdoch now owns the New York Post, which, although it has more of a regional, news-centered focus, still has significant celebrity coverage.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Enquirer
Excerpt:1926 – 1990s
In 1926, William Griffin, a protege of William Randolph Hearst, founded the paper as The New York Evening Enquirer, a Sunday afternoon broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout New York City, using money lent to Griffin by Hearst. As partial payment of his loan, Hearst asked Griffin to use the Enquirer as a proving ground for new ideas. Hearst took the ideas that worked in his successful publications; the less successful ideas stayed with the Enquirer, and as a result the Enquirer's sales never soared. During the 1930s and 1940s, it became a voice for isolationism and pro-fascist propaganda. The paper was indicted along with Griffin for sedition by a grand jury in 1942 for subverting the morale of US troops due to Griffin's editorials against US military involvement in World War II. The charges were later dropped.^[2][3]
In 1952 the paper’s circulation had fallen to 17,000 copies a week and it was purchased by Generoso Pope Jr., the son of the founder of Il Progresso, New York's Italian language daily newspaper.^[3] It has been alleged that Mafia boss Frank Costello provided Pope the money for the purchase in exchange for the Enquirer's promise to list lottery numbers and to refrain from all mention of Mafia activities.^[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generoso_Pope,_Jr.
Excerpt:
Generoso Paul "Gene" Pope, Jr. (January 13, 1927 – October 2, 1988) was an American Media mogul, best known for creating The National Enquirer.^[1]
Pope learned the newspaper business from his father, Generoso Pope Sr., a New York political powerbroker and quarry magnate whose Italian-American newspaper interests included the Corriere d'America and the daily Il Progresso Italo-Americano. Generoso Pope Sr. is said to have had ties to New York crime boss Frank Costello, and at the birth of his son asked Costello to be the godfather. Pope Jr. took over the daily operations of the Il Progresso Italo-Americano at the age of 21 after completing his education at the Horace Mann School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a bachelor's degree in general engineering in 1946. After his father died in April, 1950 at age 59, Pope worked for the CIA's psychological warfare unit.
Pope acquired the New York Enquirer in 1952 for $75,000. The Enquirer purchase was supposedly made, in part, with a loan from Costello. In 1954, Pope revamped the format from a broadsheet to a tabloid, and renamed it The National Enquirer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generoso_Pope
Excerpt:
Generoso Pope fathered three sons after he came to the United States. Fortunato "Fortune" (1918–1996) graduated from Columbia University and became an executive in the family construction business. Anthony (1919–2005) was the middle son. Generoso Pope, Jr. (1927–1988) graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology at age 19 and became the owner of the National Enquirer, which was headquartered in Lantana, Florida at the time of his death.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/31055
Excerpt:

According to legend, Mr. Pope, the son of a legendary Italian who came to the U.S. As a penniless immigrant and rose to become a multi-millionaire publisher of the nation’s largest foreign language newspaper, Il Progresso Italiano,  merchant and contractor, and friend of Presidents.  Generoso Pope’s Godfather was gambler and Mafia kingpin Frank Costello who reportedly lent Mr. Pope the $75,000 he paid to buy the Enquirer’

In the past I had called two future Presidents of the United States by their first names, as I did with presidential Cabinet members,  a host of United States Senators and members of the House of Representatives.
I called Generoso Pope Mr. Pope.

Moreover, I am a product of an Educational system overseen by the awesome Sisters of St. Joseph, hard nosed Jesuit instructors, and the sadistic drill instructors at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island South Carolina. More fondly recalled as Marine Corps boot camp.

None of these harsh environments began to match the fear and severity of life at Generoso Pope’s National Enquirer.

When I was there I was surrounded by refugees from Fleet Street - journalists recruited by Mr. Pope who admired the aggressive style of British newsmen which he strove to imitate at the Enquirer.

http://american-business.org/2676-racketeer-influenced-and-corrupt-organizations-act.html
Excerpt:
Date: Enacted on October 15, 1970
Significance: The RICO Act was designed to put an end to the enormous illegal profits enjoyed by the Mafia.
In the wake of Prohibition’s repeal, organized crime families remained powerful by engaging in other forms of illegal trade, including narcotics and prostitution. Harry Anslinger, director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was the first federal lawenforcement official to challenge the nation’s drug rings, but he got no cooperation from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover. By 1950, organized crime family chiefs Joseph Bonanno, Joseph Profaci, Vincent Mangano, and Gaetano “Tommy” Gagliano ran their empires from behind the scenes with a free hand. Of the period’s major Mafia bosses, only Frank Costello was known to the public.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger
Excerpt:
Some of his critics allege that Anslinger and the campaign against marijuana had an hidden agenda, DuPont petrochemical interests and William Randolph Hearst together created the highly sensational anti-marijuana campaign to eliminate hemp as an industrial competitor. The credibility of this theory is weakened by the fact that hemp never managed to become a competitive alternative to wood pulp or nylon in any country in the twentieth century, see Hemp. Indeed, Anslinger did not himself consider marijuana a serious threat to American society until in the fourth year of his tenure (1934), at which point an anti-marijuana campaign, aimed at alarming the public, became his primary focus as part of the government's broader push to outlaw all drugs.^{[6][not in citation given]}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midnight_Climax
Excerpt:
Operation Midnight Climax was an operation initially established by Sidney Gottlieb and placed under the direction of Narcotics Bureau officer George Hunter White under the alias of Morgan Hall for the CIA as a sub-project of Project MKULTRA, the CIA mind-control research program that began in the 1950s.
The project consisted of a web of CIA-run safehouses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York. It was established in order to study the effects of LSD on unconsenting individuals. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safehouses, where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances, including LSD, and monitored behind one-way glass. Several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations.
The safehouses were dramatically scaled back in 1962, following a report by CIA Inspector General John Earman that strongly recommended closing the facility. The San Francisco safehouses were closed in 1965, and the New York City safehouse soon followed in 1966.
The file destruction undertaken at the order of CIA Director Richard Helms and former MKULTRA chief Sidney Gottlieb in 1972 makes a full investigation of claims impossible. However, many records did survive the purge. News of the story began to leak following a landmark story by New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh on illegal CIA domestic surveillance. This report triggered Senate Subcommittee hearings which investigated MKULTRA, and brought Operation Midnight Climax to light.

[edit] See also

• Human experimentation in the United States

http://axiomamuse.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/whats-in-the-drivers-licence-bar-code/
Excerpt: 
What's in the driver's license bar code?
FromScott Schram

Last time I had my driver's license renewed, I noticed a bar code on the back.   So, I decided to try to read this bar code to see what kind of information might be hidden there. 

Alabama allows you to refuse to put your social security number on the front of the license, and I was particularly interested in finding out if they had secretly encoded it in the bar code.

There are several different types of bar codes.  There are 1-dimensional codes, like the familiar UPC code found on food products.  The code used on the Alabama license is a 2-dimensional code of the format PDF417 (or PDF-417.) 

The site BarCode 1.net has a lot of information about the various kinds of bar codes and how to read and write them.PDF417 bar codes look like this.  (This isn't the one from my driver's license.) I found some demo software from Axte lthat will read the PDF417 from a TIF1image file.

Using a flat bed image scanner, I scanned the back of the license into a file, and decoded the bar codes into plain text.  Mike from Alabama writes that this site has an easy to use decoder that might work better than the one from Axtel.  The bar code contains 286 bytes of information.  The information is not encrypted and is delimited by short codes.  The file begins with the letters AAMVA, then includes several fields containing the personal information printed on the license.  There was no social security number,and no surprises.  (However, your state might be different.)   

The only other information was some short codes at the beginning which indicate that the license came from Alabama, and is version number 1.  What could be the purpose for including all of this information in a barcode on the back of the license when they already have the information in the state database?  It must be there to communicate the information quickly to someone who is not connected to the database.

For example, police could quickly collect names, addresses and race of everyone passing a roadblock or boarding an airplane.  If you move to another state, it would save them a bit of typing.  For them to make use of the information in the license itself, you have to give the license to them.  It would be far more useful to law enforcement if they could check everyone's ID without them being aware of it.  (See discussion of facial recognition below.)  The government migh tpropose adding something to the license that can be queried via a low power radio transmitter (like shoplifting tags, or automatic toll collection schemes do now).
   
Paul from NY writes that the NY driver's license has both 1-D and 2-D barcodes.  The 1-Dbarcode contains the ID number, the birthdate and the expiration date.  Paul says that whenever he goes to a convenience store to buy beer, they scan his license using the IDentiScan IDS6000 which flashes red or green depending on age.  According to their site, the IDentiScan records the age, license number, date of birth and expiration date.  The information can later be uploaded to a host computer or printed.  Of course, the only information that they need to know is that you are over 21. 

The unlikely rationale offered by IDenti Scan is this: "Many bar, restaurant, and liquor store owners aren't aware of their state's legislation concerning the purchase of age sensitive products by a minor."  Since your personal information is stored, it could easily be combined with the cash register data and sold. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB)requires a scan of your license at all liquor stores and the purchase information is kept in electronic database in Harrisburg for use by law enforcement.

Wired News reports that bars are using the scans to collect data on their customers.  David from Kansas writes that he used a reader to get the information from the magnetic strip on his license, and found that it duplicated the information printed on the front. 
The AAMVA turns out to be an acronym for American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (their site).The AAMVA National Standard for the DL/ID 2000 available here describes the bar code file format and all of the possible fields (including several which are not on my license).  It describe smapping drivers license information to magnetic tape, optical memory cards, and integrated circuits.  Those other formats can hold a lot more data than a bar code, and would be much more difficultto read (or more likely will be encrypted.)

 A binary file containing your photograph could easily be included in such a format. (Your state is probably already keeping a copy of your license photograph in a database in case you turn out to be a criminal.) But, most likely a chip in the license of the near futurewill store your finge rprintand you'll be required to touch a scanner to prove it's your card.

The Denver Postreports that driver's license photographs of innocent people have been routinely used in police photo lineups for over 30 years. If you are mistakenly identified as a criminal, a background check is run on you, and you may be interviewed by police and required to producean alibi.  Hidden cameras and facial recognition software have been used at the Superbowl, and other public places.  The existing driver's license photographs, taken under controlled lighting conditions could allow everyone to be identified and where abouts recorded in a database.  (Update: It has been reported that some of the facial recognition software currently doesn't work very well in actual use.)  I'm sure that you'll be comforted knowing that the AAMVA is fulfilling its mission "to more effectively serve the driving public" by developing standards for the storage and exchange of     
facial, fingerprint and signature images.

 Recently the AAMVA has been behind efforts to integrate the driver's license information from each of the 50 states, creating in effect,a nationa lID card. There are some interesting articles on the AAMVA site, including reprints from their Move Magazine:  A License to Sell (your driver's license information) "Motor vehicle agencies have large databases, replete with information on drivers, vehicles and other topics, that can be extremely attractive to other agencies and private sector businesses.

Driver files not only include names, addresses and photos, but sometimes contain information on convictions, medical conditions and other personal data that companies may find useful for marketing. "Biometrics - Identifying the Issue "One of the advantages of driver's license systems is that they deal with cooperative individuals (more or less), who can be instructed to assume fixed poses.

The environment in which the individuals' images are captured also can be controlled, including lighting, distance of the capture device from the subject, etc. This affords the opportunity to capture images that are as consistent as possible, greatly aiding the comparison task."Current and Ongoing Efforts - Biometrics "AAMVA is very pleased to have had the opportunity to work through the biometric industry to develop the first ever minutiae extraction standard for finger imaging."Biometrics Big Boon or Big Brother  "Motor vehicle administrators search for new ways to use promising new technologies without trampling on customer beliefs."Note that they say customer "beliefs", not "rights."http://schram.net/articles/barcode.html

The first patent for a bar code type product (US Patent #2,612,994)

http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventions/a/Bar-Codes.htm
Excerpt:
It is method of automatic identification and data collection.

History of Bar Codes

The first patent for a bar code type product (US Patent #2,612,994) was issued to inventors Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver on October 7, 1952. The Woodland and Silver bar code can be described as a "bull's eye" symbol, made up of a series of concentric circles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Joseph_Woodland
Excerpt:
Personal life
Woodland was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey the elder of two boys. After graduating from Atlantic City High School, Woodland went on to earn his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (BSME) from Drexel University in 1947.^[2] During his military service in WWII, Woodland worked as a technical assistant with the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. From 1948-1949, Woodland worked as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Drexel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Silver
Excerpt:
Bernard Silver (September 21, 1924 – August 28, 1963) was an early developer of barcode technology alongside Norman Joseph Woodland.
Silver earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Drexel Institute of Technology in 1947.^[1] In 1948 Silver paired with Norman Joseph Woodland to come up with an automated way to read product data after overhearing the conversation of a local grocery store president. Their initial results, a system of lines and circles based on Morse code, was replaced with a bulls eye pattern so it could be scanned from any direction.^[2] Silver and Woodland filed a patent for their system on October 20, 1949.^[3] The patent was granted on October 7, 1952 as patent No. 2,612,994.^[4]
During his life Silver served as a physics instructor at Drexel and as vice-president of Electro Nite Inc.^[5] He died in an automobile accident on August 28, 1963 at the age of 38.^[5][6] In 2011 Silver, alongside Woodland, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.^[7]

http://www.barcoding.com/information/barcode_history.shtml
Excerpt:

His first idea was to use patterns of ink that would glow under ultraviolet light, and the two men built a device to test the concept. It worked, but they encountered problems ranging from ink instability to printing costs. Nonetheless, Woodland was convinced he had a workable idea. He took some stock market earnings, quit Drexel, and moved to his grandfather's Florida apartment to seek solutions. After several months of work he came up with the linear bar code, using elements from two established technologies: movie soundtracks and Morse code.

Woodland, now retired, remembers that after starting with Morse code, "I just extended the dots and dashes downwards and made narrow lines and wide lines out of them." To read the data, he made use out of Lee de Forest's movie sound system from the1920's. De Forest had printed a pattern of varying degrees of transparency on the edge of the film, then shone a light through it as the picture ran. A sensitive tube on the other side translated the shifts in brightness into electric waveforms, which were in turn converted to sound by loudspeakers. Woodland planned to adapt this system by reflecting light off his wide and narrow lines and using a similar tube to interpret the results.

Woodland took his idea back to Drexel, where he began putting together a patent application. He decided to replace his wide and narrow lines with concentric circles, so that they could be scanned from any direction. This became known as the bull's-eye code. Meanwhile, Silver investigated what form the codes should ultimately take. The two filed a patent application on October 20, 1949.

In 1951 Woodland got a job at IBM, where he hoped his scheme would flourish. The following year he and Silver set out to build the first actual bar code reader – in the living room of Woodland's house in Binghamton, New York. The device was the size of a desk and had to be wrapped in black oilcloth to keep out ambient light. It relied on two key elements: a five-hundred-watt incandescent bulb as the light source and an RCA935 photo-multiplier tube, designed for movie sound systems, as the reader.

http://mavervorlmedia.com/the-devil-shops-krogers/