PETRUS ROMANUS (Pt 11) The False Prophet And The Antichrist Are Here

The solidarity between Pope Benedict and Cardinal Bertone goes back a long way and it certainly appears to have continued—at least for the first few years of Benedict’s papacy—in the time following the “Message of Fatima” controversy. 

After being elected pope in April, 2005 and taking his place as successor of John Paul II as Sovereign of the Vatican City State and leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Ratzinger as “Pope Benedict XVI” quickly appointed Cardinal Bertone to replace Fatima co-conspirator Angelo Sodano as the Cardinal Secretary of State. On April 4, 2007, Benedict also appointed Bertone as his Camerlengo to administrate the duty of the Pope in the case of a vacancy of the papacy. Benedict has since made decisions that indicate Bertone could be (or once was) his choice for successor, and both men have at times appeared to be stacking and massaging the Red Hats in Bertone’s favor for the next (final?) conclave. This was noted in the May 13, 2011National Catholic Reporter article, “A Triptych on Benedict’s Papacy, and Hints of What Lies Beyond,” when NCR Senior Correspondent John L. Allen Jr. spoke of the shake-up inside the Roman Curia (the Curia is the administrative apparatus of the Vatican and, together with the pope, the central governing body of the Catholic Church) in which Italian Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu was appointed the Substitute for General Affairs by Pope Benedict XVI. 

Becciu, who replaced Archbishop Fernando Filoni for the job, seemed at first an odd selection to Vatican insiders. “Given how difficult it is to master the role [of Substitute], many observers found it curious that Filoni would be shipped out after less than four years, to be replaced by someone in Becciu who has no previous experience at all working inside the Vatican,” observed the NCR.[i] But then the nail was hit on the head when the news service added, “When the dust settles, the most obvious beneficiary of these moves would seem to be Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State, who will not have to be concerned about the new substitute forming a rival center of power.”[ii] The job of the Substitute for General Affairs has been described as the most complicated and demanding responsibility in the Roman Curia due to the staggering amount of concerns the Substitute must carry on a daily basis. Roughly compared to a White House Chief of Staff, the Substitute meets with the Pontiff usually once per day to administer Vatican affairs and also regularly reports to the Cardinal Secretary of State (currently Cardinal Bertone). The organizational “success or failure of a papacy often rests on his shoulders,” adds the NCR. 

And those who have handled the office well over the years “have been the stuff of legend: Giovanni Battista Montini, for instance, was the substitute under Pius XII from 1937 to 1953, and went on to become Pope Paul VI; Giovanni Benelli, who was Paul’s own substitute from 1967 to 1977, was widely understood to be the power behind the throne” (emphasis added).[iii]

But if positioning a Vatican novice in the role of Substitute in order not to challenge future papal possibilities for the Italian Cardinal Bertone was telling, Pope Benedict even more-so aligned the group-type from which the next pope will come, when on January 6, 2012 he named twenty-two new cardinals, most of them Europeans, primarily Italians already holding key Vatican stations. By elevating these advisors to the Sacred College of Cardinals at a February 18^th ceremony in Rome, the German pope certified that “Europeans will now number over half of all cardinal-electors (67 out of 125), and nearly a quarter of all voters in a conclave will be Italian,” reported Newsmax.com.[iv] As a result, Benedict seemed to put his definitive stamp on an Italian successor and lined up those who could give Bertone the so-called apostolic chair of Saint Peter. And evidently this wasn’t Benedict’s idea alone. Most Vatican experts “put the large number of Italian appointments down to the influence of the Pope’s deputy, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, whose hand in these nominations, they say, is clearly visible.”[v]

Also interesting in lieu of recent reports regarding Pope Benedict’s health (and news that he might step down in April) was the February timing of the consistory for the new cardinals to receive their red hats, rings, and titular assignments in Rome. As we hope to have Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here in print by mid April, we can only speculate why the February date was chosen. Of course the scheduling around the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter could be cited, but some who work with the pope had been pushing him for a June (Feasts of St. Peter and Paul) or November (Feast of Christ the King) consistory, and more often than not Benedict has held consistories in November (2007 and 2010). So what was the hurry? If Pope Benedict truly is considering a 2012 departure and wants to significantly influence the papal conclave toward an Italian, the date and timing in February made perfect sense as the best and final opportunity to stack the sacred deck.

Of course, just when we thought it couldn’t get any more obvious, another—and this time unprecedented—move to consolidate his power (and which also raises the question of a third contender for the throne of St. Peter) was made by Bertone himself. It followed the October 24, 2011, document, “Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” which amounted to a call by the Vatican for a World Political and Financial Authority. Published by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which is headed by Cardinal Peter Turkson, the media was quick—inside and outside Christianity—to see the dark side of socialism raising its head, not to mention prophetic implications of the paper’s call for a Global Authority seated inside the United Nations. In a chapter of our upcoming book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Herewe explain how this new unsettling directive attempts to devise a “moral” mandate for establishing “a global public authority” and “a central world bank” that would oversee individual and world pecuniary institutions through subjugation to a new global power made “at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world authority and to regional authorities” (emphasis added).^[vi]  The document was addressed at the 2011 G20 Summit in Cannes in comments by President Barack Obama and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, but nothing came of it there due to what Cardinal Bertone did just ten days later. And this is where things start getting interesting, as some soothsayers were already predicting that the author of the document, Peter Turkson of Ghana (Peter the Roman?) could be the next pope, as he is considered papabile by the College of Cardinals.

Following the election of America’s first black president in Obama, analysts around the world began speculating that perhaps Rome would follow suit and roll out the red carpet for a black pope, the first in fifteen hundred years, in somebody like Turkson. Cardinal Francis Arinze, whom Ronald L. Conte Jr. believes will be the next pope and fulfill “The Prophecy of the Popes” by taking the name Pius XIII, is also a black man, an Igbo Nigerian considered papabile since before the 2005 conclave that elected Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). “The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American US President could pave the way for the election of [a] black Pope, according to a leading black American Catholic,” wrote the Times Online in 2008. “Wilton Daniel Gregory, 60, the Archbishop of Atlanta, said that in the past Pope Benedict XVI had himself suggested that the election of a black pontiff would ‘send a splendid signal to the world’ about the universal Church.”[vii] The Associated Press agreed. “The pope has appointed Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana to head the Vatican’s justice and peace office, a high-profile post that cements his reputation as a possible future papal candidate… Turkson told reporters three weeks ago there was no reason there couldn’t be a black pope, particularly after Barack Obama was elected U.S. president.”[viii] Given that Turkson is popular in some circles, here is how the National Catholic Reporter heralded the release of his document on Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in their October 28, 2011, headline: A Papal Contender Grabs the Spotlight:

Rome saw a striking coincidence this week, which could be either simple luck or a sign of things to come. There were two big-ticket Vatican news flashes, Monday’s note on reform of the international economy and Thursday’s summit of religious leaders in Assisi. In both cases, the same Vatican official was a prime mover: Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Turkson, still young in church terms at 63, was the chief organizer of the Assisi gathering, just as he was the top signatory on the document blasting “neo-liberal” ideologies and calling for a “true world political authority” to regulate the economy. During Vatican press conferences to present both, Turkson was the star attraction each time.

Can anyone say, papabile?[ix]

Only a week following the National Catholic Reporter celebration, however, and only ten days after Turkson released his document calling for a global financial authority, an emergency summit at the Vatican was called by…you guessed it…the Secretariat of State—Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. And this time he wasn’t taking any prisoners. Bertone blasted the document by Turkson and laid down a new set of laws. From that day forward, he ordered, any new Vatican text would have to be authorized in advance by himself. The popular Chiesa News in Rome said of the power play:

Precisely when the G20 summit in Cannes was coming to its weak and uncertain conclusion, on that same Friday, November 4 at the Vatican, a smaller summit convened in the secretariat of state… In the hot seat was the [Turkson] document on the global financial crisis released ten days earlier by the pontifical council for justice and peace… The secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, complained that he had not known about it until the last moment. And precisely for this reason he had called that meeting in the secretariat of state. The conclusion of the summit was that this binding order would be transmitted to all of the offices of the curia: from that point on, nothing in writing would be released unless it had been inspected and authorized by the secretariat of state.[x]

While Bertone convinced some Vatican watchers that his overreaching motives had to do with protecting the Holy See from confusion by claiming that he had been in the dark and thus side-swiped by the release of the document (a case Chiesa News thoroughly debunked), others saw in it another giant step in Bertone carefully solidifying his powerbase in Rome. They also imagined that old enemy the Freemasons having something to do with it. “It would seem that the dark forces in the Vatican are making their moves to seize control of the Catholic Church,” wrote Catholic Jew Aron Ben Gilad. “They are using the recent document of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace on the global financial crisis as the excuse to seize autocratic control of all the congregations of the curia and putting them under the control of Cardinal Bertone and the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. Whatever the merits or demerits of this document is not the important question, but its use as an instrument for ecclesiastical masonry to take control of the Roman Curia” (emphasis added).[xi] Top Vatican watcher and journalist Andrea Tornielli had stated as much earlier, documenting how Bertone had been consolidating his influence in the Vatican:

…through a number of actions: he appointed bishops who are well known to him and friends in key roles, especially in positions involving the management and control of the Holy See’s finances. The last individual appointed, was the Bishop of Alexandria Giuseppe Versaldinew, to the position of President of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See… On the other hand, Bertone has done away with prelates who had moved against him in some way or another, such as Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who had left the Government office to become Nuncio (ambassador) to the United States, or Bishop Vincenzo di Mauro, who left the Office of Economic Affairs to become Archbishop of Vigevano.[xii]

Given what we have documented in the last few entries, one could think with some certainty that Bertone is thus a shoo-in for the end-times role of Petrus Romanus. However, as we move into 2012, cracks are suddenly appearing in the foundation of his sand castle, and not everybody in the Curia—including Pope Benedict XVI, himself—may wind up as eager to support him as they once were. So who else is rising on the radar as contender for the Final Pope?

In the next entry we consider dark horses on the horizon...

Tom Horn

Raidersnewsupdate.com

Pope Prophecy! Benedict to resign in February, False Prophet expected Next!

PETRUS ROMANUS (Pt 10) The False Prophet And The Antichrist Are Here

Sister Lucy Trapped Inside A “Mafia Code of Silence”

We ended the last entry by admitting that something unnerving did in fact seem to be happening around and with Sister Lucy in the lead-up to the release of the so-called Final Secret. After all, the first two parts of the Message ofFatima had been publically issued by her Bishop in 1941, and the Third Secret sent to the Holy See with instructions that it be made public in 1960. That year was chosen according to Lucy because the “Holy Mother” had revealed to her that it would then be when “the Message will appear more clear.” And lo and behold it was immediately following 1960 that Vatican II set in motion what many conservative Catholics today believe is a crisis of faith in the form of Roman heresies. 

And though there could have been much more to the revelation than just a Vatican II warning, and the Secret was not released in 1960 as it was supposed to be anyway (so we may never know), when Pope John XXIII read the contents of the secret, he refused to publish it, and it remained under lock and key until it was supposedly disclosed in the year 2000. If the first two Secrets were any indication of the scope and accuracy of the Third one, they had been amazingly insightful including the “miracle of the sun” that was witnessed “by over 70,000 persons (including non-believers hoping to dispel the apparitions), whereby the sun itself [seemed to be] dislodged from its setting and performed miraculous maneuvers while emitting astonishing light displays; the end of World War I; the name of the pope who would be reigning at the beginning of World War II; the extraordinary heavenly phenomenon that would be witnessed worldwide foretelling of the beginning of World War II; the ascendance of Russia (a weak and insignificant nation in 1917) to an evil monolithic power that would afflict the world with suffering and death.”[i]

But something about the Third and Final Secret was different, a phenomenon evidently to be avoided and obfuscated at all costs by the hierarchy of Rome. At a minimum, it spoke of the apostatizing of the clergy and dogma that followed Vatican II. And yet perhaps these were simply devices to lead to something more sinister, elements so dark that it was keeping Lucy awake at night. When she finally had written down the Secret in 1944 under obedience to Rome, she had a hard time doing so because of its terrifying contents. It had taken a fresh visit from the “Holy Mother” herself to convince Lucy it was okay. 

Then in the years following, she had been ordered by the Vatican to remain silent concerning its disclosure. Visits to her for hours at a time were made by Cardinal Bertone under orders from the pope during which the two of them would go over the diminutive aspects of the vision in private. This happened in 2000, again in 2001, and again in 2003. When at age ninety-seven the Carmelite nun finally passed away (2005), taking whatever secrets remained with her to the grave, her behavior at the last seemed odd to Catholics who understood Roman doctrinal “salvation” implications. 

Antonio Socci comments on this, pointing out how the long visits with the aged seer were not videotaped or recorded for posterity because viewers would have seen for themselves the psychological pressure that was being exerted on the cloistered Sister. “These thoughts came back to my mind while I was reading a passage of Bertone’s book, in which the Cardinal remembers that at one point the seer was ‘irritated’, and she told him ‘I’m not going to confession!’” About this, Socci wonders, “What kind of question could Sister Lucy answer to so strongly? Maybe someone was reminding the old Sister of the ecclesiastical power, and hinting that she would ‘not get absolution’? We don’t know, because the prelate [Bertone]—who knows and remembers the Sister’s (quite tough) answer very well—says he literally ‘forgot’ what his question was.”[ii]

It appears in truth that poor Lucy was trapped inside a sinister ring ofRomanita Omertà Siciliani or “Mafia Code of Silence” imposed by Rome. Yet Socci believes the full truth of Fatima may have gotten out anyway, and based on his investigation he offers a brave theory in his book The Fourth Secret of Fatima about what actually transpired in 2000 behind the Vatican’s walls. John Vennari summarizes Socci’s shocking hypothesis this way:

Socci believes that when John Paul II decided to release the Secret, a power-struggle of sorts erupted in the Vatican. He postulates that John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger wanted to release the Secret in its entirety, but Cardinal Sodano, then Vatican Secretary of State, opposed the idea. And opposition from a Vatican Secretary of State is formidable.

A compromise was reached that sadly reveals heroic virtue from none of the main players.

The “Bishop dressed in white” vision, which is the four pages written by Sister Lucy would be initially revealed by Cardinal Sodano, along with his ludicrous interpretation that the Secret is nothing more than the predicted 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.

At the same time, at the May 13 2000 beatification ceremony of Jacinta and Francisco, Pope John Paul II would “reveal” the other part—the most “terrifying part”—of the Secret obliquely in his sermon. It was here that John Paul II spoke on the Apocaplyse: “Another portent appeared in Heaven; behold, a great red dragon” (Apoc. 12: 3). These words from the first reading of the Mass make us think of the great struggle between good and evil, showing how, when man puts God aside, he cannot achieve happiness, but ends up destroying himself… The Message of Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the “dragon” whose “tail swept down a third of the stars of Heaven, and dragged them to the earth” (Apoc. 12:4).

The Fathers of the [Catholic] Church have always interpreted the stars as the clergy, and the stars swept up in the dragon’s tail indicates a great number of churchmen who would be under the influence of the devil. This was Pope John Paul II’s way of explaining that the Third Secret also predicts a great apostasy.[iii]

If Socci is correct in this analysis, Bishop Richard Nelson Williamson, an English traditionalist Catholic and member of the Society of St. Pius X who opposes changes in the Catholic Church brought on by Vatican II, may have verified his hypothesis in 2005 when he related how a priest acquaintance of his from Austria shared privately that Cardinal Ratzinger had confessed: “I have two problems on my conscience: Archbishop Lefebvre and Fatima. As to the latter, my hand was forced.” Who could have “forced” Ratzinger’s hand to go along with a false or partial statement on the final Fatima Secret? Was it pressure from the papal office, or, as Williamson questions, “Some hidden power behind both Pope and Cardinal?”[iv] If Pope John Paul II’s sermon at Fatima did in fact speak to the “terrifying part” of the Final Secret—as in the Dragon’s tail sweeping down a third of the clergy to do his bidding—we are left with the unsettling impression that at least 33 percent (Masonic marker) of the Vatican’s hierarchy are committed to a Satanic Plan.

The Warning of La Salette

Most people are probably unaware that in addition to the Secrets of Fatima, a second, most renowned Marian apparition from La Salette, France, which was approved by Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII, revealed analogous information about a crisis of faith that would transpire within Roman Catholicism in the last days, during which Rome would become the seat of the Antichrist.

Delivered to Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud on September 19, 1846, the Secret of La Salette reads in part:

The earth will be struck by calamities of all kinds (in addition to plague and famine which will be wide-spread). There will be a series of wars until the last war, which will then be fought by the ten Kings of the Antichrist, all of whom will have one and the same plan and will be the only rulers of the world.  Before this comes to pass, there will be a kind of false peace in the world. People will think of nothing but amusement. The wicked will give themselves over to all kinds of sin…this will be the hour of darkness. The Church will suffer a terrible crisis… Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of the Antichrist… The Church will be in eclipse, the world will be in dismay.[v]

In The Plot Against The Pope; Coup dé’tat in the Conclave–1958, Gary Giuffré discusses how French Masonic influences who had infiltrated the Catholic clergy in the 1800s were working overtime to suppress and discredit the Secret of La Salette, even though its message had been officially favored by two popes. This was because at that time, prophetic references to Rome “becoming the seat of Antichrist” was forming a common eschatology among Catholic scholars like Cardinal Henry Manning (discussed elsewhere in the upcoming book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here), Bishop Salvator Grafen Zola, and Frederick William Helle, who saw in these predictions the work of Masonically infested clergy who plotted the overthrow of the papacy and the use of the Church as a political vehicle for an occult World Order. “These kinds of details, found in the genuine, modern-day, Marian prophecies, would always generate the greatest opposition from the Church’s enemies who had infiltrated her structures,” wrote Giuffré. “For they threatened to expose the satanic plot and long-time goal of the Masonic Lodge’s agents in the Vatican, to usurp and control the papal chair.”[vi]

And it has to be remembered that the specter of infiltration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy by members of Freemasonry’s luciferian “light bearers” was a fairly well-established agenda historically, one which Pope Pius IX called the “Synagogue of Satan.” Pope Leo XIII went so far as to issue a damning encyclical (Humanum Genus) on April 20, 1884 against the efforts to invade and corrupt Roman Catholicism by Freemasons, and yet Leo’s own Secretary of State, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro was later identified as a secret Freemason of the diabolical Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) sect of whom Satanist Aleister Crowley belonged and later became leader. When Pope Leo passed away in 1903, it was widely anticipated that Rampolla would replace him as pope, and Rampolla did receive the early votes during conclave. Then something extraordinary happened, and the balloting was interrupted when Prince Jan Maurycy Paweł Puzyna de Kosielsko, a Polish Roman Catholic Cardinal from Kraków, rose on behalf of his Sovereign, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, and shocked the assembly by declaring in Latin, “…officially and in the name and by the authority of Franz-Josef, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, that His Majesty, in virtue of an ancient right and privilege, pronounces the veto of exclusion against my Most Eminent Lord, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro.”[vii] This Jus Exclusivæ (“right of exclusion” or papal veto) was an ancient rule of order claimed by Catholic monarchs to veto a candidate for the papacy. “At times the right was claimed by the French monarch, the Spanish monarch, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Emperor of Austria. These powers would make known to a papal conclave, through a crown-cardinal, that a certain candidate for election was considered objectionable as a prospective Pope.”[viii] It has since been suggested by some historians that the alert Emperor Franz Joseph knew something of Rampolla’s masonic connection and saved Rome from usurpation. It is also noteworthy that the official Liber LII Manifesto of the O.T.O. BAPHOMET XI° does indeed list Cardinal Rampolla among its members.[ix] But was Rampolla just one of many covert Masons? The answer to that question appears to be yes according to experts like the late Canadian naval officer, author, and popular lecturer William James Guy Carr. In addition to his accounts of wartime activity as a Navigating Submarine Officer during World War One, Carr—though a conspiracy theorist—was a noted authority on the history of the Illuminati and its connection to Freemasonry. He chronicled the movement from its founding in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt to its purported penetration of the Vatican. In 1959, Carr published The Red Fog Over America, in which he said:

Weishaupt boasted that the Illuminati would infiltrate into the Vatican and bore from within, until they left it nothing but an empty shell… Since I exposed certain events which indicate that agentur of the Illuminati have infiltrated into the Vatican, I have received a number of letters from priests who have studied in the Vatican… Those who wrote assured me that the fears I express are more than well founded. One priest informed me that the Pope was surrounded by picked “Specialists”, “Experts” and “Advisors” to such an extent that he was little better than a prisoner in his own palace. Another priest informed me of the eternal surveillance exercised over the Pope…those who maintain the surveillance…give him no freedom of action even in the privacy of his own chambers. The priest said ‘Those who exercise this surveillance are all hand-picked members of a certain order and they all come from the same institution…where Weishaupt…conspired.’”[x]

Carr’s description matches so closely to what Malachi Martin and similar priests have alleged on different occasions concerning a formidable Illuminati-Masonic group inside the Vatican that it is tempting to believe Malachi himself may have been one of Carr’s informants. But was this Illuminated council the unseen hand in Rome that “forced” Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Bertone to issue what Antonio Socci thought was astuzia inganno (cunning deception) at Fatima? And would this indicate both the current pope and his Secretary of State are clandestinely committed to, or being forced to go along with, the overarching scheme of a secret order inside the Holy See to deliverPetrus Romanus? 

In the next entry our investigation begins focusing in on the shocking relationship between -- and what has been going on with -- Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal "Peter" Bertone...

Tom Horn

Raidersnewsupdate.com

Biometric log on could be the answer to security threats

Imagine logging on to your eBay account with your fingerprint. Or perhaps accessing your Facebook account via an iris scan.

It might seem a bit much for the average computer user, but it may not be that far off if an initiative is successful.

The use of biometric data as an added security measure is just one of the solutions being proposed by a consortium of firms who have come together to form the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance.

Security is a contentious issue, particularly when it comes to biometrics. While everyone accepts the need for a certain level of security to protect a person and their property, biometric methods, which include everything from fingerprints to iris scanning, is often viewed with suspicion by the public at large.

Perhaps it is the thought of being watched by multiple cameras wherever you go, or the fear that sensitive data will be leaked by those who place a lesser value on privacy. But regardless of the perceptions, it seems that companies keen to keep private data away from prying eyes are turning to such methods of authentication to ensure that only authorised users can access the information.

The latest to look at such methods are online firms who are seeking to secure the private and personal information of their users. With scams like phishing refusing to die out, and users ignoring accepted best practice in favour of convenience when choosing passwords, additional methods of authentication are being sought.

PayPal is among the founding members of FIDO, which was formally established this month after being announced in July 2012, aiming to revolutionise online authentication. The group, which also includes organisations such as Infineon technologies, Agnitio and Lenovo, is hoping to eventually replace passwords used online with more secure authentication methods.

It is aiming to create an industry-supported open protocol based on agreed standards, and the founders are already developing the specification and FIDO-compliant products. Among the technologies supported will be fingerprint scanners, and voice and facial recognition.

Trusted platform modules, USB security tokens, near field communications and one time passwords are also among the other security options being considered by the alliance as a potential way to keep hackers out and information in.

“An open standard approach such as the FIDO alliance could help to improve biometric solutions which in the future could be used to improve security online or indeed in other systems,” says security consultant Brian Honan.

Humble password

PayPal and its cohorts are not the only companies to voice dissatisfaction with the humble password. Earlier this year, Google said it hoped to eventually do away with the humble password, saying it was no longer sufficient to keep users safe. It is working on a new form of authentication with a small USB key to replace it.

With FIDO, the companies are hoping it will become the industry norm, encouraging others to use it, add to it and to keep it open to future innovation.

“The internet – especially with recent rapid mobile and cloud expansion – exposes users and enterprises, more than ever before, to fraud. It’s critical to know who you’re dealing with on the internet,” said Michael Barrett, FIDO Alliance president and PayPal chief information security officer. “By giving users choice in the way they authenticate and taking an open-based approach to standards, we can make universal online authentication a reality.”

But biometrics isn’t only being considered for use by private sector companies. The technology has already found its way into everyday life, with biometric passports and visas to help with border management, and new technology being used to help with crowd control.

Accenture has been working in this area for some time. Its specialised unit has worked on large programmes such as the US visitor scheme, which includes taking the fingerprints of every traveller that crosses into the US. More recently it has been involved in its largest project to date, with India’s UID programme, which is giving a biometric ID to 1.2 billion people.

One of its innovations designed to help with managing crowds is a tool known as “face in the crowd”, which can identify faces from live videostreams and match them to a database containing thousands of images. It’s designed to match faces even under challenging lighting conditions, or from less than optimal angles, with shadows obscuring facial features for example.

At present anyone who has travelled through Heathrow Airport has seen some of this technology in action. The airport has automated passport control gates that require biometric passports to activate. The technology is set to roll out in Amsterdam soon, and it’s likely to pop up in a few more airports before long.

“That’s been quite interesting. There’s a bank of three gates in each terminal in Heathrow and more than seven million people have come through the gates since it went live,” explained Ger Daly, managing director of Accenture’s Defence Public Safety practice. “In Schiphol, they’re rolling out a much higher number of gates as part of a next generation solution.”

He believes that gaining an understanding of biometric systems is key to accepting them. “I think there’s an image there that still has to be dealt with,” he said. “I firmly believe that the technologies we’re talking about can be used to make the streets safer. If my identity is my name and address, it’s actually very easy to steal. If it’s my face, my iris, my fingerprints – that’s harder to steal. That’s not an argument that is made often enough. There are important civil liberty and data protection issues here, but it’s shining much more of a light on that.”

Systems such as these make it harder for an identity to be stolen, he argued.

Daly believes that although the application of the technology in airports shows how it can work, it is to public safety that the technology will move next. This means using the video analysis to identify potentially problematic crowds gathering, looking at crowd density and help to understand what is happening in a specific area at one point.

Potential uses

“It has a prevention value as well,” he said, citing the potential use of the technology on the buses to identify gang members congregating.

As police budgets shrink, being able to police smarter rather than harder will be a major driver for the technology.

“This is a place where you have got to do more with less,” Daly said.

Accenture’s technology will allow police to search the footage automatically, extract the valuable data in a far shorter time period. It is particularly useful for policing football matches, where watch lists may exist for banned supporters.

But security consultant Brian Honan warns that while biometrics can be more secure than passwords, the technology can also create a false sense of security.

“By that I mean people will assume there is a higher level of security when in reality that level of security may not be there. Unlike passwords which can be easily changed people may find it hard to change their biometrics, eg their fingerprints, should they be compromised,” he said.

“There is also the issue that some people’s biometrics may change over time as a result of aging, diseases or injury. So if they are depending on biometrics alone to provide security then those situations need to be factored into the solution.

“If implemented properly with proven and mature solutions, biometrics used in conjunction with other security mechanisms can help improve security. However, it should not be viewed as a silver bullet.”

The Irish Times

Pope May Change Rules To Speed Up Conclave

The start date for a conclave of cardinals to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI may be brought forward to earlier in March.

The reigning Pope may also take the opportunity to change the rules governing the election to clear up uncertainty about when voting can begin.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said: "The Pope is considering a Motu Proprio (decree) in the coming days ... to clarify a few specific aspects of the apostolic constitution on the conclave."

It would be up to the Pope to judge whether it was "necessary and opportune" to intervene on when the meeting to elect his own successor should begin, Father Lombardi said.White smoke rises from the Sistine chapel marks Pope Benedict's election

The current law says cardinals must wait 15 days after the papacy becomes vacant before voting, in order to allow all eligible cardinals to arrive in Rome - making March 15 the presumed start date.

That delay, however, assumes a papal death and funeral. In this case, the cardinals already know that the pontificate will end on February 28 and can get to Rome in plenty of time.

Benedict will become only the second Pope to resign of his own free will in the Roman Catholic Church's 2,000-year history.

The current version of the constitution does allow the cardinals some leeway in "interpreting doubtful or controversial points" - except for the election - as long as "a majority of cardinals agrees".

In meetings known as "congregations" starting on March 1, cardinals could therefore themselves agree to bring forward the start of the conclave.

Father Lombardi earlier had said the conclave would probably start on March 15, 16, 17, 18 or 19, stating that there was no reason to alter the current rules.

But on Saturday he signalled that some cardinals had asked for the date to be brought forward, arguing that many of them were already in Rome.

Many cardinals are to attend a final audience with the Pope on February 28, before he retires to a life of quiet contemplation initially at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo and then in a Vatican monastery.

The conclave is expected to bring together most of the world's 117 "cardinal electors" and meets in secret in the Sistine Chapel until a two-thirds majority is found in favour of a candidate to be the Pope.

Bringing forward the date of the start of the conclave would help prevent any overlap with Easter, which this year falls on March 31, and the preceding Holy Week, which begins on March 24.

Sky News

Charlie McGrath with Adrian Salbuchi

IRAN'S SECRET BALLISTIC MISSILE BASE

WND has learned of the existence of a secret ballistic missile base in Iran’s Semnan Province to which the Islamic regime has moved missiles armed with microbial warheads.

The base, in the deserts of Semnan far from any city, has many underground tunnels connecting to the silo launching pads, according to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit.

The base’s command and control are connected to other bases in Noje, Hamdan, Shahid Doran in Shiraz and the country’s air traffic control centers in Tehran, Birjand and Bandar Abass.

Last year, the Revolutionary Guards aired footage on Iranian TV showing commanders along with a reporter travel via private jet to the base to observe a test launch of a Shahab 3 from an underground silo.

At that time, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace division, claimed that by placing the ballistic missiles in underground silos, the country is preparing for asymmetrical warfare, which will allow the country to stand up to more powerful enemies. Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.

Hajizadeh last September warned Israel that the Islamic regime would launch a pre-emptive attack if it felt its enemies were preparing to attack Iran.

“We cannot imagine the Zionist regime starting a war without America’s support,” he said. “Therefore, in case of a war, we will get into a war with both of them and we will certainly get into a conflict with American bases. … In that case, unpredictable and unimaginable things would happen and it could turn into a World War III.”

The regime holds one of the largest ballistic missile arsenals in the Middle East and, as reported exclusively on WND, with the help of Russian and North Korean scientists, it has developed eight microbial agents, including anthrax, plague, smallpox and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), with some of the microbes genetically altered to leave the world defenseless against such an attack.

Iran has 170 missiles targeted at Tel Aviv from underground silos, some of which are armed with biological warheads, according to another source who served in Iran’s Intelligence Ministry and who recently defected.

The first source said the Semnan ballistic missile base is surrounded by many smaller bases that provide training to the support forces from the Badr and Khatamol Anbia brigades. The base and the surrounding bases also serve as the center for the regime’s aerospace activities, including the launches of Safir missiles that successfully placed satellites into orbit. Those launches are part of the intercontinental ballistic missile program.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/found-irans-secret-ballistic-missile-base/#XxvFeEdgwEU2RhuE.99