Obera: I know present to you, for free, the OECD’s latest “Tax Co-operation: Towards a Level Playing Field” annual report. You can download it here: Tax Co-operation 2008: Towards a Level Playing Field: Assessment by the Global Forum on Taxation [2008] (Complete Edition - ISBN 9264039198) [PDF Format]

Normally you would have to pay for it - $92 to the OECD, but since I would hate for that corrupt, socialist, globalist, bossy, misanthropic, elitist organized crime gang to have fuel added to their blazing inferno of dreadfulness, I’ve gotten it for you fine folks. Don’t worry, I didn’t pay for it either…

Here are the links again for anyone who has trouble downloading them, this time at Easy-Share.com:

2008 Tax Report

The Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters: Twentieth Anniversary Edition

Improving Access to Bank Information for Tax Purposes: 2007 Progress Report

I opened many accounts with FDIB in 2005 and 2006, but I never funded the accounts. That is only because I did not have money to fund them at that time, or I would have. I was glad to see there was a bank with balls out there… They offered account funding by bank wire transfer or by e-currencies, such as e-gold, Pecunix and 1mdc - back in the good ol’ days, before e-gold and 1mdc were worthless. In mid-2005, PrivateGoldTrader started accepting “paper based instruments” on behalf of FDIB for easy account funding with cash, money orders or bank drafts (aka casheir’s cheques).

I never ran across a bad report about this bank from anyone - until it went offline. That lead me to assume they operated with integrity up until they stole most clients’ money (I assume). I read one report saying as much about his account on PowerPrivacy’s forums.

What follows here is a report I wrote about the bank’s demise for the site’s entry on AboutUs.org. For some reason, you later needed an account to access the information because it had been deemed as “Adult” content. That doesn’t make any sense, but here it is, out in the open…

First Digital International Bank (aka “1st Digi Bank”) has been suspected of being fraudulant, and the website is currently down as of Novemebr 1, 2006. First Digital International Bank was an internet bank offering anonymous accounts to clients, run by an unknown group, possibly based in Eastern Europe or Russia (this is a guess based on their handling of the English language and a few other factors), from 2000 to late 2006. The bank originally had a banking license from the government of Montenegro, which (illegally) canceled all licenses of their offshore banks in 2002. First Digital International Bank, however, carried on their business with a new twist; they decided to offer anonymous accounts requiring no ID and use “trustee” accounts instead of bank correspondent accounts. According to 1st Digi Bank, they would accept clients doing any type of business accept ones that engaged in scams or fraud. The bank used the MacroBanker 4 software. In 2006, they updated their bank license page claiming they had fought in court three times with the government of Montenegro over their license and the issue had still not been resolved. They further claimed that they had been issued banking licenses by the government of North Korea (yeah, right!) and the government of the successionist Somali state of Puntland, which is where their new phone number had been routed to.

The bank had ties of some sort with Adminus, the admin of www.privacy.li, (although it is pretty doubtful it was run by him), as he promoted the bank and perhaps hosted their servers, and he was/is, by his own admission, friends with “Jorge Amanda”, the man who ran/runs PGT (PrivateGoldTrader.com), who also promoted the bank. Interestingly, one of PGT’s addresses for sending money to is/was an address in Canada (care of “Privacy Consultants”) also used by a notorious internet scammer named “Georg Adem” for his company, “Financial Privacy Consultants.” Many people on the internet accused Adminus of helping or even being Georg Adem; Adminus maintains that Adem was merely his client for a short time and he does not have any dealings with Adem. Strangely though, according to their website, Financial Privacy Consultants (privacy-consultants.com), the company headed up by Adem, “merged with Privacy.li“. Adminus also claimed to have money held by 1st Digi Bank, but was mum about what happened to his money when the bank went offline / closed its doors. PGT claimed to have been issued a gold trading license by the “privacy loving finance minister from Somaliland.” Somaliland is a break-away state within the territory of what is traditionally thought of as Somalia.

In September or October of 2006, the bank claimed, in a message to clients through their online banking console, that a large deposit had been made into their “trustee account” (under the company name “DrebaForexManagement”) at a Lithuanian bank, which was exchanged for e-gold and sent to their client’s e-gold account from whom the deposit was made. Apperantly, the deposit was from money obtained by fraud, and 1st Digi Bank’s “trustee” account was closed by the Lithuanian bank (which presumably kept the deposits) after 1st Digi Bank had already sent the e-gold to their client, thus 1st Digi Bank lost a large amount of money in the transaction. 1st Digi Bank claimed that they did not know if the bank would be able to carry on, but they would soon (by the end of 2006) have new “trustee” accounts in the likes of Dubai in the UAE, or another middle eastern country to which clients could then send bank wire transfers. After a few weeks, the site was taken offline and never came back. Up until mid-2007, however, a mirror of the site could be found at https://www.privategoldtrader.com (notice the https, not http), but the mirror lacked the ability to log into an account or open a new one. At least some people who had money in their accounts at 1st Digi Bank never saw their money again or heard from the bank representatives again, ie. 1st Digi Bank stole their depositors’ money when the site went offline.

The people at PGT (privategoldtrader.com), who accepted paper payment instruments (cash, cheques, money orders, etc) on behalf of 1st Digi Bank starting in late 2005, claimed that the people behind 1st Digi Bank were fed up with problems with their accounts due to criminals using their bank to accept the proceeds of fraudulent transactions, and could not find a workable solution to the problem yet. They mentioned that perhaps 1st Digi Bank reps could still be found on FreeNet.

• posted by Anonymous on November 2, 2007

The European Commission (EC) announced on Thursday that it has adopted an amending proposal to the savings tax directive that will widen the scope of the legislation “with a view to closing existing loopholes and eliminating tax evasion.”

Effective since 2005, the savings tax directive seeks to ensure that paying agents either report interest income received by taxpayers resident in other EU member states or levy a withholding tax on the interest income received. The Commission proposal seeks to tighten the directive, so member states can tax more interest payments channelled through intermediate tax-exempted structures.

The EC proposes to extend the scope of the directive to forms of income obtained through investments in some “innovative financial products” as well as investments in certain life insurances products. It also proposed to simplify the technical operation of the directive to make it more “user friendly and efficient.”

Laszlo Kovacs, Commissioner for Taxation and Customs, said: “The first report on the operation of the savings tax directive concluded that the directive, although effective within the limits of its scope, can be easily circumvented. The current scope of the directive needs to be extended, in order to meet our goal of stamping out tax evasion, which affects the national budgets and creates disadvantages for the honest citizens.”

At present, it is relatively easy for individuals to circumvent the rules of the savings directive by using interposed legal persons or arrangements, such as foundations or trusts, which are not taxed on their income – something that the Commission has long acknowledged.

With regard to interest payments made by paying agents (banks, financial institutions, independent professionals, etc.) established in the EU to certain intermediate structures established outside the EU, the Commission proposes that paying agents in the EU apply the provisions of the directive (exchange of information or withholding tax) at the time of the payment to the intermediate structure, as if this payment was directly made to the individual.

Concerning payments of interest to certain intermediate structures established within the EU, including some non-charitable trusts and foundations, those structures will be always obliged to act as a “paying agent upon receipt” under the proposed new regime. This means that the provisions of the directive must be applied by these structures upon receipt of any interest payment, no matter where they are established and regardless of the actual distribution of any sums to the individual beneficial owners. The suggested definition of “paying agent upon receipt” includes all entities and legal arrangements (trusts, foundations etc) which are not taxed on their income under the general rules for direct taxation in their Member State of residence or establishment.

The savings tax directive can also be circumvented by using financial vehicles other than a classical savings account in a bank. To combat this, the Commission proposes extending the scope of the directive to income from securities which are equivalent to debt claims and life insurance contracts whose performance is strictly linked to income from debt claims.

In addition, the Commission proposal seeks to ensure a level playing field between all investment funds or schemes independently of their legal form. This means that income obtained from those investment funds by individuals resident in the EU will be subject to effective taxation.

The savings tax directive has applied in 42 jurisdictions since July 1, 2005. These include 27 member states, 5 non-EU ‘third countries’ (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra and San Marino) and 10 dependent and associated non-EU territories (Anguilla, Aruba, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Montserrat, the Netherlands Antilles and the Turks and Caicos Islands).

Following the request of the Ecofin Council, the European Commission started discussions with selected Asian financial centres earlier this year regarding the application of the directive, namely Hong Kong, Singapore and Macao. Formal negotiations are also expected to take place with Norway, at its request, whilst other jurisdictions like Bermuda and Iceland have shown interest in participating in the savings taxation arrangements.

This is their policy on banking secrecy:

“The Bank had the right to cooperate with national and foreign authorities in information provision in cases where official investigation is being carried out on a client or there is official request for information with reference to an investigation.”

I contacted Loyal Bank to inquiry if this meant a court order and I was told, “No, an official request can be a phone call or faxed letter from an police or legal authority.”

LOL, you might as well bank in the US and save money rather than pay Loyal’s very high fees.

Loyal Bank is the worst bank in Caribbean.

That got me wondering… is that so? Surely banking secrecy is stronger than that by law in St. Vincent. …right? Well, I didn’t look up the law, but I did e-mail Loyal Bank and ask them a serries of questions about this. In fact, I didn’t just stop there. I asked a slew of Caribbean area offshore banks the same questions in e-mails and the following is what I’ve learned after one week’s time from when I sent the initial messages…

First of all, to start out this story properly, I should tell you the questions I asked and how I did it. For the how, I just e-mailed them all from my e-mail account. The who, when and what I asked are as follows:

All on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at about 4:00 AM (somewhere) I sent the e-mails, one after the other with the same questions and subject line.

THE BANKS

St. Vincent’s Safe Harbor Bank, Antigua and Barbuda’s Global Capital Bank, Stanford International Bank and Antigua Overseas Bank, Anguilla’s National Bank of Anguilla (International), St. Lucia’s Bank of Saint Lucia International, along with Hallmark Bank & Trust Ltd. and BIBT of the Turks and Caicos Islands,  and also Griffon Bank and Private Capital Bank the two of which are chartered in the Commonwealth of Dominica.

October 30th, I e-mailed: St. Vincent’s Loyal Bank, DGM Bank of Barbados, Atlantic International Bank, Caye Bank and Provident Bank of Belize, and NCB Cayman.

THE QUESTIONS

Dear bank rep,
I have some questions about banking secrecy at your bank. I hope you’ll be glad to answer them. Here they are:

Under what conditions will the bank share information on its clients?

Does there have to be a government investigation underway? Does that matter?

If so, who can conduct this investigation?

Does it take a court order? Is an official request good enough?

Thanks and I hope you’ll answer my questions as best you can.

THE RESULTS

ANSWERS AFTER APPROX. ONE WEEK’S TIME HAS PASSED:

The e-mail I sent to Dominica’s Private Capital Bank immediately bounced, so I sent another to their main e-mail address: info@privatecapitalbank.net …That bounced too. I can only conclude that their tech guys are incompetent, but I already knew that when I saw that their site was built entirely in Flash. The e-mail to BIBT in TCI also bounced.

Gifta Dujon-Francois from Dominica’s Griffon Bank was the quickest, e-mailing me back the next day with answers.

Under what conditions will the bank share information on its clients?
The Bank shares information upon request from our regulators. They are
The Financial Sector Supervision Unit (FSSU) and the Financial
Intelligence Authority (FIA). The request can be made under the
following circumstances: where the bank reports suspicious activity,
where a request is initiated by another jurisdiction to the FIA and
where the FIA is carrying out their own investigation. Disclosure of
client information to any person other than the regulators is an
offence.

Does there have to be a government investigation underway? Does that
matter?
The type of investigation is irrelevant if the request for information is being made by the regulators.

If so, who can conduct this investigation?

[NO DIRECT ANSWER]
Does it take a court order? Is an official request good enough?

A court order is not necessary for the regulators to request information. Their
authority allows them to visit a financial institution at any time and
request information.

Please let me know if this is what your required.

On October 31st, Joy Flowers (what a name!) of Belize’s Caye Bank e-mailed me back with answers.

Under what conditions will the bank share information on its clients?
Belize has very strict Secrecy Laws and Regulations. The Financial
Intelligence Unit was established in September 2002. Their role is
primarily for the investigation and prosecution of Money Laundering and
other financial crimes.

Information will only be released to a third party upon proof of wrong doing
and that a financial crime has been committed. Such proof must be by way of
documentation from a competent authority such as the courts.

Does there have to be a government investigation underway? Does that
matter?
[Joy Flowers] Even if there is a government investigation underway, this is
not sufficient proof that a crime has been committed. It is still “hear
say” until proven otherwise.

If so, who can conduct this investigation?
[Joy Flowers] Investigations of Financial Crimes or money laundering
activities can only be conducted through the Financial Intelligent Unit in
Belize.

Does it take a court order? Is an official request good enough?
[Joy Flowers] An official request by and in itself is not good enough. There
must be proper documentation to substantiate the claim and/or request for
information.

I find that kind of strange because, from what I’ve read and contrary to popular belief, Belize has no legislated or regulated banking secrecy.

On November 3rd (five days later) I recieved a response from Gabriella Pfeifauf of St. Vincent’s Loyal Bank, the bank that kicked off this whole inquirey. And I quote…

Under what conditions will the bank share information on its clients?
If the client gives us expressed consent to do this in writing, if compelled to do so under law. These laws include the Proceeds of Crime and Money Laundering (prevention) Act

Does there have to be a government investigation underway? Does that matter?
Any request for an investigation should come through the competent authorities.

If so, who can conduct this investigation?
This is usually the competent authorities such as the Financial Intelligence Unit which is established by Parliament.

Does it take a court order? Is an official request good enough?
A Production Order MUST be presented through our Court. We do not act on requests from other institutions. If approached we advise the party to contact the authorities who will guide them through protocol and process.

The rest of the Banks I contacted have not answered because, as everyone knows, it’s very hard to answer an e-mail if you’re only given one week.  Or maybe they’re just lazy or don’t know how to type and click buttons, or they’re just not very service oriented or non-client friendly …or the benefit of the doubt: they’re so used to keeping their mouths shut that they did not answer my e-mails. ha! I wish!

Has anyone had any experiences with these or other Caribbean banks they want to comment on? Anonymous comments are enabled. Cheers.

During a recent European Free Trade Association meeting, negotiations took place between Liechtenstein and the European Union to finalise an anti-fraud agreement, the conclusion of which would cement Liechtenstein’s commitment to conforming to European standards with regard to cross-border exchange of information.

According to Prime Minister Otmar Hasler, Liechtenstein remains determined to discourage cross-border tax offences. While maintaining that Liechtenstein was fully prepared to co-operate, however, Hasler added that it should not be expected to provide any greater degree of cooperation than that currently conceded by other European Union member states. Indeed, calls for double taxation agreements to be signed with states harbouring additional demands would be met by Liechtenstein’s request to be recognised as a diverse and highly industrialized business location, Hasler said.

The draft form of the anti-fraud agreement reflects Liechtenstein’s commitment to providing legal and administrative assistance, on the basis of a widened concept of fraud. Furthermore, Liechtenstein has also revealed its intention to fully comply with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s standards regarding bilateral double taxation agreements.

Don’t vote for that fascist war-monger Democrat, Barrack “Barkey” Obomber!

Don’t vote for that socialist war-monger Republican, John McCain.

Neither of them support privacy. Reject them and fire them from their Senatorial jobs.

The whole left-wing Democrats vs. right wing Republicans paradigm is a sham anyway. They’re both corrupt as a four dollar buck. Get over it already. Think like a rational person for just one day!

Again, vote for anyone but them. I recommend Ron Paul, but Ron Paul has endorsed Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. He previously endorsed Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader and Bob Barr also.

Whatever you do, vote for privacy and freedom.

Guidance Software’s EnCase Professional v2.12 (Full Version)

Official EnCE: EnCase Certified Examiner Study Guide, 2nd Edition

You’ll need uTorrent or some other torrent program to download those.

A good coder has as many uses for hash functions as George Washington Carver did for peanuts—but law enforcement is fond of these digital fingerprinting techniques as well, because they allow reams of data to be rapidly sifted and identified. Legal scholars, however, have spent a decade puzzling over whether the use of hash value analysis in a criminal investigation counts as a Fourth Amendment “search.” A federal court in Pennsylvania last week became the first to rule that it does—but one legal expert says an appeal is very likely.

Chief Judge Yvette Kane of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania penned the opinion in United States v. Crist, granting Robert Crist’s request for the suppression of child pornography police found on his computer. Crist had fallen behind on his rent, and his landlord hired a father-and-son pair to move the delinquent tenant’s belongings out to the curb, where a friend of one of the movers, Seth Hipple, picked up Crist’s computer. When Crist returned home, he began freaking out over his vanished machine—while Hipple was freaking out over what he’d found in a folder on the hard drive: Videos appearing to depict underage sex, which he promptly deleted.

Hipple called the East Pennsboro Township Police Department, and though the computer had been reported stolen, it soon found its way to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, where special agent David Buckwash made an image of the hard drive and began sifting through its contents using a specialized forensics program called EnCase. Rather than directly examining the contents of the hard drive, Buckwash initially ran the imaged files through an MD5 hash algorithm, producing a unique (for practical purposes) digital fingerprint, or hash value, for each one. He then compared these smaller hash values with a database of the hash values of known and suspected child porn, maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He came up with five definite hits and 171 videos containing “suspected” child porn. He then moved to gallery view, inspecting all the photos on the drive, and ultimately finding nearly 1,600 images that appeared to be child pornography.

None of this, however, had been done with a warrant. That raised two intriguing legal questions. First, longstanding precedent holds that if a private party, unprompted by police, conducts a search—by opening a package or briefcase, for instance—then the owner has lost their “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the searched object. That means police are in the clear if they proceed to examine whatever the private party has discovered. But it’s not always clear how this rule applies in particular cases. If a private person opens a briefcase, police might scrutinize it more closely when they take a look—but the exception clearly doesn’t mean that police can scour an entire house, ripping open mattresses and digging through closets, just because someone else has already wandered through the place. So had Crist lost his expectation of privacy in the entire hard drive, or only in the few files and folders Hipple had seen?

Even if the entire hard drive wasn’t to be considered fair game, however, a more interesting question remained: Was the analysis of hash values of the files on the hard drive a search at all? The question was first broached in a 1996 Yale Law Journal article titled “Cyberspace, general searches, and digital contraband.” The author noted an interesting quirk of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: Courts have held that a “search” occurs when someone’s “expectation of privacy” is violated, provided that expectation is one that society is prepared to regard as “reasonable.” But they’ve also held that there is no such “reasonable expectation” as regards the possession of illegal materials, like narcotics or child porn. In 2004, the Supreme Court would rely on this logic in the case of Illinois v. Caballes to hold that a trained drug dog’s sniff, which only reveals the presence or absence of illegal drugs, does not count as a search. In the digital realm, this raised the possibility of what we might call, with a nod to novelist Erica Jong, a “zipless search“—a more or less perfect means of detecting only contraband, circumventing the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

If hash value analysis isn’t a search, then even if the state went too far in directly inspecting the hard drive, the evidence of a hash match against the NCMEC database might still be admissible. But Judge Kane rejected that logic, writing:

By subjecting the entire computer to a hash value analysis—every file, internet history, picture, and “buddy list” became available for Government review. Such examination constitutes a search.

But as George Washinton University law professor Orin Kerr, author of the Justice Department’s computer search manual, wrote on the widely-read Volokh Conspiracy blog, this is almost maddeningly brief and vague. “Which stage was the search—the creating the duplicate?” asked Kerr. “The running of the hash? It’s not really clear.” And as Kerr notes, though the court alludes to the Caballes dog-sniff ruling earlier in its opinion, it does not directly take up the question of the “zipless search,” or explain how the hash analysis differs from a dog sniff. The answer could be massively significant, since it would determine, for instance, whether law enforcement agents serving a valid warrant against one user on a huge server are entitled to scan the entire machine, rather than only their target’s files, for illicit material.

The second question is whether Buckwash “expanded the scope of the private search” conducted by Hipple when he imaged and scrutinized Crist’s entire hard drive. In United States v. Runyan, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals seemed to accept the application of a “closed container” metaphor to digital storage devices. Just as the privacy interest in the contents of a package are lost once someone has opened it, the contents of a digital storage medium are fair game once it has been accessed. But as Kerr has pointed out in his paper, “Searches and Seizures in a Digital World,” physical metaphors are tricky in a world of bits. Is the computer really like a “container”? Or given the vast amounts of information a hard drive can contain, does it make more sense to think of the drive as analogous to a warehouse, where the “container” is an individual file or folder? Kerr ultimately opts for an “exposure theory” of digital searches, according to which only the information that has been displayed to a human user should be considered “searched,” leaving the privacy interest in all the other data intact. In this case, Judge Kane seemed to agree that Hipple’s “search” of a few files did not void Crist’s privacy interest in the rest of the drive, and that in any event Buckwash’s forensic analysis was qualitatively different and more extensive than Hipple’s casual examination.

Kerr, however, told Ars that he expects the government to appeal the ruling, both because the argument for counting hash analysis as a “search” is so brief, and because the court’s application of the Runyan precedent is subject to dispute.

That makes United States v. Crist a case to watch. Until now, the constitutional status of hash value analysis has been unclear. But if the Third Circuit Court of Appeals should disagree with Judge Kane’s reasoning, it could send a signal that a new era of zipless searching is at hand.

Some 16 new bilateral agreements on exchange of information for tax purposes were signed in the past week between OECD member counties and three offshore financial centres, as the countries stung by the recent banking crisis commence a fresh drive towards “transparency” in global financial regulation and taxation.

During the week in question, the British Virgin Islands signed bilateral tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) with Australia and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, Guernsey and Jersey each signed bilateral TIEAs with the Nordic economies- Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

These new agreements bring to 44 the number of arrangements put in place since 2000 when the OECD began its first offshore crackdown. The Isle of Man is leading, with 11 such pacts; Jersey has signed 10, Guernsey nine, the Netherlands Antilles four and the British Virgin Islands three. Bermuda, also has three of these agreements, having signed its first bilateral pact with the United States in 1986.

In signing these agreements, these offshore centres may well have succeeded in ensuring that they do not get included on any new ‘blacklist’, which is likely to be published some time in 2009.

“The latest agreements represent a significant extension of information exchange networks in place in these jurisdictions, showing their commitment to implementing OECD’s standards of transparency and exchange of information in tax matters,” the organisation noted.

As the OECD observed in its announcement, the global financial crisis and recent tax evasion scandals have strengthened governments’ determination to fight tax evasion and bring increased transparency to cross-border transactions.

“At a time when governments are seeking to forge a more stable world financial system, these are issues that need to be addressed with urgency,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said.

The OECD also revealed that progress towards increased openness is being made in other financial centres. Cyprus and Malta have removed the last impediments to a full exchange of information; Belgium has negotiated its first tax treaty with full exchange of information; Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are implementing the OECD standards; and the government of Hong Kong (China) recently launched a review of its policy on exchange of information.

“The political climate is changing, and financial centres that do not respect the OECD standards will not be allowed to gain a competitive advantage,” Gurría added.

“Every new bilateral agreement demonstrates that we can make progress internationally. It is in the interest of all financial centres to have adequate measures in favour of full transparency as quickly as possible,” he argued.

The European Commission will on November 12 present a proposal to amend the Savings Tax Directive in an attempt to ensure “more effective taxation of savings income and eliminate undesirable loopholes which facilitate tax evasion and tax fraud.”

The Commission announced last Friday that amendments to the directive, which have been under discussion for some time, are now all the more urgent “in light of recent events in the area of tax evasion.”

According to a Commission report to the European Council last month, the directive in its current form “has proven effective within the limits set by its scope.” However, this evaluation cited the need for certain amendments to the legislation in order to close possible loopholes and to limit the administrative burden on paying agents.

In a speech given to the European Platform for 3rd Country Finance Centres on October 14, Tax Commissioner Laszlo Kovacs said that the EC is “committed to promoting the co-operation against tax fraud and tax evasion.”

“The sustainable development of all economies relies on the capacity of national tax administrations to effectively exchange information. Increasing the transparency of tax systems makes them less vulnerable for use in tax evasion schemes. This does not mean protecting high tax rates in certain countries, but exactly the opposite, as an increased tax compliance makes easier the lowering of the tax burden for all the honest taxpayers,” he said.

“In return for its partners’ acceptance of these principles, the EU is prepared to offer certain incentives. A concrete example of what we can provide is the Governance incentive tranche under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF). Countries eligible for development aid, and who take detailed commitments to the principles of good governance in the tax area, may receive an additional allocation depending on the quality of their commitment. A number of Caribbean and Pacific countries have taken such commitments, some others have simply refused to do so,” he added.

The savings tax directive applies in 42 jurisdictions: 27 Member states, 5 non EU countries (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra and San Marino) and 10 dependent and associated non-EU territories (Anguilla, Aruba, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Montserrat, the Netherlands Antilles as well as the Turks and Caicos Islands).

Following the request of the Ecofin Council, the European Commission has started discussions with selected Asian financial centres, namely Hong Kong, Singapore and Macao. Formal negotiations will also start shortly with Norway, at its request, whilst other jurisdictions like Bermuda and Iceland have shown interest in participating in the savings taxation arrangements.

By VM Sathish  on 10/28/2008 (for Emirates Business 24/7)

The Dubai Naturalisation and Residency Administration (DNRD) will soon introduce four biometric face recognition surveillance camera units at the Dubai International Airport.

The new biometric system is part of UAE Community Protection Face Recognition System. It can capture the facial images of passengers from the flights and complement the iris scan mechanism currently used to nab illegal entrants and wanted criminals. The face recognition system using biometric system will help protect the UAE borders, critical infrastructure and other key assets in the country, said sources.

A senior DNRD official told Emirates Business that the DNRD is thrilled about the result of recent testing of the face recognition system, which will be introduced in other emirates too. The system was introduced at Abu Dhabi International Airport in July. The plan is to have four face recognition sites at important ports of entry – one each in Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Umm Al Quwain and Ajman and six in Dubai [four at Dubai International Airport and two outside the airport, five in Abu Dhabi and three in Al Ain].

First Lt Meshal Abdulla Ibrahim Binhussain, Director of Information Security, DNRD, said: “We are going to introduce the latest technology in face recognition. We have achieved outstanding results from testing the system, which comrprises various components – surveillance cameras which will capture facial images of passengers on flight, a sound alarm monitoring system and a database of wanted persons. The facial images of passengers will be relayed on real time basis. It is a non-intrusive system and will be introduced in different parts of Dubai,” he said.

The face recognition system will complement the iris scan currently used to detect wanted and banned people from entering or leaving the country. Later it will be linked to the passport control section of DNRD, he said.

Biometrics is the automatic recognition of a person using distinguishing traits. The face recognition system in Dubai will be part of the broader UAE Community Protection project started by the UAE Ministry of Interior.

The Community Protection Face Recognition System, the first of its kind in the world, has many unique features including machine vision cameras that capture facial images through real time image capture and enhancement technology.

The system uses an advanced detection technology that instantly locates and retains a complete set of key facial characteristics during the enrolment process, which is approved by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. Each face recognition unit will cost around Dh1 million.

“All people have an innate ability to recognise faces. The system will enhance that ability technologically using sophisticated software to scan images of individual faces for analysis and identification. It uses sensitive cameras to capture the faces of people – whether they are up close or at a distance, in motion or standing still,” said an official from Abu Dhabi Police.

“With only a brief look from the individual in the direction of the camera, facial characteristics such as the position, size and shape of the eyes, nose, cheekbones and jaw are recorded and the image is instantly secured. Biometric software allows analysis and evaluation of the image by anyone – technicians do not need sophisticated technology to handle the units.”

Interpol is planning to expand its role into the mass screening of passengers moving around the world by creating a face recognition database to catch wanted suspects.

Every year more than 800 million international travellers fail to undergo “the most basic scrutiny” to check whether their identity documents have been stolen, the global policing cooperation body has warned.

Senior figures want a system that lets immigration officials capture digital images of passengers and immediately cross-check them against a database of pictures of terror suspects, international criminals and fugitives.

The UK’s first automated face recognition gates - matching passengers to their digital image in the latest generation of passports - began operating at Manchester airport in August.

Mark Branchflower, head of Interpol’s fingerprint unit, will this week unveil proposals in London for the creation of biometric identification systems that could be linked to such immigration checks.

The civil liberties group No2ID, which campaigns against identity cards, expressed alarm at the plans.

“This is a move away from seeking specific persons to GCHQ-style bulk interception of information,” warned spokesman Michael Parker.

“There’s already a fair amount of information collected in terms of passenger records. This is the next step. Law enforcement agencies want the most efficient systems but there has to be a balance between security and privacy.” The growth of international criminal gangs and the spread of terrorist threats has increased demand for Interpol’s services.

Last year it carried out 10,000 fingerprint searches; this year the figure will reach 20,000.

An automated fingerprint identification system with far greater capacity, known as Metamorpho, will be installed next year. Earlier this month Interpol launched its “global security initiative” aimed at raising $1bn (£577m) to strengthen its law enforcement programmes. It claims to hold the “names and identifiers” of 9,000 terrorist suspects.

Branchflower will speak at the opening of the Biometrics 2008 conference in Westminster about the possibility of extending its biometric database.

Before the conference he said that Interpol wanted to create a face recognition database, to match its fingerprint and DNA records, that could be searched and matched automatically.

“Facial recognition is a step we could go to quite quickly,” said Branchflower, “and it’s increasingly of use to [all] countries. There’s so much data we have but they are in records we can’t search.”

If Interpol had been operating a face recognition database linked to national border controls last autumn, he said, it might have picked up a Canadian teacher wanted for child abuse as he entered Thailand. The paedophile was the subject of a high-profile manhunt.

“We could have picked him up the moment he entered Bangkok rather than having to wait another two weeks,” said Branchflower.”We need to get our data to the border entry points. There will be such a large role in the future for fingerprints and facial recognition.”

Identity Loop - 28 October 2008

HSBC claims to have become the first bank in the UK to use facial recognition technology to improve security at its data centres following successful trials at its offices in Canary Wharf.

The bank will be installing ten facial biometric access control units in two new data centres in the UK over the next six to nine months in a bid to protect sensitive information that might otherwise be vulnerable to loss or misuse.

The move comes at a time when identity theft is now the fastest growing crime in the UK – affecting more than 100,000 people at a cost of £1.7m according to Home Office figures.

Recent high profile cases of sensitive data being lost by financial and also public sector organisations has highlighted the risk to individuals and to the reputation of the organisations concerned.

Recognising this problem, HSBC has been co-operating with UK facial biometric company OmniPerception to develop a more secure access control system for their new data centres. The bank has worked closely with the company in testing and developing the right solution, based onOmni’s CheckPoint  facial recognition product.

First deployed in police applications, in Liverpool, London and elsewhere, OmniPerception’s biometric solutions are now being applied to access control, data protection and the improvement of identity management generally.

After extensive field trials at HSBC’s Canary Wharf offices, the CheckPoint system will be installed at access points as a way of verifying the identity of staff and external contractors who need access to areas containing sensitive information.

John Williams, Head of Physical Risk at HSBC said: “We decided to use biometrics to protect our high vulnerability inner sanctums such as communication suites and data halls.”

In explaining his choice of a facial biometric solution, he said: “To gain acceptance from the user, a biometric needs to be as non-intrusive as possible. One natural thing human beings always rely on is to be recognised by someone they know. It’s far more natural than say, getting your eye scanned or gently moving your finger across a reader to get yourself identified”

He announced the bank’s intention to install ten CheckPoint facial biometric access control units in various IT facilities in the UK; and anticipated their wider deployment to other sites in the future.

UK police to wield mobile fingerprint scanners, facial recognition up next
by Darren Murph, posted Oct 27th 2008 at 11:03AM

Surely your remember Project Lantern from back in 2006, right? If you weren’t too fond of that initiative, let’s just say your worst nightmare is coming true. Going forward, every police force in the UK will be equipped with mobile fingerprint scanners, which will allow the fuzz to carry out identity checks right on the street. Dubbed Project Midas, this here setup is supposed to “transform the speed of criminal investigations”while simultaneously freaking out anyone remotely concerned about personal privacy; in fairness, cops insist that fingerprints scanned via these portable devices will not be stored or added to databases, and we’re told that they’ll only be used ” when they suspect an individual of an offense and can’t establish his / her identity.” The £30 million ($47.5 million) to £40 million ($63.4 million) initial phase should hit widespread deployment within 18 months, and in case you thought it was over after this, you should probably know that facial recognition in the field is the next top priority.

[Via Pocket-lint, image courtesy of SpringCard]

Indeed, the boys on the Malibar Front need our help! The Daily Mail is reporting that these fingerprint scans will be random!

By Jeremy Twitchell (writing in the Las Vegas Sun)
Wed, Oct 22, 2008 (7:36 a.m.)

A minor glitch in the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicle’s new high-security system for issuing driver’s licenses shouldn’t impact the system’s planned rollout next month, officials said.

The new system still requires drivers to apply in person at a DMV office and have their picture taken, but changes after that. Instead of receiving a license on the spot within minutes, the new licenses will be manufactured at a central plant in Lacey, Wash., and mailed to drivers within seven to 10 days.

The central issuance system, which debuted Oct. 17 in Carson City, encountered problems on its first day when the information and photos taken for that day’s licenses failed to transmit to the plant in Washington.

“The system didn’t recognize them,” DMV spokesman Kevin Malone said. “Nothing is lost; we have all of the applications and the photos on the computers still. It’s just a matter of figuring out the bug that prevented them from transmitting and fixing it.”

Malone said the glitch was believed to be simple and likely would not take more than a day or two to fix. He said the new system is still planned to launch at DMV offices in Las Vegas and Henderson on Nov. 6 and 7.

The new central issuance system will incorporate technology such as laser perforations and ghost images to make Nevada licenses among the most secure in the nation.

“The card itself — it’s much harder to try to counterfeit,” Malone said. “Once you see one of these things, you’ll see what we’re talking about … It’s not like any card you’ve ever seen.”

The new licenses will not require drivers to make an extra trip to the DMV; existing licenses will remain valid until the expiration date printed on them.

The security features being added to the new licenses will increase their cost by 75 cents each, from $21.25 to $22 for drivers younger than 65 and from $16.25 to $17 for drivers 65 and older.

New NV Driver’s License Back

The comments on the article are about 4/4 against this. Nice. I like this one best:

A California resident can avoid the DMV by getting his drivers license and auto registration renewed at a nearby AAA office.
If he needs to appear at the DMV, he can make an appointment ahead of time and avoid lines.
There’s no good reason, other than preservation of a bureaucracy, for Nevada to do likewise, except perhaps the loss of work for the cottage industry that will wait in line for you, for about $25 a pop. I wonder whose palms they grease.

And the Associated Press Version of the story:

Nevada has new driver licenses
The Associated Press
Article Launched: 10/10/2008 10:33:25 AM PDT

CARSON CITY, Nev.—The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles is starting to issue driver licenses that have a new look and include security features that make them difficult to counterfeit.

The new “Central Issuance” licenses will be produced at L-1 Identity Solutions’ facility in California and mailed to drivers within 10 working days after they apply. During the interim, they’ll have temporary permits.

“The Central Issuance system is in use in 14 states,” said DMV Director Ginny Lewis. “It is proven technology that has been shown to improve the security of the license itself and the data behind it.”

DMV spokesman Tom Jacobs said his agency realized it needed to develop a more secure license after a 2005 break-in at a DMV office in North Las Vegas.

Thieves rammed a truck into the building and carted away 1,700 blank licenses, a computer, a digital camera and license printer. The items later were recovered. The thieves never used the supplies to create counterfeit licenses, the DMV said.

The new licenses have two driver photos, one large and one small, instead of just one. The smaller photo is a laser-cut ghost image that will be difficult to counterfeit. Several squiggly lines, similar to those on paper money, also are printed on the new licenses.

The new licenses will cost 75 cents more than the old ones, enough to pay the changes. Nevada licenses cost $22 and remain valid for four years. The same rates apply to people who don’t drive but use licenses for ID cards. Residents 65 and older will pay $17, also a 75-cent increase.

Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com