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PROPHECIES CONCERNING THE LAST DAYS
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Preparations for the "Mark of the Beast" (Revelation 13:16-18)

"And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six."

Studies reveal that less than 5% of the total money in our society exists as paper currency or coins. In other words, America is presently 95% cashless! Various credit card companies are testing smart cards for financial transactions. The embedded computer chip, the size of a dime, can contain as much information as 30 complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica, including your finger, hand, voice, retinal, or vein prints.

According to the May 19, 1997 edition of Business Week, a United States patient was issued to Interval Research Corporation, stated by a group that includes Microsoft Corporation co-founder Paul Allen. The patient was issued for a device that is a small liquid-crystal display implanted beneath a layer of skin on the wrist close enough to the surface to be visible. The device would contain a control chip and small battery charged by holding the wrist near an external charger.

Racom Systems, Inc., a company headquartered in Denver, Colorado, a pioneer in the development of contactless smart card technology announced on September 22, 1997 the availability of the first of a new generation of affordable smart card systems that offer secure transactions in both contact and contactless operation.

For a contactless transaction, the card is powered remotely and communicates via a radio signal from the RXR-1500 contactless controller. The entire transaction including mutual authentication, encryption/ decryption of transmitted messages and purse or file update is accomplished in less than 100 milliseconds (1/10 of a second) resulting in true "walk and wave" operation.

National ID Card Now Federal Law

The Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Section 656 states, "After October 1, 2000, Federal agencies may only accept as proof of identify driver's licenses that conform to standards developed by the Secretary of Transportation." A national registry will be established that will include information on every human in the United States of America. The database will contain an individual's Social Security Number, credit cards issued, date of birth, eye and hair color, distinguishing character-istics, addresses, licenses, organizations, titled properties, taxes, income… you name it! George Orwell's, 1984, is no longer fiction.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) outlines a process to achieve uniform national health data standards and health information privacy in the United States. Enacted with the widespread support of the industry and bipartisan support in the Congress, the law requires that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) adopt standards to support the electronic exchange of a variety of administrative and financial health care transactions. All health plans, health care clearinghouses, and those health care providers who elect to conduct the specified transactions electronically are required to comply with the standards within 2 years of their adoption, except that small health plans are required to comply within 3 years.

Among these standards are:1. Certain uniform transactions and data elements for health claims and equivalent encounter information, claims attachments, health care payment and remittance advice, health plan enrollment and disenrollment, health plan eligibility, health plan premium payments, first report of injury, health claim status, referral certification and authorization, and for coordination of benefits. 2. Unique identifiers for individuals, employers, health plans, and health care providers for use in the health care system. 3. Code sets and classification systems for the data elements of the transactions identified.4. Security standards for health information. 5. Standards for procedures for the electronic transmission and authentication of signatures with respect to the transactions identified. Privacy and confidentiality protections for health information play a prominent role in the law as well. The Secretary is required to adopt security standards to safeguard health information, during transmission and while stored in health information systems, to ensure the integrity of the information, and to protect against unauthorized uses and disclosures. Further, the law requires the Secretary to make detailed recommendations to the Congress for protection of individually identifiable health information.

These recommendations were delivered to the Congress on September 11, 1997. If the Congress does not enact legislation for health record privacy by August 21, 1999, the law requires the Secretary to issue regulations to protect the privacy of individually identifiable health information transmitted in standard transactions. These regulations must be finalized by February 21, 2000. The law also specifies steep penalties for misuse of a health identifier and for wrongfully obtaining or disclosing individually identifiable health information. The penalties, which increase by type of offense, can be as much as $250,000 and 10 years in prison. More serious offenses are defined as those committed under false pretenses or those committed with intent to sell, transfer, or use individually identifiable health information for commercial advantage, personal gain, or malicious harm. HHS formed five implementation teams to identify and analyze options and propose policies to implement the statutory requirements. Through the publication of several proposed rules in the Federal Register, HHS will propose standards for each item required in the legislation.

There has been considerable consensus on most of the standards that HHS is to adopt. However, opinion on the unique identifier for individuals is deeply divided. Given the level of controversy surrounding the individual identifier, HHS made the decision to proceed cautiously in fulfilling its statutory responsibility to adopt a unique health identifier for individuals for use in the health care system.

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