p2pnet - rss feed: UK ‘Big Brother’ warning
p2pnet.net News:- “Some of my counterparts in Eastern Europe, in Spain, have experienced in the last century what can happen when government gets too powerful and has too much information on citizens. When everyone knows everything about everybody else and the Government has got massive files, whether manual or computerised..”
The quote comes from British privacy czar Richard Thomas in The Times here.
Britain could, “sleepwalk into a surveillance society,” warns the UK’s information commissioner in comments following a House of Commons Home Affairs Committee report on identity cards released last month.
“We conclude that ID cards would make a real and important contribution to fighting organised crime and terrorism by disrupting the use of multiple identities, identity fraud and related activities like money-laundering,” says the report. “We note the support for an ID card scheme from law enforcement agencies. We conclude that the full benefits would come with a compulsory scheme.
“An identity card scheme would help combat identity fraud, but we note the need for appropriate checks on the card and on biometrics. Government should clarify how and when it expects the card to be checked.”
Thomas worries that three projects, when viewed together, “could lead to a situation reminiscent of the former communist regimes in eastern Europe and Franco’s Spain,” says European Union civil liberties group Statewatch here, going on:
“The project he refers to are: the proposed Identity Card scheme which will have personal details and the fingerprints of everyone in the country, the population database - the Citizen’s Information Project - being set up by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and proposals in the Childrens’ Bill - currently before parliament - which would create a database on all children from birth to age 18 (and details of their parents).
August 18th, 2004 at 6:55 pm
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5697267/site/newsweek/
The sad fact is that we are slowly being robbed of our freedom and privacy.
August 18th, 2004 at 10:49 pm
Would it not be easier to deter all types of fraud crimes and restore honesty if we personalise our signatures with ID stickers (small stickers with person’s photo and name printed on them). We use our photos to personalise our passports and so there is no reason why we could not make signatures reliable and foolproof by personalising them.
It is obvious that this system will restore honesty in all sectors of the industry since it will automatically deter use of stolen, forged and fake documents since no one would want the police to expose their identity on “Wanted for questioning” pages in national papers.
Pocket size book of ID stickers supplied by financial institutions, government departments etc. will enable individuals to personalise their signatures on any document at any time and anywhere. In reality this system will eliminate the need to rely on any equipment, databases and even ID documents and yet will deter fraud.
This system does not conflict with any other system but it will make all other sysyems reliable and foolproof.
Comments will be appreciated.
Warning: Idea of personalised signatures is rights protected by granted patents and stationary used is protected by copyrights.
August 18th, 2004 at 11:04 pm
WHY NOT LOVE BIG BROTHER…
HIS ECHELON PROVIDES INFORMATION AND HIS EUROPOL PROVIES SECURITY……
WHO COULD BE AGAINST THA
August 18th, 2004 at 11:15 pm
I think the time will soon come when we no longer will have to carry any money, credit cards, or identification. And no signatures, either. Retina scans and fingerprint scans will replace all that, and each of us will be known instantly without having to present anything other than our own human body parts.
Just walk into any building, and you will be automatically scanned and identified with hardly a notice.
And if ever in doubt, our DNA will be on file too, for split-second identity verification.
August 18th, 2004 at 11:36 pm
this isn’t gonna happen………………………………
it already is
August 19th, 2004 at 2:29 am
Jass,
I DONT MIND WRITING YOU BECAUSE EVERY DISAGREEMENT I HAVE HAD WITH YOU WAS THROUGH A MISUNDERSTANDING THRU THE MUSIC AND I AM ALLOWING YOU TO STOP THE MUSIC SO WHAT EVER HAS YOU UPSET YOU CAN LET IT OUT AND MAYBE I DO UNDERSTAND AND HAVE BEEN IN THE SAME POSITION YOU ARE IN RIGHT NOW,… BEFORE ?
I LOVE MUSIC AND I HAVE TO PAY CLOSER ATTENTION TO YOU, RIGHT ? WELL, HERE I AM SITTING WITH YOU AND NOT THE MUSIC,……. THEY DONT WANT ME WALKING BECAUSE I MIGHT FALL EVERY ONCE AND A WHILE,… NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL HOSPITAL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ” THE REHABILITATION INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO,” FOR SPINAL CORD INJURIES. NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL DOES HAVE BAD DOCTORS THAT I WOULD RATHER TO NEVER GO AND SEE. THEY DONT WANT ME SINGING BECAUSE I AM THE OFFICAL MUSIC STUDENT AND THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT I DONT KNOW ABOUT MUSIC,.. AND I HAVE BEEN BEGGING FOR SOMEBODY TO TEACH ME,.. AND IF I AM TO OLD TO BE ALIVE IN MUSIC I GUESS I HAVE TO BLOW MY OWN BRAIN OUT WITH A BULLET,… AND MAYBE THAT WILL MAKE THEM HAPPY TO BE RID OF ME,… THE THING ABOUT MY PAST IS IT IS GONE,… TODAY IS NOT YESTERDAY,… I AM STILL ALIVE,.. AND YES IT IS TRUE WE ALL ARE GOING TO DIE ONE DAY,… THAT IS EXACTLY WHY I WANT TO LIVE MY LIFE, NOW,…. AND I AM NOT GOING TO SHOOT MYSELF IN THE HEAD WITH A GUN OR ANY BULLETS,… THAT SOUND SO FAR AWAY FROM THE HOME PLATE IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF THE FIRST BASE,… SO,…. I PASS,….
NOW IF I HAVE TO GET MY COPYWRITES I HAVE TO GET THEM,.. I NEEDED A POST OFFICE BOX FOR MY MAIL WHEN WAS OUT ON THE STREET. STRUGGLING TO SEE THE NEXT DAY, BECAUSE I WANT TO LIVE. AND I HAVE LET EVERYTHING CRIMINAL GET REJECTED OUT OF MY LIFE WITHOUT NO PLACE TO SLEEP OR NOTHING TO EAT, AND IT IS A GOOD FEELING,.. KNOWING THAT I AM NOT A COP AND I AM NOT A CRIMINAL I AM A SONG WRITER AND I AM TELLING YOU SOMETHING YOU NEED TO SHARE WITH MIKE YOUR BROTHER SOMEBODY THAT CONTINEOUSLY KNOWS HIS WHEREABOUTS IT THE REASON BEHIND ALL OF HIS TROUBLES WHETHER HE WANT TO BELEAVE IT OR NOT IT IS TRUE!
August 19th, 2004 at 4:34 pm
It is a real puzzle why the British seem so keen to relinquish the freedom that they appear to take for granted as something they can never lose. Political apathy is the reason, I believe, why so many seem willing to accept a compulsory national identity card at face value. But also browbeating by the Government, especially arch authoritarian David Blunkett, and now tacit acceptance by the CBI and other organisations will seduce the general public into thinking that there is no alternative to ID cards. In fact, the Government is being its usual duplicitous self by cultivating a sense of easy acceptance, especially if the implicit or explicit message is: “You’ve got nothing to hide, have you, Sir?”
I am totally opposed to the card for the simple reason that it changes the relationship between the citizen and the state forever. We in Britain are free men and women. Our fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and siblings fought for this freedom in previous generations still in living memory, and many of them lost their lives that we might enjoy freedom from tyranny. This Government may not actually intend tyranny with us right now, although one sometimes has to wonder, what with the Home Secretary’s desire for “balance of probabilities” to replace “beyond all reasonable doubt”, to restrict the right to jury trials, to incarcerate suspects, maybe British nationals too, indefinitely without charge, to poke fun at the “bonkers” judiciary, to speak of Britain being “swamped” by illegal immigrants, and to glibly celebrate the suicide of a prisoner for whom he was responsible, but let us hope that a higher intellect may soon grace the corridors of that esteemed office and restore some much needed integrity to it.
However, some government in the future may see the compulsory ID card as an open sesame to all our lives in ways we cannot envisage right now. If the chip on the card is reprogrammable remotely, then a future government will be able to store details about us that we never really wanted to release. It is likely that the ID card will be state-of-the-art and therefore fitted with a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag to make it possible for the card to be read silently, remotely, from a distance of several feet by any official with the right kind of scanner - or by fraudsters with a purloined scanner. This technology is available right now and is being used commercially. The salient item of data sent will be our Universal Unique Identity Number which will immediately permit the official to access the National Identity Register and find out everything about us, almost in the space of a moment or two that it takes for us to pass by the scanner and be unwittingly logged. Forget about Britain being the country with the highest number of CCTV cameras, many of which are being scanned by people working for private security firms with sometimes dubious intent, this will be like everyone having his or her own personal CCTV camera hovering just inches away wherever one goes. Too futuristic? Do you think this Government would not adopt such measures if it could? Look at the way Government ministers are right now desperately trying to confiscate legal lottery winnings from someone who happens to be a convicted rapist. This is a measure of how desperate, how cunning, how deceitful the Government can be just to placate the media.
The huge amount of information which will accumulate on all of us will inevitably be leaky. Some of it will leak by accident, or due to faulty equipment, or because of fraudulent access by officials. But also we will be losing cards in huge numbers just by going about our normal daily business. With 40 million cards in circulation, there will be hundreds going astray every day all over the country, if only through accidental loss or damage. Criminals will target ID cards no matter how forgery-proof the Government insists they will be. Whereas a credit card is only of use for buying goods, the ID card will be the open sesame to all kinds of services. Without one you will become a non-person. This will make the card far more attractive to steal or forge than a credit card. Thieves will continually try their luck and mug someone who is unlikely to retaliate, just to steal their ID card. And if our card replaces all the various cards or forms of identification many of us use at present, what will we do if we do lose it? Will it mean that we suddenly have no access to cash, food, NHS treatment, benefits, travel, or public conveniences, and moreover are seen as potential terrorists because we can’t produce the card when asked? How long will it be before we receive a replacement card? Two days? Four? The card will be too high a risk to be sent through the normal postal service, therefore we may be required to attend a local Government department in order to collect it, perhaps losing half a day’s pay in order to get there during brief civil service hours of business. How will we carry on our daily lives if by then the ID card has become the ubiquitous proof, demanded everywhere, that we exist? Its loss will be catastrophic, not merely an inconvenience, as when we happen to lose a credit card or a season ticket.
Then there is the risible suggestion that while the card will become compulsory, a suspect will still have five days’ grace in which to present it at a police station should he not have the card handy when stopped by the authorities. Would a suspected terrorist thus be allowed to go on his way, having promised to pop in with the card as soon as he gets home? Can one really suppose that the Government has given more than cursory thought to the whole idea?
There are dozens of other points that the Government has either not addressed at all, or simply glossed over. Blunkett immediately gets ratty if asked any pointed questions, a sure sign that this is all being driven by pure New Labour dogma. The cost will be horrendous. Forget the wildly optimistic estimate of £3.1 bn over ten years. The Dome alone cost 3/4 of a billion - just for a big tent. Imagine the cost of marshalling 40 million pairs of eyes, 40 million fingers, and 40 million faces past the scanners, then storing, maintaining, updating and querying such vast quantities of data. How many hundreds of supercilious officials in shops, libraries, shopping centres, railway and bus stations, car parks, museums, employment offices, government agencies, theatres, cinemas, motorway toll booths, amusement parks, swimming baths, and public parks will demand to see the card? This is a charter for jobsworths everywhere. It will become a nightmare, but the Government will not back down. Blunkett, if still in post, will doggedly chase his British version of the Patriot Act with as much vigour as the PM chases his dream of finding WMD in Iraq. If necessary, truth will be suppressed under the cloak of commercial confidentiality. Cover-ups launched in the guise of state security. The spin machine is already turning at full speed as we are led to believe that already an overwhelming number of the general public support ID cards.
Meanwhile, we Britons who have lived as free men and women on these islands for several thousand years seem bent on giving up most of our freedom to put our trust instead in hidden computers run by unaccountable civil servants and PFI consultants, some of whom may be based abroad. Maybe to cut costs our data will be farmed out to countries in the developing world where processing is cheaper but redress more difficult. The processing will never cease. In Whitehall the lights will burn late into the night updating the data as people move, leave the country or return, get married, change their name by deed poll, are falsely accused, commit suicide, or lose their card deliberately or accidentally or through theft. The machines and their minders will be running red hot most of the day and night in order to stay on top of the millions of requests for data from myriad government agencies day in, day out. This could be the white heat of technology spoken about in a former generation, but with far more sinister overtones.
I suggest that we have not even begun to ponder the ramifications of a compulsory ID card. It is such a Draconian change from British tradition that I feel we are in danger of selling out our soul for dubious and uncosted benefits. None of the promised savings have been properly justified so far, and they are mainly comprised in vague and grandiose flights of fancy by eager authoritarians. It is my heartfelt wish that Britain remains a free nation and says a resounding “no” to ID cards.
Mike Mitchell
kylix_is@yahoo.co.uk
August 19th, 2004 at 5:30 pm
Jass,
I was LISTENING TO A SONG BY ANGIE STONE BECAUSE I HAVE NOT HEARD IT BEFORE EVER ! I WAS NOT TRYING TO UPSET YOU, PLEASE BELEAVE ME. SO, I OPOLOGIZE IF YOU THINK IT WAS DIRECTED TO YOU, IT WAS NOT !
HOWEVER I WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOU AND LOOK INTO YOUR PRETTY EYES, AND UNTIL THAT DAY COMES DONT WORRY ABOUT IT, IT ALSO MAY NEVER COME. WHAT IF MY DEATH COMES FIRST ? YOU SEE SOME PEOPLE WERE IN A LOCAL NIGHT CLUB AND THE DJ PLAYED ONE OF MY CD’s AND EVERYBODY WANTS TO BUY THE NEW-MUSIC ONE GUY OFFERED FIFTY DOLLARS AND I GOT NERVIOUS ABOUT THE CD FEELING THAT I SHOULD HAVE GAVE IT TO YOU, CURTIS OR SLIM, BURT, OR ANDRE AND QUINTON,… MAYBE TONI BRAXTON AND YOU GUYS ARE JUST TO BUSY ALL DAY LONG AND ALL NIGHT TO CALL ME, SO,….. I AM ALREADY YOU GUYS MUSIC STUDENT,… AND I WENT TO PREY ABOUT IT AND I WENT INTO AN UNEXSPECTED OUTER BODY EXPERIANCE THAT WRECKED MY NERVES,… AGAIN,…
August 19th, 2004 at 8:43 pm
Jass,
no,.. NO,.. WAY! ALL I WAS DOING WAS LISTENING TO ANGIE STONE AND YOU JUST WENT COMPLETLY OFF ON THE DEEP END AND PERSONALLY I FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOU,.. I HAVE NEVER HEARD ANGIE STONE’S SONG BEFORE AND YOU JUST TOOK THINGS WAY OUT OF THE BALL PARK. LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION,… ” ARE YOU REALLY UPSET WITH ME?” BECAUSE IF YOU ARE JUST LETTING SOME FRUSTRATIONS OUT PLEASE GO WOMAN LET IT ALL OUT I AM RIGHT HERE AND THE WHOLE SHOW IS YOURS,.. I AM SERIOUS IT IS ALL YOURS,.. JASS.
YOU ARE A GROWN WOMAN AND I AM A GROWN MAN SO YOU DO NOT HAVE TO HIDE YOUR FEELINGS FROM ME. I WANT TO KNOW HOW YOU FEEL, I CARE WHEN EVERY THING IS ALRIGHT AS MUCH AS WHEN EVERYTHING IS ALL WRONG. EVEN MORE WHEN EVERYTHING IS ALL WRONG,…. WHEN READING THE ST.JAMES VERSION OF THE HOLY BIBLE YOU HAVE TO TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE FIRST BOOK OF JOHN SO WE CAN SHINE A LITTLE MORE LIGHT ON VERSES TEN AND ELEVEN AND TWELVE,… AS IT HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED IN THE FIRST BOOK OF CORINTHIANS IN THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER VERSES ONE TO THIRTEEN,.. NOW LOOK AT YOURSELF AND I AM GOING TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR AT MYSELF,… NEITHER ONE OF US ARE SO SATISFIED THAT WE DONT HAVE ANY ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENTS WITH OUR OWN SELVES INDIVIDUALLY,. AND WITH EACH OTHER, WELL ACT LIKE IT !
August 19th, 2004 at 9:02 pm
JASS,
LOOK THIS IS FOR YOU. BURT, CURTIS,SLIM, QUNT, AND ANDRE, AND CRISS….. I AINT DEAD YET AND UNTIL I AM DEAD I DONT WANT TO HEAR ABOUT ANYONE OF YOU ACTING LIKE I AM SERIOUSLY,…. PEOPLE USED TO SAY THAT I WAS GOING TO WALK AGAIN WHEN MY LEGGS WERE SMALLER THAN FREE’S ARMS,… AND THEY KNEW IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE,… AND THEY DID NOT KNOW THAT OUR CREATOR WAS LISTENING TO THEM ALL,.. NOW I CAN WALK AND I STAND TALL LIKE AJ FET B.E.T.