Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: aldo_14 on January 09, 2006, 05:09:13 am
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This doesn't seem to have hit the internet yet, so no links....this comes from the Metro, which you can pick up from the local rail station or bus for free (which usually means this must have been on a broadsheet over the weekend or something).
Anyways, as part of the small print of a Department of Constitutional Affairs document released sneaked out over the festive period, Town Halls could be given the power to fine households (on the electoral roll) that have not applied for an ID card £2,500; despite the cards not being compulsary. So you have a choice of paying from £60-300 to sell the government your identity (for tracking use of services and possibly flogging to businesses), paying £2,500 to reserve your right to privacy, or perhaps opting off the electoral register and sacrificing your right to vote for your right to identity.
What a ****ing disgrace this country is..........
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Hang on... exactly what reason do they state when they try and fine you £2500 for not having applied? If it's not compulsery then it's not a crime not to have one. It's a choice. This fine makes as much sense as a town hall announcing they're fining people for now drinking Pepsi instead of water... they simply cannot have a reason for it.
Also, why is there a variation of £60 to £300? I know for a fact I don't want to be tracked, numbered and cattle marketed - I also know I don't have that kind of money to throw away on this either. I definitely don't have £2500 to pay any kind of fine and I'm fairly sure that forcing ID cards on anyone is infact a breach of human rights acts.
If not.. well it blows big fat chunks. Anyway, I'm off to the Metro after lunch to get a copy of this for myself.
Oh.. a couple of links. They're both old but certainly relevant.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3659355.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3127696.stm
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Hang on... exactly what reason do they state when they try and fine you £2500 for not having applied? If it's not compulsery then it's not a crime not to have one. It's a choice. This fine makes as much sense as a town hall announcing they're fining people for now drinking Pepsi instead of water... they simply cannot have a reason for it.
They don't give a reason for it (in the Metro), just that it's proposed. I've not found further info on the net about it yet.
Also, why is there a variation of £60 to £300? I know for a fact I don't want to be tracked, numbered and cattle marketed - I also know I don't have that kind of money to throw away on this either. I definitely don't have £2500 to pay any kind of fine and I'm fairly sure that forcing ID cards on anyone is infact a breach of human rights acts.
The government states it's £60, but independent analysis states it as likely being around £300. IIRC the government justification makes huge assumptions, such as that everyone will plump for the more expensive passport+id card style option. Given the track record of astonishing IT incompetence, delay and overpricing, any estimation the gov gives is likely to be complete rubbish.
See http://forms.theregister.co.uk/search/?q=id+card+costs
Especially; http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/02/id_card_video_costs/ (huge waste of money for proganda)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/17/clarke_id_3rdvote_spin/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/22/lse_on_id_card_costs/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/27/idcards_get_more_expensive/
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explain please, these ID cards, are they just to prove your age and that **** or something else?
if to prove your age and that, then its mandatory here, starting with the age of 16...
okay, upon reading it...
What information would be on the cards?
The card would contain basic identification information including a photograph of the card holder, along with their name, address, gender and date of birth.
we got that on our ID cards...
But a microchip would also hold biometric information - a person's fingerprints or iris or facial scans, which are unique to the individual.
The biometric details are designed to make the cards more difficult to forge but critics say they are not foolproof and may be more difficult for some groups, such as disabled people, to use.
biometric data... what a load of bull. they take our fingerprints, but apart from that no biometric data is collected or stored on the ID card...
so unless i misunderstood something....
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Remind me again why the government needs to know who I am?
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Remind me again why the government needs to know who I am?
Because we're all evil terrorists determined to bring down the state*?
*i.e. Non labour voters
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Remind me again why the government needs to know who I am?
Because we're all evil terrorists determined to bring down the state*?
*i.e. Non labour voters Realisitic Centrists.
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Remind me again why the government needs to know who I am?
Because we're all evil terrorists determined to bring down the state*?
*i.e. Non labour voters Realisitic Centrists.
OH NOEZ!!! TEH HUMANITY!!!!1!1!11111!!!!11 :shaking:
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So now only the rich are entitled to privacy. It's actually brilliant now that I think about it. They can't legally exempt the upper classes from requiring to sumbit to their Big Brother-like authority, so they just slap a huge fine on those who don't comply. Like back in the US Civil War, where you could get an exemption for $300, which of course only the rich could afford.
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It's laughable, they don't even try to hide it anymore. And what's more laughable is that we seem less and less inclined to stop it.
I'm going to try and get some more info, it's more than embarassing, it's treating us like morons.....again.
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We are morons though. There was a time when "we" would campaign against this sort of thing. It just wouldn't be allowed because the public at large would shout and scream and say "like hell you're going to do this, we're voting you out of government".
Now we take it. We really are morons for doing so and yes - I include myself in that.
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Exactly, and daring to speak out nowadays just involves a finger being pointed at you and saying 'Oh, so you support terrorism do you?'.
Well, first step, once I get some info is a nice letter to Joan Ryan :) It's a small start, but a start.
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We take it because Labour and the Tories both want it and the Liberal Democrats are too scared to tell them to go **** themselves.
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Radical and unlikely as it may sound... what would happen if "the majority"said "we'll vote for you, but if you do this thing we'll revolt and that's a fact".
After all, these people are only in power because we as a nation put them in power - and you can't arrest a nation that says "no".
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Yes, but you can have the army shoot the ring leaders.
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On what grounds?
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National Security, the ultimate excuse for oppression.
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If they're rounding people up and shooting them, they don't really need to give a reason.
I mean, who the **** would walk up and ask for one?
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Point taken I suppose.
Ah well.. time to start looking for a one way flight to Australia.
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You do that.
In the meantime, I'll be buying some silenced pistols and ninja suits.
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Ninja suits?
I won't ask :)
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Hey, if you're going to overthrow the regime, you may as well look cool in the process ;)
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Might cost a bit to kit out an army: Linky (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NINJITSU-COMPLETE-SET-NINJA-WEAPONS-MARTIAL-ARTS_W0QQitemZ7208399049QQcategoryZ47347QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
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If history has told us anything, it's that bright primary colours win revolutions.
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If history has taught us anything, it's that we shouldn't trust the Germans.
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Spoken like a true football hooligan :)
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Or a Frenchman.
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Sacre bleu!
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Seriously, I'm having a hard time who's buggered more, you or us.
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(on the electoral roll)
So...if you don't vote, then you can't be fined?
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(on the electoral roll)
So...if you don't vote, then you can't be fined?
To be precise, it's if you make yourself ineligable to vote (you have to be on the electoral roll to be allowed to cast a vote, i.e. to avoid fraud).
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Which sort of shows the governments true agenda with this. Only allow the docile little sheep who quite happily accept their **** to vote. Anyone who shows any signs of independant thought should be made scared to vote because they are scared of fines.
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I really don't get what you brits are so afraid of. Yeah I have a California ID and a federal Social Security number. Both these things are essentially required. However, when has either one been an invasion of privacy? Can anybody give me one example? One?
If it's more than that, then speak up and tell us all why it will deny you all privacy. Go ahead.
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I really don't get what you brits are so afraid of. Yeah I have a California ID and a federal Social Security number. Both these things are essentially required. However, when has either one been an invasion of privacy? Can anybody give me one example? One?
If it's more than that, then speak up and tell us all why it will deny you all privacy. Go ahead.
Because in order to be reliable as an identifier, that card has to be passed through a reader that will obtain biometric details from a central database and match them against encryption data on the chip. Thus, those accesses can quite feasibly be stored and tracked and used to identify every service you use that requires the ID card - be it opening a bank account, having an operation on the NHS, travelling on the train or plane, etc. Furthermore, the Id database will act to tie in all sorts of previously discrete record systems; such as your aforementioned NHS record, when previously this information was seperate and required clear legal authorisation for access. Also, you will not be allowed to know who is accessing your personal data (the Data Protection Act can bar people from knowing what is stored upon them if it is deemed in the national interest).
Finally, these cards are a colossal waste of money and will be wholly ineffective for any purpose beyond tying together all your personal records. In terms of specific security issues, not only does the government admit Id cards could not have stopped the 7/7 bombings, previous examples in Northern Ireland have shown ID cards reduce diligence in inspecting identity (a photocard ID was introduced there; it became the situation that posession of such an ID was enough to grant checkpoint access, rather than close examination - simple wave and go, same as you get from people pretending to be gas inspectors or FBI agents with false IDs) and rather act to stimulate forgery due to the placing of all ID eggs in the card basket (so to speak).
So we have a vast waste of money - taxpayer money - on a useless system whose only value is to store information about us and let the government access it for any purpose we deem fit, without us having a right to know what that purpose is if the government doesn't want us to.
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OK, point taken.
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NB: I should also emphasise; one of the things about having a passport, driving license, national insurance no, etc, is that all that information is seperate and kept in seperate systems. It's still theoretically possible to scrape it together, but there are issues of technology, legality, etc that make it a lot harder to do so easily; so MI5 can still do a background search of these types of things, but they need proper solid evidence to justify the time and effort. If you have to have your information held, it's best not to have it all in the one place.
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Can anyone say Poll Tax??
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Consider also that if you create one I.D. that's linked to so many records any forgery would also be linked to each and every one of those records. No longer is it a case of lost passport or lost driving licence, it's a case of lost identity.
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You, specifically? Or are you talking hypothetically? Cuz I can think of a few reasons for the former... :p
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Oops, that was in reply to an0n's first post in the thread... darn WAP browser... :o
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Hmm, I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' Ident-i-Eeze...
Mostly Harmless, chapter 6.
He slowly drew out from the wallet a single and insanely exciting piece of plastic that was nestling amongst a bunch of receipts.
It wasn't insanely exciting to look at. It was rather dull in fact. It was smaller and a little thicker than a credit card and semi-transparent. If you held it up to the light you could see a lot of holographically encoded information and images buried pseudo-inches deep beneath its surface.
It was an Ident-i-Eeze, and was a very naughty and silly thing for Harl to have lying around in his wallet, though it was perfectly understandable. There were so many different ways in which you were required to provide absolute proof of your identity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an epistemologically ambiguous physical universe. Just look at cash point machines, for instance. Queues of people standing around waiting to have their fingerprints read, their retinas scanned, bits of skin scraped from the nape of the neck and undergoing instant (or nearly instant-a good six or seven seconds in tedious reality) genetic analysis, then having to answer trick questions about members of their family they didn't even remember they had, and about their recorded preferences for tablecloth colours. And that was just to get a bit of spare cash for the weekend. If you were trying to raise a loan for a jetcar, sign a missile treaty or pay an entire restaurant bill things could get really trying.
Hence the Ident-i-Eeze. This encoded every single piece of information about you, your body and your life into one all-purpose machine-readable card that you could then carry around in your wallet, and therefore represented technology's greatest triumph to date over both itself and plain common sense.
Ford pocketed it.[/size]
Ford then proceeds to do an insane number of things using the stolen ID card because despite the fact that none of the information on it actually matches, it serves as the ultimate proof of identification superceding all others. Nutty.