Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: aldo_14 on April 04, 2006, 08:11:01 am
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/04/early_passport_renewal_blocked/
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The new UK Identity and Passport Service, spawned out of the Passport Service after the ID Cards Act became law on Saturday, has celebrated its birth by trying to stop people renewing their passports whenever they want to, whether or not the passport is about to expire. The change in terms and conditions has been slipped into the website without announcement, and is quite clearly ID card related.
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Well, I've got to replace my passport which was lost about 6 months ago, so I better go get the paperwork today...
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Mysterious chip failures, in any event, may show some promise as a passive resistance route immediately prior to the introduction of the ID register. Obviously, if you discover your chip is broken, then as a conscientious citizen you should tell them and get it replaced. Nor does it seem reasonable, seeing it's their kit that's failed, for them to charge you for it. So how do the smartarses wriggle their way out of that one?
I see the rise of new passport chip breaking craze. A few slaps against a hard surface should be more that enough to break the chip without doing any damage whatsoever to the passport itself. Plus if enough people break them it will appear as if the chips themselves are defective :)
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It's worth having a look through the report (http://www.identitycards.gov.uk/downloads/2005-10-12_Trade_Off_final_report.pdf) mentioned in the article. It shows just how much the Home Office want to turn identity into its own personal franchise. It's times like these that make me think if Al Quaeda were to nuke a major western population centre tomorrow, it'd STILL have less impact on our lives than governments' lingering, overblown reactions to 9/11.
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I'm not going to get a (replacement) passport or Id card, even when compulsary, but if I did I'd microwave it and then keep it wrapped in tinfoil. Of course, once they tie it into the driving licenses system, I'm ****ed, because I can't do without that.
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aldo: emigrate.
Or, depending on preference, learn to avoid police checks.
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aldo: emigrate.
Or, depending on preference, learn to avoid police checks.
But I just got a job here!
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So the id card thingy went through? Shame.
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It has, although the scheme won't really come into effect until 2008, and even then, there'll be 5 years of development work done by the cheapest (i.e. most incompetent) bidder for the IT contract. I note that the Tories have pledged to scrap ID cards (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/30/tories_to_ditch_id/) the moment they get into office, but the next general election is a long ways off and anything could happen in the next 3 years, and as we all know, manifesto commitments from any party have about as much weight as a whore claiming virginity.
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So the id card thingy went through? Shame.
Not exactly. In a stunningly helpful compromise by the House of Lords, having an Id card with passport is not compulsary until 2010..... but having your details entered into the national ID register/tracking and oppression database is. ****ing brilliant, eh?
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aldo: emigrate.
Or, depending on preference, learn to avoid police checks.
Yeah, man, come to the USA. Civil liberties are being expanded like never before. I promise.
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I was more looking at antartica, siberia, or maybe Canada when talking about that.
Anything EU or US seems a bad idea at the moment.
Aldo: Congrats on the job, then. Learn to cycle?
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As I said before I've got no plans to let the wankers in charge of this country run me out of my home.
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aldo: emigrate.
Exactly! I hear that under the sea is a popular destination.
Under the sea,
Under the sea.
There'll be no accusations,
Just friendly crustaceans.
Under the sea!
edit: It's times like these that it's a pity Britain has no sort of organized crime syndicate. That's how civilized countries do it: if some politician gets too big for his boots, boom boom and problem solved. It's a lot easier than, say, parliamentary politics or coming up with enough material to successfuly blackmail him.
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Doggedly (ahem) pursuing an FOIA request The Scotsman tells us that the Home Office's claim of 69 per cent enthusiasm for ID cards in Scotland was based on a sample size of 158 people. Impressive, no? No. The paper might also have added that the Home Office document in question, Identity Cards Trade Off Research - Final Report wasn't actually a survey of whether or not people wanted ID cards, but was conducted in order to assess awareness and demand for a scheme which was happening anyway, and to identity 'sweet spots' the Home Office could use to sell the scheme better to people. Have a look yourself - it's clearly a piece of marketing research geared to figuring out how best to sell you the soap, not about whether or not you wanted it.
That's ****ed. =/
Global revolt!
Rise up brothers!
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Not even China has a system like this.......
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Not even China has a system like this.......
China to Use RFID for 1.3 Billion ID Cards (http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=18929)
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What's the big deal with ID cards anyway? We have em in Singapore and nobody complains about them; apart from the ridiculous costs to replace em if they get lost :p
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What's the big deal with ID cards anyway? We have em in Singapore and nobody complains about them; apart from the ridiculous costs to replace em if they get lost :p
It's the principal behind it. The people don't really want it, the government hardly asks the people and just imposes it upon us. Plus its a door opening to restrict further freedoms from us.
"No papers? Come with us..."
Especially if it gets to that extreme.
I see some use, and even convenience in them, but on the other hand I see many possible ways for it to be abused. Also, still no one has made a clear response as to why we need them.
If the UK is getting them, then Australia is no doubt soon to follow. :(
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"No papers? Come with us..."
For some reason, when I read that I pictured a bespectacled German man saying that to someone getting off a train...
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What's the big deal with ID cards anyway? We have em in Singapore and nobody complains about them; apart from the ridiculous costs to replace em if they get lost :p
1/ Infringes right to privacy (stores a vast quantity of private information, including a biographical record of changes made to that data)
2/ Infringes freedom of movement (firstly, by preventing internation travel by requiring registry with a passport, despite a supposedly voluntary system. Secondly, by compulsion which in theory means you could be stopped arbitrarily to check it)
3/ Open to abuse (studies in, for example, France, have shown that ethnic minorities are more likely to be stopped for Id cards; thus it provides an easy excuse for racist harassment)
4/ Infringes privacy#2 (equipped with RFID chips that allow the potential for tracking individuals)
5/ Open to fraud (see also below; simply, having an Id card just means theives have less places to look to clone your data. A Dutch test of RFID biometric passports found that criminals were able to break the encryption and download your data from about 50 feet away; it would simply act to boost the forgery market. Also, how do you validate an Id card for something like online shopping?)
6/ Ineffective as a security measure (Photocard IDs were introduced in N.Ireland during the Troubles, ostensably to provide greater security at checkpoints. This failed completely, as possesion of an ID card became more of a signature of identity than the card content. Whilst properly checking the card data against a DB would resolve this, it would not only have a big time delay on individuals and further impinge free movement, but also mean you could theoretically track movements by tracing 'check' accesses. Also, other countries with ID cards, like Madrid, aren't exactly immune from terrorism)
7/Justified by lies (not just the aformentioned poll, but for example by a figure made up for the cost of fraud 'preventable' by Id cards, which included the costs of police raiding the homes to recover goods or the cost of deporting asylum seekers, and for which the real value was much, much less than the likely running costs. An independent report indicating a vastly more expensive system was effectively rubbished by the government, who either flat out ignored it or accused the author of bias.)
8/Overpriced and underplanned (There are no clear goals, no clear aims or benefits given, and the only costs given are for the Home Office running costs, which omit the likely vast setup costs and the interagency costs that come from, for example, the Passport Office. Moreso, it looks likely a lot of the cost will be shifted to the Pass. Off. to 'hide' this initial cost, and the government has a long history of botching and running vastly overbudget on It projects because they are, frankly, clueless; the government has IIRc already looked to pre-emptively blame IT contractors for the likely implementation FUBARS. Luckily, government incompetence could be the thing to save us all from this scheme....)
9/Loss of privacy #3 (Likely unfettered access for police & security services, probably without protection for individuals to even know of accesses, and absolutely no guarentees either in law or even in statements, that this information will not be made available to private companies as the electoral roll is. specifically, it may be possible for companies to pay for the information to run credit / history checks)
10/Reduces public confidence and co-operation with the police (this was the specific reason given by the Law Lords when they abolished the Id cards that had been introduced during WW2)
That's all that immediately come to mind. One thing worth noting on the privacy issue - again - is that whilst we have our names on a lot of databases - passport, council tax/national insurance, NHS, DVLA (driving licenses), these are disparate and independent systems. That means they have very real technical (and legal access) boundaries that prevent people from just randomly trawling them - there is a cost of access to our details that acts as a protection from government harassment, and if we really are concerned about abuse we can still opt out. Even if you don't believe the current government is willing to go all the way to totalitarianism, a system such as this just makes it easier for a government that does - imagine Hitler with an Id database. Part of the responsibility of democracy is to prevent the government - any government - being able to abuse the people, after all.
Let's not, while we're at it, ignore the governments bill The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/regulation/bill/index.asp). This bill, seemingly mundane, massively reduces oversight for the 'reform of outdated or over-complicated legislation', essentially allowing a minister to make arbitrary changes to the law without parliamentary oversightl. The Lib Dems and Tories (opposition parties) tabled an amendment to protected certain rights/laws from abuse in this method, such as habeas corpus or democracy - Labour override it. See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-2049791,00.html
[q]Looking back at last week’s business in the Commons, the Bill makes a mockery of the decisions MPs took. Carrying ID cards could be made compulsory, smoking in one’s own home could be outlawed and the definition of terrorism altered to make ordinary political protest punishable by life imprisonment. Nor will the Human Rights Act save us since the Bill makes no exception for it.
The Bill, bizarrely, even applies to itself, so that ministers could propose orders to remove the limitations about two-year sentences and taxation. It also includes a few desultory questions (along the lines of “am I satisfied that I am doing the right thing?”) that ministers have to ask themselves before proceeding, all drafted subjectively so that court challenges will fail, no matter how preposterous the minister’s answer. Even these questions can be removed using the Bill’s own procedure. Indeed, at its most extreme, in a manoeuvre akin to a legislative Indian rope trick, ministers could use it to transfer all legislative power permanently to themselves. [/q]
Brave new world, indeed.
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What's the big deal with ID cards anyway? We have em in Singapore and nobody complains about them; apart from the ridiculous costs to replace em if they get lost :p
Because a modestly competent and powerful government is necessary to the smooth functioning of a society, while a very competent and powerful government is bad for individual freedoms. People have a right to privacy just because, and the burden must be on the government to prove that it is crucial for the security of the nation that that right be revoked in each specific case.
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Another thing occurs to me; biometric measures - as tested by the Home Office - are still unreliable. The highest is 96% accuracy for iris scans, but it then goes to about 86% for fingerprint and 68% for facial (IIRC). Now, imagine when your iris scan - for example - passes, but your facial doesn't. Not to mention there is no reliable standard of accuracy set, for example if you have 2 out of 3 fingerprints matched to your register record..... you're looking at either a fundamentally unreliable system for ID, or one which stores vast amounts of personal info for correlation and requires long checking sessions. Also imagine being detained because this technical error makes it look like you have a false ID.
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Another thing occurs to me; biometric measures - as tested by the Home Office - are still unreliable. The highest is 96% accuracy for iris scans, but it then goes to about 86% for fingerprint and 68% for facial (IIRC). Now, imagine when your iris scan - for example - passes, but your facial doesn't. Not to mention there is no reliable standard of accuracy set, for example if you have 2 out of 3 fingerprints matched to your register record..... you're looking at either a fundamentally unreliable system for ID, or one which stores vast amounts of personal info for correlation and requires long checking sessions. Also imagine being detained because this technical error makes it look like you have a false ID.
In short why implement a system with no real apparantly good reason, that is fundamentally flawed and will just cost the people more in the long run both in money and time.