Slashdot Mirror

Gordon Brown has made a frank admission that government cannot promise the safety of personal data entrusted by the public. The Prime Minister was speaking hours after it emerged that a memory stick containing the passwords to a government website used submit online tax returns had been lost.

Even more worrying considering government rhetoric on the £20bn ID cards they want:

From 2010, the government will target young people to get an identity card on a voluntary basis "to assist them in proving their identity as they start their independent life in society", with full roll-out to all British citizens starting from 2011. "The government are kidding themselves if they think ID cards for foreign nationals will protect against illegal immigration or terrorism - since they don't apply to those coming here for less than three months. "ID cards are an expensive white elephant that risk making us less - not more - safe. It is high time the government scrapped this ill-fated project." The Liberal Democrats said the cards' "fancy design" did not detract from the fact that they remained an intrusion into people's liberty. Chris Huhne, the party's home affairs spokesman, said: "It does not matter how fancy the design of ID cards is, they remain a grotesque intrusion on the liberty of the British people. "The government is using vulnerable members of our society, like foreign nationals who do not have the vote, as guinea pigs for a deeply unpopular and unworkable policy. When voting adults are forced to carry ID cards, this scheme will prove to be a laminated poll tax."

And from the government mouthpiece the BBC:

SNP Home Affairs spokesman Pete Wishart MP said his party had opposed ID cards from the outset but the government's "abysmal record on data protection" was reason enough to cancel them. He said the government looked "absurd" for pushing ahead with such a costly project. "These cards will not make our communities more secure, they will not reduce the terrorist threat and they will not make public services more efficient," said Mr Wishart. Phil Booth, head of the national No2ID campaign group, attacked the roll-out of the cards as a "softening-up exercise". "The Home Office is trying to salami slice the population to get this scheme going in any way they can," Mr Booth told the BBC. "Once they get some people to take the card it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. "The volume of foreign nationals involved is minuscule so it won't do anything to tackle illegal immigration."

Collision between a 1500 lb demolition ball and a car

Apart from the 200 feet bit of course.

>The Prison Service has been forced to spend £250,000 on changing every lock and key in Feltham young offenders' institution after a TV news crew filmed a prison key during a media visit last week.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jul/05/broadcasting.youthjustice

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment

The Economy. It's the biggest topic these days, eclipsing even war

Not in the UK. The biggest story here right now isn't the US election, the wars or the economy.

It's that a couple of radio presenters left a rude message on Manuel's answering machine! http://www.guardian.co.uk/media

Serious news fatigue I guess. After weeks of relentless doom and gloom (and coverage of the US election), something silly seems to appeal to the press.

They'd like to join the EU, but they have a way to go yet because of concerns over human rights issues, eg. "Turkish minister apologises after 'tortured' activist dies in prison" -- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/15/turkey-humanrights

US troops attack Syrian [border] village. Co-incidence? October ain't over yet... a surprise flare up there, plus a bit of domestic false-flag, and lo! "Chips" is back in with a chance... remember when the UK Govt had tanks and machine-gun toting troops ringing Heathrow airport - just before the last General Election? Ministers went on telly looking serious, denying there was any specific threat but hinting darkly that "if you knew what we knew...". oh look, that was just before the crucial vote on participating in the invasion of Iraq. Anything happening over in the US at the moment, vote-wise? I don't keep up with y'domestic politics, you know how it is...

btw the image is taken from this comment is free article

the article and the comments that followed make for an interesting sunday read

Call'em Nazi's all you want, but the Republicans (or at least the Conservatives) have never made demands over what you eat, what you drive, the type of toilet you use, or whether you smoke; that's for Liberals to control.

I like Nazi's, since you brought it up. Are you familiar with the underlying political philosophy of 1930's-1940's Germany? Mussolini once called it corporatism, Hitler called it National Socialism, and long before either of them the Romans called it Fascism. It descends from the thinking of Plato, that all good is traceable to a single, central form. The greatest good is therefore achieved through the harmonization of all lesser goods. A good society can't have dissent from the truth offered by the ordained ruling class, they can't have sex with people of the same gender or not believe in god. Who does that sound like?

There are fanatics on both sides. If you play with fanatics, you will get oppressed. Compromise is the essential virtue of democracy.

The data can't be altered because it's digitally-signed.

mmkay..

That's got nothing to do with the digital signature on the data.

In order to read the data from the card, you first have to authenticate with a challenge-response protocol using a symmetric authentication key. That key is derived from data printed on the inside of the passport, the "Machine Readable Zone", or MRZ. The purpose of this authentication is to make it difficult for someone to read your passport data without your knowledge. In theory, they'd need to open your passport, grab an image of the inside page and then they could authenticate to read out the data from the chip.

The problem is that there is insufficient entropy in the MRZ, since it doesn't contain any random numbers. Because of that, with a little guesswork and some trial and error, an attacker can figure out the authentication key without seeing the MRZ.

That means that an attacker can read the data from the card -- the digitally-signed data. Being able to modify the data without invalidating the signature requires breaking either SHA-1 (with a pre-image collision) or RSA-2048. Good luck with that.

Before someone else brings it up, there was another group who discovered that at least one immigration agency (Belgium? I don't remember which) was not bothering to verify the digital signature on the data. Since they weren't, the group was able to modify the contents of a passport and get away with it. That's not a security failure in the passport, though, it's a procedural error on the part of the immigration agency. Assuming agencies implement their passport checking software correctly and validate the digital signature on the data, there is no way for an attacker to modify any of the data without detection.

The data can't be altered because it's digitally-signed.

mmkay..

Well, the good news is there is a proposed plan to bring rocks back from Mars, where NASA and ESA are expected to decide this November whether to go ahead with the plan or not.

The bad news is the called it iMARS.

;-P

Global cooling is real. So is global warming. It's just that both happened at the same time, global cooling was stronger in the 70s, global warming is stronger now. In fact, global cooling has somewhat mitigated the effect of global warming, so we've underestimated how serious a problem it is. It's even possible that decreasing the amount of particulate pollutants in the atmosphere would decrease the effect of global cooling, and exacerbate the problem of global warming.

Exactly. See the Iranians for example. They know that Israel and the US would like nothing better than to wipe them off the face of the earth, and that their survival depends on them having a strong deterrent (this was Iraq's mistake). Hence the release of photos of nuclear facilities etc.

1980s: ~50 civilians(Chernobyl)

Esimates of the number of deaths attributable to Chernobyl range from less than 4,000 to 500,000. It's hard to know; the USSR was not known for being open with data. The IAEA number of 4,000 is almost certainly BS (the International Atomic Energy Agency has an obvious bias); same with the 500,000 figure (Greenpeace has a well-known anti-nuclear bias).

Since most of the fuel remains, and the "sarcophagus" is deteriorating, it's quite possible that another large release of radioactive material may occur.

For comparison, the Bhopal catastrophe resulted the immediate deaths of 3,000, with 8,000 dying in the first two weeks and another 8,000 deaths over the long term attributed to the disaster.

Re Wiping off the map, see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155

It is worse than that. Germany is already enforcing its laws against Holocaust denial on websites that are not anywhere in Germany. See for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/02/secondworldwar.australia where someone who was never in Germany was arrested in Great Britain so they could be extradited to Germany. Holocaust denies are obviously shmucks but in the long run this is the same sort of behavior which allows any country to piss on the basic rights of people in other countries. How long until Thailand decides to extend its laws against criticizing the monarch to other countries? Or how long until Italy extends its laws against making mean comments about the Pope or the Italian Prime Minster? (see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4732048.ece ).

The summary and the Register article make it sound like Interpol wants to keep a record of everyone with a passport. This does not appear to be the case, according to the original article which the Register ripped off and rewrote.

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.

Not that I like the scheme, but it doesn't sound quite as police-state as some might think. My picture is already taken all over the place if I go to the airport, this would take my picture and cross-check it with a database of known criminals, terrorists and fugitives.

Do Jacqui Smith and the rest of the fucktards (I've just added 'fucktard' to my Firefox dictionary - I have a feeling I'll be using it more in the coming months) at the Home Office not understand anything?
Can they not see how easily these measures will be circumvented? Have they not learned anything from the data-loss scandals? Are they actually that naive?
When the ex-head of MI5 says we're over-reacting to the terrorist threat, I'm inclined to think we're over-reacting.

With any luck the Lords will take a quick scan over the legislation, wipe their asses with it, and throw it straight back in Jacquie Smith's stupid face.

You mean those 3% that actually benefit anyone?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-big-question-are-cctv-cameras-a-waste-of-money-in-the-fight-against-crime-822079.html
or these 3%?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1

And god forbid someone comes up with the idea to use advanced CCTV evading technology.

Andy

Others have pointed out about PAYG, etc, but:

The new part is the national surveillance database.

Indeed, and just to explain to others why this is quite significant: a "passport" will soon be morphed into the National ID Card and Database system. Although they ultimately want it to be compulsory for all, this is proving controversial, so they're trying to sneak it in the back door by increasing the number of occasions that you'll need an ID card / passport.

Giving up the right to have a passport is a big sacrifice for people in the UK, as many travel abroad (I'm not sure of the latest timeline, but very soon it won't be possible to get a passport without paying the full cost of an ID card, and being placed on the database), but with these plans, you'll need one just to get a mobile phones.

You'll be required to pay £93 (at least) for a card, to entitle you to buy a £30 phone.

Let's also not forget that this ties in with Government plans to monitor every Briton's phone calls, e-mails, and internet usage. They want you're details, so they can keep track of everyone you call or text.

See http://www.no2id.net/ for more info on ID cards and the database.

'...have someone like George Soros fund a new government that brings together the best and brightest minds in a manner where they're not tempted by bribery.'

This is an old idea, of course, most recently known as 'meritocracy', a term that many people are unaware was originally intended to be pejorative. Here's what Michael Young (who coined the term in the 50s) had to say about this type of system in business and politics back in 2001, well before the current economic mess:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

'The business meritocracy is in vogue. If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get. They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers can actually believe they have morality on their side. So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards they arrogate to themselves. The old restraints of the business world have been lifted and, as the book also predicted, all manner of new ways for people to feather their own nests have been invented and exploited.'

The analogy is by Douglas Adams - see http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/may/14/books.booksnews (toward the bottom of the page).

The IWF issues a blacklist that all UK ISPs implement so yes, it does act to decide what content is blacklisted in the UK. It is much more than just a hotline.

This blacklist deals with child porn. Criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content aren't filtered by this blacklist but are passed on to the authorities and ISPs to deal with via take downs instead.

Thank you however for demonstrating exactly what the problem is with the IWF. That people don't even realise that it does act as a censor.

See here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/07/bt_iwf_trails/

here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/may/26/onlinesupplement

or here:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2119771/web-watchdog-issues-paedophile-blacklist

Again, I support the work they do currently if it is as suggested, however I do not support the fact that they are allowed to manage it without any oversight or public awareness.

There's nothing normal about refusing to pay your staff a reasonable rate and then demanding the customer get involved in compensating them.

I can only quote you in the name of truth. The moment the UK government found out that was happening here they started taking steps to make it illegal, as it damn well should be.

I hate to say this, but given this, plus proposals such as the Communications Data Bill (2008) (described recently in Slashdot, and intended to monitor all telecommunications traffic in the country), when will people start thinking of the UK as a former democracy, where all of the democratic forms and customs are in place, but leached of any real meaning ?

Of course, the proposal for 42 days detention without trial recently went down for defeat in the House of Lords, along with the proposal for secret inquests, so maybe the inevitable reaction to the excesses of the Blair years is setting in and people will stop this rot before it is too late.

I hate to say this, but given this, plus proposals such as the Communications Data Bill (2008) (described recently in Slashdot, and intended to monitor all telecommunications traffic in the country), when will people start thinking of the UK as a former democracy, where all of the democratic forms and customs are in place, but leached of any real meaning ?

Of course, the proposal for 42 days detention without trial recently went down for defeat in the House of Lords, along with the proposal for secret inquests, so maybe the inevitable reaction to the excesses of the Blair years is setting in and people will stop this rot before it is too late.

Yeah because it's not like MS hasn't been complaining about Google's rise at all. In fact they don't care because they're an OS company and only want to make OSes along with maybe the occasional office suite.

They certainly have no reason to be threatened by Google or want to dominate search themselves.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2008/jul/16/microsoftcomplainsaboutgoog

From that article:
Microsoft's general counsel told a congressional committee yesterday that "never before in the history of advertising has one company been in a position to control prices on up to 90% of advertising in a single medium."

I have to wonder what Cerf thinks of Obama changing his stance on telecom immunity after the primary. No candidate that supports anything like retroactive telecom immunity will ever get a dime, let alone a vote from me.

I remember reading this article and the human conversation at the end of the linked article seemed like he/she was trying to sound like a robot... Were the human 'subjects' aware that the were part of a test to trick people?

From The Guardian's article:

"Let's talk about religion or politics. How is the government doing?" "I'm a protestant." Oh, really? Which denomination? "I was raised as a Protestant." Then, "Judge This very minute, I am a protestant; Go ahead?"

On the other half of the screen, a faceless music fan ("I like a lot of Radiohead, Stereophonics, Led Zep etc") admitted he or she hadn't watched either the England match or X Factor last night ("Haha, Top Gear's more my style"). It was pretty clear which one was a real person. And which one the computer.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/oct/13/artificialintelligenceai-computing

Though this is quite interesting:

The event's credibility was hardly aided by the insistence of Hugh Loebner, the prize's American sponsor, that he had no interest in the result and had only set up the competition 18 years ago to promote his firm's roll-up plastic lighted portable disco dance floors.

That doesn't always work. Some visiting leaders of political parties from allied nations occasionally get the full treatment. For some strange reason this poor guy tends to trigger every terrorism watch list going, even when he's on his way to meet with the President.

Interestingly, that's the same set of recommendations that most major US Corporations follow when sending their employees outside the US ... to make sure the authorities in the both the US and the foreign country don't find anything when they walk through your laptop.

Remember, the rules that we tend to rely on in our home countries don't typically apply in other countries, or even at the borders. If you think that Canadian Customs has any fewer powers than US Customs with regards to laptops, dream on:

CBSA has yet to publish a report detailing its policy on border searches of electronic devices. That said, the CBSA has stated that its examination authority under the Customs Act extends to electronic storage devices. Other sources of information also suggest that they, like their American counterparts, do not accord electronic devices special status at the border. For example, the Canadian Customs Act broadly defines "goods" to include "any document in any form." suggesting no special treatment for electronic documents. Canadian case law also supports this interpretation. In a 2008 Ontario Court of Justice decision, the Court stated that it saw no intrinsic difference between a computer search and a detailed examination of the contents of one's suitcase.

Even more goodness:

From their press releases concerning the confiscation of child pornography, it is evident that CBSA Officers regularly perform spot-checks of laptops at the border. Moreover, in another recent Ontario Superior Court of Justice case, the Court justified a customs search of a computer disc by reasoning that searches at the border are routinely held to be reasonable simply because they are searches at the border[.]

Think you're safe in Europe, specifically the UK? Think again:

A spokesman for Customs and Excise said officials would routinely scan laptops for illegal material such as pornography. Encrypted files will be treated in the same way as a ordinary luggage. "So far as we are concerned, there is no difference between an encrypted file and a locked suitcase," said the spokesman. "All travellers entering the country should be prepared to have their equipment scanned."

Perhaps you think it's just the crazy Brits? Not so fast. The German government says:

Customs authorities perform customs controls along the external frontier of the EC and within Germany. As a rule, customs officers check travellers on a random basis without a specific initial suspicion. [...] Occasionally it happens that articles are found during a customs inspection and it cannot be clarified immediately whether they are subject to prohibitions and restrictions or not. [...] In such cases, the articles in question can be seized and submitted to a test by experts.

And remember that most customs rules are harmonized in the EU ... things are pretty much the same everywhere. If you peruse the lists of "prohibitions and restrictions" for the EU, you will find many, many things that are perfectly legal to transport into or out of the United States.

Borders everywhere have different legal status than the interior of those same countries ... many many fewer protections apply, even in the most "Western" of democracies. Forget that at your own peril.

I realize this is likely starting to sound old, but Cory Doctorow's Little Brother should be required reading for people doing something like this. His writings about the "Paradox of the False Positive" are enumerated there, but also in other sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/20/rare.events

Statisticians speak of something called the Paradox of the False Positive. Here's how that works: imagine that you've got a disease that strikes one in a million people, and a test for the disease that's 99% accurate. You administer the test to a million people, and it will be positive for around 10,000 of them because for every hundred people, it will be wrong once (that's what 99% accurate means). Yet, statistically, we know that there's only one infected person in the entire sample. That means that your "99% accurate" test is wrong 9,999 times out of 10,000!

Terrorism is a lot less common than one in a million and automated "tests" for terrorism data-mined conclusions drawn from transactions, Oyster cards, bank transfers, travel schedules, etc are a lot less accurate than 99%. That means practically every person who is branded a terrorist by our data-mining efforts is innocent.

(emphasis mine)

And, as others have pointed out, this system is likely to have a false positive rate higher than 1%.

Whilst that may be a perfectly valid reason to you, the real reason is that the airlines just haven't figured out how to charge for it yet.

They will soon:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2008/sep/25/ryanair.mobilephones

which includes a classic quote from Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary:
"If you want a quiet flight, use another airline."

Actually if you look at the image on TFA, it strikes me as really odd. Kinda just stare at it a little almost as you would a magic eye picture, but with less intensity; just relax your eyes a little.

Now it might just be me and the long day I've had but he really begins to look normal* at that point - exceedingly so. Until that is, you then refocus and the hair and beard come back into proper focus with the rest of the face. * whatever that may mean.

So there you have it. RMS is a walking talking magic eye picture. It's brilliant!

FWIW I'll take the Hippy Stallman over the Norm Stallman any day. You hear that Mattel - you got the Heroes of the F/OSS Revolution action figures in production yet? I want to collect the set - Corey Doctorow, Linus (with Tux, tux and Nunchucks), RMS (Hippy with Katana), ESR (mailman outfit version). And then there are the enemies, Ballmer (with chair (of course)), Gates (with Seinfeld mini-me), etc.

Oh man, that's gonna be sweet.

The fact that the type of cloning mentioned in this article does not necessarily require cracking does not mean that it was not done or not doable. Quite the contrary. These stories have been all over the internet. First, a biometric passport issued by the Dutch government was cracked in under 2 hours (and read from a distance, by the way). An article about that was linked to right here on Slashdot:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/07/0214220

This type of passport meets international standards and is accepted by the UK and the rest of the EU, as well as the US. In fact these are the standards that the United States insisted upon and uses itself. Here is another article about that (pdf):

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~sheetals/publications/RFID_epassport.pdf

And finally, if you do not believe that RFID chips that ARE IN USE in the United States are crackable, yet meet the standards of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) -- which is the relevant standards body here -- here is yet another article explaining it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs

There are many, many articles out there about this, but these three should be enough to convince a reasonable person. Your claim that I don't know what I am talking about won't wash. It was done. It is demonstrable and provable.

The problem here is that YOU are confusing the encryption itself with the implementation. If the implementation is poor (as it is in the passports), any encryption is crackable. The UK passports that were cracked used 3DES. Big deal! They are so poorly implemented that they WERE cracked, and quite easily. So take off your own tinfoil blinders, and take a real look around you. Obviously you do not understand as much about this subject as you think. So go learn something yourself, before making such smug smart-assed remarks to other people.

in addition, more recent news confirms the aircraft wreckage found is probably his.

A warmer planet is good.

Good for who? Norway? Or West Africa?

Well, actually, much of Africa (including West Africa) will get an increase in rainfall with an increase in temperature, according to simulations run by some guy from the Netherlands. This may even result in the "greening of the Sahara:"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/sep/16/highereducation.climatechange

Global warming could significantly increase rainfall in Saharan Africa within a few decades, potentially ending the severe droughts that have devastated the region, a new study suggests.

The discovery was made by climate experts at the Royal Meteorological Institute in De Bilt, the Netherlands, who used a computer model to predict changes in the Sahel region - a wide belt stretching from the Atlantic to the horn of Africa that includes Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti.

Global warming will heat the land more than the sea, leading to changes in air pressure and weather. When the Netherlands team simulated this effect and combined it with warming caused by the expected rises in greenhouse gas emissions between 1980 and 2080, they found Sahel rainfall in the July to September period jumped 1-2mm a day.

Some scientists suspected that global warming might increase rainfall in the region, causing the so-called greening of the Sahara, but these are the biggest predicted increases so far.

"There has to be a real trust relationship with users, built around privacy and security and change," he says. If people don't trust Google, they won't use its apps. So "this company really does want to do the right thing".

There mere act of owning an email address already ties you up to whoever provides it, unless you own the domain, embracing Cloud Computing doesn't mean giving up your rights as an user, it's simply a paradigm shift, I don't understand how RMS doesn't see an implied benefit on freeing up users from the Microsoft monopoly.

I'm surprised \. is posting this without referring to the Stallman interview that was all over the nerd sites like reddit yesterday. It is very relevant. You missed it? Come on guys, you're not always the fastest and I don't care, but this is a fail.

True. We're not quite able to read thoughts, for example, thus leaving people to participate daily in thoughtcrime. But we're working on it.

And because of how much China exports these corrupt business practices affect the health of people outside their borders.

I for one try, as much as possible, to avoid any products that come from China because I have no idea what I'm getting.

You know what. China is serving global demand. Global business demands profit at all and any cost. Consumers don't care who sewed their shirts, that those people despite working hard can't afford healthcare and education.

They say "don't care was made to care". Well the developed nations have sown the seed of their contempt for the humanity of the people of those manufacturing nations by not caring except about price. Now we're beginning to reap what we have sown.

You've all heard of companies using child/slave labour. Clothing manufacturers, computer makers. Much of the worlds chocolate supplies are tainted with slavery #1 ... none of these companies go out of business.

But now our constant drive for the bottom line is affecting the health of our home nations, now will we sit up and say no to globalised exploitation?

---
#1 about 50% of cocoa comes from West Africa (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali) where child slavery (abduction of children to work for no money) was considered widespread in 2001/2002. I have never seen any reports of a solution to this problem. See eg, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1963617.stm http://www.365act.com/actions/2.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/apr/19/globalisation.benstafford;

Other sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_exploitation_in_the_chocolate_industry particularly http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/24/news/international/chocolate_bittersweet.fortune/ (read that one if nothing else).

These are worthy of mention...

The Aquanator captures power for underwater currents.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/26/1096137100758.html?oneclick=true

The Florida current has 30 times the flow of all rivers
of the World.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_stream#Possible_renewable_power_source

The Antarctic current has 135 times the flow of all the
rivers of the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Current

There are a lot of other underwater currents around the world.

This next idea has been more about how to do it vs. practicality.

I think the undersea currents are the best direction at present.

But for those who like to think on the fringe...

Some ppl have found out that 1% of the jet stream world wide
would replace all forms of fuel and power around the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream#Future_power_generation

No one has figured out a sure way to capture the power.

But I think I have an idea how to do it.

Cables from the extreme height to the ground in a 100+ mph wind
are going to be subject to terrible sheer forces.

Microwave loses power over distance geometrically.

With the high altitude aerodynamic balloon you can ease into
the high winds like jet liners do now to cut down on long
flight times.

A large Zeppelin like the prior planned Cargo-lifter, but
designed for higher altitude flight like planned by
21st century airships, and fuelless flight.

Cargolifter 160 tonne capacity planned Zeppelin: ( out of business )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter

The fuelless flight idea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nKltbQ8PBQ

21st century airships ( Strato-lites - High Altitude Balloons )

http://www.21stcenturyairships.com/HighAlt

21st century plans a balloon that will reach 67,000 ft
above all the wind and can act as a low cost satellite for telecom.

The jet stream is around 25,000 ft up.

Imagine these ideas as a hybrid where it can move into the
Jet Stream, and capture power via Super Capacitiors or in
some other extreme dense power storage method.

Then it glides to the ground once full of stored energy
in what ever form is most efficient and xfers it.

If two were connected like in the Fuelless flight idea,
it would have a Cargo capacity of near 320 tonnes.

The extreme cold at that height might also make
super conductors viable.

It is a wild and expensive idea, but it could be tested
small scale with a smaller model with long range remote controls
like 21st century has planned for their unmanned balloons.

A manned flight to 132,000 ft. is in the works right now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/jul/11/spaceexploration.sciencenews

So 25,000 ft. unmanned is quite doable.

Well, Bush has authorised the invasion of Pakistan.

To be fair, all the opposition parties (Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, SNP) oppose ID cards and say they would scrap them, if elected.

Sorry, I don't follow. What does what a party says pre-election have to do with what it does if it gets into power? Once the businesses that want to cream another GBP93 (about US$170) from every person in the country offer some healthy party donations to whoever is in power, pre-election promises will quickly be abandoned.

The GBP93 is an old figure; http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/may/25/immigrationpolicy.idcards -- it's probably more by now. And it doesn't seem to take into account the annual running costs estimated in 2005 to be GBP584m (about £10 -- US$18 -- for every man, woman and child in the country. Even if there were no civil liberties argument, I would resent having to pay that for something that appears to offer no benefit whatsoever except for lining the pockets of a couple of businesses.

How exactly is the fingerprint not readable if it, rather than just a hash, is stored on the card?

As for the RSA keys, governments, especially the British, have a very bad track record at keeping data safe. Keys of such importance are a very good target for a social or even technical attack. Knowing the track record, however, they will probably end up on some laptop, usb stick or cd forgotten on a public bus or train, sparing the attacker the effort.

And as to the forging, it may be harder to do it, but once you've done it (and it has been shown that biometric passports deployed in the EU are unsafe right now and can be compromised quite easily http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs ) it becomes very hard indeed to disprove that the person holding the passport is not actually the person referenced in the passport / on the ID card. The fingerprints match, the encrypted photograph matches, the RSA keys check out, perfect fraud.

Maybe flight simulator

Like this:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/images/LittleBigPlanet%20Screenshot%2063.bmp (BMP!!)
http://ludologia.blogs.ca.ua.pt/files/2007/04/little_big_planet2.jpg (overly compressed JPEG)

would look good or remotely close like this in 640x480 anyway?

The graphics quality is a huuuuuuge deal for little big planet. It looks fucking awesome and life like, the Wii would destroy that.