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Card Makers Say UK Citizens Want Biometric ID Cards
ArsonPanda writes "ZDnet is running a story on a recent survey in the UK showing overwhelming 80% public support of universal, biometricly enhanced citizen ID cards. Everybody here's fine with supplying the gubmit w/ your retinal scans and fingerprints, right?"
I'm guessing this study was funded by the company who will produce these cards and anyone supporting their fascist ideas. screw that.
The big thing to remember here is that the survey was conducted by the card maker, not an independant source. The results may not be as reliable as most would like.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
This is from a country who already rigorously monitors its citizens with CCTV everywhere they go. Perhaps the UK could be considered a testbed for how people react when their basic rights are subtlely chipped away. It's all in the name of safety and convenience.
The Ben Franklin Adage still applies, doubly so:
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty or safety. Nor, are they likely to end up with either."
People need to wake up and realize that they are slowly removing their own rights.
and stop whining about "losing freedoms" or "privacy". Sure it can be abused. But we need a way to identify people, and if you think that driver's licenses and social security numbers aren't already doing this, you're just closing your eyes to it.
If anything, requiring fingerprints or retinal scans will make these ids more secure and trustworthy.
or do you like the way id theft is so common in the US that there's a form you can fill out when yours has been stolen? look here
Retina scans ? Oh lovely, I really want to shove my face into a scanner that 1000 people have used since it was last washed. God help me if I get an eye disease because that alter my retinal image meaning I can't use my credit card.
Any encryption used will be cracked given enough time, meaning false biometric information can be stored on the chip, give it 2 years and card rewriters will be available for every ganster in the human, gun and drug traffic trade.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
The technique is simple: phrases the questions in such a way that you get the answers you want:
Hard to say no to that one.
In a predominantly "minority" area:
Again, hard to say no, especially if you're a member of that under-served "minority".
(I put "minority" in quotes only because it's not really a minority in a majority "minority" jurisdiction, is it?)
Sure, $thing sounds pretty bad, whatever it is.
And so forth. You can easily construct your own loaded questions. With a few bucks, you can get a pollster to construct even more devious ones, and call a bunch of people who are in too much of a hurry to really give the question the consideration it deserves. Shake, bake, and then claim only your product/plan/candidate can solve the "problem."
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Most of what you mentioned were non-Government methods. You can "Just Say NO!" -- albiet with some inconvenience.
With a government mandated ID of this type, you can't opt out.
Governments are also very hard to police on the proper use of data/powers. They tend to classify things under "National Security" when they frequently mean "Political Career Security".
They can also change the rules on a whim. Monday could be "this can only be used/accessed under an active law enforcement investigation". Whereas Tuesday could be "...or for proactive monitoring of persons deemed suspicious". [Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?]
Worse, the changes and the very rules themselves could be classified. Witness the bullshit the pull when asking for an ID to fly in the U.S. [You need a government issued ID, it is the law. Which law? We can't tell you, it is a secret. It isn't even written down -- the TSA communicated it to us verbally.]
Governments with too much power and information are more of a danger to individual liberties than anything they are trying to protect us from.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
As much as I respect Ben Franklin, I have to completely disagree with this. Even if someone is stupid enough to want to give up liberty for safety they still deserve liberty. If you start determining who liberty is for based on what they "would give up" or whatever other box you want to check off (skin color, political views, etc) for who "deserves" it, then no one has liberty. Everyone has to have full liberty, or 100% of it is an illusion.
And this new just in...
Company that stands to make millions from a technology is sells, promotes concept with skewed statistics indicating overwelmingly that the public wants the product and they want it now in spades.
Somewhat surpisingly, the public also declared that the product should cost four times what it can be offered for now.
Etc, etc, etc...
PS. Now we get to wait for it to be made law, and then watch the MPs/ministers involved become well paid non-executive directors of the self-same company. Cynic moi?
For those (Brits) wishing to state their opinion on the subject click here
If nature abhors a vacuum, why isn't there more dust in the world?
Somebody has already mentioned the purvasive CCTV camera that make the UK the most visually monitored country in history.
And it's been proven to reduce crime, and help crime detection, high profile cases like the murder of Jamie Bulger show how CCTV can be extremely helpful, and outweighs any paranoia concerns about being watched while in public. When CCTV is fitted into every home, then we'll complain, not before.
What about the partial criminalization of encryption under the RIP Act? You have to give the government your key if they demand it, otherwise 2 years in prison. The governement has sought, and obtained, powers to monitor e-mail, web usage and phone calls without judicial warrants.
How is being asked to hand over your key, any different to being asked to open your safe on production of a warrant ? Do search warrants mean locks and safes "are partially criminal "?
As for monitoring email, web usuage and so on, the Americans have that field completely sewn up.
The private right of gun ownership has been substantially destroyed in the past several years (with a concurrent rise in violent crime, including a rapid rise in gun use by criminals).
Don't even go there. We WANT tight gun laws, we don't want a gun in every bed side drawer culture. For more information see these comments.
People now go to jail in the UK for so- called "hate speech".
And you can't yell fire in a theatre despite having "free speech". Personally I'm in favour of not being able to say "blacks go home" "Jews faked the holocaust and are all money obssessed thieves" "Muslims are a lower form of life". The law came into force, because racial minorities were being harrassed with verbal abuse morning noon and night by British racists. Your right to free speech ends when it is designed to harm me, just as yelling fire in a theatre is illegal.
What has broken their will, I don't know--years of inept socialist rule? Some post-colonial ennui? Too much spotted dick?
Nice troll, we spent the best part of 2 decades under hard right rule with Thatcher, so spare me the brits are commies crap. As for breaking our will, we broke the governments will over expanding data access laws last year , and over 5000 people wrote and complained about ID cards this year.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
That ignorant trolls like you get modded up as "insightful" or "interesting" is sad.
Here, for those who are interested in the truth, are the facts:
1. The overwhelming majority of CCTV in the UK are privately owned and maintained.
Stores, shopping precincts, bars, airports, train stations, etc are, just like in the US, privately-owned premises. And, just like in the US, they have CCTV cameras installed for security and safety purposes.
Where's the problem here? Shouldn't a store owner be entitled to put a camera up in his shop to deter would-be shop-lifters? Shouldn't an airport or a train station have cameras installed to monitor passenger traffic flow and thereby ensure passenger safety?
Would you be happier if the store owner felt less secure whilst earning his livelyhood or if the occassional passenger fell onto the tracks because a station platform was dangerously overcrowded?
2. The majority of government-owned cameras are watching the roads.
Again, these are mainly concerned with the safety of road users. Monitoring traffic jams and detecting motorists speeding through red lights isn't exactly a Big Brother scenario - so why make it out to be?
3. A minority of government-owned cameras are installed in and around high security installations and other potential terrorist targets.
Number one on this list is the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. The area around that building is CCTV city, and has been for some time. Gee, I wonder why? Is it because the British goverment is obsessed with what the US Ambassador is having for lunch, or is it because it's a terrorist target?
Gee, let me think...
(Not too long ago, you could drive around all four sides of Grosvenor Square. But, some time in the last decade or so, some bright spark decided it was far too tempting to a potential car bomber and the side that houses the US Embassy was blocked off and protected with anti-tank measures. Not even Buckingham Palace or Downing Street are that secure. Next time you're in town, check it out - it makes Fort Knox look like an open air picnic camp.)
It's worth bearing in mind that Britain's been a terrorist target for over 30 years now. The IRA has been blowing up bombs, killing men, women and children all over Britain whilst freely raising funds in the US since before I was born. We can't (and won't) live in a society where there's someone watching you on every street corner so the security forces use CCTV cameras where they have to to ensure public safety.
(For the benefit of the "cameras can't stop terrorists" brigade, I'll point out now that IRA members rarely try to martyr themselves on suicide missions. They prefer to go in, place their car bomb, etc, and get out. Naturally, being spotted and caught is something they try to avoid, and evidence has shown that CCTVs do help curtail such activities. Suicide bombers are a different breed.)
4. Most CCTV footage is very poor, even when enhanced.
Most cameras are very low quality, black and white monitors. Getting a positive identification from one, even after the picture has been forensically enhanced is very difficult.
How such cameras (even if every single one of them was interlinked, actively manned, etc) could track my movement day in, day out is ridiculous to contemplate. There isn't a camera within half a mile of my house, and I live in a densely populated suburb of London, so where would they start?
So before you yanks (and sorry, but it is mainly yanks) go spouting off about how CCTV obsessed Britain is and how 1984-like our society is, why don't you examine the data? The real picture is a far cry from the sensationalist BS being spouted here.
So, "people need to wake up and realize that they are slowly removing their own rights", huh? US Patriot Act anyone?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Gee, here's a bright kneejerk (slashjerk) response. "Identity theft is ridiculously easy even though there is no way to prove your identity". Fucking wonderful.
Why is identity theft not easy in my country? Because we have ID cards (well, books). You need one (by law) to open a bank account, perform transactions with government, and to vote. To get it reissued, you provide a fingerprint. Is it failsafe? No. Does it prevent someone from withdrawing money from my bank because they know my account number and can get my birth certificate from a public registry? Yes. Does it violate my right to privacy? Maybe.
The usual argument goes: if you aren't doing something illegal then there's nothing to worry about. And the counter is: and then they came for me, and there was noone left to speak out.
Well here's my response: when they came for me, "they" were not the police, were not the government, were not some shady quasi-legal state sanctioned organisation. "They" were your average criminals with guns, who give less of a shit about my rights than a civil servant. And the only reason there is any chance that "they" will get caught, is that every adult who wants to participate in the social structure of this country has their fingerprints in a national database.
Don't come with bullshit about fingerprints being useless. I've seen two groups of criminals tracked down before on fingerprints alone, and that's just from crimes that I've suffered. Fingerprints aren't perfect, no. You can't get a conviction based on fingerprints -- but they go to circumstantial evidence. But this is all besides the point.
Every day in the US millions of people produce some form of identification. A driver's license in the most common. But what is your proof of being a US citizen? A passport? Hell no, how do you prove your citizenship when you apply for one? Birth certificate? How does that in any way prove your claim to your identity? Quite simply, data corruption is possible when there is no normalisation. If you don't have an absolute identity list, identity theft is easy.
So what happens when you do have an absolute list? Well the trick is to have a system where you can prove your identity, but no-one else can prove they are you. Biometrics is the typical answer. It has unfortunately side effects - your identity can be discovered without your consent.
Well here's something new for the privacy advocates: in public you don't have privacy. Get it? You do not enjoy the right to privacy when you are in public. Should I rephrase this again? No? Good. The assumption that you CAN identify a person in public is essential to the maintainance of law and order.
So the real problem with ID cards is that they are seen as a first step in the erosion of rights. First you have a card, then you have to produce it, then you have to wear it all the time, then you will have it revoked if your are naughty, and finally it will be tatooed to your forhead and you get your head lopped off if you commit a crime. Bummer ... and I always wanted a crime free society.
So come again, what's the problem? Someone may abuse it. Aah, yes. The State may abuse its power and abuse the identity system. Heaven forbid. They could go to war, repress an entire race group, raise taxes, collude with big business, detain us without trial and not tell anyone ... but damnit don't let them know who we are.
So get real. Every country has some mechanism for identifying people. Commerce breaks down without it. Crime is unchecked without it. It may be a birth certificate, ID card, driver's license, known family member vouching for you. It doesn't matter - its a means of identification. ID cards simply provide a system which is more difficult to subvert than most. Often, because of the way they are applied, it is more harmful when that system IS subverted ... that means we should improve the system, not go to an even more flawed alternative.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
Yes they have the data.
Because it is all held in seperate databases across many government agencies (DVLA, Inland Revenue etc...) It's hard for them to collect it all in one place.
Currently (and trust me, I know this first hand) it takes up a fair amount of Civil Servant time to collect and collate all this data into a "file" on a person. This is usually done at the request of the NCIS (National Criminal Intelligence Service) and they don't tend to waste resources on annoying gits like me who fax thier MP saying $idea sucks. I'm not a big enough threat.
Now, put all this data in one handy place and any bugger can, at the click of a button, create a case file on me. Hell, even if they just wanted to see who this Chris Adams guy is, they'd get access to *all* my details including details of my "dependants" (You know, my Tax code says I'm married with one dependant, hyperlink here for details from Census etc...).
The main reason for the ID card idea has always been to reduce the time taken for Civil Servants to dig up cross agency data with the added bonuses of *potentially* reducing DSS fraud, random political bogeyman-du-jour dodgyness etc...
The initial reasoning behind this ID card plan was to make it *easier* for the government to check up on it's citizens.
Chris.
The British TV sitcom Yes, Minister offered a brilliant precis of push-polling technique: