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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
There's a big difference between being identified by a SS number or a drivers licence and a biometric. Biometrics can be used for more than just identification.
Retnal scans, for example, could be used to filter out suspects by race (based on eye color), or provide insight into the quality of someone's vision. While this may seem trivial, this type of information, especially medical information, is _supposed_ to be protected by the Constitution (at least here in the U.S.) and any such system mandiated by the government will threaten those constitutionally protected freedoms. Would you be comfortable giving a DNA sample to the government for identification purposes, knowing that they could analyze it for genetic defects? This is the first step on the path to a day where you can't have a driver's license because you're genetically pre-disposed to alcholism.
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.
A photograph gives some way for the PERSON to validate the ID -- so does a signature. With a retinal/fingerprint scan, you are totally at the mercy of the machine. The cop isn't going to ink your finger and doublecheck against what is stored on the card.
Finally, what happens if someone DOES steal your identity? Exactly how are you going to "invalidate" your thumbprint or retinal scan? If someone steals your ATM card and PIN, you get a new one.
Latent fingerprints can be enhanced with superglue fumes, scanned, touched up and reproduced with latex or gelatin. VERY low cost.
The big problem is that people think biometrics are inherently more secure than traditional methods of identification but that isn't necessarily true.
People trust the machine, and the machine isn't reliable enough for that type of trust, yet.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
Okay, so the big cities. Look at it this way: The underground is a primary means of transportation in such cities. To that extent you can be tracked everywhere you go via CCTV.
The worst thing about CCTV *isn't* the fact there are cameras, it's that they have hours of footage stored away for long periods of time. If you were *seriously* in suspect by the police, they'd go and dig up weeks old and perhaps months old footage of you.
What if you were a citizen that had some undue interest (celebrities, financial types, etc) and some CCTV footage of you meeting with someone turned up? What if you went someplace out of the ordinary to meet this person for whatever reason, yet you were on CCTV?
You give the police far too little credit. Every time you watch TV shows in which footage from a camera is shown, the british CCTV footage always shows the most extreme high-tech. In the US we don't have CCTV which will follow people around. We also don't have databases connected to them.
The UK is still ahead in CCTV technology, and finding ways to further intermesh it with various goals.
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.
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
The British TV sitcom Yes, Minister offered a brilliant precis of push-polling technique: