Slashdot Mirror
UK Government May Ignore ID Card Opposition
DangerousBeauty writes "Yahoo has an interesting article up about the introduction of id cards in the United Kingdom. The main concern of people is that the UK Government has decided to ignore thousands of people who have said they opposed the cards because they commented via the internet."
Who cares what "thousands of people" think. I can show you "thousands of people" who oppose just about any government plan.
...from people they can track down and eliminate.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Why should a government care what people on the internet complain about? Why because people had to write in to complain or support the messure? Or bewcause of the large out pouring?
I will use the postings on Slashdot as an example of why it doesn't matter. First that's remember how many times people will be psamming from diffrent accounts over and over just to bitch and moun. Second the qualilty of the complaints might have been good from some people but what about the countrless other people who basiclly told the government to get screwed?\
The internet gives many many more people a voice then would normally complain in the real world and many of these peopl dont have much to say.
Consider this move together with existing laws to deny people the right to protect their data with encryption, and the increasing number of urban and traffic surveillance cameras, an increasing number of which are to be upgraded to use AI able to recognize vehicle registration number plates (i.e. "license plates" in the US) so any vehicle's location can be pinpointed and tracked in real time. They have also revealed that they are developing technologies to track your location in real time via your mobile phone more easily.
I even saw a piece in one of the more respectable UK papers that described another technology currently in development that allows them to use shortwave EM from mobile phone masts to "X-Ray" buildings - allowing them to monitor your activities inside your own home or office, with the resulting computer generated images being automatically transmitted to a remote receiving station at some arbitrary location. These can be forwarded over the internet or whatever in real time to whoever has authority to see them.
So very soon it will be entirely possible for the authorities to know cheaply and routinely exactly where you are all the time and precisely what you are doing. Without even getting out of their seats, for God's sake!
Judging by the number of urban surveillance and traffic cameras about, we're not really all that far away from that situation right now, as it happens.
Just think for a moment, people: this may all seem reasonable to you now, but are any of you old enough to remember reading George Orwell's "1984" and shuddering with horror at the very idea of living in such a world? I can tell you that the police state we are now heading for would have been completely unthinkable as recently as 1975. After all, wasn't that precisely why the people of Britain fought the second world war and endured the tension of the cold war - to prevent enslavement by a totalitarian regime? Wasn't it? Well it seems to have all been a waste of time because that is exactly what we are headed for now.
The public are being very naive if they think that these surveillance capabilities will only ever be used principally to catch those we people we currently think of as criminals. History has shown time and time again how governments don't often relinquish powers which suppress dissent and maintain their own hegemony, instead they use them to squash opposition while they continue to increase those powers. And "criminals" includes whatever people the law says. In such totalitarian regimes, "criminals" can mean protesters and dissidents of all kinds - like authors, journalists, even people who just said the wrong thing in public - ordinary people like you and me, law-abiding as we understand the term now.
Once ubiquitious surveillance has been a commonplace for a few years and we are all used to it being used to track lawbreakers, it won't seem such a shock when the odd government department is occasionally caught using it for their own nefarious purposes. Just as governments at both ends of the political spectrum have already been caught time and time again using any and all available surveillance technologies to defeat their political opponents.
If current public apathy is any guide, a few years down the road after that such incidents will be off the front page (if they make the news at all) and won't even cause raised eyebrows.
By that point, if not well before, organized public opposition to any government policy will have become practically impossible as the authorities will always know in advance exactly what you are planning and will put a stop to it before it happens. In fact that's already similar to what happened at this year's (and last year's) UK May Day celebrations.
As for the justification that it will make it easier to catch criminals - let me remind you of the incisive words of Benjamin Franklin (often quoted
> Why should a government care what people on the
> internet complain about?
Because this was a Government consultation exercise that asked for commments to be submitted by email as one of the response mechanisms.
It wasn't a 'this suxxors dudes' post on Slashdot. We sent in reasoned comments based on the cost, civil liberties and feasability of the proposed plan and expect to have them taken seriously.
Also because copies of some of the responses were sent to MPs and responsible ministers by fax and email. I know from corresponence that some of the responses were sent directly on to the Home Office by MPs who received many of them from their constituents.
This is why there will be a great deal of anger if our views have been ignored. The Government seems hell bent on having these ID cards and unwilling to listen to other views.