Biometric ID Cards Trialled in Glasgow

StuWho writes "The Register is reporting a trial of Biometric ID Cards in Glasgow, Scotland. The trial is one of several tests prior to the implimentation of a universal UK ID card. It also carries reports of how you can evade the sensors by doing something as simple as crying. 'It costs the UK 1.3 billion a year, and facilitates organised crime, illegal immigration, benefit fraud, illegal working and terrorism,' Home Office Minister Des Browne said. He then said that the ID card would fix all this, but did not say how. It's not only in the US where governments are using the excuse of terrorism to infringe on civil liberties."

Comments

And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations.

[The I Shing]

And the ID card will be grafted onto the right hand or forehead of the bearer, and will contain a 666-character identification number. Persons without ID cards will be disallowed from engaging in commerce of any kind, and those actively refusing to wear the ID card will be summarily put to death.

When questioned about the potential reactions from devout Christians, government officials replied, "Revelations of what, now?"

News Opinion

[Bon bons]

"It's not only in the US where governments are using the excuse of terrorism to infringe on civil liberties."

It's only news until you stick your opinion in it. Honestly, I think things like this are best said in comments, not in the front-page reports

the american flavor

[Anonymous Coward]

cryptogram article talks about an american ID card in the works (and why its a bad thing )

Re:the american flavor

[eric17]

Schneier's argument goes like this:

1. Some dishonest people might be able to forge their identity card.
2. Since some dishonest people might slip through the cracks, its less secure than we have now.

Can someone explain to me why this is a valid argument, even if the forgery can't be made highly improbable through cryptography, which I doubt.

Re:the american flavor

[DrMrLordX]

Schneier's argument is explained quite well in his own article. It makes a lot of sense. Any introduction of a new, monolithic ID system will inevitably be compromised by way of forgeries(it WILL happen). As Schneier pointed out, the worst "forgeries" are legitimate IDs issued to people using false names. Cryptography doesn't stop social engineering.

If any such flawed system is implemented, and if this system is sold as being a new, secure measure against identity theft, crime, and terrorism, all security agencies will come to rely upon the new ID card as their verification document of choice. Increased trust in the system only makes forged/scammed national ID cards more powerful to those seeking to abuse the system.

Furthermore, one could easily argue that a monolithic ID system would make forgeries easier to concoct. If you were in the business of making forged identity cards/documents/etc, which would you rather face? Multiple layers of personal idenfitication(Social Security card, dozens of different driver's licenses, international driver's license, passports, etc), or one national ID card? You could easily simplify your business by focusing on forgery of one national ID card rather than waste your time producing a variety of different documents and cards for different purposes. The difficulty of creating a forgery of the natiolal ID card might be greater initially, but once someone has cracked it . . . well, you get the idea. We'd be stuck in a race between the government updating/upgrading ID cards to prevent forgery and charlatans cracking the ID card to enable forgery. Who will win? My money's on the "bad guys".

Re:the american flavor

[TygerFish]

Schneier's argument goes like this:

1. Some dishonest people might be able to forge their identity card.
2. Since some dishonest people might slip through the cracks, its less secure than we have now.

I think Schneir's argument goes more like this:

'no matter how much work a government puts into a national I.D. card, sophisticated criminals and terrorists will hack the system by obtaining real IDs (social engineering) or by eventually creating more sophisticated fake IDs that embrace anticounterfeiting measures.'

With this in mind, the problem with national IDs is a question of security versus privacy. The current hodge-podge of state IDs is (somewhat) less amenable to intrusive information-gathering and movement tracking than a nationwide ID system would be.

The deep question of National IDs is thus one of individual privacy versus collective security and it is a question that history has already answered: twelve of the 9/11 Hijackers carried perfectly valid IDs issued by the state of Florida.

Now, to really understand Schneier's objection, the question you have to ask yourself is: 'what security magic would the 9/11 Hijacker's having had perfectly valid national ID's instead of perfectly valid Florida IDs have worked, except for their cards to have been newer and shinier than the ones carried by the people around them who hadn't gone through immigration?'

What you choose as an answer is usually a matter of faith and ideology; according to mine the answer is, 'none.' Your results might vary.

If you want to laugh about it, try this addy:

Billy Milano's rant on the subject

Re:the american flavor

[eric17]

Although I agree that nothing is 100% effective, I would argue that with the potential for devastication from a well planned attack, that information gathering and movement tracking is something we (our government) should definitely do, especially with certain individuals.

Ask yourself (as you say), what if monitoring and tracking had caught one or more of the 911 terrorists and upset their plans. Or, if an even more worse attack (nuclear) were foiled.

Obviously, oversight is important, as recent events can attest, but the benefits outway the drawbacks, IMHO. An ID card, even if a terrorist obtains a valid one, would allow such monitoring and tracking, and quicker arrest should evidence of intention become available.

Re:the american flavor

[Anonymous Coward]

As Schneier often points out, the 9/11 hijackers all had valid government issued ID. Not ID issued by foreign governments but by US state governments. At the very least, those IDs would have contained signatures. They may have also contained photos. Even if they contained fingerprints and iris scans, it would have made no difference. Each hijacker would have been carried a US state government issued ID bearing his face, his signature, his fingerprint, and his iris scan. All the checks would have been positive, yes the person carrying the card matches the biometrics on the card, looks like the photo on the card, and signs his name the same way as the signature on the card. It would have done nothing to stop any of the hijackers.

On the other hand, the next time you go to the Superbowl (alternatively, insert any other event public gathering place, eg, peace protest, walking your dog in the park) the face scanning AI may pick you out of the crowd and send a swat team your way to answer for those unpaid parking tickets and fair use copies of mp3s. Remember that Ashcroft has been making the rounds advising local police on how to use anti-terrorism legislation for local law enforcement.

Also remember this story of a man who flew round trip between Britain and Italy on his wife's passport and nobody noticed. When poorly paid airport workers have to check millions of IDs per day, they will be as sloppy about it as anyone doing a boring repititive job. This is not just an isolated case of one airport worker slipping up. This is a series of airport workers at each end of each leg of a round trip not noticing that a man carried a passport with a picture of his wife! What is easier for them to verify, his face or his iris?

Disgrace

[fiannaFailMan]

People in the UK should refuse to carry these things. They are an abomination.

Re:Disgrace

[edoc]

It's unfortunate but in the current situation such a large number of people would have to refuse to carry them to have an effect on the government that I couldn't see that happening any time soon.

Re:Disgrace

[GothChip]

I am one of the 1 Million people who would rather go to jail then carry a card.

I can understand why you would want to license drivers and I can understand the need for a passport. But I refuse to accept I need a license to walk down the street in the country where I was born.

Re:Disgrace

[turgid]

I refuse to accept I need a license to walk down the street in the country where I was born.

Hear hear.

Re:Disgrace

[s20451]

But I refuse to accept I need a license to walk down the street in the country where I was born.

You already do need a license. It's called "citizenship" and you get it when you are born. You can surrender this license if, for example, you become a citizen of a different country that doesn't recognize dual citizenship. In this case your country of birth is well within its rights to refuse you entry and prevent you from walk down the street in your native country.

The only difference is, before you only had to prove your citizenship when you crossed a border. And given the many forms of ID that the average person carries, and the multitude of ways in which the government (or any private agency) can track your movements, I don't see why this is such a massive attack on privacy, other than its symbolic value.

Much better that we should insist on privacy rights associated with the ID card, rather than resisting it altogether, for reasons which are mostly speculative or implausably apocalyptic.

Re:Disgrace

[Anonymous Coward]

I am one of the 1 Million people who would rather go to jail then carry a card.

Where's (-1, Tosser) when you need it? You'd seriously rather go to jail than carry a simple credit card sized piece of plastic? Well, have fun in jail - you and the other million will ease the strain on the nations security forces as we'll have fewer ID-less deviants to round up and more time to spend on important issues such as street crime.

Re:Disgrace

[Attaturk]

I am one of the 1 Million people who would rather go to jail then carry a card.
I can understand why you would want to license drivers and I can understand the need for a passport. But I refuse to accept I need a license to walk down the street in the country where I was born.

Took the words right out of my mouth. See you in there mate. Shall I bring the scrabble?

Re:Disgrace

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes. That's the model that some states have - particularly dodgy post-revolutionary states like the USA, France, and maoist China - this idea that the citizen of the state is only made so by the state.

The UK is essentially still a monarchic state, however, and therefore there's no nonsense about "needing a license". The state expects you to pay your taxes and obey its laws and that's that. It doesn't try and infect you with its ideals by having you swear allegiance in school and there's no nonsense about "un-British" ideas or activies, as there is with "un-American" or "un-Maoist Chinese" where they do in fact have strange ideas about what it means to be of those states.

This is essentially the difference between being a subject and being a citizen. States like to use the latter term - it increases their control over the citizen (they can then say what ideals a person must hold to be a "good" one) and it increases their legitmacy, but the former is more honest about the nature of the state and more free.

Americans always seem to think their particular ideas of the state are somehow universal, and come out with pap as in your comment. At least you haven't made the common American "nation=state" mistake regarding the UK, though.

Re:Disgrace

[iminplaya]

...I can understand the need for a passport.

I don't. The only purpose for national boundries is to restrict an individual's travel rights, and to create economic stratification for profiteering corporations. Without poverty, how can we motivate people to work?

Re:Disgrace

[OAB]

You do realise that it costs something like 30,000 per annum to keep somebody locked up don't you?

Re:Disgrace

[LaBlueCow]

I think it's a mistake, and a very grave one at that, for everyone to assume that the citizen is made by the state. Now, there may be discrepancies, but try to follow me here. The state is made by the citizens. Granted, murder is illegal. However, if every last citizen of any given country rose up and decimated the government and the military (unlikely, but this is just a theory), then what would that state be? The USA would not be the USA if not for the complacency of the populace thereof NOT to destroy the government.
Granted, it'll probably never happen, but I think it's a realization people need to start making. The only reason the government is in power is because A) we (or our ancestors, or another country even) put them there, and B) because we haven't the motivation to remove them.

Re:Disgrace

[s20451]

The UK is essentially still a monarchic state, however, and therefore there's no nonsense about "needing a license".

If that is true, then why do they issue one kind of passport for those born in the UK itself, and an "overseas" passport for those born in the colonies?

You are also confusing two different definitions of the word "citizen". Every nation on Earth recognizes a legal status known as citizenship. The idea of "citizen" as a member of society has little to do with the meaning in the sense of immigration. For example, you can have committed heinous crimes and yet the government cannot revoke your citizenship, if you are a citizen by birth.

Re:Disgrace

[PennyUK]

Like Anonyomous Coward says, you can live your entire life without making any allegiance to the country. So far, I've never had to swear alleigance to the UK in any form.

Re:Disgrace

[Colin Smith]

Yo, Moron. I've already had this discussion with another moron who made the same comment.

Did you know that the prison population in the UK is around 90,000, in 140 prisons. Building enough prisons to host a million people is going to be *fucking* expensive. They cost around 90 million each and you're going to need around 1,400 of them.

You're an idiot who hasn't put a second's thought to the subject but figured they'd just blurt out their ignorance for all to read anyway. I'm not surprised by the AC.

Re:Disgrace

[Anonymous Coward]

The nazi's managed to build prisons for millions of jews. Before the nazi's I suspect germany like most other countries only had prison space for 10s of thousands or may be 100,000 prisoners.

Re:Disgrace

[kraut]

Surely the onus is on those that want change to demonstrate how it will be beneficial, rather than on those who want the status quo? After all, the UK has been getting along nicely without an ID card for quite a while.

So far the only benefit the government has demonstrated is that its a convenient way to take my tax money and give it to tech companies.

Re:Disgrace

[JimBobJoe]

You already do need a license. It's called "citizenship" and you get it when you are born.

Uhhh...talked about being confuzled.

A license is a special authority granted to an individual by the state to do something --like carry a concealed weapon, or fly an airplane. (I left out car for a reason.)

Citizenship is a status, and more importantly a relationship, not everyone is born with one incidentally (which really fucks things up) but most people have one.

The concept of citizenship came from the idea that when a baby was born, it was the king's (who ruled the land in that area) responsibility to protect the child. When that child would get older and became an adult, they had responsibilities back to the king for that protection when they were young.

Hence, if you are born in an airplane in international airspace, the citizneship of the child could be that of the flag carrier. (Since it was them whom you were entrusted to.)

It's a very modern thing to use citizenship as a way of allowing people not to move around between different nation states.

To adopt a new citizenship, or dump another is a creation/severing of a relationship, not of a license.

You can surrender this license if, for example, you become a citizen of a different country that doesn't recognize dual citizenship. In this case your country of birth is well within its rights to refuse you entry and prevent you from walk down the street in your native country.

A bunch of countries do not recognize dual citizenship, cuz it confuses them to have people walking around with multiple relationship/statuses. However, while the US does not recognize it, they don't have much choice, since a lot of people have dual citizenship anyway (the fact that I have two passports is something that the US will get over. Not that I'm telling them of course, that would be asinine. They cannot prevent me from creating a realtionship with Canada, Costa Rica, or the Comoros.)

Re:Disgrace

[s20451]

Fine, but under your definition, an ID card is not a license to walk down the street, either. I was simply trying to show that you already need a certain legal status to be legally present in your country of birth (or any country).

Re:Disgrace

[mdwh2]

Where's your ID, Anonymous Coward?

Please pay your 2,500UKP fine for not taking the time to register your details with Slashdot.

Re:Disgrace

[Anonymous Coward]

I am one of the 1 Million people who would rather go to jail then carry a card.

Why is that? Can you provide some reasoning? Why go to jail first, and then carry a card? Your logic seems absent to me.

If you want to carry the card, why would you also want to go to jail? Is it because you want to see the condition of people who would go to jail rather than carry a card?

When and to who?

[magarity]

So you've got this national ID card with biometric data. Who gets to see it and how often? I haven't been pulled over and asked for a driver's license for over 15 years now. I have had to show a DL at the airport last year but what if I just drove everywhere? If this biometric card has a similar use pattern then it doesn't seem worthwhile. On the other hand, if they're going to set up roadblocks every few miles where you have to swipe the thing then I guess it will catch some baddies but how much aggrevation will that cause?

Re:When and to who?

[slashrogue]

I don't know about the rest of the UK, but in at least London the major mode of transportation is the tube (subway). So maybe it will change that you not only have to punch your ticket, but you have to swipe your ID card or passport so they know exactly where and when you boarded or left a station.

Will it actually work out that way? Who knows, but it's a scary thought.

Re:When and to who?

[Anonymous Coward]

The logical next step would be to implement RFID in them, then you "could" scan everyone that passes by a scanner set up on a freeway every 10 miles if you wanted to. I do see something like that happening at some point in time, but probably not for at least another 70+ years. Privacy invasion like that needs to be done slowly enough so the general populace does not even notice it.

Re:When and to who?

[Jardine]

So you've got this national ID card with biometric data. Who gets to see it and how often?

These cards will probably end up being abused in much the same way people get pulled over for DWB or DWA (driving while black and driving while arab). The difference here is that if you're required to keep your national id card on you at all times (papers please) people will be bothered for WWB and WWA (walking while black and walking while arab).

Re:When and to who?

[ahillen]

So maybe it will change that you not only have to punch your ticket, but you have to swipe your ID card or passport so they know exactly where and when you boarded or left a station.

Maybe, but just because they introduce an ID card in the UK it doesn't mean that suddenly you are subject to total control or anything. We have had ID cards in Germany for decades, and nowhere in Germany do you have to show your card when going on a subway or train. In fact, I don't remember ever beeing stopped on the street by the police and asked for my ID. I always saw the ID card as a convenient standard to identify yourself when you need something for identification, eg in certain situations in a bank, or maybe when you are still a teenager and have to prove that you are old enough to by beer - just show your idea card. Not everybody has a drivers license.But maybe in the modern times of 'terrorist threat' countries which now introduce ID cards have 'higher' plans...

Re:When and to who?

[Anonymous Coward]

After 9/11, a poll showed that many blacks are no longer concerned about profiling. As long as it's not them evidently...(Troll or Flaimbait? Only the mods knows for sure.)

Re:When and to who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not about ID, its about MONEY - everyone, including kids, will be expected to PAY 95 ($120)for one of these. Its is a TAX - and 35 ($50) goes strait to some sleazy company who persuaded a few ministers to say anyone who objects to this pocket-lining exercise is a terrorist.

Re:When and to who?

[kraut]

Given the approach they take to driving licenses and insurance in this country, I can't see the public going for that... At the moment, it works like this:

"Afternoon, Sir, do you realise why I've stopped you? Could I see your documents please? Oh, you haven't got them on you? No problem, just pop by your local police station in the next seven days and show them."

I mean, if your "foolproof", "high-tech", "unfakeable" ID said Mr. Osama-bin-Laden, you're just not going to show it, are you?

Re:When and to who?

[Anonymous Coward]

if owning a non state approved computer or being a geek was to become outlawed. how far do you think you`d get if they were looking for you? just because your not breaking any laws now, how safe are you from anything that can become law later?

Re:When and to who?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK that company is one that was set up by the MOD (Ministry of Defense) as a "public private partnership". The UK government is fond of these partnerships, basically they allocate public funds to a project in "partnership" with one of their own companies. In this case the company is international arms traders the Carlyle group with such esteemed board members as former US president George Bush and former UK Prime Minister John Major.

Criminal.

Re:When and to who?

[Ian Cackett]

Very true. Currently, you rarely (if ever) get asked to show ID in the UK. However, if they combine these ID cards with your travel pass, then they get the ability to hook into a swiping activity that most of us who commute into London currently do several times every day without thinking. The oyster-card that most of us are already carrying could very easily be replaced with the new ID card. Then, hey-presto, you've gained the ability to track a large proportion of the non-driving population of London. Of-course, it would be easy to by-pass those checks by not using public transport, or by jumping over the barriers (*so* many stations are poorly supervised by staff), so those who seek *not* to be tracked will simply travel by different means or find new tricks. Road blocks or road-side swipe points are the only way to force people to carry and use these cards, and I think they would create too much of a sense of a police state to go down well with the public, whether we're living with the threat of terrorism or not. And, of-course, who's going to stop people swiping their friend's card instead of their own. Unless you confirm bio-metric data at every swipe point, are they really going to be certain that the person carrying the card is the person to whom it was issued?

The entertainment biz

[Freston Youseff]

and French people don't like George Bush. Film at 11.

Defy-ID protest in Glasgow

[Master Of Ninja]

If you are in the area and want to help protest against the ID cards, Defy ID is organising meetings against it. Go to the main website to get more information, as well as pointing your friends to it. Everyone needs to know!!

Re:Defy-ID protest in Glasgow

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is sabotage a valid and ethical way of protesting this? What exactly would you be sabotaging anyway?

I'm very much against ID cards, but seeing that has put me off joining really.

Plus the subtle undercurrent of violence surrounding the GAP in general worries me.

Re:Defy-ID protest in Glasgow

[UpnAtom]

Trevor Mendham has summarised a lot of the important arguments and legal protest measures in his site.

Build a better moustrap....

[Shivantrill]

And someone will build a better mouse.

How soon before we hear stories of people having their eye extracted so that someone could get by these scanners? This has been portrayed many times in the movies. Cue the next Urban legend, "I woke up in a hotel room with one eye a different color, someone had swapped them on me!"

A 4% failure rate? What happens if it fails? Are you detained, denied whatever you were being identified for? This seems unacceptable as a form of identification. Until they perfect the thing, why not use thumbprints?

Re:Build a better moustrap....

[iminplaya]

Until they perfect the thing, why not use thumbprints?

Cutting off a thumb is easier than ripping out an eye. Is there an MD that could verify that?

Oh, my God! She fainted! Is there a doctor in the house?
Why, yes, I'm a doctor.
Eh..Chomp, Chomp, Chomp,...What's up doc?

Less Secure

[cquark]

The likely result of universal biometric identification schemes will be to make us less secure. All of them suffer from the problem of creating the initial cards for the whole population. How do you determine people's identities to give them their initial cards? By using their current identification materials, so the system won't start in a state that's any more secure than our current identification system. In order to be secure, you not only have to avoid transitioning from a secure state to an insecure one, you also have to start in a secure one, and all of these systems fail that requirement.

Two of the 9/11 terrorists had valid driver's licenses in false names. Biometrics won't prevent existing false IDs from being used to generate new false biometric IDs. Biometrics also won't prevent the personnel who issue biometric IDs from being bribed or coerced into issuing IDs in false names. Remember that the initialization problem isn't a one time issue either--people lose IDs frequently, so the procedure for issuing new biometric IDs to people who don't have one has to exist throughout the lifetime of the system.

Identification is not an effective solution to preventing terrorism. What good would it have done to have known Timothy McVeigh's name before the Oklahoma City? In order to prevent terrorism, you need to know someone's intentions, not their identity, or you need preventative mechanisms in place to stop terrorism that are idependent of who a person is, such as secure doors to the cockpits of airplanes.

Re:Less Secure

[eric17]

Your less secure argument is invalid. Many people here illegally for whatever reason have papers which look valid, but are not verifiable. A one-time lengthy verification process provides the information needed to put on the card for a quick identification.

The rest of your post seems to imply that an "effective solution" requires catching ALL terrorists. If you have a way to be 100% effective, I suggest you patent it and start making plans for your new opulent lifestyle.

Re:Less Secure

[turgid]

The real reasons for the UK ID card scheme are to make money issuing the cards (they'll be compulsory soon, but you'll have to pay a lot of money to get one) and to cut benefit fraud. The UK social security (and health) system loses hundreds of millions of pounds a year through false claims for unemployment benefit, income support and foreigners coming on "holliday" to Britain to get free operations on the NHS. The terrorism story is just an excuse. We already have National Insurance numbers (social security numbers) and cards, but they just contain a signature. You never need to show them to anyone - just recite your number. Biometric ID on your National Insurance card might be a slightly better idea, but the whole "terrorism" thing is just hogwash.

Re:Less Secure

[OAB]

Funny, I thought we where all going to France for our health care due to the state of the NHS! Also, very little money is scamed from the DWP via fake ID, most of it is people claiming more than they are due.

Re:Less Secure

[mark-t]

You've raised an interesting point... Yes, there's no way that the system could actually start out as secure because we don't have any secure system in place to verify it.

But it's worth noting that the biometric ID would be with a person for their entire life. If they were to try to use some flaw in the existing system to fake their identity before getting tagged biometrically, it wouldn't really matter a whole hell of a lot because they'd still be stuck with that (fake) identity for the rest of their life. The most they would be able to do is restart life with a clean slate, but that's as far as it would go. The faked ID people would die off eventually (a generation or two) and you would, in fact, be left with a secure system.

Re:Less Secure

[Jardine]

The UK social security (and health) system loses hundreds of millions of pounds a year through false claims for unemployment benefit, income support and foreigners coming on "holliday" to Britain to get free operations on the NHS

Do you not have a health card or something similar? In Ontario we have a card you give to the hospital or doctor when you go there. It used to be that they were just a card with a number and name on them but they have change so that they now have your photo and signature on them. The thing with these cards is that they are not a form of identification. A cop will never ask you for your health card, a liquor store will not accept it as proof of age, and a library won't let you use it as ID when getting a library card.

Re:Less Secure

[turgid]

Do you not have a health card or something similar?

We have an NHS number printed in purple on a flimsy piece of card. Mine is somewhere... That's it. It's realted to your National Insurance number.

Re:Less Secure

[Blue Stone]

"The UK social security (and health) system loses hundreds of millions of pounds a year through false claims for unemployment benefit [&] income support [...]" But very very little of that is related to people claiming money under a false identity. The majority of cash that's taken from the system in breach of the rules is due to things like people claiming benefits whilst working, people caliming benefits as if they are single people when they are infact couples (housing benefit etc.) and such like.

Identity is only a small factor in benefit fraud in the UK (just the same as it is in crime, which will also be largely unaffected by ID cards.)

Re:Less Secure

[kraut]

Okay, so how do the numbers work out? NHS "tourism" is estimated to cost 200m p.a.;

a) that's pocket money in the government budget (accordingto the BBC they spent 60 million in three months telling us what a great job they are doing),

b) you can't actually stop it. An uncle of mine fell seriously ill in the UK recently. Coma, a week in intensive care @ 1400 a night, a couple of weeks on the normal ward - bill over 25000. Now, thankfully, our doctors are not going to turn away elderly gentlemen to die because they don't have an ID card, but I'm sure our "Labour" government would want them to.

c) Let's just reclassify this as medical aid to the thirld world, and we look a lot better in the "We care" statistics.

d) Even at 0% that would break even after 15 years on ludicrously optimistic assumptions - how about spending money on something that's actually useful, like fixing the London transport system? Immediate benefits, by the way!

I have no idea how much benefit fraud there is, but I don't see why the government should infringe my liberties and raise my taxes to vainly attempt to cut it. If they said: "You want to claim benefit, you need to give us your fingerprints" - Fine. No Problemo. And then, after you stop claiming, it's deleted.

Re:Less Secure

[turgid]

Indeed. I agree with you. The ID card scheme is yet another sledgehammer to crack a nut, and the wrong nut at that.

So maybe I'm paranoid, but I can forsee a situation in 10 years time when we're still "at war" with terrorism, when I drive from England to Scotland, I'll be stopped every 100 miles or so at checkpoints by the police and asked to show my ID, presumably to stop "terrorists" moving about the country.

social engineering

[magarity]

The biggest problem of this kind of idea is the one where line level law enforcement persons contract 'the computer is always right' syndrome.

"Well, yeah, he kept twitching nervously but the database said that according to his ID card he was allowed to have all those guns and explosives."
"Well, I know she *looked* like someone's great grandmother but the database said she was really an international terrorist so we shot her on sight."

With good looking fake identification you can bluff your way past the most secure system as long as there's a person you can appeal to. And if your information gets entered incorrectly by the minimum wage data entry clerks hired to populate the database with its first data, you're SOL.

Guess what

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what, it's pretty much impossible to live as a citizen of any modern nation without having to carry some sort of identification. Social security numbers, driver's licenses, even credit and debit cards can be used to identify you and infringe on your privacy. I guess you could go live as a hermit in Montana, paying for everything with wads of dirty bills that you keep stuffed in your matress, but for the other 99% of the population, ID cards are already a reality.

Instead of crying about them, or coming up with some kind of implausible 1984-esque depressive scenarios, how about insisting that the government enact legislation to prevent them from being misused. That seems like a much better option.

Re:Guess what

[Jane_Dozey]

Like you said, it already seems that we're already required to carry around ID. So why do we need more?
And why will they make it mandatory to carry these new ID cards around with us?
Is there actually a valid reason to spend all this money (and make us pay for the "privalidge")?

Re:Guess what

[Cranx]

How can you be free when your anonymity is completely erased? The government isn't the watchdog of all of its citizens, and shouldn't be. It's perfectly acceptable for a human being to live quietly, unbeknownst to his/her neighbors and remain that way for their entire lives. The government has no right to cast an eye on every living human being, effectively "tagging" them like animals so their every move, their every purchase, their every word spoken can all be cataloged and analyzed for any purpose.

If implemented, this sort of system WILL leave to the kinds of abuses envisioned in 1984. It's just a matter of time, but this is definitely the foundation on which it is all based. After this, it's just a matter of tying input into the system. Cameras that can ID faces can instantly match your presence in any given location to a database of everything you've done, said, eaten, shitted, dropped, picked up, waved at, got into, got out of, you name it. When they can tie your IP packets to the database, the cameras, microphones, etc. all into the one place where everything can be stored and associated with your one big biometric ID, it's just a matter of time.

I know this is paranoid. But this is the direction governments move in. Democracies moves away from it, but bureaucracies move towards it. It makes the jobs of police and investigators a lot easier, and the pressure to implement 1984-style system is constant and internal. It's hard to fight against. So when technology starts to make it easy, and other valid uses for it are found, they can sneak in and once they're there, they're there.

We don't need to track everyone and everything. Forgery-resistant certificates are all we need to establish citizenship, eligibilities, ownerships and so on. We don't need one big database maintaining all that information. Every once in awhile forgeries will occur. That's a small price to pay for liberty.

It has also worked just fine for centuries.

Re:Guess what

[iminplaya]

...how about insisting that the government enact legislation to prevent them from being misused.

Many times such legislation doesn't apply to gov't (OSHA, for example). They would just exempt them selves. With almost every election going 50-50, I doubt that we would unite enough to accomplish that. Outside of Slashdot(actually, both sides of Slashdot), most people are just trying to vote themselves a bigger gov't check or tax break(same thing).

Re:Guess what

[Colin Smith]

If you have my library card number, what can you find out about me?

If you have my driving license number, what else can you find out with that number?

If you have my passport ID, what else can you find out about me?

If you have my national insurance number, what else can you find out about me?

If you have my national ID number which indexes *everything*, what can you find out about me?

It isn't rocket science. A single index makes monitoring, investigation, stalking even of individuals trivial. By anyone who can afford access to the databases, and most of the databases will be held by private organisations. They'll also be located outside the country to evade the data protection laws.

Governments change. Germany wasn't always a fascist state, it was a democracy prior to 1933.

Re:Guess what

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say its the biometrics thats what bothers people not the idea of carrying ID. Are they seriously going to finger print and iris scan every citizen?
Is every police station, hospital and government office going to have a scanner?
How accurate are the biometric matches likely to be, I can see quite a few problems trying to match the fingerprints of 60 million people. A scheme is already in existance for asylum seekers to stop repeat applications by matching fingerprints but it has been proven not to work very well, an undercover bbc reporter posed as an aslyum seeker, applied and was rejected and then reapplied under a new name without detection.

Re:Guess what

[Anonymous Coward]

With the exception of your library card each one of those can link to the others. My dad recently moved to Italy and bought a mobile phone there, in Italy you have to give your codicie fiscale (national insurance number/social security number) to get a phone, as a foreigner he didn't have one so they accepted his UK drivers license instead, they were then able to get all kinds of details on him!

I saw an article recently on EU integration and the Polish border guards have handheld passport readers, run an EU passport through one of these and it will come up with all the details so they can check its not fake!

Re:Guess what

[tolan-b]

Blunket has said explicitly that ID cards will essentially become the primary key for all government databases. They're trying to bring all 'citizen' data together into one big database, which can be accessed by all gov't departments. The proposed scheme has little in the way of safeguards against dodgy officials accessing data they shouldn't. In fact this is already a problem since the RIP act.

Re:Guess what

[mdwh2]

I don't know what nation you are in, but I'm in the UK, and I rarely need any ID when I go out. I don't drive; debit cards only have my name and not a load of biometrics, and I don't always need or want to take these with me, and I'm under no obligation to show them to anyone; I don't need any other identifying details or numbers unless I'm doing something like opening a bank account or applying for a job.

Re:Guess what

[GothChip]

Instead of crying about them, or coming up with some kind of implausible 1984-esque depressive scenarios, how about insisting that the government enact legislation to prevent them from being misused.

What's to stop a future government changing those the laws that regulate their usage in the future? It will be a lot harder to stop any small changes in their usage once the IT database and rollout has been completed.

You might trust this government but can you guarantee you will trust the next one?

False Positives

[cquark]

A 4% failure rate? What happens if it fails? Are you detained, denied whatever you were being identified for? This seems unacceptable as a form of identification.

If the purpose is discovering terrorists, a 4% false positive rate means the system is completely ineffective. Assuming than one person in a million is a terrorist (ridiculously high, I know), then you'd have 40,000 false positives in addition to your one likely correct guess. That's not only a tremendous cost to civil liberties, but it's also likely that the security personnel are going to ignore the terrorist because they've dealt with 40,000 mistakes in the process, and are justifiably unlikely to believe the system any longer.

Re:False Positives

[turgid]

The other problem is that with the UK ID card, like the driving license, you don't actually have to carry it, but if asked to see it, you have 7 days to produce it at a police station of your choice.

Now, will someone kindly explain to me how this cures terrorism (or any other crime for that matter)?

Contact lenses can defeat iris scanners, and thin transparent plastic can defeat fingerprint scanners.

There will be nore more "innocent until proven guilty" (not that there really is in England nowadays). Everyone will be under suspicion, and everyone will have to "prove" their innocence. With such a system where infallability is assumed by the powers that be (just listen to or read some of the nonsense David Blunkett comes out with), it will be very difficult indeed to regain your freedom once the system gets its grubby little fingers around your throat.

Re:False Positives

[H09N0X10U5]

Well said. On top of which, if the card has to be shown to get social security benefits and NHS treatment (and if it's not, then how is it going to combat benefit fraud & heath tourism as they claim?), the government will be forced by human rights legislation to issue one to anyone who drops of the back of a lorry at Dover anyway, no matter that nobody knows anything about his background.

Trial in FRA (Frankfurt am Main) in Germany

[aepervius]

There is a similar trial with Biometrical data by lufthansa in Frankfurt. I dunno the detail... But you can read them here :
LH and biometric
German Airport and Biometric

Face it, whether you like it or not (I personally dislike it being traced and identified by my "biological property" for various reason, one being you cannot escape being recognized once they are in governement database...), biometric will come...

there's only one good biometric

[InternationalCow]

.. and that's DNA extracted from blood cells (the white ones). Run it through a lab-on-a-chip which will take all of, oh , 5 minutes these days and run a minimum of six microsatellite repeats on it. Guaranteed ID, although you might consider running eight satellites for added safety. One problem: the identification procedure is invasive (it has to be, to be sure that the DNA really comes from the person that is being ID'ed) and takes too long. But those are mere technical problems. All other forms of biometry can be circumvented (crying, enucleation of eyes, cutting of hands). You can even check the blood for freshness (eg by measuring calcium in platelets, takes a couple microseconds) to prevent people from carrying little bags of blood to have tested.

Re:News Opinion

[Jane_Dozey]

Tell that to newspaper reporters.

Trailled?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that even a word?

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[Anonymous Coward]

its "Revelation" (not plural)

personally given the reputation of the 'enemy' (devil) this seems too obvious. i think the 'mark' will be something totally left field(a flank manuver) that people don't give a 2nd thought to.

for example the watch/the time.
in any non-third world country, try going a week without knowing the time and still keeping your job. how much business can you do without knowing the time. and see if you get mocked/persecuted for actively not wanting to know the current time.

time: hour=4*6:minute=10*6:second=10*6
or even date month=2*6 if you don't like seconds.

and then the wearing it on the right hand - literal or metephore for 'working by the clock'
of the forehead - metephore for thinking.

sure you can take off a watch, but then its possible that 'on the forehead' is a phase like the USA's 'butterflies in my stomic' (nervice/uneasyness, not a bug eater)

i'm not saying 'this is the mark' but it has some of the properties of it. from what i understand it doesn't actually have to do with money, just 'business'

spelling? how about using real words

[Transcendent]

Biometric ID Cards Trialled in Glasgow

Trialled? Try "tried".

Re:spelling? how about using real words

[Anonymous Coward]

BS...
http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/0025740 9?
trial, v. trans.
To submit (something, esp. a new product) to a test or trial; to test.

1981 M. H. ASTON in Lewis & Tagg Computers in Educ. 385 Several distribution models are already being trialled in the United Kingdom. 1982 Internat. Conf. Road Traffic Signalling (IEE Conf. Ser. CCVII.) 123/1 The radar was briefly trialled in two road situations, a T-junction and a straight section of road. 1982 ICL News Mar. 2/5 The 2946 [computer] was successfully trialled on the weekend of February 19. 1984 Proc. Conf. NATO Advisory Group Aerospace Res. & Devel. CCCXLIV. xiv. 1 Field trials models weighing 17kg..have been..extensively trialled in field conditions.

With apologies to OED for copy/pasteing

Re:spelling? how about using real words

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=trialled

It's not accepted as proper speech. I can find lots of cases where "ain't" is used... but come on...

Young people will hate ID cards

[KhalidBoussouara]

It will make it harder for those under 18 to purchase alcohol/cigarettes from shops/off licenses. Of course they can always ask an adult to buy the drinks for them but I've heard of people who take the money and run.

I'm a young person from Glasgow, Scotland and although I don't drink I know that alot of my friends do. Underage drinking is a serious problem in Scotland.

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true. All your poofs are fleeing to London in terror.

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[Jane_Dozey]

How so? If they arn't asked for ID now, why would they be when a new ID system is in place? And who's to say they won't just borrow their older sister or brothers card, and make themselves look a little more like said older sibling before going off to try and buy the stuff? It happens now, so kids will find a way around it.
In order to tackle underage drinking, you need to tackle the people selling it (I was very rarly asked for ID and when I was I usually managed to convince the person selling it that I'd left my ID at home).

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[turgid]

Drinking isn't the only problem in Glasgow. Sectarianism is much worse. It's one of the reasons my parents left the area after I was born. That and the weather. I would argue that underage smoking is worse than underage drinking. Many a life-long nicotine addiction is started by a few sly cigarettes behind the bikesheds at school.

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[Anonymous Coward]

And who's to say they won't just borrow their older sister or brothers card, and make themselves look a little more like said older sibling before going off to try and buy the stuff?

That's where the biometrics kick in, in theory anyway. Scan the kid, see it's their older sibling, and kick them out.

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[KhalidBoussouara]

The police have been sending young people under 18 into shops to see if they can purchase alcohol. If they can then the shop loses their license. The police are doing this more and more so shop owners will get scared and end up asking for ID's.

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[turgid]

That's where the biometrics kick in, in theory anyway. Scan the kid, see it's their older sibling, and kick them out.

I can just see this happening at the corner shop.

"See you Jimmy, gee us a look at yer haun. That's nae your fingerprint. Get oot o' ma shop 'afore ah pop a cap in yer arse."

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[turgid]

What's so bad about drinking alcohol when you're a bit younger than 18? It's illegal to buy it (or to attempt to) or to be sold it, but it's not actually illegal to consume it. I don't think a 16-year-old having two cans of lager is really a great threat to himself or to society (neither do the Germans). It's when you're like I was and drink far to much that it's a problem, but people of all ages can have problems with alcohol.

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a young person from Glasgow, Scotland and although I don't drink I know that alot of my friends do.

I bet you don't eat pork either. Do your friends?

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[KhalidBoussouara]

I didn't actually say there was anything wrong with underage drinking. I really don't give a shit. Although if you are too young then it can damage your body more. However I still don't give a shit.

On another note, can someone tell me why my posts always seem to have a score of zero. My slashdot posts have remained at this score ever since I made a joke about sending SCO up to an asteroid to collect license fees for linux (in a topic about an asteroid impact simulator). I'm pretty sure that although my posts may not deserve a 2/3/4/5 they provide enough information to deserve a 1.

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[turgid]

Ah, you've been "bitchslapped." One of the admins doesn't like your ideas and opinions, so they've silenced you. That happened to my old account (karma maximum, posting at 0) after I had a huge argument with some por-Microsoft/anti-UNIX zealot/astroturfer who was talking absolute nonsense.

Re:Young people will hate ID cards

[kraut]

Actually, overage drinking is just as serious a problem in glasgow. Gosh, Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night?

Can't quite see how ID cards will stop a) everybody getting far too pissed and pissing and vomiting everywhere, or girls that are way too fat wearing far too little.

thank you!

[sbma44]

Aren't we nerds supposed to feel a sense of antipathy toward horrible marketingspeak like this? You can't "trial" something. You can't "task" someone. Stop verbing nouns.

Re:thank you!

[kraut]

Allegedly you can "burglarize" someone's house, though, at leat in the colonies ;)

Re:thank you!

[theTerribleRobbo]

I hope the irony was intentional with that last sentence there. ;)

Re:thank you!

[u38cg]

Ahem, this is English we're speaking here. There is essentially no linguistic barrier in English between the verb and the noun. So go out and noun whatever you like.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[Anonymous Coward]

personally given the reputation of the 'enemy' (devil) this seems too obvious.

Absolutely. Whereas Santa Claus will definitely wear red clothes and have a big beard - no subtlety at all there.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[lawpoop]

If you're put to death for refusing to wear it, how could there be anyone disallowed from commerce for not having it?

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[turgid]

In Glasgow, they should have CATHOLIC and PROTESTANT in big bold letters on the ID cards. Then the hoologans can look at each others cards and procede to murder each other. This will accelerate the process of Darwinistic selection and in a few more generations, Glasgow will be cured of its religious biggotry.

My post appears to be contradictory

[KhalidBoussouara]

I am a slashdot user yet I have friends in the real world.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[chamblah]

Dead people can't shop.

erm

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever been in Glasgow? Sectarianism my arse, it is barely a problem at all. In fact recent studies have shown sectarianism is a very minimal problem in modern Glasgow. This is because the city has changed a lot since the 60s and earlier.

Re:erm

[turgid]

Have you ever been in Glasgow? Sectarianism my arse, it is barely a problem at all. In fact recent studies have shown sectarianism is a very minimal problem in modern Glasgow. This is because the city has changed a lot since the 60s and earlier.

I was born in Glasgow. Every drunken Glaswegan I meet at some point says, "are you a Catholic or a Protestant?"

I've been following the Scotland section of the BBC's news web site, and from what I can see sectarianism is alive and well in Glasgow, with little children calling each other "proddy dogs" and "catholic scum" and fighting with each other.

I've never felt so scared in all my life as the day I was going to Ayr from Aberdeen and got lost in Glasgow (missed my exit from the M80) and ended up driving past Ibrox stadium. I'd feel safer driving through downtown LA. Luckily they pubs had just opened, so the animals were just starting to get tanked up and the streets were empty. Too many bars to prop up.

Re:erm

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with asking someone whether they are catholic or protestant - it's just making conversation. Who cares? There's nothing offensive about it.

Additionally, the football supporters of G;asgow no longer believe in the creeds they spout. Church attendances among Rangers and Celtic supporters are minimal, to say the least.

Rather, these football supporters latch on to these identities for reasons of postmodern irony. The Hun sings the sash not to celebrate catholic dead and the safeguarding of his right to worship, but as a witty comment on modern society's identityless, soulless malaise, and nothing more. This is also true of Tims praising the IRA.

There's no sectarianism in Glasgow these days. Just trendy types drinking sophisticated wines brewed by certain monks in England, and cracking postmodern ironic jokes on matters of identity and religion.

It sounds to me that you have been cowed by an outdated reputation Glasgow used to have, but have never actually had any bad experiences. You have just been jumping at shadows.

Re:erm

[Tandoori Haggis]

"Just trendy types drinking sophisticated wines brewed by certain monks in England".

I read this and was immediately reminded of a certain Robert Nesbit who enjoyed parting of a "sophisticated wine" from Buckfast Abbey.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/r/rab cn esbitt_7775310.shtml

Re:erm

[Tandoori Haggis]

That was supposed to read "Nesbitt" by the way. Dropped a "t" at the end. Damn typo's this evening. Spooks or Martians must have turned up the strength of the mind scanning beams again...

Re:erm

[turgid]

LOL :-)

Have you read his autobiography?

It is superb.

Re:erm

[Tandoori Haggis]

Not yet. Rest assured, I am planning to collect various material from BBC Scotland Comedy Unit, including Rab C Nesbitt, Naked Video, Chewin The Fat, etc etc.

Laughter is the best medicine after all.

Cheers

Crying?

[6Yankee]

[Y]ou can evade the sensors by doing something as simple as crying.

Crying, simple? I'm a bloke, you insensitive clod!

Re:Crying?

[Anonymous Coward]

Crying, simple? I'm a bloke, you insensitive clod!

Then grow cataracts, you insensitive bloke!

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[gnu-generation-one]

Information minister Blunkett has said that there'll be a GBP 2500 penalty on anyone refusing to register for the ID card. That sounds like it would stop a lot of people from engaging in commerce. (Specifically, those who won't have any money left)

Do you have 2,500 pounds ($4470) to spare, or would you choose to be marked?

And in other news,

[Anonymous Coward]

Nouns verbed in Slashdot article header.

Come on, "trialled"?

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[lawpoop]

Well, no one's stopping them, are they?

Besides the whole throwing them in a coffin and then burying it.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[The I Shing]

its "Revelation" (not plural)

Damn, I should've looked it up.

One time, years ago, I was collecting money at the door of a bar for a friend's band, and this kind of dirty hippie dude came up and wanted to come in. The doorman of the bar demanded to see ID before letting him in, since it was a 21-and-over venue. The hippie dude got really peeved, since he didn't have any ID at all, and was denied admittance, and as he walked away, he angrily exclaimed, "Sorry, I don't carry the Mark of the Beast."

If I wasn't busy working, I'd have run after the guy and demanded to know how he could possibly equate a driver's license, which one carries in one's pocket and uses to simply prove identity, age, and automobile driving privileges, with the Mark of the Beast from the Bible. I wanted to ask him, "Hey, if you went into that little grocery store across the street and tried to buy a pack of gum, would you have to show ID? No? Then how is an ID card the Mark of the Beast when you can buy most things without showing it?" Then he probably would've stabbed me or something. Good thing I had to stay in the bar and collect money.

Still, people like that hippie dude ought to at least read the Bible before declaring that its prophesies are being fulfilled.

And another thing

[turgid]

My sister went to Glasgow University. While she was there, this guy she knew was waiting at a bus stop. A bunch of local neds came along and stabbed him several times (unprovoked).

Why?

Because it was somewhere popular with the local gays.

What a lovely place.

Luckily he survived.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[Anonymous Coward]

They already helpfully wear colour-coded uniforms. Unfortunatly the neds are quite proficient at having children soon and often.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[turgid]

They already helpfully wear colour-coded uniforms.

Indeed they do :-)

Unfortunatly the neds are quite proficient at having children soon and often.

Yes, it's a universal phenomenon unfortunately. The great unwashed have a propensity to reproduce vigorously. As Werner von Braun said when asked what sort of computer would be best to put on a rocket he said, "Man. And it's the only one readily mass-produced by unskilled labour." Or something.

It could be worse

[turgid]

Edinburgh. What a dump :-(

Re:It could be worse

[sydb]

"Glasgow's miles better!"

If only Edinburgh had a made-up superiority slogan, you wouldn't be able to say that!

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[The I Shing]

If you're put to death for refusing to wear it, how could there be anyone disallowed from commerce for not having it?

It'll be like not filing a tax return. You could get away with it for a little while, but eventually the authorities catch up with you and demand that you get the ID device. Then, if you actively refuse to submit to its installation, they just kill you.

But it occurred to me a little while ago that maybe there won't be a device or even a visible mark at all. Maybe it will be your fingerprints and your retinal pattern that becomes the Mark of the Beast once they've been added to the global database. So that covers the hand and forehead part of the prophesy, kind of.

So at some point, every legitimate shopkeeper will have to have customers and salespeople submit to a combination fingerprint and retina scan before a transaction can take place, and no cash will change hands. The debit and credit will take place electronically. No signature will even be required.

That ought to scare the believers, oh yeah. Whoever refuses to be added to the database will be imprisoned in some countries, put to death in others. The death sentence might be carried out as an actual execution, or might be done more covertly, disguised perhaps as a denial of medical care to anyone not in the system.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[LaBlueCow]

Wow... that REALLY sounds a lot like a dirty hippie dud I attended college with. The guy always ran around campus singing and dancing, and making a general nuisance of himself. And he was a hippie, too. I can definately see him pullinga stunt like that.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[linzeal]

You have to watch out for people that dress like hippies nowadays as you never know what they are on (Speed, Crack, Heroin) or what they should be on (Thorzine, Prozac, Lithium). Perhaps it was like that in the 60's too with mentions of peace and love when they were just as violent as the rest of society normally but when they faced the desperate life of a rambler, homeless 'kid' or worse their illusory life of goodwill towards all men when forced to relent their silly psuedo-intellectual views (that verge on being pedantic, but can't because they haven't really learned anything and are only able to regurgitate knowledge wholesale) on things they snap like a cheap plastic spork. Watch out!

Re:Not sure these will be needed

[LaBlueCow]

Statements like that should get people smacked. How long will it be before people honestly realize that there's no practical difference between "republicans" and "democrats"? They're ALL politicians, which means they throw their weight where it'll get them the most money and/or clout.
Open your eyes, for the good of everyone around you.

Because the government isn't constrained by law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the news once in a while.

Correction

[StuWho]

Part of the section attributed to me is a quote from The Register.

'It costs the UK 1.3 billion a year, and facilitates organised crime, illegal immigration, benefit fraud, illegal working and terrorism,'[Quote from Des Brown] Home Office Minister Des Browne said. He then said that the ID card would fix all this, but did not say how.[Quote from The Register].It's not only in the US where governments are using the excuse of terrorism to infringe on civil liberties.[Quote from StuWho].

There are lots of reasons ID cards are crap

[Colin Smith]

And there's a campaign against them being organised on the BBC iCAN activism site:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican/G114

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[Tandoori Haggis]

Parent was marked funny but the potential is there. There may be enough people scared enough of being
a minority to beg to be given their new WiFi implant with its unique xxxxxx.xxxxxx.xxxxxx IP address.

Besides, think how many people you see everyday with a phone welded to their ear. Time to get in to cyborg business perhaps.

Caveat: I don't own any tin foil hats - they tend concentrate the RF energy into the body rather than away from it, especially near mobile phones...

The problem is the single index.

[Colin Smith]

An ID card gives all information about you a single index. All you need is an indidividual's ID number and there's absolutely no technological reason you couldn't monitor their activities in real time.

"Speculative or implausably apocalyptic"? WTF? Don't you know *any* history?

Germany, 1938 6 million jews were executed by their government. The jewish people had "J" stamped on their identity documents. It's how they knew who to kill.

Rwanda, *TEN* years ago. 800,000 men, women and children with "Tutsi" marked on their ID cards were *butchered* by their government... With machetes.

Governments change in the blink of an eye:

Pakistan, 1999 a military coup took 17 hours.
Iraq, the fall of Saddam took a week and that was an outside country.
Greece, 1967.
Portugal, 1974.
Fuck, there was a coup attempt in Spain in 1981.

What planet do you live on? One where the CIA didn't help overthrow the democratically elected government of Chile and install a military dictator?

All these things *actually* happened. If you give the government the tools they'll bloody well use them.

Re:The problem is the single index.

[s20451]

You seem to be falling into the same trap that catches most people who oppose ID cards: the notion that ID cards, by themselves, will lead to an erosion of civil liberties, and even dictatorship (as you suggest). The fact is that we already live in this world.

A large fraction of the adult population carries a driver's license, or some other form of government-issued photo ID. An equally large fraction carries a credit card. Various organizations either keep records, or could keep records, on your telephone activity, your internet activity, your banking, and so forth. In many cases it is illegal to give these people false identifying information. If you use a discount card at the supermarket, they could keep records on everything you buy.

It's not hard to imagine that one could round up Jews (for example) based on credit card activity -- say, whoever has made purchases at the local kosher deli. Such methods would be basically as efficient and as thorough as marking a card with a "J".

So what I'm arguing is two things: firstly, don't think that opposing ID cards will make us safe (because it won't, we are already at risk); and secondly, because we are already at risk, we should be working within the system to protect our privacy and liberty from infringement from the government that we have, rather than worrying about what might happen if the shit hits the fan.

Re:The problem is the single index.

[Colin Smith]

No, I'm not falling into that trap, because it doesn't exist. Christ I can't believe people keep coming up with this "you already have half a dozen ID documents so why does it matter" argument.

If you have my credit card number, what do you know about my library usage? My driving habits? Do you know my loyalty card number? Sweet fuck all is what you know. To monitor me, you have to find me in all of the various different and incompatible indexes used by dozens of organisations. Not impossible, but decidedly non trivial. If everything is indexed onto a single number (and that *IS* the goal), it becomes trivial. You and I can be monitored in real time from anywhere in the world. Buy access to the offshore supermarket loyalty database and query my ID number (you know, that thing I have to present all over the place), bam! You know how many sheets of toilet paper I use when taking a shit.

There's a nice Iranian bloke owns a corner shop 80 feet from where I live, among other things he supplies halal meat, I shop there regularly, does that make me Muslim?

And no, I'm not suggesting that it will *lead* to dictatorship. ID cards are by definition a tool to allow discrimination. Dictators just find them extraordinarily useful when they decide which ethnic group they want to commit genocide upon.

The government is only one of the sets of people who will have access to your information.

I *am* working within the system to protect my privacy and liberty. I'm opposing a national ID card scheme. Britain has the oldest democracy in the world and it has functioned more or less acceptably for 800 years without a National Identity Register for all of that. I am lobbying my MP, he knows I won't register and that I'll be campaigning against him at the next election.

Re:The problem is the single index.

[amembleton]

I can't find a source right now but Iceland has an older democracy than Britian.

Re:The problem is the single index.

[s20451]

I don't see why a single number matters, because there is no reason why it could not all be indexed by your name (and address, if there is more than one person with your name).

So I think the ID card is a red herring. Any government dedicated to abusing civil rights could do everything you're worried about, and the addition of a new "single" identifier makes it only trivially more complex.

I'll bet the government might already do this in its databases ... you might have a universal ID number and not know it. The only role of the ID card would be to formalize the process. But if the same database can be indexed by any of your identifiers, what difference does it make, really.

And as for you shopping at the halal shop, I suspect an anti-Islamic government wouldn't make those kind of fine distinctions.

Re:The problem is the single index.

[dustmite]

But you're giving up more and more power to even be able to protect yourself against a possibly corrupt/'evil' government. When the 'shit hits the fan', there will be so much surveillance etc. in place that you won't be able to defend yourself or even organize enough people to be able to defend yourself. The questions you should be asking are (a) if the 'shit hits the fan', will I still have enough privacy/powers to even be able to organize enough people to defend ourselves, and (b) does the government need so much surveillance etc. powers in the first place that you are rendered entirely defenceless if the government becomes corrupt.

I'm afraid your hope of "working within the system" and basically "hoping it doesn't happen" is very naive. Study a little history, study what the potential of technology is, put the two together.

Re:The problem is the single index.

[ahillen]

If you have my credit card number, what do you know about my library usage? My driving habits? Do you know my loyalty card number? Sweet fuck all is what you know. To monitor me, you have to find me in all of the various different and incompatible indexes used by dozens of organisations...[...]Buy access to the offshore supermarket loyalty database and query my ID number (you know, that thing I have to present all over the place), bam! You know how many sheets of toilet paper I use when taking a shit.

You seem to have a pretty scary idea of how it is to live in a country which issues ID cards to their citizens. I live in Germany where we have ID cards since decades.

If I show my ID card to the police, they still don't know what I'm borowing at the library or what I buy in supermarkets. Because I never show my ID there. Probably the only people showing their ID in supermarkets are teenagers who have to prove that they are old enough to buy that alcohol. But even then the person at the cashier looks at the birth data and whether the guy in front of him/here looks like the guy on the picture and that's it. And I honestly don't remember when I had to show my ID card to anybody in Germany. So I don't know where you get the idea that you have to show it 'all over the place'.

To monitor me, you have to find me in all of the various different and incompatible indexes used by dozens of organisations. Not impossible, but decidedly non trivial. If everything is indexed onto a single number (and that *IS* the goal), it becomes trivial.

Yes, but indexing everything onto one single number is completely independent from issuing an ID card or not. If your government gives you an ID number and connects to that number all your credit cards, bank accounts, library cards, driving license, payback cards...whatever, then they can find out a lot about your way of living. Whether they give you another plastic card with this number does not really matter.

I have never seen my ID card as something else as a standard way to prove my identity if I need to. As long as I don't have the feeling that this way of identification is not misused to control my life I don't mind. And considering that hardly anybody ever wants to see my ID card...

ID cards are by definition a tool to allow discrimination. Dictators just find them extraordinarily useful when they decide which ethnic group they want to commit genocide upon.

That of course depends on whether any such information is contained in the ID card. My ID card does not tell you which ethnic group I belong to, it does not tell you to which God(s) I pray (if any). Even the Nazis (as you mentioned them earlier) had to put a stamp into the ID document (I think it was the passport and not the ID card...) of people which were considered Jewish, since otherwise you just could not tell from the document. There was AFAIK not even a central register in Germany were they (the Nazis) could look up who was (by their definition) Jewish or not. That's why millions of people had to submit a so called 'Ariernachweis', where they had to show that their parents and grandparents where not Jewish. That most (or maybe all) people in Germany had a passport or other ID where they just could stamp a 'J' in if the bearer was considered Jewish was not at all important for the genocide. I mean, issuing another ID document with the label 'Jewish' or the label 'German' (or 'Arian' or whatever) would have been no major problem.

Re:The problem is the single index.

[UpnAtom]

I'm with you. I will pester my MP, write to newspapers... basically protest as loudly as possible.
And if that doesn't work, I'll emigrate.

I don't care about having to prove my identity. What I do care about is the ability for anybody with friends in any future government to persecute me.

Anyone in the UK: I beg you, please find out more. There is a reason we scrapped ID cards after WWII and now our entire lives can be scrutinised.

Re:The problem is the single index.

[mdwh2]

If I show my ID card to the police, they still don't know what I'm borowing at the library or what I buy in supermarkets. Because I never show my ID there. Probably the only people showing their ID in supermarkets are teenagers who have to prove that they are old enough to buy that alcohol. But even then the person at the cashier looks at the birth data and whether the guy in front of him/here looks like the guy on the picture and that's it. And I honestly don't remember when I had to show my ID card to anybody in Germany. So I don't know where you get the idea that you have to show it 'all over the place'.

Interesting - mostly I hear people claiming that supposedly there are already lots of places we need ID, so therefore an ID card would be a good thing for convenience. Now here's the argument the other way round. I agree that there's few places we need to show ID - in which case, what's the use of an ID card?

Even if your government does not insist on you showing your ID card everywhere, you cannot be sure that future governments will always be so friendly.

The UK Government is planning that these ID cards would be needed where ID is currently not needed, and I feel it is certain that they will push for even more occasions where it has to be shown, once it has been introduced.

That of course depends on whether any such information is contained in the ID card. My ID card does not tell you which ethnic group I belong to, it does not tell you to which God(s) I pray (if any). Even the Nazis (as you mentioned them earlier) had to put a stamp into the ID document (I think it was the passport and not the ID card...) of people which were considered Jewish, since otherwise you just could not tell from the document.

Well that's just it - currently in the UK there isn't an "ID card" to "stamp". Once there is, it'll be a lot easier (and "stamping" could be done electronically, making it easier still). That's assuming that the information isn't on there to begin with - the UK Government doesn't seem to be very open in telling the public anything about what details will be on these cards (or indeed, much about the ID cards at all).

I mean, issuing another ID document with the label 'Jewish' or the label 'German' (or 'Arian' or whatever) would have been no major problem.

Issuing this ID card is costing billions, and taking several years - hardly "no major problem" for the would be dictator. But if Labour have already done that for them, things get a whole lot easier.

Re:The problem is the single index.

[ahillen]

Interesting - mostly I hear people claiming that supposedly there are already lots of places we need ID, so therefore an ID card would be a good thing for convenience. Now here's the argument the other way round. I agree that there's few places we need to show ID - in which case, what's the use of an ID card?

Even though I rarely use my ID card, I actually see it as a convenient way to prove your ID if you need to. If you want to collect a parcel at the post office because they did not reach you at home - just show your ID card. If you go to a bank where they don't know you and you want to do something you can't do at the cash machine - just show your ID card. Furthermore, when travelling in Europe, you mostly don't need a passport - the ID card is enough (and, in contrast to that passport 'booklet', theplastic card fits nicely into your wallet... ;) ). Now, surely I don't have the feeling that ID cards are essential and society wouln't work otherwise, but I never was in a situation where it bothered me to have one, but I surely was in situations where it came in handy.

Issuing this ID card is costing billions, and taking several years - hardly "no major problem" for the would be dictator.

I don't know why this card is so expensive. Maybe it's the cost for collecting all this biometric data and putting it on some modern plastic card which maybe contains also a chip or whatever... I think a would be dictator could do with less. Certainly in the 1930s (which I was talking about) , where an ID document was much more simple - a paper with a glued in picture which was filled out at some local registration office - the effort would have been much lower. And it certainly wouldn't have stopped them...

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[sydb]

Information minister Blunkett...

Uh... he's the Home Secretary. But I'm sure he would appreciate his new title.

Ancient rights

[the_twisted_pair]

I am also one of that million - in fact I dearly hope the number is higher than that.

The problem I do have is that, on one hand, we are told that ID cards are essential to our 'security' when more-enlightened people are moving the other way - travel throughout continental Europe as an EU citizen and you just don't not need a passport to travel; I've *never* been challenged to produce one, and it's a joy to travel light, far and wide. You come home to find Tony B.liar (aided and abetted by David Blunkett, our control-freak Home Secretary) cannot act fast enough on enabling legislation which has the potential to lock-down UK citizens.

[sarcasm] The day I plan some great abomination against a group of people I'm sure my biggest worry will be that I can't prove who I say I am. Mmmm: handguns in the UK, check; explosives, check; evil plans, check. Fake ID - oh bugger, I'll never carry that off. [/sarcasm] You see where I'm going with this? Benjamin Franklin's most famous quotation was never more true.

Guess what? I will protest, all I can, for my liberties which have their roots in law delineated in the Magna Carta. Posters in the U.K - read it, it is the legal acceptance of pre-existing common law, now an 800 year-old precedent. And it was expressly draughted to prevent interference in the lives of citizens by the Government:

IT IS ACCORDINGLY OUR WISH AND COMMAND that [...] men in our kingdom shall have and keep all these liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably in their fulness and entirety for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and all places for ever.
Both we and the barons have sworn that all this shall be observed in good faith and without deceit. Witness the abovementioned people and many others.

That we now have an elected dictator, rather than a hereditary one, does not change the rights of the people.

Re:Ancient rights

[H09N0X10U5]

travel throughout continental Europe as an EU citizen and you just don't not need a passport to travel; I've *never* been challenged to produce one, and it's a joy to travel light, far and wide.

Rubbish. You still need an ID card, different name same function. And even when you aren't crossing an international border, it is (certainly in Belgium & France and I think in Germany and Italy) an offence to step out of your door without carrying one.

Bad for privacy? I don't think so

[jsebrech]

Why do people assume ID cards would be a privacy invasion? Every modern country needs to keep track of its citizens for various things, from banking to medical insurance. The US uses the combination of social security number and driver's license as a facsimile for an ID card. The problem with these facsimiles is that they weren't originally designed to uniquely identify a person, so identity theft is a lot easier.

Here in Belgium we have had ID cards for as long as I can remember, and it has never to my knowledge been a privacy problem. Yes, the ID card lets people gather up all your data in one tight bundle, but that can be done with or without an ID card. It is not some disastrous measure that suddenly opens up your data to all the world. There is no privacy in modern society. Not in Western Europe (which mostly has ID cards) and not in the US. Deal with it.

I don't get the hysteria people have around things like ID cards. The government doesn't need them to find out what they want about you. And they are a protection against identity theft.

Now, as for why the British government thinks ID cards will solve illegal immigration, let me explain why this would be the case. Currently since there are no ID cards, once someone gets inside the British borders, they can pretend to be a citizen, and even if the police stops them they aren't easily identified as illegal immigrants. Therefore all someone needs to do to live as an illegal immigrant in Britain is sneak past customs (not a hard thing to do). When there is a national ID card not carrying your ID sets you apart for scrutiny, and life as an illegal immigrant becomes a lot harder. And since most modern ID card systems are tied into a database which cops can easily access they are very hard to fake, so the black market won't be the answer.

Re:Bad for privacy? I don't think so

[Colin Smith]

"very modern country needs to keep track of its citizens for various things, from banking to medical insurance."

Eh, no it bloody doesn't. The government in the UK is a public *servant*, that means I am their boss not the other way round. You might be quite happy on your leash as the property of your government.

"Yes, the ID card lets people gather up all your data in one tight bundle, but that can be done with or without an ID card."

Um, no it can't. That's the whole point of the card... To allow this.

Spain has compulsory ID cards and they have 800,000 illegal immigrants from Morocco. How exactly have the cards stopped these immigrants?

The only reason Belgium doesn't have an illegal immigration problem is that they saw the place and decided not to stay. They don't seem to have a big problem comming through Belgium when heading for the UK.

BTW, the proposed UK legislation won't require you to carry the card, but you'll have to present it within 7 days when stopped by the police. How fucking stupid is that?

"Yes officer, my name is Ben, Ben Dover and I'll pop down the station on Monday with my card."

Re:Bad for privacy? I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Belgium we have had ID cards for as long as I can remember, and it has never to my knowledge been a privacy problem.

There in Belgium, you get invaded by the krauts every 50 years or thereabouts, the strrets are covered in dog shit and you drive like cunts. Doesn't mean it's a good idea. If you all decided to jump off a cliff tomorrow, do you think we should do it too?

Re:Bad for privacy? I don't think so

[H09N0X10U5]

they can pretend to be a citizen,

Bollocks. I can spot one from 50 feet away, and what's more an Albanian accent is quite different from a Yorkshire one.

and even if the police stops them they aren't easily identified as illegal immigrants.

Even if the police had infallible proof that they were, EU law would prevent them from deporting them. it's against human rights, or something.

Re:Bad for privacy? I don't think so

[kraut]

Gee, so ID cards have completely solved the "problem" of illegal immigration in Italy, Germany, France, Belgium? Someone let them know, quick, that all those people are clearly a figment of the imagination.....

Meanwhile, back in the real world: Yes, ID cards are probably not THAT bad - after all, I lived in Germany for twenty years and was asked for ID once, although carrying the card is allegedly mandatory. But nobody has yet made a convincing case that ID cards would actually have any effect on anything, apart from a bad one on the tax payers wallet.

They will NOT cut crime.
They will NOT cut terrorism.
They will NOT cut illlegal immigration. That's what passport checks are for, Mr. Blunkett!
They WILL cost a lot of money (at least 3b, more likely 8b, in direct costs. 35 on top for every citizen, plus lots of costs for businesses if they are forced to use them)

Just another stupid, misguided attempt by the government to look like they are doing something.

Re:Bad for privacy? I don't think so

[JimBobJoe]

Every modern country needs to keep track of its citizens for various things, from banking to medical insurance.

Well then have the banks issue me whatever they want to identify me (prior to ID cards they have perfectly good internal cusotmer identification systems.)

Medical insurance is an odd one. But, if everyone in a social health care country has automatic insurance, then why do they need a card anyway?

Here in Belgium we have had ID cards for as long as I can remember, and it has never to my knowledge been a privacy problem.

One of the main lessons about ID card issues is that each country's experience with it is different. Of what I know of Beligium's ID card experiences I would characterize them (as I would a lot of the Western European ID card experience) as being bureaucratic. A lot of the bureaucracy that a Beligian would use an ID card for would be done differently in the US or UK. Honestly, several european nations really don't need them (I would put Beligum into that category.)

It's an odd paradox, but if you don't have rampant ID card fraud, you really dont' need the card in the first place.

Now, as for why the British government thinks ID cards will solve illegal immigration, let me explain why this would be the case.

Other posters answered this question pretty well. Once again, the Western European model of ID cards is fairly uninteresting and benign, as well as entirely unnecessary.

Take a look at Latin America though for some great experiences. You got everything good, hard to forge ID cards, biometrics, national database, blah blah blah.

And you have the most amazing ID fraud ever. I would say it's a sport in Costa Rica, but that would be singling out just Costa Rica. I think a lot of the problems are bribery (which is the case in the US as well, but DMVs go out of their way to make sure that internal bribery is covered up. Here in Ohio, I happen to know that criminal charges are often not carried out so that the scale of internal bribery is not fully realized.)

Check out Israel for a really odd ID card experience. It's a completely worthless card--not even used for bureaucratic purposes for the most part. It's not even used in security contexts.

It is however used as a way of hassling Palestinians. Stories abound of Israeli guards taking away Palestinian ID cards so that they can be fucked over (something which the UN intervened on several years ago)...or throwing them onto the as a show of force. Honestly, you could write several books about ID cards in Jewish history.

Re:Bad for privacy? I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason Belgium doesn't have an illegal immigration problem is that they saw the place and decided not to stay. They don't seem to have a big problem comming through Belgium when heading for the UK.

errr, the reason that Belgium doesn't have an illegal immigration problem and they are just passing through to the UK is exactly BECAUSE we have id cards and UK doesn't...

Benefit fraud

[Colin Smith]

Identity based benefit fraud is around 5% of the 4 billion per year. The rest of the fraud is "misrepresentation of circumstances" according to the DWP. This is people claiming that they are unemployed while actually being employed for cash in hand or claiming housing benefit while owning a house or "renting" from relatives etc. You get the picture.

The ID scheme itself will cost more to administer on an annual basis, around 250 million per year.

Re:Not sure these will be needed

[MajorDick]

THANK YOU !!!!

I've been saying that for years, I am a democrat I am NOT a liberal, I am Pro-Gun and Pro-Life or Pro-Choice , depending on how you want to look at it (to a point 24 wks sounds reasonable to me) I am for capital punishment, and YES I am a Democrat, you see I am more keen on the Democrats financial plans, I am pro-union and I come from a family with a long history of Democratic ties

Then I get all these fucktards that say Ohhhh youre not a real democrat, piss off. 20 years ago a Democrat would have strung up a child molesting murderer just as fast as a Republican, a Democrat 30 years ago had NOTHING to do with Gun control and so on.

Being a Democrat does NOT mean you are a liberal, there are 2 groups that would like VERY much for you to belive that, 1) The LIBERAL Democrats who want people to belive there are many more just like themselves, and 2)The Republicans, but here in the Rust Belt, Ohio to be exact thats not the way things are, many Democrats are disgusted with the Party and vote Republican when it comes down to it

Me and Mine are just as guilty for the unfortunate state of the Democratic Party, many of them rode in on the Union vote for years.

I would think I would like to be a Libertarian IF I thought they could actually win anything.

Re:News Opinion

[StuWho]

You're actually right.

Sorry!

Hmmm.

[H09N0X10U5]

'It costs the UK 1.3 billion a year, and facilitates organised crime, illegal immigration, benefit fraud, illegal working and terrorism,' Home Office Minister Des Browne said.

But that's enough about the EU...

Re:Not sure these will be needed

[LaBlueCow]

I think you missed the point of what I was saying entirely. I wasn't saying that Democrats have gun control or don't, or are liberal, or whatever. I'm saying that we're adhering to party lines that were established at a time when they MEANT something, but they clearly don't anymore, as you've just pointed out. You call yourself a democrat, yet follow what you say is a more non-democrat format for your choices. Point made.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[H09N0X10U5]

Caveat: I don't own any tin foil hats - they tend concentrate the RF energy into the body rather than away from it, especially near mobile phones...

You've got it inside-out, you berk.

North Ireland

[The Green Skeleton]

wow, I hope "universal UK ID card." doesnt mean they are going to try to implement these in North Ireland too. Almost all the Catholics in the country (about half the population) are already pissed at the UK government and want to split off and go back to being part of Ireland. I cant imagine making them all carry bio. ID cards will make them feel any better about UK rule.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[Anonymous Coward]

it's "it's"

and you spell like a /. editor!

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[Anonymous Coward]

www.welovetheukhomesecretary.com

Ive in Glasgow

[neon-fx]

I live in glasgow and to be honest, im not agaisnt the plan. Im just against having to pay for this sort of thing (im a student you see). The main reason Im not against them is because of the amount of fraud here, I work in a major department store in town and every day Im in the police get called in for people trying to get money out the store via openning instore acount under false ID. An ID card would be perfect way to let us know a little bit about the client, it would save alot of time as well. The other reason is becuase of the amount of scum who live here who take advantage of our benfits system (social security equivalent) and other means of claiming things they dont deserve. I currently carry about my drivers licience as my main form of ID and a matricluation card to get about university, neither of these have ever caused me an inconvienience and Ive never been worried about my privacy. One more card for a lot less hasslte, not a problem with me as long as its free.

Waste of money, no benefit

[kraut]

So the government plans to spend 3 billion of our tax money on this, which, given their record of delivering IT systems, will almost certainly mean 8 billion for a system that does half what was promised.

Then it wants to charge you 35 for getting an ID card, which you have to renew regularly. How do you identify yourself to get this card? Doh, using your existing unsafe identification.

It will do nothing to stop illegal immigration; it will do NOTHING to stop terrorism. It might cut down on benefit fraud a bit - but that's hardly a reason to make everyone carry one. It might cut down on "health tourism" a little, but the estimated cost of that is trivial by government standards anyway (200million). Also, of course, anyone willing to travel to the UK to use our public health system must a) be pretty desperate anyway and b) we can't actually, in this country, turn dying people away at the hospital door for not having insurance.

Willie here's ya

[gareth6889]

Willie dont care :)

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[Anonymous Coward]

After a recent visit to the US, I was amazed at how often I was asked for ID. When I asked why this was, i was told that it is not for legal reasons (being over 18/21 to buy booze etc) but mearly to proove that I was me.

I think having a single Passport/Drivers license/ID card is a good idea - I have nothing to hide and if it makes things easier for the innocent and thing smore difficult for the guilty, so be it!

Re:News Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of it isn't fact? The fact that 1.) The US government is slowly taking away civil liberties 2.) The US is using terrorism as an excuse 3.) That other countries are doing it? The current US government isn't even pretending that they aren't taking away civil liberties. Why you're pretending is beyond me.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[stiggle]

Except having only one ID makes it easier for the criminal types as they only need to copies of one ID instead of multiple ones.

Easier for ID theft too.

All the major studies into the ID cards have said it won't make any difference to the things the government claim it will make a differnce in.

Re:Not sure these will be needed

[MajorDick]

I did get what you are saying, although on rereading my post I did not articulate it correctly.

"more non-democrat format" Well thats all a matter of prespective, it USED to be the NORMAL Democrat format, unfortunatley it isnt anymore, that was kinda what I was trying to say.

I will add, Foreign Policy is also a MAJOR difference, I am admittedly an Isolationist, nothing wrong with that, thats just how I am. I am of the opinion we could close our doors tommorow and end up ahead of the game, the return of manufacturing and innovation as well as more domestic production, lots of hazzards but tons of potential benifits at this point in the game.

There was a time when the main differences were Foreign Policy, Trade (Unions) and Economic, NOW its all about crap that dosent mean a thing to 90% of the population, 90% Of America could give a crap less if Gays can Marry, myself I never give it a though it isnt something that is worth the brain cycles.

IMHO You were DEAD on when you said , "there's no practical difference between "republicans" and "democrats"? They're ALL politicians, which means they throw their weight where it'll get them the most money and/or clout." Youre right, I feel the parties are ruled by the special interests, and its really sad its all boiled down to that. In the end they are all politicians....

drukea

[Trimbo2]

its 1:15 AM, im in glasow, i havnt read the aritcle and im drunk! Hurrsh! (was at a wedding) glasgow rules. scotsare all alcacholics hurrah!

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[sydb]

Ah yes, now I understand.

LibDems

[amembleton]

See what the Liberal Democrats say about this.

Yes, they are against ID cards!

oh, and PS:

[s20451]

Britain has the oldest democracy in the world and it has functioned more or less acceptably for 800 years without a National Identity Register for all of that.

The UK has had national identity cards in its history. They were instituted during World War 2 for security reasons (to prevent Nazi spies from being parachuted in to the country), and were retained after the war. In the early fifties, they were challenged in court, when a grocer refused to present his card on request to a police officer. Although the government prevailed in the challenge, the negative publicity caused the government to abolish them in 1952.

But there's something the matter with glosgow...

[dylan.ucd]

...For it's going round and round!

--Will Fyffe

Re:Not sure these will be needed

[LaBlueCow]

I have nothing else to add, except AMEN. Close the doors, bring our jobs back, and boot out the clout. If they won't run the country for minimum wage, screw em! :) I loved Schwarzenegger's comment that nobody would buy his vote because he had more money than anyone that would try.

Re:News Opinion

[dustmite]

I agree, I couldn't see why that was "opinion" when everything in the sentence was really a fact .. although, well, StuWho seems to agree, so so be it.

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[dustmite]

That attitude works pretty well until the definitions of "guilty" and "innocent" are changed underneath you. (For a few examples, see human history of, oh, nearly every country on the planet).

Re:And now for the usual sarcasm about Revelations

[mdwh2]

I think having a single Passport/Drivers license/ID card is a good idea

This sounds like an argument for a voluntary ID card.

The UK Government is talking about compulsory ID cards, and that's what we're discussing here.

Plus, I get asked for ID cards rarely here in the UK. I'm not sure that people barely over 18 needing ID to buy booze counts as a large number of times.

And why the hell is an Anonymous Coward arguing for ID cards, and talking about "nothing to hide"??

Smart Card IDs

[eidola]

The US has 4 million issued to DoD employees and up to 40 million will be issued to government employees, contractors and some state employees by 2008. Extensions of use for transit and parking in Washington, DC and posssibley other cities likely. The will have biometrics, including but not limited to face and finger.

Re:Let's not forget South Africa

[jasoneyre]

During the Apartheid years, non-white South Africans were also forced to carry passes when walking on the streets.

Just my R0.02.

XeeRz,
Jason

Just One in a Million???

[GozerBrothers]

Assuming than one person in a million is a terrorist (ridiculously high, I know)

I disagree. www.census.gov says there are now just over 293 million people in the United States now. Do you really believe that only 293 of them are terrorists? I think one person in a million is a very low estimate.

Re:News Opinion

[TomV]

In any case, Mr Very Scary Blunkett started out describing it as an anti-terrorist measure, but since it was pointed out that the ID card would have minimal usefulness in combating terrorism, he's mainly been selling it on its benefits for xenophobic borderline racist anti-immigration purposes instead. It's now meant to stop dirty disease-ridden foreign benefit tourists coming to the UK to live like kings on social security and steal our jobs (what, while they're living on benefits?), houses and health services, at least that's how he's been selling it to the gutter press. Which seems to have gone down a lot better with the public.

'Well, sir.. your card appears to be faulty...

[Channard]

.. as your biometric data says you're made entirely of deep fried mars bars.'

Transparency versus Confusion

[guet]

We already have several obligatory universal IDs in the UK, and I don't understand the parent poster's paranoia on this specific issue (this is from a fellow UKian).

We currently have
National Insurance Number : given out to all adults of working age, and unique to that person (also used by the tax office)
Passport Number : ditto
Birth Certificate : again, legally required for various things
Driving license - this is a bad example because it's not obligatory and it's tied to one function.

They are probably all in various databases combined and correlated anyway. In my opinion the poster who said in the post above that the best approach is to demand transparency and accountability in the use of these numbers is correct. We should demand more open information, rather than trying to balkanise the government departments and hope for the best; that they won't talk to each other and somehow that makes us safe from dictatorship.

If a sufficiently repressive government came to power, they have the army and police on their side, and that's where these arguments become academic. If they ask for papers you will go along with it (along with the majority), or resist. You wouldn't be complaining about which papers exactly they asked for.

We should not try to fight the tools used for singling out minorities (there are many, and many innocuous tools can be used for these ends). I'd be interested to know what documents the Nazis used to classify racial identity - probably things which before were in common use - birth certificate, family name, along with some concocted rules of their own like medical inspections. Instead we need to be observant and complain about abuse as it happens - witness the disregard for the Geneva Conventions sanctioned by our government in the UK.

Many other European countries are already using Identity cards as a substitute for passports on their internal borders - I see a lot of people at Waterloo coming off the Eurostar without passports for example. I think in the long run they'll get rid of paper passports. I found that figure of 1 million people amusing. If they try to introduce a national Identity card, I really don't think you'll get 1 million in the UK going to jail for it. That's not to say I swallow all the arguments put forward by the government (as soon as they mention terrorists I switch off), but a card would make life easier for various government departments, and it makes sense in the long term.

Re:Transparency versus Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a non-Brit (so correct me if I
misunderstood), your examples don't sound like
universal IDs, otherwise, you would not need a
separate National Insurance Number and driver's
license. Here is the concern of all those
documents in your examples being defined by a
single number. When you travel to any other
country, Customs in that country has a hook into
your tax and health records because the number on
your passport is universal. Do you trust every
government and police officer or government
worker anywhere you may travel to not have
access, legitimately or otherwise, to UK revenue
and health service records? Is there anything you
own government knows or even suspects about you
that no other government or potential employer
should know?

Make money? nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

It is about control. A new revenue source (tax) is a side effect.