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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."
"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 reportsPeople in the UK should refuse to carry these things. They are an abomination.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
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.
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.
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.