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HP Announces National Id System Built on .NET
Anonymous Coward writes "Yahoo is running a story about HP's national ID plan, 'The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,' said Jim Ganthier, worldwide leader, Defense, Intelligence and Public Safety, HP. 'HP and Microsoft are working together to provide government agencies the ability to access the integrated data streams needed to securely identify people both in the physical and virtual worlds.'"
I can't decide if I'm upset because it's a National ID, because it's made by HP or because it's being built on .NET.
Where would you like your identity to go today?
Do we really want microsoft involved in something which will identify us? I think not!
Erik
Your papers please!
All appears to be in order.
Proceed Citizen.
But be aware. Ve are vatching you!!
The UK ID card system is now estimated at £18 billion (30 billion dollars or so). That's up from £3 billion and £6 billion previous estimates.
m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4590817.st
Deleted
So if someone exploits a security hole in .NET they can take my identity?
Robert Oschler - RobotsRule.com
FP?
Already makes such a system. It's quite expensive (like in the tens of millions) but it works very well. It's in version SIX right now.
Jim Ganthier, worldwide leader, Defense, Intelligence and Public Safety
Worldwide leader? Who is he interested in defending us from, aliens?
Microsoft is helping to make it. That makes me feel SO safe.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.
If .NET is not fit for Longhorn, how is it fit in this enlarged and more crucial role? I truly hope that those whom get presented this idea also get presented this fact as well.
The Crimson Dragon
who lobbied for this legislation? i think it would be interesting to see who all was pushing for the RealID (besides senators trying to cover their asses)
Carly Fiorina has been brought out of a retirement to assist in finding a name for the new venture that is seven letters long and ends in "-ent."
that the answer to all of our homeland security issues would be Micrsoft?
Gee, I feel more secure already.
They mean enterprise-size ID systems. Like for businesses that are nation-wide.
If I'm wrong please let me know... but I hate it when people spin the headline.
What could possibly go wrong?
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
... the US government will have a fine excuse: "The Windows server crashed, there was nothing we could do."
they intend to build a secure national id system out of technologies which have proven themselves to be insecure at each turn?
god forbid there ever be something like code red or equivalent that hits this system, because the resulting sound will be that of 280 odd million people being simultaneously sodomized by very large cacti.
I'm trying out the beta version, and it includes an option for anonymous posting on Slashdot. See, it works just fine!!
-----
Name: Richard Kniefle
Citizen Location: San Francisco, CA
Occupation: Hospital Records Manager
SSN: 123-12-1234
DOB: 04-23-59
Political Affiliation: Liberal Democrat
Status: Citizen of Concern
Church Affiliation: None
You have a constitutionally protected right to be wrong, and I the right to ignore you.
Greetings and Salutations...
I would feel far better about this if;
a) the bad guys would play by the rules and register for their identity cards just like us law-abiding citizens and...
b) We did not have such a long history of government abusing power that it takes.
It may be a more complex world now, but, because of that, privacy should be even more valuable and preserved...rather than being stripped away.
While there is no current indications that this ID card will become a required, internal passport, there is a VERY good chance it will be...which undercuts one of the mainstays of American life - that of unfettered travel throughout the country. It could, alas, lead to a totalitarian state on a VERY easy road. Read Lewis Sinclair's "It Can't Happen Here", and see if you see any parallels between HIS thesis and OUR reality today!
On top of that, I have little confidence in the government or large organizations to keep accurate enough records to make this workable. So far, the track record is not great.
Regards
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Maybe its not HP or Intel or others we have to worry about, atleast i feel that they are being manipulated by Micro$oft (MS) to join some kinda of alliance to govern identities world-wide with unique and traceble ID systems. The problems is MS and its vast network of partners. Soon we will see MS at its glory with the world at the palm of its hand - and then what!?!?! (BAAM)!! they get hit and charged for monopolizing the industries and takedown by governments that will want to have control over these ID systems. I fear this most than anything else!
will you be dead for the gov?
.net overlords
not have to pay taxes, not being drafted ect?
well then i must say that i suport our new
Sark: Greetings. The Master Control Program has chosen you to serve your system on the Game Grid. Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the Users will receive the standard substandard training, which will result in your eventual elimination. Those of you who renounce this superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the warrior elite of the MCP. You will each receive an identity disk. Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disk. If you lose your disk or fail to obey commands, you will be subject to immediate de-resolution. That will be all.
Say hello to my little sig.
Wow, just what did that press release say beyond "we're going to help create a national ID using Microsoft .net"??? A whole lot of veribiage and redundant terminology. For example:
- 22 instances of "indentify" or "identification"
- 7 instances of "integrate"
- 7 instances of "system"
- 5 instances of "e-government"
- 4 instances of ".NET framework"
- 3 instances of "authenticate"
Feh. That's enough of reading through that tripe. Now I need to take a bath. --MHP provides the hardware, and Microsoft provides the software. It's like the worst of both worlds!
Simplely put, the government can fuck off. I will downright refuse to use ANYTHING built on microsoft technology which is this important. If all my personal data is being kept on it then I DEMAND security above and beyond anything MS has ever done.
I don't care if I get arrested 100 times over for refusing to carry an ID card, it'll be worth it.
I like muppets.
What's the point of identifying a person?
..when he was trying to get me in .. my Dad asked them if I needed to show a birth certificate (this isn't a simple deal to get everywhere you know) .. the principal just looks at me and goes .. "Nope, I think I know he was born".
When I was a kid I enrolled in a school run by Jesuits (in a developing country)
Mind you the whole point of my enrolling there was cause it was a scholarly and disciplined
one could study at without getting "caught up". And the didnt seem to worry about identity..
Now I'm going to have to get a hotmail passport account!
Libraries are now requiring finger prints.
Chicago installed 3000 camera's.
And now this...
I just have one question. Did ANYONE read the patriot act?
What if I want to read a book by Lenin, and not let anyone know that I have read his book? It seems that will be more difficult to do in the future. If I read it at the library, they have my fingerprint scan. If I buy it from the downtown borders, the police camera can look inside to see what books I have. If I somehow sneak the book home, and read it, then want to discuss it on the internet, they can find me.
This reminds me of Ray Bradbury, only far more sinister, with a splash of Orwell tossed in. My dear God, how dumb is the american populace? Has the smartest 5%, the ones that run the entertainment industries, the news, the companies, has the smartest 5% of the people sold their souls for more money?
We have all been enslaved.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Something like this could be heavily disrupted by a queue blocking technique. Cause huge backlogs by going down to a registration center, sitting at one of the biometric terminals and refusing to move.
The biometric readers will be fairly expensive and will require trained operators so there won't be all that many of them at any one registration point.
Deleted
Sooner or later we'll have some kind of encrypted GUID indentifying us instead of the 9 letter SS number, a GUID that can be applied on the whole planet. Unfortunately privatizing SS is like privatizing the military or the police, or even education and healhcare. I'd rather have some benevolent global gov't issue these numbers than a private corporation, but unfortunately the only forum that ever had a chance to be a "league of nations" or a global gov't is the UN, whose credibility was recently undermined by Bush. I guess the powers that be are fed up that in the UN countries with no military, no resources, or who otherwise would be completely ignored, get a full vote each, simply because they are split into two countries, and outvote the US simply to say look, here we are, give us cash because we have no other way to make some. One whacky solution would be to split the US into 50 states to the US gets 50 votes. The other solution is what Bush is pushing, saying I'm the UN, I'm boss, kiss my ass. Neither one is a good solution, and frankly, the whole point of any global gov't is to stop the risk of a totalitarian global gov't, which means having to listen to those with no power, no voice, instead of just invading them and clubbing them down, even if they are idiots.
I had long suspected, but now it's confirmed. HP and Microsoft determining if I'm me. I think I'll just post my credit card number on Craig's list.
Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
First time MS tried passport Sun objected and quickly put together a powerful alliance of technology and banking companies to propose a competing effort. Although the effort ultimately produced nothing it spread enough doubt to derail passport.
This time MS is better prepared. They already bought sun for all proactical purposes. With Sun now officially a MS lapdog who will stand in opposition to this venture? Of course the open source community will but they don't own enough politicians to do anything.
It will be interesting to see if any members of the liberty alliance object to this. My guess is that unless some tech company takes the lead they will simply jump on the MS bandwagon.
It's amazing what a few billion can buy you these days. MS by dumping a fistfull of dollars into Suns lap got them out of the way and now will be in full control of the identitiy of everybody in the US.
evil is as evil does
What a slap in the face for Sun and Java 5 J2EE 1.5.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
They make the system just insecure enough to let hackers get in, to let disasters strike. They use that as justification for more intrusive forms of government control.
Is it possible that governments aim here is not to make a system that is unhackable? Maybe they want it to fail, as a prelude to enslavement?
This is why computers suck. They will no longer be an aide to your life, no longer making life simpler and easier. Computers will now be used to track you, identify you. You are already probably in some government index with a score of how much of a threat you are. Check out Lenin from the library, your score goes up. Join the wrong chats, your score goes up.
Remember, this is the same government that tapped the phones of the Black Panthers in the 1960's, arrested innocent people, killed innocent people, overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile. Our government stinks with evil.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
.NET is the most advanced RAD environment on the market today. It's a joy to program in, and it's so well designed that in 99.5% of cases you don't even need documentation. Things are just done the way they should be done. .NET is also standardized with open, publicly available specification available to anyone. Whidbey release gets even more things right (generics, partial classes, nullable types, etc.)
.NET only runs on Windows. I know about Mono, but it's not quite there yet, and my guess is it'll always be at least one year behind and not ready for deployment.
The only downside is that
Does this mean that if I have a digital ID, and someone spoofs it, that if it says I went to another country and I didnt, that my word wouldn't be enough against the transaction log of such a device?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Why aren't they using Ada like every other IMPORTANT goverment project?!
At least Ada actually IS a proven technology.
Is that more clear?
It presumes security based on Windows. Didn't Passport already fail, doesn't MS learn from past mistakes?!?
It presumes HP will be at the center of it.
And it presumes on a platform that isn't platform agnostic.
Fucking greed again at work.
So on the one hand we have this and on the other implanted RFID chips.
Those of you who in other news replies felt that merely having encryption and using anonymous e-mail and network services equals having something to hide, please refrain from commenting against this now. If you have nothing to hide, you won't mind be tracked everywhere you go and in everything you do, because... you have nothing to hide, right?
Please ready your papers, citizens.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
The only problem with this plan is that a blue screen could hold up the border for hours...
If we have a system where everyone is tracked, through databases, camera's, RFID in cars, fingerprints in libraries, and a future dna database, think about the abuse?
Someone hacks the government servers, and puts in data, data that says you are a terrorist, a dangerous terrorist with knowledge of how to build bombs.
You, of course, are just an avarage joe who is walking to the local park to read Invisible Man. Next thing you know, a van hits you on the sidewalk, and you're dead. The driver is not just some old man who lost control. He is an old man who appears to have lost control.
I can't help but wonder, if Joe Mccarthy was alive, if Bush would nominate him to be Director of Homeland Security? The technology we have today is what he was missing to acomplish his goals. If he had todays technology, he could have killed the people who complained, before they got organized. Just find out who is reading the "banned" books, and execute them. Of course, the USA will never pull a book off a library shelf. They will just monitor who reads it.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Explain to me exactly how they got me to fund a system that is detrimental to my freedom?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Yeah, except to Hitler, he seemed pretty adamant about tracking where the Jews came and went.
...that this comes after the spoof "GPS Tags in Clothes" story - I got slightly confused between which one was actually fake :)
HP is a Microsoft sycophant.
i will pack up some camping gear and a hunting rifle & fishing gear and head for the northwest wilderness and live like a mountian hillbilly before accepting such nonsense...
... wouldn't you like to track them, for at least your own security, if not to do them more wrong?
The Blue Screen of Deportation?
-- This void intentionally left null.
Lets See:
Hitler needed an ID system. IBM was the ideal partner for them during the Holocaust. Perfect for tracking victims.
Bush needs and ID system. HP is the ideal partner for them during the Crusades 2.0. Perfect for tracking non christians.
history does always repeat itself.... sadly.
Mod parent UP!
//
Considering that Oracle said they'd donate the software to the
feds for free for a national ID system, you have to wonder what Microsoft's price was. Clearly there's some payoff; but my bet is that it's to some special interests (individuals, or the states of specific lobbiests) and the taxpayer'll get screwed.
But seriously. National ID? What part of 1984 don't you guys understand? That book was even part of our school curriculum...
you had me at #!
..especially not from M$. You got to be joking. Go fuck yourself M$, go fuck yourself UK and US government. Stick your Orwellian Bush led empire up your fat repulsive arses.
The governments are no longer the representatives of the people. They seem to be the enemy
As an international criminal, I am very happy to hear that Microsoft is developing this solution.
It all starts with someone in the senate they then scheme to build a clone army in secret, this case its an ID server and its microsoft. Then they give the clone army to the "good" guys, this case the government. Only to find out later that the clone army belongs to the person who schemed to build it, this case microsoft.
What would happen next; ponders me.
Oracle already announced their competitive bid for this project. How big a pie can it be considering Oracle's price?
Now all we need is an P2P identity-swapping scene. I can be anybody!
Incognito ergo sum. - Descartes
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
...welcome to National Identity System customer service. My name is Ravi -- I mean 'Jim'. How it is I can be of helpful to you this fine morning?"
"I can't get past security."
"Have you tried to be re-installing your identity?"
You wont get arrested for refusing to carry the approved ID.
You will get detained once... And if you tell them to "FO" while in detention, you can be assured it wont happen again as you wont get released.
Legal? no.. but when you cant even call an attorney there isnt much you can do.
Even if they do release you eventually, they can still ruin you. No job, no credit, no house, no driving..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Did the people who are bashing about .net ever really worked with .net? Security depends on the people that create the architecture and the application. In some technologies this might be an easier task than in an other but it's always possible to create secure applications. Clearly open source doesn't always stand for an open mind.
We get to find out who is moving where. Ever wanted to find out when the very wealthy are leaving the states? Want to know where they are moving to? now is the chance.
The article cites several countries where the .NET identity solution by HP is already in use. Obviously there has been no news about any security problems with these systems. You should be far more worried about simply losing your wallet than this system getting hacked.
In the UK, the Labour party just got reelected with only 36% of the vote. Yup. That's a minority. Almost 2/3 of the population didn't want them in power.
Step 1: So, the first thing you do in a "democracy" to reduce individual liberty *and* get them to pay for it is take advantage of a medieval electoral system which gives a 1/3 minority an absolute majority in the parliament.
Step 2: Then you use that parliamentary majority to push just about any legislation you like through the house.
Step 3: Profit!
Good eh?
Deleted
This is just a horrid misuse of funds. Bush wants to close military bases distributed around the US that might be a real source of security if say an aircraft were to be commadeered by a terrorist.. but getting that national ID which can be hotswapped out with a person who looks like you, is really safe.
We knew who the terrorists were who hijacked the planes... did it make any difference?
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Sarah Conner...paging Sarah Conner....
Considering that the M$ environment is under constant pressure from various threats I would like to call the selection of that environment risky, and almost stupid. By selecting other environments you would be running the risk of being more dependent on a few persons with that particular competence. On the other hand the number of persons competent enough to cause trouble will also decrease significantly.
If I was involved I would have selected OpenVMS , now owned by HP as operating system for the servers running either MySQL or Oracle as a database and developing the software in Ada or (horrendous thought) Pascal or maybe Java.
---
OpenVMS - The OS with longer uptimes than Microsoft support policies
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
'The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,'
If *anything* the lesson of 9/11 should have been that identification is not effective nor relevant to certain types of security sitautions, like air travel.
Instead, the assumption stands that identification is essential, but, in regards to 9/11, it was somehow lacking, either in format (see REAL ID act) or application.
Bad security is built around bad assumptions. Remove the bad assumptions and rebuild the security framework.
Based on the vast quantity of individuals flying, and the amazing sum of variables, all of which indicate little about the potential danger of the passenger, a defense could be made that we would be safer building a security system around nameless tickets.
I am terrrribly sorry to be irate and faley... but...
How the FUCK can all of the seattlite liberal types who hang out at burning man and protest the WTO just sit back and work day to day at the Redmond campus while their company works to promote a system that no terrorist or criminal will use, but will be used by any and every law abiding mind that may wish to change the government.
What is sick in my mind is that their is a stock options culture that made their million and in so sucking off the microsoft tit, has surrendered any and all free thinking that is in opposition to "the comapny".
We totally surrendered to this fascist state. And the drones that walk down the hallways in redmond have become bobbleheads surrendering their intellectual integrity and their souls for the stock options that bought them their houses in the gentrified (and formerly low rent) regions of seattle.
damn.we fucked ourselves good this time... everything has changed and I can't ever see it going back.
If you can sell your sould for stock options, it is easy to sell out your bill of rights.
damn.
sorry for any typos, I am definitely ranting.
Did anyone else read that as the need to secretly track individuals?
For the benefit of our non-American readers, I'll explain: the right to own guns is the most fundamental right we have. All the others rest on that right. What good is the right to freedom of speech if we have no means to defend ourselves physical? "If you criticize the government we're going to come into your house and take you to a detention camp" would render freedom of speech meaningless. Fortunately we have the right to own guns so that such threats are not realistic, and therefore the citizens can say "I have freedom of speech, and in fact anyone who tries to take that away from me is risking his life to do so."
So prohibiting gun ownership based on a secret list is like saying that the government can secretly take away all the rights of anyone it wants to. This is a terrifying possibility.
Godwin's Law
Meme, Counter-meme
How to post about Nazis and get away with it - the Godwin's Law FAQ
It looks like I just bought my last HP printer.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yahoo is not running a story; they are repeating a press release which announces a product. HP would probably love the US Government to select their product to be used to build a national ID system, but we as a country have to decide if we want that or not.
If you are opposed to a national ID system, don't waste your time whining about HP's product or the technology that it is built upon, spend your time lobbying your senators and representatives against pursuing national id.
I can't decide if I'm upset because it's a National ID, because it's made by HP or because it's being built on .NET.
All three!!!
FalconShould there be a Law?
They scale well enough if you understand what you're doing. If you just mindlessly sit there and write code without scalability in mind, then you'll have problems with any other language.
.NET when it came out, i.e. 4 years ago. Half a year of experience doesn't lend much weight to your words.
And try to write a large (by large I mean more than 200K lines of code), componentized, interoperable, maintainable system in Perl or Python and see how that scales for you.
You should have started with
I guess Microsoft finally found a purpose for PassPort...
...and how is it supposed to work with HP's REAL money-making servers (HP-UX, Tru64, VMS) ??
The national ID system is guaranteed to fail with this kind of ridiculous convergence. I mean, honestly, with Microsoft technology at the fore, the system will be as full of holes as, well, the rest of their software. Your liberty and anonymity will be safe, rest assured.
I would proclaim HP, Microsoft, and SCO as the Axis of Evil...
http://chrono.posterous.com/
That's for a US system rather than the UK one. However even with free software I'm sure Oracle could find a way to generate 30 billion dollars worth of consultancy.
Deleted
Or, what if many countries of the world get together and implement a compatible system that allows them to track people's identities across all those countries. Is that going to help fight terrorism? Or are the terrorists simply going to figure out a way to live without an ID card? I mean seriously, if you're the kind of crazy motherfscker who wants to blow up innocent people, do you really care if you drive without a license, or do you really care if you can't buy booze without an ID? Or are you simply going to live without a picture identification and work all your evil schemes in a cave somewhere? These people, you have to remember, live like some kind of cavemen in the middle of the desert. Cavemen with AK-47s. So no stupid national ID system is going to help fight that.
In other words, this is a big thing of bullsh1t.
It's way past tyme SS is privatized. As far as I'm concerned it's robbing Peter to pay Paul. Now there's something like 13 people paying into SS for everyone recieving it but soon it will be more like 2 or 3 paying for everyone receiving. It was meant to be a safety net, but people should be saving and investing their own money for retirement, and the earlier started the easier. With a compound interest of 10% a person who saves $2000 a year from the age of 18 to 25 will have three quarters of a million dollars saved when they reach 65. By this tyme they should also own their own home and shouldn't even need SS. They can sale their home, move to the Caribbean and buy a bungalo.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Godwins law is a simple judgement to stop thought.
How many people resist seeing actual similarities between our government and NAZI germany simply because they wish to be above the emotives that such comparisons make.
Face the facts. Our government is using techniques similar to NAZI germany to control and limit dissent and the ability of the opposing parties to regain control of countries mind.
My law is that Godwins law is just a tool to demote any analogy to NAZI germany to the level of a sophmoric crank.
So screw Godwin, or at least let's give him a job as the person on the public address system speaking to the masses to stay calm and not think about the ramifications of the situation. His verbage will be well used to keep the computer geeks calm as they march into the oven... because after all.. the law is the law... and Godwin wrote the law.
Carli Fiorina was a bad CEO though.
FalconShould there be a Law?
.NOT!
There are two problems with .NET : Microsoft and Windows. .NET for something else than Windows there will only be 1 problem with .NET...
The day M$ will deliver a
In Soviet Russia, the government... oh, wait... damn.
Hell is other people
What about a national security ID system screams for RAD? It's not as though we're talking about development of massively complex applications with tons and tons of screens, etc.
At most, there will be a few queries made to a big database.
Face it. A national security ID system ought to be about *security*, not some single-platform programming tool / buzzword.
I agree that we're collectively allowing "freedom" to become a meaningless buzzword - but the 60's hippie generation didn't do much of anything to help prevent that. Rather, much of it had seeds in that era.
IMHO, we do an awful lot of worshipping the 60's that's unwarranted. Flower children, hipppies, etc. etc. The fact is, most of the people growing up in the 60's doing their psychadelic drugs, having sex with anyone willing, and protesting Vietnam ended up tightly wrapped up in "corporate America" afterwards anyway. (Hey, take Steve Jobs for example. Still pays lip service to his 60's "hippie past" with all those folk-rock 60's artists he has play music before his Apple keynote speeches and so on. But he's just another big-time corporate C.E.O. today.)
The 60's was great from a cultural standpoint. Lots of really good music and art came from it. But "greed" was never exclusive property of the "corporation". It's a trait shared *individually* by all of us, and properly channeled - can be a good thing. (To some extent, "greed" is what motivates people. If you didn't want more than what you already have, why would you work for someone doing a task you disliked? If there was no such thing as "greed", pay-raises would serve no useful purpose in the workplace.)
The real problem is, most Americans seem to be far too "non-chalant" about political issues. We take a "Who cares? Politics is boring! New law X or Y doesn't affect me directly anyway." attitude, and government grows and grows in power. The founding fathers of our country realized this could be its downfall. That's why they made such statements as "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." Preserving freedom is *work*. It's not something you attain once and you're finished. You have to fight to keep it every day, or it slips away, one new piece of legislation at a time.
You're a goddamn paranoid moron. This is in no way detrimental to your freedom. Pull your head out of your government-fearing ass and see that
Yeap I fear government just as Thomas Jefferson did.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I bet J Edgar Hoover would be happy to be the Director. Or both, that way Cointel, Project Phoenix, and McCarthyism can all be rolled into one. Bet Stalin or the gestapo would love it too.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Is this the same government that helped stop Fascism, stopped Soviet Communism, and gave the world the Internet, or is it a wholly different government? Is it the government that sat by while the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan? Is it the same government that in the 1970s let inflation run rampant in the United States, causing the standard of living here and around the globe to stagnate, or is it the one that fostered a huge technology and economic boom through more open market policies?
My point is that a government is never wholly good or evil. I'd say that describing a government as "good" or "evil" plays right into the hands of absolutists like Bush, except in the most extreme cases (Nazi Germany and Pol Pot's Cambodia come to mind).
I'd say that even elected governments make mistakes, sometimes horrible ones. Talking about the US government desiring the enslavement of its own citizens is just bizarre. But putting a government like that of the United States in the same boat as one like Nazi Germany is absurd.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The more they stay the same.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
--Benjamin Franklin, 1759
The fact that a faulty and insecure technology underlies an obvious grab for power is perhaps a good thing.
What we should really be worried about is the software that all this will run on, not the API used. .NET has yet to be proven insecure by any means, but all the software pieces the application is going to run on are well known to have security issues. Maybe we should ask for this to be ran on Linux with Postgre instead of Server 2003 and MS SQL 2000 (slammer worm victim).
yeah, i am fully inspired with confidence in HP's data management. i work for a small non-profit and they recently called to say they were coming over to work on our servers and wanted permission to do so. we told them we didn't have any HP servers and that even if we did, they wouldn't be allowed to work on them. they called back five minutes later and asked were we located at such-and such address. we said, yes we were, but that again, we didn't have and never would have HP servers and didn't this seem like a good time to check their records. the tech said, "you're a liar". well, a few more minutes go by and yet another tech calls to inquire about their service call. at this point, we repeat the above information - yes this is our location and yes this is our phone number, but no, we didn't call and did we mention we don't even have HP servers. the tech's response was, "Have you been drinking?".
so great, the masters of data management will be in charge of a national ID system. i can see it now - "Yes, officer, i do live here, and that is my phone number, but my name isn't Osama!"
You're comparing OS kernels with ID systems. Apples and oranges. OS kernels require extreme performance and direct hardware access among other things; obviously an ID system may not need these things as badly.
An ID system won't require extreme performance, or access to hardware? I can easily see airport checkin being even slower as well as any other "process" or system that needs to check a database. Or are you saying these should all be done in ram? What happens then when there's a power failure? No, quite to the contrary an ID system will NEED top performance and hardware access.
FalconShould there be a Law?
It depends on what the term RAD means to you. If it means using safe language with verifiable intermediate code, garbage collection and a large, managed library of well designed components available to it, then .NET (and Java) is a RAD tool. It cuts down significantly on boilerplate code which no one can deny is a good thing.
.NET languages, for the reasons of security. A language that by design doesn't have buffer overflows, pointer errors or memory leaks (I know you can still have them, but you have to make a conscious effort).
If it means Borland Delphi, then no, I wouldn't advise to use THAT for this system either.
Quite frankly, I'd rather see this system implemented in a managed language, be it Java or one of
Its other benefits pertinent to this task are:
1. Unicode, l10n and i18n awareness "baked in".
2. Future-proof, will run on 64bit hardware once 64 bit URT comes out
3. As efficient as unmanaged code written without "shortcuts". Gets compiled into machine code when executed.
4. Easy to deploy and maintain. IIS6 on Windows 2003 is the most secure among the commonly used web servers according to Secunia.
Check this out:
IIS6: http://secunia.com/product/1438/
Apache 2: http://secunia.com/product/73/
Apache 1.3.x: http://secunia.com/product/72/
Hard to believe, eh?
http://img167.echo.cx/img167/2969/410nationalid0cj .jpg
Microsoft
HP
and in the "commie red" corner, the alternative:
IBM
Linux
mono
I know who I'd put money on getting it right... sadly for everyone, I don't think Linux would get much of a look in because of all the schmoozing from Microsoft...
Something this important, really, really needs to have the code in the open for review. I'd hate to think of all the opportunities for backdoors to be programmed in for the use of the corporatists to edit the database without leaving any traces of it. That would allow them to easily have anyone they don't like declared an enemy of the state just by going in and fudging the data... and the enforcement agencies would just go along with it as the data can't be wrong now can it...
i suggest reading "postscript to the societies of control" by gilles deleuze...it's a good theoretical breakdown of the ways in which conrol enters our lives through various institutions.
e uze-societies.cfm
http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/vy2k/del
a brief excerpt:
"We are in a generalized crisis in relation to all the environments of enclosure--prison, hospital, factory, school, family. The family is an "interior," in crisis like all other interiors--scholarly, professional, etc. The administrations in charge never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons. But everyone knows that these institutions are finished, whatever the length of their expiration periods. It's only a matter of administering their last rites and of keeping people employed until the installation of the new forces knocking at the door. These are the societies of control, which are in the process of replacing disciplinary societies."
You sure 'bout dat?
I don't get what's so wrong with having a national ID card. We already have Passports that are managed by the State dept, and driver's licenses that are managed by our state's, why not combine the systems? Is there much use in carrying around 2+ government issued ID cards? I do think it should be for ID, driving, and border crossing purposes ONLY. I don't like these ideas that I saw flying around on tv news networks about incorporating our ATM/credit cards, because that's too much. If it's just a driver's license and passport combined, what's the big problem? Don't tell me it's the computer system required to make it because most geeks I know would kill (not literally) to get on a big project like that.
The wording of this is peculiar enough to check what it means.
Do they want these IDs to be internal passports in addition to being used for national border crosssing?
If the system was 100% secure so what?
It's the people who "should" have access that worry me. It's the huge number of people who think we should be cataloged that really worry me.
Many of us need to duck and dive to get by - the grey economy has often helped me out.
And if any of us choose to oppose what we see as despotism we need as much space as possible to do that. The unfettered exhange of ideas will determine who is right.
And there's an easy way to do it, too. Move to a country that still values freedom. Boycot everything in the US by leaving.
Nobody in congress read it before voting to approve it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This gives you even more reason to boycott HP. Not that their products would be that great anyways.
Here's news for everyone. The world isn't black or white. There's no "US" verses "THEM". Freedom has been all over the world, and so has tyranny, both big and small. And that's because basically humans have more in common than what's different. A Swede can be just as greedy as an American. A Nigerian can be as honest as say a Mexican. The US may have built the worlds attention around it's freedom (of which we still have more than the doomsayers think we do.*), and hence any loss will garner more attention than say if Chileans lose their freedom.
.e.g. Saudi Arabia and women.
But we still shouldn't lose our perspective (and hence ignore), and forget that we should be paying attention to what's happenning in all parts of the world. Because all the bad things will not so convienently follow your scripts, nor even say "here I am you goody-two shoes".
*Yes we still enjoy more freedoms than a lot of countries
"HP Announces New National Citizens Personal Financial Information Dissemination System Built on .NET."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The word you are struggling to find, my sadly indolent friend, is poor.
Nothing too fancy, now - just process an 8-channel pipe with 10Hz/pipe signals.
Yeah, right.
Larry offered the DB for free!!
Yeah, right.
For similiar reasons to why there's always a reply to "Slashdot Hypocrisy" posts.
"So thats where you went today!"
I don't how this was considered a troll. Unless history and facts are trolls.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666" (Rev. 13:16-18).
Now is the time to rise up and fight for democracy. Silence is acceptance. Many of you did nothing when they passed the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II but now is the time to get organized and fight to save your way of life. Power to the people. United you stand and divided you fall. Put aside your political differences (democrats and republican) and send your leaders a message.
In your hand or head?
Where would you like it?
"It's for your best interest".
you: "O really!? wow cool!!"
n00bs.
There are two problems with your comment: Intellectual vacuousness and you. Oh wait, that's only one...
Well, it'll be everywhere..like the sky...and um, it's based on a network, or net..so
Skynet!
bing, bang, done, let's break for lunch!
It is a crying shame that the bulk of the American people are letting their freedoms, their liberties be eroded by the federal government. National ID Card? No Thank You...
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Ben Franklin
I have some advice for the government. Don't let them trick you with the purchase cost of the national id card printers. The cost of replacement cartridges will be through the roof!
All your ID are belong to us.
Because there's no chance it will actually work.
Just because everyone is greedy doesn't mean that greed should be socially acceptable. In many societies it's not.
The problem with a greed-driven society is that the greediest come out on top. Example: every multi-billionaire that's still working like a dog or screwing someone over to make another buck. Yes, that's probably how he got rich in the first place (yes it's probably a he), and yes it's still compulsive behavior.
Like it or not, when you codify personal power into a monetary system, money buys anything. Groceries, murders, pay-per-view wrestling, politicians. So the bulk of the power ends up with those who want primarily just that. Insert some proverb about people who want power being the last ones that should have it.
The size of government is completely beside the point. Whereever laws are made, you will find businessmen trying to distort them to the (usually exclusive) benefit of business. Even Adam Smith warned of this in The Wealth of Nations. All smaller government does at that point is lower the price of lawmakers.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
"Refuseniks"? Sounds like someone's trying really hard to relate them to communism...
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It lays out the problem with this whole idea very clearly.
Basically, the system will NOT do what it is supposed to do. What it WILL do is allow those in power to STAY in power. I'm not talking about Bush either, he's just a puppet.
Many of us are against Nation-ID anyway. Now throw HP and .Net (Microsoft) in and people forget, what the main issue is and start worrying about how insecure Nation-ID will be based on .NET.
Our crappy printers are the last product we bought from HP. As an ethical and responsible CEO I will actively boycott HP and make sure that my company does not buy any HP systems or peripherals anymore.
I came up with the same line just now, hours too late. I salute you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So - assuming the government gets rid of all the unwanteds:
Democrats, single women with degrees, the old, the educated, unionists, your children...
People can be disposed of more easily, just by deleting them,
no ID - no job, no money, no food, no home.
I think Max Headroom had a episode about 'Blanks',
people with no record and no identity...
...we avoid to go to such strange countries with strange rules. and now i must say that the usa bcame one of those countries in the past years.
;)
I would not even fly to the us if i got it as a gift, because i don't want all my data inserted into 35 databases and some obscure foreign government (us) to track my actions.
in my eyes this thing now is just a furter step to industry-feudalism.
no, thanks.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
> You failed to confirm you are a human. Please double-check the 7-letter image and make sure you typed in what it says.
:(
AAAAHH! Someone replaced my with a very small shell script!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
And on Slashdot, you are modded Troll for speaking your mind.
I guess so.
FalconShould there be a Law?
There is a truism, I'm not sure what the source is, that we are safe so long as we have an incompetent government and/or police force. If they're betting the farm on .NET, we have relatively little to fear. If they start doing things properly, get very worried.
Maybe it's one of these:
I see that both Thomas Jefferson and Henry David Thoreau are credited with one of my favorite political quotes, "That government is best that governs least." Then again I admire both.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Er... wait...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
While the right to privacy isn't enumerated in the Bill of Rights, the Nineth Amendment does say:
Amendment IX - Construction of Constitution. Ratified 12/15/1791.
Further courts including the US Supreme Court has ruled there is a right to privacy:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court Thursday struck down a Texas state law banning private consensual sex between adults of the same sex in a decision gay rights groups hailed as historic.
President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In this capacity, he wrote over 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues.
Early treatises on privacy appeared with the development of privacy protection in American law from the 1890's onward, and privacy protection was justified largely on moral grounds. This literature helps distinguish descriptive accounts of privacy, describing what is in fact protected as private, from normative accounts of privacy defending its value and the extent to which it should be protected. In these discussions some treat privacy as an interest with moral value, while others refer to it as a moral or legal right that ought to be protected by society or the law. Clearly one can be insensitive to another's privacy interests without violating any right to privacy, if there is one.
That was just a quick check but I'd bet I can find more references to the right to privacy. The reference at Stanford University mentions privacy protection from the 1890s.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The part where you should be torn is that you are happy your tax dollars are being wasted.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Where I live now it's stretching it to say 1 in 5 sales clerks or cashiers even check id when the customer writes a check or uses a credit card. This really pisses me off, how do they know the check or card wasn't stolen? I've lived here for several years now and that's how it's been the whole tyme, but where I moved from even people who know you check your id. I couldn't write a check or use a credit card without being asked for id. Many places would write down the drivers license number and such.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Personally, I think this is a great time to assemble an ad-hoc group of crack programmers, put together a proposal for the government, and really push for this system to be based on open source software. Linux, PHP, Postgre, Python, Ruby, they could all be a good fit for a system like this.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
I bought my last HP printer some years ago. My new one, well under a year, is a Canon. You might say I'm a Canon person as that's what my SLR is too and I'd like to get Canon's EOS 1Ds Mark II. Unfortunately my pc is an HP, I plan on replacing it with a Mac though.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I brought up the Soviet Union's use of internal passports related to another article. A reply to it says internal passorts are still required:
Read ID
They still require internal passports here in not-so-soviet Russia. Nobody will sell you a train ticket (or plane ticket) without your internal passport and you can't enter a train without proving your identity (with passport only, your name is printed on ticket). You can drive a car from town to town but you won't go much far without an ID because of traffic police (driver licence is usually sufficient, though). You are required to be officially registered at your living address and you can't stay more than a month at another place without at least a temporary registration. Government here wants to know every your move and with all that "terrorists" propaganda things are getting worse.
Are we headed down the same road?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Thanks Jim. I hope to have the title "worldwide leader" when I grow up too! The Mormon cabal running HP has been pushing for this for decades. Maybe we can combine it with RFID chips implanted in our skulls?
Fascism. Remember that Hitler guy and that Mussolini guy?
The USSR wouldn't have failed from within if it hadn't been resisted from without.
The Internet was funded and put into place by the US government, regardless of who invented packet switching, which is only one aspect of the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee did invent the Web, but whether the Average Joe calls it the Internet or not, it's still just one component of a larger international network that was started by the United States.
The US did not intervene in Afghanistan until after it was invaded, which I showed as an example of American moral cowardice.
The US lost the war in Vietnam and withdrew from Somalia, an effort that started as a humanitarian mission. Remember all of those starving Somalis? I do.
The US did nothing about Rwanda, much to my shame as an American.
The US did try to overthrow Castro on many occasions. Let's not forget that the US was involved in the Cold War at the time, and American perceptions of Cuba were colored by it. The Bay of Pigs occurred but so did the Cuban Missile Crisis.
American training and support of nasty regimes in Central America was also colored by the Cold War, and was a colossal miscalculation designed to favor dictatorships over totalitarian states.
The Bush Administration has made incredibly stupid and dangerous civil rights limitations part of his "War on Terror" but it is a strength of American government that such overreaching can and will be fixed. Domestic freedoms have been curtailed before (Civil War, WW II, McCarthy Era), but our system is flexible enough to recover.
So yes, the US government has a mixed history. Is that an "overwhelming history of being evil?" I don't think so.
By the way, what government do you call your own?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
first of all, they tell u that the system is used for terrorists, of course no one can argue with the need to track down those evil killers, and hey! what do we really have to hide ? we are a good citizens with nothing to fear.
.. one way or the other
soon enough the system will be used to track down those dirty screwed up pedophiles, after all pedophiles are the worst scum of the earth. they are even worth than the terrorists. this time most parents will cheer up and be happy ! after all, personal freedom is a small price to be paid to protect our little ones.
the next step is to track down the drug dealers, no one can argue here too, we protected the kids from sex abuse, now we must protect them from drugs ? eh ? ad as i said before, all of the good citizens have nothing to fear or hide so far.
the steps can continue to inclue everybody
Hi. I'm the "its" vs "it's" guy. (I make three or four "its" vs "it's" corrections per day here, and also around three to ten other corrections.) One of these days, I'll get myself another account here that I use purely for correcting spelling errors. (I don't use my regular account for obvious reasons.) At that time, you, and every other person who, for some reason, hates the correct use of the finest human language in the world (so far), the English language (American version), will be able to declare me your foe, and thus avoid my posts.
than an asenine correctly spelled one
"asinine".
If you want to be really obnoxious, use "then", instead of "than", in your signature line.
People are motivated by what I like to call the Seven Deadly Sins:
Greed (Generosity)
Lust (Self Control)
Sloth (Zeal)
Anger (Kindness)
Pride (Humility)
Envy (Love)
Gluttony (Temperance)
(The antithesis of which are the Virtues which the sins are against (in parenthesis)).
"Sin creates [an inclination] to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of the same acts. This results in perverse inclinations which cloud conscience and corrupt the concrete judgment of good and evil. Thus sin tends to reproduce itself and reinforce itself, but it cannot destroy the moral sense at its root."
Etc.
The idea is that you have to balance out your sins with good deeds. You talk about how "everyone is greedy". Maybe you've killed your boss so you can make more money. Maybe you've sold deadly drugs to make money easily. Somehow I doubt it.
You see, you place moral limits on your greed. Each and every person has their own idea about how much greed is too much, how much lust is too much, etc.
What the 60s did was shake everything up. Society, the government, television, churches, parents were all telling them what to do; they were being drafted for service in the military for a pointless political war, a president was assassinated, race relations were fuming. The 60's were a horrible time.
I think the hippies had some things right: Love is definitely better than Envy and Anger. I think they did too much of a lot of other things, too. But the hippies weren't everyone; they were the far edge of reason that helped pull society a little in their direction, a little away from the burning abyss of white christian oil power in this nation.
There are many ways to think, and a government which places restrictions on thinking limits societies' ability to naturally evolve into something greater.
Right now, the problem is that America is full of greed and lust and all of these things; much more than *I* am comfortable with. And it's about you and me. As I said earlier, we all have different Ideas. All I can do is do my best to share mine with others, and hopefully they understand what I mean and reciprocate so I can understand them.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
I live on the planet where America waged war against fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and ultimately defeated both of them. Your comparison of IBM and Ford's involvement in Nazi Germany versus the full weight of American military and industrial power, not to mention tens of thousands of American lives, is a case of creating equivalency where it doesn't even remotely exist.
The alignment of corporate interests with government interests is obvious to anyone who is paying attention. But that is not the same thing as "evil", particularly given that in my opinion, corporate interests are not inherently evil. Because corporations have been given so much power, their capacity to fuck things up has become greater. Give anyone (churches, government agencies, corporations, unions) too much power, and bad things will follow. But we still have the capability to reign in corporate power. The American electorate is already starting to realize that the "War on Terror" has been oversold.
By the way, if you are actually trying to convince me of something, don't tell me that I have my head up my ass, particularly if you're posting as an AC. The Far Right has been calling everyone who disagrees with them anti-American idiots, terrorist sympathizers, and worse. My feeling is that when we fall in to that line of base accusatory argumentation, the ability to see nuance and get beyond rhetoric is lost.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ