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UK Government Passes ID Card Bill
cowbutt writes "The two houses of the UK government, the elected House of Commons and the House of Lords have agreed a compromise on Labour's ID cards bill, after Conservative peers accepted a Labour amendment. Under the new amendment, anyone renewing a designated document (e.g. passport) will be able to opt-out of getting a card until 2010, but will still have their details put on the National ID Register immediately."
Get stuffed number 6.
Great Britain, meet Totalitarian State.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
How, exactly, is any of that supposed to help against crime / terrorism / illegal immigration / whatever?
This is going to cost the government some money. That money comes from taxes and fees. What is the British citizen getting for that expense?
Living in Northern Ireland, with dual nationality I'll be going for an Irish passport, instead of a British one. If a British Driving license is a "designated document", I might just have to shenanigan enough to be able to get an Irish Driving license too, come renewal time.
"Never 'clear the air'. Instead, investigate all the subtle nuances of the word 'fester'." - R. Candappa
When I'm at the airport, I want to have the following T-shirt:
FRONT TEXT: I'm carrying a picture of myself.
BACK TEXT: Do you feel safer yet?
"Proper" ID (that is, rigorously checked, hard to fake, and accurate), for all of the good civil liberty arguments against it, might actually prevent certain types of crime. Them's the breaks.
Would it deter people who don't mind dying in order to obtain a religo-political goal? Well, it didn't deter the September 11 hijackers, at least not all of them.
The only way to travel free of possible terrorism is if everyone agrees to be schlepped around nude, drugged, and packed in Jello. Including the terrorists.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
What data will ID cards store?
Fears have been raised by opponents of identity cards about the amount of information which could be stored on the database. Here is the full list of the 49 types of information which the Identity Cards Bill says should be on the register.
Personal information
* full name
* other names by which person is or has been known
* date of birth
* place of birth
* gender
* address of principal place of residence in the United Kingdom
* the address of every other place in the United Kingdom where person has a place of residence.
Identifying information
* a photograph of head and shoulders
* signature
* fingerprints
* other biometric information
Residential status
* nationality
* entitlement to remain in the United Kingdom where that entitlement derives from a grant of leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, the terms and conditions of that leave
Personal reference numbers
* National Identity Registration Number
* the number of any ID card issued
* allocated national insurance number
* the number of any relevant immigration document
* the number of their United Kingdom passport
* the number of any passport issued to the individual by or on behalf of the authorities of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom or by or on behalf of an international organisation
* the number of any document that can be used by them (in some or all circumstances) instead of a passport;
* the number of any identity card issued to him/her by the authorities of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom
* any reference number allocated to him/her by the secretary of state in connection with an application made by him for permission to enter or to remain in the United Kingdom
* the number of any work permit relating to him/her;
* any driver number given to him/her by a driving licence;
* the number of any designated document which is held by him/her and is a document the number of which does not fall within any of the preceding sub-paragraphs
* the date of expiry or period of validity of a document the number of which is recorded by virtue of this paragraph.
Record history
* information falling within the preceding paragraphs that has previously been recorded about him/her in the Register
* particulars of changes affecting that information and of changes made to his/her entry in the Register
* date of death.
Registration and ID card history
* the date of every application for registration made by him/her
* the date of every application by him/her for a modification of the contents of his entry
* the date of every application by him/her confirming the contents of his entry (with or without changes)
* the reason for any omission from the information recorded in his/her entry
* particulars (in addition to its number) of every ID card issued to him/her
* whether each such card is in force and, if not, why not
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
>
>Yes, we'll still have Bush, but if we can a Democrat majority in Congress, especially a democrat majority with a fucking spine, Bush and them will spend the next two years fighting until we can hopefully replace all of them in '08 and start the long path of recovery...
Pop Quiz: On January 20, 2009, the leader of Democratic wing of the party, having retaken the House and Senate in '06, and the Presidency in 2008, will take a look at the powers available to it, and say:
a) "Look at all this power we just had dropped into our laps! Just in case we're ever tempted to use it, we'd better pass laws to prevent us from using it."
b) "Thank you very much, Republicans! It's just what we always wanted. Let us know what additional powers you'd like in place for 2016 when it's your turn."
It doesn't matter whether you work for the Democratic wing or the Republican wing. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
Here's a Guardian link with every article and editorial they have on the issue. Lots of good stuff here.
t ml
http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/0,,1373591,00.h
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
"everyone's getting so worked up about this 'big brother state', but what are you *honestly* doing that's gonna cause any serious concern/suspicion on the part of the ruling authorities?"
And that my friend is exactly why so many jews ended up in crematoriums.
1. "Okay the don't like us but we can still work, this is as far as they'll go"
2. "Okay we have to register and wear these stars, be we can still own our business. this is as far as they'll go"
3. "Okay, our property has been siezed, and we cant get a permit to leave. but they'd be crazy to go any farther...."
Right now it's a nebulous group. Next it becomes people who don't have "acceptable" viewpoints. Here in the US both the FBI and pentagon have been caught spying on quakers for gods sake.
Every time any government tries to increase its power, the citizens should always ask themselves "would I want (insert your least favorite politician or political group here) to have this power?"
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
No2ID is the main opposition to the ID Cards scheme. These guys are truly wonderful people though currently somewhat gutted that the Tories sold them out & didn't even have the decency to warn them.
What is the British citizen getting for that expense?
First a correction: we're not citizens of our country, we're subjects of the Queen. In theory she can send us to the mines on a whim, although in practice our royalty are pretty nice folks that just want to be left alone.
Not being citizens is not the problem though. The real problem is that we're just slaves of our politicians, who are all total scum.
We didn't vote for any ID cards or biometrics on passports, since it wasn't put to the vote. The scum in power want more power though, so it was bound to come without a public vote.
No of course it doesn't help anyone, except Bush of course, who uses Blair as a policy support bitch all the time. In this case the War on Drugs was getting a bit flat, so the War on Terror had to be fed the blood of virgins, or of the innocent public in this case since these measures do nothing against terrorists.
It's a sad world, especially this corner of it. Britain will be the first totalitarian police state among the G8, no doubt about that. We're already tracked in our vehicles, monitored on CCTV, recorded at our phones, and spied on at our ISPs. And now we're going to be fingerprinted and retina-scanned.
It's clearly 1983. Not long for 1984 now.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
If you live in the UK and have ever received a fine (citation) from a speed camera (everywhere in the UK) or even from a minimum wage automaton (virtually all traffic wardens in the UK are minorities) you will know that no matter how well meaning a person you are, your professional reputation or that you were only 5 mph over the limit, or simply rushing around trying to find some lose change for the ticket machine while the parking fine was issues, when you attempt to challenge 'the system', it is time consuming, stressfull and of course, if you fail in your protest, expensive. Like the introduction of iD cards, all of this simply profits the government, local authorities and the manufacturers of the technology. This is all the realisation of the distopian nightmare of having freedom, the right to make mistakes and the right to revolt ('wither revolution?' taken away from us by a corporate sponsored government who keeps tabs on it's citizens using technology. I'm British and find this far more abhorant than any terrorist threat and prey the people of the freedom loving USA reject the lot of it. The best way to fight terrorism and other crime is for us all to keep a fair eye on suspicious activity. We have souls so can judge accordingly.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
I guess the next revolution is one step closer.
It's instructive to watch history repeat itself, because it allows me to see just how Hitler and the Third Reich were able to achieve what they did without people stopping them. It's one thing to learn about it in school, when you seldom understand the full spectrum of what is being taught.
I can now safely say that it's not that people didn't know back then. Just as now, the people just DID NOT CARE enough to do something about it. So in sixty years we have learnt exactly.... nothing.
It's just sad that so many new people will have to die needlessly before we realise our error yet again. As an "intelligent" race we really don't deserve our place at the top of the food chain, because intelligence denotes reason and so far I don't see any.
I won't weep for our destruction, because we deserve it.
Visceral Psyche Films