Slashdot Mirror
The UK's Total Surveillance
Budenny writes "The Register has a story in its ongoing coverage of the UK ID Card story. This one suggests, with links to a weekend news story, that the Prime Minister in waiting has bought the idea that all electronic transactions in the UK should be linked to a central government/police database. Every cash withdrawal, every credit card purchase, ever loyalty card use ... And that data should flow back from the police database to (eg) a loyalty card use. So, for example, not only would the government know what books you were buying, but the bookstore would also know if you had an outstanding speeding ticket!"
And we ALL have many things to hide.
Abuse of the info will happen, so let it never be allowed, anywhere!
"I have a right to buy those, but please officer don't tell my boss or my wife or my kids!"
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
And who's guilty of this all?
Terrorists!
And I do mean it. They're bad, bad folks who use scare tactics and incite the fear of getting blown up to control the population into obeying their demands.
Yeah, that's right. Your beloved government fills all the requirements for the word "terrorists". Just like the other side of the pond.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
If this database could be linked to myspace!!
I'll never have to write my own boring blogs ever again, this could do it for me!
11am bought donuts at krispy kreme
11:15 incurred speeding fine on South eastern freeway
11:30 purchased petrol
I wonder what people would do if they took a vacation in the UK or if they were there on a business trip. If this system became integrated into daily life and such, I bet that visitors would have to get some type of a temporary card so that they could be tracked, too.
Question: With all these people's lives transparant to business and government, do you think that business/government will become MORE or LESS transparant to people in exchange?
My take is that this is a game of government and business ganging up on the rest of society in the name of security. Government is the daddy, business is the favorite trusted son, and everything else is their hunting ground. The conservative dream.
Ryan Fenton
If you pay cash for something you'll be required to swipe your ID card through a reader anyways because "it's standard procedure to get a card swipe of some kind with every transaction"
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
"The bookstore would know you had an outstanding parking ticket" - how and why? The current bank card we use in a bookshop links to all our bank details but a bookshop cannot access them - no system would let retail outlets interrogate a database for that information or any other info that didn't directly refer to them - that would be a serious design flaw and would never be accepted.
So an article in the Observer makes claims from 'sources', and all of a sudden everyone should get their tin foil hats out. We've all seen what a spectacular failure most of the recent UK Gov IT projects have been, if I believed they were even capable of doing this I might be slightly concerned. When they officially announce this is what they're rolling out, I'll make a fuss.
About five years ago I was generally in favour of limited invasion of privacy like ID cards, CCTV etc. The level of craziness coming from Labour in the area has pushed me into the privacy nut camp. Their current behaviour just seems like the Labour equivalent of Thatcher's last years.
Then two things occured to me;
1) I don't live in the UK
2) Natural incompetency will prevent this from ever seeing the light of day. They'll be a lot of noise about it, then a year or so before it's supposed to go live, there will be story after story about how this jack holes never managed to figure out what a database was, let alone link them to others.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Kinda makes me feel like I'm on the Truman show - all famous and special and such.
Oh wait - its a bad thing, not having a life of my own...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Oh the irony...promoting George Orwell using a system that behaves exactly like the Ministry of Truth.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Anyone remember the scare about the NSA commissioning programs that could pull together information on individuals from all over t'interweb and produce coherent, intelligent reports on behaviour patterns etc? The idea being that all of this data is available, but it's so massive and disparate that it would be almost futile to draw anything useful from it.
Seems kind of obsolete now, doesn't it.
Meta will eat itself
that started in 1215 with magna carta. Apparently your present prime minister, whom you have elected to power 2 times, is very enthusiastic about following in the footsteps of his sidekicks in u.s. government to kill democracy.
Read radical news here
The bookstore cited in the summary would not want to know about your speeding tichets. They would undoubtedly implement a filter to narrow down the information they display. Plus, I didn't RTFA, but it seems unlikely to me that the system would actually be structured in such a way that all information could be pulled with the same weight. I'd think that personal information would require a higher access level. However, in the US, traffic citations are public record, and a bookstore could pull them in if they wanted to.
I myself am living through the hell of a family member's minor criminal infraction being repeatedly mishandled and miscoded by the 2 courts and 3 police departments that have some jurisdiction. Now on a daily basis there are cops at my house with one kind of arrest warrant or another for a charge that was dropped months ago.
So yeah let's give the cops more power and more data to peer into and let's give them more of an excuse to wave a piece of paper in my face and tell me "I don't care what you say, this piece of paper says I'm right and you're going to jail.." Yeah let's do that.
This system is far too complicated to ever work.
A much easier system would be to just let the government decide what you can eat, where you can go (and when), and what you can read (if anything). In fact, let the government set your schedule, issue you a uniform with a number on it, and install a chip in your head so you can be tracked 24/7.
Only then will we be safe from terrorists.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
When I first heard about the 9/11 attacks, I thought "Was this a CIA plan to get a law passed to elimnate all are civil right?" Of couse not, but then they passed the Patriot act. Only terrorists and criminals would have anything to hide, only a terrorist would say, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Fight Spammers!
I was thinking more of V for Vendetta.
Watch Ordering pizza (turn on your speakers!)
Although this film was made in response the the U.S. Information Awareness Office program, it is equally relevant here.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
every day there is an artical about rights being oppressed in countries and anti-terror campaigns, but this is ridiculious.
n d anything else thats digital and has information will be also tied into this database *if* they get it together, also the government will be the least of your worries, just wait for the employers start getting access... lets just say, i'd trust a drug dealer with this information more than i would trust a . not only that, think about when you sign up for health insurance, they'll be like `dear sir, we know you lied on your application, we have seen you have purchased excessive tobacoo and alcholic substances in the last year`.
Dear UK people, it would be a good idea to invest in somthing like anonet today since soon your msn/skype/aim/yim/gmail/email/computers/routers/a
laugh at me if you must, it will be abused, hacked, sold, stolen, exposed at some point
One of the underlying goals of the whole ID card fiasco isn't the card but the database it is intending to use that is designed to integrate all the other government owned databases in a way that allows a single view of a person. As things stand, if you want to search the driving licence data, address, voting info, criminal records etc you haven't to search different databases.
Nowhere have I seen anything that suggested this data will be available to 3rd parties such as shops but for sure, they want the data from shops.
Anyway, the UK government have a terrible record for producing big systems either to time, budget or function so we'll have nothing to worry about for ten years by which time it will have bankrupted us and will use kit no longer available and crash out with errors and timeouts all over the place. It will probably be a doddle to hack too so at least the crims will get something useful out of it.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
If the patron is drunk, the barman should call the patron a cab no matter what the patron's legal record says.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
As a Brit who lived in the USA from 1991 to 2000, I can report unfortunately, that unlike the USA, whose wonderful constitution and congress means that controversial measures are often debated, here, if the PM or PM2B decides to implement a law, he may and sometimes will bring it into being. The collapse of morals, lack of principled leadership, common sense and genuine concern for the populace shown by Blair's government is terrifying. I have had several parking tickets (citations) in London whereby my car was photographed BEFORE the alleged offence, and without my permission. I was stunned to receive pictures of my car and toughly written letters demanding payment of £100 for very very minor and totally accidental parking offences. Once such CCTV systems and linked to the same database as this retail database, we will in fact be living in a world far worse than Owell envisioned because unlike people, technology is cold and unable to make compassionate or common sense based judgements. It's not the Orwellian nightmare we should be afraid of, it's the concept of Skynet and such a system being missued by a corrupt and morally bankrupt government. Or G-d forbid, any terrorists who take over parliament and use it to 'take out' people of a specific ethnic group. It's happened before! People of Britain, open your eyes!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
The public do not elect the Prime Minister. The public elect their regional MP (Member of Parliament) who takes a seat in the House of Commons representing a particular party. The Prime Minister is (by tradition, not constitution) the leader of the party with the most MP's in parliament. So, don't blame us.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
The oft used trick in the UK for getting the population to swallow whatever crap the government wants to hurl their way, i.e.
1) Announce insanely over the top version of whatever it is you want to do
2) Sit back while the population freaks out for a while and make a token defence of it
3) Back off to the point you originally intended and watch the population sigh in relief your "capitulation" in the face of their protests.
Generally, if there's one thing to realise about New Labour it's that things don't leak from a source close to anyone in the government unless there's an agenda behind it.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
think about when you sign up for health insurance, they'll be like `dear sir, we know you lied on your application, we have seen you have purchased excessive tobacoo and alcholic substances in the last year`.
Most people don't have private health insurance here, we have the NHS, and if you do choose to get private health insurance, you have to tell them how much you smoke/drink anyway.
If anything, this would be one of the few possible benefits of such a system - the amount of tax you pay could be directly linked to your lifestyle, so people who smoke would pay more because they're probably going to make more use of the NHS than those who don't. True, they already pay more due to the high level of duty on cigarettes, but smokers are an easy target and what government can resist easy tax targets. They could sell it the same way that they're selling the road usage charge idea (the one one where they stick a gps in your car and monitor where it goes) - just use a dubious moral argument to get it through (smokers|car drivers are evil and must be punished through punative taxation).
You could even go one stage further and make VAT progressive as well - instead of everyone paying the same 17.5%, your VAT rate would be directly related to income. Of course, that would mean moving to the US model where the displayed price doesn't include tax, which would mean people would actually become aware of how much money they're handing over to the government, and some resentment might result.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
BARMAN: You're a cab.
DRUNK: The old ones are the best. Hic!
DRUNK FALLS OFF BAR STOOL.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Statistically, that's not true. Smokers cost the NHS less over the course of their lifetimes on average, because they tend not to live as long.
This may be counter-intuitive, but it does illustrate very nicely how dangerous a little information can be. Not that this is at all relevant to the current discussion, of course. ;-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If it had been in the "News of the World" or "Sunday Mail" I might have agreed with you. However the Observer is one of the two Sunday newspapers that are actually newspapers (the Independent being the other, the Sunday Times is an upmarket Murdoch tabloid).
So, even though there have been some fairly well reported failures in UK government IT projects I am not dismissing this one.
Money - use it in cash transactions. If you remove their ability to collect data...
...they will RFID the money.
Remember, Remember, the 5th of November,
of gunpowder treason and plot.
For I see no reason that gunpowder, treason,
should ever be forgot.
If anything, this would be one of the few possible benefits of such a system - the amount of tax you pay could be directly linked to your lifestyle, so people who smoke would pay more because they're probably going to make more use of the NHS than those who don't.
Dear Mr.Smith,
We have noticed from your grocery purchases that this month you did not buy proper amounts of vegetables from our approved Nutritional Excellence(tm) list. Instead you purchased some cakes which, you must realize, are bad for your health. Accordingly, we have no choice but to double your health insurance premiums.
Sincerely yours
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Your ID card protects your identity - keep it close!
Smile! Our cameras are here to protect your privacy!
The new limits on automotive traffic will ensure you get to your destination quicker!
Friendly reminder from the Revenue Service - save all financial records - We Do!
Please don't litter - remember: everything you throw away has your DNA on it, so we'll know!
'Give me six lines penned by the hand of an innocent man, and I will find in them somethign to have him hanged.'
We all do, say, buy, or otherwise involve ourselves in things that might not put us on everyone's best person of the year list. If you have access to enough information about somebody, simply through selective presentation one can create a danmning image of an otherwise innocent and decent indivual.
"And I see you bought drain cleaner, fertilizer, and firecrackers sir, clearly you are trying to build a bomb"
This is definately a serious potential for massive abuse.
Why do you do that? Do you think the grocery store is planning to kill you? "Sir, he went to our competitor yesterday, prepare the death ray"
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
As soon as they can get the tech working, passport applicants/renewers will be entered on the National Identity Register (NIR). There is no opt out.
This NIR is initially planned to be linked to your tax records, police records, passport records and even the new Automated Number Plate Recogntion system which tracks all your car journeys.
This, of course, is just the beginning, but is already the world's most intrusive database on citizens, going further than even China. If Brown gets his way, it looks like your credit card transactions, phone calls & emails will soon be able to automatically flag you as a possible troublemaker.
Britain's democracy has failed to stop this. It will likewise not stop future governments of any variety abusing you via your data.
NO2ID has known about this all along and we have been telling anyone who would listen. The campaign is extremely well run and full of great people, but we need YOUR help to stop this Orwellian nightmare.
It's easy to get confused if you're used to a two-party system. You can tell just by the phrase "that side of the divide", as if there were a canyon and there are only two sides of the canyon that you can stand on. The two party system here taints all discussion and even thinking about politics, even my own though I try to be aware of it. Everything becomes an "either-or" issue with two choices, and the worst part is that both of them are usually bad. Thus the phrase "lesser of two evils", which denies the existence of possible third choices.
The enemies of Democracy are
What a whole load of fuss over pretty much nothing. Apart from "speculation" that ID cards are evil and will contain your soul the actual facts are that ID cards will only contain the same amount of information found in driver's license, passport, etc - it is just consolidated in one place. Every single time there is an ID cards discussion on /. everybody starts saying "the UK is a police state", "the UK is fascist", "Britain is undemocratic". Nobody seems to realise that ID cards aren't the state trying to reach into every aspect of your life, they are just trying to consolidate your personal information into one place, rather than having it scattered all over the place, making ID theft all the easier.
And to whoever it was who said about discussing policy in the UK rarely happens and policy discussion goes on all the time in the US: a seperation of powers only works if they are pulling in different directions.
Transponders?
:
:
: ...but the link finally died in July 2004 and the new location does not have a photo of a RFID bridge underpass collector. But does discuss thhe toll booth RFID uses...
Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.
A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFid chips embedded in the tire).
I hope this guys RFID dumper helps people learn about their car more (if supported scanner is in the AIAG frequency standard range)
Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) . A particular frequency energizes it enough so that a receiver can read its little ROM. A ROM which in essence is your GUID for your TIRE. Multiple tires do not confuse the readers. Its almost identical to all "FastPass" "SpeedPass" technologies you see on gasoline keychain dongles and commuter windshield sticker-chips. The US gov has secretly started using these chips to track people.
Its kind of like FBI "Taggants" in fertilizer and "Taggants" in Gasoline and Bullets, and Blackpowder. But these car tire transponder Ids are meant to actively track and trace movement of your car.
Taggant research papers
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/ ~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
(remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)
I am not making this up. Melt down a high end Firestone, or Bridgestone tire and go through the bits near the rim (sometimes at base of tread) and you will locate the transmitter (similar to 'grain of rice' pet ids and Mobile SpeedPass, but not as high tech as the tollbooth based units). Sokymat LOGI 160, and Sokymat LOGI 120 transponder buttons are just SOME of the transponders found in modern high end car tires. The AIAG B-11 Tire tracking standard is now implemented for all 3rd party transponder manufactures [covered below].
It is for QA and to prevent fraud and "car theft", but the US Customs service uses it in Canada to detect people who swap license plates on cars when doing a transport of contraband on a mule vehicle that normally has not logged enough hours across the border. The customs service and FBI do not yet talk about this, and are starting using it soon.
Photos of chips before molded deep into tires!
http://www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html
You never heard of it either because nobody moderates on slashdot anymore and this is probably +0 still. It has also never appeared in print before and is very secret.
Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.
The photo of the secret prototype WAS at
http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html
http://www.telematics-wireless.com/site/index1.php ?ln=en&main_id=33
but the fact is... YOU PROBABLY ALREADY HAVE A RADIO TRANSPONDER not counting your digital cell phone which is routinely silently pulsed in CA bay area each rush hour morning unless turned off (consult Wired Magazine Expose article). Those data point pulses are used by NSA on occasions.
The us FBI with NRO/NSA blessings, has requested us gov make this tire scanning information as secret as the information regarding all us inkjet printers sold in usa in the last 3 years using "yellow" GUID barcode under dark ink regions to serialize printouts to thwart counterfeiting of 20 dollar bills. (30 to 40 percent of ALL California counterfeiting is done using cheap Epson inkjet printers, most purchased with credit ca
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Dear UK people, it would be a good idea to invest in somthing like anonet
Oh, it's way past that. They need to move right to investing in guns by this stage.
Wait, UK? Ha ha! Too late, they've already criminalized knives .