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No Passport For Britons Refusing Mass Surveillance
UpnAtom writes "People who refuse to give up their bank records, tax records & details of any benefits they've claimed, and the records of their car movements for the last year, or refuse to submit to an interrogation on whether they are the same person that this mountain of data belongs to — will be denied passports from March 26th. The Blair government has already admitted that this and other data will be cross-linked so that the Home Office and other officials can spy on the everyday lives of innocent Britons. Britons were already the most spied upon nation in Western Europe — more so even than Sweden. Data-mining through this unprecedented level of mass-surveillance allows any future British government to leapfrog even countries like China and North Korea."
However, we do have one advantage over North Korea: Blair has less credibility than Kim Il Jong. And unlike most facist governments, they can't get the trains to run on time either.
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People in the US value their privacy and expect more of it than in Europe. I've lived in London and Paris for a time and both cities are full of surveillance. Even the French now data mine public transit. I've never been to Scandinavia but I can tell you that there is a totally different attitude about it there. More people accept and even want cameras etc...on every light pole. transactions are monitored and mined more there. That is why banks use data centers in Europe to store information. All Interpol tracking is done their, that is why pedophile rings are always busted from Europe. The are far more Orwellian societies.
Well said.
Indeed, I have to wonder what the hell they're thinking over there...? Are all Britons living in daily fear of ogres, such that they'll ask for these kinds of measures? Is this a long-term consequence of Socialism, making adults demand to be treated as children? Is it something in the water supply? I mean, WTF?
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Wow. Just watched "V for Vendetta" on cable last night. Turned on the computer, went over to slashdot, and this is the first story I see. Spooky.
If you live in a society that lives by the credo of "Stay in line, this is your number" and where the most common expression is "May I see your Papers Please?" you accept the paranoia of those in charge as an immutable natural law and go on from there. So how to live with it? Protest or work against it? -easy way to get a larger file, that.
No, the best way is to always smile, say "Yes Sir" and do exactly as you please while APEARING to be a common little proliterait. I once knew a janitor who told me that every time he had a kid born he applied for and recieved at least 20 social security cards. The pencil pushers are used to the paperwork and just roboticlly fill in the correct blanks. This way, he had at laset 5 his kid could use, 2 or three he could use, and he could sell the rest. I always thought this fellow a smart man; trading paranoia as a commodity. Spys call it a "legend"; Building up a absolutley solid ID that is totally different from you. I would suggest anyone itnerested in freedom investigate open literature on how this is accomplished. f you are unwilling to stray that far from the matrix, try this: Always lie, always typo, always answer with a smile and a mis-spelled name. such mistakes are expected, forgiven and never result in problems for you but if ENOUGH do it, the monkey wrench colides with the machinery in such a way as to render the whole thing disfunctional,. Do your part to show the insult to individualism and freedom it truely is.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
I really don't agree. I realize that around here it is popular to bad mouth America,
but I really cringe when I wonder what would happen to the UK if they were subjected
to the same level of terrorism that the US was with September 11th. Not to be too
condescending, but the tube bombings were really nothing in comparison to the numbers
killed in the WTC.
If they are already going to give up all their rights for something relatively small,
I genuinely wonder what is going to happen when a larger terrorist action occurs.
Yes, the politicians here in the US pretty much sold us out to the highest bidding
security company and a group of dolts that believe not only in Armageddon, but that it
is coming in the next decade. But, the political tides here always sway back. Due largely
to the same forces which make it difficult to make any real meaningful changes to fix
social issues.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
I'm in the process of applying for an Irish passport, as I was born in Northern Ireland. I won't be renewing my UK passport this time around.
The point of terrorism is just that, to cause terror, not necessarily deaths. With the IRA, we never knew if a bomb would go off in our city for 30 years. They kept a lot of people scared for a long time. Al Quieda are no where near the league that the IRA was in. As a terrorist organisation, the IRA was very successful, Al Quieda has not been. During the recent Northern Ireland elections I've still been cautious and alert for IRA splinter group (such as the "real" IRA) activities; I haven't given a second thought to Al Quieda cells, everything I've seen and heard about them shows that they are both inept and that the security services seem to overplay their significance (almost all arrests seem to end with the vast majority of people being released).
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
I once knew a janitor who told me that every time he had a kid born he applied for and recieved at least 20 social security cards. The pencil pushers are used to the paperwork and just roboticlly fill in the correct blanks. This way, he had at laset 5 his kid could use, 2 or three he could use, and he could sell the rest. I always thought this fellow a smart man; trading paranoia as a commodity. Spys call it a "legend"; Building up a absolutley solid ID that is totally different from you. I would suggest anyone itnerested in freedom investigate open literature on how this is accomplished.
One of the points of this whole exercise is to stop this sort of activity, by using biometric data to ensure that each person has only one identity - their own (whatever that may mean). So if this works, you can say goodbye to that idea...
If a person in country A wants to travel to country B, then country B is certainly justified in demanding assurances from country A that that person is not going to cause problems in country B. It is reasonable, therefore, that country A does a detailed background check and documents that background check; that can be either part of the passport application or part of a separate visa process. Furthermore, the nature and depth of that background check is largely determined by the requirements of country B. These requirements pretty universally include sufficient financial resources and an unblemished police record.
So, yes, the UK looks like it's turning into a surveillance state, but that's an internal matter in the UK, unrelated to either national IDs or the issuance of passports. Requiring background checks in order to travel to other countries is justified and unrelated. UK citizenship does not confer the right to travel to other countries, and other countries who consider the UK background checks unnecessary can still choose to admit you without a passport (like the nations of the EU do, for example).
To get as much bad data into their database as we can.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
A passport is a request by your government for foreign nations and domestic agencies to safeguard your passage and extend you basic courtesies based on your nationality. By extension, they are also an assurance by your government that you will not abuse these privileges or in any way harm your host nation. How can your government make such an assurance if the only data they have on you is your name, address, and date of birth?
That is not correct - this proposed rule only covers public carriers and I think was limited to air and sea, so you are free to leave by car or foot and maybe train. Also as far as I can tell it was never actually enacted, so it may not actually be in force at all. And the rule was proposed for January 2007.
Well, I've been around long enough to remember almost everything that is happening now from having happened in the past at least twice. During WWII there were plenty of abridgements of what most Americans believe to be due process. During the "Red Scare" ditto. It used to be illegal to be a member of the Communist Party. And of course during the Nixon administration there were plenty of problems. Now post-9/11 we see the same mistakes again. Eventually the pendulum will swing back, mostly because some serious abuses will be discovered.
What disturbs me most about all this is the failure to learn from past mistakes, and the possibility that it will take more time than it should for the reversal to begin. And of course maybe someday the reversal won't happen. That's when the Republic will be over.
as a British citizen but luckily not a resident, this is totally fucked up, luckily i live in china where the government is a lot nicer with a few less cameras. i'm glad that all my bank accounts were closed down by 'bank policy' when not touched in 4 years, i'm glad i never paid national insurance, i'm glad i left england 9 years ago, i'm glad i have no property, I'm glad i never got a drivers license, i'm glad i left the British public ed-ju-mi-cation system.
now, i will however donate to a cause to "take out" Charles Clark and those that are pushing for this... I've a PayPal account and i'm not afraid to donate!
They hardly even bothered to look at me when I arrived at Beijing, contrary to the silly questions, finger printing, photography, scanning of my passport and close looks at my picture whenever I arrive in the US. At least the US visa waiver form is a neverending source of amusement (of course I would certainly tick "yes" on the form if I had committed genocide or planned to commit crimes in the US and hand those forms to the nice border police man to make sure he knows about it...).
At present you can travel without passport from UK mainland to Northern Ireland (if you don't fly Ryanair). From there you can cross the border to the Republic of Ireland without a passport. You can live and work there freely if you are a UK subject (you'll possibly need ID to prove this if your prospective employer doesn't believe you, or the immigration people get onto you - very unlikely - they are ill-equipped), and so you can stay long enough to get citizenship. UK and Ireland haven't signed the EU agreements on cross-border pursuit by police due to how shall we say, regional sensitivities.
Problem solved.
If you're from NI or your parents/grandparents are Irish, even easier, just get an Irish passport.
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Ireland and the UK share a free travel area, exclusive of the Schengen agreement.
It is a well accepted fact here in Ireland that if the UK introduces mandatory identity cards, the Republic of Ireland would have to follow suit in the interests of maintaining the privileged position we have with respect to travel to the UK. The British are by European standards quite paranoid about border control but, Irish and UK citizens can travel within the UK & Ireland sans passport. This free travel area with the UK is of enormous benefit to the Irish economy, clearly.
Thus if the Blair/Brown government does indeed start to place tough requirements on obtaining a UK passport this means that defacto such a system will be introduced in Ireland, in order to guarantee Ireland can maintain it's privileged access to the UK border
The Irish government would no doubt claim that they *have no choice* and that, of course it's not their fault... it's Tony Blair's fault.... if we, the Irish government don't spy on you to British standards... we might have difficulty traveling to London and Manchester for our stag parties, football games and occasional golfing sessions...
Solution: Grow your hair, buy a log cabin in the mountains and a shot-gun and go wait for *the day* the "Feds" come calling... trying to take your fingerprints for your "biometric" passport.
As I said to a Muslim friend earlier today, most of us regard GWB and his ilk as an embarrassment.
He also does not seem to have read the bit in the Bible about rich men entering heaven (or rather not entering).
More seriously, why is there do Christian left in the US? It is quite evident in other countries - and right wing British governments have found the churches to be a significant source of opposition (particularly over issues such as poverty) - why is that not happening in the US?