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UK Gov't To Require ID Cards For Some Foreign Residents
craigavonite, writing "It's looking like the UK is in for biometric ID cards within the next few years, despite widespread protest from groups such as 'NO2ID,'" excerpts from an article at the BBC describing a UK identify card to be issued starting later this year: "The biometric card will be issued from November, initially to non-EU students and marriage visa holders. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the cards would allow people to 'easily and securely prove their identity.' Critics say the roll-out to some immigrants is a 'softening up' exercise for the introduction of identity cards for everyone."
It isn't a big thing. It's an ID card that holds a fingerprint record. How is it bad to tie a card to a person?
The UK government has shown countless times that it's unable to keep its citzens' data secure.
If someone gets hold of my credit card and CCV number and creates a forgery I ring up and get a new one.
If someone gets hold of my finger prints, what do I do then?
No-EU students etc have to have a passport anyway just to be able to come there, so they have an internationally accepted way of identifying themselves.
How will an additional ID card help to do anything?
It isn't a big thing. It's an ID card that holds a fingerprint record. How is it bad to tie a card to a person?
It's not the card that's the issue. The problem is that as part of the ID card program the UK Government want a centralised database behind this card that holds personal info on each citizen. To be honest, I don't think it's been clearly defined what the data is but it's expected to be DOB, national insurance number etc. The main concern is that the UK Government has a very poor track record in keeping this type of information secure. If this particular database, containing what most people expect it to contain, is compromised then it's ID theft-galore in the UK.
1. It wont stop illegal working.
Anyone who is supposed to have such a card but doesnt can just pretend to be on of the 99.9%
of the population that is not required to have the card.
2. Whats the point of the frigging fingerprint?
Who has got the both tha equipemnt and the right to check it?
3. The variously elected and appointed idiots are in thrall to various "consultants".
To paraphrase Warren Buffets immortal words "Never ask a consultant if you need an overpriced solution".
4. Lastly but most importantly -- there is no "problem".
Various candidates for the problem to which id cards are the solution have been proposed and they have
all been found wanting.
First it was terrorism -- but it was pointed out that all known serious terroist attacks in hte UK
were carried out by terrorists using thier real names, and, that at no point in the leadup to any attack
were they required to identify themselves.
Second it was illegal immigration -- but some 350 million EU citizens have the right to work in the UK
anyway, the much villified asylum seekers are attempting to immigrate legally, plus nobody is going
to check the documents of thier Russian nanny or Morrocan cleaner.
Thirdly it was "identity theft" -- but if the banks give money/credit to unverified strangers it is
thier problem. For this to be effective lenders would need to have; the equipment to read the card,
the right to ask for a fingerprint and access to the central database to verify the validity of the
card.
Currently Jaqi Smith cannot come up with any reasonable justification for this system at all but is
still pressing ahead with a system that will dump billions into the coffers of the "usual suspects"
Accenture, EDS (now HP), CAP and IBM.
Well at least the labour party will be more or less extinct in a years time, but the civil servants who
are pushing this idea will still be there, and the Conservatives look even more prone to SnakeOil salesman that the incumbent idiots.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
They're planning on getting rid of passports for ID cards. It gives them a centralized database, more information on you and as the scope quietly creeps up people will be apathetic until passports are gone and they're squarely in 1984.
How do they tell the difference between someone that is foreign and someone that just looks foreign? Any black person can just claim they are a British citizen, so don't need an ID card.
Identity cards introduced for those foreign Johnnies, not you. "The card will be compulsory for foreign nationals. All terrorists and illegal immigrants will be required to obtain one and show it to policemen, council officials or dog catchers on request. LOOK! TERRORISTS!"
This is largely from (a) civil servants who think it'd be convenient to their jobs to have everyone filed and numbered (b) private contractors like EDS and Capita who have been promised CASH CASH CASH for consulting on such schemes, and certainly don't have a track record of employing ex-goverment ministers and senior civil servants at vast consulting fees 12 months after they leave the government. Well, maybe a bit of a track record.
The ridiculous thing is that this is a creature of the Labour government, who are vastly unpopular, and will likely be kicked out on their corrupt arses in the 2010 election. This scheme is set only to be fully implemented by 2011/2012. EDS and Crapita will, of course, still be paid in full.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
> Send hooker to foreign Ph. D.'s apartment,
> copy info on ID card, manufacture a fake
> fingerprint using the info [...]
As opposed to "walk to foreign Ph.D.'s apartment, lift fingerprint from front door handle"?
Your fingerprints are all over the place anyway, so why would anybody go through lots of trouble to "steal" them?
Wow, what a class act. Let's inflict this evil on Johnny Foreigner, shall we? It's just as bad and risk prone for them to hand over their inside leg measurement to a government desperately seeking more contractors to blame their avalanche of data loss on, but hey, they're foreigners so that ought to be OK. Nobody will be campaigning for them, surely?
Every time I think the current UK government has reached the lowest of the low they amaze me by finding new ways to dig. I guess that's why they call it NEW Labour - it can pretend to be Labour but isn't, and it can pretend to be business friendly which it isn't either. It's hot air, spin and as huge a risk to the future to the UK and the current US government is to the US, no wonder they got on so well.
The current ID card schemes are unacceptable, and plenty of advise has been given how to correct it. All that is happening here is a last minute panic to try and land the new government with a huge mess to unpick, not that that pile needs any adding.
It's time to bring personal responsibility back to those clowns. It's needed.
In the country I live in (Malta), *everyone* has an ID card. How was it imposed? It wasn't but if you want to:
- Sit for an exam
- Require *any* government service (+ motoring +insurance etc)
- Vote
- Open a bank account
- Etc
you will need an ID. You don't "ask" for an ID card, you get one assigned to you upon birth registration.
Even local business ask for it sometimes because it makes locating your record easy. Seriously what's the problem with a having a document saying that you are number #123456 ? That's all it boils down to!
I think I've only had to "prove my identity" twice in the last five years: once when I did jury service, and the second time was to my company accountants because of money laundering regulations or something. This is so infrequent that any extra benefit of simpler ID is much, much less than the additional risks of the government losing my data.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
"If someone gets hold of my finger prints, what do I do then?"
Um, anyone who follows you round for a few minutes could probably get hold of your finger prints, without need for an ID card.
That's why police love them so much, it's not like criminals deliberatly leave theirs at crime scenes!
Maybe the data isn't stored on the RFID in the passport. But there's the headshot ; such an obvious biometric that people forget about it.
What many people noticed on applying for a UK passport recently was the leaflet that came with the form telling you exactly how to pose for your photograph... you were only allowed certain margins, certain backgrounds, you had to face forward, you had to take off your glasses. It was pretty clear to those with a technical bent that the photograph was intended for consumption by a computer, so I'd suggest that anyone with a recent UK passport is already in a large database of facial geometry metrics somewhere in the Home Office (and maybe on your passport chip too). This would mean that you are ripe for rapid recognition from any sufficiently detailed CCTV footage ; and as we know, the UK has more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the world. Nice.
Now, people don't habitually carry their passport in the UK, partly because it's a valuable document, partly because you don't need it for everyday usage, and partly because of the form factor - a little red book that doesn't conveniently fit into your pocket without the risk of being bent. A credit card sized ID on the other hand, is VERY easy to slip into your wallet and forget about.
If I were the UK government wanting to promote the routine carrying of an RFID enabled ID, I'd make the UK passport modular - a red book for the visa stamps, with a pocket in the back to carry the wallet-sized photo / RFID card when you're travelling. A lot of people would take to carrying their "passport card" routinely because suddenly, it's convenient.
Many is the time I've turned up at a place and found I needed a photo-ID or my passport and not had one, buying foreign currency, for example. It would probably work on me (after I put the tinfoil weave in my wallet, of course).
I wanna see you tell unfunny jokes the next time you get pulled out of the airport and dropped in a detention cell because your "pulled" fingerprints appeared on an IED in Iraq or a burglarized weapons depot somewhere in the Ukraine. It's really easy to land on the "no-fly/terror suspect" list nowadays and by granting authorities the right to distribute your data all over the world you basically WANT to be on one of those lists.
It's scary how V for Vendetta is slowly turning from a work of fiction into a documentary.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
God I hate the "paedophile issue".
Yes paedophiles exist. No, none of these schemes will do much to stop abuse since the vast majority of abuse is by a family member of friend.
And yet idiots who read the Sun et al are willing to accept anything in the name of fighting paedophiles.
It's the biggest hole in the armour of the civil rights movement too. Since any legislation can be pushed through no matter how absurd if you say it's to combat paedophiles. Said legislation can then be used to arrest whoever you like etc and nobody wants to get killed by a lynch mob for defending "paedophiles"
Socialy it's a crime you can't even be found innocent of.
If a court finds someone innocent no matter how rock solid their defence then "you never know! people are always getting off on technicalities! I saw it in a movie!!".
I don't know how much of this really works the way he described it, but this seems to be a very good reason to introduce id cards...
The National ID register is going to cost (IIRC) 4.5 billion pounds at the governments estimate. The LSE estimates 19 Billion. The type of fraud you describe actually makes up the smallest proportion of benefit fraud that the UK suffers from, most of it is just done by people lying. If they are trying to stop that form of benefit fraud with these cards, they have chosen the least cost effective way of doing so, and this card gives no other benefits that I can see.
full disclosure: I'm a fully paid up member of no2id
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
The other posting is probably joking slightly more than you are...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
1. It's part of the creeping UK Police state
2. We had them during WWII and they were struck down as unlawful a few years after the war was over
3. It's not just the card, it's the massive unified database of everything you do that's going to be behind the card. Not only should the government not have that sort of power, but they are incompetent with data protection.
Well, the frog is now in the pot, and the water is lovely and warm - it thinks it's having a bath!
Get your own free personal location tracker
Even more:
I would certainly hope that simply being a paedophile would never be illegal.
Actions may be illegal, but what you think being illegal?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me