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Passport Required To Buy Mobile Phones In the UK
David Gerard points out a Times Online story that says:
"Everyone [in the UK] who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society. A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say."
We've recently discussed other methods the UK government is using to keep track of people within its borders, such as ID cards for foreigners and comprehensive email surveillance.
When signing up for a new mobile phone contract, you're pretty much asked for two forms of identifications, such as a driving license, passport, utility bills, etc. so this is nothing new. The new part is the national surveillance database. Thank god I'm moving out of this country.
I had a similar problem when I wanted to by a SIM card in provincial Russia last month. The clerk wouldn't give me one, claiming that not only would I have to show a passport, but a Russian passport. I then just asked a friend to buy the damn thing for me. I thought it was stupid considering how, in most of the civilized world, travelers buy a SIM card from a local kiosk as a matter of course. It's sad to see the UK limiting the ease of travel, then.
Do pre-paid phones apply?
Will soon be the safest country in the world to live, or the scariest.
I live here - looks like I'll be stuck with the phone I've got for a while, then. FP!
Are the USA and the UK in some sort of competition to see who can do the more thorough job of obliterating their citizens' rights to privacy?
Lately there's been a morbid tit-for-tat article exchange going on here on slash, like the USA and UK are trying to outdo one another. Just when you think the USA or UK is as bad as it gets, there's a reply.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
In whose name they doing this? Is it to stop terrorists, or to make us think of the children?
...Cellphone call resgisters YOU!
Oh, it seems in the UK as well...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
I have purchased phones in many countries through out Europe, and Thailand as well, and have always been forced to provide official ID.
Made the decision not to purchase a phone now that I have moved to the USA, so I have no idea about the States. But since I can't even get through the switchboard at my utility company without my SSN, I imagine it might be difficult to buy a phone or have a contract without ID.
Of course, that's a guess. Not saying I agree with this regime - just observing a fact.
Ebay has high end phones on it so you can use it.
...How the headline is accurate?
Same here, which is why there are services where you can send prepaid SIM cards and get back a different one, registered to someone else. Some risks might be involved, though.
Fleur de Sel
Cell phone theft and street robberies are about to rise very rapidly in the UK.
Another excellent idea from the UK government.
From the same people who brought you the excellent "don't bring bottles of water on a plane" legislation. Go UK!
Seriously, please do something about this, join Liberty:
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/
Criminals steal phones. Criminals can buy phones abroad.
And they will know your name and address, or at least your address.
The British are each day taking a step closer towards the society envisioned in 1984. Orwell predicted this would happen forty years in the future -- he should've bet on 65-80 -- but still not so far off.
If this is coming true, when will we see an invasion from Mars?
Someone once asked a while ago how much freedom will we be willing to surrender for a false sense of security.
It seems that in the US and UK this very scenario is playing itself out and all we can do is sit, horrified and watch in spite of ourselves.
It's like sitting in the passenger seat of a car that is being driven by a lunatic - you squint your eyes closed but keep peeking because you know what is bound to happen, but you cant help but look and hope you will be somehow wrong.
And safe.
One thing proponents of all this gathering of data on people keep forgetting is that data gets lost, stolen or otherwise compromised on a daily basis.
The UK is a shining example of data getting lost.
How long before a terrorist hacker steals the info and spoofs a phonecall to a bomb that is detonated via cellphone?
Suddenly the possibilities of being wrongly implemented in a terrorist plot is so much more possible.
This is a bad idea all around.
I am glad that I do not live in the US or the UK - if my country implements this kind of policy I would start browsing using the TOR network, set up my own mailserver to do direct relay and eventually fall back on using older means of communication - snail mail and pretty much nothing else.
Who is it that said "As soon as we change our way of living the terrorists have won"?
I tell you now - terrorists are holding the citizens of the US and the UK captive via proxy, and the proxy is ironically the very governments they are battling.
They win on all fronts at this moment.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
...this was the case from the beginning of cell phones. And it is not enough to show some ID, the service providers even photocopy it. I think this is standard practice in most european countries (maybe except the photocopy part).
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
100 miles below the surface a thriving society of Martians, little green men, plot our eventual demise. They are advanced enough to escape detection by our puny remote controlled buggies.
Looks like this will be yet another thing that people will have to make an afternoon trip to Calais for in future.
Cannot buy a SIM card without personal identification, whether Pay as you Go (Top-up payments) or monthly subscription. Identification is then entered into the national database. SIM cards that do not have a connected identification will be blocked.
I strongly suspect this is already the case in many other European countries.
Why is NO ONE from UK protesting against this monstrous humongous assault on rights and freedom?
I mean this UK government is incapable of fulfilling everything that people yet is perfectly capable of converting everyone into a criminal and shooting innocent people in subways and the like.
Why doesn't the stupid holier-than-thou BBC question the government over this massive haul?
First it was ISP snooping and 3-strikes law, next it was throttling, next it was email provacy gone, next it was bedroom privacy gone, next it was laptop privacy gone and now it is this.
Everyday we hear massive new amounts of such assaults against human rights in UK, which puts China and even Korea to shame.
Pretty soon to walk down the street with your dog, the cops would require a passport; for the dog.
And instead of US where privacy and freedom is enshrined, UK depends on courts which seem more likely than ever to side with the stupid government which can't look after its own employees who visit prostitutes and lose their laptops.
Why doesn't the Lords do something?
The commons is made up of Common riff-raff which are more concerned with nailing down the next highest-priced whore who comes their way, while public servants regularly lose private information and then ask us to check our bank accounts.
Why isn't there a law which imposes mandatory criminal jail sentences for people who lose private information.
If an employee loses a laptop, he goes to serve bubba in prison for 12 months or more with free lube given by people.
Why isn't there a law which prevents people from entering a home or accessing someone's private property without authorization from Lords or the Queen herself. in that way if something goes wrong and an innocent person is shot dead because he jumped over a ticket barrier, she is forced to face jail.
Dumb ass citizens! Wake up!
70 years ago, a failed austrian artist did the same thing and propagated Reich. He was atleast intelligent and brilliant.
Your current crop of leaders can't spell their own properly let alone build a reich. The max they can build is what Viagra builds for them!
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
...in recognizing fake passports?
That being a low paying job, I am guessing it employs many immigrants.
From like... I don't know... Nigeria?
And what are the current UK laws on creating and carrying around a obviously fake passport?
You know... kind that would have big red letters saying "FAKE PASSPORT! NOT REAL! NOT A FORM OF IDENTIFICATION! FOR JOKE PURPOSES ONLY!" on it?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In several UK airports and on ferries you can currently buy prepaid sim cards from vending machines so travellers can get easy access to UK networks. Several networks also give away free sims either via websites or when contract users upgrade they are sometimes given a free prepaid sim so they can give their old phone to a friend. I guess this scheme would end all this, I'd of thought the networks might have some objection to it.
Also to say all prepay users are anonymous is wrong, most networks persuade you to register your phone and give incentives to do so, most people will pay for their phones and/or topups with credit cards. So the majority of users are still going to leave their details even if they didn't intend to.
1. Wait in front of mobile-selling location.
2. Spot mobile-buying victim.
3. Follow victim for a while.
4. Club victim on the head, grab bag, run.
You get: one or more mobile phones and cards, one or more forms of ID, money, credit card(s), car and/or house key(s), one or more packet(s) of tissues, one or more packet(s) of gum, various other bonuses.
Or are you perhaps one of those pussy terrorists that is afraid of hitting people on the head and only does suicide bombings?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It was over a decade ago when they were getting happy with CCTV cameras in London. We talked about how creepy that was and that they should be careful that they were not sliding down a slippery slope. We were dismissed, we were laughed at, and now look. We were right.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
UKers should be in their politician's faces over this. Send an email. Mail a letter. Fax them. Phone them. Preferably all of the above. Political pressure is the only remedy against the constant erosion of your rights.
Australia has been doing this for a year plus now on prepaid and postpaid accounts
As long as I am not required by law to carry a charged mobile at all times when I leave home I don't see a problem.
This would have prevented Jason Bourne from buying a phone and planting it on Simon Ross to talk to him covertly without the CIA being able to trace the call.
My guess would be the UK government watched the movie and decided this loophole need to be closed.
Someone needs to tell the PM in England that Orewell's book 1984 was never meant to be a handbook on how to run a country. It was intended to be a warning against such control.
Sigh.. it's a slippery slope until those in the US begin looking at these with genuine interest, with the intent to deploy these measures within our own borders.
However, if you're planning $LARGE_SPECTACULAR_JIHADIST_ATTACK, and you steal a phone, it makes you a little more likely to be caught/fail.
You don't. You get a sympathizer to buy one for you, and then claim it was stolen. Enough phones are stolen anyway that this won't look suspicious.
Open societies are going to be vulnerable to terrorism. We can accept that, give up our freedoms, or be so scary nobody will want to mess with us.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Andy
Another belated movie plot threat response. Specifically, The Bourne Ultimatum, in which Bourne arrives at London's Waterloo station and immediately purchases a pre-paid cellphone to give to his journalist contact. If he had to show a passport to buy that phone... he could have been delayed by a couple of seconds, while he decided which of his fake passports to use. Gee.
(this is not a
Because the bad guys cannot steal cell phones.
\u262D = \u5350
What I still don't understand is if there are 72 million mobile phones in use in the UK, how come the UK population is only 60,776,238 (July 2007 est.)?
I'm not convinced that almost 20% of the population have two mobiles they use at the same time.
Has anyone got a more up to date figure?
Anyone remember when typewriters had to be registered in several Eastern European countries? Being mechanical devices, each had its own unique signature (character shapes, weights, and so forth). The idea was to be able to track the origin of unapproved newsletters etc. which were typically produced via typewriter and stencil or carbon paper. This was all rendered irrelevant by the arrival of PC-based communications (a rear-guard action was fought over printers, faxes, and so forth).
Looks like the UK has just revised those old Soviet-era laws for current technology. Anonymous communication must be considered to be really subversive in the UK.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
It strikes me that ham radio operators world-wide have lived with citizenship requirements from day one. I suspect that would be true of a great many other fixed and mobile services. Why should cell phones be any different?
I am posting a link to 2 petitions that people in Britain can sign opposing such action. Please sign it and pass it on to as many people as you can: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/privacy-matters/ http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/edatabase/
A thousand Americans claiming this is worse than the US's torture flights.
I wonder how the legislation will impact of software radio mobile phone clients? After all the same device that 5 minutes ago was a mobile can, at the flick of a switch, be a radio-control car controller.
Gotta start getting ready for 2012, just gotta do it, can't let those chinese show them up, right?
Perhaps the New Labour party is thinking if they become the laughing stock of security during 2012, they risk a quicker return to the wilderness years...
And what are the current UK laws on creating and carrying around a obviously fake passport?
You know... kind that would have big red letters saying "FAKE PASSPORT! NOT REAL! NOT A FORM OF IDENTIFICATION! FOR JOKE PURPOSES ONLY!" on it?
Who cares? If you're looking to acquire an untraceable mobile phone for criminal purposes, the crime of carrying a fake passport isn't a big deal.
And getting hold of a pretty convincing fake shouldn't be that hard.
Terrorists win!
...I don't see why this is such a bad idea.
Sure, I'm very much into privacy laws and not being snooped by the Government but as a home owner and car driver with a home phone and Internet connection, I am already registered in databases for Council Tax, the electoral role, the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) and with my telephone provider (even though I'm not in the UK phone white pages as deliberate "ex-directory"). So having to go on one more database for owning a mobile phone is pretty meaningless.
In addition to the above, perhaps if email addresses (for example) were also registered to unique individuals or organisations to the point of being traceable, then the whole issue of SPAM and worms would pretty much disappear overnight. I would be more than happy to register all of the email addresses I use for some minimum cost of, say, £1, such that the address is tied to a particular credit card that means it's a validated address.
No, I don't want to hand over my personal freedoms lightly, but I happen to be a law-abiding British Citizen without a criminal record who has no intentions of breaking the law. Sure, I've been hacked off for getting three points on my driving license and a £60 fine for driving at 7mph over the speed limit past a speed camera but if someone in a control room wants to watch me on CCTV going about my daily business then I hope they're not bored easily.
Yes, I'll be more than pissed off if someone in a black suit comes knocking on my door with a piece of CCTV footage or taped phone call but I'll worry about it when it happens.
And to all the "freedom loving Americans" out there, I have a much bigger problem with your openly heavy-handed customs people and security types who are stood there stereotyping everyone that walks past them. The first time I entered your country on holiday during the late 80s, I was taken to one side and questioned heavily purely for having a Slavic-sounding surname in my passport.
Houses, cars and (at least) home phones are already registered to a person in every Western country as it stands - and if a few people with less better things to do with their time than make anonymous nuisance calls from unregistered "pay as you go" phones have to stop what they are currently doing then, so be it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
They let you have phones in the UK and USA? Sweet.
I'll bet phone salespeople won't be looking terribly closely at the passport photos. Stealing a passport or doing a half-assed job of faking one if probably sufficient. It's a good thing them thar terrorists have no interest or talent in faking or stealing passports.
That was a good point. The more often you carry your ID everywhere, the more easier that your ID can be owned.
See my journal, I write things there
Read his "Wilt" book, that's a simple humorous way to see what a combination of circumstances can do. You are presently assuming everything they collect will just work fine - not a track record I have seen so far. Alternatively, read Little Brother which will help a bit to understand where this is going.
A couple of things to think about: what if someone who really hates you gets hold of the information? Do you realise that a copy of everything means possibly that all that "everything" is going to be spilled on the street the moment some idiot again posts a couple of unencrypted CDs? Can you maybe remember an innocent Brazilian which they'd mistakenly tagged as dangerous? Are you insured for getting shot? Will your family cope?
Each step in itself doesn't look like a big deal, but track record of what has been done with those powers and how well all that data is kept is so bad, I wouldn't trust them to store my name properly.
In a number of countries you can't have an unregistered phone number. However, in those countries they know what "confidential" and "private" means and how important it is for a society to keep that protected. The 1984 fans in the UK don't.
But hey, it's your freedom. I left because I saw it coming, that's the advantage of working in gov and military. No bloody way.
You have a problem with the US being heavy handed. Here's a tip for you: they're only further along the path. Look at that supposed democracy and see what's left of it, they even spy on their own (and we help them with Menwith Hill).
Silly nerds, don't you realize yet that this situation is the rule in most of the world? Only a very few countries -- notably the USA, Canada, Australia, and a few EU countries such as the UK -- allow buying mobile phone service with no ID and no questions asked.
Most countries do NOT allow buying mobile phone service without ID. Many do not allow non-residents to buy them even with their foreign ID. Even some EU countries, such as France and Germany, have always been this way. Japan cut off non-residents three years ago.
This is a worldwide trend towards greater government control and surveillance. The USA, Canada, and a few other countries such as Australia, are bringing up the rear. The UK used to be among this group of laggards, but is now racing to catch up with France and Germany.
But go on, children, keep on using these stories to bash the USA even when the US government has nothing to do with it. Tell people in foreign countries that the USA is worse even though their countries have far more restrictions on civil liberties.
You represent perfectly what Trotsky called the "useful idiots"; the armchair intellectuals who undermine the very thing that you claim to uphold.
In this case, yes. If you would point out the flaws they would fix it, leaving it alone means it will collapse under its own weight of incompetence and greedy consultancies soaking up the budget so there's nothing left for the actual system.
I call it the "Yes minister" effect.
The sooner the country loses the incompetent clowns that run it now the better. There is an economy to fix which is presently a LOT more important than this (no, I don't think Brown will "lead the UK out of the crisis" - he's the one who led the UK into it in the first place).
Insert
All the networks bar stolen IMEI numbers. Most likely what will happen is that people will just find ways to acquire both phones and SIM cards without using ID.
As it stands this wont cause any problems in the short term. I've got quite a few SIM cards lying round for various networks, none of which are associated with any names. As it happens my current PAYG sim is registered to my name just so I can use the control panel on my networks website.
Trading mobile phones and accessories happens to attract a fair few dealers (it's a big cash in hand business so easy to make it look like your making money selling phones, not coke) so I think as soon as word of this law hits then people will just start stockpiling SIMs. In the short term this wont make any difference, it's only over the longer term as unregistered SIMs start to become scarce that it'll cause problems. Getting unregistered mobile phones, however, will be as easy as a trip to mainland Europe.
Nick
The TFA doesn't mention it but it'd be ridiculous if they didn't apply the same rules to acquiring SIM cards.
Nick
Why are they now the most paranoid country in the world. Even Iran and N. Korea are not as bad as Britain, nor was the USSR. Perhaps it was the demise of Monty Python's Flying Circus that put them over the edge. I suppose that show would be illegal now along with Benny Hill. Too subversive, you know, the giant breasts and all.
I know of a working O2 SIM, 2yrs old, unregistered. I also got, last year, at least one working unregistered Fresh SIM and I assume the 6 others still sealed worked too; they only accept top-up via card payment making anonymity a moot point unless you get one of those prepay debit cards you can top-up using PayPoints in shops. I've been on T-Mobile PAYG for about 4 years and I only had to register my SIM because I wanted to use the features on their website.
Are you sure that's really meant to be the case for all SIMs on all networks?
Nick
Your address can just be a mail box / drop box
The UK really is becoming the police state I was so scared it would become. I'll be moving away as soon as I can, I think.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Not a problem :)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3098104.stm
(article from 2003, but they are beurocrats, it probably stil works)
Oh they will really get under the skin of those terrorists by making them live without the convenience of a cell phone. That's likely to make most of them reconsider their professions. I mean they are used to living in caves with no heat, hot water, electricity or plumbing. But take away their cell phones and they will have had it!
Yeah that takes care of the foreign terrorists entering UK. But now how do you stop the terrorists who were born and grew up in the UK like the ones responsible for the bus and metro bombings? I'm more than certain hey had their own mobiles, and I doubt in those cases knowing they bought cellphones would have prevented crap.
The answer for those of us not in the UK is to stay away from "The Village" and let Patrick McGoohan (#6) fight off #2 and the "water balloons".
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
My thoughts exactly. I've just wrapped them in couple of layers of sarcasm.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Do Jacqui Smith and the rest of the fucktards (I've just added 'fucktard' to my Firefox dictionary - I have a feeling I'll be using it more in the coming months) at the Home Office not understand anything?
Can they not see how easily these measures will be circumvented? Have they not learned anything from the data-loss scandals? Are they actually that naive?
When the ex-head of MI5 says we're over-reacting to the terrorist threat, I'm inclined to think we're over-reacting.
With any luck the Lords will take a quick scan over the legislation, wipe their asses with it, and throw it straight back in Jacquie Smith's stupid face.
C-x C-s C-x k
This comes two weeks after the Home Secretary announced that the government was going ahead with the 'ID card' (database of all citizens) plan, and one week after it was announced that terrorists use Internet pornography to pass messages. - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4959002.ece as a justification for spying on Internet access.
This week it is another step in getting people on to the database - they can only have a mobile phone if they register their details.
The government will continue with this piecemeal approach, because they know that they could not do it any other way.
1984 isn't a fucking instruction manual.
...Cellphone call resgisters YOU!
Oh, it seems in the UK as well...
Don't forget Oceania.
The solution: Buy a phone abroad and prepaid SIM/top-up once you arrive in the UK.
The fundamental flaw in the argument that any of these steps is to fight terrorism/crime is that terrorists/criminals will be the only people who take the steps necessary to by pass them. Thus such schemes are only effectively to monitor the stupid terrorists/criminals (who would get caught/fail anyhow), and every law abiding person in the country.
It comes down to a simple ratio equation which the government shouldn't be in a possition to decide the result of:
Chance of being the victim of terrorism (Tn) X Some measure of the consequence (Tc)
Against
The number of people affected by the law (En) X a measure of the consequence of infringing their freedom (Ec)
Since Tn is tiny but Tc is large (probably death) and En is very large (everyone) - the balance of that equation all comes down to what value is put on Ec compared to Tc. i.e. how much of a consequence is the loss of privacy/civil liberty/ability to live without feeling under survailance etc.
Since En is so large, Ec wouldn't need to be very large in order to tip the balance of this equation away from implementing any such draconian laws. It should not be the governments place to make this assesment - although they probably feel that they are the only ones in a position to asses Tn and Tc based on the reports from the intelligence services - so lets put figures on things.
Would people be willing to put up with say 3000 people being killed every 5 years or so through something like 9/11 to not have such laws? What about 30,000? Or say 1 small attack killing 100 people per week? Actually, it would need to be as serious as that, and in which case, I'd want to see very different laws which would actually make a difference even then!
Well, everyone know about history that UK liked the NAZI ideas. Hitler already think UK was at your side ( just read history to know that). If was not come to GERMAN CRAZY NAZI side was a kind of decision ( The UK QUEEN AND FAMILY like this ideas). So, why not now with the idea spread about TERRORISM/PEDIFLES/ELETRONIC PIRATES put this ideas on? Dont know other ones here. Reading and writing ..
but for who dont live at UK and visit there., some crazy things scares. More than the CRAZINESS from russia/CHINNA.
TODAY IAM less worried to visit Russia, and china ( thing i already do a lot this year).
There i know exact what i can and i cant do.
But UK.? Australia? If a airport guy look bad to me he just can arrest me. ( this happens all time, but news dont speak so much about this there UK and CLOSED MEDIA/NEWS COUNTRYES like US).
Or if you have a more black skin whit a more like mid orient face and live in the wrong place on UK.
IF you just do something suspect, they SHOT IN YOUR READ in subway or SEND YOU out country in a expatriation. This happens and seems just at BROADCAST NEWS outside this places show this.
I visited UK this year for 5 times and same living outside Europe and having a GERMAN/EURO PASSPORT ( iam living Brazil. ) THEY LOOK ME BAD BECAUSE IAM COMING FROM OUTSIDE WRONG BORDER. The UK government start to become CRAZY, like in a kind of HISTORY BIG BROTHER BOOK.
When something happens piece by piece, seems not be a big things.
But soo, not much distant, UK will build a big WALL around the island and talk about what you can use or not at your day by day ( because morality), and what you can read or note ( because this can influence BAD your kid).
When they will start to put CAMs inside home just to ALREAD be certain you are not doing something BAD for your kid?
DUDES this is something to worry. and worry already,..
HITLER come to POWER BY ELECTIONS, like a SALVATORE. and become what we know.
The luck our was at this time. The world was so polarised of ideas ( FASCISM/COMMUNISM/FREE WORLD/NOT KNOW WORLD) that the craziness become visible. but today? the ideas mean MONEY. If UK, AUSTRALIA, some Nordic countries , and EVEN US with this TOTALITARIANISM IDEAS start do it, one will do nothing.
NO MORE THE CRAZY YANKEE WITH BIG IDEAL OF LIBERTY TO PROTECT US.
TODAY WE ALREADY KNOW AT UK:
HAVE BLACK SKIN, this is BAD.
HAVE A FACE LIKE MID ORIENT, THIS IS BAD.
SPEAK LANGUAGE SOMEONE AT STREET NO HAVE IDEA, this is BAD.
RESEARCH, TALK, or EVEN TRY TO THINK about speak against government, THIS IS BAD.
SPEAK ABOUT TERRORISM, EVEN IF YOU ARE AT UNI, a PHD AND DOING A RESEARCH. THIS IS BAD.
What more?
WE NEED TO WAIT they start speak about the JEWISH?
Just a point of VIEW, Italia that are easy to pursuit this kind of ideas to. Catholic church started the MARCH for the UNIVERSAL HUMAN HISTORY change ( OF COURSE, CHANGE THE VIEW POINT OF THEM, WHERE CHURCH IS MOTHER, CHURCH IS FATHER, WE NEVER DO NOTHING WRONG, EVER)., Here in Brazil this is more evident. Where they use MONEY, POWER AND TV to SAY THEY NEVER KILL NO ONE, ALL RELIGION ARE THE WRONG ONE BESIDES WITH A OTHE FACE EVERYTHING IS OK, WHO KILL JESUS WAS JEWISH. Here this already starting to happens.. When will happens in UK?
Iam worried about the world future, where who in past, give us a sign of hope, and ALREADY SUFFER a lot because this kind of IDEAS AND ACTS ( maybe the govern not, if iam not wrong ROYAL family/palaces doesn't loose so much in war, but the people, HUU they know well, what WAS FIRE, BOMBS AND TERROR).
IN A CRAZINESS future we will need to ask help to russia and chinna agains the totalitarianism of UK/US and friends.
JusT a view point.
In between paroxisms of fear, the paper makes it clear that this is a purely hypothetical plan and, like most things the government does, will probably come to nothing. It's not surprising that the government has people coming up with ideas like this, and it's certainly not all that scary.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
They used anti-terror laws against Iceland, who are not at all terrorists.
When? Do you have a cite on this?
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
Your post is dumb because:
[ ] You're wrong and the right answer is in TFS.
[ ] You're wrong and the right answer is in TFA.
[ ] You're wrong and a number of replies posted before yours have already given the right answer.
[x] You think you understand the issues based only on TFS.
[x] You use an overly strict interpretation of terminology to create a false distinction.
[x] You assume the people who have been working on this for some time haven't spotted what you could see in 5 seconds.
[] You could have found the answer with a web search in much less time than it took to ask.
From TFA:
The proposals have sparked a fierce backlash inside Whitehall. Senior officials in the Home Office have privately warned that the database scheme is impractical, disproportionate and potentially unlawful. The revolt last week forced Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, to delay announcing plans for the database until next year.
Bear in mind that the Government has already had to delay and dilute the ID card scheme and it's relevant that Jacqui Smith (hiss!) is delaying this too. It's also comforting that civil service mandarins are up in arms about it.
It's a Good Thing that stuff like this comes up on Slashdot as the more people who can kick up a fuss about stuff like this the better, however I'd remind American readers that regardless of Brown's mini-bounce back in the polls, IMHO it's likely that New Labour will be out of power before they can implement this.
I'm no fan of Cameron or the Tories, but chances are they're going to be as populist as possible to get back into government, and creating a massive surveillance database is not a populist move. With any luck the Union will be toast in a few years anyway and the newly independent ex-UK states can start behaving like grown-up modern democracies.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
I'm not understanding why Britain wants to be so much like North Korea. Britain is trying to create terror in its own civilian population and yet claims to be fighting against terrorism. There's something not right here.
I'm baffled a to why our eroding civil liberties aren't causing protests across the nation. No-one seems to care.
Where are all the protests?? 30 years ago, a more politicised population would be rioting in the streets over this.
Who do I vote for to restore our freedom? I doubt the lib-dems will make government, but what do the Conservatives stand for? I've no idea! I'd vote for them in an instant if they promised to destroy these policies.
I urge any UK residents to sign this petition
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/privacy-matters/
1) Order an unlocked phone online from Germany or France
2) Buy prepaid simcard (not phone)
3) Anonymism
Surely the UK government doesn't think criminals are that stupid?
The only people they will be monitoring are the innocent citizens and the stupid criminals.
The BBC had an article on a guy who was running a fake ID setup for illegal immigrants, it's not like anyone determined can't get one.
Secondly, my passport doesn't have my address on it anyway, so conceivably neither do any of the fake ones. If it is linked to any address, that address, like my driving license, will be my parents' address. They could have moved in the meantime (or passed away or something) so the database still wouldn't know where I live. If you were fairly careful I'm pretty sure that even with perfectly legitimate ID you could still at least keep your address unknown.
At the end of the day I can't see how it's going to prevent terrorism. Some of them are muppets I'll grant you, but they are more likely to blow themselves up in a toilet, or set themselves on fire and get beaten up by Scotsmen than to cause any major loss of life. Look back a few years to when we had the IRA. The amount of effort that went in to tracking and surveillance of the IRA did not stop them from blowing up a fair amount of stuff. This approach of surveying everyone will not work no matter how hard people try. It may prevent a few attacks but it will not prevent all of them and it will not preserve the freedoms that we want protected.
I bought a prepaid SIM on Sept 27th at Carphone Warehouse and I was asked for my passport.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
How is this flamebait? Does the truth hurt your politically correct feelings?
Apparently Britain and the U.S. fought and defeated the Nazi's, and Soviet Communism out of jealousy. They wanted to be the top fascists on the block.
No wonder the US still hates Cuba. Pure envy and jealousy.
Is there an English speaking country left on this bloody planet which has a sane government? I'm about ready to vote with my feet and quit the UK, assuming I can find anyone stupid enough to take me.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I've recently bought two prepaid phones at a large chain store in the Netherlands, and there is absolutely no ID required or even asked. 100% anonymous.
Bart
What's the problem to just connect to a SIP server? I'm pretty sure UK goverment can't so easily check-up what connections you were performing with a german company...Or even some company from outside Europe
Wait until they're being used to track protest organizers... err, I mean riot inciters.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
If a law is rushed through because of the "thereat of terror", and we are all told that it is necessary to bypass scrutiny because of that it does not make it better if they later say "of course it was not just for terrorism". In my books that makes it worse, a general law should definitely be given full scrutiny.
You've got it wrong..
A weak incompetent government which can't do any harm however worse its intention
You're forgetting the willful collaboration of poodle Blair with the US in going to war in Iraq over a WMD lie. The actual background was that Saddam converted all his oil trade and reserve currency to Euro, and that was a trend that had to be countered because other Arab states could do likewise, thus endangering the now over 10 Trillion dollar loan that the US draws from the world by having the dollar as fiat currency for energy purchase.
What sealed Saddam's fate was that he was making a serious profit on the currency alone as well. And there were plenty people in US (and UK) government that wanted to make a fast buck - a war always benefits those who sell military goods.
So, being dumb and weak is NOT good. Thatcher would have told them where to stick that idea, naturally with eloquence in a plummy English accent..
Next time you vote, vote the 4th, and write, No no nazi style modern govts.
I hope all of todays pollys are proud of them selves, their grandparents would be screaming bloody murder.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I have hard evidence that London Underground overcharges PAYG to quite a substantial degree (at least at the time when I discovered it, this was almost a year ago), and I checked with two different cards just to be sure. I managed to spend £17 over a 2 day period, only traveling inside zones 1..4 - you can work out for yourself just how much more that is than is required.
When I started talking to customer support about paying some of it back, they came back with a killer line: "I should register the card online" or "give them my details over the phone" before they could do anything. When I asked them which part of "unregistered" they didn't understand they told me "it was for my protection because someone could have found my card". When I finished laughing I asked them how they were going to prove that *I* wasn't the finder, and this was when the service guy finally went off script and admitted he couldn't work that one out either :-).
I could have gotten the money back but it wasn't enough to bother. I don't live in the UK so I would cost me more to go after the money than just write it off as a business cost.
Last but not least, isn't it impressive how well they are set up to take your money well in advance, but how hard it is to get some of it back? Since John Mayor came up with the Customer Charter they have been actively hiding the fact that you can get your money back for delayed journeys, and this must have saved them millions over the years. Just consider:
- you have to know the scheme exists. Even as much as 5 years ago, I did a check at a station. Out of 35 brochures there was ONE which mentioned the scheme in a one-liner, but then omitted to describe what it actually did.
- with ticketed travel you have to retain the ticket. What happens when you pass the gate? Yup - extra effort for you to hang on to the ticket..
- somehow, the opportunity to directly and automatically refund onto the Oyster PAYG and prepay cards has been "omitted" - the whole process is still voucher based
- handing in a voucher means manual labor, the ticket office has about a million forms they need to fill in so you're the one holding up the queue. Accident or social engineering? Your choice..
Ripoff Britain. It took New Labour to turn it into an art, and combine it with the type of state 1984 had been trying to warn us against. Instead, they treat 1984 like a blueprint..
Insert
Its mainly the old stupid fugs that vote for the current gung ho admins.
Come on young people, tell you grand parents to smarten the f up, and vote for freedom, print them out stuff from the internet, and tell em, if you dont vote right, we'll burn the govt down and trash your history.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
That's why they take away your guns. You can't have a revolution if you cannot fight back. Look back in history where peasants are prohibited from owning weapons, (in the real old times, it was swords) and hence why fighting with staffs became popular, as you can't ban a farmer from owning a big stick that a farm implement is attached to.
It may so happen that when revolution occurs in the UK, it will be with people with sticks, rocks, and moltov cocktails. Sadly, the army that will be called to defend the corrupt dictators will be armed to the teeth with guns, tanks, artilliary, and more. The only thing that can save the people in that circumstance is the consience of the military members. The move to drone aircraft and other robotics in the military will remove that element. Skynet is not your enemy. It's the guy who tells Skynet what to do.
P.S. Amusingly enough, the captcha phrase presented to me was "redcoat" hahaha.
Here in the US of A, liberal Massachusetts even, there was proposed legislation to require ID for purchasing a pre-paid cell phone:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/07/30/bill_adds_rules_for_prepaid_cellphones/
Newer Nokia phones, in fact newer phones in general are quite hard to change the IMEI on. They've started storing it in a proper write-once ROM. Having said that, I suppose one could just get a compatible ROM chip and install it.
The 5yr prison sentence for changing IMEI is quite justified. The only reason you'd want to change your IMEI is because your phone is stolen which means your knowingly handling stolen goods and most probably reprogramming stolen phones for other people too. I can't think of a single legitimate reason to change your IMEI, it's not like ethernet where MAC spoofing is useful for lots of reasons.
Nick
It's a different world down there. There are posters all over the place telling you to look out for things like people taking photos. That next snap happy tourist could be a terrorist.
...in recognizing fake passports?
Real UK passports are kind-of easy to spot. They have a translucent hologram over the page with your identity info on it, which would be very hard to fake up.
Who cares?
I do.
I don't want to have to commit a criminal act in order to have anonymous phone calls. I'm concerned that a lot of my legal but unusual activities would single me out for police harrassment if they knew what I did. I don't want them trawling through a database of my phone calls (including my location when I made/received them) and text messages with automated data mining algorithms looking for "terrorists" (which will, of course, be prone to producing false positives).
Luckily for me, I already have an anonymous phone, and the legislation being discussed sounds like it would only require registration for new customers. But it's only a single step further to require the phone companies to switch off all those old, unregistered phones. And I'm also concerned for people like me who haven't already acquired such a phone, but might need one in the future.
You'd me amazed how often people see "a translucent hologram" as just a "shiny thingy". Which is very similar to any other shiny thingy.
And lets not forget older/sight impaired people.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"A social and political ideology with the primary guiding principle that the state or nation is the highest priority, rather than personal or individual freedoms. ..."
doesn't describe the rhetoric from 'strong on defense' from both the US and the UK.
Oh, right, the "well, somebody else had it worse, so we're not really doing that bad" defense.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?