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UK Plans To Link Criminal Records To ID Cards
Death Metal writes with this excerpt from ComputerWeekly.com about the UK's national ID card scheme: "Privacy advocates have reacted angrily to reports that the government plans to link national identity records to criminal records for background checks on people who work with children and vulnerable people. Up to 11 million such workers could be affected immediately if the plan goes ahead. Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of privacy advocates NO2ID, said the move was consistent with the various forms of coercion strategy to create so-called volunteers for national ID cards. 'Biometrics are part of the search for clean, unique identifiers,' Phil Booth said. He said the idea was patently ridiculous when the Home Office was planning to allow high street shops and the Post Office to take fingerprints for the ID card."
From the UK and don't like the ID card proposals? Then use your vote next year!
You know in the last season of the wire, where Marlow Stansfield was willing to throw around cases full of cash and kill people just to get the right to meet with a drug supplier? Well, the Queen, as head of state, has the right to meet with her own PM on demand and with any visiting foreign dignitary. Do not underestimate the amount of unelected power this gives her.
Oh, and we did not elect any of those people. Mandelson is a Lord (as Frankie Boyle put it, appointed by the Sith) and despite being in the cabinet was not elected. The rest are MPs who were elected by the constituency of ~20,000 people each and have taken positions in national government.
Brown was also elected in a Scottish consituency, Scotland having its own devolved parliament, and gets to rule over England as well despite never having been elected here and his party not having contested a UK election with him as leader.
Democracy is a distant dream.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Yes, you're right, no one elected Gordon Brown to power... Oh wait, yes they did:
Labour - Gordon Brown - 24278
SNP - Alan Bath - 6062
Liberal Democrats - Alex Cole-Hamilton - 5450
Conservative - Stuart Randall - 4308
Scottish Socialist - Steve West - 666
UKIP - Peter Adams - 516
Scottish Senior Citizens - James Parker - 425
Independent - Elizabeth Kwantes - 47
Independent - Pat Sargent - 44
(Results for the 2005 Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath parliamentry elections)
There you go ladies and gentlemen - the most powerful man in our country, our effective head of state for some issues - voted in by 24278 people in Scotland who, due to the devolved parliament there, will not be affected by many of his decisions anyway.
Furthermore, he wasn't leader of the Labour party in 2005, so those people did not elected him as PM they elected him as Chancellor.
This is about as democratic as Iran. Yes, there is technically a vote - but the context of it and result are so warped you cannot really consider it a democratic election.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Yeah, but the government has a history of leaving this data on trains, mailed second class between offices through Royal Mail, or dumped in a stack of boxes on a roundabout in Devon
Oh, and sent to Ireland by the DVLA where again, it is promptly lost.
Hmmm, no. They voted for him as their member of parliament. He was chosen as leader by the party members, including the elected MPs.
I Dislike being modded Troll there, the comment was intended as a frank answer to the article using personal experiance.
Working within three schools and one other company also requiring a CRB.
They fitted George Orwell's coffin with rollers so he could turn over more easily years ago.
In case you might not grasp the reality of the mission creep which inevitably follows the implementation of any system which potentially trivialises the access to private data, see here how the use of the Oyster card system, ostensibly used to streamline public transport in London, has transformed over the years. Bear in mind that the same system is now being promoted for other cities in the UK:
2003 - Civil liberties concerns brushed aside
2006 - Police increasingly access Oyster travel database
2008 - Security service wants full access to whole travel database 2008
Once it is in place, the use of the system will be extended, and it will be well nigh impossible to get rid of. That is guaranteed - unless you raise a storm over it, and truly punish your MP for their behaviour.
Remember: your MP doesn't care what you think. Except for the two or three months immediately prior to an election, they only care about the organisations who lobby them.
And that is a problem with any number used as an ID. Same shit happens with the American SSN.
Germany has done it right for once: The number of the personal ID card is just a serial number and the date of birth and by itself meaningless. Only the ID card itself can be used as identification so to steal someone's identity the card itself has to be stolen (and it has got a colour photo and the signature on it) AND the thief has to be able to access the victim's mailbox (because his address is on the back side of the ID card).
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
...the bizarre and unfair policies currently imposed upon the Police.
The police don't need much imposing to get them to behave bizarrely and unfairly.
Current 'offences' which they seem very keen on include:
- Disagreeing politely with a police officer
- Asking for a police officer's badge number when it has been obscured
- Photographing a police officer
- Photographing any form of transport in London
- Complaining about the police not responding to a serious crime
- Walking away from a police officer in an insolent manner while not detained (this one carries an instant death sentence)
Apart from the last case, the reason for arrest and the possible charges seem to mysteriously fade into nothing somewhere after being arrested, fingerprinted and DNA sampled and before any court case actually commences.