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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."
Just like they sold the DVLA database to car buying/selling services (with fucking annoying adverts) where you can text a registration number to a number and get a car history/valuation from it.
You pay the DVLA for them to process data on your vehicle so you can legally drive it. Then the government sells it to a private corporation, which sells it back to the people who paid for it in the first place for a profit.
As it will be for the ID card database. The government will not be able to resist selling access to it, and every business that can pay will know your criminal history. In a society that is trying to criminalise littering and file sharing, that is not a pleasant prospect.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Stop this shit. You're embarrassing yourselves and setting a bad example for other countries.
Every time you have contact with the governments your name will land in a database to properly assign the bit of info to the correct person. Tax ? You are in the tax database. Crime ? You are in some police DB (print,possibly DNA, photo etc...). Identity ? You are in birth certificate, death certificate at the end. The alternative of not being in those database, is possibly to be mismatched to somebody else. So people get their panties in a knot when the government try to do a proper job to make sure they have identified the correct persons, but when they refuse them the tool to do so, and error happens, they get their panties in a bunch and accuse the government to be unprofessional, doing a bad job, then possibly suggest a private entity which will have possibly worst privacy or less oversight. Sure government should not willy-nilly be able to use or abuse such data, but it is the abuse which should be reprimanded. Not the normal usage. And the linking above, do not sound abusive. We call it here around a background check and it is done by checking your judicial database for sex offense.
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The claim that they will be used for "background checks on people who work with children and vulnerable people" as just an extension of the earlier plans to issue the cards to foreigners, i.e. a way to try and make the deployment of the cards acceptable to the public by initially issuing them to disliked groups (Paedophiles, Immigrants & Criminals) so that by the time they get to the rest of society it's too late to do anything about it.
In fact, why not take it a step further? Why limit the use of this system to the protecting only of children and vulnerable people?
I propose a system where offenders are clearly marked using clean, unique identifiers, worn in a visible place. For example, on their lapels or coats. By marking people this way, it will be easy to pick them out to disallow access to certain areas and to provide for continuous easy monitoring of their ways.
Distinctions could be made between sex offenders, thieves, previously convicted enemies of the state, etcetera, by using a colour-coding system of sorts.
Stachel
How would an ID card show that you own a car?
Given that you would need an expensive biometric reader to test whether the ID card which is being shown to you is actually owned by the person stood in front of you, how would you be able to verify an identity any better than a driver's license or passport, or even a gas bill.
Is this really an actual problem that needs to be solved? I've never bought or sold a car, but many of my friends have bought or sold used cars, and I've never heard of anyone accidentally buying a car the seller didn't own. What are the statistics on this? Is it really worth going after this problem by giving up privacy? And if it is, does giving up privacy actually solve the problem in any way?
Really? ID cards are unpopular, they want to be elected, and oddly, they oppose it, funny that.
I've seen enough elections to know whilst they oppose it now, they'll love it if they get into power, lest the plebs think they matter.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
The Home Office has announced new security measures for identity cards.
"The biometrics, chip and PIN, RFID transponder, fingerprint-reader, real-time spectroscopic DNA analyser and two-way radio that demands 'papers please!' in a cod-German accent inexplicably failed to completely eliminate crime or identity fraud or stop terrorism," said Home Secretary For Life Jacqui Smith, "so we're getting back to the basics of PFI-funded governmental identity management: magic beans, pixie dust and snake oil. EDS Capita Goatse's experience in these areas is unparalleled."
Identification procedures have duly been enhanced. Magic beans are squashed into the paper driving licence, producing a pixie-dust effect when inspected by the police. Day-to-day purchases are made smoother by the snake oil, with the pixie-dust glow authenticating the transaction. Frequenters of brothels will be able to require the prostitute to wave her identity card at them and be reassured by the pixie-dust glitter certifying her bona fides as a legal resident.
The requirements for getting a bank account -- a retinal scan, hair clippings, 250 millilitres of blood and three documents for every address change since twenty years before your birth -- remain unchanged.
The new identity card weighs thirty-five kilograms. All UK residents must carry it everywhere at all times and produce it on demand of council bin inspectors or any higher official.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Tories and Lib Dem will still keep the database, just scrap the card.
We have no privacy laws in the UK, but I have a right under of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (now the European Charter of Human Rights ) against "arbitrary interference with his privacy... nor attacks upon his honour and reputation." Criminals have their biometric data recorded so they can be easily identified if they reoffend, making it taking the data a deterrant. I am not a criminal, I have no PNC-held data, and I pass the Enhanced CRB check for working with children and vulnerable adults (working in a Special School, for fuck's sake) every time I am required to take it, which is currently two years where I work. I've also worked in three other schools prior to this current posting, in a different borough.
I object to being treated like a criminal, and I object to having my privacy being invaded. I don't have store discount cards for this very reason; What I buy is my own business. If people want to find that information out, they can pay me for it, not tie me in with store-specific loyalty schemes.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Whatever a politician says is, as it always has been, a lie.
FTFY
-- Intelligence is soluble in alcohol
The Id card as proposed by the UK government is not a simple reference document, but it allows connection with any means of electronic media, including computer databases, of course. This opens a huge can of worms: forming a resistance movement against an authoritative power will become very difficult, or even impossible.
Here is an example: suppose that you are interested in the preservation of the environment and the climate change; you don't want to sit on your couch all day, and the next G7 climate change meeting is not far from your country. You take a holiday, and then riding the first plane to the city where the climate change meeting takes place, you participate in the rallies against G7 policies regarding the climate. Sooner or later, you are part of a street battle with the local police that wants you not to rally at all. They arrest you, they get your picture and send it to the London's police department along your ID card data. They open a record for you in the UK criminal database as a possible "environmental terrorist".
You then return home, only to find that you have been fired. Although it hurts your feelings, you try another job. But without luck...employee after employee connect to the UK's criminal database using your Id card only to find out that you are a "terrorist". You are essentially finished...
KÃre vÃn, you are comparing a country where 64% of managers have engineering or technology degrees, where the customary approach to selecting options is to gather measurable facts and do some calculations based on those facts, with a country where 38% of managers have no formal qualifications at all (not even basic school leaver certificate), and almost all options are selected by dogma or whim.
Sweden is not perfect - the same id number has been allocated to a new born baby as is already in use by someone over a hundred years old (that's fun for the old lady when she gets called to the doctor for a post-natal checkup!). But in general it works because (a) most government and commercial business is run mostly on rational processes (b) the freedom of information laws and privacy laws have teeth. Most government naughtiness gets caught out.
Britain is by comparison chaotic and irrational. Most of us like it that way because we can get on with our lives without any central or local government snoop knowing enough about us to interfere (and believe me, they would if they could - just look at the frequency of local councils using terror laws to combat littering!). Our real objection to ID cards is just this - we don't want to be ordered around by petty jumped-up know-it-all officials.
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Ah Sweden. This is a discussion I ( English ) have with my gf ( Swedish ) often, and I think it's important to realise that Sweden is almost alone in having a paternal socialist government which is largely fair. In my experience a Swedish approach to living in England often results in frustration and genuine shock that people could live like this.
In England, personal information is very likely to be abused or used for profit by people who are effectively above the law, and it's unlikely that this information will have any positive effect on society, so people are naturally cautious as to plans like this, they feel ( correctly in my opinion ) that it's a loss of power for no gain. These laws tend to have clauses which exonerate the ruling classes, a lack of transparency which inspires contempt and a high likelihood that the data will be stored ( and used ) incorrectly.
England does not work. It's run by self-serving and generally unaccountable people who believe they are superior to large sections of the population, an opinion based largely on birthright. The class system I imagine was useful in an empire context where everyone knowing their place resulted in the entirety of the country ( questionably ) achieving greatness, but it is now almost impossible to dissolve, as this would require a reduction in power for a group of people who's entirety is based around not doing so.
You're right to say that in Sweden this would not be a problem, and is a good idea. In England not so.
Erm... I did their test. They're rich nutters who don't "believe" in climate change, want to abolish the minimum wage, would like to see some proper poverty, and want the British crime rate to match the American one.
More seriously, I don't see how their economic policies are in any way sustainable. They appear to encourage exploitation of workers, resources and the environment/land.
The current system sucks, but we can do better than this.
The "If you have nothing to hide" lobby are missing an important point. We don't live in a full democracy. If we did, there would be no problem.
The difficulty lies in the fact that we have a tiered democracy (don't call it 'representative', it isn't.) We vote only for the people who will take the actual decisions; we have no say over the legislation itself. That system allows rich individuals and organisations to influence our 'representatives' far more effectively than our puny vote does.
In such a flawed system the only thing preventing our MPs from going completely off track, is the notion that should they go too far, they will have a riot on their hands and they would run the real risk of suffering retribution. The sheer numbers of the people who might be involved in such a reaction ensure that the state is kept responsive to the people's needs. Back in the eighties UK, the poll tax was abandoned only after extensive rioting in the streets, not because of polite letters sent to MPs.
Step forward Big Brother. With the technology available today, it is possible for fewer and fewer people to keep tabs on the population at large and identify malcontents before they have an opportunity to act.
In a world where protesters have to ask the police for permission to protest, where a person's location can be identified through the mobile phone records and the national motorway vehicle identification database, where email headers and phone traffic data is routinely held and scrutinised, the ability to mount an effective protest is rapidly diminishing.
Yes, I do want to retain the ability to riot (legal or not) because if we as a citizenry ever loose that ability, we might as well also give up the vote, because we will surely have lost any say in the running of this country.
There is every reason to avoid yet more databases.
Libertarianism is a recipe for fail.
We see over and over again that "the market" brings poverty and misery to millions, yet libertarians still worship it like some sort of god.
The world does not work by magic, human nature is selfish and abusive. Libertarianism would result, very quickly, in an effective return to feudalism and serfdom.
That just happened in November here in the US.
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