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UK ID Cards Could Be Upgraded To Super ID Cards
An anonymous reader writes "Gadget lovers are used to punishing upgrade cycles but now it seems that the British ID card could be replaced with a 'super' ID card just a couple of years after the first one was released. The new card could be used to buy goods or services online, or to prove identity over the web. It's a bit of a kick in the teeth for the people who have already paid £30 for a 1st gen card that can't do any of these things."
No one thinks 'well, we've sold a bunch of these, we'd better stop innovating now in case we annoy the people who bought Version 1'. Buying something, then a few years later a better version coming along is not a "kick in the teeth". It's progress.
If the best argument you can come up with against "super ID cards" is that they're not fair on people with ordinary ID cards then you need to go back to Civil Liberties School.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
It's a bit of a kick in the teeth for the people who have already paid £30 for a 1st gen card that can't do any of these things.
Yes, all 6 of them.
It's always been my dream to be profiled by law enforcement on the basis of my shopping.
Who knows, maybe my toilet paper buying habits exactly match those of a known terrorist and the men in black will single me out for "special attention". After all, who doesn't want to be incarcerated for 28 days without actually being accused of anything because of buying "the supermarket's brand in packs of 4 in average once every two months" just like the terrorists.
The good news is that using a Government provided electronic ID card for shopping will bring me closer to my dream.
One single card that absolutely verifies who you are AND accesses all your finances. What a wonderful idea! What could possibly go wrong?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So I can have my identity AND my money stolen, together with everything else!
Wait, let me just quickly forge one of $currentDummyGovernmentLeader. You know... for the nasty stuff. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
You cannot post on this web forum without first verifying your identity with the UK government. From the article:
THIS is how they plan to implement the draconian measures in the DEB. They want all Internet activity linked to an ID card system that they control (and whose data they can sell). Am I being paranoid? My wife would say so. But if currently legislation pans out - and the incoming government have made no indications they wish to change direction - then the government will have on one hand an unworkable set of Internet regulations and another hand a technological solution that could potentially make it work. They will also have very rich men offering financial incentives to link the two.
The fact this will kill Internet freedom in this country stone dead is completely irrelevant to them. As with so many other aspects of life, career politicians simply do not care because they are outside their very narrow experiences, which have been aimed at public office for basically their entire life.
These people select themselves for leadership at private school (if Tory) or at university (if Labour or Lib Dem) - and never venture out of that world to experience the life, work, and leisure of ordinary human beings.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Most people in the UK are happy to be profiled in exchange for financial benefits. When the Tesco Clubcard was introduced it was so popular that people stopped shopping at other supermarkets like Sainsburys, which then had to introduce their own "loyalty card" schemes. Tesco announced last year that there are now 16 million active clubcards in the UK. As a comparison point there are around 25 million households in the UK , so a significant number of British households are having their shopping profiled in detail already.
One card to rule them all, one card to find them, One card to bring them all and in the darkness bind them (With apologies to you know who)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wouldn't it be easy if you had one card for ID, public transport, payments, building access, getting your treatment, etc?
It probably should have some kind of Chip. Now this would be perfect day!
No. Definitely not. I don't want my complete life to stagnate when I loose the ID card, for instance. Furthermore, the idea of coupling payments to the ID card (which is basically a passport) is so horrible I do not forgive a government to even suggest it.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
since 1999 finland has been pushing exactly this kind of super-card technology for exactly the same reasons. So far less than 4% of the population has taken the card. Also the widely available online bank account authentication tools, have effectively made the card obsolete. Finally the government seems to be giving up and gladly accepts the online bank authentication methods for the purpose of identifying anyone online. like this
The British super ID card will have exactly the same fate as the finnish Super-card did.
Wouldn't it be easy if you had one card for ID, public transport, payments, building access, getting your treatment, etc?
It probably should have some kind of Chip. Now this would be perfect day!
Nice until the government decides to revoke your access to all of the above on a whim.
Wouldn't it be easy if you had one card for ID, public transport, payments, building access, getting your treatment, etc?
Wouldn't it be easy if the government and corporations could track and timestamp every action of your life with no court supervision?
The problem with any such card is that as it does more and more things, more and more people can access data used by it. The fact that it can do more things makes it a juicy target for criminals, while the larger the number of people who have access to its data the more there are to be criminals or to be suborned by criminals. This means that there is in inverse square law of security against power of such a card. Nobody is going to attack my library card: all they could do is take out books in my name, and the only people who have access to the database are a handful of librarians. But single index to my entire life gives access to my bank, my medical records, my employment records, my tax records... and is vulnerable to attack by all those with legitimate access to any of those people.
Beware of revenge effects. Every technology has them - this ID card seems to me to have bigger ones than most.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
You do know the UK ID card and it's backend would be illigal in Germany.
THe UK government has a very poor record in securing data. These cards have already been hacked. They are unsecure. Oh and the plans are for fingerprinting to be tendered out to private companies. Do you want to go to Tesco to hand over your fingerprints?
Hillier? Hillier? So officials under Hillier will be asking for our papers?
Hail Meg...!
Where's the +1 Wrong mod option when you need it? You're so terribly wrong on this one, that I just want to mod up so that others can see you.
The above quote, although written many eons ago, seems remarkably accurate for the not-so-distant future...
http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200601/df20060116.jpg
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
Millions? I think not.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/09/id_card_numbers/
The area of North West England listed there includes two major cities with a combined population of 3.5 million alone. And how many cards have they issued in this area up until the 3rd of March this year?
Four thousand three hundred and seven. Yes we Brits are banging down the doors to get our ID cards.
Two problems. Firstly, define, and prove, "difficult-to-spoof" for all time. People have already shown the ability to spoof fingerprints. And all you have to do is to clone the identity of one card onto the biometrics of another, and you have a card that describes the criminal but accesses the victims data.
Secondly, much access to the data is not with the card but without. If people have access to one part of the data it is all to easy to access other parts. So the clerk who can legitimately check, say, that I have paid my property taxes may all to easily be able to access my medical appointments - including the one with a specialist in embarrassing diseases.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
We already have standard forms of ID (in the UK, the passport). That's not an argument for making the passport/ID card much more expensive, and tying it to a national database, or introducing laws criminalising people who fail to notify about change of details, or lost/damaged cards, and so on.
It's also not an argument for making the ID compulsory.
Yeah it does doesn't it? However this is Gordon Brown's bunch of incompetent fuck-wits, at least until the next election when they will be replaced by David Cameron's bunch of incompetent fuck-wits! UK Government IT is all based on back-handers and directors taking cuts for projects that are almost always delayed and almost always nothing like what they were supposed to achieve. I wouldn't trust the Gov's IT mob to run a 1 table with 1 row Access database, they'd fuck it up or leave it on a USB on a train somewhere!
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!