if I ever moved to a City where I though I needed an offensive weapon to defend myself, I move elsewhere very quickly. Violent crime rates are low where I live (and in the majority of the UK) - I like it that way; it means I feel safe walking the streets without having to carry a weapon. IMO that's a far better state of affairs than only feeling safe if I'm carrying one.
That's weird, one of your fellow Britons posted elsewhere on this discussion that knife attacks are common and that streetfighting is a common pastime in many towns there. I've read many times of violent teenagers running around England terrorizing and attacking people.
If you go by newspaper headlines then yes, you'd think that the UK is gang ridden, murderous, hell hole. If you go by the actual statistics, the people most likely to be hurt by violent crime are other violent criminals. Admittedly there are some parts of some cities that are worse for crime than the majority of the UK (most notably parts of London, Manchester and Nottingham), but country wide violent crime is low although recently it's been rising, against the general crime trend, hence the hysterical media reports. The perception of crime in the UK is far worse than actual crime rates suggest that it should be.
No, but they do carry clubs to beat people with. I'll bet those aren't legal for non-police to carry.
IIRC truncheons are legal to possess, though not legal to carry in public - no offensive weapon is legal to carry in public here. I don't actually know anyone who has ever had the desire to carry one anyway.
We have something similar in some US states: there's a weapon some police (and some civilians like me) carry, called an expandable baton. It's made of several steel pipes that fit within each other, and opens to full length (~2 feet) with the flick of a wrist, and has a steel ball on the end. It's easily concealed (because it retracts), but can be a deadly bludgeon. In some states, they're illegal for non-police to own or carry (though strangely, in some of those states, it's legal to carry a handgun).
Google says those were recently made illegal to buy, sell or import here (2004), though not illegal to own if you had one before the ban. Though why you'd need one is beyond me - if I ever moved to a City where I though I needed an offensive weapon to defend myself, I move elsewhere very quickly. Violent crime rates are low where I live (and in the majority of the UK) - I like it that way; it means I feel safe walking the streets without having to carry a weapon. IMO that's a far better state of affairs than only feeling safe if I'm carrying one.
Guns aren't the only form of force. Many leftists think that no one should use force, ever, only the police, whether it's beating people with a bat or tasering them or shooting them. For everyone else, we're just supposed to cower and cry and beg for our lives, and if we survive, we can maybe testify against the attacker in court so they can go to prison for a short term until they're released early for "good behavior" or to make room for a non-violent drug user.
Whoever these so called "leftists" are, I disagree with them - there's a time and a place for violence in self defence. But I'd rather need not "cower and cry and beg" because my streets are actually safe rather than having to being forced to defend myself every time I go out. Tackling the underlying cause of street violence is a far better long term strategy than just fighting off the symptoms.
It's because of the british hooliganism that the rest of the continent had to put more security in soccer stadiums than in prisons.
Hooliganism is all but stomped out in the British game, but I wouldn't go near Milan for a game between Inter and Ac if you paid me; the Italian "Ultras" are far worse than anything we've had here for decades. Oh, and there's very little security inside English football Stadia these days; it's now so safe that I took my mum to a recent Saints v Pompey match.
Surely the very existence of this app proves that we're not disarmed. Sure we don't have the same gun culture as you in the USA do, but we didn't have it before the gun laws were tightened either. Imagine British anti gun legislation was replaced with that of, say, Texas tomorrow; do you think that gun ownership levels would reach the same levels? I'll bet my bottom dollar that they wouldn't. Having said that, I do think that our firearms legislation is too harsh here in the UK, but I also think that the American fetishisation of the gun is far from healthy.
Hooray! I wouldn't say no to one, though I haven't read a copy for a while... a family member bought me a copy last time I was in hospital (see, I'm still on topic), helping me to maintain a smile at the "wrong" time.
Get one, IIRC it's only ~£25 for the whole year (24 copies - fortnightly); the cover price is £1.50 so it's well worth it if you're into politics and satire.
Actually the word 'seriously' was left in by accident; I was originally going to write "They take the sun seriously", then realised that they probably don't;p .
I personally read the websites of the Gruniad & Torygraph to try and get a bit of balance - I don't buy any of the papers as I think that they're all jokes to some degree, just the Broadsheets less so; I do have a subscription to Private Eye though.
Sure, you can opt out by not allowing your kids to check out books. Or is there another alternative system in place? If there is an alternative system, then why are they maintaining TWO systems? Please answer.
If it's like any other library system I've used (I work in library systems in FE) you can also get the reader record by typing in the student's name, it just takes longer. Where I work we scan barcodes on the students library cards, but if a student doesn't have their card, I can still ask for their name & something else to ID them (e.g. first line of address) so they can take out a book. It's unlikely primary school students would have this back up knowledge, so using parts of a thumbprint as a unique identifier means they will always have quick access to the library. I expect that a list of those who opt-out will be kept so that the student will have to give their name and the librarian will check against the list that the student is on it then issue the book by typing his name into the system. Obviously some sort of ID system has to be in place so you can check which student has which book - and tell them to bring it back if they keep it too long!
And you're missing the main point. It's not Orwellian because they are collecting biometric information, it's Orwellian because kids are taught, from a very young age, that giving away your fingerprints is a fine and dandy idea. Do you think kids are making these choices because they've been informed, and understand, the consequences of giving away identity information? Not a chance.
It's the duty of their parents to be informed & inform their children. Can you tell me what the consequences of giving away parts of a thumb print that is subsequently hashed and kept for the duration of the time that child is at that school is anyway?
They are being taught that you should just do what you are told, because it's better that way.
No more than any other way, at Primary school I was always taught by my parents to listen to my teacher, but they could also opt me out of certain controversial things if they so wanted. Actually, they never did, but I grew up always questioning authority anyway; I don't see how this is different from listening to your teacher in any other way.
They are specifically being taught that fingerprints make an excellent identity system. Bad bad bad.
In this case it's actually an unusual example of Biometrics done right. I've posted in more detail here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1671388&cid=32418990 Biometric data can be misused in many ways, but there's no need for knee jerk reactions when the data is not being misused and the system is actually being implemented in a way that works both for staff and students whilst maintaining the exact same amount of privacy as a library card would. Possibly more privacy as library cards where I work also have the students full name and picture on them so I can visually ID them (i.e. they can't nick someone else's card and borrow books on that) or find out their name if they are misbehaving - This system dispenses with the need for that.
Isn't the whole point to use to in order to identify someone?
You mean like a library card? NO2ID hasn't issued a statement against library cards as far as I know.
Presumably, that hash code is associated with your personal record in the library's database.
Just like a library card is. I can pull up the record of any of our students and find out their name, address*, student number and some other stuff - at the moment we use their student numbers in the form of a barcode that we scan to quickly get their library record.
*To send them overdue notices.
As the name implies, NO2ID is against personally identifying and tracking individuals across our society, their concerns are much more broader than specifically biometrics or ID cards. These are mere tools to reach that goal.
Indeed. However, this is the wrong target; what we (and lots of other schools & colleges) do, is issue students with a single student number & card; they use this number to log in to college PCs, the VLE & use the library - since last term they've also needed the card to get onto the campus using an RFID access system. Internally that same student number is used on all the college databases & systems that the student is on. It's much worse than what this school is doing, but I'm actually OK with it since I know that all that data is deleted after the students leave. It's not as if someone who stole it could use it for identity theft or anything anyway; we don't keep enough human readable info on a single database (see below). Why do we need this data you ask? To provide better services to the students year on year, for example every year I write a report showing how much we spent on each curriculum area & how well that section has been used. Other people around the place use it for monitoring the demographics of our students and to see how many complete which courses etc. Some of these are statuary duties so we can tell the government we had x number of students; please pay us £n,000. Others are simply good practice - "Our subject x collection hasn't been used much this year, so lets spend extra on it and promote it more to that area this year".
It's also worth mentioning that all these databases are mostly decentralised - sure the library pulls bits of data from the registry & HR databases, and IT do the same for active directory so we can all log on to the college computers, but they aren't linked in some Master database with all info on all students & staff somewhere, all the systems only have the data they need to give students & staff their best service. I'll give you £100 if you can find a state run school or college that has the resources secretly monitor students anyway. IT depts. & Libraries don't have the time or manpower; management doesn't have the competence - besides even over all our databases we don't keep enough useful info for identity theft and a lot of what we do keep is useless & unknown even to the student; what course does X01234/567 mean? Someone in the registry department may be able to tell you off the top of their head* but I'd have to look it up on a different system if I needed to find out what course the student was on & he couldn't tell me as that's all we share electronically (it's all we can be sure is totally unique).
*Actually I just made it up, using the same structure, so they couldn't.
The problem with bad ideas like this is that there is no way for those kids (or their parents) who think such Orwellian shenanigans set a bad precedent to opt out.
Wrong RTFA:
She confirmed it would be extended to all pupils, adding that parents would be given the choice to opt in or out.
Also, as I mentioned elsewhere, these things usually store a hash of parts of a thumbprint, not images of full thumbprints; I'll bet this is the same (the article even says no image is stored). It's no where near as Orwellian as you make out.
As far as I'm concerned, that's enough to move this project from "appalling" to "kinda awesome". I'm not sure what (the otherwise excellent) NO2ID are on about here.
If it works like we've been looking at (I work in library systems) it just takes the thumbprint, turns it into a hash and stores that, then every time you want to take out a book it just matches the stored hashes against the one of the person currently trying to take out a book. No personal data is stored & the thumb print can't be recreated as it doesn't use the whole print, only certain points. It's actually an (unusual) example of Biometrics done right! I donate to NO2ID, I'm going to email them and explain this to them.
Only American trained retail employees use the phrase "Have a nice day" when they clearly hate you*, and you know that couldn't care how your day goes. Every time I hear it, I feel like grabbing the person by the scruff of the neck, slapping them round the face, and telling them to behave like the cynical Brit that they really are and stop trying to be American; pretending to care is worse & more annoying than not caring at all. Then I remember that they probably know this, and are either doing it because they've been told, or (more likely) out of vicious spite and thus being their cynical selves after all. As you seem to have taken the latter option against the AC GP, I'm guessing you've encountered a retail worker in the UK at some point as well./rant;p
*except the ones I actually met in the US, who somehow actually said it like they meant it; still, having someone follow you around, looking like they'll hug you any second now, still makes for an annoying shopping experience.
I watched a repeat as a teenager and thought 'this is amazingly topical'. I watched the episode again on DVD over Christmas and thought 'this is still amazingly topical, when was it made?' Turns out, it's as old as me. I wish the BBC would repeat Yes [Prime] Minister more often...
It's regularly on one of the Satellite channels (GOLD, I think), and it remains as topical & insightful as ever.
What are you doing? I've only ever had to prove my age, and there's already a much less intrusive national scheme set up for that: http://www.brc.org.uk/pass/default.asp
I Finland everyone has a national identification number. Censuses haven't been done in my lifetime, no need. A drivers license, passport, social security card or ID card identifies the citizens with this number. I'm not sure if there's a law that says you have to posess one of the above, it's just something everyone has anyway.
Still there haven't been any major issues. Is this because the Finnish government is simply less corrupt that many others? I don't have a problem with having a number assigned to me. In fact that number ensures I can use all the services my taxes pay for, like working health care.
So am I living in some socialist police state, or is it just a matter of what kind of government implements this kind of a scheme?
No, we all have a National insurance number in the UK as well, the problem with this scheme wasn't the card but the database behind it; it was going to keep ~50 pieces of personal data on all of us and wanted to charge everyone £30 for the privilege of having one. More info here: http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/FAQ/
As to the current Con/Dem government doing anything about these wider abuses, I remain very sceptical. Previous Tory governments have been equally as big on repressive legislation as the last Labour government was. And as everybody knows, politicians are generally loathe to give up any powers unless forced to by the population.
Well, the coalition document promises a "great repeal\freedom bill" and more regulation on CCTV and a review of the libel laws (as a side note, Lord Leicester has just introduced a libel reform bill - http://www.libelreform.org/news - in light of their pledge, I'm hoping that it will get government backing) amongst other things - full text: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8677933.stm
The relevant section for those who don't want to click on the link:
10. Civil liberties
The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour government and roll back state intrusion.
This will include:
A freedom or great repeal bill;
The scrapping of the ID card scheme, the national identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point database;
Outlawing the fingerprinting of children at school without parental permission;
The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency;
Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database;
The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury;
The restoration of rights to non-violent protest;
The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech;
Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation;
Further regulation of CCTV;
Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason;
A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.
My understanding is that (some?) countries in the EU who are in Schengen still expect some sort of ID to be carried by people from other Schengen countries - not for crossing borders but for going about your daily life in their country. Maybe I've got that wrong though?
Yes, some other continental countries have ID card systems, but they are almost all decentralised & none hold anywhere near as much data as the proposed UK one (IIRC ~50 different pieces of info) on a "national identity register" (NIR).
Had a continental style scheme been set up, their would have been far less opposition as the main arguments were against the NIR, not the cards themselves.
And I'm guessing that there is absolutely no point to this audio manipulation via "JavaScript" when it only works with one specific build of one specific browser's particular JavaScript implementation.
I think it's only because they are so moderate that we don't complain (much) that they are still our established church. Indeed, I think that is one of the reasons they are forced to modernise & adapt.
Is it really that obvious? For example, should the Lockerbie bomber (Pan Am flight 103) be tried in Libya or in the UK?
Seeing as the crime was committed in the UK, he should be tried in the UK (and was). Gary's crime was also committed in the UK, so he should be tried here.
Slashdot Mirror
if I ever moved to a City where I though I needed an offensive weapon to defend myself, I move elsewhere very quickly. Violent crime rates are low where I live (and in the majority of the UK) - I like it that way; it means I feel safe walking the streets without having to carry a weapon. IMO that's a far better state of affairs than only feeling safe if I'm carrying one.
That's weird, one of your fellow Britons posted elsewhere on this discussion that knife attacks are common and that streetfighting is a common pastime in many towns there. I've read many times of violent teenagers running around England terrorizing and attacking people.
If you go by newspaper headlines then yes, you'd think that the UK is gang ridden, murderous, hell hole. If you go by the actual statistics, the people most likely to be hurt by violent crime are other violent criminals. Admittedly there are some parts of some cities that are worse for crime than the majority of the UK (most notably parts of London, Manchester and Nottingham), but country wide violent crime is low although recently it's been rising, against the general crime trend, hence the hysterical media reports. The perception of crime in the UK is far worse than actual crime rates suggest that it should be.
No, but they do carry clubs to beat people with. I'll bet those aren't legal for non-police to carry.
IIRC truncheons are legal to possess, though not legal to carry in public - no offensive weapon is legal to carry in public here. I don't actually know anyone who has ever had the desire to carry one anyway.
We have something similar in some US states: there's a weapon some police (and some civilians like me) carry, called an expandable baton. It's made of several steel pipes that fit within each other, and opens to full length (~2 feet) with the flick of a wrist, and has a steel ball on the end. It's easily concealed (because it retracts), but can be a deadly bludgeon. In some states, they're illegal for non-police to own or carry (though strangely, in some of those states, it's legal to carry a handgun).
Google says those were recently made illegal to buy, sell or import here (2004), though not illegal to own if you had one before the ban. Though why you'd need one is beyond me - if I ever moved to a City where I though I needed an offensive weapon to defend myself, I move elsewhere very quickly. Violent crime rates are low where I live (and in the majority of the UK) - I like it that way; it means I feel safe walking the streets without having to carry a weapon. IMO that's a far better state of affairs than only feeling safe if I'm carrying one.
Guns aren't the only form of force. Many leftists think that no one should use force, ever, only the police, whether it's beating people with a bat or tasering them or shooting them. For everyone else, we're just supposed to cower and cry and beg for our lives, and if we survive, we can maybe testify against the attacker in court so they can go to prison for a short term until they're released early for "good behavior" or to make room for a non-violent drug user.
Whoever these so called "leftists" are, I disagree with them - there's a time and a place for violence in self defence. But I'd rather need not "cower and cry and beg" because my streets are actually safe rather than having to being forced to defend myself every time I go out. Tackling the underlying cause of street violence is a far better long term strategy than just fighting off the symptoms.
It's because of the british hooliganism that the rest of the continent had to put more security in soccer stadiums than in prisons.
Hooliganism is all but stomped out in the British game, but I wouldn't go near Milan for a game between Inter and Ac if you paid me; the Italian "Ultras" are far worse than anything we've had here for decades. Oh, and there's very little security inside English football Stadia these days; it's now so safe that I took my mum to a recent Saints v Pompey match.
Sadly people in England are (A) disarmed
Surely the very existence of this app proves that we're not disarmed. Sure we don't have the same gun culture as you in the USA do, but we didn't have it before the gun laws were tightened either. Imagine British anti gun legislation was replaced with that of, say, Texas tomorrow; do you think that gun ownership levels would reach the same levels? I'll bet my bottom dollar that they wouldn't. Having said that, I do think that our firearms legislation is too harsh here in the UK, but I also think that the American fetishisation of the gun is far from healthy.
The anti-gun people basically want the government to be the only one that can legally use force (in the form of police).
Regular police don't carry guns in the UK*, nor do most regular cops want to when surveyed.
*Although in certain parts of London it can seem as if they do.
Switzerland has now joined Schengen and will oppose it to their dying breath.
Whilst I agree with most of what you say, Switzerland is not an EU member, so have no say over the issue.
It's unimaginable that it will happen, but certainly Britain, ... would impose barriers that would make Turkey's membership almost pointless:
Our British politicians are among those most enthusiastic about Turkish accession. As for the media, even the Telegraph endorses it: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/5115953/Turkeys-time-has-come.html
It's the Germans with their large native Turkish population that really oppose it.
Hooray! I wouldn't say no to one, though I haven't read a copy for a while... a family member bought me a copy last time I was in hospital (see, I'm still on topic), helping me to maintain a smile at the "wrong" time.
Get one, IIRC it's only ~£25 for the whole year (24 copies - fortnightly); the cover price is £1.50 so it's well worth it if you're into politics and satire.
Actually the word 'seriously' was left in by accident; I was originally going to write "They take the sun seriously", then realised that they probably don't ;p .
I personally read the websites of the Gruniad & Torygraph to try and get a bit of balance - I don't buy any of the papers as I think that they're all jokes to some degree, just the Broadsheets less so; I do have a subscription to Private Eye though.
I guess my point here is that there's nothing especially stupid about the Sun reader
Sure there is, they read the Sun seriously for a start.
Sure, you can opt out by not allowing your kids to check out books. Or is there another alternative system in place? If there is an alternative system, then why are they maintaining TWO systems? Please answer.
If it's like any other library system I've used (I work in library systems in FE) you can also get the reader record by typing in the student's name, it just takes longer. Where I work we scan barcodes on the students library cards, but if a student doesn't have their card, I can still ask for their name & something else to ID them (e.g. first line of address) so they can take out a book. It's unlikely primary school students would have this back up knowledge, so using parts of a thumbprint as a unique identifier means they will always have quick access to the library. I expect that a list of those who opt-out will be kept so that the student will have to give their name and the librarian will check against the list that the student is on it then issue the book by typing his name into the system. Obviously some sort of ID system has to be in place so you can check which student has which book - and tell them to bring it back if they keep it too long!
And you're missing the main point. It's not Orwellian because they are collecting biometric information, it's Orwellian because kids are taught, from a very young age, that giving away your fingerprints is a fine and dandy idea. Do you think kids are making these choices because they've been informed, and understand, the consequences of giving away identity information? Not a chance.
It's the duty of their parents to be informed & inform their children. Can you tell me what the consequences of giving away parts of a thumb print that is subsequently hashed and kept for the duration of the time that child is at that school is anyway?
They are being taught that you should just do what you are told, because it's better that way.
No more than any other way, at Primary school I was always taught by my parents to listen to my teacher, but they could also opt me out of certain controversial things if they so wanted. Actually, they never did, but I grew up always questioning authority anyway; I don't see how this is different from listening to your teacher in any other way.
They are specifically being taught that fingerprints make an excellent identity system. Bad bad bad.
In this case it's actually an unusual example of Biometrics done right. I've posted in more detail here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1671388&cid=32418990 Biometric data can be misused in many ways, but there's no need for knee jerk reactions when the data is not being misused and the system is actually being implemented in a way that works both for staff and students whilst maintaining the exact same amount of privacy as a library card would. Possibly more privacy as library cards where I work also have the students full name and picture on them so I can visually ID them (i.e. they can't nick someone else's card and borrow books on that) or find out their name if they are misbehaving - This system dispenses with the need for that.
Isn't the whole point to use to in order to identify someone?
You mean like a library card? NO2ID hasn't issued a statement against library cards as far as I know.
Presumably, that hash code is associated with your personal record in the library's database.
Just like a library card is. I can pull up the record of any of our students and find out their name, address*, student number and some other stuff - at the moment we use their student numbers in the form of a barcode that we scan to quickly get their library record.
*To send them overdue notices.
As the name implies, NO2ID is against personally identifying and tracking individuals across our society, their concerns are much more broader than specifically biometrics or ID cards. These are mere tools to reach that goal.
Indeed. However, this is the wrong target; what we (and lots of other schools & colleges) do, is issue students with a single student number & card; they use this number to log in to college PCs, the VLE & use the library - since last term they've also needed the card to get onto the campus using an RFID access system. Internally that same student number is used on all the college databases & systems that the student is on. It's much worse than what this school is doing, but I'm actually OK with it since I know that all that data is deleted after the students leave. It's not as if someone who stole it could use it for identity theft or anything anyway; we don't keep enough human readable info on a single database (see below). Why do we need this data you ask? To provide better services to the students year on year, for example every year I write a report showing how much we spent on each curriculum area & how well that section has been used. Other people around the place use it for monitoring the demographics of our students and to see how many complete which courses etc. Some of these are statuary duties so we can tell the government we had x number of students; please pay us £n,000. Others are simply good practice - "Our subject x collection hasn't been used much this year, so lets spend extra on it and promote it more to that area this year".
It's also worth mentioning that all these databases are mostly decentralised - sure the library pulls bits of data from the registry & HR databases, and IT do the same for active directory so we can all log on to the college computers, but they aren't linked in some Master database with all info on all students & staff somewhere, all the systems only have the data they need to give students & staff their best service. I'll give you £100 if you can find a state run school or college that has the resources secretly monitor students anyway. IT depts. & Libraries don't have the time or manpower; management doesn't have the competence - besides even over all our databases we don't keep enough useful info for identity theft and a lot of what we do keep is useless & unknown even to the student; what course does X01234/567 mean? Someone in the registry department may be able to tell you off the top of their head* but I'd have to look it up on a different system if I needed to find out what course the student was on & he couldn't tell me as that's all we share electronically (it's all we can be sure is totally unique).
*Actually I just made it up, using the same structure, so they couldn't.
The problem with bad ideas like this is that there is no way for those kids (or their parents) who think such Orwellian shenanigans set a bad precedent to opt out.
Wrong RTFA:
She confirmed it would be extended to all pupils, adding that parents would be given the choice to opt in or out.
Also, as I mentioned elsewhere, these things usually store a hash of parts of a thumbprint, not images of full thumbprints; I'll bet this is the same (the article even says no image is stored). It's no where near as Orwellian as you make out.
As far as I'm concerned, that's enough to move this project from "appalling" to "kinda awesome". I'm not sure what (the otherwise excellent) NO2ID are on about here.
If it works like we've been looking at (I work in library systems) it just takes the thumbprint, turns it into a hash and stores that, then every time you want to take out a book it just matches the stored hashes against the one of the person currently trying to take out a book. No personal data is stored & the thumb print can't be recreated as it doesn't use the whole print, only certain points. It's actually an (unusual) example of Biometrics done right! I donate to NO2ID, I'm going to email them and explain this to them.
Have a nice day now!
Only American trained retail employees use the phrase "Have a nice day" when they clearly hate you*, and you know that couldn't care how your day goes. Every time I hear it, I feel like grabbing the person by the scruff of the neck, slapping them round the face, and telling them to behave like the cynical Brit that they really are and stop trying to be American; pretending to care is worse & more annoying than not caring at all. Then I remember that they probably know this, and are either doing it because they've been told, or (more likely) out of vicious spite and thus being their cynical selves after all. As you seem to have taken the latter option against the AC GP, I'm guessing you've encountered a retail worker in the UK at some point as well. /rant ;p
*except the ones I actually met in the US, who somehow actually said it like they meant it; still, having someone follow you around, looking like they'll hug you any second now, still makes for an annoying shopping experience.
I watched a repeat as a teenager and thought 'this is amazingly topical'. I watched the episode again on DVD over Christmas and thought 'this is still amazingly topical, when was it made?' Turns out, it's as old as me. I wish the BBC would repeat Yes [Prime] Minister more often...
It's regularly on one of the Satellite channels (GOLD, I think), and it remains as topical & insightful as ever.
I have to prove my identity several times a day.
What are you doing? I've only ever had to prove my age, and there's already a much less intrusive national scheme set up for that: http://www.brc.org.uk/pass/default.asp
I Finland everyone has a national identification number. Censuses haven't been done in my lifetime, no need. A drivers license, passport, social security card or ID card identifies the citizens with this number. I'm not sure if there's a law that says you have to posess one of the above, it's just something everyone has anyway.
Still there haven't been any major issues. Is this because the Finnish government is simply less corrupt that many others? I don't have a problem with having a number assigned to me. In fact that number ensures I can use all the services my taxes pay for, like working health care.
So am I living in some socialist police state, or is it just a matter of what kind of government implements this kind of a scheme?
No, we all have a National insurance number in the UK as well, the problem with this scheme wasn't the card but the database behind it; it was going to keep ~50 pieces of personal data on all of us and wanted to charge everyone £30 for the privilege of having one. More info here: http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/FAQ/
As to the current Con/Dem government doing anything about these wider abuses, I remain very sceptical. Previous Tory governments have been equally as big on repressive legislation as the last Labour government was. And as everybody knows, politicians are generally loathe to give up any powers unless forced to by the population.
Well, the coalition document promises a "great repeal\freedom bill" and more regulation on CCTV and a review of the libel laws (as a side note, Lord Leicester has just introduced a libel reform bill - http://www.libelreform.org/news - in light of their pledge, I'm hoping that it will get government backing) amongst other things - full text: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8677933.stm
The relevant section for those who don't want to click on the link:
10. Civil liberties
The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour government and roll back state intrusion.
This will include:
A freedom or great repeal bill;
The scrapping of the ID card scheme, the national identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point database;
Outlawing the fingerprinting of children at school without parental permission;
The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency;
Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database;
The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury;
The restoration of rights to non-violent protest;
The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech;
Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation;
Further regulation of CCTV;
Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason;
A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.
My understanding is that (some?) countries in the EU who are in Schengen still expect some sort of ID to be carried by people from other Schengen countries - not for crossing borders but for going about your daily life in their country. Maybe I've got that wrong though?
Yes, some other continental countries have ID card systems, but they are almost all decentralised & none hold anywhere near as much data as the proposed UK one (IIRC ~50 different pieces of info) on a "national identity register" (NIR).
Had a continental style scheme been set up, their would have been far less opposition as the main arguments were against the NIR, not the cards themselves.
To travel to Europe you need to fork out the full fee for a "real passport"
That's nothing to do with ID of any sort, it's because the UK is not a member of the Schengen Agreement.
And I'm guessing that there is absolutely no point to this audio manipulation via "JavaScript" when it only works with one specific build of one specific browser's particular JavaScript implementation.
It's called a proof of concept.
they are really the most moderate in terms of their beliefs (well...at least since Vatican II)
You've never spoken to an Anglican have you? It's hard enough to get a CofE priest to admit to belief in God, but the American Episcopalian church just ordained a Lesbian bishop: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/05/15/episcopal.lesbian.bishop/index.html
I think it's only because they are so moderate that we don't complain (much) that they are still our established church. Indeed, I think that is one of the reasons they are forced to modernise & adapt.
What is the difference between hacking the Pentagon because you believe in aliens and hacking the Pentagon because you believe in Allah?
There's this thing called "intent"
Obviously, yes.
Is it really that obvious? For example, should the Lockerbie bomber (Pan Am flight 103) be tried in Libya or in the UK?
Seeing as the crime was committed in the UK, he should be tried in the UK (and was). Gary's crime was also committed in the UK, so he should be tried here.