Monday, July 21, 2008

Monday 21 July 2008


Latest from NO2ID

The recently published ‘Data Sharing Review’ by the Information Commissioner and Mark Walport of the Wellcome Trust has seriously neglected to recognise the enormity of the database state. The only acknowledgment it makes is in its annexe which states “A recurring theme among members of the public was the disparity in power between the citizen and the state in relation to data sharing.” "It was said that the citizen has no choice but to use public (or publicly administrated) services, but equally had no choice or say over how their personal information is used once it was in the public sector" The report then goes on to say that the removal or modification of legal barriers to data sharing should be instigated, presumably letting everybody poke their noses into our private lives. They just don’t seem to care about our rights or privacy!

The Italian government’s plan to fingerprint gypsies in a so-called move to combat crime, has been heavily criticised as being ‘racist’. Quite probably expecting this reaction, the government has now suggested that everyone be fingerprinted to eliminate such criticisms. How convenient!

A Home Office initiative to coerce youngsters into accepting ID cards hasn’t quite produced the response the government might have hoped for. The web site invites youths to engage in dialog with the Home Office over ID Cards by asking them what they think of them. Many of the replies have indicated just what they think... "We don't want the ID Card", "Number of The Beast", "What could 4.4Bn of taxpayers money be better spent on?", "Carrying on the Stalinist security state dream", "Creepy".

The German government insists that ID fingerprinting will not be compulsory when the new electronic ID cards are introduced in 2010 after widespread criticism and controversy over the originally planned compulsory need for it. Presently there are quite widely differing schemes in use or in the process of implementation throughout the EU. Spanish plans are to have its ID cards associated with a central database in which full biometric data of all citizens, including fingerprints, are stored. In Britain there are, rightly, grave misgivings over the use of a central database.

Airport operators have written an open letter of complaint to the Home Secretary about plans to issue some 200,000 airport workers with ID cards. They maintain that they will have no tangible advantage. The cost of implementing the scheme is reckoned to be more than £4 billion. The authors make the contention that in proposing this scheme the “UK aviation industry is being used for political purposes on a project which has questionable public support”.

With ministers wanting to relax elements of the Data Protection Act in order to cross match our personal data from different sources, there has come serious concern that the end result could be very misleading and dangerous. Data held by different bodies is collected specifically for an individual purpose and if government were to try and assemble it from lots of disparate sources in an attempt to create a more comprehensive picture of us, that assembled picture could be rather like making up a jigsaw and joining the wrong pieces together. With trust in government’s ability to handle data securely currently at an all time low, any attempt to trust it with data from multiple sources is quite frightening.

ID cards chief, James Hall, has admitted that the ID cards database will not be secure. Following a plethora of secure data breaches over the last year, Hall suggests that we should be concerned about the security of our personal data held by government. His statement that the IPS’ scheme will, however, be robust and secure, holds little credence.

Following Transport for London’s requirement that children using the network must carry Oyster Photocards serious questions have been raised about the amount of information TfL is gathering on its younger customers. Parents and the Information Commissioner have asked TfL why it is doing this. Of course, if you want to ensure your child’s privacy while travelling in London, make sure they pay cash, that way they will be issued with a standard anonymous Oyster card.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Saturday 5 July 2008


Latest from NO2ID


A peaceful protest resulted in the arrest of nine NO2ID campaigners at an invitation-only Home Office public consultation recently on ID cards. This is yet another kick in the face for freedom of speech and the ability of law-abiding citizens to raise valid questions about government policy. Those arrested included a mother with her 4-year-old child and a retired academic, hardly security threat material unless you consider any criticism of government policy as a security threat, which this government obviously does. If an honest opportunity, such as this so-called public consultation, is being made unavailable to those who are worried about compulsory identity cards and the setting up of a vast nationwide database of all citizens, then the only recourse left to us is that of non-compliance in governments plans and that is a course of action we MUST take. But how many will just acquiesce using the weak excuse of ‘I have nothing to hide’ as their defence? With that attitude you have everything to lose!

Government ID Card propaganda in Austria matches the euphorics displayed by the people of that country at the time of Hitler’s Anschluss. Their advertising banner shows people jumping for joy and almost wetting themselves in anticipation of their ID scheme with the slogan ‘get yourself activated’. I hope that Austrian citizens behave rather differently in reality and tell the government where to stuff their ID scheme, otherwise, in reflection of those events in 1938, we could justifiably ask the question ‘has nothing being learned?’

Meanwhile in Britain the slogan ‘Everyone’s Unique’ is being used to sell the same iniquitous scheme. Let’s hope everyone is collectively unique in turning their backs on this shameful legislation.

The National Health Service is considering opening up the availabilty of patients’ healthcare records to a much wider audience outside of the NHS itself. This could include social care bodies, voluntary and private sector organisations, pharmacy, dental and optical services - in fact almost everybody. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if the government issued us all with sandwich boards listing all of our vital statistics and have us wear them every time we went out on the streets?

A fast track scheme for ‘trusted travellers’ is to be instigated by the Home Office for those who travel regularly between the US and the UK. Fingerprint and facial recognition technology would be employed to prevent regular business travellers from having to queue in airport terminals

Although the Scottish government has made it clear that it does not intend to use ID cards, having one will make life a lot less difficult for many and it is predicted that by 2011 many in Scotland will use the card as their main form of identification - so that’s as good as making it compulsory!

The FBI’s The National Security Analysis Center (NSAC) has been denied an $11 million appropriation by the US House Science and Technology Committee to continue to work on a massive database of the government's records of nearly all American citizens. This STASI-like database was to have been used to predict would-be ‘terrorists’ without any more than a ‘hunch-like’ reason, eliminating any hope of due process by those who be might implicated thus. I’m sure this is only a temporary set back for NWO operatives and if the scheme isn’t taking place under cover elsewhere it will probably rear into existence in some other form before long.

The Mod and HMRC have been highly criticised for their recent data losses by the Information Comissioner’s Office. This will undoubtedly open the doors for placing every local and central government officer under Orwellian control.

According to an article in The Economist British citizens seem largely happy to trade in their freedoms and liberties. Large numbers of organisations seem to be following the government’s lead in using technology to do their own surveillance, whipped up by a constant barrage of news stories and statistics that impound terror, crime and fraud threats, and the public at large seem prepared to accept these largely contrived stories and willingly allow a surveillance grid grow up around them. I wonder if they will still be happy with this arrangement when these same organisations pinpoint them as a threat?

Here's what The Economist found: