It is over for ID cards and the NIR

November 27th, 2007

Anyone with any doubts about just how ‘over’ the NIR and ID cards are should have those doubts washed away by this, from the Times:

[…]

Ms Smith had many inquisitors. The first was the senior Labour MP Keith Vaz, who is deeply oily but that makes it all the more slippery when he asks a good question. After the events of last week, he demanded, was she planning to look again at how to protect ID scheme data. As his words oozed over us, like treacle over sponge, Ms Smith just sat there. She did not jump up, eager to inform. Instead she looked over at her Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne. He popped up and trumpeted: “The House will know that, where there are lessons to be learnt from last week’s events at HMRC, then it is right that we learn them.”

This was clearly nonsense. Ms Smith nodded away earnestly. Why? Could this really be the Home Secretary? Was she in charge? Perhaps we should check her biometric data just to make sure. David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, knows exactly who he is. He is her tormentor. He can smell weakness but he asked a simple enough question. “If the Government gives away your bank account details, that is a disaster but you can change your bank account,” he noted. “What precisely do you do if the Government gives away your biometric details?”

Here was another chance for Ms Smith to tell us of her strategy or, at least, to pretend to have one. Instead she said: “Biometrics will link a person securely and reliably to his or her unique identity.”

No one looked reassured. I cannot think why: surely the news that our biometrics can link us to ourselves can only be good, but Ms Smith, or her impostor, struggled on, to loud barks of laughter. “The current plan for the national identity register is that biometric information would be held separately from biographical information, thereby safeguarding against the sort of eventuality that you are talking about.”

Mr Davis, looking like a shark who had just had a tasty snack, asked her about a European information-sharing scheme called Project Stork. “How are we going to prevent a repetition of the disaster of the last few weeks when sensitive personal data is held not by one government but by 27?” Ms Smith looked flummoxed. I don’t think she knew about Project Stork. Again, this was worrying. Wouldn’t a real Home Secretary have a clue about this?

[…]

Yes indeed; it looks like the computer illiterates in the House of Commons have all suddenly woken up to what biometrics really mean, and it has happened because either they or someone they know has been violated; so large was the recent violation that there is no way that a single member of the house was not affected.

Absolutely Brilliant. You could not have designed a better demonstration of how the NIR and ID cards are dangerous.

Members of the house are now speaking like we and the many others against this madness have been speaking for years. It is now well and truly OVER.

Now we hear about ‘Project Stork‘; so many words and images come to mind. But I will defer.

Fears over pan-EU electronic identity network
By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor

New concerns have been raised over the Government’s multi-billion-pound ID project as it emerged that Britain’s identity database could be shared with 26 other European Union countries.

The Home Office is taking part in a scheme, codenamed Stork, which aims to make all EU electronic identity networks ”inter-operable” within three years..

Michael Wills, the data protection minister, yesterday conceded that the ”deplorable” loss of 25 million records had implications for the ID card scheme.

“We are going to obviously have to look at the national identity register in the light of all this,” he told Parliament’s joint human rights committee.

”We are going to have to learn the lessons. Everything will have to be scrutinised and then we will assess it again.”

However, Mr Wills said this did not mean the ID scheme – due to start next year for foreign nationals – would be scrapped

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/27/nidcards127.xml

There cannot be anyone now, thanks to the DVDR fiasco that does not instantly understand the full implications of this. Everyone in the UK now has first hand, intimate knowledge of what this means; it means that your personal information will no longer be personal, it will be sown to the wind and spread to every corner of the globe. It will be a violation without precedent, even WORSE than the violation of the DVDR release, since, as Rt HON Vaz points out, you can change your address and bank account but you cannot change your face or fingerprints and once they are out there, they are out there forever.

The question everyone is now asking; do I want my face, fingerprints, address, date of birth and all of the other pieces of information the NIR will collect on me in the hands of, say, the Germans?

The answer, from Land’s End to John o’Groats is a resounding ‘NO’.

Anyone who signs up for ID cards now is totally insane, or has been living under a rock for the last two weeks. There is nothing you can do about your data being in the DVDR release, but there is everything you can do about staying off of the NIR / ID card database.

All you have to do is refuse to comply, and your data will never enter that system. If enough people refuse, the whole scheme will become unworkable and collapse.

There is a problem however, with passports. Something needs to be done about the new generation passports and accompanying database and the poor sheeple that have applied and been issued with them. They are all going to need to be recalled as too dangerous to be used. They then need to be replaced with ISLAND (Intrinsically Secure Legally Acquired Named Document) Passports.

As you know, the ISLAND Passport system allows you to be issued with a secure document that does not depend on a centralized database for verification and does not violate your rights by assigning a unique number to you.

It is entirely possible to reduce the amount of passport fraud without rolling out an Orwellian surveillance system.

But you know this!

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