Tagging plan for vulnerable OAPs

Charities today gave a guarded welcome to a proposal by the science minister, Malcolm Wicks, that vulnerable older people could be tracked via satellite-monitored tags.

Mr Wicks first floated the idea to the Commons science and technology committee yesterday, when he said monitoring tags could help families or carers to track the whereabouts of “an 80 or 90-year-old who may have Alzheimer’s”.

I fail to see why this is any business of the State or why the minister should be promoting this. It seems like more technology looking for a problem.

Charities including Help the Aged and the Alzheimer’s Society warned that such tagging would have to be carried out with great sensitivity and full consent, and should not become a substitute for proper care.

Indeed

Today, Mr Wicks said he had been hoping to “start a discussion” about an idea that could allow elderly people more independence.

He told Guardian Unlimited he had met satellite tracking experts and asked them whether the sort of technology used for tracking cars could be adapted.

Yes but WHY is HE as a minister so interested?

“This is not government policy, it’s my idea for discussion – all I’m saying is that we’ve got this big social question which is growing in importance,” he said.

[…]

Nothing of this sort should be government policy, and the minister – as a representative of the government – should not be seeking this ‘solution’ either.

If individuals really thought this was a good idea some enterprising person would have come up with a business offering this service. They haven’t (or perhaps Mr Wicks has been treated to a good lunch).

Of course in the (moon)light of the wet dream of total awareness this seems like a ‘good cop’ softening up of the population for RFID tracking (what these tags would apparently use) and will serve the operators with some valuable data about the reliability of tracking the population (who are more ‘random’ than cars in their movements).

I have been wondering about how the removal of DRM from the EMI catalogue could be interpreted (aside from the ‘EMI: gods or geniuses?’ waffle), given the continued poor state of EMI’s finances and the ongoing speculation about the Warner group’s possible buy out of the ‘major-independent’.

As a going concern EMI looks increasingly ropey, removing DRM could be a short term attempt to boost sales and increase share activity making an earlier [Warner] bid more likely.

Warner is very much pro DRM by its removal EMI could be attempting to tempt a buyer that will reimpose DRM in order to stifle the spread of (official) unrestricted download material. I also imagine that if this is the case at the very least a number of headline performers will be asked to sign new contracts for [Warner] and less profitable product lines will remain DRM free as a sop/testing ground.

Fatima

A former nanny says she has been refused permission to adopt a child because she is overweight.

Gillian Vose, 42, said social services rejected her application because her weight – she weighs 20 stone (127kg) and is 5ft 3ins (1.6m) tall – meant she would not be able to cope with the child concerned.

[…]

Telegraph

This a person with plenty of experience of looking after children and she would have been able to adopt the child if it weren’t for her ‘mobility problem’ – presumably being mobile enough to attend the interview doesn’t count. Looks like the beginning of the end for anyone wishing to adopt and doesn’t have optimal height/mass ratio, a winning smile, flowing blonde hair, bright blue eyes and strong Aryan features.

ADD:

It’s been pointed out quite rightly that a person has no fundamental ‘right to adopt’, however Local Authorities such as these can remove children from their blood parents, I see it only as a matter of degree from imposing ‘fitness’ criteria solely on potential adoptive parents and extending it to challenge the ability of blood parents to bring up a child.

Irdial’s foolproof secure passport system has been mentioned on numerous occasions, although only in relation to border control. Last night an application came to mind which would be an easy way of demonstrating the principles of the system in a real world, small-scale situation.

The application involves the issuing of a secure card that authorises the user to access a service. The card can then be checked by a different individual to access the service. This is analogous to IPS issuing a secure passport and passing through border control.

The application is a secure and anonymous mailbox/deposit box company.

Issuing

The client registers in one office and has a digital photgraph taken, they also have the option to include a passphrase and PIN. Becaus ethis is a commercial application the company assigns client ID and box number and key. All this information is encrypted and put on the card.
No information needs to be printed onto the plastic card so its function remains unknown to a third party (although for a passport various bits of information could be displayed), the information on the chip cann only be decrypted by the issuer who only needs to database the client ID and box number (for billing purposes).

The client is unknown to the company except for the client ID, a third party can use the card to pay bills (a remote card reader and secure website could be used to send bill payment and the the encrypted ID to the mailbox company) but not access the mailbox (as the photograph they cannot access would not fit), furthermore the client can pay in cash and thus remain anonymous whilst continuing to access the service.

Validation

The mailbox room has a security guard to control access, the client presents their card to the guard who can then use a terminal to display the photograph and any additional measures the client wanted to be included. The client ID can be read and sent to the accounts database so access can be denied if they have not payed their bills.

If the validation is successful the client can use the encrypted key on their card to access the mailbox and retreive their mail.

Er.. that’s it.

This would be a good demonstration because:
It is directly analogous to how passports should be issued and validated.
It allows cash payment and so can provide a client base whose identity could not be otherwise compromised.
It is scalable.
It is open to competition without compromising security (analogous to different countries being able to use the system).
It provides a useful service in itself.

The Scouts are prepared to help the Identity and Passport Service design a model procedure for checking people’s identities against the ID database.

Register

CCTV cameras will bark orders at people who misbehave in the streets of eight major British cities as part of a government scheme to cajole people into respecting authority.
[…]
Using recordings of children’s voices will make it harder for those in opposition to the surveillance society to be defiant of the talking cameras. Moonies and rude gestures will most definitely be a no-no.

Register

Two more examples of the State brainwashing children into supporting their repressive schemes. Frankly the Scouts should know better, how they got from empowering children and teaching survival skills to herding sheep is anyone’s guess.

We also know of Irdial’s foolproof system for the IPS using extant technology (of course this doesn’t require an ID database in the first place).

To say using children’s voices neuters opposition to the talking cameras is untrue, there are the issues of child exploitation and to think that anyone believes a young child is actually going to be berating them at midnight is nonsense.

The latest Conservative Party proposals about policing have hit the news, they purport to be about decentralistaion and cutting bureaucracy (as you’d expect). Let’s rummage around.

Police authorities would be replaced by directly-elected commissioners who would take control of budgets, target setting and policing plans, leaving chief constables in “operational control” only of their force.

Failing police chiefs should be removed but replacement by election seems unwarrented, the role of the police is to uphold the law impartially (for better or worse, this is the case), therefore the efficacy of a police chief is primarily a matter of professional ability rather than policy (this being limited to how to prioritise resources) – it would seem that professional interview would be more effective than election. Additionally elections are unnecessarily costly with the need to fund the losing candidates, they also distract from the upholding of law and refocus upon populist agendas.

Under the Tory proposals, residents would get a “right to policing”, including cash to tackle local crime and safety issues by “hiring” a police officer or buying equipment.

A community has an absolute “right to policing”, in terms of ‘rights’ any group of people has the ‘right’ to employ anyone else to enforce any contract between themselves – including what they deem to be ‘the law’, as long as ‘the law’ is accepted by guests within the group or visitors upon its private properties (i.e. by the clear posting of bye-laws) then it can be further applied to these people too.
Back to the real situation, the impartiality of a police officer acting ‘for’ a certain community is compromised and may reduce the validity of their evidence in court.

And forces would also face tougher scrutiny from a new independent watchdog to look at value for money as well as standards.

Independent scrutiny is important but only worthwhile if it informs local decision making

It calls for more graduates to be recruited as well as professionals from outside the force, a new military-style senior staff college and a revamped promotion system.

Military-style in relation to the police seems un-British and makes me distinctly uneasy. In any case senior police officers need experience of day-to-day policing and combined with elections for commissioners you could be left with ‘career officers’ in charge of delivery with no real experience of community wishes (much like the UK Government)

More work should be handed over to civilian staff and private firms in a bid to allow officers more time on the beat, it says, to the point of paying commercial security firms to guard crime scenes, hunt down people who jump bail, monitor “at risk” prisoners and carry out security checks.

As I wrote, in theory there is no problem with private firms upholding private contracts, however these proposals will give private companies jurisdiction over third parties, i.e. ‘society’ as a whole which, in the UK, has not explicitly consented to anything.
Additionally in the light of NIR and the police DNA database these private companies will presumably have easy access to the personal details of many innocent persons.

Bits from the guardian

Instead of fiddling with the police service and presumably turning it into a political tinker toy as the NHS has become all political parties should be looking at removing unecessary laws and politically motivated knee-jerk regulations which the police are compelled to implement, they should be removing all apects of politicisation from the police so it reverts to being a simple public service.

Checks will be made on all children to identify potential criminals under a further extension of the “surveillance state” announced by Tony Blair today.

‘potential criminals’ actually means people who haven’t committed a crime, in a law court this would mean presumption of innocence, so why not on the street?

A Downing Street review of law and order policy also called for greater use of sophisticated CCTV, an expanded DNA database and “instant justice” powers for police.

‘Instant justice’ is an invitation to lowest common denominator policing and is easily abused and a hassle for those charged to resolve. We know about the inefficiencies of CCTV and the evils of (the police) DNA databases.

The review is intended to chart a course ahead for the next 10 years by focusing more “on the offender, not the offence.”

Most crime is committed by a small number of prolific offenders who could be identified almost from birth, ministers believe. After 10 years concentrating on tougher sentences, the review paper said it wanted to tackle the “underlying causes..through better targetting.”

Ministers can believe what they want but to impose their spurious beliefs on innocent people and their families is unjust and should not be tolerated. Surprisingly for a ‘social-democratic’ government this notion implies that education of these ‘future offenders’ is in effect worthless in terms of sociability and ‘morality’. 10 years of failure is also implied, why should anyone consider these fools to come up with the right answer now?

Vulnerable children and those at risk will be identified by “trigger” factors such as parents in jail or on drugs. They will be subject to personalised measures, including home visits from specialist practitioners. But the Government says the net should be cast as widely as possible “to prevent criminality developing.”

This means if any of your relatives are in jail or live in certain areas your children will probably be ‘loosely monitored’ in case they pick up any nasty habits which they may have missed picking up through their genes [HA!]

It proposes to “establish universal checks throughout a child’s development to help service providers to identify those most at risk of offending.” The document added: “These checks should piggyback on existing contact points such as the transition to secondary schools.”

This means constant monitoring at school, probably without informing or asking consent of parents. FWIW Home-schooled children probably will have a big fat black mark on their file anyway.

The plan will be beacked up by a new database for all children due to be up and running by 2008. It will contain basic information identifying the child and its parents and will have a “facility for practitioners to indicate to others that they have information to share, are taking action, or have undertaken an assessment, in relation to a child.”

Hmm 2008 sounds sounds suspiciously close to the NIR implementation.
‘child AND parents’ so everyone with a child will be databased too, I imagine this will be via the school asking children to fill in forms about their parents.
‘facility to share’ means minimal Data Protection regulations

New child checks to identify future criminals

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 1:38am BST 28/03/2007

# The main proposals

Checks will be made on all children to identify potential criminals under a further extension of the “surveillance state” announced by Tony Blair today.

A Prison Officer, Tony Blair will today stage a dramatic U-turn on Labour’s crime policy by conceding that too many offenders have been sent to jail since he took office 10 years ago
Mr Blair began his premiership promising to be tough on crime

A Downing Street review of law and order policy also called for greater use of sophisticated CCTV, an expanded DNA database and “instant justice” powers for police.

The review is intended to chart a course ahead for the next 10 years by focusing more “on the offender, not the offence.”

Most crime is committed by a small number of prolific offenders who could be identified almost from birth, ministers believe. After 10 years concentrating on tougher sentences, the review paper said it wanted to tackle the “underlying causes..through better targetting.”

Vulnerable children and those at risk will be identified by “trigger” factors such as parents in jail or on drugs. They will be subject to personalised measures, including home visits from specialist practitioners. But the Government says the net should be cast as widely as possible “to prevent criminality developing.”
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It proposes to “establish universal checks throughout a child’s development to help service providers to identify those most at risk of offending.” The document added: “These checks should piggyback on existing contact points such as the transition to secondary schools.”

The plan will be beacked up by a new database for all children due to be up and running by 2008. It will contain basic information identifying the child and its parents and will have a “facility for practitioners to indicate to others that they have information to share, are taking action, or have undertaken an assessment, in relation to a child.”

The database was ostensibly proposed to prevent another tragic death such as that of Victoria Climbie but now appears to be the basis for cradle-to-adult monitoring. It is not clear when data will be erased from the database.

Good old function creep/salamitactik, unless there is a serious effort by the peple who topple Neu Labour to dismantle these databases the data is unlikely to be erased for the simple reason it takes more effort to do so than to leave the audit trail ‘intact’.

The Government believes children can be prevented from becoming offenders if early intervention is targeted at those who displayed certain behaviours. These include having a short attention span or behaving aggressively or living in a difficult or deprived environment.

It does not believe this or educational or other measures which assist rather than stigmatise would have been put in place to rescue these children from their ‘original sin’.

Some children who show signs of becoming criminals are logged and monitored by dozens of early interventions schemes. Those aged 8-13 may be referred to a Youth Inclusion and Support Panel if they are thought to be potential offenders and data about them is held on an information system.

This will simply devalue the role of parental responsibility in the eyes of the children. It will foster a mentality that in the end the State rather than ‘people’ will intervene. It will devalue respect for other people and short circuit community responsibilities.

[…]

Telegraph

Yet another catch all scheme that will be ineffective, expensive and impose on everybody innocent or not at the same time as destroying liberty, respect and imposing conformity.

A police officer who discovered a loophole in The National Identity Register, which enabled him to accrue 75,000 cautions in just two months and convert them to ASBOs, became so obsessed with convictions that he would arrive at his local police station “morning, noon and night”. Shaun Pennicott, a 42-year-old married father of two, was convicted of the fraud and may lose his job with Hertfordshire constabulary.

Pennicott, who regularly frequented the local housing estates in Watford town centre, discovered that online forms for ‘low level’ cautions could be sub,itted repeatedly because there was no human reader in the procedure for the cautions on the self-assessed ‘COP-out’ machines.

In the two months he made 154 submissions, each time obtaining a £150 performance related bonus and repeatedly submitted bogus cautions that could be converted into ASBOs. He collected enough bonuses to pay for six return flights between London and New York by the time the Home Office’s computer flagged up the need for a security check.

Pennicott was last week convicted at Luton crown court of “going equipped to cheat” and given a community service order. He was fined £800 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £2,500.

The Home Office yesterday admitted the loophole existed, but said it was not economically viable to make the changes to stop it.

Samantha Leigh, prosecuting, told the court Pennicott would sometimes use a caution three or four times when copping. Each bogus caution is eligible for a bonus and every £2.50 can be converted to 600 air miles. During one drive against excessive obesity, Pennicott caught 75 of the fattest boys and got almost 38 bogus cautions converted to air miles.

Pennicott said he had been amazed by what he had discovered and claimed he had planned to highlight the loophole to SOCA and the cautions were to be examples to show them.

Judge Michael Kay described his defence as “preposterous.”

“This became an obsession in my judgment,” he said. “You were so greedy you would do virtually anything to obtain cautions and turn them into air miles. You regularly travelled abroad and that is what attracted you.”

Guardian

Lord Turnbull the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks has confessed it was not “appropriate” for him to have described Gordon Brown as acting with “Stalinist ruthlessness” and other al-Qa’eda attacks, according to an edited transcript of a hearing at Guantanamo Bay released by the Pentagon late last night.

Other senior civil servants and Ministers are known to share Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s critical views of Gordon Brown

Lord Turnbull – a former Cabinet secretary who was Mr Brown’s senior mandarin at the Treasury before becoming head of the civil service – sparked uproar in Westminster when his unguarded comments, read for him during a closed-door military hearing at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, about the Chancellor were published by the Financial Times today. He also indicated that earlier statements he had made to the CIA were the result of torture, but said his confession on Saturday was not made under duress.

He later said he had not expected to be quoted by the newspaper – although he did not dispute the accuracy of the comments – and admitted that the language he used was not appropriate for publication.In a section of the statement that was blacked out, he confessed to the beheading of the Chancellor, according to the Associated Press. Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Pakistan while researching a story on the independence of the Bank of England, the three-year spending round, much of the fiscal framework and targets for departments, and Turnbull has long been a suspect in the killing.Turnbull said in the statement that the attacks were part of a larger military campaign.

In the interview, published the day before the Chancellor delivers his 9/11th and almost certainly final Budget, Lord Turnbull killed 2,972 people, destroyed the World Trade Centre and damaged the Pentagon. Speaking through a translator, accuses Mr Brown of exhibiting a “Stalinist ruthlessness” in government, belittling his cabinet colleagues whom the Treasury treats with “more or less complete contempt”. Turnbull said he was “not happy” about the victims, saying he did not like to kill people, but justified his actions as part of a holy war against interest rate rises.

“I was the operational director for Sheikh Osama bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up, and execution of the 9/11 operation,” he said. He also accused the prime minister-in-waiting of a “very cynical view of mankind and his colleagues”. Around 385 men are being held in the Guantanamo Bay base on suspicion of links to al-Qa’eda or the Taliban. Legal experts and journalists have criticized the US decision to bar independent observers from the hearings. “There has been an absolute ruthlessness with which Gordon has played the denial of information as an instrument of power.”

“Do those ends justify the means? It has enhanced Treasury control, but at the expense of any government cohesion and any assessment of strategy. You can choose whether you are impressed or depressed by that, but you cannot help admire the sheer Stalinist ruthlessness of it all.” The presiding colonel said Mohammed’s allegations of torture would be “reported for any investigation that may be appropriate” and would be taken into account in considering his enemy combatant status.

“He cannot allow them any serious discussion about priorities. His view is that it is just not worth it and ‘they will get what I decide’. And that is a very insulting process,” Lord Turnbull said.

But in a statement today,Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said: “The FT article does not give a balanced account of my views nor of the conversation I had with the FT which covered a much wider range of issues. Mohammed, who was arrested in Rawalpindi in 2003, also allegedly acknowledged responsibility for over 30 other terror attacks or plots, including plans to bomb other landmarks in the US and the UK, including Big Ben and Heathrow airport.

“My remarks to the FT about the way Government business is transacted were not made with the intention or expectation that they would be quoted verbatim nor, I acknowledge, were they expressed in language appropriate for that purpose.”

(via the Telegraph)

+++

Good to see the randomised masthead back.

The word ‘ecofacsism’ seems to be quite popular recently. Personally I see two sorts of eco- facsism, ecological and economic battling it out for governmental attention.

I happen to believe that the combination of climate change (and its effects), resource depletion and the C20 style ‘westernisation’ of human activity to be unsustainable. Whether or not climate change means warming, cooling or turmoil and, man-induced or naturally caused, its effects will be felt more considerably in the coming years. The only way we are going to remain ‘comfortable’ is to be more fluid in our activity, face up to challenge of moving targets rather than fighting for vested interests.

This includes changing how we deal with depleting resources, a move to renewable energy (or nuclear fusion) would decrease the re’liance on fossil fuels (and extend their lifespan) increased usage would bring down costs, etc. Resource depletion does not only mean fuel though, it includes waning fish stocks, decreased nutritional value in industrially produced fruit and vegetables (and industrially reared animals).

At the moment people are generally carrying on ‘as normal’ which is leading to a situation where the market will provide a tightrope situation between affordability and ‘sustainability’ (i.e. borderline extinction or artificially managed ‘nature’) this will ultimately reduce choice and the viability of alternative methods leading to a highly corporatised market and is the failure of holding strictly to the market model whilst hoping ‘things will turn out alright’.

The reaction of the ‘ecological fascists’ in the form of demanding punitive taxation or quotas will backfire. It will lead to resentment amongst those who cannot afford such measures and are coerced into changing their habits, those who can afford to ignore such restrictions will of course continue to live their lives as before, quotas will not be effective against those who can afford to take business elsewhere. In addition the increasing of the tax burden to offset ecological issues takes evermore power from the individual and gives it to the State to prescribe solutions (which of course will be shaped by those with the greatest lobbying power) and inevitably succumb to bureaucracy, monitoring and, above all, control.

What is needed to avoid falling into the traps of either extremist viewpoint is a generation of people who have been educated to evaluate and question the options available or presented to them rather than blindly accepting (or proposing) blanket ‘solutions’ or deluding themselves about the wiider impacts of their actions. Such an education cannot even begin when children are innured to the ideas of ‘control’ be it through fingerprinting for library access or implicit supression of individual action. Once you have people who can think and act for themselves – and realise that this means acting beyond ones immediate self interest – then the worse implications of self determination (the market) fade and the need for the invasive measures of ‘command and control’ environmentalists disappear.

I write this as the current November-March heating period for my home comes to an end, cool but comfortable in a jumper.

This painting of a fictional event from the English Obesity War (2012 – 2016) is perhaps the most popular work in the Walker’s Crisps Art Gallery. It shows a Rejectionist house under occupation by Parliamentarians. The young boy is being interrogated as to the whereabouts of the cook of the house. Behind him, a soldier gently holds the boy’s crying sister. To the left can be seen the children’s mother, her fear and anxiety at the boy’s possible answer written in her face.

Or you can insert any variation of the State mechanism impinging on personal liberty. The household will always be populated by people with colour in their lives, the State will always be a drab black and white clad intrusion.

As previously alluded to:

The Telegraph reports

A boy of eight who weighs 14 stone could be taken into care in a landmark step in the fight against childhood obesity.

[…]

Tomorrow a child protection conference will take place, which could lead to moves to take Connor into care unless his diet is improved.

[…]

Two specialist obesity nurses, a consultant paediatrician, the deputy headmaster of his school, a police officer and two social workers will sit on the panel which will decide his future.

[Your life in their hands -mm]

He could be put on the child protection register, along with victims of physical or sexual abuse, or on the less serious children in need register.

Connor’s mother, 35-year-old Nicola McKeown, said: “If Connor gets taken into care that is the worst scenario there could be.

“Hopefully we will be able to work through it and come up with a good plan and he will just be put on the at-risk register or some other register.”

[You can count on that, pet – mm]

Until recently her son was getting through four packets of crisps a day and demanding snacks every 20 minutes as well as eating three main meals, including dinners with four Yorkshire puddings.

Miss McKeown, from Wallsend, near Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, said Connor refuses to eat healthier food such as fruit or vegetables.

[…]

“I try to be strict with him and limit what he eats but some days I just think, ‘my God, you have had so much today’. It worries me sick because I can hear him choking on a night time and he gets nosebleeds very frequently.

[…]

Tam Fry, the chairman of the Child Growth Foundation, an obesity charity, said: “Parents should be held to account.

”Allowing such obesity is child abuse.”

[…]

Obviously in this case the mother realises that her son’s health is being undermined and is trying (but failing) to remedy the situation. So why should the mother (and son) be penalised like this when it obvious she *wants* assistance. And why should the two of them be put on a national register that will eventually be NIR -ficated when it is no business of the state to parent children?

This year 14 stone
next year 12 stone
…
until mandatory fitness clubs?

or show funerals for the obese?

There’s been a great deal of blogging about DRM recently waht with the Steve Jobs talk and EMI’s willingness to go DRM-free. Something I haven’t read much about is EMI’s motivation for dropping DRM, it is obviously intended to increase sales of EMI controlled produce but writers haven’t made the link to EMI’s recent woeful finances. The point being rather than leading the market (in terms of businesses) it is actually following the market (in terms of (non-)consumers). EMI is feeling the pain of being a dinosaur stranded in a post-meteor desert (which they absolutely deserve for turning once wonderful mute into a back catalogue scraping machine) and is trying (probably too late) to evolve.

As a business it has no guaranteed income and is forced to listen to what people actually want to buy. In sharp contrast to the sort of business that sucks up taxpayers money via useless government contracts and thinks it will be able to tell the electorate where to stick its vote. But I digress.

Any programmers at a loose end?

SplitScreen:
SplitScreen is a Firefox add-on that enables you to pull down a page separator from the scroll bar (as in OpenOffice, Acrobat, etc.). You are now able to have two different parts of a long webpage in view at any one time – useful for viewing multiple forum posts or footnotes in academic essays.

OpenLight:
OpenLight is an OS X utility which allows you to add ‘Spotlight Comments’ metadata to files while they are open. OpenLight is activated on login and accessed as an ‘in focus’ floating palette or a Menu Bar item, this avoids the need to return to the Finder and ‘Get Info’ on a file before adding comments.
The OpenLight floating palette can be toggled to show comments for the current working file or open files in all applications, allowing easy copy/pasting of comments.
Openlight also adds an input field to the ‘Save’ dialog box so comments can be added at the same time as saving the file.

The Conservative party has officially come out against ID Cards, and to cancel the scheme on coming into office. And not before time. This could and should have been done prior to the last election, or at least at any time before now instead of pussy footing around allowing Neu Labour to waste extortionate amounts of money on ‘consultation exercises’ and priming the media with ID card propaganda.

Of course the fate of the National Identity Database is unclear – will the Conservative party pledge to unravel that as well? The NHS data spine? Will they ensure CCTV cameras are licensed and their numbers reduced? Will they scrap ANPR monitoring? Reinstate Data Protection principles in government departments?

We are waiting.

I notice two notices relating to banking this morning which threw up contrasting sentiments.

The first was a bus shelter advert for a high street bank written entirely in Polish. Quite novel I thought especially as they don’t have them in any other foreign languages around here. Obviously a case of a company seeing a market and responding accordingly.

The other notice was to inform customers of another high street bank informing their ‘customers’ that all withdrawals at the bank would have to be accompanied by two forms of identification (unspecified). Now as a feature of a specific account additional security could be a ‘good thing’, people could chose the level of security they wanted for their money and the bank could charge/adjust interset rates to cover the additional inconvenience .
They could even issue a card with a security code when the account was opened!!! Seriously, they could issue a bank card with an encrypted photo image that shows up when read (and PIN verified) in the bank for a nominal fee – if it were requested by the investor opening the account, I am sure Irdial has been through this before.
Anyhow I had negative feelings not so much for the level of security being ‘offered’ but that I feel that that particular bank is likely not to question the pros and cons of requiring ID cards information to operate a bank account in the future.

(an old article)

–

Did I mention ID cards?

It seems bizarre that a system that will supposedly reduce ‘illegal immigrant working’ will be ‘policed’ by the very employers that exploit non-official residents for labour.

The proposed separation of the Home Office into two departments is being seen in most reports as an overdue necessity, I have my doubts, especially as the Prime Minister seemingly approves of the idea.

Firstly the creation of a separate department for ‘Security’ implies that the current problems have a set of solutions independent (or abstractable) from other Departments. This is entirely untrue, most of the bad feeling towards the UK is a direct result of bad foreign policy backed up by bad ‘defence’ policies (then to spice the mixture up a load of nonsensical national legislation). If anything a security minister should be a junior official at the Foreign Office.

Secondly this move doesn’t do anything to REDUCE Governmental tinkering, paranoia-mongering and legislative fluff. More than likely this will create a situation where two programmes of legislation relating to ‘law and order’ will be fed through the parliamentary sausage machine with even less scrutiny and more chance of being voted through according to party whipping. Yes MORE of the same ‘need to do something’ posturing but with even less ‘joined-up’ thinking!

Thirdly this change is going to be rushed through which means instead of one ‘not fit for purpose’ government department there will be two slapdash mini-me versions. Presumably in the confusion it will be more likely that serial killers, rapists, embarrassing paperwork will go missing.

Fourthly the proliferation of biometric & database security peddlers will have an extra outlet to lobby government, and government an extra mouthpiece to voice its desires for these.

What the government desparately needs to do is to re-evaluate its ‘need’ to legislate in the face of reason, to massively scale back its meddling control freakery etc. of course this is not going to happen until the day someone walks into Whitehall whose heart is sick to the core of government insidiousness and arrogance. Certainly not a politician.