A NATIONAL identity card scheme will be a “present” to terrorists, criminal gangs and foreign spies, one of Britain’s most respected former intelligence agents has told ministers.

[…]

Baroness Park, who was made a peer by Margaret Thatcher, passed a withering verdict on the proposed cards, ridiculing ministers’ suggestions that the system will make people safer. In fact, she said, the complete opposite is true.

“The very creation of such an enormous national identity register will be a present to terrorists; it will be a splendid thing for them to disrupt and blow up [!!!-mm],” she said.

“It will also provide valuable information to organised crime and to the intelligence services of unfriendly countries. It will be accessible to all of these,” she said.

[via bribery and database cracking, but of course peoples lives will be disrupted by ‘functionally fit’ false ID without the need for accurate NIR information – because some companies or institutions will accept the cards at face value]

The warning about the risk of foreign spying comes at a time when MI5, the domestic security service, has cut its counter-espionage budget, prompting concerns among MPs who oversee the UK intelligence services.

Baroness Park concluded: “I find it extraordinarily difficult to believe why anyone would voluntarily and enthusiastically come forward and say: ‘Do let me join this dangerous club’.”

Baroness Park is not the first former intelligence officer to question the value of a national ID card. Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, last year said she did not believe the cards would make Britain any safer from terrorist attack; they would quickly be copied, she said.

Whereas Dame Stella’s background was in combating internal threats, especially the IRA, Baroness Park has extensive experience of foreign intelligence operations.

[…]

From The Scotsman

–

In other news another government IT project has failed it – but this time due to ‘user non-compliance’, ;

At the meeting, the head of the watchdog, Sir John Bourn, said his report will say the government project had failed to win the “hearts and minds” of the NHS staff required to use it.
The project’s failure to “take the people in the National Health Service with them” meant it had become a “focus of dissension” amongst GPs and consultants.

And of course I mean;

At the meeting, the head of the watchdog, said her report will say the NIR project had failed to win the “hearts and minds” of the public required to register.
The project’s failure to “take in the people of the country” meant it had become a “focus of dissension” amongst Citizens and Residents.

http://30gms.com/index.php?/permalink/beard_moustache_white_trainers/

This is disgusting. I too have a beard, moustache and wear white trainers. My hair was quite a bit longer up until a month or so ago. But I’ve haven’t been stopped recently. Is it because I have white skin and blue eyes?

The irony is that this guy is working on a site for the Home Office that deals directly with this. I wonder how he can go on working on it with a clear conscience after this has happened to him.

Are you familiar with NAIS? Let me give you a little background. The USDA wants to register the GPS coordinates, name, address, phone, and other data on every farm, home, and other location that has even has a single animal, with a government Premise ID. For this privilege of mandatory registration, you will pay a fee of $10 or more, per year. Next, they intend to tag every single one of your animals with a RFID, or other tag. This will be mandatory. In addition to paying an annual fee and paying for tags for all of your animals, you would also be required to log, track, and report all “events,” such as the birth of an animal, death of an animal, animals leaving, or entering your property. All reports must be made within 24 hours, or you could face stiff fines. Do not expect them to keep your private information secure. In a little “Oops,” the USDA just released the social security numbers of 350,000 farmers.

Big producers, like factory farms, get to use a single batch ID for tens of thousands of animals,to keep their costs down. For them, NAIS is a minor bookkeeping entry that gives them big profits in the export markets to Japan and other countries. Small farmers and homesteaders, with their mixed-age flocks and herds, would be required to tag and track every single individual animal. NAIS is great for big corporate producers, and hellish for small farmers and homesteaders. The cost of NAIS in fees, tags, equipment costs, and time will bankrupt small farmers, and overwhelm people who raise their own food animals. In the end, the consumer will pay – NAIS could add almost a thousand dollars a year to the annual food budget for the typical family of four. By destroying small producers, NAIS will kill the Slow Food and the Buy Local movements, as local farmers are driven out of business.

NAIS is already mandatory in some states, starting this year, including Texas and Wisconsin. In other states, like Vermont, the agricultural commissioner and state vet have said they will tag and track every animal, right down to the back yard level. This means everyone, even Granny with her one laying hen, is going to have to get a $10 per year premise ID, a RFID tag for her chicken, and make government reports on its movements. Texas has implemented a $1,000 per incident per day, fine for non-compliance. What small farmer or homesteader can stand up to that kind of fire power? […]

USDA agents can come to your home, and kill all of your livestock, without a warrant or any legal appeal under NAIS. Once you are registered into the mandatory NAIS system, you effectively lose your rights to your own livestock. You become a serf for the state, worse than in Communist Russia. If you do not believe me, then please go to the USDA web site, and read the draft proposal for NAIS, which is already being implemented in stages, without public feedback or scrutiny. Check out the timeline – we all must start fighting it now, before it is too late. Together, we can stop this fascist move to take away our property and livelihoods. We can still protect our traditional rights to farm, if we act now. […]

Justice William O. Douglas,
U.S. Supreme Court (1939-75)
http://www.eco.freedom.org/el/20060301/walterjefferies.shtml

They have some real problems going on over there don’t they?

American’s wont’t accept a state issued national ID card, so the corporations who are set to fleece every sheepish supjecte have arranged to tag every animal in the USA.

Also, since only 23% of people have passports, they can’t pull the same ‘its not compulsory compulsion’ trick that they are trying here; 80% have passports in the UK, and so the ‘sheering point’ is more accessible.

Animal, Man, its all wool right?

What with all the controversy about occult loans to the labour party leading to nominations for peerages it has been suggested by some quarters that there should be consideration of taxpayers fnding political parties (Bliar and Prescott it seems)

This is entirely the wrong solution and if polls are to be believed thankfully 73% of the country are ‘against’ such moves. Although given that 80% didn’t vote for labour politicians at the election Bliar will probably view this as an ‘overwhelming mandate for reform’.

Firstly the current scandal is not that political parties are receiving large, private donations; it is that these loans are being used by the political parties to cover up their funding and for the government to be perceived to be using loans as a tool of patronage – to repeaat in neither case is the act of receiving private funding a problem and it is not this aspect that requires attention.

Secondly political parties are not required for a (true) parliamentary democracy to exist, the fact that independent members and members of very marginal parties have been elected to parliament show that it is not necessary to have the support of a large party to be elected. Of course parties make easier to identify what sort of promises will be broken by each MP and in any case we are talking about funding and not the abolition of politival parties (now!).

Thirdly if by some tragedy tax funding of politics were to be extended many of the activities that political parties currently undertake such as (commissioning think tank) reports and policy studies could be organised ‘independently’ by Select Commitees rather than political parties, that way we could possibly get less partial findings and avoid replication of spending.

Here are just a few Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months.

[…]

http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/FEMAsecretgovt1995.shtml

Michael Geist reports that the Alberta government has proposed legislation that blocks the US Patriot act:

The Alberta government last week introduced Bill 20, which is designed to stop compelled disclosures of personal information under the USA Patriot Act. The bill creates fines of up to $500,000 for violating provincial laws governing disclosure of records. The fines arise for violation of the following provision:

“A person must not wilfully disclose personal information to which this Act applies pursuant to a subpoena, warrant or order issued or made by a court, person or body having no jurisdiction in Alberta to compel the production of information or pursuant to a rule of court that is not binding in Alberta.”

With B.C. and Alberta leading the way on this issue, the pressure for action at the federal level should continue to grow.

The link to the Bill will provide more detail. This current Alberta government is interesting as it has always had a perplexing stance on privacy laws. While it writes bills to improve privacy and protection of information for every citizen of the province, Premier Klein has also made a new bureaucratic (new as in the last decade) office solely directed towards the purpose of limiting the public’s access to the goings-on of the provincial government (of course it’s not advertised as such but just TRY to get some information Klein doesn’t want you to get). Quite an interesting paradox because that information is NOT private is belongs to every citizen of the province, including myself.

Also interesting about this rather progressive legislation is that on the other hand, the AB Government’s health care legislation is completely REgressive, aiming to replace our public medicare with US-style profit-based health insurance (the talking heads deny this, but we KNOW it to be true).

Off-Topic, last night I saw the movie for “V for Vendetta,” which while being a watered down version of the great graphic novels, is still a good movie by it’s own right (even though Alan Moore’s name doesn’t appear in the credits, and despite a single innapropriate Wachowski-Brothers fight scene). It provides some great extrapolating of the current ID-and-Surveillance madness in Britain, especially a scene in which V uses Evey’s ID-card to commit a crime, thereby implicating her instead. The policemen on the case know that it’s unlikely she did it, but the government goes along with it because it’s not only easier, but they CAN. Don’t TELL me this wouldn’t happen in real life! Another great scenes involves a routine patrol van canvassing a neighborhood at night, listening to every phoneline and coversation they pass, monitoring and logging any cases of sedition or independant thought. That being said, the fascist National Front-esque government portrayed is still a bit soft compared to what WE know they are capable of.

PS: There maybe should be a category for Film?

Jowell singsong
‘broke licensing laws’

Hélène Mulholland and agencies
Friday March 17, 2006

Tessa Jowell returned to the spotlight today for breaching a law she herself introduced as part of new legislation which MPs say was mishandled by her department.

The beleaguered culture secretary fell foul of regulations under the Licensing Act (2003) when she led an apparently innocent singsong to mark International Women’s Day on March 8.

The Licensing Act heralded a massive overhaul of the regulations for public entertainment and drinking, combining 10 separate licensing schemes into one regime.

Though the terms of the act require a licence for any musical performance in a Royal Park, Ms Jowell did not have one when she lead a rendition of The Truth Is Marching On in front of a statue of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens Royal Park near the Houses of Parliament.

The council’s attention was drawn to the minister’s breach by musician Hamish Burchill, who has campaigned against the act’s provisions on public entertainment.

Westminster city council’s cabinet member for licensing, Audrey Lewis, confirmed that Ms Jowell and her fellow singers had breached the law, but said no prosecution was likely for this first offence.

She told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Technically, to have a performance which was advertised of singing in a Royal Park, which is a premise under the terms of the new Licensing Act, is an offence, because it is not licensed.

“We would not, however, expect to prosecute because nobody has complained about it. It wasn’t a question of disorder breaking out or indeed public nuisance. Having said that, they have had a first offence and if they wanted to do this quite regularly, they would have a warning.” […]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1733278,00.html

The fact is, she is not being prosecuted because she is a minister. That being said, there is something moreinteresing about this story.

I have written before about there being too many laws; we will eventually reach a tipping point where there are so many new and absurd laws that parliamentarians are directly or indirectly affected. When that happens, (in a perfect world) there would be an immediate push for mass reapeal of all bad law. This can only happen when, for example, a ministers daughter cannot have music at her wedding because of some stupid statute.

As for tessa jowel, since we are commenting on a Guardian story, lets put the knife in, in a way that would be guaranteed to be erased from comment is free: What a stupid fucking bitch!

Critics claim ministers are breaking an election promise that the ID scheme would be voluntary by insisting that anyone who renews a passport will also have to get an ID card and be entered on the national register.

But Mr Clarke rejected this charge last night to laughter and jeers of derision from the opposition.

“Passports are voluntary documents,” he insisted. “No one is forced to renew a passport if they choose not to do so.”

Invertebrates refuse backbones.

So, from this final statement by Dumbo, I infer that there must be no legal requirement for me to have a passport in order to leave this country and return. Otherwise, once again, HMG are stating that I will be under confinement within the UK mainland unless I comply with their ‘voluntary’ ID card scheme.

A quick search on the UK Passport  Service site reveals no page detailing any legal requirement for holding a passport in order to leave the country. Hmmm… I wonder. Don’t you?

MPs back identity card proposals

Government plans to force all passport applicants to get an identity card have been backed by MPs, overturning an earlier defeat in the House of Lords. Peers have twice defeated the plans, which they say break Labour’s election promise that the initial ID scheme would be voluntary.

But Home Secretary Charles Clarke said passports were “voluntary documents” that no-one was forced to renew.

The Identity Cards Bill will return to the House of Lords on Wednesday.

The vote, which Labour won by 310 votes to 277, sets the stage for a constitutional clash between the Commons and the Lords. […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4803930.stm

Charles Clarke is a beast of a man. He knows you cannot travel on an expired passport. He knows that if you loose your passport, that you must replace it if you want to travel.

This is a perfect example of how ID cards will be used to control you. You are not obliged to have one, but if you refuse, you cannot open a bank account, post a package, travel on the underground with a pass, etc etc.

This is pure evil, and this statement about passports being voluntary documents just shows how evil the whole proposal is. It is based on lies at its very foundation, and lies are being used to force through its introduction.

This is why people say that democracy is broken; with monsters, murderers, liars and enslavers at the helm every single time, no one in their right mind thinks that democracy in its current form is a good thing.

This little piggy deployed marksmen
This little piggy should stay schtumm
This liilte piggy creates a load o’ grief
This little piggy comes undone
‘cos this little piggy taped Lord Goldsmith as they spoke on the phone

Further information: freedom of movement, and ka-tzetnik, and propiska, Economic and social liberals have a generally negative attitude towards identity cards on the principle that if society already works adequately without them, they should not be imposed by government, on the principle that “the government that governs best, governs least”. Some opponents have pointed out that extensive lobbying for identity cards has been undertaken, in countries without compulsory identity cards, by IT companies who will be likely to reap rich rewards in the event of an identity card scheme being implemented.

Very often, opposition to identity cards is born out of the suspicion that they will be used to track anyone’s movements and private life, possibly endangering one’s privacy; for instance, a person will probably not want others to know he or she is attending meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous. In countries currently using identity cards, there is no mechanism for this. However the proposed British ID card will involve a series of linked databases, to be managed by the private sector. Managing disparate linked systems with a range of institutions and any number of personnel having access to them is a potential security disaster in the making.[1]

Opponents have also argued that some nations require the card to be carried at all times. This is not necessarily impractical, as an ID is no more cumbersome than a credit card. However, opponents point out that a requirement to carry an identity card at all times can lead to arbitrary requests from card controllers (such as the police). Even where there is no legal requirement to carry the card, functionality creep could lead to de facto compulsion to carry.

Some opponents make comparisons with totalitarian governments, which issued identity cards to their populations, and used them oppressively.

• They point out that the issuing of unique biometric identities was taken to its logical conclusion within living memory by the Nazis (see Godwin’s Law), when they tattooed unique concentration-camp detainees numbers on the arms of people taken to be processed by the Final Solution.
• More recently, the apartheid-era government of South Africa used pass books as internal passports to oppress that country’s black population.

[…]

France

France has had a French national identity card since 1940, when it helped the Vichy autorities identify 76,000 for deportation as part of the Holocaust.

In the past, identity cards were compulsory, had to be updated each year in case of change of residence and were valid for 10 years, and its renewal required paying a tax. In addition to the face protograph, it included the family name, first names, date and place of birth, and the national identity number managed by the national INSEE registry, and which is also used as the national service registration number, as the Social Security account number for health and retirement benefits, for the access to the personal judiciary case, for taxes declarations.

Later, the laws were changed so that any official and certified document (even if expired and possibly unusable abroad) with a photograph and a name, issued by a public administration (or enterprise, such as railroad transportation cards, or student cards issued) can be used to prove one’s identity (such as the European driver’s licence, a passport, …). Also, controls of identy by the law enforcement forces (police, gendarmerie) can now accept copies of these documents, provided that the original is presented within two weeks. Any of these documents must be treated equally to proove one’s identity when accepting payments by checks, issuing a new credit (however credit cardsare now much more common and do not require such additional proof, as all French credit cards issued by banks include a processor requiring a four-digit code, the magnetic tape being almost never used).

The current identity cards are now issued free of charge, and non-compulsory. Legislation has been published for a proposed compulsory biometric card system, which has been widely criticised, including by the “National commission for computing and liberties” (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés, CNIL), the national authority and regulator on computing systems and databases. Identity cards issued since 2004 now includes biometric information (a digitized fingerprint record, a numerically scanned photograph and a scanned signature) and various anti-fraud systems embedded within the plastic-covered card.

The next generation of the French green card, named “Carte Vitale”, for the Social Security benefit (which already includes a chip and a magnetic tape with currently very few information) will include a numeric photograph and other personal medical information in addition to identity elements. It may then become a substitute for the National identity card.

[…]

United States

Main article: Identity documents in the United States

There is no true national identity card in the United States of America, in the sense that there is no federal agency with nationwide jurisdiction that directly issues such cards to all American citizens. All legislative attempts to create one have failed due to tenacious opposition from libertarian and conservative politicians, who regard the national identity card as the mark of a totalitarian society. Driver’s licenses issued by the various states (along with special cards issued to non-drivers) are often used in lieu of a national identification card and are often required for boarding airline flights or entering office buildings. Recent (2005) federal legislation that tightened requirements for issuance of driver’s licenses has been seen by both supporters and critics as bringing the United States much closer to a de facto national identity card system.

[…]

Hong Kong

See also Hong Kong Permanent Identity Cards

Hong Kong has a long history of identity document, from paper document to recently smart card. It has not yet aroused much controversy from its first issue.

Compulsory identity document was first issued in 1949, the year the establishment of People’s Republic of China. The issue of identity documents was to halt large influx of refugees and control the border from mainland China to then-British colony Hong Kong. The exercise was completed in 1951. Although the registration was compulsory, it was not required to bring the document in public area.

The identity document was replaced by a typed identity card with fingerprint, photograph and stamp from 1960. Another replacement was taken in 1973 and new card was with photograph but no fingerprint. Stamp colour was to identify permanent residents from non-permanent.

From 24th October, 1980, it is compulsory to take the identity card in public area and produce it to a policeman when asked. This law was to halt waves of illegal immigrant to the city.

In 1983, the issue of identity card was digitalised to reduce forgery and from 2003 a smartcard embedded identity card replaced the old digital cards.

The issues of card is in general giving more desire effects than harms. It helps to reduce the crime rates in the region and provide fast access to mainland China and Macau.

[…]

Others

According to Privacy International, as of 1996, around 100 countries had compulsory identity cards. They also stated that “virtually no common law country has a card”.

For the people of Western Sahara, pre-1975 Spanish cards are the main proof that they were Saharaui citizens as opposed to recent Moroccan colonists. They would be thus allowed to vote in an eventual self-determination referendum.

Some Basque nationalist organizations are issuing para-official identity cards (Euskal Nortasun Agiria) as a means to reject the nationality notions implied by Spanish and French compulsory documents. Then, they try to use the ENA instead of the official document.

[…]

Countries with compulsory identity cards

Note: the term “compulsory” may have different meanings and implications in different countries. Often, a ticket can be given for being found without one’s identification document, or in some cases a person may even be detained until the identity is ascertained. In practice, random controls are rare, except in police states.

• Argentina: Documento Nacional de Identidad. Issued at birth. Updated at 8 and 16 years old. Small booklet, dark green cardboard cover. The first page states the name, date and place of birth, along with a picture and right thumb print. It’s a hand written form, and the newer models have a adhesive laminate for the first page. Next pages issue address changes, wish to donate organs, military service, and vote log. Half of the pages have the DNI (a unique number), perforated through the first half of the book. Prior to DNI was the Libreta Civica (“Civic booklet”), for women, and the Libreta de Enrolamiento (“Enrollment Booklet”), for men. A few years ago there was a big scandal with the electronic DNIs that were going to be manufactured by Siemens, and it was decided that no private corporation could control the issuing of national identity. The federal police also have an identity that is valid sometimes instead of the DNI, which many people prefer to carry because after the loss of DNI there is a long process (caused only by bureaucratic reasons) in which the person is limited in some situations which require the DNI. Random controls cannot be made without a judge’s order, except in situations such as military border checkpoints.
• Belgium: State Registry (in Dutch, French and German) (first issued at age 12, compulsory at 15)
• Brazil: Carteira de Identidade. Compulsory to be issued and carried since the age of 18. It’s usually issued by each state’s Public Safety Secretary, or sometimes by the Armed Forces. There is a national standard, but each state can include minor differences. The front has a picture, right thumb print and signature. The verse has the unique number (RG, registro geral), expedition date, name of the person, name of the parents, place and date of birth, and other info. It’s green and plastified, officially 102 × 68 mm[3], but the lamination tends to make it slightly larger than the ISO 7810 ID-2 standard of 105 × 74 mm, resulting in a tight fit in most wallets. Only recently the driver’s licence received the same legal status of an identity card in Brazil. There are also a few other documents, such as cards issued by the national councils of some professions, which are considered equivalent to the national identity card for most purposes.
• Chile: (Carnet de identidad; First issued at age 2 or 3, compulsory at 18)
• China(mainland):(First issued at school age, compulsory at 16)
• China(Hong Kong SAR) : Immigration Department (Children are required to obtain their first identity card at age 11, and must change to an adult identity card at age 18)
• Estonia: id.ee (in Estonian), [4] (in English)
• Germany: Personalausweis (in German) It is compulsory at age 16 to possess either a “Personalausweis” or a passport, but not to carry it. While police officers and some other officials have a right to demand to see one of those documents, the law does not state that you are obliged to submit the document at that very moment, but that you have to be able to submit it at all (bring it to the police station/municipal office the next day, or know where it is and can show it to the police at your home, etc.) You may only be fined if you do not possess an identity card or passport at all, if your document is expired or if you EXPLICITLY REFUSE to show ID to the police.
• Indonesia: Kartu Tanda Penduduk (KTP)
• Israel: Teudat Zehut (first issued at age 16, compulsory at 18)
• Italy: Carta d’Identità
• Hungary: [5] (in Hungarian) It is compulsory to possess and carry either an ID card or a passport from the age of 14. A driving license can be also used for identification from the age of 17.
• Madagascar: Kara-panondrom-pirenen’ny teratany malagasy (Carte nationale d’identité de citoyen malagasy). Possession is compulsory for Malagasy citizens from age 18 (by decree 78-277, 1978-10-03).
• Malaysia: MyKad. Issued at age 12 and updated at 18.
• Netherlands: Ministry of Justice and Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations While it is not compulsory to possess an identity card, every person over 14 years of age must always carry, and be able to submit, identification (i.e., an identity card, passport, driver’s licence or aliens’ document).
• Poland: Dowód osobisty (compulsory at 18) The relative law is roughly similar to German one.
• Portugal: Bilhete de Identidade (compulsory at 10, can be issued before if needed)
• Romania: Carte de identitate (compulsory at 14)
• Singapore: National Registration Identity Card. It is compulsory for all citizens and permanent residents to apply for the card from age 15 onwards, and to re-register their cards for a replacement at age 30. It is not compulsory for bearers to hold the card at all times, nor are they compelled by law to show their cards to police officers conducting regular screening while on patrol, for instance. Failure to show any form of identification, however, may allow the police to detain suspicious individuals until relevant identification may be produced subsequently either in person or by proxy. The NRIC is also a required document for some government procedures, commercial transactions such as the opening of a bank account, or to gain entry to premises by surrendering or exchanging for an entry pass. Failure to produce the card may result in denied access to these premises or attainment of goods and services. Immigration & Checkpoints Authority
• Slovenia: Osebna izkaznica compulsory at 18, can be issued to citizens under 18 on request by their parent or legal guardian.
• Spain: Documento Nacional de Identidad (DNI) compulsory at 14, can be issued before if necessary (to travel to other European countries, for example). It is to be replaced by Electronic DNI.

Also Croatia, Egypt, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Thailand.

Countries with non-compulsory identity cards or no identity cards

Austria, Canada (“Certificate of Canadian Citizenship”), Finland, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland have non-compulsory identity cards.

• Sweden has recently started issuing national identity cards, but they are by no means compulsory. Most Swedes have not even seen one. Commonly people use their driving licences as ID, or a ID issued by banks or the post. Some big companies and authoritys also issue ID cards to their employees which are usually accepted inside Sweden as identification.

Denmark, Norway, the United States, the Republic of Ireland and Iceland have no official national identity cards.

Note: As noted above, certain countries do not have national ID cards, but have other official documents that play the same role in practice (e.g. driver’s license for the United States). While a country may not make it de jure compulsory to own or carry an identity document, it may be de facto strongly recommended to do so in order to facilitate certain procedures.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID_Card

One to watch:

http://www.infowarsmedia.com/video/shows/030106_camps_free_30min_bb.mov

Alex Jones right on target, and ‘on fire’.

A link from this broadcast:

News Analysis/Commentary, Peter Dale Scott,
New America Media, Feb 21, 2006

Editor’s Note: A recently announced contract for a Halliburton subsidiary to build immigrant detention facilities is part of a longer-term Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.” Scott is author of “Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). He is completing a book on “The Road to 9/11.” Visit his Web site at http://www.peterdalescott.net.

The Halliburton subsidiary KBR (formerly Brown and Root) announced on Jan. 24 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps. Two weeks later, on Feb. 6, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that the Fiscal Year 2007 federal budget would allocate over $400 million to add 6,700 additional detention beds (an increase of 32 percent over 2006). This $400 million allocation is more than a four-fold increase over the FY 2006 budget, which provided only $90 million for the same purpose.

Both the contract and the budget allocation are in partial fulfillment of an ambitious 10-year Homeland Security strategic plan, code-named ENDGAME, authorized in 2003. According to a 49-page Homeland Security document on the plan, ENDGAME expands “a mission first articulated in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.” Its goal is the capability to “remove all removable aliens,” including “illegal economic migrants, aliens who have committed criminal acts, asylum-seekers (required to be retained by law) or potential terrorists.” […]

http://news.pacificnews.org/

THE NEW TERRORISTS – ARE YOU ONE? DOWNLOAD MUSIC? BLOCK TRAFFIC? WRITE A BAD CHECK?

Posted By: Rayelan
Date: Sunday, 15 January 2006, 6:12 p.m.

The reclassification of terrorism is spreading across this country. A bill just BARELY defeated in Oregon would have made you a terrorist if you download music, block traffic or write a bad check. Want to know what the punishment would have been? Read on…

This Madness Is Spreading Nationwide!!

Excerpts from a recent interview of
Dr Walter Belford
by PT Shamrock

DWB – For instance Senate bill 742 in Oregon, which was narrowly defeated by just three votes, would have classified terrorism as a plethora of completely unrelated actions.

Downloading music, blocking traffic, writing a bad cheque or any form of protest, none of which has anything to do with terrorism. All these ‘offences’would be punishable by life in prison unless you agreed to attend a “forest labour camp” for 25 years of enforced labour.

I understand that a made over version of Senate bill 742 will be reintroduced in late 2006 with another name and with some minor adjustments and will probably pass the second time around. Then it will naturally, spread nationwide.

Not even Communist China or Stalinist North Korea put people in labour camps for writing a bad cheque, but this was nearly implemented in the ‘land of the free’. Debtor’s prisons were supposed to have been banned more than 150 years ago! Explain to me what does writing a cheque with insufficient funds have to do with fighting terrorism? Nothing I tell you, absolutely nothing!

Understand and know that this was an actual bill and there are similar ones around the nation that are also being drawn up by your so-called representatives in government.

DWB – If you think Oregon is bad, try Wisconsin! Wisconsin is crazy about control. It takes fingerprints when a police officer pulls you over for a broken taillight. And blood specimens if they suspect you are intoxicated or on drugs. Wisconsin has the honour of sponsoring the Super National ID legislation which will also be a Pan American Union Card, i.e. an international ID as the US merges with Canada and Mexico.

PTS – What else is Wisconsin infamous for?

DWB – A man was sent to prison for five years for “paper terrorism.” He sent too many papers in a complaint he had with the government.

DWB continues – In Rhode Island, governors proposed a bill that would have outlawed criticism of the government, defining it as anarchy under World War One era rhetoric.

In the UK there is a very active advert campaign presently that encourages anyone to report “any suspicious” behavior from their neighbors, etc. to the authorities. What “suspicious” means is left entirely up to the person who would report someone. So if you had a neighbor that was angry with you for any real or imagined reason, you’d be reported and your name will remain on numerous government databases forever! Your name will never be deleted from those government databases.

…

Couldn’t find the “real” article and don’t really have time to find all the dates/actual instances of all the mentioned things in this article, but it really is quite ridiculous… I wonder if one day not paying a parking meter will land me in a forced labour camp (because, after all, parking fees are all about private property, which is the most important thing of all…).

An 82-year-old Women’s Institute stalwart has been asked to remove her hat in a pub – because staff claimed it was a security risk. […]  “I mulled it over and then thought ‘How ridiculous!‘ “.

[…]
Pub licensee Tony Love said it was pub policy to always ask people to remove their hats. …”Mrs Wilbraham does not understand that the world is changing.”

…

Wrong. Mrs Wilbraham obviously understands the changes better than Mr Love. She immediately and correctly identified the changes as ‘ridiculous!’. Mr Love thinks being filmed while in a pub is a normal way for society to progress. He is blind and stupid.

…

I also wanted to point out this as a fantastic read. The Chinese have had enough of being hit by rocks tossed by their friends in the glass house. Every single page is fabulous.

Our taxes fund the collection of public data – yet we pay again to access it. Make the data freely available to stimulate innovation, argue Charles Arthur and Michael Cross

Thursday March 9, 2006 The Guardian
Imagine you had bought this newspaper for a friend. Imagine you asked them to tell you what’s in the TV listings – and they demanded cash before they would tell you. Outrageous? Certainly. Yet that is what a number of government agencies are doing with the data that we, as taxpayers, pay to have collected on our behalf. You have to pay to get a useful version of that data. Think of Ordnance Survey’s (OS) mapping data: useful to any business that wanted to provide a service in the UK, yet out of reach of startup companies without deep pockets.

[…]

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1726229,00.html

If you want to beat Google at their own game, you let Ordnance Survey free all of its data for British companies, and let them get on with it…but this is a subset of the principle; when you pay for something, it must belong to you, or be accounted for to you or both. HMG does none of this, and treats you like its slave. You have no rights to the fruits of your labor and no avenue of redress.

That is not right.

And of course, this goes across everything, not the least of which is the spending of your money on the war machine.

Did you know that simple text lists detailing every school in the UK are held by the government, but you cannot have access to them because private sector companies rent these lists and the government is forbidden from competing with them?

This means that even though you have payed for the government to compile and store these lists, they are not allowed to supply you with copies; you have to go to a list dealer and pay £8000 to RENT the list of all schools in the UK.

I’m not making this up.

As the originator of the “Iran Oil Bourse” I hope you can spare me some space to comment in relation to Ms. Berg’s recent articles.

The original concept five or so years ago was not of an “Iran Oil Bourse” but of a “Middle East Energy Exchange” providing a new Gulf benchmark price which would not be manipulated by investment banks and oil traders – as is the case with the North Sea “Brent” crude oil complex and has been for at least 10 years.

It makes no sense at all – and never has – for crude oil coming out of the Gulf and going to the Far East to be priced against a North Sea benchmark – but Brent has always been used since it is the “least worst” solution.

From personal experience – including very high level conversations – I think that there is no prospect whatever that Iran would unilaterally attempt to create a crude oil benchmark contract whatever currency it may be priced in. A domestic market in products, petrochemicals, and so on, is another matter.

The current global market in oil is owned, controlled, and operated by intermediaries for their own benefit and is fast deteriorating – as I warned it would five years ago – into an “ICE-bound” (ICE = Intercontinental Exchange, currently completing an audacious but brilliant strategy by applying the coup de grace to NYMEX) global monopoly extracting ever increasing profits at the expense of producers and consumers. Barclays Capital recently estimated that intermediary profits from commodity markets (of which energy is a huge component) will double to $26bn in the next three years.

Moreover, this market is now awash with hedge fund money, and despite Ms. Berg’s confidence in NYMEX and IPE/LCH, I believe that these centralized institutions face little-appreciated systemic risks as “single points of failure” in the face of the unregulated, opaque, and massive off-exchange, or “OTC,” market in energy and energy derivatives.

The difference between the LTCM near-meltdown in the financial markets and an energy market crisis this winter or next is that the Fed can’t print oil to bail out the system.

In relation to clearing, Ms. Berg is unfamiliar with the concept of a “Clearing Union” because no partnership-based “enterprise model” (i.e., legal and financial structure) enabling one has ever existed. Naturally, market users would have to back up a mutual guarantee in some way, whether through margin, collateral, or otherwise.

It’s just that there isn’t the “central counterparty” Ms. Berg is used to.

In a nutshell, I believe that the future lies in the creation of a neutral global oil trading network and “Energy Clearing Union” owned by ALL market constituencies: and this concept is beginning to get across. Certainly the Norwegians were interested in it: “Norwegian Bourse Director wants oil bourse priced in euros” – a development which followed a paper I submitted at the request of their consul-general in Edinburgh.

~ Chris Cook, formerly a Director of the International Petroleum Exchange and now a member of the Wimpole Consortium tasked with creating an energy exchange for Iran

Antiwar.com letters page with reply

MPs overturned previous Lords defeats on the ID Cards Bill

Government plans to make all passport applicants also have an ID card have been defeated in the Lords.Peers voted by a majority of 61 to overturn the proposal – backed by MPs last month – for a second time.

Opposition peers say the plans break the government’s promise that ID cards will initially be voluntary.

…

The UK and other countries must introduce biometric passports by October to remain part of the US visa waiver scheme, which makes travel to America easier.
[…]

On this latter point…

Remember: this is the government of my country changing my passport requirements – putting my biometric details on a database – at the request of another country.

And will that country get access to that database when some British mug wants to enter The Land Of The Free?

So obviously, if I put on my passport application that I don’t want to travel to the USA, or that I don’t mind getting a visa, I can opt out of having a biometric passport.

N’est pas?

No, me neither.

Al Quaida strikes again!

Update:

Clunk vows to continue ID battle

“I hope the Lords will recognise that this manifesto commitment, voted through by the elected chamber, should be respected,” Mr Clarke told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

[…]

OK. And the manifesto commitment is (was)…

On page 52 of its 111 pages, under the heading “Strong and Secure Borders”, the Labour 2005 manifesto said:

“We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports“.

[…] From David Davis.
As one Lord put it last night, and as this site has said recently…

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury, a Liberal Democrat, said] … describing the ID card scheme as voluntary was stretching the English language to breaking point. He went on: “It’s not often it’s left to the opposition to make sure the government honours its manifesto pledges.”