DHS proposes guidelines for proving one’s identity and residence when applying for a Real ID card. Yet while the department concedes it’s a monumental task to prove one’s domicile or residence, it leaves it up to the states to determine what documents would be adequate proof of residence–and even suggests that a utility bill or bank statement might be appropriate documentation. If so, a person could easily generate multiple proof-of-residence documents. Basing Real ID on such easy-to-forge documents obviates a large portion of what Real ID is supposed to accomplish.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly for Americans, the very last paragraph of the 160-page Real ID document deserves special attention. In a nod to states’ rights advocates, DHS declares that states are free not to participate in the Real ID system if they choose — but any identification card issued by a state that does not meet Real ID criteria is to be clearly labeled as such, to include “bold lettering” or a “unique design” similar to how many states design driver’s licenses for those under 21 years of age.

In its own guidance document, the department has proposed branding citizens not possessing a Real ID card in a manner that lets all who see their official state-issued identification know that they’re “different,” and perhaps potentially dangerous, according to standards established by the federal government. They would become stigmatized, branded, marked, ostracized, segregated. All in the name of protecting the homeland; no wonder this provision appears at the very end of the document.

One likely outcome of this DHS-proposed social segregation is that people presenting non-Real ID identification automatically will be presumed suspicious and perhaps subject to additional screening or surveillance to confirm their innocence at a bar, office building, airport, or routine traffic stop. Such a situation would establish a new form of social segregation–an attempt to separate “us” from “them” in the age of counterterrorism and the new normal, where one is presumed suspicious until proven more suspicious.

Two other big-picture concerns about Real ID come to mind: Looking at the overall concept of a national identification database, and given existing data security controls in large distributed systems, one wonders how vulnerable this system-of-systems will be to data loss or identity theft resulting from unscrupulous employees, flawed technologies, external compromises or human error–even under the best of security conditions. And second, there is no clear guidance on the limits of how the Real ID database would be used. Other homeland security initiatives, such as the Patriot Act, have been used and applied–some say abused–for purposes far removed from anything related to homeland security. How can we ensure the same will not happen with Real ID? […]

And there you have it, from Shneier.

Attention needs to be drawn to the similarities between the Apartheid system’s Pass Laws and ID cards. People think that there is no similarity because the reason for the laws is not explicitly ‘race’. What they fail to understand is that the effect of these ID cards is the same as racist Apartheid, only it applies to everyone. Everyone becomes ‘black’ (underprivileged) and only the state is ‘white’ (elite class).

Sir Patrick Moore has identified an alien species that threatens to destroy intelligent life – the women who have taken over the BBC.

The veteran astronomer celebrated the 50th anniversary of The Sky at Night with a withering attack on the female executives he believes have dumbed down the corporation.

Sir Patrick’s outburst echoes criticisms raised by Alasdair Milne, a former Director-General, who provoked a furious response when he accused a female-dominated BBC of producing “terrible” programmes.

Sir Patrick, 84, was asked by the Radio Times if television had got better or worse during a career spanning the medium’s life. The answer was worse – “much worse”. He said: “The trouble is that the BBC now is run by women and it shows: soap operas, cooking, quizzes, kitchen-sink plays. You wouldn’t have had that in the golden days.”

They have even destroyed sci-fi, Sir Patrick’s personal passion. He said: “I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC – making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching.”

And don’t sit Sir Patrick in front of a Sophie Raworth bulletin. He said: “These jokey women are not for me. Oh, for the good old days.”

He recalled: “There was one day (in 2005) when BBC News went on strike. Then we had the headlines read by a man, talking the Queen’s English, reading the news impeccably.”

Fortunately, Sir Patrick has a solution. Institute a gender divide and create BBC Bloke.

He said: “I would like to see two independent wavelengths – one controlled by women, and one for us, controlled by men. I think it may eventually happen.”

Soaps could then safely be produced and watched by women. Sir Patrick said: “I was in hospital once and I watched a whole episode of EastEnders. I suppose it’s true to life. But so is diarrhoea – and I don’t want to see that on television.”

Sir Patrick has an ally in Mr Milne, who ran the BBC between 1982 and 1987. He said the domination of television by women was the reason it had so many “dumb” lifestyle and makeover programmes.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1760061.ece

In other countries, they have separate busses for men and women….there might be something to this ‘Sharia’ after all!!!

US ‘wants British Pakistanis to have entry visas’

Matt Weaver
Wednesday May 2, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

The American government wants to impose travel restrictions on British citizens of Pakistani origin because of concerns about terrorism, according to a report today.

In talks with the British government, the US homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, called for British Pakistanis to apply for a visa before travelling to the US, according to the New York Times.

The newspaper claimed that US officials were concerned about the number of terrorist plots in Britain involving citizens with ties to Pakistan.

But today the Foreign Office made it clear would resist the idea. It said it would oppose any attempt to exclude particular ethnic groups from the US visa waiver scheme that allows citizens from 27 countries, including the UK, to travel to the US without a visa for up to 90 days.

Like they ever care about what you think, you bloody idiots!

A spokesman said: “We are in close touch with the US about entry clearance, and they are aware of our view that changes to the visa waiver programme could cause economic damage to both our countries without materially enhancing the security controls over immigration.”

They are going to do it, wether you like it or not. You are poodles. You will now forever be poodles. It is too late to turn yourself from jellyfish into men.

He added: “The Muslim community in the UK, including those of Pakistani origin, are an important part of our society and we would oppose strongly any proposal to single them out in response to the actions of terrorists. Furthermore, we will oppose any measure based on broad categories of religious, ethnic or other criteria, and will continue to emphasise the importance of the current risk-based approach.”

You will ‘oppose’ it? And WHAT EXACTLY WILL THAT DO?

These are the same people whose cousins and brothers you have MURDERED in the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS. Where were your beeding heart words when everyone told you not to even THHINK about going into Iraq?

And as for measures based on broad categories of ‘religious, ethnic or other criteria’ you have been violating the very people you claim to be wanting to protect yourselves, in your poodleish participation in the bogus ‘war on terror’.

COME ON GUYS, if you are going to lie, you have to do it better than that.

Mohammad Sarwar, the Labour MP for Glasgow Central, described the proposal as “unbelievable and shocking. Every British citizen must have the same rights. I don’t think America has any right to interfere in this way.”

Labour MP finds it ‘shocking’. You cant make shit like this up.

Mr Sarwar, who was born in Pakistan and became Britain’s first Muslim MP in 1997, urged ministers to reject the idea.

Ahmed Versi, the editor of Muslim News, agreed. He said: “They [the Americans] are trying to paint the whole Muslim community with the same brush. It’s racist. There would be a huge outcry from all Muslims whether they are Pakistani or not.”

see below about this.

He pointed out that many British Muslims were already put off from the travelling to the US for fear of the unwelcome reception they would receive.

They should not be traveling there anyway, out of principle, but then again, all of the middle east is in a mess precisely because they are unwilling or incapable of unifying under a single banner, even on the smallest matter that does not take any effort.

The report of America’s concerns follows the conviction earlier this week of five British men for planning a series of attacks across the UK. Four of them were of Pakistani origin. But according to the New York Times, talks on travel restrictions for British Pakistanis have been taking place for some “months”.

Last month, Mr Chertoff held talks with the home secretary, John Reid. It is believed they discussed the visa waiver scheme that allows citizens from 27 countries, including the UK, to travel to the US without a visa for up to 90 days.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph on the eve of the talks, Mr Chertoff said: “We need to build layers of protection, and I don’t think we totally want to rely upon the fact that a foreign government is going to know that one of their citizens is suspicious and is going to be coming here.”

At the time he did not mentioned restrictions on British Pakistani, but he expressed concern that the terrorist such as the July 7 bombers, three of whom were of Pakistani origin, could have used the visa waiver scheme to enter America.

[…]

Guardian

Now, lets do what the Guardian cannot do, and actually think about this.

If you are going to require VISAs for people of Pakistani origin, that means that you must identify them all. You cannot rely on the persons name alone; for example ‘shoebomber’ Richard Reid, has the same surname as the current Home Secretary.

That means that you will need to put the NIR in place, and on it, mark everyones ‘racial profile’ or ‘racial origin’. This will mean that the UK will have a system like South Africa, where people’s race was marked down in their ID card.

This raises some interesting problems; for people who do not have ‘Pakistani names’ they will have to find a way to determine wether or not they are ‘Really British®’. Actually, this is quite a soluble problem for which there are precedents.

In South Africa, they used a pencil.

When the authorities put a pencil through your hair, if it fell out, you were ‘White’. If not, you were ‘Not White’.

I’m not making this up:

A type of test used by authorities during the apartheid era in South Africa to “ascertain” a person’s ‘race’ (see Coloured and Passing (racial identity).) In the absence of any centralized method, this and other subjective tests were used in various places across South Africa as part of the Population Registration Act of 1950. A pencil would be placed in a person’s hair, if it fell through they were classified as “White” (or “Coloured“, depending on other subjective classification considerations); if the pencil did not fall through, they were classified differently (“Coloured” or “Black”, also depending on other subjective classification considerations). Members of the same family who had different hair textures would find themselves in different race groups as a result of this test. This presented serious consequences for many families (see Population Registration Act, Pass Law, Group Areas Act, District Six). [2] [3][4] [5]

[…]

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

Check the Google too.

This is what the americans are asking the UK to do. Micheal Chertov is an Apartheid style racist, and the worst thing about this is that the americans started all this, poodle dog bliar dragged this once great country kicking and screaming into the mess and now those fascist american animals want Britain to lower itself to the level of the Apartheid state to salve their paranoia.

Doing this will create an active Apartheid society, with first class citizens (so called ‘whites’), second class citizens (‘pakistanis’) and third class citizens (illegal immigrants, refugees etc).

There will be all the confusion bitterness and hatred caused by that system, as people are sifted, marked and categorized by the state, and don’t you believe for a single second that the private sector will not use this ‘racial’ information in its daily operations.

It will be an unmitigated DISASTER for this country,

and the only way they can pull it off, is with the NIR

. Just use your brain for a minute; this means that British people ‘of Pakistani origin’ will have to have visibly different passports from everyone else so that they can apply for a VISA under these rules.

Do you understand what that means?

The NIR is now Britain’s Pandora’s box. If it is opened….

Out of this box will come every evil, every excess, every violation you can imagine (if you remember the Apartheid system, even as an observer from afar) and some modern violations that we will soon discover the taste of.

Now there are those who say, “All of this is worth it. If we can stop just one act of violence, its worth these people saying who they are and then applying for screening for the good of society. Their so called ‘freedom’ is not worth anything.”

And I say that people who say that are the bad guys.

Everyone’s freedom is ‘worth something’. I am not a Pakistani, but when a Pakistani born in Britain with a British passport is forced to apply for a VISA, it violates ME as much as it does HIM, because, unlike the people who throw away freedom like empty crisp packets, I understand that we are BOTH HUMAN BEINGS.

The ability to empathize with other human beings, the ability to imagine another person’s pain is absolutely crucial to peace. If you cannot imagine another person as ‘a real thing’, you do not care if their rights are violated; they are an object, a concept, not a real person. That is how Iraq can be destroyed beyond recognition, dozens killed every day and no one cares, but when 50 people are killed in London, it is suddenly the end of the world.

This story about Pakistanis being essentially given yellow stars to wear in Britain should have every decent person puking in their Wheatabix.

It is so contrary to decency, to Britishness that it staggers the imagination that John Reid allowed the words to be said to him without immediately terminating the meeting. But then we know that he is one of the Murder Inc. Criminal Genocide Gang, and this is NOTHING to pigs like him.

Now, having said all that, I am sure that a discrimination lawsuit will very quickly follow any introduction of Apartheid style legislation in Britain. Heavens above, did I actually type that?

There is no way that they will get away with this, and if they DO introduce that legislation, heaven help them.

And furthermore, the american government is putting the onus on the British to segregate and mark out all Pakistanis for VISA treatment, because they are too squeamish to take harsh Apartheid measures themselves on their own soil.

If the British do not comply, that means that the americans are going to either:

1/ require that ALL british people need a VISA to travel to the USA (and anyone who has had to make that application will know what a horrible experience THAT is)

2/ Selectively block ‘Pakistani types’ at the airport using the Apartheid racial identification ruleset. That means many million dollar lawsuits.

Dirty Racist Murdering Bastards.

Publishing this number is illegal in the USA, because it’s something of a commercial secret used to protect copyrights:

09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B:D8:41:56:C5:63:56:88:C0

or, decimal if you prefer:

13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640

or get it on a t-shirt (from the USA).

This number is the HD-DVD encryption key. If you know how to do it, it’s possible to decrypt HD-DVD disks with this key, making them copyable, downloadable or whatever. As you might expect, there are lawsuits abound over the pond at the moment.

[…]

Snarfed from Coofercat

All multimedia files on a computer can be represented as numbers or sums of numbers.

That means that you would have to make the publishing of numbers or certain mathematical operations illegal to protect peoples’ copyright.

That is clearly insane.

Numbers belong to everyone, and all possible numbers and sums and mathematical operations pre date the very existence of man. None of them are novel or new, and hence, none of them can be copyrighted. If your movie inevitably divides down into a simple sum, that is just the tough luck of numbers.

The only way to protect your movie from pristine copying over the internets is to distribute it on 35mm film to cinemas. If it is never digitized then it will never exist as a number that can be copied and which can never be protected.

UPDATED FOR THE 2010 ATTACK!
Crytome, a very old and very useful service run by John Young, has been told by its ISP that its contract is being terminated. This is a shenanigan, since his ISP was very supportive of the site up till now:

[By certified mail, received 28 April 2007.]
VERIO
An NTT Communications Company

Writer’s Direct Numbers
o) 303-645-1912
fax) 303-708-2445
e-mail: dthompson[at]verio.net

April 20, 2007

Via Certified Mail

John Young
Cryptome Org
251 West 89th Street
New Yor, NY 10024

RE: www.cryptome.org

Dear Mr. Young,

This letter is to notify you that we are terminating your service for violation of our Acceptable Use Policy, effective Friday May 4, 2007. We are providing you with two week notice to locate another service provider.

Sincerely,

VERIO INC.
an NTT Communications Company

[Signed]

Danna Thompson
Legal Department

Verio Inc.
8005 S. Chester Street
Suite 200
Englewood, CO 80112
www.verio.com

————————————————————
Cryptome note:

This notice of termination is surprising for Verio has been consistently supportive of freedom of information against those who wish to suppress it. Since 1999 Cryptome has received a number of e-mailed notices from Verio’s legal department in response to complaints from a variety of parties, ranging from British intelligence to alleged copyright holders to persons angry that their vices have been exposed (see below). In every case Verio has heretofore accepted Cryptome’s explanation for publishing material, and in some cases removal of the material, and service has continued.

In this latest instance there was no notice received from Verio describing the violation of acceptable use to justify termination of service prior to receipt of the certified letter, thus no opportunity to understand or respond to the basis for termination.

It may be wondered if Verio was threatened by an undisclosable means, say by an National Security Letter or by a confidential legal document or by a novel attack not yet aired.

Every few months our Verio service rep, Warren Gleicher, Senior Account Manager, (wgleicher[at]verio.net) writes to see if service is satifactory.

Danna and Warren: Cryptome would appreciate your telling what has led to the termination for publication. Send the information anonymously if necessary to keep your jobs.
————————————————————

Sample legal notice[s] from Verio:

Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2000 13:06:12 -0400
To: cchunt[at]hway.net
From: John Young 
Subject: British Request to Remove Document

Mr. Charles Hunt
Acceptable Use Department
Verio
Tel: 561-912-2536

Dear Mr. Hunt

It was a pleasure to speak with you today about the
document on my site Cryptome:

 http://cryptome.org/mi5-lis-uk.htm.

Your courtesy and supportive remarks are very much
appreciated.

This will confirm that I decline to remove the document
in response to your forwarded request from a "British
Intelligence Agency" made to Verio's legal department.

I do not believe that posting the document is illegal
under US law and does not violate Verio's terms of
acceptable use. And that an informal request, not a
court order, is insufficient reason to remove the
document which provides significant public information.

I told you that I knew of three other instances of
British intelligence documents being posted on the
Internet, and that they had been removed by the ISPs
(Yahoo and Geocities) without public explanation of
why or what justification was given for their removal.
Thus, I would like to obtain information on the British
request to Verio in or to publish the information on Cryptome.

In response to your invitation to send a letter for
forwarding to Verio's legal department I would very
much appreciate learning, in writing if possible:

1. Who made the request: person, title and agency.
2. When it was made.
3. To whom it was made.
4. Its format, whether verbal or written or both.
5. A description of the request or a copy if it was written.
6. Other means discussed between British Intelligence and
Verio to remove the document.
7. How the request relates to Verio's acceptable use policy.

Verio's response and this message will be published on
Cryptome to provide information on how British Intelligence
conducts its affairs in the US.

Regards,

John Young
Cryptome
251 West 89th Street
New York, NY 10024
212-873-8700

That is how REAL PEOPLE respond to threats, in case you didn’t know.

I am sure that Mr. Young is being flooded with offers of free space. All he has to do is take all the offers, upload Cryptome to each of them, and then keep them all identical with rsync.

Then, like TPB he will be impossible to shut down.

Shutting down Cryptome is like burning books. The BASTARDS who have ordered this are the lowest ‘humans’ on the scale.

FAST FORWARD

its 2010 and the completely evil Micro$oft has managed to get Network Solutions to deregister cryptome.org, effectively making it invisible.

Here it the document that Micro$oft does not want you to read. I suggest you download, it, read it and then seed it.

Not only is Micro$oft unable to innovate, its worthless products destroy your work, track you, allow the totalitarian governments of the world back door access to your private documents… the list goes on and on. If you do not already shun them, you should shun them completely. If you have money, buy Apple, who are less evil. If you want to keep your equipment, switch to Ubuntu; it is a superior and moral operating system. You have no excuse, other than your own lazyness, to keep putting up with and financially supporting the evil of this bad company.

Now M$ seems to think that they can remove other people’s websites and stop information on their nefarious acts from spreading. They did not understand the internet when it first started to become important, and now they demonstrate that they are without any clue when it comes to the modern internet, the intentions of the people who run it (you and me) and most importantly, the Striesand effect. Now that they have tried to remove this document, the number of people reading it and storing it will increase by orders of magnitude.

No one is safe whilst evil companies like M$ are able to use the violent state as their enforcing arm. There must be a consequence to this company being evil. That means you must boycott them and their products completely.

Micro$oft is evil, stupid, destructive and in this instance, on the wrong side of history. In the future, Micro$oft will replace Watt in a book about how copyright and patents were eventually destroyed.

At the time of this update Thu Feb 25 10:34:26 GMT 2010, whois says the following of Cryptome.org:

Domain ID:D7496146-LROR
Domain Name:CRYPTOME.ORG
Created On:25-Jun-1999 14:58:29 UTC
Last Updated On:24-Feb-2010 18:47:18 UTC
Expiration Date:25-Jun-2011 14:58:29 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Network Solutions LLC (R63-LROR)
Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT HOLD
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:24163306-NSI
Registrant Name:Cryptome
Registrant Organization:Cryptome
Registrant Street1:251 West 89th Street
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:New York
Registrant State/Province:NY
Registrant Postal Code:10024
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.9999999999
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:+1.9999999999
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:jya@PIPELINE.COM
Admin ID:24163306-NSI
Admin Name:Cryptome
Admin Organization:Cryptome
Admin Street1:251 West 89th Street
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:New York
Admin State/Province:NY
Admin Postal Code:10024
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.9999999999
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:+1.9999999999
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:jya@PIPELINE.COM
Tech ID:24163306-NSI
Tech Name:Cryptome
Tech Organization:Cryptome
Tech Street1:251 West 89th Street
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:New York
Tech State/Province:NY
Tech Postal Code:10024
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.9999999999
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:+1.9999999999
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:jya@PIPELINE.COM
Name Server:NS47.WORLDNIC.COM
Name Server:NS48.WORLDNIC.COM
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
Name Server: 
DNSSEC:Unsigned

Wired Blog Network
Monday, April 30, 2007

Like any dictator worth the title, Saddam Hussein kept good records on his people — dossiers that included fingerprints. Now the occupying forces in Iraq have digitized his fingerprint files in order to screen potential recruits for the Iraqi police force using Automated Fingerprint Identification System technology, according to reporter David Axe’s post at Aviation Week’s ARES blog, cross-posted to Wired’s DANGER ROOM.

AFIS is a widely used technology to compare one print against a database of prints, and is used by local, state, national and foreign law enforcement agencies.

So by digitizing those records and looking for matches among recruits, the police trainers have been able to catch scores of former felons, Ba’athists and other ne’er-do-wells before they donned the blue uniform, according to U.S. Army Brigadier General David Phillips. “We have caught people coming straight out of jail.”

This is a great example of re-using old data with new systems to achieve a result no one had anticipated when the data and the systems were created. Still, this does not represent a major success for proponents of battlefield biometrics. What we need is tough handheld enrollment devices for building new databases about current populations … and we need universal databases for Iraq so that trainers, military police and everyone else are on the same page.

Actually, having an unwanted occupying force re-using a dictator’s secret spy files, “building new databases about current populations” and creating “universal databases” sounds pretty creepy to me — justified, I assume, with the idea that the end justifies the means.

There are some core accepted practices around personal data usage — data should be thrown out at a certain point, data collected for one purpose should not be re-used for another reason without permission and individuals should have the right to see and contest the accuracy of data in their files. Those principles are universally accepted in the free world as necessary checks and balances on government data collections, even as the U.S. government continually finds ways to opt its databases out of those requirements domestically.

Starting up a new system to take the fingerprints of people convicted of a crime is one thing. Digitizing the secret spy files of a murderous dictator and enrolling new people simply detained by local cops or foreign soldiers? I can taste the freedom from here.

[…]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2007/300407biometric.htm

This article encapsulates everything that is wrong with biometrics and national identity cards.

The original was data supplied by Iraqis as a ‘normal’ part of their lives. They did it to be a part of their society, ‘for the good of society’. It was used for years ‘normally’. Then, the nightmare scenario began; their country was invaded.

Their data is being reprocessed and repurposed without their consent by a fascist hoard of satanic invaders. They are now suffering precisely the scenario that people are warning about here in the UK. You might (if you are COMPLETELY INSANE) trust Tony Blair and his government to keep your data private and not abuse it, but in the future, another government of liars, murderers, fascists, control freaks, poodle dogs and venal incompetents could easily be elected, and then your data will be abused, used against you, sold to anyone with money etc etc.

That is what the poor suffering Iraqis are getting a taste of right now.

And as for the ‘handheld enrollment devices’ we have seen the precursors of these right here.

And as for ‘smelling the freedom from here’, well, its not surprising, because the STENCH you are detecting with your badly damaged olfactory glands is the rotting corpse of YOUR OWN DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM. Your own REALID and RFID passports are stinking up the air right there in america, so, by all means, sniff out the fascist horrors that are going on in Iraq at the hands of your soldiers and government, but do take a look outside your own front door, and bury your own dead!

And you forgot to put the word ‘democracy’ in single quotes. Doh.

Schools handing out morning after pill to under-age girls backed by Ofsted
By LAURA CLARK 12th April 2007

More schools will be encouraged to hand out the morning-after pill to underage girls after a strong endorsement of the service from Ofsted inspectors.

Around one in three children already has easy access to condoms and emergency contraception – without their parents’ knowledge or consent – thanks to sexual health clinics based at secondary schools.

Many more heads are expected to set up contraception services in their schools following Ofsted’s warm endorsement in a report published yesterday.

The education watchdog declared that school nurses ‘provide a valuable service’ distributing contraception and advising pupils on birth control.

Inspectors even complained that progress towards establishing the centres had so far been ‘modest’.

Last night family campaigners warned the initiative may simply encourage promiscuity.

They pointed out that more than 20 studies have failed to find a link between better access to the morning-after pill and a fewer teenage pregnancies.

By 2010, ministers want every secondary school to have access to a nurse providing emergency contraception and advice as part of a drive to reduce the number of teenagers becoming parents.

In its latest report on the state of sex education, Ofsted inspectors said handing out the morning-after pill was more effective at reducing teenage pregnancies than promoting abstinence.

‘There is no evidence….that “abstinence- only” education reduces teenage pregnancy or improves sexual health,’ their report said.

‘There is also no evidence to support claims that teaching about contraception leads to increased sexual activity.’

The report said: ‘School nurses can arrange visits from their colleagues in the community and work with them to promote health and improve young people’s access to health services.’

It added: ‘School nurses can also provide a valuable service, particularly in terms of providing emergency hormonal contraception and advising on other forms of contraception.

‘Progress towards establishing such centres has been modest, but many extended schools are now providing a good range of services.’

Norman Wells, of the pressure group Family and Youth Concern, was concerned about the resulting message to children. ‘In putting its faith in sex education and contraception to deal with high teenage pregnancy rates and the crisis in sexual health among young people, Ofsted is blindly following the dogma at the heart of the government’s teenage pregnancy strategy,’ he said.

‘Ofsted has swallowed the lie being peddled by the sex education and contraceptive industry that using contraception is the mark of sexual responsibility.

‘No less than 23 studies from ten countries have found that increased access to the morning-after pill has made no difference to unintended pregnancy and abortion rates, yet Ofsted continues to fly in the face of international evidence.’

Margaret Morrissey, of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said school nurses gave children the chance to talk to someone impartial outside the classroom, where they may be embarrassed to ask questions.

But she added: ‘When it comes to things like morning-after pills and condoms there are many parents who will be concerned if they are not informed.

‘The majority will be quite devastated if they suddenly found that their kids were on birth control pills and they didn’t know anything about it.’

Official figures show pregnancies among under-18s rose in 2005 to 39,683 – up from 39,593 in 2004 and much higher than the 35,400 recorded a decade earlier in 1995.

Children’s minister Beverley Hughes welcomed the Ofsted finding that the quality of personal, social and health education, which includes sex education, had improved.

But help was also needed on the homefront. ‘We are taking steps to improve the support we give to parents to talk about sex and relationships,’ she said.

Daily Mail

So, Ofstead makes a ‘societal preference‘ to promote promiscuity and by extension, call your daughter a whore, but this is all OK [whine] because its good for society to stop teenage pregnancy [/whine].

Consent of the governed, a SANE voice, says:

With the establishment of school health clinics and national control of education creeping its way along in our country, we will not be too far behind with the implementation of these kinds of programs, funded by our tax dollars. School clinics in some places might already give out birth control and abortion referrals. Some states have policy on this and others do not. As it is now, kids cannot and may not buy a coke from a school vending machine in CT (Connecticut), but they can get an abortion without parental consent. Something is definitely wrong with that picture.. it not only throws parents out of the picture completely but also may further enable kids to engage in risky behaviors, because they know they can just as easily abort the “consequence”. Many people will say.. well kids will have sex anyway, so let’s give them tools to deal with “the consequences” without their parents even knowing. How can the schools enable sex between minors which is also a crime in many states?

[…]

Putting the moral and religious issue of abortion aside, I think the minimization and exclusion of parents regarding this issue is reprehensible. Undermining parental authority and consent is just really wrong, in my opinion. Yet, parents are supposed to be held responsible if their kids break the law or go truant from school?? How come parents are responsible in some instances and not allowed to be included in others?

I would think that school boards should be held liable for the results from negligent referrals regarding “sexual health” of a child. What happens if a child is harmed by either referred procedures or school administered medication like the Morning After pill? Schools and taxpayers will naturally be averse to this type of legal and economic liability.

[…]

For me as a parent, it is yet another reason to homeschool our kids, and be able to more directly and effectively deal with our kids without government enabling of bad behavior and without government inserting itself into the picture.

[…]

Consent of the governed

A refreshing blast of cool fresh air on a fetid sticky stinky summer day in the city.

Now, there are those blockheads who say:

This is a sensitive subject, far more than truancy or otherwise. The addition of sex into the equation adds a completely new element. I can think of plenty of examples in which it would be in the student’s best interest to keep sexual activity from their parents. One notable example would be a fundamentalist religious family in which any child from the resulting pregnancy would be shunned along with the child’s mother, forcing both into a hard position as social pariahs.

Personally I would rather give students the ability to decide what happens in their body without pressure from parents who’s motives may not always be the child’s well-being.

And this is the problem. This man, this idiot, a commenter on Consent of the governed blog to this post, is clearly not a parent of a female. He probably isn’t a parent of any kind. No parent would think it is appropriate that their child was given access to these abortion drugs, let alone the information that accompanies them.

Each family, each parent is responsible for imparting this sensitive information in the way that they see fit. School should not have regularly scheduled sex education for minors. When you are doing your biology GCSE however, reproduction should be taught, but that is different to sex education which is what is being pushed in schools.

But I digress.

This MORON has a vote. He can vote and express his opinion that, “Personally I would rather give students the ability to decide what happens in their body without pressure from parents” which means anything from forcing your daughter to be implanted with sterilizing drugs without your consent to, by the doctrine of ‘societal preference‘, YOUR DAUGHTER being given abortion drugs without any referral to you as the parent. He can justify your daughter being taught things that come directly from pornography, without your consent.

Now, having thought about that, and being repulsed as a parent, you might think, “to hell with that, I am going to home school my daughter. I don’t agree with any of this at all, and since I can’t be there to monitor the class and swoop her out when these vile lectures begin, I have to remove my daughter from that system entirely”.

But some other brain dead schmuck has expressed his ‘societal preference‘ which means your daughter cannot be home schooled, or, that home schoolers must follow a state issued curriculum, so YOU end up teaching your 11 year old pornographic sex tricks, that she will be examined on by the state.

That is what happens when unthinking people exercise their ‘societal preference‘, for ‘the good of society’. Organizations like Ofstead, which cannot introduce programs to solve literacy and numeracy problems approve giving out contraceptives to children, because they ‘think its right’. And next, they want to go straight into your house to provide ‘help on the homefront’, i.e. telling you how to teach your children about the most vile and repulsive behavior imaginable, right in your own home.

These are the same people, the ones who blithely express their ‘societal preference‘ who then say that it is wrong that children are becoming sexualized. Once again, they want it both ways; they want the schools to be teaching pornography and perversion, they want children to have free access to abortion and contraception, and EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION, but they also want children to be children.

Its just plain stupid.

This is the TRUE problem of ‘societal preference‘. It is the means by which everything is dismantled and the all powerful state gets into every nook and cranny of your life…even your pants…your children’s pants and their minds.

Only the most sick, twisted, perverted and deluded of people think that any of this is correct.

You cannot be FOR ‘societal preference‘ and AGAINST schoolchildren being manipulated and brainwashed. Its is an ‘either or’ situation. If you are FOR ‘societal preference‘ then you are FOR these repulsive and diabolical schemes. If you are AGAINST ‘societal preference‘ then you are against the state:

• telling you what you can do in your own house
• controlling you as a parent in ANY way
• mandating that you can or cannot own a gun
• stipulating what you can and cannot ingest
• forcing your children to attend state schools
• issuing compulsory Identity Cards
• outlawing species of plant
• engaging in mass surveillance as found in the UK/USA
• using secret travel ban lists as found in the USA
• setting up random checkpoints

And all the other things that we really really and rightfully hate.

What is it that you REALLY want? What are the consequences of your ‘societal preference‘? This is what you have to consider VERY CAREFULLY before you give any control over to the state.

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).

Well well well!

Thanks to Valerie at Home Education Magazine for alerting us to this. It appears that Germany has an interesting twin state when it comes to Home Schooling:

C-Ville Weekly, Charlottesville, Virginia, 10 April 2007, UVA student’s film wins Peabody Award

For a broadcast journalist, winning a Peabody Award is a crowning achievement. But for UVA junior Sahar Adish, it was just another day in the college grind. What did she do to celebrate when she heard the news? “I took a three–and-a-half hour exam,” she says.

…

The theme of the project was fear and security, and Light House’s film focused on the life of Adish herself, an Afghani refugee whose family was forced to flee the Taliban-controlled country in the late 1990s for fear of their lives. Adish’s parents were in trouble with the Islamic fundamentalist regime for violating Taliban law. Their crime? Secretly home-schooling their daughter and several neighborhood kids. Schooling was forbidden.

Others have found their inner protester by seeing photos of Melissa Busekros.  Is it that we need a face to provoke fury over affronts to freedom?

Seventies-style consciousness-raising is fine.  I think the German educational establishment is now aware of homeschooling, or at least aware of homeschoolers.  Perhaps we should share our insights with the Afghani authorities as well.

Lol Taleban!

Her parents were forced to flee with her from Afghanistan because they were home schooling their children, just like the German families are being made to flee Germany.

Now, in Afghanistan, school itself was forbidden, but in Germany schooling out of state control is banned. It is essentially the same thing, because the Taleban want to control what people do and do not learn absolutely (you must only learn Koran), and so do the Germans; they want you only to learn what the state says your children should learn, and nothing else.

Both states use vicious punitive measures to pressure anyone who will not conform to their standards of education.

Can you say ‘Strange bedfellows’?

Why does the Bush administration have a list of everyone who has ever used anti-depressants?

America Blog
Wednesday April 18, 2007

Guess what? They do. From ABC News, regarding the VA Tech shooter:

Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government’s files. This does not completely rule out prescription drug use, including samples from a physician, drugs obtained through illegal Internet sources, or a gap in the federal database, but the sources say theirs is a reasonably complete search.

We don’t even have a list of gun owners, and we have a list of everyone who has been prescribed anti-depressants? And in fact, the article suggests that this isn’t just a database of patients who use anti-depressants, it’s a federal database of every prescription drug you’ve ever bought.

What exactly do the Bushies do with that list? And what other lists do they have of which medications you’ve ever taken?

Americablog

[…]

But all this is ‘perfectly ok’ because (in whining sing song voice) its ‘good for society‘.

Right?

Thats what the people who advocate ID cards, gun control, banning Samurai swords, ‘the war on drugs’, banning breeds of dogs, interfering with home schooling, banning vitamins, in fact, all nanny state, knee jerk, bottle-fed brain-dead population ideas… this is what they are about: VIOLATION in the name of false safety, turning people into defenseless cattle.

The influx of strange demos continues. This one consists of a wedge of cheese:

The Package

Closeup of the label

It came with a cardboard stiffener and a pink post it note, with some lines about beer.

OMW. WTF.

Which brings us to:

Russian agents are as active in Britain now as at the height of the Cold War, senior Whitehall officials have said.

The sources told the BBC’s Frank Gardner there were more than 30 identified intelligence officers trying to get secrets by covert means.

Targets include military hardware, scientific know-how and technology, and inside tips on Westminster politics.

Businessmen who may have access to sensitive information are also of interest, as are Russian dissidents.

Such dissidents include Boris Berezovsky, friend of the murdered former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko.

‘Very extensive’

Sir Paul Lever, a former member of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said: “Russian espionage activity in Britain is very extensive.

“In scale it’s probably pretty much as it was at the height of the Cold War.”

BBQ

[…]

“Russians fighting Russians is bad for Russia”.

I wish I could attribute that quote to Roman Abramovich, but it’s mine.

More on the demos; we received this VERY interesting one in the last seven days, from Ljubljana in Slovenia, which arrived with some patent application diagrams for a novel guitar pitch-bending arrangement (foot controlled) a CDR of movies featuring it and its inventor in action, a contract proposal and a nice letter. Yes, ‘nice’.

Excerpt from the patent application

“But what did it sound like?”, I hear you cry.

Like Brij Bhushan Kabra on Crystal Meth.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Michael Chertoff, who arrives in Britain tomorrow for talks with John Reid, the Home Secretary, said the US was determined to build extra defences against so-called “clean skin” terrorists from Europe.
“We need to build layers of protection, and I don’t think we totally want to rely upon the fact that a foreign government is going to know that one of their citizens is suspicious and is going to be coming here,” he said.

Mr Chertoff insisted that the US required additional information, including email addresses and credit card details, to vet European passengers and rejected “the idea that we’re going to bargain with the European Union over who’s going to come into the United States” under the visa waiver scheme.

“We have an absolute right to get this, in the same way that if someone wants to be a guest in my house I have a right to ask them who they are and get identification.”

The July 7 tube and bus bombs nearly two years ago had shown that Britain had a problem with its Muslim immigrant population that America did not share, he argued.

“Our Muslim population is better educated and economically better off than the average American. So, from a standpoint of mobility in society, it’s a successful immigrant population. To some degree, the whole country is a country of immigrants, and therefore there’s no sense that we have insiders or outsiders. In some countries [in Europe], you had an influx of people that came in as a colonial legacy and may have always have felt, to some extent, that they were viewed as second-class citizens, and they’ve tended to impact and be kind of clustered in some areas.”

Mr Chertoff, a former federal prosecutor, said that one of his biggest worries was that “unknown terrorists” – such as most of the 7/7 bombers, who were British citizens with no criminal record or intelligence traces – could use the visa waiver scheme to enter and attack America. […]

InfoWars

What does this really mean?

It means that not only do they not trust people in their dirty database of ‘terrorists’ but that everyone who is NOT in that database, the ‘clean skins’ is ALSO a suspect.

This is obviously as unsustainable as the absurd and insane ‘threat level’ meter that has now been abandoned, and I predict that this ‘strategy’ will be abandoned as unworkable, useless and a total waste of money, as is the case with the utterly offensive USVISIT.

Once again, the vendors are pushing for an upgrade of technology. There is not a single case of someone being missed by USVIST because they only have two prints instead of ten. This is a totally made up reason for retrofitting the system. But you know this.

What is going to happen is that they are going to run out of strategies. When that happens, they will simply give up. Like the scene from The Man Who Fell to Earth where Newton is simply abandoned, because they could not get anything out of him, couldn’t do any thing with him….they just left the secret facility one day and that was it; no explanation, no rationale, just over.

The database, which can only be used to harass and abuse people will be dismantled. The public will become fed up with surveillance and harassment, just like the people living under the Soviets did. This whole episode will be seen as a monumental failure and a waste of astronomical sums of money.

Shame on them all for participating in it.

Yesterday a group of Home Schooled children visited the Houses of Parliament. Home schoolers in London get together several times a week for these sorts of educational and social events, and these were all very well behaved, confident and polite children.

Before they went into the palace itself, they were ushered into a room in Portcullis House, so the event organizer’s MP could come and talk to and welcome them.

The MP was Bridget Prentice, representative for Lewisham East. She was ‘a full on New Labour front bencher’ according to one of the mothers. There was a question and answer session. One of the children asked Prentice what she thought of Home schooling.

She said, “Unless there are exceptional circumstances, children belong in school because learning in groups is best for children”.

This was in front of a group of Home Schoolers, i.e. children learning in a group.

I am not making this up.

Parents think that the epidemic of crime in London’s schools are ‘exceptional circumstances’, certainly exceptional enough to warrant taking your child out of harm’s way.

and lets spare a thought for the beleaguered teachers:

A survey of teachers in Bradford found that half were suffering from levels of stress that required medical aid, said Sylvia Jewell, from Kirklees. She said: “It’s the Government’s fault because it piles one demand on us after another.” Gill Lee, from Lewisham, south-east London, said: “We have too much work, too little time, too little pay and too little control over what we teach.” Dave Clinch, another Lewisham teacher, said: “We’re being asked by the government to cram facts into children’s heads instead of giving them a global view of the world.” Pete Bishop, a principal and member of the executive, said: “Primary school teachers are being forced to write down plans for every single lesson they teach. It’s totally unacceptable.”

[…]

oecta.on.ca

Once again, the quality of schools is a red herring; it is your right to home educate without state interference. Period.

A Swedish couple has run into trouble with authorities for trying to name their baby Metallica.

Michael and Karolina Tomaro are locked in a court battle with the country’s National Tax Authority about naming their daughter after the rock band.

The six-month-old has been baptised Metallica, but tax officials have dubbed the name “inappropriate”.

Under Swedish law, both first names and surnames need to win the approval of authorities before they can be used.

Offensive, unsuitable or inappropriate names, as well as those that could “cause discomfort for the one using it” cannot be used.

Last month, Goteburg’s County Administrative Court ruled there was no reason to block the name, adding that a Swedish woman already has the middle name Metallica.

Name battle

However, the Tomaro family ran into trouble when they tried to register the name with tax authorities before applying for a passport.

Tax officials objected to the decision, sending the case to a higher court.

“We’ve had to cancel trips and can’t get anywhere because we can’t get her a passport without an approved name,” said Mrs Tomaro.

Baby Metallica is not the first Swedish child to fall foul of Swedish name laws – the names Ikea and Veranda have also been rejected in the past.

The name Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 – pronounced Albin – was also rejected by authorities in 1996. The boy’s parents had chosen the name as a protest against Swedish naming laws.

But, the name Google managed to pass muster in 2005, when Oliver Google Kai was named by his parents, search engine expert Kelias Kai and his wife Carol.

BBQ

Well, what can we say about this? ‘Sucks to live in Sweden’.

I wonder what the reaction would be if my blog title was the actual title of the story…probably nothing, since it appears that anything is now acceptable as long as it comes from the state.

In many cultures, names are not just ways to identify a person. They have power, literal power, in some cultures, in others they are used to identify the place of the child in the family, and in yet others, they are used to honor the ancestors. For whatever reason you name your child, in a free country, you can name your child whatever you like; it is your child and not the property of the state.

That is why you have people named Zowie Bowie, Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches, and anything else that you can imagine, and some things you cannot.

It is clear that naming a child ‘Metallica’ will do no damage to the child, but this is not the point. The parents of that child have the right to name him or her whatever they want. The state is a servant who should merely write down the child’s name and then that is it.

Heaven knows what other nonsense the poor Swedes have to put up with; one thing that I do know about is the absurd state of alcohol laws in Sweden:

In order to limit the consumption of alcohol and reduce alcohol related harm, Sweden has adopted the ’alkohollag’ which rules on all aspects of production and trade of alcohol. Within this framework, Sweden has established a retailer monopoly. Products that are not displayed in the shops can be requested by the consumer. If the products are from other countries, the import taxes must be paid by the client. Up to 2005, the monopoly could refuse to import alcohol. This provision has been removed from the law since then.

In other words, individuals do not have the right to import alcohol by themselves, unless it is restricted to their personal consumption.

The case is based on request from Mr Rosengren who tried to import Spanish wines without a licence. He ordered Spanish wines through a Danish website as well as directly in Spain therefore bypassing the national alcohol monopoly.

[…]

The Google

Crazy isn’t it? And why do they put up with any of it?

Just what kind of people are these?

From a Home Schooling mailing list comes this astonishing story:

We have just returned from a weekend away. At Liverpool Street station on Thursday (when we left) we were approached by a truancy officer together with a helmeted uniformed officer. There were also two other uniformed officers stood behind at close-ish range.

They asked us if we were on holiday and if we had permission for Reuben to be out of school. I explained that we were home educating and that we were on holiday. They had no problem with this but asked us to fill out a rather lengthy form which they would then send to check us out with the local authority. I explained that we were not known to our local authority as this was not a legal requirement. They said this wouldn’t be a problem. The LA would just check that we were not ‘out’ of one of their schools.

The details of the form were as follows:

Child’s name
Address
Local authority
Date of birth
Telephone number
Date child last attended school
If child was excluded – date of exclusion
Whether child was with parent
Reason for being out of school
Name and address of parent
Ethnicity

There may have been a few other things that I can’t remember.

I was unsure about filling in these details. I had hoped to remain unknown to the LA for at least a while longer.

In the event, our train left in 10 minutes, so we filled it in to avoid hold-ups.

Has anyone else been approached like this? Is there a formal response that I should have been aware of? Do you think that the LA will put us on their register now? Or perhaps, as Ian thinks, it will be lost in a mountain of paperwork and never touched again.

I will let you all know if we are contacted for an inspection, as this would be the only route to it as far as I know.

There is no way that people in this country know that this is going on, because if they did, they would surely be outraged. Parents are responsible for their children. If a child is with its parents, by definition the child is not a truant, because truancy means absent without leave from school:

n. pl. tru·an·cies
The act or condition of being absent without permission.
Dictionary.com

Not only were these children not truant because they were accompanied by their parents, but there were a total of four salaried people there to intercept them. Four people who were wasting their time questioning parents about on their own business in their own country.

Great Britain has gone totally MAD.

The most worrying thing about this is that this person stated that there was no legal requirement to fill this form, but filled it anyway instead of saying point blank that she would not comply.

This is the greatest problem that we face; any government can enact legislation; the thing that gives it force is obedience. If the home schooling community of the UK will not stand up for its rights, then it will have no rights.

And that is a fact.

A passport to misery, if you ask me…

We’re askin; are ye dancin?!

By Jenny McCartney
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 25/03/2007

When it emerged last week that people who apply for a passport will soon be required to submit to an official interrogation, in which they will be compelled to answer in person from a list of 200 questions, I was filled with a distinct unease. For the truth is that I have only a hazy impression of the factual details of my own life. Indeed, it is quite possible I would fail a test to prove that I am me.

I’m good on names but worryingly poor on dates, and I see that some of the sample questions are rather keen on the latter. A query such as “Precisely when did you move into your current residence?” is exactly the sort that could have me bemusedly gaping like a goldfish as the interrogator slowly, grimly shakes his head.

Bernard Herdan, the executive director of the Identity and Passport Agency, wishes to reassure us: “This is not meant to be a daunting experience for people. We will seek to make it customer-friendly.” Whatever Mr Herdan’s intentions, he is wrong: the process will be intensely unfriendly. My reason for so thinking is that a visit to the London Passport Office last summer, even under its current system, left me feeling as though I had narrowly made it through Checkpoint Charlie into West Berlin.
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A few weeks before going on holiday, we had realised that our baby would need his own passport imminently, and that it would be swifter to make an appointment to sort it out in person. The passport form was complicated, and there seemed to be infinite ways of messing it up. On the day of the appointment, already frayed from the effort of marshalling the baby and his documentation to a given place at a fixed time, we found ourselves in a snaking queue outside the passport office. Suddenly an official appeared, herding people according to reference numbers. “Without a reference number you can’t come in!” he cried.

We had no reference number. Gradually, a dim recollection took shape in my mind, of something scribbled down and placed carefully in a kitchen drawer. I felt like crying. Fortunately, however, there was a number you could ring to rediscover your reference number. The pleasant lady next to me was carrying a sheaf of applications on behalf of her brother and his family: he had just broken his leg, and they were all due to go on holiday in two days’ time.

Half an hour later I stood in front of a female passport official. We both understood our roles: she was sternly officious, I was humble and ingratiating. Then she discovered that my Christian names were apparently displayed in the wrong order on my own passport. She paused, quizzical and outraged, as though seriously considering whether to refuse the whole thing.

Finally, I was allowed to creep away with the baby’s new passport and a ticking off.

The nice lady from the queue, who was at the desk next to me, was not so lucky: her distracted brother had apparently filled in a detail incorrectly, and the application was promptly rejected. As she left, despondent, the official concerned turned to his colleague and remarked with a distinct whiff of self-righteous satisfaction: “Well, that’s another one who won’t be going on holiday this year!”

Most British people intensely loathe such brushes with paperwork and officialdom. Since passports are important and necessary documents, however, we are prepared to put up with a bit of it. Yet this Government seems intent upon vastly increasing the tiresome bureaucracy we must endure. It is establishing 69 centres across the country, at an enormous cost to the taxpayer, in order to “authenticate by interview” first-time applicants. By 2009, anyone wishing to renew a passport will also be compelled to attend one of these centres, in which they will be fingerprinted and have their details fed into a national database. Passports and their administration centres are being used as the Trojan horse for the ID card scheme, which will carry a wealth of personal information and biometric data.

The Government has justified these intrusive methods as a security measure, which is presumably why it was so eager to advertise last week that 10,000 British passports each year are sent out to bogus claimants. It cited in particular the case of Dhiren Barot, the British al-Qaeda member who was found to have seven British passports in his own name and two in false ones.

Yet seemingly no one at the sharp-eyed passport agency even noticed that Mr Barot had “lost” an unusual number of passports. Why not? Surely it would be easier to devise a scanning system whereby a passport reported lost or stolen is automatically invalidated and detected if used, than to criminalise the blameless majority of citizens. If the government’s passport and ID card schemes come to fruition, however, I suspect that my stressful little trip to the Passport Office last year will seem, in comparison, as serene as a yoga session on a far-away beach. […]

Telegraph

My emphasis.

I wonder if the very intelligent and insightful Jenny McCartney has read BLOGDIAL, and all the things we have been writing.

Peers have criticised the “intrusive” and increasingly common practice of taking schoolchildren’s fingerprints.

Junior education minister Lord Adonis defended some schools’ use of biometric data for the attendance register, and access to meals and libraries.

He said fingerprints were destroyed once pupils left the school, and were only taken with parents’ consent.

Dirty Liar!

But Lib Dem, Tory and crossbench peers criticised the practice as intrusive, alarming and “completely astonishing”.

For the Lib Dems, Baroness Walmsley said: “The practice of fingerprinting in schools has been banned in China as being too intrusive and an infringement of children’s rights. Yet here it is widespread.”

Identity fraud

She said one head teacher had “tricked” three-year-olds into giving their prints “by playing a spy game”.

And, she said, with the dangers of identity fraud, the practice should be banned unless parents specifically signed up to the system.

Crossbencher Baroness Howe said: “Most people would be somewhat alarmed by the idea of having fingerprints taken and would have connected it with criminal offences.”

A Tory peer, Baroness Carnegy, asked Lord Adonis: “Are you not concerned that the impression children are going to get of what it is to live in a free country and what it is to be British if, in order to get the right school meals, they can have fingerprints taken? It seems to me completely astonishing.”

The Department for Education and Skills (DfeS) says it does not have figures for how many schools are already using biometric data.

Privacy watchdog

But a web poll by lobby group Leave Them Kids Alone estimated that 3,500 schools had bought equipment from two DfES-approved suppliers.

After pressure from campaigners, privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner is to urge schools to seek parents’ permission before taking children’s fingerprints.

Some primary schools have stored children’s thumb prints for computerised class registers and libraries without parental consent.

Lord Adonis told the House of Lords on Monday that under the Data Protection Act 1998, children or their parents must be given “fair processing” notices about the data and its proposed use.

He said biometric systems could improve the take-up of free school meals, as there was no “stigma” attached and many schools were using the systems “without any contention whatever”.

Lady Walmsley accused him of “complacency” and said children were being fingerprinted without permission, and were being victimised if they did not comply and threatened with exclusion.

Lord Adonis replied: “I think there is a certain amount of scaremongering in your question, which I regrettably don’t accept on the basis of the information that has been made available to my department.” […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6468643.stm