SEATTLE – A man operated a “warehouse bank” out of his suburban home, taking at least $28 million from people around the country who wanted a discrete bank account, according to court documents.

An IRS investigator said Robert Arant had hundreds of customers, many of whom apparently used his bank, Olympic Business Systems LLC, to conceal assets for the purpose of evading taxes.

On his now-defunct Web site, Arant advertised his services to those “who would rather not deal directly with the banking system,” court records said.

Arant took customers’ money – promising to keep their identities private – and pooled it in six accounts at Bank of America, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo Bank, IRS agent Susan Killingsworth said in court papers.

Arant would pay the customers’ bills from those commercial bank accounts, charging about $75 a year in fees for the service, plus fees for wire transfers and for initial account set-up, court record said. For $30, customers could buy debit cards to access their money more easily; otherwise, they could access it by check, money order or wire transfer, she said.

Reached by phone at his home Tuesday, Arant said he intended to represent himself in court, but declined to comment further.

“I’m not where I need to be as far as responding to the IRS at this point,” he said.

A civil complaint charges Arant with promoting abusive tax shelters and unlawfully interfering with internal revenue laws. And a federal judge has frozen the assets of Arant’s bank.

Agents seized computers and financial records last month from the home where Arant lives with the property’s owner, Martin F. Dugan.

Killingsworth was initially assigned to investigate Arant’s failure to file income tax returns since 2001.

She said she has been able to identify 13 people who used Arant’s service while underreporting or not reporting their income from 2002, when the bank opened, to 2005.

Arant could face civil penalties of $1,000 per false statement he made in promoting the scheme – typically calculated as one false statement for each of his customers.

Warehouse bank schemes were popular as illegal tax shelters in the 1980s, but several have been busted in more recent years – including one broken up in Boring, Ore., in 2000, involving $186 million in deposits from 900 people over 14 years. The six organizers of that scheme were sentenced to up to four years in prison. (1 image)

[…]

LibertyPost

A long while back, I wrote about the privacy shielding services that are going to and that have now started to appear:

Privacy will be taken very seriously when Nectar is everywhere, and there is very little privacy; in other words, when it becomes scarce. When that happens, people will pay for privacy.

There will be legions of people and services providing privacy, in the same way that there are professional dog walkers in the major cities of the world. You will pay someone to do your shopping for you, in their name though the goods will be going to you. These Dorian Greys will take on all the sin of your shopping, and heap it onto themselves, leaving your record clean and lean. Your ID will show that you never buy anything, except (if you are careless) the services of one or two people, who might not even be real people, who will seem to have the buying power of 100 human economic units.

Don’t worry, this does not mean that you will loose your Nectar points. The Dorian Greys will keep perfect accounts of what was spent on your behalf, anonymously, and your points will be redeemed for you on whatever you desire. You will get it all, the anonymity AND the privacy.

BLOGDIAL

So, what can we infer from this? If you pay someone else’s bills regularly, is this a crime? If you hold on to someone’s cash for them, is that also a crime?

You had better believe that there are many people who do not use these services, but who use other similar services that have no footprint at all.

The point is that people turn to these services because something is wrong with the services currently on offer everywhere.

But you know this!

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).

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.

FireGPG is a Firefox extension under GPL which brings an interface to encrypt, decrypt, sign or verify the signature of a text in any web page using GnuPG.

[…]

http://firegpg.tuxfamily.org/index.php?page=home&lang=en

Its about time.

If you use this with Gmail, no matter what happens, no one can read your email on the server. Not that Google will do that of course.

Quite why Google didnt do this themselves is a good question. They have the expertise, and the understanding to do it. Certainly the Bad Guys® would discourage them from releasing a tool like this to all Gmail users; it would mean email messages going dark to ECHELON, and then the sky falling.

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

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

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

Issuing

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

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

Validation

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

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

Er.. that’s it.

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

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

Mark Ballard
The Register
Tuesday, March 20, 2007

The UK government faced questions on school fingerprinting in the House of Lords yesterday, led by the accusation that they had a worse track record on civil liberties in this regard than the Chinese.

Baroness Joan Walmsley, Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman, said the government should look at the Chinese example

“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’s widespread,” she said, calling for the UK to ban school fingerprinting unless parents opted into it.

Lord Adonis, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Schools), Department for Education and Skills ignored the reference to the Chinese, but said it was normal for parents to be informed about fingerprinting, at which Walmsley screwed up her face in disbelief – a lack of parental consent in school fingerprinting has been central to the debate.

What’s the point of taking children’s fingerprints at all, asked another Lord.

Adonis said they were taken to control the issue of library books, taking registration or dishing out school meals. In the latter instance, he said, children who take free school meals would be able to do it without anyone knowing if they bought them with a fingerprint rather than a voucher, and so avoid any stigma that might be lumped on them for being poor. An alternative to a fingerprint scanner is a swipe card.

The Chinese decision to ban school fingerprints took a broader, longer-term view of the matter, the official who made the decision told The Register today.

Roderick Woo, the Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner, said: “A primary school has no business collecting data of that kind.”

“The way we look at it is, is it really necessary to collect that data and is it’s collection excessive, concerning their primary function [which is education],” he said.

“We always look at the issues and say, ‘are there less privacy-intrusive methods to achieve the same ends?’,” he said, suggesting that it might be enough to take someone’s name at registration and a little excessive to take their paw print.

“One takes a longer view,” he said. “And also whether it’s a good education for young chaps growing up thinking whether privacy of their personal data is important or not. It’s just a way of saying, ‘I attended school’ – surely there’s a less intrusive way?”

However, Woo was also a little put out by being referred to as Chinese: “We are one country and two systems and this is very much a Hong Kong show.”

[…]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/20/chinese_lords/

The other night, I saw a report on BBQ about the ‘repressive’ Chinese government that is denying people property rights. They followed some displaced people on a protest to Tianamen Square. They duly then reported the ‘repression’ as the protesters were arrested for protesting.

At no time did the idiotic reporter convey sickening fact that in the UK, such protests outside our own Tianamen Square (Parilament) are now banned.

Now it turns out that the British Government is more repressive than the Chinese government, which does not fingerprint schoolchildren, because it is, “too intrusive and an infringement of children’s rights”.

Who would have thought.

British children would be better off under Chinese Communism than British Democracy.

Pinch me…PLEASE!

Here we have top sleeping policeman at BBQ trying to slow the momentum of the anti road pricing rage. He uses a straw man argument to try and pull it off. Lets see…

Here’s an old economist conundrum about queues.

Here we go.

Suppose there is a water fountain in a park. It’s a hot day and lots of people want to drink from the fountain. Being awfully British and civilised, they form an orderly queue at the fountain.

Now, if the number of thirsty people strolling past the fountain is large enough, the rate at which people join the queue will exceed the rate at which people satisfy their thirst and leave the queue. So the queue will get longer and longer.

So what. The point is that everyone has an expatiation of when they are going to be served. They choose to queue up for the water. It is fair. It is efficient. There is no problem here. Anyone can leave the queue at any time to seek another source of water…or even a coke.

But at some point, thirsty people will reason to themselves that the displeasure of waiting in the queue is not worth the pleasure of the drink at the end. They’ll avoid the wait, and the queue will grow no longer.

The market solves its own problems. Order emerges from chaotic systems automagically. There is no need for interference, tweaking and other salary addict tactics. People work out problems for themselvs, and their interactions constitute a dynamic system that is self balancing and self ordering.

So far so good. That’s how life works in many ways.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But this simple account has a devastating implication.

Are you a thespian or an economist?

If there are people who are not joining the queue because it’s not worth it, then the people who do join the queue are probably barely getting any positive benefit out of their drinking fountain experience at all.

This is bullshit. There is no such thing as ‘drinking fountain experience’. These people are thirsty. When they get to the end of the queue their thirst will be quenched. That is all there is to it. Your input, meddling and nanny stating is not needed to make this magic happen.

They enjoy the drink, but for them, it is only just worth the wait. It’s a close run thing between bothering to drink or not.

More dramatic nonsense. People are able to weigh for themselvs the cost benefit of joining a queue. In the UK, people learn to do this from a very young age. The fact that they have waited for the water means that they are satisfied with the trade off. They know perfectly well that they can go elsewhere and get water. You are simplifying the dynamics to fit your bogus argument. Well, we expect nothing less from BBQ staffers, the largest concentration of paid liars deceivers and opinion steerers in the UK.

In fact, you might as well not have a drinking fountain on the hot day, as no-one can enjoy it without paying a time penalty that more or less wipes out the benefit.

In your humble opinion the benefit is wiped out. Its a hot day. They get free water. Its up to them and not you, to decide what that is worth. This is a classic error made by people like you; you think you know what is good for other people. And its completely STUPID to say that, “you might as well not have a drinking fountain on the hot day”. If some people get satisfaction from it, it should be there. It should not have to exist according to your idiotic standards of ‘efficiency’. Typical; you would rather people suffer from dehydration than allow an ‘inefficient’ distribution system to continue unregulated. You Swine!

I hope I’ve explained this properly. It’s a simplified account, and it relies on all the people in the park having a similar taste for drinking and not queuing.

Its completely bogus. Like most arguments made by hack economists, they create totally false idealized models of human behavior and then start to write garbage about it. Nothing wrong with that, but when you do it on the licence fee payers back, its a different proposition altogether, especially when you use this false reasoning to justify evil like orwellian road pricing, by direct order of Bliar and his contractors.

But it shows that when queuing does the rationing, it does a really bad job.

No, it doesn’t show that at all. It shows that you are not very good at making an argument. You are admitting that its a simplified model, not fit for purpose, but then in the next line, you say its good enough for the argument! Holding two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. You are a model citizen!

In the park, if you could get a warden to ban people from queuing, and who instead insisted that only random people could drink, (people whose surname begins with A to K for example), the fountain would give more benefit, (although that benefit would be distributed a little unfairly).

The police state option. The first line of choice from a BBQ animal. No surprise there.

There is another alternative that’s a little more equitable. If it’s practical, you can charge people to use the fountain.

‘Tax them’. Another ‘let the state control it’ ‘solution’. BBQ are the most unimaginative people out there. Its sickening.

Now, those who do pay, have the benefit of drinking without queuing,

NOW HOLD ON A MINUTE THERE BUSTER.

There are many other options to knock down this straw man problem:

• Put up a sign showing people alternative sources of water.
• Put in more fountains.
• Allow vendors to sell water in the park.
• $insert_your_solution_here

I have always hated the ‘this or that’ style of posing an argument that journalists are so fond of; it precludes any other, perhaps better options and arguments. It narrows the dialogue. Constrains thought. Its bad.

but they have the cost of paying. So on balance they are better off using the fountain, but probably only just better off. As far as they’re concerned, we haven’t improved things much over the queuing situation: we’ve just changed the pain of queuing by the pain in the purse.

The state of being ‘well off’ depends on who is being asked. What a biased BBQ ‘economist’ thinks is better for you and I is, I assure you, not what is actually better for you and I. And that is a fact.

The difference is though, that the money they’ve handed over can be of benefit to someone else, or the population at large.

But the population at large will never know, because their monies are routinely misdirected and never properly accounted for.

There is an upside to the drinkers’ displeasure, unlike in the case where the queue does the rationing.

Or to put it another way: when you queue – I get no benefit from your pain. When you pay, I probably do.

Now that is a pretty good argument against the use of rationing by queues.

It may not be a good argument for road pricing, but it does explain why economists tend to think of the price mechanism as a better method of rationing things than congestion.

[…]

The Reporters at BBQ

This is a concatenation of utter gibberish.

What this moron leaves out is the fact that the road pricing scheme is more about surveillance than it is about relieving congestion. HMG already has plans to put cameras on every inch of road, “to deny criminals the use of the roads”. What that means is that the criminals will use the roads as they have done before, and all ordinary, non criminal drivers will have their every movement recorded by a Big Brother system.

This couldn’t be more far removed from a water fountain in a park could it?

If you want to eliminate congestion in any place, you simply have to take cars off of the roads.

Think about a pint glass in your local. The beautiful brown haired bar maid starts pulling your pint. As the golden nectar reaches the top, she stops pulling. If she were to keep pulling, the bitter would start to spill everywhere, the publican sees his money spilling onto the floor, and you have to wait longer for your pint, which will still have only a pint of beer in it when it is handed to you.

Now think about London. London has a finite road capacity. Lets say that it is 200,000 cars on the road, plus all parked cars that have the potential of getting on the road at any time. When London is full, it should be closed off to incoming traffic. That means that on every road around the whole of london, barriers come down and no more cars are allowed in.

Cars are allowed out of course, and for every car allowed out, one is allowed in.

There is no need to take down the license numbers of each car. This is a case of simple counting, and capacity, just like the pint glass. There is no need to count in every sweet molecule of brew as it enters the glass; gravity takes care of it for you automagically. What cars do when they get into London is their business. As long as the capacity of London is not exceeded, the mission is accomplished. The quality of life for all Londoners improves dramatically, no one is disadvantaged by an iniquitous Congestion charging scheme, there is no opportunity for a Big Brother surveillance system of absolutely hideous cameras despoiling the city and making its inhabitants feel like prisoners in their own town, and if each of the entry points is manned, well, its jobs for the boys. And economists like jobs don’t they?

The simple solutions are the best. Take your lead from Beer. It almost always works.

Now there are those who say that such a scheme would cause chaos. So what. There is a cost to driving that has been ignored for decades. Everyone has to understand that there is a limit to the number of cars that can be on the roads, and there is a limit to the number of roads that are possible in any country. By setting the capacity of cities and roads and then cutting off access, people will have to think hard before they take their car out. There will be many systems that will grow out of this method of flow control; imagine the GPS navigation systems overlaid with the capacity of the roads and cities in real time. You could use a system like that to plan your journey. As you approach, say, London at 7:45 in the morning, the capacity left would be shown. If there is no chance of you getting there before ‘LonCap’ reaches 100%, your GPS will tell you to get off of the M4 NOW and park so that you can get a train.

This is the sort of solution that is preferable to the orwell style Blair Brother ‘options’. All you need to do is THINK about the problem correctly, with the rights of people uppermost as you consider what needs to be done.

Without beer, its harder to do.

Jason Singh, an officer with Northumbria Police, was the ringleader of a team attacking ATMs with power tools in professional, well planned raids across Tyne and Wear.

The 23-year-old police constable even used confidential information obtained from a Northumbria Police computer to target a vulnerable woman’s £30,000 savings.

[…]

Telegraph

Yet again this a demonstration of how ‘insiders’ can misuse database information, and how the importance being able to control access to personal information should be paramount.
Now if you consider that the government is doing as much as possible to convince businesses to use NIR/ID card information as proof of identity this will allow someone somewhere to correlate bank account numbers with NIR entries. Now if your bank starts deploying fingerprint activated atm machines it will take the minimum of effort for such an insider to link NIR stored fingerprint data to a certain bank account.
In addition this shows how detailed NIR information can become ‘valuable’ in it’s own right – in order to allow secondary crimes to occur.
The ‘proposal’ (assuming it already isn’t happening) to allow departments access to each other’s data will both make it easier to accumulate disparate data and for ‘insiders’ to hide their tracks more effectively.

Blair launches new drive to let officials share data on citizens

Tony Blair will today spearhead a fresh government initiative to persuade voters they have nothing to fear from consenting to a relaxation of “over-zealous” rules which stop Whitehall departments sharing information about individual citizens.

How are people going to give ‘informed consent’? Is it not more likely that officials will be told to assume consent has been given unless specifically denied (and how effective is this likely to be)? And how will all this be regulated?

But the exercise was denounced by opposition MPs as a further lurch towards a Big Brother state even before the prime minister announces the formation of five citizen panels, each with 100 members, to examine the merits of such a change.

Just examine the merits? will these ‘citizen panels’ be fed with the sort of half truths and incomplete information that Civil Servants/Select Committees would rightly reject?

Officials were keen to emphasise that talk of a “single massive database” is misconceived. What is at issue is allowing individual departmental systems to talk to each other.

What is at issue is the ability for an individual to limit/prevent the damage caused by disclosure of personal information to all and sundry.

One official derided the condemnation likely to come from civil liberty lobbies, insisting: “At present we have some ridiculously artificial demarcations in government when Tesco and the credit agencies know more about us all than government agencies which are there to help you.”

Tesco is not a monopoly service provider and the information it gathers can be controlled to an extent by Data Protection laws which help prevent it gaining third party information. In principle and to a large degree Tesco only gathers the information you supply it with or allow to be made public. YOU CAN OPT OUT OF SUPPLYING TESCO WITH INFORMATION especially by not shopping there. In addition a lot of information held by State controlled agencies is potentially more damaging than that held by Tesco et al. (and I don’t even include covertly gathered ‘intelligence’).
There is no comeback from not supplying Tesco with information – it can’t fine you for not having a clubcard, or for not having a TV License, it doesn’t have powers to curtail freedom of movement or protest. It’s a shop – it just sells things.

The first target of the reforms is bereavement, when families under stress are required to notify a range of agencies that they have lost a loved one.

Work is still under way to establish the technical changes that would be necessary to make reporting a death a one-stop call. It is claimed such changes would help “early identification” and thus give warning that a family is struggling.

Surely it is better to question why so many officials need to be informed of a death.

But the Tories and Liberal Democrats have brushed aside promised safeguards and denounce the change as “an excuse for bureaucrats to snoop”. The NO2ID campaign to resist government plans for universal ID cards calls the proposals “the abolition of privacy”.

Manifesto commitments to overturn this please, all else is hot air.

It reverses the historic presumption of confidentiality, the campaign argues, something ministers deny. But the office of the information commissioner, whose task is to promote public access to official data – and to protect personal data – is taking a more benign view. The government’s intentions have been debated within Whitehall and were signalled as part of the reform of public service delivery in the documents published as part of Gordon Brown’s pre-budget report in November. “Citizens should be able to access public services in relation to changes in their personal or family life events through a single point,” said a document which promised a delivery plan in 2007.

If public services were handled at a local level more then the burdens would be easier to bear on both sides

Inside Whitehall the lead department on the proposed change is work and pensions, whose secretary of state, John Hutton, yesterday used an interview on BBC1’s Politics Show to deny that the change were too intrusive. The potential benefits were considerable, he said. “The government already stores vast amounts of data about individual citizens [why??? – mm] but actually doesn’t share it terribly intelligently across various government agencies. I had a case in my department about a family where someone had unfortunately died in a road traffic accident, and over the space of six months, on 44 separate occasions, they were asked by elements of my department to confirm details of this terrible tragedy.”

This burdensome red tape is entirely because the government is already too involved in people’s lives.

[…]

Guardian

This all follows on from the relaxation of Data Protection controls last July and is most likely a prelude for the most questioning Census ever in 2011. It’s like a real version of the boogeyman stories about drugs, the soft stuff leads onto the hard stuff and BAM! you’re hooked.

Government intrusion? Just Say No!

—

Hmm, I was trying to ‘Detox’

If you’ve traveled abroad recently, you’ve been investigated. You’ve been assigned a score indicating what kind of terrorist threat you pose. That score is used by the government to determine the treatment you receive when you return to the U.S. and for other purposes as well.

Curious about your score? You can’t see it. Interested in what information was used? You can’t know that. Want to clear your name if you’ve been wrongly categorized? You can’t challenge it. Want to know what kind of rules the computer is using to judge you? That’s secret, too. So is when and how the score will be used.

U.S. customs agencies have been quietly operating this system for several years. Called Automated Targeting System, it assigns a “risk assessment” score to people entering or leaving the country, or engaging in import or export activity. This score, and the information used to derive it, can be shared with federal, state, local and even foreign governments. It can be used if you apply for a government job, grant, license, contract or other benefit. It can be shared with nongovernmental organizations and individuals in the course of an investigation. In some circumstances private contractors can get it, even those outside the country. And it will be saved for 40 years.

Little is known about this program. Its bare outlines were disclosed in the Federal Register in October. We do know that the score is partially based on details of your flight record–where you’re from, how you bought your ticket, where you’re sitting, any special meal requests–or on motor vehicle records, as well as on information from crime, watch-list and other databases.

Civil liberties groups have called the program Kafkaesque. But I have an even bigger problem with it. It’s a waste of money.

The idea of feeding a limited set of characteristics into a computer, which then somehow divines a person’s terrorist leanings, is farcical. Uncovering terrorist plots requires intelligence and investigation, not large-scale processing of everyone.

Additionally, any system like this will generate so many false alarms as to be completely unusable. In 2005 Customs & Border Protection processed 431 million people. Assuming an unrealistic model that identifies terrorists (and innocents) with 99.9% accuracy, that’s still 431,000 false alarms annually.

The number of false alarms will be much higher than that. The no-fly list is filled with inaccuracies; we’ve all read about innocent people named David Nelson who can’t fly without hours-long harassment. Airline data, too, are riddled with errors.

The odds of this program’s being implemented securely, with adequate privacy protections, are not good. Last year I participated in a government working group to assess the security and privacy of a similar program developed by the Transportation Security Administration, called Secure Flight. After five years and $100 million spent, the program still can’t achieve the simple task of matching airline passengers against terrorist watch lists.

In 2002 we learned about yet another program, called Total Information Awareness, for which the government would collect information on every American and assign him or her a terrorist risk score. Congress found the idea so abhorrent that it halted funding for the program. Two years ago, and again this year, Secure Flight was also banned by Congress until it could pass a series of tests for accuracy and privacy protection.

In fact, the Automated Targeting System is arguably illegal as well (a point several congressmen made recently); all recent Department of Homeland Security appropriations bills specifically prohibit the department from using profiling systems against persons not on a watch list.

There is something un-American about a government program that uses secret criteria to collect dossiers on innocent people and shares that information with various agencies, all without any oversight. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect from the former Soviet Union or East Germany or China. And it doesn’t make us any safer from terrorism. […]

This essay, without the links, was published in Forbes.

They also published a rebuttal by William Baldwin, although it doesn’t seen to rebut any of the actual points. “Here’s an odd division of labor: a corporate data consultant argues for more openness, while a journalist favors more secrecy.” It’s only odd if you don’t understand security.

It also needs to be pointed out that all over the world, in countries without a widespread credit card system, most airline tickets, no matter what the destination, are bought with cash.

That means that any ‘third world’ traveller has been given a higher score thanks to this bogus metric, when in fact its absolutely normal to buy airline tickets with cash all over the world.

These people are totally insane.

But you know this.

Britons to be scanned for FBI database
Anger over airport fingerprint plan; Terror tests to start this summer
Paul Harris in New York, Jamie Doward and Paul Gallagher

Sunday January 7, 2007

Millions of Britons who visit the United States are to have their fingerprints stored on the FBI database alongside those of criminals, in a move that has outraged civil rights groups. The Observer has established that under new plans to combat terrorism, the US government will demand that visitors have all 10 fingers scanned when they enter the country. The information will be shared with intelligence agencies, including the FBI, with no restrictions on their international use.

[…]

The Observer

You really don’t need that holiday in Florida that much, do you?

Middle Finger Print?

Guantanamo Bay of Pigs!

Here we go….

Rethink on ID card computer plan

This is yet another lie. Saying that it is a ‘rethink’ implies that there was thought given in the first place. This is demonstrably not the case.

The government has abandoned plans to build a new computer system as part of the national identity cards scheme.

Instead information will be held on three existing and separate databases.

So, we will have three times as many points of access than before. Well done! And in any case, these three DBs will have to be synchronized for the real time magic to happen, so it will for all intents and purposes act like a single database.

This data, wether it is held on one or a thousand different computers should not be held at all. That is the thing that needs to be understood by HMG.

Home Secretary John Reid denied this was a “U-turn” saying it would save money, lead to greater efficiency and lower the risk of fraud.

Lies lies and more lies. They now know for sure that these measures will not prevent people from getting fake ID issued to them, complete with bogus NIR entry. The whole thing is a sham and a lie, and they all know it. This is being done to line the coffers at Schlumberger and the other vendors who look to make a trans-generational killing on the fleecing of the UK citizenry.

All non-Europeans already in the UK – not just those arriving from 2008 – would have to register biometrics, such as fingerprints or iris scans.

This is bollocks. Imagine a piece of legislation saying that you had to be fingerprinted like a criminal just to enter or stay in the UK…uh oh, thats exactly what they are talking about. When the millions of people who came to live here did so over the last forty years, they did so on the premise that they were coming to live in a free country. Now they are changing the agreement, and saying that you must now sign up for their fascist police state, or get out. This is so wrong it beggars belief.

The controversial National Identity Register (NIR) was originally proposed as a single “clean” computer system built from scratch to avoid repeating mistakes and duplications in the government’s computer systems.

We have been through this garbage soooo many times, and over such a length of time….now we are winning. Finally.

‘Lower risk’

Now the information will be spread across three existing IT systems, including the Department of Work and Pensions’ (DWP) Customer Information Service, which holds national insurance records.

Once again, it will be held between three different systems, all of which will need to be synchronized. It is a disaster times three, no doubt about it.

Mr Reid denied IT companies had wasted millions on preparation work for an entirely new system, saying the industry had been consulted on the move.

AT WHOSE INSTRUCTIONS WAS THIS MONEY WASTED you dirty swine? And now you are going to spend MORE money putting in a system that millions will reject out of principle, knowing full well that it will do nothing to stem the tide of people, stop any crime whatsoever etc etc.

“Doing something sensible is not necessarily a U-turn,” Mr Reid told reporters.

White is black, day is night, right is wrong, up is down, hot is cold, war is peace, freedom is slavery.

“We have decided it is lower risk, more efficient and faster to take the infrastructure that already exists, although the data will be drawn from other sources.”

YOU have decided this? Upon consultation with whom? Based on what parameters? This is more bullshit….and they know it.

Iris scans

The move was welcomed by campaign group No2ID.

Spokesman Michael Parker said campaigners had been warning the Home Office for years about the dangers of “putting all your eggs in one basket” when storing data.

Indeed.

Biometric information will be stored, initially, on systems currently used for asylum seekers, while biographical information will be stored on the DWP’s system.

So, your prints (should you be stupid enough to hand them over) will be stored with asylum seekers, where, thanks to the imperfections of biometric systems, you can be mistaken for someone who is not British, and who is in fact, the lowest creature in the Neulabour mind-set. That MIGHT be OK if you are not brown. And I don’t mean Gordon Brown.

Other information, on the issue and use of ID cards, will be stored on the existing passport service computer system.

Which we already know is a broken system that can allow near instant cloned passports, and which of course is open to all the insider abuse that Whitehall is already renowned for.

Mr Reid also announced proposals to force foreign nationals from outside the European Economic Area (EEA), who are already in the UK, to register their biometrics, such as fingerprints and iris scans.

And just how is he going to do that, and who in their right mind is going to agree to it?

This is already due to happen for those applying for visas to come to the UK from 2008, but Mr Reid said: “We are going to look at how we could do it for people who are already here.”

I would suggest that you look very hard at all of this and then throw it all in the garbage. There is no way that any self respecting person is going to knuckle under to your fascist bullshit.

Fake identity

He said the ultimate aim was to make all foreign nationals from outside the EU to register their biometric details but the scheme would begin with people re-applying to stay in the UK.

This will be challenged in court, and they will fail. You cannot treat people like criminals. Period.

He said he wanted to tighten up exit controls at ports and airports, as well as entry requirements.

“We want to count everybody in and count everybody out,” said Mr Reid.

Why? What will this achieve? What crime will it prevent? The answer is there is no reason for this, it will achieve nothing and that it will not prevent a single crime.

Foreigners from outside the EU would not be able to get a National Insurance number unless they have a biometric identity.

Like they even CARE. All the illegal workers DONT WANT A NATIONAL INSURANCE NUMBER YOU NUMBSKULL.

Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said a consultation paper would be published in the New Year.

Will this be like the previous consultation, where 5000 ‘noes’ were counted as one ‘no’ simply because they originated from a single website? Like that consultation that got all the facts right, that you are admitting were right only after MILLIONS of pounds have been wasted?

Don’t even PRETEND that this consultation paper will have any weight, its just an insult, and we are tired of these insults and your lies you dirty bastard.

Mr Reid said ID cards would help tackle illegal immigration, identity fraud, fight organised crime and terrorism, help protect vulnerable children by allowing better background checks and improve public services.

He said that? really?!?!?!?!?

They would not stop people having a fake identity, he conceded, but would prevent people having multiple identities, which he said were most often used by “crooks, terrorists and fraudsters”.

You have GOT to be kidding!!!!!! This is the STUPIDEST thing I have ever heard from Fascist Labor. If your prints are in the DB and a system operator is compromised, then you can have multiple identities. Period.

“You can go around claiming the first time you are John Reid, but you can not then come round a second time claiming you are Liam Byrne,” he said, by way of illustrating his point.

No one, would ever claim to be John Reid. That is just ABSURD. Honestly, even CRIMINALS have some shame.

Civil liberties

The plans were laid out in an action plan which Mr Reid said was a “countdown” to the introduction of ID cards.

The only thing we are ‘counting down’ to is the end of your evil regime you dog.

ID cards are due from 2009, becoming compulsory for anyone applying for a passport from 2010. Critics question their cost and the impact on civil liberties.

The card will contain basic identification information including the name, address, gender, date of birth and photo of the cardholder.

A microchip would also hold biometric information.

BBQ

And yet again, (and no surprise) BBQ fails to live up to its responsibilities, and lets this all slide by.

Pure unadulterated evil, and its ever compliant supporter.

SHAME ON YOU!

A new civil liberties controversy has flared up over the news that police chiefs are considering using high-powered microphones to “eavesdrop” – as critics will see it – on crowds at the London 2012 Olympics.

A high-ranking officer told the BBC the proposal to strengthen security by using microphones alongside closed-circuit TV involved “taking public surveillance to an entirely new level”.

But the former home secretary David Blunkett called publicly on the government to block the scheme.

He told BBC Radio Five Live’s Weekend News programme that the suggestion was “simply unacceptable”, and smacked of the “surveillance state”.

As you walk down the street you expect to be able to have a private conversation
David Blunkett

Mr Blunkett said the idea echoed the fictional authoritarian Brave New World of Aldous Huxley’s novel.

“As you walk down the street you expect to be able to have a private conversation,” he said.

“If you can’t guarantee that – and here is someone speaking who has been pretty tough in terms of what should be available to protect society – I believe we have slipped over the edge.”

As you walk down the street, you expect to be able to have a private conversation.

This simply CANNOT be real.

Does the subhuman adulterer actually think this? Is he joking? This is the very same loathsome David Blunkett that did all the evil that we railed against…..

But Mimi Majick chimes in:

Its because he is BLIND; sound to him is equivalent to sight for us. That is why he understands this. It shows you why you shouldn’t have somebody who is disabled in a position like Home Secretary, because they cannot represent us. He cannot possibly understand what having CCTV cameras in the street means, because he has no sight.

And I agree totally, and have said this before; a blind Home Secratary cannot judge what is obscene and what is not obscene because he cannot see porn.

But I digress.

This BASTARD now wants to defect from the dark side (no pun intended) and join the side of what is right?

What utter rubbish.

This proves yet again that the people behind the push for ID cards, biometrics and all that other hogwash simply don’t understand what it is that they are doing. They don’t understand the consequences, the ramifications, the results, and if it all gets rolled out, the police will be in charge and they will have the power to silence any politician that goes up against them because they will be able to see into every bedroom, every bank account and every nook and cranny of this great country. No one in any position of power will dare defy them because it means, as in the case of asshole Blunkett, that adulterous affairs will be exposed, and in the case of Bliar, bribery uncovered.

Told you so!

and this from Bruce’s November newsletter:

We can’t turn back technology; electronic communications are here to stay. But as technology makes our conversations less ephemeral, we need laws to step in and safeguard our privacy. We need a comprehensive data privacy law, protecting our data and communications regardless of where it is stored or how it is processed. We need laws forcing companies to keep it private and to delete it as soon as it is no longer needed.

And we need to remember, whenever we type and send, we’re being watched.

Foley is an anomaly. Most of us do not send instant messages in order to solicit sex with minors. Law enforcement might have a legitimate need to access Foley’s IMs, e-mails and cell phone calling logs, but that’s why there are warrants supported by probable cause–they help ensure that investigations are properly focused on suspected pedophiles, terrorists and other criminals. We saw this in the recent UK terrorist arrests; focused investigations on suspected terrorists foiled the plot, not broad surveillance of everyone without probable cause.

Without legal privacy protections, the world becomes one giant airport security area, where the slightest joke — or comment made years before — lands you in hot water. The world becomes one giant market-research study, where we are all life-long subjects. The world becomes a police state, where we all are assumed to be Foleys and terrorists in the eyes of the government.

http://tinyurl.com/ymmnee

Yes indeed. What you are describing is not a ‘giant airport security area’ but a Prison Planet.

Me too Me too!!!! :

Passengers at Heathrow had their fingerprints taken for the first time yesterday, in tests which could lead to routine biometric scanning at Britain’s airports.

A high-tech scanner was unveiled by the Government and eventually all passengers could be required to have iris and face scans.

Initially, passengers are being invited to have their fingerprints scanned in return for skipping boarding queues. If the scheme, known as miSense, proves succesful, it could be rolled out across the UK…

Telegraph

Copycat imbeciles!

Hacking through the jungle of “haven’t we heard all this before?” , wading through the river of “Is there anything more to say?” and adjusting our hat to avoid the bright rays of “PRopaganda dressed as news” seems to having an effect on one’s system. The daily news once more seems to me a set of evolving illusions – popular tropes that need regular spinning lest they fall off needle thin spires of truth – just as it did in the mid-90s.

Anyway I caught the end of the Toady programme this morning which had some news about the introduction of portable fingerprint detectors. In the first instance I was dumbfounded by the sheer futility of the excercise as it will stand:

Experts hope the device will save massive amounts of police time and money by allowing officers to identify suspects on the roadside without having to take them to the station.

A pilot scheme – called Project Lantern – will be used in Luton, Bedfordshire, by officers targeting motoring offences.

The gadget allows officers to search 6.5 million fingerprints archived on the National Automated Fingerprint System, with the trial aiming to give them a result within five minutes.

The Home Office’s Police Information Technology Organisation (Pito) calculates it could save more than £2.2m a year.

Fingerprints can only be taken from the public voluntarily using the Lantern system because the law will have to be changed before officers can force people to give prints on the street.

Guardian

So for the system to ‘work’:
1) a person needs to alreday be on a police database.
2) said person needs to give their consent (incredibly likely, no?)

Additionally the spokesman on the Toady programme informed us that new fingerprints would not be added to the database and records would be deleted at the end of the day or on request (actually a good thing – not as good as prints not being taken though).

But then what does the system ‘working’ mean? Presumably it will allow truth-telling people with a criminal record to be identified more quickly. Hooray.

NO.

That is not what this device ‘working’ means.

This is part of the softening up procedure to make ‘procedural’ fingerprint taking and police access to a population database acceptable. Remember:

Fingerprints can only be taken from the public voluntarily using the Lantern system because the law will have to be changed before officers can force people to give prints on the street.

And believe me this Government will be all too ready to change the law to follow the technological ‘solution’.
This Government wants acceptance of a fully populated ‘criminal’ database (that is everyone has a criminal record, empty or otherwise)
This Government wants it’s NIR-centred biometric databases to be complete and pervasive.

But I’m sure we’ve said this before.

Just as individual identity is fundamental to our face-to-face interactions, digital identity is fundamental to our interactions in the online world. Unfortunately, many of the challenges associated with the Internet stem from the lack of widely deployed, easily understood, and secure identity solutions. This should come as no surprise. After all, the Internet was designed for sharing information, not for securely identifying users and protecting personal data. However, the rapid proliferation of online theft and deception and the widespread misuse of personal information are threatening to erode public trust in the Internet and thus limit its growth and potential.

Microsoft believes that no single identity management system will emerge and that efforts should instead be directed toward developing an overarching framework that connects different identity systems and sets out standards and protocols for ensuring the privacy and security of online interactions. Microsoft calls this concept the Identity Metasystem. The Identity Metasystem is not a specific product or solution, but rather an interoperable architecture that allows Internet users to use context-specific identities in their various online interactions.

PDF

M$ has released a new paper ‘The Identity Metasystem: Towards a Privacy-Compliant Solution to the Challenges of Digital Identity’. The above is from the summary. This paper is flawed from the outset; the ‘problem’ of identity on the web is a vendor looking for a solution.

individual identity is fundamental to our face-to-face interactions, digital identity is fundamental to our interactions in the online world

This is not true. When I buy a newspaper from a street vendor, he doesn’t need to know anything about me to sell me an Evening Standard. When I buy a bouquet of flowers from a shop in the high street, the shop keeper doesn’t need to know who I am and where I live, or anything else about me. All they have to know is that my money is good. They can then deliver the flowers to wherever I say it should go. The second part of that quoted sentence, “digital identity is fundamental to our interactions in the online world” is simply wrong, for reasons I give below.

many of the challenges associated with the Internet stem from the lack of widely deployed, easily understood, and secure identity solutions.

This is not true; the problem is, as I say below, one of buggy whip manufacturers trying to sell their wares to bicycle makers. Poor analogy!

the rapid proliferation of online theft

Is caused by this misapplication of existing systems and a misunderstanding of what is actually required for an online purchase.

Microsoft believes that no single identity management system will emerge and that efforts should instead be directed toward developing an overarching framework that connects different identity systems and sets out standards and protocols for ensuring the privacy and security of online interactions. Microsoft calls this concept the Identity Metasystem.

Identity management systems are not needed. The onus needs to be swung back onto the user. Identity management systems will eventually be replaced by light systems where the users ‘identity’ is owned by the user. These bad, antiquated systems will eventually collapse like MS Passport collapsed, when the solution that solves the problem correctly is launched.

Identity, like cash, needs to be owned by the user, and it needs to be cash like, and not card like. The problems of CC fraud are caused by old style services trying to shoehorn ’70s style payment systems into a twentieth century shoe. The way forward is to literally let people own their identities, i.e., in systems that do not rely on you revealing who you ‘really are’ to get things done, but which rely on you managing your identity in a cash like manner. I have said this before on BLOGDIAL; your data has an actual monetary value and should be treated as a valuable thing, like precious metals etc.

Skype payments (and all payment systems like it) are a good example of a cash like identity system; they are light, limited in their exposure of user info, and the onus is on the user to protect a single piece of information; her login.

Skype doesn’t care who you ‘really are’ in order for you to spend Skype money (when they roll this out); its up to you to protect your user name and password, just like it is your responsibility to look after your wallet in your pocket when you are in the street. Oyster, for all its flaws (following people around) is the same. When you buy an anonymous Oyster card, no one will care who you are when you go and buy a Mars bar with it in a shop. Who you ‘really are’ is irrelevant to all transactions both online and offline; this is the paradigm (re) shift that identity system vendors resist but which has been in place for generations. It is only now that it is possible to know everything about someone when they grocery shop that companies are clamoring for ways to actually do this and harvest this data. It has never been needed and will be rejected wholesale when people cotton on (again) to how bad these systems really are for people and society.

You can buy with Skype money, have goods delivered to any address that you like, and be completely anonymous while taking full advantage of e-commerce. This is the way that identity should be managed; in light, not heavy systems, that are cash-like, where the onus on security is pushed (or released) back to the consumer. Chaumian e-cash did this beautifully; you should look it up as an example of how identity can and should be managed.

Biometrics, ID cards, iris scans and every other vendor created snake oil product to ‘secure’ identity and e-commerce is just that, Snake Oil. Twenty first century thinking and systems are what is needed and are what will eventually take over. Over zealous, pointless, vendor driven ‘solutions’ are detected as damage by ‘the internets’ and economics, and both of these will be automatically routed around, circumvented, defeated and replaced by systems that are both better and beneficial.

One thing is for sure, Microsoft will not be the vendor to come up with it. It will be someone like Skype, or its decedents that does it; some outfit that is light, decentralized, focussed and unfettered, unlike M$, which is encumbered, lethargic, immobile and who has been playing catch up since Netscape. It will not be Google either, as we have seen from the YouTube buy out. Whoever does it, this solution will change everything overnight. It will destroy the old (and wrong) ideas about identity, and then we will enter ‘The Third Bubble’.