The Homeland Security Department is trying to squash criticism of its slow development of an exit piece to the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program.

Robert Mocny, US-VISIT director, said yesterday the agency has decided a piece of the exit program will require airlines to collect biometric data of visitors leaving the country when they check in at the airport. Mocny said DHS will issue a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register by January 2008 detailing the program.

“We don’t have too many details yet,” Mocny said during a conference on identity management sponsored by the Information Technology Association of America in Washington. “The technology worked fine during the pilots, but we want to see what infrastructure is out there already.”

DHS has conducted an experimental biometric exit program at 14 major airports in the past three years.

DHS discontinued a pilot exit program May 6 based on radio frequency identification technology. DHS stopped requiring foreign nationals to use RFID-equipped US-VISIT kiosks to check out as they leave the country. Some described those kiosks as difficult to use, and the RFID tags used in the exit program proved to be unreliable.

Mocny said he would like to see airlines volunteer for the program, but many companies are against this concept, fearing it would delay check-in times.

He added that DHS’ bigger challenge will be creating an exit system for land ports.

“Our goal is to have an exit system for air and sea ports by December 2008,” Mocny said. “The exit system is important, but it was not the first thing we wanted to do. The entry system was more important.”

Despite these plans, lawmakers remain frustrated about DHS’ slow pace in developing the exit system.

Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), ranking member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology, said he would like to see DHS focus more on the program.

“We ask about US-VISIT every time secretary [Michael Chertoff] testifies because we are worried about visa overstays,” McCaul said. “We are still not satisfied with their response. I think it has been on the backburner because [the Secure Border Initiative]-Net has been their priority focus. I understand why, but I would like to see more focus on US-VISIT’s exit system.”

McCaul added that there is a lot of interest in Congress on secure identification cards. He pointed to a host of bills requiring technically advanced identifications such as H.R. 98, which calls for the Social Security Administration to produce cards with encrypted machine-readable electronic identification strips and an electronic eligibility database with citizenship and resident work status that employers could check potential employees against.

But he also warned that getting some of these bills passed may be tougher than before.

“The new Congress shifted toward more American Civil Liberties Union driven,” McCaul said. “It is not as much about security, but what the government is doing wrong in not protecting citizen’s privacy. It is a good debate to have, but in some areas such as the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act it is going the wrong way.”

McCaul said Mike McConnell, head of the Director of National Intelligence, said the government would have to go through the FISA court to get permission to capture 70 percent of all communication.

[…]

http://www.fcw.com/online/news/150554-1.html

Post tipping point; use the Google to find out what we have to say about this.

Vote Ron Paul.

Social Democratic Party drops its objections to fingerprints in ID cards

The experts on domestic and legal policy of the parliamentary group of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the Bundestag, the lower chamber of Germany’s Federal Parliament, have withdrawn their initial objections to biometric enhancements of the new German ID card, the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel has written in a report published in the run-up to the final meeting of the representatives of the ruling coalition on the highly controversial topic scheduled for Tuesday. The Conservatives (CDU) and their partners in the ruling grand coalition, the SPD, have been working towards a solution akin to the one found for the e-passport, the paper declares. Thus apart from a digital photograph of the person in question, two of his or her fingerprints are to be integrated into the electronic ID card’s RFID chip. The approach does not provide for storage of the sensitive data outside the documents themselves. Members of the opposition have already warned that the system that was being put in place would lead to citizens being fingerprinted and photographed like criminals by the registration authorities.

>Dieter Wiefelspütz, an expert of the Social Democratic Party on domestic affairs, said he thought it was possible to countenance the inclusion of fingerprints in the ID cards that most citizens would eventually be carrying provided that “the storing of the data elsewhere has been ruled out completely.” The digital ID card was a “fascinating modernization project,” he added. Because of the potential advantages of the new document for citizens – it would make it a lot easier for them to register with authorities or have their age confirmed or checked via the Internet or when surfing the same, he pointed out – he for one would be supporting the project. For identification and authentication purposes a digital photo was good, “but a fingerprint is better still,” he declared. For Fritz Rudolf Körper, the deputy head of the parliamentary group of the Social Democrats, the party line is clear: “Fingerprints yes, but no database to go with them.” Even Klaus Uwe Benneter, the spokesman on legal policy issues of the SPD in the Bundestag, who within the ranks of the party has, to date, been a vocal critic of the project has signaled that he would be willing to drop his objections. The citizens of the Federal Republic would undoubtedly “benefit from” the biometric ID card, he said. (Stefan Krempl)

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/97169

Clearly there are people in the SDP who can feel the threat from routine fingerprinting, and the spectre of a database of everyone’s prints in a central location. What their ‘solution’ doesn’t address is the problem of taking people’s fingerprints, storing them on a card and then that card being readable and the prints, unique IDs and other information subsequently storable in a database. All it will take is one law to require this, and all the work of fingerprinting everyone will have been done on the basis that it was safe. It is called ‘betrayal’.

This problem cannot be circumvented. The SDP have to accept that in order to live in a free society, some things must be forbidden, and mandatory fingerprinting people is one of them. No concessions, no work-arounds, no compromise. The definition of freedom requires that you should not be compelled to be fingerprinted by the state for its purposes.

They at least accept that this is a very gravely serious issue, which is at least a start.

ID card-based criminal record checks get thumbs up

Gemma Simpson

Tuesday October 02, 2007

Plans for a new service using the government’s controversial ID cards scheme to speed up criminal record checks have met with approval from volunteers involved in a trial of the technology.

The volunteers piloted two potential online services developed by the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) and the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) which could be used to authenticate the identities of and information supplied by job applicants.

At the trials, all volunteers went through a simulated experience of applying for a position requiring a CRB check. The participants met a prospective employer, filled out the CRB disclosure application form and had their identity authenticated by a counter-signatory. Their criminal record information was then disclosed to the company requesting it.

Each volunteer completed two legs in the trial — one using a passport and one using an ID card.

The passport-based system would use an applicant’s UK passport with information from the IPS to make sure the data provided is correct — with this system likely to come into effect before the second system. The second online service would use ID cards issued to UK citizens and foreign nationals residing in the UK for more than three months with information from the IPS to check application data. This system could be introduced in the longer term.

Nearly all (96 percent) of the 160 volunteers said the passport-related service is an improvement on the current arrangement and 71 percent rated it as a “great improvement”.

Nearly nine out of 10 volunteers said the ID card-linked service is even more robust than the passport-linked process.

But Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of the NO2ID anti-ID card campaign, criticised the trial because he said it tested the customer experience of the CRB check in isolation, while “glossing over the inconvenience and intrusiveness of the ID system as a whole”.

Booth said: “IPS is trying to sell a so-called benefit without any reference to actual cost or reality.”

[…]

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/

Well well well.

It looks like the contents of the ‘Frances Stonor-Saunders’ email are confirmed as correct yet again:

[…]

There will be spaces on this database for your religion, residence status, and many other private and personal facts about you. There is unlimited space for every other details of your life on the NIR database, which can be expanded by the Government with or without further Acts of Parliament.

[…]

Private businesses are going to be given access to the NIR Database. If you want to apply for a job, you will have to present your card for a swipe. If you want to apply for a London Underground Oyster Card, or a supermarket loyalty card, or a driving license you will have to present your ID Card for a swipe. The same goes for getting a telephone line or a mobile phone or an internet account.

[…]

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1207

ID cards were sold to the public on the basis that they would only hold a small amount of information. Now we see that they are to be used for CRB checks.

You can now guarantee that they will indeed hold residence status, religion, criminal record and everything else that they can possibly store on you.

Once again, for the thousandth time, if you do not register for this card they cannot include you in the database.

Meanwhile, David Cameron has reiterated his promise to scrap ID cards. He will of course, have to scrap the NIR and biometric passports to really come through on this promise.

You’ve probably seen the front page of yesterday’s Mail on Sunday“Officials from the top of Government to lowly council officers will be given unprecedented powers to access details of every phone call in Britain under laws coming into force tomorrow. The new rules compel phone companies to retain information, however private, about all landline and mobile calls, and make them available to some 795 public bodies and quangos. The move, enacted by the personal decree of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, will give police and security services a right they have long demanded: to delve at will into the phone records of British citizens and businesses”

As usual the Daily Mail are permitted to complain about all this stuff, but within the acceptable boundaries of plebdom. So it goes, “what if it falls into the wrong hands ?”. But of course, one struggles to think what is the ‘right hands’ in this circumstance. We’ve talked about all this stuff before on here.

Council workers asking permission from a nominated person ? Various other agencies, quangos ?

You have to think about it. What possible means do they have to interpret or act on such information ? Presumably it will be possible to phone up any government agency and arbitrarily ‘grass’ on someone you don’t like and get their phone call and internet web surfing use put into the hands directly of council, government workers ?

I remember when all this was being concocted, one of the ‘selling points’ about the phone snooping side of things (due to come in later) was that it will only be a small amount of data, ie it couldn’t show the subject of the phone call itself (obviously), but that’s not the case with internet data retention, the subject of intent is very much known from the URL requested, and can be much much more intimate. And I don’t think people really understand the implications of this.

And where are the powerful voices against all this ? Where is business ? What are they afraid of ? Are they afraid the Labour spin machine of doting commissars obsessed with hideous ideology will turn against them and start looking at their phone calls and internet records ?

Naturally all this itself is just one small part of the the regime’s ongoing plans.

This sounds a like a communist police state to me, hidden behind the crap about ‘shared values, security, terrorism, a new ‘modern’ crime’ and so on. As such I think it’s only fair to treat the country as that as I’ve said before. How else exactly are you supposed to treat it?

[…]

Jultra

At last, Jultra is back.

The question that arises from this article is…are you able to live without a phone? and if the answer is ‘no’ how can you use the phone network in a way that allows you to preserve your privacy?

Will we now see a proliferation of private un-tappable untraceable Asterisk networks supplanting the phone network?

Billionaire Kool-Aid drinker says Big Brother is desired:

LONDON – Residents of big cities like New York and London must accept that they are under constant watch by video cameras, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.

Bloomberg, holding talks with his London counterpart Ken Livingstone, said such measures as London’s “ring of steel” — a network of closed-circuit cameras that monitors the city center_ were a necessary protection in a dangerous world.

“In this day and age, if you think that cameras aren’t watching you all the time, you are very naive,” Bloomberg told reporters at London’s City Hall.

“We are under surveillance all the time” from cameras in shops and office buildings, “and in London they have multiple cameras on every bus and in every subway car,” he added.

“The people of London not only support it, but if Ken Livingstone didn’t do it they would try to run him out of town on a rail. We live in a dangerous world, and people want to have security cameras.”

During his visit, Bloomberg was getting a demonstration of the ring of steel, a system of cameras and road barriers introduced during the years of Irish Republican Army bombings to protect London’s central business district.

London has one of the world’s highest concentrations of surveillance cameras. An estimated 4 million CCTV cameras operate in Britain, and some civil liberties campaigners have warned the country is becoming a “surveillance state.”

New York has far fewer, but the number is growing. Authorities hope to implement an $81.5 million version of the ring of steel for lower Manhattan, featuring surveillance cameras as well as barriers that could automatically block streets.

[…]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071001/ap_on_re_us/bloomberg_surveillance

First of all, “Residents of big cities like New York and London” do not have to accept anything like this; especially when it does not work to prevent crime, costs a fortune in money and costs everyone their dignity and liberty.

London doesn’t feel like it used to. Having cameras on you all the time has a dibilitating effect on a city and everyone in London is suffering from the ill effects of CCTV…wether they know it or not.

Check out these Google results. The jury (we still have those for the moment, at least rhetorically) is out on this matter. CCTV doesn’t work, and the next step is dismantling the entire CCTV network. Most of the cameras operating in the UK are illegal in any case.

You will note that the future is not one of all pervasive Big Brother surveillance. There are many examples where the future is free of the insane fear that is gripping the ‘democracies’. This era will pass and the totalitarian apparatus dismantled, just like the Soviet Union was dismantled. It is a question of WHEN not IF. Certainly the issue of wasted money and lack of results will be one of the key reasons why this will happen.

I don’t even have to go into the causes of this irrational fear and the real solutions to putting an end to this insanity do I? We have gone over it so many times!

CCTV is Security Theatre. To have real security, you need to remove the thorn from the lions foot and do all the other things that are reasonable and moral.

That is how you stop people from doing bad things in your city.

As for crime, you need to take care of the endemic problems in the police forces, and then double the numbers. You need to stop locking people up for no reason and end the insane prohibition that has been destroying America for generations.

Lastly…

Check this out in particular, for Epic Win Value.

[…]
Fingerprints
T5 will have shops, cafes and bars like any other airport, and some of those are already fitted out – Harrods to name one.The terminal also has some new features, particularly in the area of security.

HEATHROW TERMINAL FIVE SECURITY

Every passenger will have their photograph taken and fingerprint scanned at passport control. Their fingerprint will be checked again at the gate before boarding.

“It’s so we can make sure that the person who turns up at the gate is the same one who checked in,” Mr Pearman says.

Another state-of-the-art addition involves X-ray scanners which screen hand luggage before they enter departures.

Never used before, the Advanced Threat Identification system is designed to detect explosives and liquids in baggage and automatically divert suspicious bags to one side for further examination.

In fact, the entire building is designed with security in mind: “We’ve been able to work security in, rather than try to add it on afterwards,” Mr Pearman says.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7015785.stm

This is of course, a total lie.

This building has been built with Security Theatre in mind…but you know this, because we have written about the abomination that is Terminal 5 before.

This nauseating piece of propaganda from BBQ by the completely ignorant ‘Victoria Bone’ is astonishing in its breathless promoting of Terminal five in nothing but glowing terms.

She completely leaves out any negative consequences to the fingerprinting of criminals passengers, and this is in the light of the huge fight against biometric ID cards that is going on in this country. Such an omission can only be by design, and that therefore means this article is pure propaganda and part of a ‘softening up’ exercise for the British population, who, if they were told about what this really means to them, might refuse to fly out of Terminal 5 altogether.

Richard Rogers has made one of the worst buildings in the history of mankind. His firm is going to be responsible (unless the building is retrofitted and fixed to work correctly) for a violation of humans on a scale bigger than the concentration camps of Germany; Up to 30m passengers will travel through Terminal 5 every year.

Millions of people are going to be processed through this infernal machine, by his design, humiliating, violating and dehumanizing them for no other reason than that it was possible to do.

History will judge this building and its designer after the biometric fad and ‘security’ (Security Theatre) hysteria are over over.

They will say that what Richard Rogers has done with this Terminal 5 was pure evil, architecture in the service of Fascism and it will cast a dark shadow over any other building or success he ever had.

I for one, I will never travel through this building. I will not submit to this Fascism and inhuman architectural experimentation.

SHAME SHAME SHAME once again on BBQ for this blatant piece of propaganda.

SHAME on Richard Rogers, who has designed this Fascist monstrosity.

I pray that the truth about this building gets out and that people refuse to mover through it.

And for you people who do not know anything about identity and security, a quick recap.

There is absolutely no reason to take people’s fingerprints and photographs as they check in.

First of all, this is being done not only for international flights, but for ALL FLIGHTS including domestic ones. That means that if you, a British Citizen, want to fly to Manchester you have to be fingerprinted.

Inside your own country!

That is INSANE.

The reason why they are doing this is that travelers on international flights and domestic flights are mixed in one large unsegregated departure lounge, unlike any other airport in the world, where passengers flying on domestic and international flights are normally separated by walls. If someone got on a flight that connects through terminal five, it could be possible for them to get onto a domestic flight and then evade immigration control since the passenger area is mixed. To fix this problem with the building, they are fingerprinting EVERYONE so that this loophole is closed.

This has to be the stupidest mistake ever in the history of architecture.

The article above does not mention this of course, since it is propaganda.

Secondly, when you check into an international flight in a properly designed airport, you go to the international departure lounge and show your passport, which has your photo in it. The staff check your face against the picture in your passport. The name in your passport is checked against your name in your ticket. You are let through.

When you get to the gate, you show your passport again and your ticket stub, and the staff check your face against the photo in your passport, and the name on the stub. You are let onto the flight.

Fingerprinting you is nothing more than Security Theatre; this extra step adds no extra security to the normal process of checking in, and similarly, taking another photo of you in addition to the one you have in your passport adds no extra security whatsoever.

This is total Security Theatre, insanity and vendor driven garbage.

And there you have it.

By all means, tell everyone you know about this outrageous and vile building.

The Government is considering placing all people on the organ donor register automatically unless they “opt out”. Currently only a quarter of Britons are on the register and the waiting list for organs is at a record high.

But a system of presumed consent – which operates in several other countries including Sweden and Austria – has proved controversial in the UK.

At present, the family has the final say unless a person has actively put themselves on the organ donor register or expressed their wishes.

The family does not have the legal right to veto or overrule those wishes even if they disagree.

Chief Medical Officer for England, Sir Liam Donaldson, backs changing the law to drive up donation rates but some critics have argued against it. Sir Liam’s Scottish counterpart, Harry Burns, has said the public is not ready for a system of presumed consent.

Today, Health Secretary Alan Johnson announced that the Organ Donation Taskforce – set up in 2006 to look at barriers to organ donation – would examine the issue in detail.

The taskforce will focus on the moral and medical issues around presumed consent, including whether the family of somebody who has died should be given the final say on organs for donation.

Mr Johnson said: “We know that around 8,000 people in the UK need an organ transplant but only 3,000 transplants are carried out each year.

“With more than 400 people dying every year waiting for a new kidney, heart, lung or liver, we need to do everything possible to increase organ donation.

“The Chief Medical Officer’s annual report helped put the idea of presumed consent into the public arena to be debated.

“This is a sensitive issue, but it is vital that all possible options for increasing the number of organs available for transplant are explored.”

Elisabeth Buggins, chair of the Organ Donation Taskforce, said: “I am very pleased that the taskforce has been asked to explore this incredibly important issue.

“We will establish a special sub group to take this work forward which will examine the complex medical, ethical, legal and societal issues.”

Earlier this year, it was revealed that the number of people waiting for organ transplant had reached a record high. UK Transplant said 7,234 patients were waiting at the end of March, up 8 per cent on the previous year.

Currently, more than 14.5 million people (around 24 per cent of the population) are on the organ donor register.

The British Medical Association (BMA) supports a system of presumed consent for organ donation for those over the age of 16, where relatives’ views are taken into account.

The Human Tissue Act 2004 states that no organs and tissue can be removed without the consent of the dead person or their relatives.

Adrian McNeil, chief executive of the Human Tissue Authority, said: “As we said in our statement in July 2007 in response to the Chief Medical Officer’s recommendation, any move to a system of presumed consent would require a change in the law.

“There would need to be extensive consultation and debate before that happened.”

[…]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

The first thing that comes to mind is what are the religious implications; for example, what rules govern the 1.6 million Muslims in the UK once they are dead?

Internets say:

[…] Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, issues the following Fatwa:

“Organ donation is permitted in Islam if it is done within the permissible limits prescribed by the Shari`ah.
The following are the conditions scholars have stipulated for donation:

Conditions associated with a living donor:

1. He/she must be a person who is in full possession of his/her faculties so that he/she is able to make a sound decision by himself/herself;

2. He/she must be an adult and, preferably, at least twenty-one years old;

3. It should be done on his/her own free will without any external pressure exerted on him/ her;

4. The organ he/she is donating must not be a vital organ on which his/her survival or sound health is dependent upon;

5. No transplantation of sexual organs is allowed.

Conditions associated with deceased donors:

1. It must be done after having ascertained the free consent of the donor prior to his /her death. It can be through a will to that effect, or signing the donor card, etc.

2. In a case where organ donation consent was not given prior to a donor’s death, the consent may be granted by the deceased’s closest relatives who are in a position to make such decisions on his/her behalf.

3. It must be an organ or tissue that is medically determined to be able to save the life or maintain the quality of life of another human being.

4. The organ must be removed only from the deceased person after the death has been ascertained through reliable medical procedures.

5. Organs can also be harvested from the victims of traffic accidents if their identities are unknown, but it must be done only following the valid decree of a judge.”

[…]

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/

Hmmm and my emphasis.

The Muslim Religious Council initially rejected organ donation by followers of Islam in 1983; but it has reversed its position, provided that donors consent in writing in advance. The organs of Muslim donors must be transplanted immediately and not be stored in organ banks. According to Dr. Abdel_Rahma Osman, Director of the Muslim Community Center in Maryland, “We have no policy against organ and tissue donation as long as it is done with respect for the deceased and for the benefit of the recipient.”

[…]

http://www.redcross.org/donate/tissue/relgstmt.html

and finally:

A. 5. This question is very much debated by the jurists (Fuqaha’) in recent years. It is a matter of ijtihad and some jurists consider it permissible while other prohibit organ donation and transplantation. The Supreme Council of Ulama’ in Riyadh (as per their resolution no. 99 dated 6 Dhul Qi’dah 1402) has allowed both organ donation and organ transplantation in the case of necessity (idtirar). They use the principle of Maslaha and the principle that every thing is permissible unless it is forbidden. According to these jurists, the organ can be taken from the body of a living person with his/her consent and approval and also from the body of a dead person. In the case of a living person, the jurists have stipulated that this donation should not deprive him/her of vital organs. It should also not cause risk to his/her normal life. The Fiqh Academy of the Muslim World League, Makkah also allowed organ donation and transplantation in its 8th session held between 28 Rabi’ul Thani – 7 Jumadal Ula, 1405. The Fiqh Academy of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah during the year 1408 and the Mufti of Egypt Dr. Saeed al-Tantawi also allowed the use of the body organs of a person who has died in an accident, if the necessity requires the use of any organ to cure a patient, provided that a competent and trustworthy Muslims physician makes this decision.

It is important to note that most of the Fuqaha’ have allowed the donation of the organs only. They do not allow the sale of the human organs. Their position is that the sale of human organs violates the rules of the dignity and honor of human being and so it is haram. Some jurists suggest that because people have become too materialistic and it may not be possible to find a free organ, so under necessity one can purchase the organs, but a Muslim should never sell his/her organs.

Some Egyptian as well as Indian and Pakistani jurists do not permit organ donation or transplantation. They argue that our bodies are Allah’s trust (‘amanah) with us and we do not own our bodies. So as it is haram to commit suicide, it is also haram to give away part of one’s body. But this does not seem to be a strong argument. Allah owns every thing and every thing that we have is a trust from Allah, but Allah allowed us to use things for our benefit and to give them to others for their benefit. Suicide is a termination of life for no purpose and it is haram according to the specific rules of the Shari’ah, but organ donation or transplant is for the benefit of oneself or others and there is no rule of the Shari’ah that forbid it.

[…]

http://www.pakistanlink.com/religion/re10-04-96.html

Fascinating…internets led me to this tract about sperm donation in the Middle East, starting with Israel:

This focus on the “local moral” is found in another award-winning book on the topic of IVF. Titled Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel, this book by medical anthropologist Susan Martha Kahn (2000; see also her article in this special issue) takes us into the often arcane world of Jewish Halakhic law, where male rabbis legislate on the appropriate uses of IVF for their followers. Kahn carefully describes how these rabbinical debates and decisions affect the actual practice of Israeli IVF. For example, third-party donation of gametes, including sperm donation, is allowed, since Jewishness is seen to be conferred through the mother’s side, particularly through the act of gestating and birthing the baby. However, most conservative rabbis prefer that non-Jewish donor sperm be used, to prevent adultery between a Jewish man and a Jewish woman and to prevent future genetic incest among the offspring of anonymous donors in this small, intermarrying country. Furthermore, debates have revolved around whether surrogacy should be allowed for infertile couples, using single or married surrogates. Generally speaking, single Jewish women are preferred as surrogates, both to avoid the implications of adultery for married surrogate women and to confer Jewishness through a Jewish woman’s gestation of the fetus. Finally, because the Jewish state is pronatalist—with the state subsidizing up to six cycles of IVF or up to the birth of two IVF children for any given Jewish patient—rabbis have generally been permissive when it comes to single career women, as well as lesbian Jewish mothers, conceiving children through assisted conceptive means.

Kahn’s fascinating and frankly funny book details the sometimes dizzying rabbinical arguments regarding morally appropriate and inappropriate reproduction. In so doing, the book bespeaks the importance of local religious moralities in the contemporary world of Israeli assisted conception. There, doctors in many clinics serving orthodox Jewish patient populations attempt to practice IVF according to the moral dictates set forth by religiously conservative rabbis. The IVF laboratories in these clinics are full of orthodox women called maschigots, who literally peer over the shoulders of laboratory technicians to make sure that the correct sperm and correct eggs are being united—so as not to produce a mamzer, or an illegitimate child. In her book, Kahn is explicit in stating that the American consumer model of free-market reproductive medicine has yet to take hold in Israel, with its concern over religious guidelines. Nonetheless, Israel’s relative permissiveness over the use of donor gametes, surrogacy, and single and lesbian motherhood stands in stark contrast to the Muslim Middle East, including both neighboring Egypt and Lebanon, where I have conducted my own ethnographic research on IVF.

and now Sunni Islam:

Sunni Islam and IVF
IVF was first practiced in the Sunni Muslim world, with clinics opening in the mid-1980s in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, all Sunni-majority countries. The Grand Shaikh of Egypt’s famed religious university, Al Azhar, issued the first widely authoritative fatwa on medically assisted reproduction on March 23, 1980. This fatwa—issued only two years after the birth of the first IVF baby in England but a full six years before the opening of Egypt’s first IVF center—has proved to be truly enduring in all its main points (Inhorn 2006a). In fact, the basic tenets of the original Al-Azhar fatwa on IVF have been upheld by other fatwas issued since 1980 and have achieved wide acceptance throughout the Sunni Muslim world. Sunni Islam, it must be emphasized, is the dominant form of Islam found in the Middle Eastern region and throughout the Muslim world. Between 80 and 90 percent of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, and more than 90 percent of Egypt’s citizens are Sunni Muslims, the rest being predominantly Coptic Christian.

The degree to which these official Sunni Islamic fatwas on IVF have affected the actual practices of the Middle Eastern medical profession is also quite striking. For physicians, the dominant Sunni religious opinion on IVF has been made known to the Middle Eastern medical community through the writings of Gamal I. Serour, one of three founding members of the first Egyptian IVF center and the director of Al-Azhar’s International Islamic Center for Population Studies and Research. In article after article (Serour 1992, 1994, 1996; Serour and Omran 1992; Serour, El Ghar, and Mansour 1990, 1991; Serour, Aboulghar, and Mansour 1995), Serour has spelled out the main points of the Sunni Islamic position on medically assisted conception, as follows:

• Artificial insemination with the husband’ssemen is allowed, and the resulting child is the legal offspring of the couple.
• In vitro fertilization of an egg from the wife with the sperm of her husband followed by the transfer of the fertilized embryo(s) back to the uterus of the wife is allowed, provided that the procedure is indicated for a medical reason and is carried out by an expert physician.
• No third party should intrude into the marital functions of sex and procreation, because marriage is a contract between the wife and husband during the span of their marriage. This means that a third party donor is not allowed, whether he or she is providing sperm, eggs, embryos, or a uterus. The use of a third party is tantamount to zina, or adultery.
• Adoption of a donor child from an illegitimate form of medically assisted conception is not allowed. The child who results from a forbidden method belongs to the mother who delivered him/her. He or she is considered to be a laqit, or an illegitimate child.
• If the marriage contract has come to an end because of divorce or death of the husband, medically assisted conception cannot be performed on the ex-wife even if the sperm comes from the former husband.
• An excess number of fertilized embryos can be preserved by cryopreservation. The frozen embryos are the property of the couple alone and may be transferred to the same wife in a successive cycle, but only during the duration of the marriage contract.
• Multifetal pregnancy reduction (or so-called selective abortion) is only allowed if the prospect of carrying a high-order pregnancy (i.e., twins, triplets, or more) to viability is very small. It is also allowed if the health or life of the mother is in jeopardy.
• All forms of surrogacy are forbidden.
• Establishment of sperm banks is strictly forbidden, for such a practice threatens the existence of the family and the “race” and should be prevented.
• The physician is the only qualified person to practice medically assisted conception in all its permitted varieties. If he performs any of the forbidden techniques, he is guilty, his earnings are forbidden, and he must be stopped from his morally illicit practice.

interesting…

and finally:

Muslim IVF patients use the term “mixture of relations” to describe this untoward outcome. Such a mixture of relations, or the literal confusion of lines of descent introduced by third-party donation, is described as being very “dangerous,” “forbidden,” “against nature,” “against God”—in a word, haram, or morally unacceptable. It is argued that donation, by allowing a “stranger to enter the family,” confuses lines of descent in patrilineal Islamic societies. For men in particular, ensuring paternity and the “purity” of lineage through “known fathers” is of paramount concern (Inhorn 2006b). As one Sunni Muslim man, a high school biology teacher, summarized the problem:

The most important thing is that we are Muslims. If there is faith in carrying out this operation using sperm from the husband and ova from the wife, then this is okay. We cannot accept what happens in the West. We heard some women “hire the womb” of another woman, or take sperm. According to our religion, this is called ikhtilat in-nasab, “mixing relations.” We consider it some kind of zina, prostitution. Because there are many hadiths from the Prophet Muhammad that confirm this. If you put your sperm in another woman besides your wife, you go to hell. This is adultery. There is a hadith on adultery. “If you put your sperm in another woman other than your wife, you are going to commit a sin.” People asked the Prophet, “How?” He said, “If you put it in your wife, you are going to be rewarded from Allah.” They said, “Yes.” He told them, “But this is also the case if you put it in the wrong womb. You are going to have punishment.”

In addition to the consequences of mixed bloodlines and adultery, bringing such donor children into the world is considered unfair to the children themselves, who would never be treated with the love and concern parents feel for their “real” children. Such a child could only be viewed as a bastard—an ibn haram, literally “son of sin.” Thus, a child of third-party donation starts life off as an “illegal” child. The child is deemed illegitimate and stigmatized even in the eyes of his or her own parents, who will therefore lack the appropriate parental sentiments (Inhorn 2006b). As one Sunni Muslim IVF patient stated

:

And so on, from PubMed

That was a major digression, but worth it.

Essentially, this goes right back to wether or not a person is the property of the state or not. When you are dead, the state is trying to confiscate your body and then use it as it sees fit. They already do everything they can to steal your property after you die, so why not steal your body also?

Like the screengrab above from THX-1138, what will happen in the end is that they will compel you to have your health actively monitored and store the results in a database (a decedent of the NIR) so that they can then harvest your body parts on demand while you are still alive or under certain conditions, i.e., if you are a freshly executed criminal.

An NHS primary care trust has warned of a new risk to the confidentiality of medical records stored under the National Programme for IT [NPfIT] after a celebrity was admitted into hospital and more than 50 staff viewed the patient’s records.The warning by North Tees Primary Care Trust raises questions about whether hundreds of thousands of NHS staff who would be able to view electronic records under the NPfIT would have their accesses to information policed robustly.

Systems that support electronic patient records – a central part of the NPfIT – produce audit trails of who has accessed what information. But it’s unclear whether busy NHS employees would have adequate time to police audit trails

And Computer Weekly has published evidence of a culture in the NHS that is incompatible with tight lax security. Smartcards have been shared so that busy doctors can share PCs without having to log on and off each time. This means it can prove difficult to establish who has accessed confidential patient information.

North Tees Primary Care Trust says that the unauthorised access by staff of patient records presents a “new security risk” under the Department of Health’s Care Record Guarantee – which gives an undertaking to patients that their confidential data will be protected from unauthorised access.

The trust says in a paper to the Board:

“A new security risk … has been identified as part of the Care Records Guarantee. This risk is around staff inappropriately accessing [a] patient’s records who are not part of their care load. It was noted in an audit that a recent admission of a celebrity to a hospital had revealed over 50 staff viewing the patient record… Staff should only access records of patients with whom they have a legitimate relationship.”

The document paper adds that trusts have to demonstrate that regular audits are undertaken and that they have “disciplinary procedures in place to deal with breaches”.

If staff wanted to access the medical records of a well-known individual or anyone else they were interested in, the risk with paper-based medical records would be smaller because the files would ordinarily be held in one location, and may not be accessible remotely. It’s unlikely that dozens of staff could view a paper record without drawing attention to themselves.

Evidence on the security risks of electronic records was submitted to the House of Commons’ Health Committee by the UK Computing Research Committee, which is an expert panel of the British Computer Society, the Institution of of Engineering and Technology and IT-related scientists.

It said: “As a general principle, a single system accessible by all NHS employees from all trusts maximises rather than minimises the risk of a security breach. It increases … the opportunity for access to any one patient’s data from some point on the extended system… it is important that a formal analysis is carried out to identify risks and show that they have been reduced as low as reasonably practicable.”

A spokesman for North Tees Primary Care Trust said the accessing of a celebrity’s records took place elsewhere, not within the trust. The spokesman was unable to give any details of the incident or where it took place.

Links:

Smartcard sharing by an NHS trust – a breach of IT security or a practical way around slow access to the NHS Care Records Service?

Care Record Guarantee [for example on the confidentiality of patient data]

Loss of 1.3 million sensitive medical files in the US – possible implications for the NHS’s National Programme for IT

Department of Health and Connecting for Health security flaws

Major reports on NHS and NPfIT

Evidence submitted by UK Computing Research Committee to the Health Committee on the Electronic Patient Record

Report raises further NPfIT concerns – British Computer Society [Security]

Computer Weekly

My emphasis.

And of course, if the spine is implemented as they desire, you can multiply the 50 Hippocratic violators, nosey parkers, scumbags by 1000 as every terminal connected to the spine will be able to see everyone’s records without restriction.

The same goes for ContactPoint, the child violating database, and of course, the nearly aborted NIR/Identity Card.

All of these systems will be abused from the day they go online.

One can only hope that some brave person leaks the personal details of every member of parliament and the house of Lords and their many offspring, so that we can see whose daughter had an abortion, which of their children is on anti-psychotics, who has been beating their wife, which MP is infertile, which MP(s) have Gonorrhea / Syphilis / HIV etc etc.

THEN we will start to hear loud howls of disdain for the system, with rapid moves to dismantle it and then blame the previous administration(s) for the failure.

In the meantime, you really must have your records physically deleted from your GPs computer, so that the data does not get snarfled into the NHS Spine. If you do not even bother to ask, then you only have yourself to blame, when all of a sudden you are surprised when your new employer says, “I hope that we wont have any more skiing accidents while you are working with us; we need your commitment to us to be 100%”.

Yes.

Your employer got a hold of your medical records and saw that you broke your leg whilst on holiday in the Alps two years ago.

How did he do it?

YOU LET HIM you JACKASS!!!

UPDATE

Of course, this is not a ‘new security risk’ as the report fallaciously states; this security risk is inherent to these poorly designed systems

Anti-terrorist programs depend on technology — remotely controlled cameras, automatic license plate readers, interception of cell-phone signals and high-tech explosives detectors.

It might pay to ask: Is this high-tech surveillance security or security theater? Does it provide enough additional safety to justify the added intrusiveness? Or do the bad guys just find a way around it?

For example, if terrorists don’t know that the National Security Agency can intercept their phone calls in remote parts of the world, the intercepts will be useful. Once they know, they stop using cell phones.

This is doubtless a nuisance to them, but hardly a show-stopper. If they know about automated monitoring of e-mail, again, they stop using it or, depending on what they are doing, use an anonymous, disposable Hotmail account.

The inability thus far to capture Osama bin Laden demonstrates the ease of circumventing surveillance techniques.

For a while people talked about combating steganography — the hiding of messages in, say, Web pages by various coding schemes. At least some security folk wanted specialized software to examine pages for messages exchanged among terrorists. Useful sometimes, perhaps — unless the bad guys know about it.

Then they communicate by prearranged codes. For example, a post on a classic-car site looking for a blue 1957 Chevy six-cylinder means one thing, whereas looking for a red 1958 Ford means another.

If a suicide bomber (which seems to be the threat we face) thinks he can’t get his bomb past nitrate sniffers and specialized X-ray machines at the airport, he simply blows himself up in a crowded part of the terminal. If the point is to protect airplanes, security may work.

If the point is to stop terrorism, it is useless.

There is no way to stop a guy with a backpack from getting on Metro at rush hour.

New York is set to spend $90 million on more cameras and license plate readers. What will this accomplish? A CNN story on the system quoted Steve Swain, a security specialist who spent years working with London’s net of cameras, who said, “I don’t know of a single incident where CCTV [closed-circuit television] has actually been used to spot, apprehend or detain offenders in the act.”

Cameras aid in the investigation of a crime already committed, he said, and “you need to do this piece of theater so that if the terrorists are looking at you, they can see that you’ve got some measures in place.”

But catching the offender is of trivial importance compared with preventing the terrorism. Is the theater aimed at the terrorists, or at the public? Surveillance increases apace. From the Times Online of London, “An ‘intelligent’ CCTV camera designed to predict when a person may be about to commit a crime is being tested in high streets and shopping centres.” I have encountered brain-scan research endeavoring to determine moods thought to be associated with terrorists.

According to a recent ABC News poll, the public favors surveillance by almost 3 to 1. Governments from federal to local want to integrate cameras and similar devices.

Concern with terrorism makes it difficult to oppose new measures. And there is big money in making the equipment. All of this contributes to the acceptance of more and more surveillance, without anyone asking, “Wait, what are we really going to get out of this? Will it work?” In the words of Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York ACLU, “Technology is an unstoppable train. The question is whether we can maximize the benefits and minimize the harms.”

[…]

http://washingtontimes.com/

And there you have it; another Post Tipping Point Post^®

We have been saying this for years, as have many other people.

It must be pointed out that the ‘terrrorists using Steganography’ hysteria was just that hysteria. Not a single Steg image has ever been found in the wild by researchers and, certainly not a single image has ever been traced to a ‘terrorist’.

You can guarantee that if they ever found a ‘terrorist’s’ laptop with encrypted data on it, using any of the popular crypto wares like GPG/PGP that uncle sham would trumpet this from every one of their ‘news’ outlets and use it as an excuse to bring in some sort of ’90s style insane controls.

And then of course, if these people need to use telephones, all they need to do to have secure, untracable calls where NSA will not even know that a call is being made, is to use Asterisk in a private telephone network.

Finally ACLU Donna Lieberman is wrong to say that, “Technology is an unstoppable train.”. STUPIDITY is an unstoppable train, and as everyone knows, trains run on rails, and those rails eventually reach the ‘end of the line‘.

Stupidity (them/they) WILL come to an end, and reason (us/we) WILL prevail.

Europe to rule on whether police can keep DNA of innocent people
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Published: 08 September 2007

Police could lose the power to keep DNA samples taken from suspects who have been cleared of any wrongdoing, in a landmark case which is to be decided by the highest court in Europe.

A ruling against the British Government could lead to the destruction of tens of thousands of DNA and fingerprint materials as well as deal a severe blow to any plans to create a universal genetic database.

The challenge at the European Court of Human Rights is being brought by a teenager, known as S, who was arrested and charged with attempted robbery aged 11 in 2001, and Michael Marper, from Sheffield, who was arrested on harassment charges, aged 38, in the same year. Both were cleared and have no criminal records.

But the Court of Appeal ruled in 2002 that they cannot ask for their DNA and fingerprint evidence to be destroyed. One of the judges hearing the appeal was Sir Stephen Sedley, who this week called for a national database to include DNA samples taken from every British citizen and any foreign visitors to this country. His comments provoked outrage from the human rights group Liberty, which called his proposal “chilling”.

European judges in Strasbourg believe the issue is so important that they have decided to fast-track the case to go before the grand chamber, where all the Strasbourg justices will sit to determine the matter.

The decision has been taken because the court decided that the case raises a serious question affecting the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights or because its resolution might have a result inconsistent with a previous judgment of the court.

In both cases, the clients asked that their fingerprints and DNA samples be destroyed – but the requests were refused by South Yorkshire Police.

Mr Marper and the juvenile argued that keeping fingerprints and especially DNA samples was an unjustified breach of their right to respect for private life protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. They are especially concerned about the future uses to which the DNA samples might be put, and the lack of independent oversight in the national DNA database.

They are represented by Peter Mahy, a civil liberties specialist at Sheffield-based Howells, and one the country’s most respected human rights barristers, Richard Gordon QC. Mr Mahy said:”This decision by the European Court of Human Rights gives us significant hope that these cases will finally result in a massive change in the law – providing protection for those acquitted of crimes against their fingerprints and DNA samples being kept, putting them on a level footing with those not previously accused of any crimes.”

He added: “We think this will be one of the most important human rights challenges the court has grappled with in recent years.”

This is all well and good, but there are problems with this.

Why should Britain be obeying this court, and why should people in the UK not be able to get justice from their own courts? Why is it that people in the UK are being criminally mistreated and abused in this way in the first place?

And should the court side with the keeping with DNA samples from the innocent, what then? Does this suddenly make it ‘all right’?

I don’t think so.

Britain should be the most just place, the most fair place, and the second you have to go to another court, in another country, something very important is lost; confidence in British Justice.

New immigration rules will force undocumented workers to be firedCarolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau(08-11) 04:00 PDT Washington – — People clamoring for a crackdown on illegal immigration got their wish with the Bush administration’s announcement Friday of sweeping new enforcement measures that will force employers to fire the millions of illegal workers they now employ.

“We strike at that magnet” of jobs, said Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, announcing a new rule holding employers liable for workers whose Social Security numbers do not match government records. The new rule takes effect in 30 days.

No state stands to feel the effects more than California, which has more illegal immigrants – an estimated 2.5 million – than any other state. California farmers are expected to be among the hardest hit with their heavy reliance on Mexican field hands, the vast majority of whom are undocumented. But service businesses will be heavily affected too, from hotels and restaurants to cleaning services and nursing homes.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein predicted a “catastrophe” in the state’s $32 billion agriculture industry as the new rules become effective with the fall harvest. But the proposal met no opposition from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, who issued a statement saying, “Securing our border remains a top priority for the New Direction Congress.”

This sounds like a declaration of war against business. Uncla Sam (yes, ‘uncla’) let all these people flood into the country, and now they are penalizing business for their lapses of security and imagination.

The rule that will require employers to fire employees unable to clear up problems with their Social Security numbers 90 days after they’ve been notified or face sanctions and a fine of at least $2,200 for a first offense. Up until now, employers have routinely ignored what are called no-match letters.

And this behaviour is quite right; it is not the job of business to sort out illegal immigrants from legal immigrants. The border starts at mexico, not the front door of some firm.

“In certain industries and in certain states, there will be a very significant impact on the functioning of businesses or entire sectors,” said Deborah Meyers, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “Some employers are going to find themselves having to fire significant portions of their workforces, and I think there will be employees – some who are authorized and some who are not – who will find themselves out of a job.”

Meyers predicted the fallout to be quite visible within six months.

[…]

And then they are going to do what and go where? Has anyone actually THOUGHT about that?

Business groups pointed out that a significant fraction of no-match letters – including 11 percent for the work-authorized foreign born – are in error because of name changes and clerical mistakes, and could cause trouble for legal workers. Immigrant rights groups said the rule could drive millions of illegal immigrants who are now paying taxes underground and drive businesses who depend on them to relocate overseas.

Here it comes….

The system also has a big loophole that some experts warn could lead to more identity theft. Social Security does not catch numbers that are valid but have been stolen and used by another person, increasing the incentive to steal valid Social Security numbers.

Which is an argument for biometric REALID.

Hiring undocumented workers has been illegal for two decades, but until now, employers were not held liable for fraudulent documents.

And quite rightly.

“This is going to cause a lot of pain, but that pain I hope will be an impetus for our nation to get realistic and fix our broken immigration system,” said Larry Rohlfes, assistant executive director of the California Landscape Contractors Association. “In the meantime, people are going to be hurt.”

That is an understatement, and what is broken is not the ‘imiigration system’ but border security in the south of the USA. That is where all of these illegal immigrants are coming from, not JFK.

Rohlfes predicted that many workers would not leave the country but go underground as unlicensed contractors, where they will not pay taxes. “It’s going to hurt our remaining workers because the underground economy competes with us and because they have much lower costs,” Rohlfes said.

That is exactly what (amongst other things) that they will do. There will be a huge parallel society where the suck law abiding pay the penalties of being law abiding and everyone else lives free.

Much will hinge on how effectively the administration enforces the new rules.

[…]

No, it will hinge on wether or not any business obeys this insanity. I suspect many will not.

About 12 million people are estimated to be in the country illegally, and about half a million more have been arriving each year. They have moved beyond traditional immigrant states like California and Texas and into the South and Midwest, where their presence has created a voter backlash and spawned state and local laws intended to make it difficult for illegal immigrants to work and even find housing.

Illegal immigrants make up about 5 percent of the civilian workforce, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Most have arrived since 1990. Many have children born in the United States who are citizens – which adds up to about 64 percent of the children in unauthorized families, or 3.1 million children, Pew estimates. Most illegal migrants crossed the border from Mexico and farther south, but about 40 percent arrived legally from all other parts of the world and overstayed their tourist or student visas.

And this is the big problem; what do you do with all the hate and resentment that is growing? What do you do with all the families where the children are citizens and the parents are illegal immigrants? Its a disaster. Some of the comments on this story have it just about right:

This could be the next tactic of the corrupt Bush administration in getting an Amnesty Bill passed. If they get a panic going in business and then get a panic going in the public, through the use of the media, they could appear to sway opinion in their favor. I already see a sort of panic on the rise anyway. The economy appears to be correcting itself to all of the scams and lawlessness. Weve run up the price of our homes just like we did stock in the thirties. We were willing to out-borrow the next. It works okay on the way up. Not so great on the way down. Then youve got the presses running full speed to finance all of the wars. I have seen this sort of article over and over recently. If this is a trick, I would expect a huge backlash to follow their actions.

and

I must say I’m shocked that Bush is actually doing something about this problem but I’m fairly sure that employers will just rehire the undocumented workers after the 90 days and start the process again. Currently employers have a year to figure out the status of their workers. The process is: hire, check their SS #, govt tells the employer the worker in illegal, employer has a year to check, at the year mark they realease the worker then rehire them and start the process all over again. The only thing that has teeth is if the govt actually enforces sanctions. I assure you employers are shaken up by these types of measures.

Talk about a work around!!!

and now we get to the meat in the hamburger:

As part of the stepped-up enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security said it would expand an electronic verification system called “Web Basic Pilot” to all federal contractors, as well as continue to train state and local law enforcement to help enforce immigration laws.

[…]

The number of Border Patrol agents is expected to rise to 18,300 by the end of the year; there will also be 370 miles of fencing along with other technology such as vehicle barriers and camera and radar towers that are now being constructed.

Also, the administration announced that it would implement a long-delayed exit verification system at border crossings to find out who is overstaying their visas. That program, called US-Visit, has been hampered by the cost and technological problems. The administration said it would plow ahead with plans to require all travelers to use passports, despite the enormous backlogs that delayed travel by U.S. citizens earlier this year.

[…]

SF Gate

And there you have it. We all knew in in advance that USVISIT was not about ‘terrorists’ but was instead designed to control genpop and that is exactly what they are going to do with it. Once they expand it to solve this ‘problem’ its effectiveness will appear to have greatly increased because instead of catching just 1500+ people in violation, they will be able to claim that they have caught millions of people, illegal immigrants, with the system.

In order to do it, they will have to get everyone into the system, the biometric net, so that they can scan people randomly, all the time and deny every sort of service to people who are not allowed to be in the USA.

All those ignorant hicks from the stix who deeply resent the Mexican invasion will line up to be fingerprinted, because it will force the invaders back to Mexico.

This is the cause they have been waiting for, sufficient reason to give up liberty that not only seems entirely reasonable, but which people will clamor for of their own free will….of which there will be nothing left after there is total compliance with the Quantized Human Pleb Grid.

This is the REALREASON™ why they left the borders open for so long; to create a crisis that would allow them to put everyone in this system under artificially created conditions where no decent person would object to being fingerprinted because the threat is real and obvious.

Maybe now we can see the purpose of all those concentration camps that are being manned right now; imagine all those hot blooded illegal immigrants getting mad about this and rioting in their millions. They will have to be rounded up and put somewhere.

Horrible!

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Thursday August 9, 2007
The Guardian

The future of the ID Card that is supposed to keep track of the population who are living in the UK working here is in doubt after ministers halted the programme this week. The moratorium follows an admission that the original £234b costing “proved to be optimistic”.

Unions say the 2004 estimate has now risen to £950b. The rollout to 15% of the population next month and 15 more by the end of the year has been cancelled.

The new computer system is supposed to underpin the introduction of “end-to-end management” of British Citizens through the National Identity Register (NIR) which oversees the Identity and Passport service. But Harry Fletcher, of Napo, the probation officers’ union, yesterday claimed the project, which is six months late and supposed to be in full operation by next July, was “close to collapse”.

The Ministry of Justice last night confirmed that a “rapid review” of the NIR system is under way. Ministers are to decide in mid-September how much of the project can be salvaged. It is expected that it will be adopted in a scaled-down form for the Civil Servants in England and Wales but is unlikely to be rolled out across the whole population. Cancellation could involve paying the contractors, EDS, a £50m penalty.

The system is supposed to provide a single database of all people in England and Wales and their histories, instantly accessible to the 700,000 staff in the Civil Service system. It is designed to give every person a number “for life” so that their record of offending, financial transactions, anti social behaviour and medical treatments can be logged.

The justice minister, David Hanson, has asked for a “full audit trail” on the £155m spent so far on the programme. The system has been tested on the Isle of Wight at a cost of £69m but they are not linked up to any other part of the Civil Service IT infrastructure. A similar trial planned in Northamptonshire did not go ahead.

Roger Hill, director of the Probation Service, told chief officers on Monday that the original costing had proved optimistic: “We have advised ministers that we will need to undertake a fundamental review of the work, to return to an affordable programme plan.” The director general of the NIR, Phil Wheatley, has told staff: “It is obviously disappointing that the ID Card project will not be provided as originally anticipated.”

Mr Fletcher said: “The whole project appears to have been badly managed since its inception. It is arguably an outrageous waste of public money. As a consequence of the problems, Civil Service staff will now have to use IT systems that are not fit for purpose.”

[…]

Guardian

Typical of the government to bury bad news in the summer.

Unpaid fines may stop people leaving UK

• Home Office plan outlined in ‘e-borders’ scheme
• Huge amounts of data likely to be produced

Alan Travis, home affairs editor

Tens of thousands of people who have failed to pay court fines amounting to more than £487m would be banned from leaving the country under new powers outlined by the Home Office. Ministers are also looking at ways of using the new £1.2bn “e-borders” programme to collect more than £9m owed in health treatment charges by foreign nationals who have left the country without paying.

The programme, to be phased in from October next year, will also allow the creation of a centralised “no-fly” list of air-rage or disruptive passengers which can be circulated to airlines.

The e-borders programme requires airlines and ferry companies to submit up to 50 items of data on each passenger between 24 and 48 hours before departure to and from the UK. With 200 million passenger movements in and out of the UK last year to and from 266 overseas airports on 169 airlines, an enormous amount of data is expected to be generated by the programme.

Passenger numbers are expected to rise to 305 million a year by 2015 and ministers claim the £1.2bn programme is the only way to provide a comprehensive record of all those seeking to enter and leave the UK. The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, claims that the programme will create a kind of border control, with information being passed to police and security services before passengers board a plane, boat or train: “It will create a new, offshore line of defence – helping genuine travellers, but stopping those who pose a risk before they travel.”

However, the long-term nature of the programme means that by 2009 only half the passenger movements in and out of Britain will be logged in the e-borders computers, and even by 2011 coverage will have reached only 95%.

A Home Office assessment of the secondary legislation that is being used to implement the programme gives some early indications of who, other than suspected terrorists and international criminals, will be on the British no-fly list and be banned from travelling to and from the country. It floats the idea that provisions should be introduced to ban travel overseas for the tens of thousands of offenders who have not paid outstanding court fines or failed to discharge confiscation orders made against them. Although no official estimate exists of the number of people who have to pay court fines the amount they owe has now reached a record £487m, with a further £300m in unpaid confiscation orders.

Passengers will be further encouraged in future to book their tickets and check in online. Other suggested benefits of the e-borders programme include easier identification of those who falsely claim non-domicile or non-resident status to avoid UK income tax, thought to be costing as much as £2bn a year, and those who wrongly claim social security benefits despite having left the country.

[…]

Guardian

Like we have said so many times before; none of this is about ‘terrorism’, the original reason they gave for proposing all of this in the first place. It is all being done to totally control everyone in the UK.

The nonsense of unpaid fines is just that, nonsense. If they succeed in putting all of this together, your fines will be withdrawn from your account automatically without your consent.

This piece in the guardian gives you the reader a false impression of what is being created. Once all the tools are in place, they will not only be able to control who can and cannot leave the UK, but they will also control all of your money and movements as you live in the UK. They will be used to control who can and cannot have a bank account, or credit card for example. Who can and cannot travel on the underground or a train. Who can or cannot buy alcohol. They will do all of this with the ID card / NIR / your thumb, which will be the talisman without which you will be able to live.

They will keep registers for everything. By getting yourself on the ‘no underground list’ when you try and tap in to board a train, the gate will not open. When you try and buy a pint of beer your thumb will tell the barmaid not to serve you, because you are on the ‘no alcohol’ register. When you go to withdraw money, you will find your account locked because you are on the ‘no financial transactions’ register. Since you will be compelled to swiped for just about anything you want to do, the government will have total control over the goods and services that you will and will not, by decree, be able to access.

If you do not believe this, then you are a fool.

And as for non-domicile or non-resident claims to avoid income tax, the people who are doing this will simply leave and not come back to the UK, and spend their trillions in less hostile countries.

‘e-borders’ like USVISIT is an affront to decent people, will cost billions of pounds netting only a few petty criminals while making some IT contractors very rich. The population of Britain, and now passengers traveling here, are to be reduced to cattle by this proposal, and it is pure evil, just like USVISIT is.

Use the google to see what we have written on this.

Alan Travis of course, has no idea about what he is writing, failed to connect the dots between the proposed e-borders and USVISIT and how the latter has cost billions and caught only 1500 ‘criminals’.

The Guardian fails again. No surprise there.

Update…

You will remember that in the Soviet era and till today, as is the case today in many undemocratic and unfree countries, you have to get what is called an ‘exit visa’ in your passport before you are allowed to travel. This is completely abhorrent to all decent people. Only in totalitarian states does the government have the power to stop you from traveling outside of your country, and guess what, this is precisely what the proposals above create; an exit visa system for the UK.

By creating a list of people who cannot travel and checking your name against it in realtime, the government is essentially granting you an exit visa at the time you are checked. The permission to leave is the visa. The way things work in a free country, you can come and go as you please; its your private business. Britain is like this now; when you turn up at the airport, you simply show your passport and get on the plane and that is it; this is certainly true for people with nationalities that do not require a visa for entry, and it should NEVER be the case that a BRITISH person should be checked to see if their exit visa is in order.

Read this list of countries and their exit visa requirements:

Afghanistan
“The Constitution provides for these rights; however, certain laws limited citizens’ movement. The passport law requires women to obtain permission from a male family member before having a passport application processed. In some areas of the country, women were forbidden by local custom or tradition to leave the home except in the company of a male relative. The law also prohibits women from traveling alone outside the country without a male relative, and male relatives must accompany women participating in Hajj.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41737.htm

Algeria
“The law provides for freedom of domestic and foreign travel, and freedom to emigrate; however, the Government sometimes restricted these rights in practice. The Government does not permit young men who are eligible for the draft and who have not yet completed their military service to leave the country if they do not have special authorization; however, such authorization may be granted to students and to those persons with special family circumstances.” (…) “The Family Code does not permit married females younger than 18 years of age to travel abroad without their guardian’s permission.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41718.htm

Armenia
“The law requires authorities to issue passports to all citizens, expect for convicted felons; however, an exit stamp may be denied to persons who possess state secrets, are subject to military service, are involved in pending court cases, or whose relatives have lodged financial claims against them. An exit stamp is valid for up to 5 years and may be used without limit. Men of military age must overcome substantial bureaucratic obstacles to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41668.htm

Bahrain
“The 1963 Citizenship Law provides that the Government may reject applications to obtain or renew passports for reasonable cause, but the applicant has the right to appeal such decisions before the High Civil Court.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41719.htm

Belarus
“The Constitution provides for freedom of movement in and out of the country; however, this right was restricted at times. Official entry and exit regulations specify that citizens who wish to travel abroad must first obtain an exit stamp valid for 1 to 5 years. Once the traveler has a valid stamp, travel abroad is not restricted by further government requirements and formalities; however, the Government could intervene to invalidate stamps that had been issued.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41671.htm

Benin
“The Government maintained documentary requirements for minors traveling abroad as part of its continuing campaign against trafficking in persons.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41588.htm

Bhutan
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation “The law does not provide for these rights, and the Government placed some limits on them in practice. Citizens traveling in border regions were required to show their citizenship identity cards at immigration check points, which in some cases were located a considerable distance from what is in effect an open border with India. By treaty, citizens may reside and work in India. In addition, ethnic Nepalese claimed that they were frequently denied security clearances, which is a prerequisite for obtaining a passport form. The ethnic Nepalese said that since the clearances were based on the security clearance of their parents, the clearances frequently excluded children of ethnic Nepalese. All citizens must have a security clearance from the Government.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41739.htm

Brunei
“The Government restricts the movement of former political prisoners during the first year of their release.” (…) “Government employees, both citizens and foreigners working on a contractual basis, must apply for approval to go abroad, which was granted routinely.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41636.htm

Burma
“An ordinary citizen needs three documents to travel outside the country: a passport from the Ministry of Home Affairs; revenue clearance from the Ministry of Finance and Revenue; and a departure form from the Ministry of Immigration and Population. In 2002, in response to the trafficking in persons problem, the Government tightened the documentation process in ways that hinder or restrict international travel for the majority of women.” (…0 “The Government carefully scrutinized prospective travel abroad for all passport holders. Rigorous control of passport and exit visa issuance perpetuated rampant corruption, as applicants were forced to pay bribes of roughly $300 (300,000 kyat), the equivalent of a yearly salary, to around $1,000 (1 million kyat) for a single woman under 25 years of age. The board that reviews passport applications denied passports on political grounds. College graduates who obtained a passport (except for certain official employees) were required to pay a fee to reimburse the Government for the cost of their education.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41637.htm

Congo, Democratic Republic of the “Married women were required by law to have their husband’s permission prior to traveling outside the country.” (…) “Local authorities in the Kivus routinely required Congolese citizens to show official travel orders from an employer or government official authorizing travel.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41597.htm

Cuba
“The Government severely restricted freedom of movement…” (…) “The Government imposed some restrictions on both emigration and temporary foreign travel. By year’s end, the Government had refused exit permits to 836 people, but allowed the majority of persons who qualified for immigrant or refugee status in other countries to depart.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41756.htm

Ecuador
“The Government requires all citizens to obtain permission to travel abroad, which was granted routinely. Military and minor applicants must comply with special requirements.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41759.htm

Egypt
“Males who have not completed compulsory military service may not travel abroad or emigrate, although this restriction may be deferred or bypassed under special circumstances. Unmarried women under the age of 21 must have permission from their fathers to obtain passports and travel.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41720.htm

Equatorial Guinea “All citizens were required to obtain permission to travel abroad from the local Police Commissioner, and some members of opposition parties were denied this permission. Those who did travel abroad sometimes were interrogated upon their return.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41601.htm

Eritrea
“Citizens and foreign nationals were required to obtain an exit visa to depart the country.” (…) “Citizens of national service age (men 18 to 45 years of age, and women 18 to 27 years of age), Jehovah’s Witnesses (see Section 2.c.), and others who were out of favor with or seen as critical of the Government were routinely denied exit visas. Students who wished to study abroad often were unable to obtain exit visas. In addition, the Government frequently refused to issue exit visas to adolescents and children as young as 5 years of age, either on the grounds that they were approaching the age of eligibility for national service or because their diasporal parents had not paid the 2 percent income tax required of all citizens residing abroad. Some citizens were given exit visas only after posting bonds of approximately $7,400 (100,000 nakfa).”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41602.htm

Gabon
“The Government intermittently enforced an internal regulation requiring married women to obtain their husbands’ permission to travel abroad. During the year, there were numerous reports that authorities refused to issue passports for travel abroad with no explanation. There also were reports of unreasonable delays in obtaining passports, despite a government promise in 2003 to process passports within 3 days.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41604.htm

India
“Under the Passports Act of 1967, the Government may deny a passport to any applicant who “may or is likely to engage outside India in activities prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India.” The Government used this provision to prohibit the foreign travel of some government critics, especially those advocating Sikh independence and members of the separatist movement in Jammu and Kashmir.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41740.htm

Indonesia
“The Constitution allows the Government to prevent persons from entering or leaving the country, and sometimes the Government restricted freedom of movement.” (…) “The Government prevented at least 412 persons from leaving the country during the year. The AGO and the High Prosecutor’s Office prevented most of these departures. Some of those barred from leaving were delinquent taxpayers, while others were involved in legal disputes.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41643.htm

Iran
“The Government required exit permits (a validation stamp in the passport) for foreign travel for draft-age men and citizens who were politically suspect. Some citizens, particularly those whose skills were in short supply and who were educated at government expense, must post bonds to obtain exit permits.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41721.htm

Israel
“Citizens generally were free to travel abroad and to emigrate, provided they had no outstanding military obligations and were not restricted by administrative order. Pursuant to the 1945 State of Emergency Regulations, the Government may bar citizens from leaving the country based on security considerations.” (…) “In addition, no citizen or passport holder is permitted to travel to countries officially at war with Israel without special permission from the Government.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41723.htm

Jordan
“The law requires that all women obtain written permission from a male guardian to apply for a passport; however, women do not need a male relative’s permission to renew their passports. In the past, there were several cases in which mothers reportedly were prevented from departing with their children because authorities enforced requests from fathers to prevent their children from leaving the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41724.htm

Kenya
“Civil servants and M.P.s must get government permission for international travel, which generally was granted.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41609.htm

Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of “The regime only issues exit visas for foreign travel to officials and trusted businessmen, artists, athletes, academics, and religious figures. Short-term exit papers were also available for residents on the Chinese border to enable visits with relatives in bordering regions of China.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41646.htm

Kuwait
“The Constitution does not provide for the rights of freedom of movement within the country, freedom of foreign travel, or freedom to emigrate. The Government placed some limits on freedom of movement in practice.” (…) “Unmarried women must be 21 years of age or older to obtain a passport and travel abroad without permission of a male relative. Married women must obtain their husbands’ permission to apply for a passport. A married woman with a passport does not need her husband’s permission to travel, but he may prevent her departure from the country by placing a 24-hour travel ban on her through immigration authorities. After this 24-hour period, a court order is required if the husband still wishes to prevent his wife from leaving the country. In practice, however, many travel bans were issued without court order, effectively preventing citizens (and foreigners) from departing. All minor children under 21 years of age require their father’s permission to travel outside the country. There were reports of citizen fathers and husbands confiscating their children’s and wives’ travel documents to prevent them from departing.” (…) “The law permits the Government to place a travel ban on any citizen or foreigner who has a legal case pending before the courts. The law also permits any citizen to petition authorities to place a travel ban against any other person suspected of violating local law. In practice, this has resulted in many citizens and foreigners being prevented from departing the country without investigation or a legal case being brought before a local court.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41725.htm

Laos
“Citizens who sought to travel abroad were required to apply for an exit visa. The Government usually granted such visas; however, officials at the local level have denied permission to apply for passports and exit visas to some persons seeking to emigrate.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41648.htm

Lebanon
“All men between 18 and 21 years of age are subject to compulsory military service and are required to register at a recruitment office and obtain a travel authorization document before leaving the country.” (…) “Spouses may obtain passports for their children who are less than 7 years of age after obtaining the approval of the other spouse. To obtain a passport for a minor child between 7 and 18 years, the father or legal guardian needs to sign the request to obtain a passport.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41726.htm

Libya
“The Government requires citizens to obtain exit permits for travel abroad…” (…) “A female citizen must have her husband’s permission and a male escort to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41727.htm

Morocco
“The Ministry of Interior restricted freedom to travel outside the country in certain circumstances. In addition, all civil servants and military personnel must obtain written permission from their ministries to leave the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41728.htm

Oman
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, Repatriation, and Exile “The law does not provide for these rights; however, the Government generally respected these rights in practice.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41729.htm

Pakistan
“Government employees and students must obtain “no objection” certificates before traveling abroad, although this requirement rarely was enforced against students. Persons on the publicly available Exit Control List (ECL) are prohibited from foreign travel. There were approximately 2,153 names on the ECL. While the ECL was intended to prevent those with pending criminal cases from traveling abroad, no judicial action is required to add a name to the ECL.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41743.htm

Qatar
“In general, women over 30 years old did not require permission from male guardians to travel; however, men may prevent female relatives and children from leaving the country by providing their names to immigration officers at ports of departure. Technically, women employed by the Government must obtain official permission to travel abroad when requesting leave…”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41730.htm

Saudi Arabia “Citizen men have the freedom to travel within the country and abroad; however, the Government restricted these rights for women based on its interpretation of Islamic Law. All women in the country were prohibited from driving and were dependent upon males for transportation. Likewise, they must obtain written permission from a male relative or guardian before the authorities would allow them to travel abroad. The requirement to obtain permission from a male relative or guardian applied also to foreign women married to citizens or to the minor and single adult daughters of Saudi fathers.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41731.htm

Senegal
“Some public employees, including teachers, are required by law to obtain government approval before departing the country; however, human rights groups noted that this law was only enforced against teachers and not other public servants.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41623.htm

Seychelles
“Although it was not used during the year, the law allows the Government to deny passports to any citizen if the Minister of Defense finds that such denial is “in the national interest.””
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41624.htm

Singapore
“The Government may refuse to issue a passport and did so in the case of former ISA detainees. Under the ISA, a person’s movement may be restricted.” (…) “Male citizens with national service reserve obligations are required to advise the Ministry of Defense if they plan to travel abroad. Boys age 11 to 16½ years are issued passports that are valid for 2 years and are no longer required to obtain exit permits. From the age of 16½ until the age of enlistment, male citizens are granted 1-year passports and are required to apply for exit permits for travel that exceeds 3 months.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41659.htm

Sudan
“The Government denied exit visas to some categories of persons, including policemen and physicians, and maintained lists of political figures and other citizens who were not permitted to travel abroad.” (…) “Women cannot travel abroad without the permission of their husbands or male guardians; however, this prohibition was not enforced strictly, especially for NC members.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41628.htm

Swaziland
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation, “The law does not provide for these rights, and the Government placed some limits on them in practice. Citizens may travel and work freely within the country; however, under traditional law, a married woman requires her husband’s permission to apply for a passport, and an unmarried woman requires the permission of a close male relative.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41629.htm

Syria
“Travel to Israel is illegal, and the Government restricted travel near the Golan Heights. The Government also denied human rights activists, leaders of opposition groups, and other individuals permission to travel abroad, although government officials continued to deny that this practice occurred. Government authorities could prosecute any person found attempting to emigrate or to travel abroad illegally, any person who was deported from another country, or anyone who was suspected of having visited Israel. Women over the age of 18 have the legal right to travel without the permission of male relatives; however, a husband or a father could file a request with the Ministry of Interior to prohibit his wife or daughter’s departure from the country”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41732.htm

Tunisia
“The law provides that the courts can cancel passports and contains broad provisions that both permit passport seizure on national security grounds, and deny citizens the right either to present their case against seizure or to appeal the judges’ decision. The Ministry of Interior is required to submit requests to seize or withhold a citizen’s passport through the public prosecutor to the courts; however, the Ministry of Interior routinely bypassed the public prosecutor with impunity. The public prosecutor deferred to the Ministry of Interior on such requests.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41733.htm

Turkmenistan
“The Constitution does not provide for full freedom of movement; although the Government took steps to ease restrictions on freedom of movement, restrictions remained.” (…) “In January, the Government eliminated the exit visa requirement, following international pressure from the diplomatic corps, the OSCE, and the U.N. The elimination of the exit visa regime allowed the majority of citizens to travel abroad; however, the Government maintained a “black list” of those not allowed to travel. Some members of minority religious groups, regime opponents, relatives of those implicated in the November 2002, and those suspected of having “state secrets” were not permitted to leave the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41714.htm

Ukraine
“Exit visas were required for citizens who intended to take up permanent residence in another country…” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41715.htm

United Arab Emirates “Custom dictates that a husband can bar his wife, minor children, and adult unmarried daughters from leaving the country by taking custody of their passports.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41734.htm

Uzbekistan
“The Government required citizens to obtain exit visas for foreign travel or emigration, and while it generally granted these routinely, local officials often demanded a small bribe.” (…) “Authorities did not require an exit visa for travel to most countries of the former Soviet Union; however, the Government severely restricted the ability of its citizens to travel overland to neighboring Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Turkmenistan and restricted and significantly delayed citizens attempting to cross the border to Tajikistan. Authorities closed the border with Afghanistan to ordinary citizens.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41717.htm

Vietnam
“Although the Government no longer required citizens traveling abroad to obtain exit or reentry visas, the Government sometimes refused to issue passports. The Government did not allow some persons who publicly or privately expressed critical opinions on religious or political issues to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41665.htm

ID cards – some of the main corporate beneficiaries so far

Some in the IT industry are concerned about facets of the ID cards programme: the costs, the lack of a robust business case, and uncertainties over how well the technologies will work when applied to millions of people.

But not everyone is complaining. Indeed a by-product of the government’s decision to award a plethora of contracts under the ID Card scheme is that parts of the IT industry have signed up to non-disclosure terms, which has reduced significantly the number of cognoscente who could speak openly about the scheme even if they wanted to.

These are some of the organisations and individuals that have won contracts so far under the Identity Cards scheme …

PA Consulting (in part including Electronic Commerce Associates Ltd.) Approx £29.5m to £33.5m
Capita Resourcing – up to £5m
Field Fisher Waterhouse Appox £1.1m
Atos Origin IT Services UK Ltd – £1m+
Parity Resources – up to £1m
Glotel Technology – up to £1m
Sirius consortium (Fujitsu Services Ltd and Global Crossing Ltd and PWC) – £184,000
CESG Communications Electronic Security Group – £140,000+
Veredus London — £135,000+
Ernst and Young – £111,000
Partnerships UK – £93,000+
KPMG – £90,000+
Cornwell Management Consultants – £48,000
Shreeveport Management Consultancy – £43,000+
Sigma – £37,000+
The Metropolitan Police – £35,000
Axon Group Plc – £29,000
Excel Recruitment – £20,000
Whitehead Mann Ltd – £17,000
Alan Hughes – £16,000+
Office of Government Commerce – £12,000
Abbey Consulting – £4,000
Interleader Ltd – £2,000

Contracts worth up to £500,000

Adecco UK Ltd
Allen Lane
ASE Consulting Ltd
Capita Interim Management
Chamberlain Beaumont
Computer People
Crystal UK Ltd
Elan Computing Ltd
Electronic Computer Associates (novated from PA Consulting contract)
Hays Accounting
Hedra Ltd
Hudson Global Resources Ltd
Kelly Services
Logica CMC
Methods Consulting
Montpelier Contracting and Consulting
Northern Recruitment Group plc
OGC Accounting Service
Pendragon Information Systems
Real-Time Consultants plc
Ruillion Computer
Sand Resources
Search Total Recruitment Solutions
Security Printing Systems Ltd
Spring Technology
TAG TPS Ltd
The Nesco Group

Contracts under £50,000:

Angela Mortimer plc
Anite Public Sector
Beamans Ltd
British Print Industries Federation
Brook Street
Buchanan and Darby Associates
Business in the Community
Callcredit plc
CE Williams
Central Office of Information
Centre for Accessibility
Diane Bailey Associates
Donaldson’s
Drivers Jonas
ER Consultants
Equifax Ltd
Excel Recruitment
Home Office Cashiers
Ian Farrand HR Management Consultants
Ideas UK
Identix Ltd
Insight Consulting
Josephine Sammons Ltd
Kingston Communications plc.
Lambert Smith Hampton
Manpower
Michael Page UK Ltd
Minority Matters Recruitment
McCrindle Associates Ltd
OCS
Officeforce Ltd
Parity Training Ltd
Partnerships UK
Plain English Campaign
PicnicBox
Procurement Services Ltd
QDOS Computer Consultants
Q1 Consulting
Reed Accounting Personnel
Resource Analysts Ltd
RNA Ltd
Robert Walters
Security Services Group
SGS UK Ltd
Siemens Business Services
St. John’s Ambulance Services
Step Ahead
Streamline Financial Solutions
Telelogic UK Ltd
TK Cobley
The Whelan Partnership
The Whitehall and Industry Group
Turner and Townsend Project Management Ltd
White Young
Yale Data Management Consultant Ltd

[…]

http://www.computerweekly.com/

It doesn’t matter how many people they corrupt and who have signed NDAs. It is the people who are going to suffer at the hands of these companies who matter. It is their rights that are central to this, and despite what anyone says, the answer to all of this is ‘NO’ and HMG is wasting your money because in the end, this scheme will be dismantled if it ever goes into production.

There are some other interesting aspects of this list; the potential points for leaks are high in number. It cannot be possible that every one of the thousands of people who are going to be working on this will keep quiet. We can expect some leaks, if anyone decent works in any of these companies.

And finally, all the talk about open government (not that anyone with a single brain cell believed it) is further put to rest by everyone in this list being held under an NDA.

If this ID card scheme is so secure, then, like peer reviewed crypto (GPG etc) it should be possible for everyone to know how it works without compromising security. Security through obscurity is no security at all.

But you know this…

And now you can read about why this scheme is doomed to failure:

BBC’s File on 4 reveals defects in ID Cards scheme – with wide implications for government IT

Analysis/comment

A BBC Radio Four “File on 4” programme on 31 July 2007 on ID cards gave a useful insight into how ministers approve a major new IT-based project, then leave the rest to committed civil servants who have no clear what they’re supposed to be doing.

The broadcast included an interview with Computer Weekly’s news editor and several experts from the identity and IT community. It was apparent from the interviews that co-ordination and genuine accountability were lacking, or even absent, from the ID cards scheme, and that civil servants were trying to implement something indefinable that their leaders had decided to implement, nobody having a clear idea of the task that lay ahead.

This was the government machine at its worst: working in secret, having meetings whose minutes were secret, keeping secret “gateway” reviews of the scheme, and nobody having to account to ministers, stakeholders, the public, Parliament or the public over any decisions taken or not taken.

Carl Jung said that in all disorder there’s a secret order. Not in the case of the ID cards scheme, I suspect. Listening to the experts interviewed by the BBC I began to visualise the ID cards scheme as clusters of arms convulsing on an empty floor, none of them attached to a torso.

Peter Tomlinson an IT consultant and specialist in smart card technology told File on 4 he had attended government meetings where the ID card programme was discussed.

He was puzzled when officials from the Home Office, which was the department in charge of ID cards, didn’t appear to be present. “The meetings were called by people in the Cabinet Office. There were topics on the agenda that were set by people in the Cabinet Office and we kept on thinking: why are we not seeing people from the Home Office. Why are we not seeing technical people from the Home Office, or people involved in technical management? Eventually they began to come along but they never produced anyone who had any technical understanding of large-scale systems. We were just completely puzzled.”

File on 4’s researcher asked Tomlinson what questions had been asked at the government meetings he’d attended.

“Other government departments were asking the basic question: how will we use this system, and never getting an answer. No answer at all. ..It was my first real introduction to silo government. Individual government departments were completely independent of each other and now they were going to have to start working together. But they just did not start to do it.”

One of the government’s business justifications for the ID card scheme is that departments will be able to link into the National Identity Register to verify that citizens are who they say they are. But File on 4 found that departments have not assessed the costs of providing systems or software upgrades that integrate with the register.

Neil Fisher, vice president of identity management at Unisys, was also interviewed for the broadcast. Unisys is one of the companies that hope to join consortia bidding for ID scheme contracts.

Fisher had been talking to the Home Office about other computer projects he was involved in. He believed that work on these projects should have fed into the identity scheme. He, too, criticised a lack of co-ordination. He said it was difficult to find out who was in charge.

“I think there has been a realisation, as they have gone through this, that there are a lot of projects, even within the Home Office, being run by awful lots of different and smaller divisions in perhaps immigration, in law enforcement, in passport, and in ID cards, all of whom have a sort of relationship which was ill-defined.

“So [when I went] into a meeting invariably the wrong person from the wrong department would be there who could not speak for their colleagues in some other silo.”

He added that suppliers liked to talk to those who work within a well-organised chain of command. “But it just isn’t like that. I am not giving away any secrets here. The Home Office is quite a difficult department to run. It is like a herd of cats and it’s very difficult to herd cats as you know.”

Tomlinson said that as he sat listening to officials discussing the ID project at Cabinet Office meetings, he began to wonder whether it had really been thought through.

“We were asking questions like: how does one government department that is not the Home Office connect up to the identity card system? Where are the specifications for the communications protocols? How does the equipment get to be security certified? There was no work going on any of these technical topics…

“If you are going to design a large-scale system like this you first go and look at the volumes of transactions that are going to take place, how often are they going to take place and then we would see roughly how big it was going to be. You can’t specify a system unless you have these figures. There were about four of us who used to go to those meetings and we were all very puzzled. We said that this project is empty. It has no content.”

None of this can be blamed on James Hall, the affable, experienced, open and business-minded Chief Executive of the Identity and Passport Service. James Hall did not join the ID cards scheme until last October – three years after its inception; and in any case no individual civil servant, however deft his skills, can resolve the deep-rooted problems on the ID cards scheme which are arguably more to do with the anachronistic, cosy, closed-door culture of government than the action or inaction of any one person.

Several times during the File on 4 programme, Hall ably defended the scheme saying that it would continue to evolve. But some of those listening to him could be forgiven for thinking that he was saying in essence: things are not clearly defined at the moment and we’re at least partially reliant on suppliers defining things for us.

It’s the salesmen and consultants from suppliers that have pushed for ID cards; and so it will be, it seems, the technical people from some of the same companies that will be largely responsible for setting the specifications they will contracted to deliver against.

Very odd.

James Hall told the BBC’s researchers: “We have published a plan laying out our approach to the national identity scheme last December. Since January we have been in continuous dialogue with the technology industry and we have taken on board some of their thinking about the shape of the scheme and that’ll be reflected in procurement activity. And I have no doubt that once we into the procurement process we will continue to get innovation and good ideas from the market which will continue to refine our thinking about the precise details of how we deliver this.”

Martyn Thomas, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and visiting professor of software engineering at Oxford University Computing Laboratory, said the requirements for the ID cards scheme “are still not being articulated”.

He added: “Without a very clear statement of what the requirements are it won’t be possible to build a system that meets those requirements cost effectively.”

File on 4’s programme was specific to ID cards, so it’s easy to forget that there are much wider implications of the disclosures made in the broadcast. The civil servants we have met have been bright and committed. But it’s not their fault if they work without clear tasks, without leadership and in secret – so mistakes and inefficiency are hidden.

If the machinery of government is in such poor condition – and some parts of it seem to be – how can it be exploited for the purposes of huge, complex, risky, costly and ambitious IT-projects such as ID cards?

[…]

http://www.computerweekly.com/

Tony Collins is really on the ball. Astonishing stuff.

Richard Littlejohn

Fancy a pair of those newfangled motorised roller skates? Careful, you could end up being branded a potential serial killer and forced to hand over your DNA.

Police chiefs want the power to take samples from people committing even the most trivial offences.

And where the first motorised roller skates go, the first motorised roller skates breath test will surely follow.

After all, the Old Bill have already breathtested one man using a child’s scooter with a strimmer engine attached and another riding a skateboard.

But you won’t have to be skating under the influence to be catapulted to the top of the “Most Wanted” list. You’d be breaking the law simply by using the skates.

Senior policemen and the Crown Prosecution Service agree that would be enough to justify you being forced to give a DNA sample on the spot.

Currently, they’re only allowed to take swabs from those convicted of crimes which carry a jail term.

According to one of the supporters of the scheme, Inspector Thomas Huntley, of the Ministry of Defence Police, failing to take a sample ‘could be seen as giving the impression that an individual who commits a non-recordable offence could not be a repeat offender.

“While the increase of suspects on the database will lead to an increased cost, this should be considered preferable to letting a serious offender walk free from custody.”

We’re not just talking reckless endangerment with a pair of turbo-charged roller skates, either. What they mean by ‘non-recordable’ encompasses anything from ignoring a stop sign or not wearing a seat belt to dropping litter or letting your dog foul the pavement.

HOW are the police supposed to know that the little old lady allowing her poodle to poop in a public place won’t go on to commit another Dunblane massacre? Or that the spotty youth casually dropping a KitKat wrapper in the gutter may not be the next Yorkshire Ripper.

You never can tell. Better to be safe than sorry. Open wide.

The step from not wearing a seat belt, or running a red light, to mass murderer may be a small one in the tiny mind of someone like the impertinent Inspector Huntley.

But it’s a giant leap in terms of liberty and the presumption of innocence.

What was that phrase again? We can’t be certain that someone could not be a repeat offender.

Of course we can’t. But our system of justice is based upon a person being innocent until proven guilty.

We don’t lock up shoplifters for life on the grounds that they might one day rob a bank. Nor should we be taking

DNA swabs from those guilty of piffling offences, just in case.

And while convictions for relatively minor offences are wiped clean under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, your DNA sample is for ever.

This is an attempt to establish a comprehensive national biometric database by stealth, because they know we would never agree to it voluntarily, just as the new passport regime is a way of bringing in ID cards by the back door.

How many politicians would be prepared to stand for election on a commitment: “Vote for me and if you forget to fasten your seat belt you will be forced to hand over a DNA sample”?

It’s monstrous, but it’s par for the course these days.

How many people voted for the thousands of new “criminal” offences brought in over the past few years?

How many of these exciting new crimes were brought in after a ‘consultation’ exercise, rather than a proper debate and vote in Parliament?

How many times have I written about this Government’s sinister determination to criminalise as many people as possible and pretend that a middle-class motorist doing a few miles an hour above the limit on a deserted motorway is just as much a villain as an inner-city mugger?

That’s what’s happening again in this case. It’s all in line with Labour’s love of surveillance and snooping and treating us all like criminals.

No one voted for officials to be given the power to come into our homes to prod our roof insulation and measure our conservatories, to use satellites to assess the size of our gardens for taxation purposes, or to rip open our bin-liners to check for the “wrong” kind of rubbish.

No one voted for the millions of CCTV and speed cameras on every street corner, or for the increasingly intrusive amount of personal information demanded even to get a bus pass.

There are already four million people on the DNA database – including one million who have never been convicted of any crime.

Curious how a government in thrall to “yuman rites” has such contempt for the right to privacy.

We already live in a punishment culture and we’re getting perilously close to a full-blown police state.

If we don’t want to wake up one day and wonder where the last of our liberties went, it’s time to get our skates on.

[…]

Daily Mail

You know its ‘Game Over’ when you agree with people like Litlejohn!

New biometric technology means one in the eye for airport queues

Beat the crowds at UK airports this summer by taking advantage of the latest biometric technology, says Emma Hartley

It’s been a bad week for the British airport queue. First, MPs said that standing in one could make you a “sitting duck” target for terrorists.

Then Kitty Ussher, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, warned that “Heathrow hassle” and long queues, particularly at passport control, were deterring business people from flying to London for meetings, which could have a long-term impact on the national economy.

Never has air travel been less glamorous for the British holidaymaker. The recent beefing-up of airport security, while understood and accepted with typical stoicism, has none the less turned foreign sojourns into an epic and tiring series of queues and checks.

But it needn’t be that way: there is a recently installed digital solution to at least half of the problem – the part encountered at the arrivals hall in the UK – available to those travellers classified as “low security risk”.

IRIS, an acronym for Iris Recognition Immigration System, is a service provided free at the point of contact by the Immigration Service, in which eight British airport terminals – four at Heathrow, two at Gatwick plus Birmingham and Manchester – have the facility to scan a human iris. As with a fingerprint, every iris is unique, even for identical twins.

The iris-scanning process takes about two minutes and no appointment is necessary; you just need to clear security at a participating airport, keep hold of your boarding card, and ask to be directed to the IRIS suite.

The particular infrared camera system used to power IRIS was developed by Sagem Défense Sécurité, a French company that has also developed iris-scanning applications for military use, but the basic technique involves taking simultaneous pictures on two light frequencies – ambient light and that from a light-emitting diode in the infrared region.

Paul Stanborough, managing director of rival outfit Aditech, explains: “It’s the red light that makes the picture of the iris unique. That’s the clever bit that generates the algorithm, coding the image and allowing it to be stored and found again.”

With the images of your irises held on a database, when you return to the UK you can skip the long queue at passport control and instead head for the IRIS gate. The queue here, by comparison, is determined entirely by the scheme’s uptake – only around 100,000 have enrolled so far, very few of whom will be travelling at any given time, so there is rarely any queue at all.

Moreover, the day when that line will be the same length as the others is a long way off, not least because access to the scheme is restricted to those deemed “low risk”.

Passing through the IRIS system involves simply gazing into a mirrored box at the recognition technology, which should spring the gate open within seconds.

IRIS users are and will remain almost entirely UK passport holders, according to Brodie Clark, the Government’s strategic director for border control. “It is possible, though, that if [non-British passport-holders] fly to the UK often on business and are not on any police watch-list, you may also be eligible,” he said.

Because the data is not stored on your passport but on the Immigration Service’s database, the scheme is unaffected by passport expiry. However, IRIS must be activated within six months of enrolling and is valid unused for two years but renewed every time it is used.

It is designed for frequent flyers, most probably business and solo travellers. It’s not without its pitfalls: if, for instance, someone takes a small child into the IRIS gate the technology will not work since it is designed for one person at a time. Similarly, a person wearing backpack-style hand luggage might create the impression of two people in the booth and disrupt the process, so all baggage must be put on the ground.

Until now, the system’s existence at passport control has remained a rather well-kept secret. The three other people who presented themselves for enrolment at Gatwick South Terminal during the 15 minutes or so I was there this week all said that they had heard about it in a roundabout way, through random browsing on the internet or from friends.

However, it is understood that the Government is about to launch a promotional drive to encourage greater use of the IRIS technology.

And the benefits of IRIS will be felt elsewhere in the airport, too. Since the time-saving benefits of iris-scanning are wiped out if you speed through immigration just to hang around at the baggage carousel waiting for your suitcase, the scheme indirectly encourages people to take less luggage when they travel, leading in turn to shorter check-in times.

Balm to the soul for Britain’s weary travellers.

[…]

Telegraph

This is a piece of blatant propaganda, placed by a PR company in the Telegraph, for money.

SHAME.

Today we learn that the DNA database has been accumulating records at one per minute, and that the government wants to be able to take your DNA on the street for dropping litter or not wearing a seat belt.

By Michael Hampton

As you are probably aware, the greatest threat to your privacy and well-being stems from the government, whether directly or indirectly. Even the “freest” or “most democratic” governments have committed their share of atrocities, and even if you think you’re safe today, if the political winds blow in a different direction tomorrow, you could be the next victim.

Today, governments use databases to track virtually everything, including their own people. So an important part of protecting yourself is to minimize the amount of information governments have about you.

Unlike businesses, which use databases to reduce the costs of the products and services they provide on a voluntary basis, governments of all stripes use databases of people in order to track, monitor, forcibly control and even kill them more efficiently. Indeed, for a government, this is the only purpose for a database of people.

The most important thing to remember is that being innocent will not protect you. It didn’t protect Japanese-Americans in the 1940s, it didn’t protect people falsely accused of being Communists in the 1950s, and it doesn’t protect innocent people who have had their property wrongly seized or been killed in botched drug raids today.

Staying out of government databases, to the maximum extent possible, is the best way to protect yourself from whatever dark fate your government has in store for you tomorrow. These tips will help those of you who want to protect your privacy to do so without unnecessarily sacrificing your quality of life.

Government gets most of its information about you from you, so limiting the amount of information you give the government is the easiest way to protect yourself.

If you can avoid it, do not obtain a driver license or state ID card. The driver license, despite its dubious legality and its utter irrelevance to the physical act of driving a vehicle, has become so pervasive that virtually everyone now has one. Whether by accident or design, it stands as the de facto ID through which you’re tracked, even without the REAL ID Act, by local, state and federal government alike. If you must obtain one, then you can ensure that the information on it is out of date the moment it’s issued, by obtaining the license and then immediately — the same day — moving to a new address. You can also provide an address you haven’t lived at for years, if ever. The same applies to vehicle registrations. Keep in mind that governments don’t like it when the information you’ve given them is inaccurate or outdated, and usually have laws against it; however, such laws are virtually unenforceable.

Obtain a “fake” ID and use it wherever possible, but never with the government. Many places which ask for a government-issued ID these days have no legitimate reason to ask, or their reason for asking could be satisfied through other means. For instance, hotels ask for ID not because they need to know who you are, but because they want to know that you can pay for your room and any damages you may cause. This need could be met through the use of a credit card or through other means, but the prevalence of government ID cards has caused people to rely on them when other solutions would work as well or better. Jim Harper from the Cato Institute addresses this issue in his book, Identity Crisis. Never use your real name or ID unless the government has actually required it, and be aware that many places will tell you the government requires it, when it does not, such as for air travel. In the U.S., under common law, you may use any name you like, as long as you aren’t trying to defraud.

Do not give out your Social Security number, if you have one, to anyone except the government. Do not give it to your bank, nor your credit card issuer, nor anyone else, who isn’t actually required by the government to collect it. (Your bank does not need a Social Security or tax ID number unless you have an interest-bearing account.) If you’ve already given it to your bank, for instance, change banks.

On that note, do not keep large amounts of money in banks. All fiat currencies depreciate much faster than any rate of interest you’ll ever be offered; even interest-bearing offerings will lose money over the long term, adjusted for inflation. True money of intrinsic value, such as gold, silver and platinum, is much more stable, holding its value over the long term, and should be a significant part of any respectable investment portfolio, if not under your pillow.

Do not participate in the census. Sure, your local bureaucrats will try to guilt trip you into filling it out, because they get more of your money if you do. But census data is among the most detailed information the government collects, it’s been abused before, and government has no legitimate purpose for collecting most of what they ask for these days. The most they need to know is the number of people in your house, not even who they are, and even that is probably too much to tell them.

Be aware of what data government collects and how it uses that data. Remember that the use that seems benign today may turn malevolent next year, and by then it’s too late. Evaluate a government data collection program not just on its merits but its potential for misuse in the future. Ask yourself, What could Hitler do with this database? That will tell you what its true potential is. Keep in mind nobody saw Hitler’s evil coming; he looked like a perfectly normal politician to almost everyone, putting Germany on the path to economic recovery, right up until he started exterminating people.

Always remember that government is evil. Thomas Paine said, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” (And a growing number of people believe that government is an unnecessary evil which should be dispensed with as soon as possible so that we can finally have a civilized society.) As we all know by now, the Constitution is no guarantee that our government will remain in “its best state;” indeed, the government violates it with impunity by having its own court redefine what “is” — or the inconvenient word of the day — is. It’s only a matter of time before government violates your rights, if it hasn’t already, and it probably has.

This is why we were admonished by the country’s founders to distrust government. And that is the best advice of all.

Homeland Stupidity