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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judge Michael Kay described his defence as “preposterous.”

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

Guardian

People think there has to be a choice between privacy and security; that increased security means more collection and processing of personal private information. However, in a challenging report to be published on Monday 26 March 2007, The Royal Academy of Engineering says that, with the right engineering solutions, we can have both increased privacy and more security. Engineers have a key role in achieving the right balance.

One of the issues that Dilemmas of Privacy and Surveillance – challenges of technological change looks at is how we can buy ordinary goods and services without having to prove who we are. For many electronic transactions, a name or identity is not needed; just assurance that we are old enough or that we have the money to pay. In short, authorisation, not identification should be all that is required. Services for travel and shopping can be designed to maintain privacy by allowing people to buy goods and use public transport anonymously. “It should be possible to sign up for a loyalty card without having to register it to a particular individual – consumers should be able to decide what information is collected about them,” says Professor Nigel Gilbert, Chairman of the Academy working group that produced the report. “We have supermarkets collecting data on our shopping habits and also offering life insurance services. What will they be able to do in 20 years’ time, knowing how many donuts we have bought?”

Another issue is that, in the future, there will be more databases holding sensitive personal information. As government moves to providing more electronic services and constructs the National Identity Register, databases will be created that hold information crucial for accessing essential services such as health care and social security. But complex databases and IT networks can suffer from mechanical failure or software bugs. Human error can lead to personal data being lost or stolen. If the system breaks down, as a result of accident or sabotage, millions could be inconvenienced or even have their lives put in danger.

The Academy’s report calls for the government to take action to prepare for such failures, making full use of engineering expertise in managing the risks posed by surveillance and data management technologies. It also calls for stricter guidelines for companies who hold personal data, requiring companies to store data securely, to notify customers if their data are lost or stolen, and to tell us what the data are being used for.

“Technologies for collecting, storing, transmitting and processing data are developing rapidly with many potential benefits, from making paying bills more convenient to providing better healthcare,” says Professor Gilbert. “However, these techniques could make a significant impact on our privacy. Their development must be monitored and managed so that the effects are properly understood and controlled.” Engineering solutions should also be devised which protect the privacy and security of data. For example: electronic personal information could be protected by methods similar to the digital rights management software used to safeguard copyrighted electronic material like music releases, limiting the threat of snooping and leaks of personal data.

The report also investigates the changes in camera surveillance – CCTV cameras can now record digital images that could be stored forever. Predicted improvements in automatic number-plate recognition, recognition of individual’s faces and faster methods of searching images mean that it may become possible to search back in time through vast amounts of digital data to find out where people were and what they were doing. The Royal Academy of Engineering’s report calls for greater control over the proliferation of camera surveillance and for more research into how public spaces can be monitored while minimising the impact on privacy.

The public will be able to find out more about this report and have their say at a free evening event at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre in London on Tuesday 27 March.

“Engineers’ knowledge and experience can help to ‘design in privacy’ into new IT developments,” says Professor Gilbert. “But first, the government and corporations must recognise that they put at risk the trust of citizens and customers if they do not treat privacy issues seriously.” […]

http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/releases/shownews.htm?NewsID=378

And by engineers, this report had better be talking about software engineers, because it is precisely these people who are teh (yes, ‘teh’) architects of the solutions that can either enhance our lives or completely enslave us.

I am talking about Phil Zimmerman, Dr. David Chaum, Whitfield Diffie and all the other cryptographers and developers who have been working on this since the early 90’s. The software already exists to create an information ecosystem based on anonymity and authorization; the problem is that the legislators and to a certain extent the vendors are computer illiterates who have never even heard of Public Key Cryptography, let alone understand what it really means and what it can do to secure documents while keeping our information private.

Chaumian Ecash is a perfect example of this. Had it come about at the right time, we might all be using a version of PayPal that was actually cash like, i.e., anonymous, secure and instant on a peer to peer basis. Instead and for the moment, we are stuck with the reviled PayPal which is the complete opposite of a cash like system, that is very large, but also reviled, where there is no privacy at all.

Like I demonstrated with my system for a better passport, there are better ways to improve document security. This thinking can spread to all other areas of authentication and transacting so that we can keep our privacy and also have all the benefits of remote transacting and databases.

A passport to misery, if you ask me…

We’re askin; are ye dancin?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Telegraph

My emphasis.

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

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

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

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

Dirty Liar!

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

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

Identity fraud

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

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

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

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

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

Privacy watchdog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Ballard
The Register
Tuesday, March 20, 2007

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

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

“The practice of fingerprinting in schools has been banned in China as being too intrusive and an infringement of children’s rights, yet here it’s widespread,” she said, calling for the UK to ban school fingerprinting unless parents opted into it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

Who would have thought.

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

Pinch me…PLEASE!

So BBQ is reporting that ‘10,000 passports go to fraudsters’.

This is of course, spin to engineer support for the new interrogation centres that are popping up all over the country.

The fact of the matter is this. ‘Home Office minister Joan Ryan said the IPS had 16,500 fraudulent applications during the 12 month period, 10,000 of which went undetected.’ This is clearly a lie. If they know that 10,000 were fraudulent, they in fact were detected. If the Immigration officers used my system where each passport can be checked in realtime over the internets with just the information in the machine readable part of the passport, with no biometrics, then each of these 10,000 people could be caught as and when they tried to use these bad passports.

If the Home Office has detected these ‘10,000’ passports, then they have a list of all their numbers, and this list is not being used. It is sitting in a paper file somewhere on someone’s desk. That is not very smart.

The Tories it seems, are not very smart either:

Conservative MP Grant Shapps, who compiled those figures, said they raised “serious concerns” over the risks of identity fraud and terrorism.

Identity has nothing to do with ‘terrorism’. I’ll say it again, “Identity has nothing to do with ‘terrorism'”.
It is not the government’s responsibility to guarantee identity. We have said this again and again and again.

Note how this article fails to mention that everyone ordered to report to these interrogation centres will be fingerprinted like a criminal and their details entered on the NIR, and note too that the ‘Related Links’ are only to the government and not to No2ID and or Privacy International.

BBQ, you are the lowest of the low!

Tony Blair is facing fresh criticism over identity cards after saying police would be able to use the national database to check fingerprints found at crime scenes.

The Prime Minister was accused of “changing his tune” on ID cards after using the argument to reassure opponents of the controversial scheme. The Government insisted there was nothing new in his comments and that the police provision was set out explicitly in legislation passed by Parliament.

But the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats said they never realised police would be allowed to go on “fishing expeditions”.

Evening Standard

So they voted on it without understanding what it was they were voting for.

This is why all countries need a constitution. The legislature is so ignorant, so over worked, so stupid that they cannot be trusted to write anything but the most mundane pieces of law.

Everyone has been saying this for ages. ‘Frances Stonor Saunders‘ laid out the true nature of the ID card scheme clearly and succinctly, and her piece was read by millions of people.

How could they possibly not understand exactly what this bad idea really means?

What is encouraging is this; as everyone starts to understand what this system will really do, it will cause an explosion of pure outrage. It might take a demonstration of how evil it is for this outrage to be manifested, but make no mistake, it will happen, and this scheme will be totally dismantled.

After this happens, people will be made aware of how precious their privacy is, and they will protect it with more vigor and attention. Its like having your car broken into; once it happens, you think differently about parking your car and what you leave in it. You are suddenly made aware of the true reality, and this permanently changes your outlook forever. The ID card scheme will do and is doing this to the British population.

The next ‘revelation’ people will make is that the card itself is meaningless. You become the card with this biometric ID scheme. The police or anyone anywhere can id you by your fingerprint. You don’t have your card on you? No problem, put your thumb on the scanner please sir. And that will not be a request.

Police will have hand held scanners as I wrote about in January 2004. You will not have to carry your card to be identified. In fact, if you go to a public place and leave your prints, someone with access (i.e. anyone with some money) will be able to access the NIR and find out you were there.

It is clear that these MPs do not know what they are talking about, because they keep talking about the cards and not the NIR which is the true evil in this idea.

The next round of articles will centre on the NIR and how it is a grave threat, and how they ‘didn’t understand what it really meant’ when they voted for it.

Just you watch.

They are the “safest ever”, according to the Government. But the Daily Mail reveals today how easily a person’s identity can be stolen from new biometric passports.

A shocking security gap allows the personal details and photograph in any electronic passport to be copied from the outside of the envelope in which it is delivered to homes.

The passport holder is none the wiser when it arrives because the white envelope has not been tampered with or opened.

Using a simple gadget built from parts bought on the Internet, it took the Mail less than four hours to copy the details from one passport.

It had been delivered in the normal way by national courier company Secure Mail Services to a young woman in Islington, North London.

With her permission we took away the envelope containing her passport and never opened it.

By the end of the afternoon, we had stolen enough information from the passport’s electronic chip – including the woman’s photograph – to be able to clone an identical document if we had wished.

More significantly, we had the details which would allow a fraudster, people trafficker or illegal immigrant to set up a new life in Britain.

The criminal could open a bank account, claim state benefits and undertake a myriad financial and legal transactions in someone else’s name.

This revelation will prove a major embarrassment to ministers. Since their introduction a year ago, more than four million biometric travel documents have been delivered by courier.

And I have no sympathy for any of them.

All of them were warned well in advance about the dangers of these passports, and yet, they all lined up for them like sheep.

The Government believes this is the safest way of sending out passports. But this may be an illusion.

It is an illusion, and you have just proved it!

Each of these passports is now an ID transmitter that silently puts your information out there to whoever wants it.

The passports are dispatched in white envelopes which are easily recognisable from the distinctive lettering and figures on the outside.

This is not the worst of it. Anyone carrying one of these ID transmitting passports around can have their information snarfed as they walk down the street. A smart snarfler will put antennae near the entrances of banks (or anywhere else that people regularly show their passports) and then sit back and watch the data roll in. They will not even have to be there. All they need to do is set up a system that phones home when it collects a batch of passports. Cheap laptops in a small box could do it with ease.

There is no identity check on the person signing for the passport when it arrives. In multi-occupancy flats they can be handed to anyone at the address. Thousands have already gone missing.

That is irrelevant, since the data can be snarfed in transit or no matter where it is, wether the right person receives it or not.

We began our investigation by asking Elizabeth Wood, a 33-year old web designer, to apply for a new biometric passport.

She telephoned the Identity and Passport Service on Monday, February 12.

Because she wanted the passport quickly, she was asked to go to the IPS office in Victoria, Central London, the following afternoon.

If she had not requested the fasttrack service, the passport would normally have been sent out without a face-to-face interview.

And now we have the sneaky advocation for the interrogation centres that HMG is setting up.

The next day Miss Wood met an official for ten minutes. The details on her application form were verified using two forms of ID – normally a household bill and a bank statement. Her photograph was also examined.

Miss Wood paid 91 for the fasttrack delivery and was told her passport would be sent to her home by secure courier in exactly seven days.

That is as it should be. Getting a passport is a RIGHT. It is used only to tell governments of other countries that you are a British Citizen entitled to protections afforded to such people. Far too much weight is given to passports and identity documents like driving licenses.

In fact, it took just four days, arriving when Miss Wood was in the shower. Her boyfriend went to the door and signed for the document. He was able to do so without showing any form of identity to the courier, who did not ask for Miss Wood.

This is also perfectly acceptable. If her passport goes missing, she will report it to the Passport Office and then they will cancel that passport number, meaning that it will become worthless. That is why it is ok for her boyfriend to collect the passport for her. A passport is not some magic book that confers UlTimAte PoWer to its holder. Get a grip you idiots!

But there is another gaping hole in security. At first glance the new biometric passport looks much like the traditional one.

The only clue on the outside of the document that it contains an electronic chip is a small gold square on the front.

Inside the passport there is a laminated page containing the holder’s picture, passport number, name, nationality, sex, signature, date and place of birth and the document’s issue and expiry date.

At the bottom of this page are two lines of printed numbers and letters which can be read by a computer when the passport is swiped through a special machine by immigration officials. It is called the Machine Readable Zone.

On the back of the page is a tiny computer chip, surrounded by a coil of copper-coloured wire. This is a Radio Frequency Identification microchip, which can be read using radio waves.

Encoded on the passport’s RFID chip are three important files. One contains an electronic copy of the printed information on the passport’s photo page; the second holds the electronic image of the holder’s photo. The third is a security device which checks that the previous two files are not accessed and altered.

In order to get into the files, the computer needs an “electronic key”. This is the 24-digit code printed on the bottom line of the passport’s Machine Readable Zone. It is called the “MRZ key number”.

When an immigration official checks the passport by swiping it through his machine, it reveals the key which is then used to open up the electronic data on the microchip.

And this is the error that my system overcomes.

The official checks that the photograph and information printed on the passport match the details on the chip and the holder is allowed to pass in, or out, of the country.

The Government says the biometric chips are protected by “an advanced digital encryption technique”. In other words, without the MRZ key code it is impossible to steal the passport holder’s details if you do not have their travel document.

Yet it took us no time at all to unravel the crucial code, using a relatively simple computer software programme and a scanning device.

There is no extra utility in using RFID in a passport. This is simply vendor pushed garbage. A printed paper cryptographic public key system is far more secure than any RFID system.

The Mail was helped by computer security consultant Adam Laurie, who advises public bodies and private companies on combating IT fraud. He discovered glaring weaknesses in the biometric passport’s security system.

The first flaw is that a hacker can try to access the chip as many times as he likes until he cracks the MRZ code. This is different to putting a pin number into a bank machine, where the security system refuses access after three wrong combinations are entered.

The second is that there are easily identifiable recurring patterns in the MRZ key codes issued. For example, the passport holder’s date of birth always features, as does the passport’s expiry date, which is ten years after the issue date.

These are schoolboy howlers. PGP signed documents do not have this vulnerability. The problem with PGP is that it costs nothing and vendors cant make a killing out of it.

The Mail is not publishing full details of Miss Wood’s passport to protect her. We know exactly how Mr Laurie cracked the MRZ code but we are not going to reveal the process for security reasons.

Crucially, he only needed one new piece of information – Miss Wood’s date of birth.

In under two hours, the Mail had found this by checking the electoral roll, birth records and looking at genealogical sites on the Internet.

Miss Wood’s photo page soon popped up on Mr Laurie’s laptop screen. He had not needed to see her actual passport – the white envelope containing it remained unopened on the desk.

And RFID passports make all of this much easier.

Crucially, some banks, including the Post Office, no longer require to see a full passport as proof of identity from a new customer opening an account. They ask for a photocopy of the photo page to be sent in the post instead.

This is not crucial. Opening a bank account is simply a service. Its your money. If you put your money in a shoe box under your bed or in a bank it makes no difference. You should be able to identify yourself by whatever means you like if it is YOUR money in YOUR account. Ahhhh journalists!.

Miss Wood’s photo page could easily be copied and used for this purpose. Mr Laurie said: “I used public information and equipment that is legal. The software took me three days to write. It is incredibly easy to thieve data from the passports. It could be put onto another chip and implanted in a blank passport.”

Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of NO2ID, a group pressing the Government to abandon plans for identity cards, witnessed our experiment.

“This shows how easy it is to steal a person’s identity from the new passport without the innocent owner even knowing,” he said.

“The Government has repeatedly said this information is secure. You have just shown that it is not.”

AND SO?

And so, “you should not on any account carry one of these passports. You should not be interrogated in one of the new centres. Period”. THAT IS WHAT YOU NEEDED TO SAY!

Last night a Home Office spokesman said: “We do not believe it would be possible to successfully forge a new passport by doing this.

“The security around the UK passport chip prevents anyone changing or deleting any of the data or information on the chip, which is what is required to successfully forge a passport.”

What they need to demonstrate now is that this too is a lie. But then again, it doesn’t matter how many times you do this sort of exercise; if people are going to line up to get these passports, then there is nothing that you can do about it. Four million have already been issued. Its bad news.

Americans do not have to be fingerprinted or interrogated to get new passports, which have RFID people who care are being instructed to use a hammer to destroy the RFID chip. The passport is not invalidated if the chip is broken, so there is no reason for you not to hammer your passport, and roll it back to an acceptable document.

I wonder why they did not issue an instruction to the four million holders of bad UK passports to hammer the chips so that they do not work?

It beggars belief.

This is a reply to a post on a Home Education mailing list; it was written by a glove puppet (or a perfect imitation of one). Note the flawed logic, doublethink and straw man tactics that are common to all glove puppet / inflitraitor posts. Yes, ‘infiltraitor’.

Here we go:

> I’ve been reluctant to pass comment on the Government’s HE monitoring
> proposals as I think I’m in the minority on this list but, having
> read the comments on the BBC site, I think I will take the plunge.

uh oh.

>
> Doesn’t monitoring imply 2 concerns – child protection and ensuring a
> ‘suitable education’? The Victoria Climbie case sparked the whole
> thing off and it concerns me that my children have been ‘invisible’
> for all of their lives.

I can scarcely believe what I am reading. You sound just like one of Bliar’s cabinet with that ‘Victoria Climbie’ nonsense. Just because one child is hurt that doesn’t mean that all children in the UK must be registered in an Orwellian system of controls. There is no logic in it. Crime is like rain; you will never be able to prevent it, you need to learn to live with it. You do not destroy the very foundations of your life because of it i.e. not going outside ever because it MIGHT rain and you MIGHT get wet and you MIGHT catch a cold you BUY AN UMBRELLA, and use it when you like. You do not get the government to shield you from the rain, or build a giant roof over the entire UK to ensure that you are always dry.

> I could do anything to my children and nobody
> would know.

Yes, you COULD, and you COULD also take a kitchen knife and kill your postman, or burn your own house down with a box of matches, or strap your children in your car and drive into the sea to drown them. You could do alot of things…bad things…but you WONT, and the vast majority of people never do, and just because you have the capability to do these bad things that doesn’t mean that everyone should be under total state control. Not only that, state ‘monitoring’ of everyone and every child will not prevent a single crime, especially the silent crime of child abuse.

> A comment on the BBC site mentions ‘thick, weird …
> downright barmy’ parents home educating and people have been quick to
> reply ‘but we’re not weird’ etc. But what happens if an ‘evil’ parent
> chooses HE? Where’s the child protection?

Wheres the logic? You sound like the type of glove puppet infiltrator that Bliar’s government employs to monitor groups that they consider could be a threat. The same sort of people were used against the fuel protesters. They would attend meetings and this would happen:

The new recruits spent a lot of time arguing against taking any action and spreading doubts about the need for it. “They were saying things like: ‘Think of the hospitals, what happens if it goes like 2000?’”…

Read all about it here: http://tinyurl.com/2ftbvg the organization is,

…the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). Few have heard of it, but its role in controlling dissent is central.

They infiltrate groups, and go onto the internet posing as people on the side of any cause, only to present government arguments as if they are coming from inside the group, as we are reading in your post. They are the ones who always write, “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” on the subject of ID cards on every forum out there. They are the ones who pollute the BBC ‘Have Your Say’ comments with pro government propaganda. Beware of people who say they are willing to give up their rights or accept more government control because a single person got hurt. Its Bliar logic, and they and their arguments are utterly bogus, scripted nonsense.

> I would gladly give up my
> children’s invisibility to protect other children. It is a worthwhile
> price to pay if it prevents a child going through a similar ordeal to
> Victoria’s. (And I am aware the Victoria’s case wasn’t HE based but
> it could have been.)

And there you go! Its pure Blair speak. You admit that the Climbie case is irrelevant to HE, but cite it as a reason to give awy your privacy (which you incorrectly call ‘invisibility’) anyway, saying that it COULD have been related to HE. That is utter nonsense, and you know it. We all know it. “He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security” Benjamin Franlkin. You and your children will have neither security nor liberty if you are willing to give up your right to live without the government looking over your shoulder. The worst thing about it is, no amount of monitoring can prevent crime, and so you are advocating giving up liberty for NOTHING. That is completely insane.

> Of course the level of monitoring/interference should be the real
> debate. Will they simply try and find the ‘invisible’ children and
> put them in the same inspection regime as the others? Or will the
> regime be toughened up for all HE children? I have to say I’m
> optimistic for a number of reasons. What resources will there be for
> all the extra ‘found’ children like mine? Will local authorities
> really be prepared for extra children AND extra supervision? I think
> not.

Astonishing. Firstly, the ‘real debate’ is wether or not the government has any business regulating HE in any way. And once again, there is no such thing as an ‘invisible’ child. HE’d children are not ‘invisible’; stop characterizing them in this way, it is pure evil and a propaganda technique. Secondly, you are saying that you are willing to give up your rights, then you are saying that you are not too worried because even if you do, there are not enough staff to watch everyone! You are not very good at this game are you?

I will help you.

If they decide that all children in HE are to be monitored, what they will do is put the burden on YOU. YOU will have to report somewhere with your children regularly to be inspected. YOU will have to fill out forms detailing your children’s performance. YOU will have to obtain a license to educate your children at home.

Get the picture?

> Also Summerhill School (the ‘run by students’, ‘no rules’ school) has
> survived inside the school OFSTED inspection system. And, as a
> teacher, I’m inspected and, although it’s very irritating for me, it
> doesn’t stop me teaching my students the way I feel is best. In other
> words I listen to the inspectors comments and simply ignore those I
> don’t agree with. I haven’t lost my job yet. And very often they make
> suggestions that I actually agree with!

This has nothing to do with us free parents who want nothing to do with you, your OFSTED inspections, ‘your’ opinions and your vile way of interacting with the system whilst pretending to be against it, and all the time bolstering it.

> We live in a country with a history of compromise and ‘fudging’.
> Isn’t this going the same way?

We are not going to submit to any of the government’s new, draconian, Soviet Style controls; that means NO to the children’s database, NO to ID cards and NO to the introduction of compulsory schooling, or ANY interference in HE.

> Sorry I couldn’t resist putting another point of view into a debate
> which seems rather extreme – ‘change nothing’ or ‘ban completely’– at
> the moment.

It was deliberate, and the language you use is highly indicative of you being a shill. We are on to your games however; you don’t play them very well and really, its not your fault. Bliar is asking you and your glove puppet colleagues to do the impossible – argue for the rights of children and families to be destroyed. No one will go along with it, on any level.

If you are indeed a genuine person, not in the employ of the government, I am even more horrified that you could write such drivel and present it as a valid argument.

What you are advocating is nothing less than the mass enslavement of all the children in the UK. No one in their right mind would advocate that, even as a theoretical possibility, because it is so abhorrent and contrary to the natural feelings of any parent or human being.

If you are not a glove puppet, then you may not realize that we are in the middle of a war for our freedom and the freedom of generations of British Citizens. This is not the time to play games with ideas like, “gladly give up my freedom and the freedom of my children”. If this response has come across as particularly harsh I hope that that is the case, because people like you who advocate, even in theory, the enslavement of my children are my mortal enemies.

AP Wednesday, February 7, 2007

A revolt against a national driver’s license, begun in Maine last month, is quickly spreading to other states.

The Maine Legislature on Jan. 26 overwhelmingly passed a resolution objecting to the Real ID Act of 2005. The federal law sets a national standard for driver’s licenses and requires states to link their record-keeping systems to national databases.

Within a week of Maine’s action, lawmakers in Georgia, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Vermont and Washington state also balked at Real ID. They are expected soon to pass laws or adopt resolutions declining to participate in the federal identification network.

“It’s the whole privacy thing,” said Matt Sundeen, a transportation analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “A lot of legislators are concerned about privacy issues and the cost. It’s an estimated $11 billion implementation cost.”

The law’s supporters say it is needed to prevent terrorists and illegal immigrants from getting fake identification cards.

States will have to comply by May 2008. If they do not, driver’s licenses that fall short of Real ID’s standards cannot be used to board an airplane or enter a federal building or open some bank accounts.

About a dozen states have active legislation against Real ID, including Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.

Missouri state Rep. James Guest, a Republican, formed a coalition of lawmakers from 34 states to file bills that oppose or protest Real ID.

“This is almost a frontal assault on the freedoms of America when they require us to carry a national ID to monitor where we are,” Guest said in an interview Saturday. “That’s going too far.”

Guest proposed a resolution last week opposing Real ID and said he expects it quickly to pass the Legislature. “This does nothing to stop terrorism,” he said. “Don’t burden the American people with this requirement to carry this ID.” […]

Kansas City

There’s no place like home!

And of course, within hours of this AP piece, the idiot glove puppets go on the attack:

REAL ID Offers Real Protections to Personal and National Security

Bureaucratic Foot-Dragging Must Not be Allowed to Delay Implementation, Cautions FAIR

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Fifteen months before the REAL ID Act is scheduled to be fully implemented, a handful of state DMVs, together with fringe groups on the far left and far right, are mounting an all-out offensive to repeal the measure. The REAL ID Act requires that driver’s licenses and other government issued identity documents meet certain security standards to ensure that they are not abused by terrorists and other criminals.

The REAL ID Act was passed by Congress in 2005 in response to the significant risk that terrorists could obtain driver’s licenses and other official identity documents. Several of the 9/11 terrorists were able to obtain valid driver’s licenses in spite of the fact that their visas had expired. The 9/11 Commission cited easy access to driver’s licenses and other identity documents as a critical component to the terrorists’ plot against the United States.

“The threat that we face in 2007 is every bit as real and ominous as it was when the REAL ID Act was passed,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “The need to determine with a high degree of certainty to whom we are issuing government identity documents, and the ability to verify the authenticity of those documents, is vital to our national security. Homeland security must not be held captive by a handful of DMV administrators who can’t get their act together, or by a few alarmists at either end of the political spectrum.”

In addition to addressing homeland security concerns, full implementation of REAL ID is critical for other domestic priorities, including combating mass illegal immigration and identity theft. As the de facto identity document used in this country, illegal aliens covet driver’s licenses as a way of making themselves invisible to immigration authorities.

“By lopsided majorities, the American public believes that their vital identity documents must be made more secure. About the only people who would be harmed by the REAL ID Act are terrorists, identity thieves, people who are in the country illegally, and a small number of bureaucrats who run state motor vehicle departments,” Stein observed.

“If we cannot substantiate the identities of the people who are receiving or using government-issued IDs, then what is the point of having them?” Stein asked. “Nothing in the law requires Americans to surrender more private information to the government. REAL ID merely requires that people prove that they are who they say they are, and that they have a right to be here in the first place, which is precisely what the law intended,” Stein concluded.

SOURCE Federation for American Immigration Reform

http://www.prnewswire.com/ […]

Once again, this type of action cannot work. There are too many people who understand the truth about this. The mass has been inoculated.

This poison is in the sack and we laugh at it.

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

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

We are waiting.

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

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

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

(an old article)

–

Did I mention ID cards?

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

Maine overwhelmingly rejected federal requirements for national identification cards on Thursday, marking the first formal state opposition to controversial legislation scheduled to go in effect for Americans next year.

Both chambers of the Maine legislature approved a resolution saying the state flatly “refuses” to force its citizens to use driver’s licenses that comply with digital ID standards, which were established under the 2005 Real ID Act. It asks the U.S. Congress to repeal the law.

The vote represents a political setback for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Republicans in Washington, D.C., which have argued that nationalized ID cards for all Americans would help in the fight against terrorists.

“I have faith that the Democrats in Congress will hear this from many states and will find a way to repeal or amend this in the coming months,” House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview after the vote. “It’s not only a huge federal mandate, but it’s a huge mandate from the federal government asking us to do something we don’t have any interest in doing.”

The Real ID Act says that, starting around May 2008, Americans will need a federally approved ID card–a U.S. passport will also qualify–to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments or take advantage of nearly any government service. States will have to conduct checks of their citizens’ identification papers, and driver’s licenses likely will be reissued to comply with Homeland Security requirements.

In addition, the national ID cards must be “machine-readable,” with details left up to Homeland Security, which hasn’t yet released final regulations. That could end up being a magnetic strip, an enhanced bar code or radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.

The votes in Maine on the resolution were nonpartisan. It was approved by a 34-to-0 vote in the state Senate and by a 137-to-4 vote in the House of Representatives.

Other states are debating similar measures. Bills pending in Georgia, Massachusetts, Montana and Washington state express varying degrees of opposition to the Real ID Act.

Montana’s is one of the strongest. The legislature held a hearing on Wednesday on a bill that says “The state of Montana will not participate in the implementation of the Real ID Act of 2005” and directs the state motor vehicle department “not to implement the provisions.”

Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project, said he thinks Maine’s vote will “break the logjam, and other states are going to follow.” (The American Civil Liberties Union has set up an anti-Real ID Web site called Real Nightmare).

Pingree, Maine’s House majority leader, said the Real ID Act would have cost the state $185 million over five years and required every state resident to visit the motor vehicle agency so that several forms of identification–including an original copy of the birth certificate and a Social Security card–would be uploaded into a federal database.

[…]

News Dot Com

Well well well.

Does this mean that the drivers licenses from that Maine will not be good for travel inside the other areas of Soviet America? If that is the case, the free citizens of Maine will go berserk with rage when they are routinely denied travel ‘rights’ or are perpetually strip searched because they have deviant drivers licenses. This is commonly known as ‘discrimination’.

It is also what we call ‘soft compulsion’; make them need REALID by causing their lives to become impossible without it. Are all the banks in Maine who are going to be forced to require REALID for all transactions going to be under different rules than the rest of Soviet America? Will they then be prevented from making transfers to other banks from customers who have not presented REALID? These are the questions that come to mind. Hell, forget all of that, will they be able to drive cars in other states?

Maine is going to have to become like another country entirely if they are going to separate themselves from the biometric net. Its called secession, and it will be the best thing for them. They will have their international airport, where USVISIT will not exist, and then once again, at least in one place, america will start looking like America. With a capital ‘A’. Most importantly they will have their own foreign relations, ensuring that they have real, long term security at zero cost.

In a properly federated country, stuff like this can happen. After everything, this total nightmare, like I said before, if any country can come back from the brink of total destruction, it is the United States of America. These are the people who went to the moon, who built the internets…there was no place like it on earth.

And I’m not just saying that.

The question is, is this the beginning of the end for the biometric net? Will Maine and the other ‘REAL-AMERICA’ states get away with this?

I sure hope so.

Here come some big lies:

Huge majority say civil liberty curbs a ‘price worth paying’ to fight
terror

Research finds most support compulsory ID cards, with phone tapping, curfews and tagging for suspects

John Carvel and Lucy Ward Wednesday January 24, 2007 The Guardian

An overwhelming majority of people in Britain are willing to surrender civil liberties to help tackle the threat of terrorism, the nation’s leading social research institute will disclose today. The survey found seven in every 10 people think compulsory identity cards for all adults would be “a price worth paying” to reduce the threat of terrorism. Eight in 10 say the authorities should be able to tap the phones of people suspected of involvement in terrorism, open their mail and impose electronic tagging or home curfews.

The findings come from the annual British Social Attitudes survey, based on interviews with a sample of 3,000 adults by the National Centre for Social Research

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1997179,00.html

And a clever person on the FIPR saved me some typing:

would the replies have been different if the questions had been:

are you prepared to identify yourself every time you:

(a) take money out of the bank;
(b) want to enter a shopping mall/department store;
(c) [etc]; with those data being stored so the police, social security and your boss can check where you were and what you did at any time?

would you object to being detained for a week because an anonymous informer told the police that s/he thought you were up to no good – without the police giving you any further evidence and without you being able to challenge your detention?

people are always willing to give up freedoms if they think it’ll only affect “the other”, i.e. sinister people from “other cultures” (black, muslim, hoodie). as whatshername said, it’ll be too late if you wait until the [secret] police knocks on your door …

la lotta per la liberta (e gli liberti) continua!

John Carvel and Lucy Ward Wednesday are total scumbags.

They know perfectly well that biased and malformed questions are almost always used to generate this data; the fact that they did not publish the questions proves that they are culpable, or amongst the stupidest people in the country.

Everyone knows now that we are in the middle of a historic fight for the very soul of Britain. To let this sort of thing pass unchecked is simply CRIMINAL, especially since its appearing in the same paper that Henry Porter has been doing such good work in. They will know ABSOLUTELY that this report is totally bogus, because they work IN THE SAME TEAM AS HENRY PORTER. They will have read, without a doubt, the ‘Frances Stonor Saunders’ email. THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING when they publish this without question and put their names to it.

Dirty filthy animals, against Britain, against freedom; LIARS LIARS LIARS, COWARDS COWARDS COWARDS lower than any dog, suicidal, imbecilic…

FUCKING DUMBASSES.

… and they don’t even have the brains to point out that none of the measures proposed will actually do what HMG says they are for. Even HMG admits that ID cards will do nothing to stop ‘terrorism’.

The question is, why on earth do the editors of The Guardian allow this evil drivel in their paper?

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

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

[…]

Telegraph

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

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

Sunday January 7, 2007

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

[…]

The Observer

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

Middle Finger Print?

Guantanamo Bay of Pigs!

[…]

Police who knocked on Raymond Easton’s door in Swindon, England, in 1999 were certain he had committed burglary at a house 200 miles (300 kilometers) away. DNA found at the scene was a 37 million-to-1 match with Easton’s sample, which had been taken three years earlier.

Easton, a former construction worker, had Parkinson’s disease and could barely dress himself. He was still charged. Further tests proved he had never been to Bolton, where the burglary occurred, according to the Greater Manchester police. “Britain’s DNA database is spiraling out of control,” said Helen Wallace, deputy director of GeneWatch U.K., which campaigns for responsible use of genetic science. “It could allow an unprecedented level of government surveillance”.

Other government plans include loading the confidential medical records of 50 million patients in the state-run health system onto a central database without their consent.

Most controversial of all are Blair’s biometric ID cards linked to a national register holding every citizen’s fingerprints, iris or face scan. Starting in 2010, anyone renewing or applying for a passport will have to get one.

“Desperate for some sort of legacy, the prime minister has nothing to offer but Blair’s Big Brother Britain”, said Phil Booth, national coordinator of the anti-ID card group NO2ID. […]

Snarfed from the FIPR mailing list…..

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