We expected this to happen:

1.2.3 Section 436A requires all local authorities to make arrangements to enable them to establish (so far as it is possible to do so) the identities of children residing in their area who are not receiving a suitable education. In relation to children, by ‘suitable education’ we mean efficient full-time education suitable to her/his age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs the child may have. 

And here is the true purpose of this entire exercise.

This is the way they are going to get every child in England into and justify the existence of ContactPoint.

[…]

The goal of these guidelines is to create a way to sweep up all the home educating children in the UK, identify them, categorize them and put them on a database, together with the names of their parents, siblings, ethnicity and other details. See below. Once again, children who are being educated at home, privately, or in alternative provision should not be subject to being identified for this purpose, since they are being educated quite legally.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1217

And now its even worse than we thought it would be:

By Lauren Higgs
Children & Young People Now
17 September 2008

The national database of everyone who is under 18 in England is to be used to identify children missing from education.

Monthly reports created by the ContactPoint database will be sent to local authorities listing the names of children not recorded at an education setting.

The School Census for state schools and pupil lists from independent schools and pupil referral units will be used to complete the relevant field on ContactPoint. Children not accounted for will feature in the reports, which are intended to help children missing education teams focus their work.

But Fiona Nicholson, chair of home schooling organisation Education Otherwise, said the reports will mean councils target home-educated children. She said: “ContactPoint should not be used for this.”

But Richard Stiff, chair of the information systems and technology policy committee at the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said the reports would not change the way councils treat home-educated children: “It is unlikely this will be a tool in the armoury of the state.”

Thanks to the vigilant lurker who sent this in.

If this article is correct, someone will extract and print monthly reports from ContactPoint of groups of children. This means that the names addresses and other private details of children in the UK will be distributed all over the place; any claim that ContactPoint is secure is once again shown to be absolute nonsense.

Once these reports are printed out or emailed, they can be copied and stored in another database. Imagine the value of this database to someone who wants to get a hold of every home schooler in the UK. This list would be worth literally millions of pounds.

We have written about ContactPoint and the nature of data before.

Richard Stiff is either lying or is painfully naïve.

The new duties that Local Authorities have to make sure children are receiving suitable education dovetail with ContactPoint perfectly. Once they have a list of all people who are not in school, they will be able to claim that they do not know whether or not the children listed are being educated suitably; their duty would kick in automatically, and they would be compelled to go through the list and inspect every single name, if only to see who is home educating and who is not.

If Richard Stiff cannot see this then he is unfit to hold his chair; in any case, he sits on the information systems and technology policy committee, which has nothing to do with Local Authorities and how they do and do not operate.

This article begs the question, “what other reports are going to be generated by ContactPoint?”. It is clear that as we predicted, the ContactPoint data will have completely escaped within a matter of months. All of the Security Theatre that they have shrouded around it is now proven to be completely useless.

Think about it. If a list of all children who are not listed as being in school is sent to all 410 Local Authorities every month, wether it is by email or in printed form that is a huge number of mass points of escape. ContactPoint was originally sold as a way for the 330,000 workers who will have access to it to find information on particular children, and not children en masse or children of a particular category or class.

It is obvious that the next step in ContactPoint’s development is to use it to generate a list of all muslim children, to make sure that they are not being exposed to extremism. For example. Or to create a list of all children of a certain ‘race’, to do some analysis on them as a group. You can add whatever pretext you like to this list obviously. Anyone who does not think that this is going to happen is living on another planet.

It is now abundantly clear that massive abuses of ContactPoint are to be standard operating procedure. I recommend that if you have children, you do everything you can to get them out of and keep them away from ContactPoint. If you cannot do so, then next in your list of possible responses is to refuse to respond in any way to anything that was generated or a result of a search on ContactPoint. If everyone were to do this, ContactPoint would be a very dangerous thing to access, because if the alert parent finds out it was used to contact them, it could cause a total ‘shut out’.

All those who are depressed by this constant stream of extreme and nauseating news; take heart. All of this will go away, just like the Soviet Union, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, BCCI, Franco, PanAm and every other seemingly unassailable person and institution. Your job is to keep yourself free while the rest of the world and time itself catches up with these monsters.

The Telegraph has a story that is direcly related to the previous post about the TSA and the irrational mania for lists, and the other BLOGDIAL posts about this insanity

Despite ministers admitting of concerns the laws could spark a wave of claims, officers will be able to tell worried parents about the history of someone who has access to their children, if they think they could be dangerous.

They will give out details of convictions, arrests and acquittals for child sex and violence offences as well as unproven suspicions kept on file.

Incredible.

Unproven suspicions kept on file? That means that a single phone call could put you in the police database as a sex criminal, FOREVER, and everyone would be able to access that and brand you as the ultimate kind of monster.

This is beyond imagining.

Critics said the scheme was a “return to witch trials” which would create a climate of unnecessary suspiction.

Police want single mothers to ask for information about their new boyfriends and believe those under suspicion will welcome the opportunity to prove they have nothing to hide.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear? I thought we were past that nonsense!

Grandparents and neighbours can also demand that police look into the records of anyone – even teenagers – who come into contact with their friends’ or family members’ children.

Officers, meanwhile, will pass on the results of their investigation to the child’s parents, carers or guardians.

And how do you think they are going to co-ordinate all of this? Through the NIR and ContactPoint of course.

The pilot schemes, which come into force in four police forces across England, are being set up following a campaign for “Sarah’s Law” – the public disclosure of the names and addresses of paedophiles named in honour of Sarah Payne.

This is completely nauseating, and is probably an accidental misuse of english. How does it honor a victim of a crime to have a law named after them? How many other laws are to be thus named? Will the statue books in the future be full of names of people and not descriptive text?

The campaign was established after the eight year-old was murdered by convicted sex offender, Roy Whiting, in 2000.

Officers, however, said the new scheme does not go that far as measures called on by child protection campaigners.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said: “Giving parents the ability to find out if someone close to their child poses a risk will empower them.”

Jacqui Smith…I am not going to waste any bandwidth in this article on that monster.

Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, admitted there were concerns that “huge numbers of claims” could be made by worried parents but he insisted: “We don’t believe that doing nothing is appropriate and in the best interests of our children.” Critics however, warn the scheme would create a climate of suspicion with thousands of innocent people having their lives scrutinised.

In any country where reason was the rule, this could never happen. In any country where the state was properly accountable to the citizenry the same would be true. Defamation of character is a serious matter, and in a properly run society, if the police ruined your reputation they should be forced to pay out millions in compensation and the officers involved would be sacked. In Britain however, there is no such redress available even for the smallest mistake, and so these officers have carte-blanche to destroy the lives of anyone who they mistakenly identify as an evil doer. And these mistakes WILL HAPPEN.

They also fear it could lead to vigilante attacks on people found to have child sex convictions.

What about the vigilante attacks against those who are wrongly identified by the police? And what about the vigilante attacks on people mistakenly identified by vigilantes? This is a pandora’s box, a nightmare scenario and TOTALLY INSANE.

The announcement comes after The Telegraph revealed that all adults who work with children and are accused of abuse must be investigated by council officers and have details of the claim, even if it was totally malicious, kept on their personnel records until they retire.

In addition, 11.3 million people who work or volunteer with under-16s will from next year have their backgrounds scrutinised by a new vetting body.

Guy Herbert, general secretary of the civil liberties group No2ID, said: “It’s virtually a return to the witch trials, and is the logical conclusion of our zero-trust society. Everybody is being encouraged to be suspicious of everybody else.

Guy Herbert has come up with a beautiful and perfect phrase; ‘Zero-Trust Society’.

This society is the projected reality brought into being by the personalities, character and true nature of the politicians in New Labor. They are superimposing their own flawed view of human nature onto Britain, and through this projection, we get a real picture of the inhuman monsters they really are; fear soaked, suspicious, paedophile sex obsessed, broken spirited, criminal, untrustworthy, lying, thieving, Godless, animals who are hell bent on re-creating Britain in their own image.

“The police won’t be able to isolate the information once they release it, and it will be full of unsubstantiated allegations and suspicions. It is potentially incredibly dangerous.”

Once the data is out there, it is out there forever. But you know this!

What is most galling about this is that the government is putting together the paedophile catalogue ContactPoint on the one hand, an then with the other hand is putting in measures to expose the very people they are facilitating by putting together ContactPoint in the first place. They really are THAT STUPID.

Donald Findlater, of the child protection charity Lucy Faithfull Foundation, added: “The biggest risk to children is not from the registered sex offender who the police know and are managing; it is from the sex offender who is not registered and who no one knows about.”

[…]

Telegraph

And that is the crux of this; you cannot use a list to predict the behavior of a person. Everyone now knows this, so there must be another reason why they are putting these lists together, and quite separately, there must be a reason why they are giving access to real and false criminal evidence to everyone everywhere.

The logical conclusion is that they are deliberately trying to create a Zero-Trust Society, where the last remnants of social cohesion and normal behavior are stripped away, replaced by a government mediated trust that will exert control over everyone in every thing they do. This will be controlled by the ID card, which will be used not only to control and track every movement and financial transaction, but it will also be the talisman and token of trust that will enable your interpersonal relationships to take place. The government and its card will be between you and everything. Literally. And after one generation, no one will remember what it was like to take a person on faith, no one will work on instinct, on gut feelings.

You would be better off living in the Amazonian jungle amongst the most ‘primitive’ people on earth; at least there human beings really will be human beings an not components in a nightmare machine where everything, even human instinct is replaced by a card.

From Bruce Schneier’s Cryptogram, yet another crystal clear explanation of why the TSA’s list of ‘terrorists’ is completely bogus:

The TSA is tightening its photo ID rules at airport security. Previously, people with expired IDs or who claimed to have lost their IDs were subjected to secondary screening. Then the Transportation Security Administration realized that meant someone on the government’s no-fly list — the list that is supposed to keep our planes safe from terrorists — could just fly with no ID.

Now, people without ID must also answer personal questions from their credit history to ascertain their identity. The TSA will keep records of who those ID-less people are, too, in case they’re trying to probe the system.

This may seem like an improvement, except that the photo ID requirement is a joke. Anyone on the no-fly list can easily fly whenever he wants. Even worse, the whole concept of matching passenger names against a list of bad guys has negligible security value.

How to fly, even if you are on the no-fly list: Buy a ticket in some innocent person’s name. At home, before your flight, check in online and print out your boarding pass. Then, save that web page as a PDF and use Adobe Acrobat to change the name on the boarding pass to your own. Print it again. At the airport, use the fake boarding pass and your valid ID to get through security. At the gate, use the real boarding pass in the fake name to board your flight.

The problem is that it is unverified passenger names that get checked against the no-fly list. At security checkpoints, the TSA just matches IDs to whatever is printed on the boarding passes. The airline checks boarding passes against tickets when people board the plane. But because no one checks ticketed names against IDs, the security breaks down.

This vulnerability isn’t new. It isn’t even subtle. I wrote about it in 2003, and again in 2006. I asked Kip Hawley, who runs the TSA, about it in 2007. Today, any terrorist smart enough to Google “print your own boarding pass” can bypass the no-fly list.

This gaping security hole would bother me more if the very idea of a no-fly list weren’t so ineffective. The system is based on the faulty notion that the feds have this master list of terrorists, and all we have to do is keep the people on the list off the planes.

That’s just not true. The no-fly list — a list of people so dangerous they are not allowed to fly yet so innocent we can’t arrest them — and the less dangerous “watch list” contain a combined 1 million names representing the identities and aliases of an estimated 400,000 people. There aren’t that many terrorists out there; if there were, we would be feeling their effects.

Almost all of the people stopped by the no-fly list are false positives. It catches innocents such as Ted Kennedy, whose name is similar to someone’s on the list, and Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), who was on the list but no one knew why.

The no-fly list is a Kafkaesque nightmare for the thousands of innocent Americans who are harassed and detained every time they fly. Put on the list by unidentified government officials, they can’t get off. They can’t challenge the TSA about their status or prove their innocence. (The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided this month that no-fly passengers can sue the FBI, but that strategy hasn’t been tried yet.)

But even if these lists were complete and accurate, they wouldn’t work. Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, the D.C. snipers, the London subway bombers and most of the 9/11 terrorists weren’t on any list before they committed their terrorist acts. And if a terrorist wants to know if he’s on a list, the TSA has approved a convenient, $100 service that allows him to figure it out: the Clear program, which issues IDs to “trusted travelers” to speed them through security lines. Just apply for a Clear card; if you get one, you’re not on the list.

In the end, the photo ID requirement is based on the myth that we can somehow correlate identity with intent. We can’t. And instead of wasting money trying, we would be far safer as a nation if we invested in intelligence, investigation and emergency response — security measures that aren’t based on a guess about a terrorist target or tactic.

That’s the TSA: Not doing the right things. Not even doing right the things it does.

My previous articles on the subject:
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0308.html#6
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/forge_your_own.html
http://www.schneier.com/interview-hawley.html

This article originally appeared in the L.A. Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-schneier28-2008aug28,0,3099808.story or http://tinyurl.com/6dmcl4

All true, all correct.

What the article does not do however, is to explain the irrational TSA policy and how they can continue to do what they are doing unchallenged. TSA admins must know that what they are doing is incorrect and innefective in every way; they are not that stupid to believe the fairy story that they give as the pretext for their procedures.

There therefore must be another reason why they are persisting with this nonsense, instead of abandoning it completely as a big mistake.

Once explanation is that they want to put everyone in the country, and I mean every single man woman and child, on a new ‘Clean’ list, not for the purposes of anti terrorism, but for control of every aspect of life. I am talking about a national ID card that is needed for every transaction, no matter how small, as we have written about so many times.

We all know that the ‘security’ measures they are trying to roll out world-wide are not about security. It is high time that everyone start trying to figure out (for themselves) what the real agenda of all of this is. They will find that any conclusion they can come to is not pretty.

Trying to second guess the final maneuver and true agenda will also help us force the people who are trying to do this to state explicitly why they are doing it; if they cannot give a satisfactory answer they will be forced to shut it all down permanently.

Either way, we are fast approaching the point where the road forks, and they will either get away with rolling out the global police state or they are utterly destroyed.

The Telegraph has an astonishing piece on ContactPoint: firms who have already demonstrated their incompetence are now in charge of ContactPoint:

Prisoner data loss firm allowed to work on database of every child in England

The private firm which lost the details of the entire prison population is being allowed to continue working on the controversial project to build a database of every child in England.

By Martin Beckford Social Affairs Correspondent

PA Consulting was branded “completely unacceptable” by ministers and lost its three-year contract with the Home Office after an employee mislaid an unencrypted memory stick containing the names, addresses and expected release dates of all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales.

Its other contracts with the Home Office, worth £8million a year, are now under review.

But the firm is being allowed to continue working on the highly sensitive £224million ContactPoint scheme to create a computerised record of the names, addresses, dates of birth, parents, schools and GPs of all 11 million children in England, which has already been delayed by security concerns.

Critics said the involvement of PA Consulting – which is also working on the national ID card scheme – in the project should lead to it being scrapped completely, before any serious mistakes can be made.

There is so much wrong with this…..

Firstly, if we are to take the rationale behind the database madness at face value, why on earth are they making an ID database SEPARATE from a database of all children in the UK? It makes far more sense to keep everyone on a single database and then use access control to partition it.

Secondly, it is symbolic of the real reason why this insanity is being done; this is a way for companies to make money. This company is on a contract for ContactPoint. For certain, its contract for the ID card is separate and also worth a fortune. If this was being done efficiently, there would be one contract and not two.

This is a scam from start to finish, and none of it should have been done in the first place.

Terri Dowty, Director of Action on Rights for Children, said: “PA Consulting has been held responsible for one of the most serious data losses yet, after apparently disregarding specific instructions from the Home Office.

“How can the Government – or anyone else – possibly feel confident that children’s ContactPoint data will be safe?”

No one with a single working brain-cell does!

The Liberal Democrat Shadow Children, Schools and Families Secretary, David Laws, added: “Both the Government and now the company responsible for administering this database have proven themselves to be unreliable in safeguarding personal data.

“Serious concerns have already been raised about the security of the database. The revelation that PA Consulting Group are also involved will do nothing to reassure parents that their children’s personal details will be secure. This intrusive and costly project must now be scrapped altogether.”

And if it is not scrapped immediately, what should all the parents in the UK do about it?

This is the question that no one is asking and that no shadow minister will confront. If someone is literally attacking your child, what are you expected to do, just sit back and take it?

ContactPoint was delayed last year for a security review after HM Revenue & Customs lost CD-Roms containing the personal details of 25 million families, which concluded that the risk of a data breach on ContactPoint could never be eliminated.

At last, someone is telling the truth about this. In the light of this it is clear that ContactPoint should never be deployed and all work on it should be stopped.

Its launch was recently put back again after technical “glitches” were discovered in the software, while The Daily Telegraph disclosed that police will be allowed to trawl the database for evidence of crime among young people. ContactPoint, which will be accessible to 330,000 council workers, headteachers and social workers as well as police, had always been portrayed as a way of protecting children by improving links between professionals who work with them.

This is called feature creep. It ALWAYS happens with projects like this, as data by its nature is always valuable for more than one purpose. For example, data collected about any single activity can always be used to produce statistics of some sort; a minimum of two uses always exists. It also means that the data will ALWAYS and INEVITABLY be shared, since in order for it to be used, it has to be transferred somewhere in bulk for analysis.

The Government insists that it still has confidence in the ability of PA Consulting to carry out the sensitive work on the project, which is to include access to children’s data.

They are a bunch of computer illiterate liars who are trying to save face. That is a fact.

A DCSF spokesman confirmed: “PA Consulting is one of a number of client-side partners appointed to deliver service management to the project.

“We have confidence in PA Consulting to provide client-side services to the ContactPoint project.”

You are fools.

PA Consulting said: “PA Consulting remains confident that we can complete our work on ContactPoint.

They are delusional, and fatally over confident.

“We are one of a number of client-side providers whom DCSF has appointed to deliver specialist technical, project delivery and service management services to the ContactPoint project.

“To date no PA Consultant has had access to live ContactPoint data. In the future, access to ContactPoint data may be given to a limited number of named, security cleared and enhanced CRB checked PA consultants to carry out specific key activities (such as user acceptance testing).

And this proves that they cannot and must not be trusted. If the data is given to one named and security cleard and enhanced CRB checked PA consultant and that person has his laptop stolen with the ContactPoint database on it, then the data is out forever, full stop. No number of enhanced ‘security clearances’ or CRB checks can stop an incompetent (or unlucky) person from divulging data. The DVDRs that HM Revenue & Customs lost were lost by a CRB and enhanced security checked person and firm. This is nonsense on stilts and no one with a clue buys it for an instant.

“All access will be conducted within strict departmental audited security procedures and security procedures specific to ContactPoint. These procedures would apply equally to any other organisation who will have access to live data.”

No procedure is perfect. That is why banks still get robbed. This data will be worth BILLIONS, and as we have seen with the criminal German government who paid money to have stolen to order, the private bank details of people in Liechtenstein, there is no end that companies and governments will go to to get at valuable data. I can guarantee you that PA consulting’s offices and computers are less secure than the most secure banks; if their premises are broken into, then the Contact Point data will escape. If a hacker gets into their systems, the ContactPoint data will escape. If a careless employee is blackmailed or bribed, the ContactPoint data will escape. There is no way that they can protect this data, therefor it should not be collected and aggregated in a system like this in the first place.

PA Consulting is one of a number of companies working on ContactPoint, with most of the work being done by the IT firm Capgemini.

The same goes for Capgemini.

[…]

Telegraph

The following things must happen immediately with ContactPoint:

The database must be purged and all data dropped from all tables.

The backups must be destroyed, with certification and verification as far as possible, criminal penalties for failure to destroy.

All development contracts to fulfill work should be paid in full.

A new law forbidding any government agency from creating a database of children must be enacted, so that this and anything like it cannot possibly be restarted.

I have stipulated that the development contracts should be paid in full. This needs to be done because the incredible pressure that will be put on ministers to roll ContactPoint out simply for the money will be irresistible to the weak minded ministers who have allowed this abomination to proceed this far. Vendors are the ones who came up with this and who sold this snake oil. They have powerful lobbyists and bribery machinery to make government business happen for them; essentially, they will be bribed to back off of ContactPoint.

Finally, any firm that had been responsible for the incredible data leaks that have happened recently would be instantly fired in the business world, and there would be hellish compensation to be paid after historic lawsuits for the future damage by identity theft that would result in flagrant negligence and incompetence. Since this is a government contract however, there is no liability at all, and not only do these companies get off scott free, but they get MORE and GREATER responsibility and more money!

I’m not making this up, as you can see….astonishing!

The Telegraph is doing a very good job at staying on top of this; well done and thank you to Martin Beckford who is behind all of this good work.

Andy Burnham, fascist, liar and traitor said that:

Suggesting the Government will have knowledge of, and control over, your life through the National Identity Register is untrue. It is also nonsense to suggest either that “every outpost of the state” or private enterprises will have access to the register.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=156

and

His (Henry Porter’s) article swallows the contents of a ridiculous, anonymous email and unquestioningly regurgitates it. The scheme will not track your life’s activities. ID cards will be used when it is important to verify identity.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=142

Now it emerges that not only is everything that Andy Burnham said about the NIR and ID cards a total lie, but that the EU knew it, and had been planning to capture everything about everyone. We were right and he has been proven to be a liar:

New Statewatch Report: Embargoed until 00:01, Thursday 11 September 2008

The Shape of Things to Come by Tony Bunyan

The EU is currently developing a new five year strategy for justice and home affairs and security policy for 2009-2014. The proposals set out by the shadowy “Future Group” set up by the Council of the European Union include a range of highly controversial measures including new technologies of surveillance, enhanced cooperation with the United States and harnessing the “digital tsunami”. In the words of the EU Council presidency:

“Every object the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record. This will generate a wealth of information for public security organisations, and create huge opportunities for more effective and productive public security efforts.”

Seven years on from 11 September 2001 and the launch of the “war on terorism” this major new report The Shape of Things to come (60 pages) examines the proposals of the Future Group and their effect on civil liberties. It shows how European governments and EU policy-makers are pursuing unfettered powers to access and gather masses of personal data on the everyday life of everyone – on the grounds that we can all be safe and secure from perceived “threats”.

The Statewatch report calls for a “meaningful and wide-ranging debate” before it is “too late” for privacy and civil liberties.

Press release (pdf)
Eight page Conclusions (pdf)
Copy of full report (pdf)

For further information:
00 44 208 802 1882
e-mail: office@statewatch.org

And there you have it.

“Every object that the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record.”

We have detailed how all of this will be done before on BLOGDIAL, and of course, much of this was accurately predicted in the ‘Frances Stonor Saunders’ email from 2006.

• They will know what objects you have because each store receipt will have your ID attached to it, and the state will have access to the store’s database of all purchases.
• They will know each and every transaction you make, no matter how small, because cash transactions will be outlawed and replaced by Oyster like systems..
• They will know everywhere you go because you will use an Oyster or its decedents to go on public transport or trains, your car will be tracked every mile by GPS and or ANPR and CCTV will watch you while you walk.
• They will know everywhere you fly because the airlines will capture information about you and pass it to them.
• They will know every border you cross because your passport data will be captured.

And of course, they will know everything about your medical history, in intimate detail.

There is no technical reason why they cannot do all of this. The only reason why they will not be able to do it is if there is public opposition. Of course, the elite security services will put together a covert system that will do all of this and more outside the scope of the law, but that is not our worry; these measures have nothing to do with ‘security’, which is now the word they are slowly using in place of ‘terrorism’ since it is becoming widely understood that none of these measures can stop ‘terrorists’. These measures are designed to exert total surveillance and control over the ordinary individual, with a special focus on financial transactions.

I say control because the state will be able to turn ‘your’ identity off with a few clicks of a mouse, making it impossible for you to exist.

Imagine a world where there is no cash. You will not be able to even beg on the streets for money should the state freeze your bank account. You will not be able to travel anywhere, go on the internet (which will require you to ‘swipe in’ to log on). You will become a non person, cut off from society, made desperate…and easy to persuade.

Once this happens to a few people, and news about it spreads, a wave of deeply seated fear will spread over the civilized world like a black fog. No one will dare say or do anything out of line for fear of being handed the death sentence of ‘ID Death’.

As we have seen in Great Britain, there is nothing and no place that they will not consider their domain, from how you plant your garden, to what and how much you eat, to how you dispose of your garbage, they will be there, watching you, controlling you and fining you for the smallest infraction. That is what they will add to the mix. The Germans will bring their obsessive need to control thought to the table. The worst aspects of every nation will be brought to bear on everyone; this will be the greatest nightmare ever faced by any generation of human beings in their short history.

I say their because if no one stands up to this, if everyone accepts this without even a stone being thrown then I cannot consider myself to be one of those ‘human beings’ that would willingly put their heads into a noose without so much as a word.

But I digress.

We have an anti Police State policy whereby we do not cooperate with any police state measure, and do anything we can to stop it. Just recently when someone asked me to produce my passport to complete a transaction, I refused. A few weeks later when another person asked for that same document, I refused again. I will not show my passport at any place other than a border. I will not show my driver’s license anywhere except when I am getting a ticket for speeding or some other car related event. I will refuse every time, without exception. I will not pay any fine that is generated by the Police State system. I will not respond to anything generated by it.

Now.

If four fifths of all adults in the UK did this, the system would utterly collapse. I imagine that something like this will happen eventually, and hopefully sooner rather than later. It is the only way that it can be destroyed utterly; by denying it the food it needs to survive; compliance. BLOGDIAL readers know that demonstrations, petitions and Chakrabarti posturing will not do anything to stop this. Only massive refusal to obey will stop it in its tracks. This refusal must be carried out with business, because it is they who actually operate the majority of the system on a day to day basis. They swipe everyone’s cards, they provide back door access to their databases. The state alone has no apparatus to do the majority of the work. Their single greatest point of direct access and contact is at the borders – other than that, they are nothing but desk bound creatures shuffling between meetings and lunches while they delegate the dirty work to the public.

This can and will be stopped. The Soviet Union no longer exists, and neither does PanAM. Nelson Mandela got out of gaol and became president of South Africa Both of those institutions and that man and his countrymen’s situations seemed unassailable, unchangeable and the pillars of reality. Now all of it is gone, and we lived to see it.

We will live to see the total destruction of the Police State. It will either happen before it starts or after it is entrenched. Either way, it will end and the subhuman monsters that are bringing it about will be consigned to the ranks of the forgotten. No one will remember Andy Burnham in the future. His worthless, meaningless life and the lives of his co conspirators will be washed away as we move to a future where people like that, pure evil, are rendered powerless to hatch their vile schemes on the good people of civilization.

The Telegraph has a piece about ‘zero immigration’ where people will be ‘counted in and counted out’ and for every one person allowed in, one has to come out.

This is of course, unworkable, and cannot be done without serious consequences that will end up changing everything about Britain.

Lets look at some scenarios.

Imagine that there is a one in one out (OIOO…its binary…how fitting!) policy. The only way to make it work is to give everyone a number and then identify them uniquely. That means NIR and ID cards. That means watching everyone, forbidding anyone who is in the UK illegally from being able to exist. The NIR has all of this built in, and once you cannot operate a bank account or buy food without an ID card, coming here illegally will be a non starter.

The Telegraph is against ID cards, or so we thought. This OIOO policy is the ultimate means to an end justifying ID cards.

Imagine this also; you live in an OIOO country, and over a period of ten years a new technology emerges that literally changes the whole world – how the world spends money, learns, communicates – EVERYTHING.

Imagine now, that there is a shortage of workers who can operate this new technology, which we will call ‘the internet’ for sake of argument. If there is a OIOO policy in place, and all the workers who know how to work this complex technology live outside the UK, and this new ‘internet’ is crucial to the functioning of all countries, then Britain will be in big trouble, because no one is going to voluntarily leave the UK so that 10,000 people can enter and run the new fantastic tool, brining all the unintended and desired technologies with it and the ancillary jobs that inevitably grow like cultures around any new technology. And if you are going to make exceptions for skilled workers, they will have children and add to the numbers living here.

In the case above, training will not bring your local workers up to speed quickly enough. Only people who know how to work this new magic NOW can bring the benefits NOW and keep Britain in front of the pack for decades to come.

Obviously I am using the internet as a device to illustrate the point, but one thing is for sure, there will be new technologies and unless Britain wants to be left out, it is going to have to make exceptions for highly skilled people that it can no longer produce. OIOO cannot be taken at face value as a ‘final solution to the immigration problem’.

The other crucial flaw in this OIOO idea is that the number of people already in the UK is growing thanks to childbirth. Even if you ‘go OIOO’, Britain will be overpopulated (I mean MORE overpopulated) by virtue of that fact alone.

The logical, inevitable conclusion to this line of thought is to have a number set by government beyond which the population of Britain is not allowed to go, and then to say OIOO, where ‘OIOO’ means for every exit or death in the UK, one person can come in, AFTER licensed births have taken place. Thats right, all birth would be subject to a government issued license, and couples would only be able to have a child if someone died, and then there would be a queue to join…or perhaps, it would be done by lottery, the winning ticked salable on the open market. There would be stiff penalties for those who disobey, just like there are in Fortress. This would mean an end to immigration altogether and the introduction of a nightmare beyond the imagining of most ordinary people. Of course, all rich people, skilled people, people with common sense and intelligence would leave Britain, making life even more intolerable. Of course, these rich, smart people would be welcomed anywhere in the world that they wanted to go, and they would be enticed with licenses for multiple birth (in countries that adopt OIOO) and failing that, they would go to places where there are no restriction on the number of children you can have. Either way, Britain would suffer the ultimate, final brain drain, and the only children left behind would be obese, drooling, cheeseburger chasing monsters with slicked back hair, wearing garish shell suits, writing textlish (text messaging english) and barking with hoarse voices.

Like I said about the fake Romany marriage outrage story, everyone should be VERY careful about stories and measures to fix problems; the solutions can come back to bite you and destroy the very thing you are so eager to protect.

Finally, all of this is moot as long as Britain is in the EU. EU membership means that anyone from the member countries can come and live here permanently and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. You cannot address this ‘problem of immigration’ without first addressing that.

Laura Margottini at the NewScientist.com news service wrote the following:

Snoop software makes surveillance a cinch

“THIS data allows investigators to identify suspects, examine their contacts, establish relationships between conspirators and place them in a specific location at a certain time.”

So said the UK Home Office last week as it announced plans to give law-enforcement agencies, local councils and other public bodies access to the details of people’s text messages, emails and internet activity. The move followed its announcement in May that it was considering creating a massive central database to store all this data, as a tool to help the security services tackle crime and terrorism.

Meanwhile in the US the FISA Amendments Act, which became law in July, allows the security services to intercept anyone’s international phone calls and emails without a warrant for up to seven days. Governments around the world are developing increasingly sophisticated electronic surveillance methods in a bid to identify terrorist cells or spot criminal activity.

However, technology companies, in particular telecommunications firms and internet service providers, have often been criticised for assisting governments in what many see as unwarranted intrusion, most notably in China.

Now German electronics company Siemens has gone a step further, developing a complete “surveillance in a box” system called the Intelligence Platform, designed for security services in Europe and Asia. It has already sold the system to 60 countries.

According to a document obtained by New Scientist, the system integrates tasks typically done by separate surveillance teams or machines, pooling data from sources such as telephone calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions and insurance records. It then sorts through this mountain of information using software that Siemens dubs “intelligence modules”.

This software is trained on a large number of sample documents to pick out items such as names, phone numbers and places from generic text. This means it can spot names or numbers that crop up alongside anyone already of interest to the authorities, and then catalogue any documents that contain such associates.

Once a person is being monitored, pattern-recognition software first identifies their typical behaviour, such as repeated calls to certain numbers over a period of a few months. The software can then identify any deviations from the norm and flag up unusual activities, such as transactions with a foreign bank, or contact with someone who is also under surveillance, so that analysts can take a closer look.

Included within the package is a phone call “monitoring centre”, developed by the joint-venture company Nokia Siemens Networks.

However, it is far from clear whether the technology will prove accurate. Security experts warn that data-fusion technologies tend to produce a huge number of false positives, flagging up perfectly innocent people as suspicious.

[…]

New Scientist

Once again, ‘scientists’ (or in this case, a science writer) fails to connect the dots.

What is most amusing about this failure is that the article is about… connecting the dots!

We all know that everyone is separated by Six Degrees of Separation thanks to a recent thorough test of the theory.

Since this is true, that means that everyone, everywhere is Six Degrees of Separation away from a ‘criminal’. The only thing left to measure in a system like the Fusion Centers and this completely bogus software from Siemens is the level of criminality of the focus person.

This is absolutely the case because all people are connected, and so if you are going to investigate (violate) someone because they are two steps away from a ‘criminal’ you will have to assign a threat level to that person; everyone everywhere ‘knows’ or is ‘close to’ a ‘criminal’ and I put the word criminal in single quotes because what a criminal is or is not is highly variable.

The massively connected nature of people is the reason why these systems cannot possibly work. It also explains why there are an irrationally large number of people on the ‘terrorist’ watch list in the USA; if they are secretly using this software or something like it to see who is connected to who, they will find that everyone is connected to everyone, and everyone is a potential terrorist according to the software. That is why there are literally millions of people falsely listed as ‘potential terrorists’ in the USA. Just to be clear, I do not accept that there is such a thing as a ‘potential terrorist’ in the first place.

No one working with the systems has had the guts to stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes, and that it is impossible for this many people to all be potential terrorists. Eternal shame upon them.

The writer of this New Scientist article should know about Six Degrees of Separation, that it has very recently been demonstrated to be true, and she should have made the insight jump and use this to make the case that these ‘services’ cannot ever work and to explain why they should not be deployed.

If the terrorist threat is real, and you are doing this to try and catch terrorists, then these systems should not be used because they throw up too many false positives and put too many people into the system that have no relation to ‘the enemy’. This confusion would stop you from getting to the real bad guys and stopping what you are trying to stop. The Six Degrees factor makes it even worse, as you are bound to be putting everyone in the system since everyone ‘knows’ everyone. These systems are actually dangerous in the physical sense AND the moral sense.

It is clear that these systems should not be deployed because they do not help you do what you need to do. This is quite apart from the moral aspect of mass violation of innocent people. Guilt by Association is known by people who can use the Google to be an inductive form of fallacy:

An association fallacy is an inductive formal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association. The two types are sometimes referred to as guilt by association and honor by association. Association fallacies are a special case of red herring, and can be based on an appeal to emotion.

[…]

Wikipedia

Everyone who worked on this software will have been aware of all of this. They are selling software, and will have simply given the authorities who are computer and maths illiterates what they asked for. The question is, what is the real reason they want it in the first place.

It is clear that the people who ordered these systems are not interested in ‘terrorists’. They want this to use against enemy corporations, politicians that need to be shut down and every other nefarious thing you can imagine. Do you remember the arrest of the British executives for ‘gambling offences’ the USVISIT system and the passenger list data are being used not to stop ‘terrorists’ but to capture people, in this case, who are not even criminals at all.

That is what this is all about. Anyone who says otherwise is completely delusional. All the evidence points to this, and all the other evidence that no one wants to accept is the icing on the cake.

Do I have to actually type out that the ID Card and the NIR would be used as a key part of a guilt by association system? Oyster is already being used in this way; they have the swipes of all the Oyster cards at a certain time / location locus and then they investigate every one. You will be in BIG TROUBLE if purely by chance you were the passenger that swiped just before or after a criminal; the software would assume that you were traveling together since you were in such close proximity.

And this brings us to the final point in this post.

Once cash is banished from public transport, the only way to travel on it will be with Oyster. That means that they will be surveilling everyone by default, and the guilt by association will be used against you by default.

Now extend this to the cash you use every day to by anything.

Once cash is driven out of the marketplace, the same systems will be used universally; only much much worse.

Lets say that you pay a plumber to do some work for you, and that plumber did work on the black market. Everyone who paid him in the new Beast Money® would immediately be subject to investigation to see how they were connected to the black economy. This scenario is faulty of course, because in the cashless society, the state will extract its payments automatically and you will have no control over your money at all, never mind privacy.

The bottom line is that the engineers, architects, programmers, scientists and everyone who can make systems needs to have a moral code instilled in them so that no one will be willing to supply the mortar, or the bricks or the door hinges or anything else for the gas chambers. It takes a very small number of people to devise and deploy these systems and in the networked world, everyone everywhere can be involuntarily plugged into them and made to suffer, barring a massive, unprecedented revolt.

I fear that an appeal to high standards may fall on deaf ears.

We shall see.

The white heat of public outrage is crisping this sham:

The launch of the Government’s flagship database of every child living in England has been delayed just days after The Daily Telegraph exposed serious concerns about its purpose.

ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of all 11 million under-18s in the country, as well as detailed information on their parents, GPs and schools.

It was announced in the wake of the murder of Victoria Climbié as a way to protect children by connecting the different services dealing with them, but this newspaper discovered that it will actually be used by police to hunt for evidence of crime.

The £224million computer system was meant to come into operation in April 2008 but was delayed following the loss of data discs containing 25 million child benefit records by HM Revenue & Customs last year, which triggered fears that ContactPoint records could easily find their way into the hands of paedophiles.

A review of its security – which the Government refused to publish in full – found the risk of a data breach could never be eliminated and the launch of ContactPoint was pushed back to October.

Now, just weeks before its planned launch and days after the Telegraph disclosed concerns that it will be used to increase the criminalisation and surveillance of England’s youth, ministers have announced that ContactPoint will not become operational until the New Year at the earliest.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families claimed that the new delay was not down to security or privacy fears, however, but simply because of “glitches” that had emerged during testing of the system, which is being built by the IT firm CapGemini.

The children’s minister, Kevin Brennan, told fellow MPs: “We have identified some issues as a result of recent system tests which we are working urgently to address.

“I have therefore taken a decision today to postpone deployment until January 2009 to allow sufficient time to continue to test the system.”

However opposition MPs said the Government should now take the opportunity to scrap the whole project.

The Shadow Families Minister, Maria Miller, said: “We repeatedly warned the Government of the problems with ContactPoint but they pressed ahead regardless, ignoring our calls to allow time to sort them out.

“There were clear indications in February of significant security concerns with this database. Only now, with just weeks to go until the project is supposed to go live, have they finally agreed to pull back to try to iron out some of the problems. Ministers now need to come clean and confirm whether this delay is because children’s personal information is at risk.”

The Liberal Democrats’ Shadow Children, Schools and Families Secretary, David Laws, added: “Instead of delaying the launch of the database, this intrusive project must be scrapped altogether.

“A recent independent review has already undermined all of the Government’s assurances that the database will be secure. The discovery of further technical issues does not bode well for the future.

“The Government has proven itself untrustworthy with large databases containing sensitive data. Parents have every right to demand that their children’s personal details are not put at risk.”

Of course, ContactPoint should be scrapped entirely, and readers of BLOGDIAL know the reasons why.

If it is scrapped, (and it should be because ContactPoint can never be made secure) then the same reasons why it is being scrapped will apply to the rationale behind scrapping of the NIR and the ID Card.

No database can ever be secured. Once the data gets out, it is out forever. Internal leaks are a great hazard, and most of the biggest data escapes have been from this source, like the DVDR posted in the post and LOST, containing the personal details of 25 million children and parents.

This submission has a good summary of these risks, and why databases can never be secured.

The fact of the matter is if children need to be protected from paedophiles by not implementing ContactPoint, then the rest of the population should also be protected from identity thieves, stalkers, rapists, and every other sort of criminal that will be willing to pay millions for access to the NIR data. Of course, all of these correct objections are completely separate from the moral objections that are to do with children not being the property of the state, privacy, liberty and all the rest.

ContactPoint is part of the irrational mania for registers that computer illiterate ministers are suffering from which threatens to plunge Britain into an abyss of unprecedented blackness and horror.

I am getting a sense that this is a step too far for the mild mannered, infinitely patient Great British Public™; that the reaction of the public has been violently antagonistic to ContactPoint, and ministers have been feeling the incandescent rage of anyone they encounter who knows about this abominable system. Even a rabid dog knows when to turn tail and flee when it is confronted by its own destruction, and it may be the case that Neu Labor is that rabid dog when it comes to ContactPoint.

It should not be long before the same reasoning is applied to the NIR and ID Cards and then the whole identity sham will come down on them.

“This is your freedom. This is the freedom of the British. And to you, it’s gold. And you don’t get it. Because to give freedom to you is just throwing it away. Freedom is for closers.”

In the Queen’s speech this autumn Gordon Brown’s government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and “made accessible” to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and “other public bodies”.

This fact should be in equal parts incredible and nauseating. It is certainly enraging and despicable. Not even George Orwell in his most febrile moments could have envisaged a world in which every citizen could be so thoroughly monitored every moment of the day, spied upon, eavesdropped, watched, tracked, followed by CCTV cameras, recorded and scrutinised. Our words and web searches, our messages and intimacies, are to be stored and made available to the police, the spooks, the local council – the local council! – and “other public bodies”.

This Orwellian nightmare, additionally, is proposed for a world in which leading soi-disant liberal democracies run, and/or permit rendition flights to, Guantanamo Bay. How many steps separate an innocent British citizen from some misinterpretation or interference or error in the collected and ‘made accessible’ data of text messages and emails, and a forthcoming home-grown version of Guantanamo Bay for people whose pattern of phone calls does not fit the police definition of acceptable?

Two things have made this ghastly development possible: the technology, and politicians. The technology is way ahead of the game: Siemens of Germany are already supplying 60 countries with a device that monitors and integrates data from phone, email and internet activity; its software establishes patterns of uses and alerts monitoring staff to deviations from the patterns. As New Scientist reports, the system is already known to throw up huge numbers of false positives; that could have been predicted by a rudimentary acquaintance with human nature and human life. But it is a fact that has to be added to the brilliance and reliability of government and law enforcement agencies in keeping data secure, unhackable and unlosable.

The second point concerns the quality of our politicians. They say they are putting us all under suspicion for our own good. They wish to protect us against terrorists and criminals, and to make bureaucracy more efficient. The efficiency of bureaucracy has one of its finest moments in the neat and sorted piles of false teeth, hair and spectacles at the gas chamber doors. Oh no: better the milling crowd than the police-disciplined queues of bureaucratic efficiency; better the irritation of dealing with human fallibility than the fear of dealing with jack-booted gendarmes whose grip on one’s arms follows stepping out of the queue.

But as to the first matter: protecting us – by making us all suspects, all potential criminals and terrorists – from terrorism and criminality. Well: the first duty of our politicians should be to protect our liberties, and to encourage us to see that liberty carries risks, which we should be trusted to understand and accept so that we can make our own lives our own way. But no: these politicians – Brown and Labour, once the party of the people – are going to keep us safe by not keeping our liberties safe; they are going to keep us safe by making us unfree. Yet the putative benefit of protecting us from terrorism and crime is unattainable. They themselves say ‘there is no 100% guarantee of safety’: but they are going to spy on us all anyway! In fact they are going to create crime: a huge new criminal industry awaits for stealing, copying, falsely creating and manipulating that newly-created precious commodity, “identity”. A huge new impetus awaits for techno-crime to disrupt the monitoring and data storage systems on which the government intends to spend billions of our tax money, creating its unblinking eye in our bedrooms. As surely as night follows day, the new surveillance society will do more harm than good.

[…]

Grauniad

We have been saying this for almost a decade, and with all the technical facts included.

We are far ahead of AC Grayling and all the others who write in these newspapers, and have been for many years.

What none of these people want to face is the fact that government will NEVER bestow (or in this case, return) freedom on its citizens. If AC Grayling wants his civil liberties back, he is going to have to become uncivil to a very distasteful degree.

The potential for profoundly negative uses of technology has escaped us. It is with despair that I conclude that we have to start all over again with the demos and resistance, the campaigns and arguments, to roll back this huge and ultimately destructive assault on our civil liberties.

That is not going to cut it. The police are armed like Japanese manga characters, and have powers to lock you up indefinitely should you dare to riot. Once again, BLOGDIAL is way ahead of you. Rioting and demonstrating do not work. They did not work to save the Iraquis (who were murdered to the tune of one million people), and they will not work to restore your liberties. Do you really think that people who are capable of mass murder (Gordon Brown) will be in any way moved by a demonstration or a riot?

Are you really that Naïve?

In any case, how are you going to organize a resistance when they can know your every move in advance? This is assuming that you will not seek permission for your demonstration or gathering of more than 99 people in advance. You will not be able to surprise the police state with a demonstration or a riot, which in any case, even if you managed to organize it flash mob style, would not produce the result you require; the restoration of your liberties.

We need to stop this assault on civil liberties going further, we need to roll back the attritions they have already suffered, and we need a rock solid written constitution to protect us from those who aim to make us all suspects in the gaze of the unblinking universal eye.

Wow, you really ARE that Naïve!

The United States of America has a written constitution, and it has been summarily torn to shreds by the legislature in the last seven years.

A written Constitution is useless against this sort of onslaught. That should be plainly obvious to everyone by now.

If you have even a shred of common sense, you should be coming to the conclusion that all bets are off, that something VERY UNCIVIL has to happen if you are going to ever be free again.

Thankfully freedom returning to this beautiful island is not impossible. It will take some clear thinking, some twenty first century thinking (combined with some eighteenth) to make this happen.

Your freedom is out there, just waiting for you to take it. Are you man enough to take it?

If you are not prepared to face these facts, if you are not prepared to stare this problem in the face as you would a leaking roof, then all is lost, and all you and Henry Porter will have are your columns.

Oh…have I got your attention now?

A flagship database intended to protect every child in the country will be used by police to hunt for evidence of crime in a “shocking” extension of its original purpose, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of all 11 million under-18s in England as well as information on their parents, GPs, schools and support services such as social workers.

The £224 million computer system was announced in the wake of the death of Victoria Climbié, who was abused and then murdered after a string of missed opportunities to intervene by the authorities, as a way to connect the different services dealing with children.

It has always been portrayed as a way for professionals to find out which other agencies are working with a particular child, to make their work easier and provide a better service for young people.

However, it has now emerged that police officers, council staff, head teachers, doctors and care workers will use the records to search for evidence of criminality and wrongdoing to help them launch prosecutions against those on the database – even long after they have reached adulthood.

It comes amid growing concern about the increasing criminalisation of Britain’s youth and the extent of the country’s surveillance society.

Only this week a report warned that teenagers were being dragged into the criminal justice system rather than being given an old-fashioned “ticking-off”, while it has also been disclosed that the DNA profiles of almost 40,000 innocent children are now being kept on the national database.

An estimated 330,000 people will have access to the data stored on ContactPoint, which is due to launch this autumn despite fears the Government’s poor record on data security will mean it puts children at risk from paedophiles.

The records will be updated until children turn 18 then kept in an archive for six years before being destroyed, meaning they can be accessed until a young person reaches 24. Those who have learning difficulties or who are in care will remain on the live system until they turn 25, so their archived records will be available into their 30s.

Little-noticed guidance published by the Government discloses that ContactPoint users can request administrators to give them archived data for a number of reasons, including “for the prevention or detection of crime” and “for the prosecution of offenders”.

The disclosure has led civil liberties campaigners to warn the entire database will be open for investigators to trawl for evidence that links young people to crime or anti-social behaviour.

ContactPoint will not include detailed case information on children, but will record if they have contact with a Youth Offending Team or “sensitive services” such as drug abuse workers, which critics say will mean it is obvious which young people have criminal records.

Investigators opening a ContactPoint file would be able to see at a glance where they had lived throughout their childhood, where they had gone to school, what contact they had with social services and who their parents or carers were, and use the information to link them to known gangs or areas of criminal or anti-social activity.

Baroness Miller, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesman in the House of Lords, said: “This is truly shocking. It’s exactly the definition of a police state. The police will have the details of a whole generation for so-called crime prevention.

“It raises a lot of issues and we haven’t had a debate in Parliament about it.”

The proposed use of ContactPoint to collect evidence will raise further fears about the extent to which citizens are being spied on by the state.

Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country, and its local authorities are increasingly using powers designed to prevent terrorism to spy on people suspected of petty crimes such as littering and failing to pick up dog mess. Ministers are also pressing ahead with a £20 billion scheme to issue all UK residents over the age of 16 with ID cards.

The launch of ContactPoint was delayed following the loss of data discs containing 25 million child benefit records by HM Revenue & Customs last year. A review of its security – which the Government refused to publish in full – found the risk of a data breach could never be eliminated.

Because of fears that certain children, including those of MPs and celebrities as well as abuse victims, will be at particular risk, a “shield function” has been created within ContactPoint to hide their addresses.

However, the new guidance states that this can be overridden if police or social workers deem it an emergency. One of the stated reasons why this may be carried out is “an investigation of a crime toward or by the child”, in a further confirmation of the intended uses of the database.

Prof Ross Anderson, an expert in security at Cambridge University, said: “This is yet another revelation about the database state that is shocking but not surprising.

“The police have always been able to look into whatever they want, but the information age changes the scale of that completely.”

Phil Booth, national co-ordinator for the civil liberties campaign group No2ID, added: “Parents should know that this is not for the protection of their children, it could be used to prosecute them. This is a serious step on from what little has been told to the public.”

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families insisted: “The purpose of ContactPoint is not crime detection, it is to help improve services to children, including safeguarding vulnerable children.

“To access ContactPoint for the purposes of prevention or detection of crime or for the prosecution of offenders, police would have to make a special request directly to the Secretary of State or Local Authority and make a case for disclosure.”

ContactPoint will be put into use by 17 councils in the North West in October and then rolled out across the country.

[…]

Telegraph

You were warned.

Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana hit out at the religious values of the Italian government on Monday as the furore over a plan by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni to fingerprint all children in the country’s gypsy camps rumbled on.

“The ‘Catholic’ ministers of Silvio Berlusconi’s government have fallen at the first hurdle, without appeal,” said the weekly, which slammed the newly formed government in April for failing to include staunch Catholics in its line-up.

“The dignity of man is worth nothing to them. No-one has raised his hand to counter Maroni and his indecent racist proposal“.

The weekly went on to attack the granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Alessandra Mussolini, who had previously failed to comment on Maroni’s plan despite her recent appointment as president of the Parliamentary Children’s Committee.

“Mussolini’s silence is not surprising, since ethnic and religious registers are part of her family DNA and finally return as government heritage“, it said.

The Catholic paper went on to suggest that the fingerprints of parliamentarians and their children should be taken first.

“The registering of a Roma child, who has committed no crime, violates human dignity,” it said,

“We would have given more credit to the minister if, together with the register, he had explained how he would get all the Roma children into schools and take them away from the camps they share with rats. What help has he planned? Nothing”.

Mussolini described the editorial as “a mixture of confusion and intolerance”, adding that she “could not fail” to support a plan that would “save and defend” the Roma children.

But the president of the Italian branch of the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) echoed Famiglia Cristiana’s fears.

“Not only do we fail to understand how this register can bring positive results, but there is a risk of criminalising the victims – the children themselves,” said Vincenzo Spadafora, appealing for a meeting with Maroni.

“I think the minister would do well to open dialogue on this issue rather than repeating his position,” he added.

A former Italian president, Francesco Cossiga, added to the chorus of nay-sayers, asking what Maroni had planned next.

“I think the minister’s next step will be to cut the first phalange from the little finger of the right or left hand of gypsy children, or even better a piece of the lobe from the right or left ear so that they can be immediately recognised,” he said.

MARONI DEFENDS PLAN.

But Maroni’s proposal received support from Foreign Affairs Minister Franco Frattini, despite unofficial comments from the EC last week that the plan would be unacceptable.

“I think that Maroni has done well to continue along this path. This measure is above all in the interests of the children who have no identity. We can help them (by removing them) from the ignoble state of abandonment in which they find themselves,” said Frattini, a former European Commissioner for Justice and Security.

“It’s not about registers or anything like that but about identifying those who live in our country. These things are done in many other European countries without any scandal and they will also be done here,” he added. Maroni hit back at critics, describing his plan as a “logical measure” that conformed to European directives.

“All the polemics are unfounded, the fruit of ignorance or ideological prejudice,” he said.

Maroni also pointed to an EU law passed in April that requires member states to take the fingerprints from migrant minors coming from outside the EU from the age of six and up.

Under Maroni’s proposal, fingerprints will be taken during a census of all gypsy camps in a bid to establish who is in the country legally and who is not.

Gypsies found without the correct paperwork will be expelled after three months.

The government eventually plans to dismantle all illegal camps as well as authorised camps that do not have adequate facilities.

The proposal has come under heavy fire from opposition politicians, children’s rights organisations, Catholic immigration foundation Migrantes and international bodies including the European Union and the Council of Europe for discriminating against an ethnic minority.

[…]

http://www.italymag.co.uk/italy/politics/catholic-weekly-slams-fingerprints

My emphasis.

Well well well; it seems like the Catholics are finally smelling the stench of fascism and are beginning to say something about it.

Note how Franco Frattini, Fascist, justifies dehumanizing people because it is a logical measure.

Note also how these vermin lie through their teeth; they say:

It’s not about registers or anything like that but about identifying those who live in our country

how can you identify who should or should not be in the country without keeping a register of who is legal? The whole ‘logic’ of fingerprinting and biometrics is that you keep a permanent register and then constantly check people against it. If this man does not understand this, he is incompetent. If he does understand it and said those words, he is a liar. Either way, he has no place being in charge of any of this.

All the usual excuses are rolled out:

These things are done in many other European countries without any scandal and they will also be done here

Translation: “other states violate peoples rights, and so we will also”.

Italy would be far better off simply rounding up all Roma and expelling them en-masse, as they bulldoze their camps.

That way, the people of Italy will be spared the creation of their own police state biometric apparatus; which is the REAL reason why this is being done. Once the apparatus is in place, ‘logic’ will be used to justify putting all Italians in the database, and using it for any and all purposes.

This is how they build these systems. This is how the Germans built their early computer driven police state apparatus; on the back of the threat of the Baader Meinhof gang.

Wake up Italians; you may not like the Roma, but your problem is not them, it is what is being planned for YOU!

“Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends… …when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.” Isabel Paterson ‘The God of the Machine’

There is a new consultation, hot on the heels of the last one outlining the proposed guidelines for Local Authorities who have a ‘…a new duty to establish the identities of children missing education.’

Everything that could be wrong, is wrong with this. Lets pull it apart section by section:

1.1.1 There is wide agreement about the outcomes we all want for every child – they should be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic wellbeing.

That is completely wrong. There is no ‘wide agreement about the outcomes that we want for every child’. That is why millions of families are home educating. There is no ‘we’ in all of this. Each family is separate, and there is no collective ownership of children. Any normal parent wants their child to, “be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve”. The shape that that takes is up to each family, and has nothing to do with and cannot be defined by the state.

None of this is negotiable.

The same goes for ‘economic well-being’ this is not something that can be defined by the state, especially when it concerns future economic well-being. And for an idea of what a country looks like where everyone has a degree, just look at third world countries where there are so many people with them that many of them are bus conductors. No parent wants their child to be a bus conductor, and yet, if everyone in the country achieved a university degree, would not this eventually be the case? But I digress.

1.1.3 The guidance in this document aims to help Local Authorities (LAs) to effectively implement the duty to identify children not receiving a suitable education. […]

Everything in this document (except the database references) would be acceptable if all mention of home education was removed. Home education is not relevant to this in any way, and if this document was designed to guide Local Authorities for all cases of bad children or children at risk (which home educated children are not a subset of) then it would be fairly innocuous. Sadly, the imbeciles who authored this are clearly against home education and have, from the outset, wanted to create a system of organized harassment to suppress home education in the UK.

As I have said before, no one in a Local Authority has the right to tell a parent what is or is not ‘suitable education’ anyone with even a single brain cell can see that this is the case. A parent may want their children educated and nurtured in their culture and religion; no Local Authority Apparatchik has the right to come into your house and tell you that your child must receive facts deemed by the state to be necessary to life. The very idea should be anathema to all decent people.

1.1.4 Children not receiving a suitable education are clearly at risk of a range of negative outcomes that could have long term damaging consequences for their life chances. For example they are at risk of not attaining the skills and qualifications they need to succeed in life, and are at significant risk of becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training) once they have reached the compulsory school leaving age. They are also are more likely to be vulnerable in one way or another. They may be from disadvantaged families, (experiencing multiple risks such as poverty, substance misuse, mental ill-health and poor housing), travelling communities, immigrant families, be unaccompanied asylum seeking or trafficked children, or be at risk of neglect or abuse or disengaged from education.

The schools that the state runs produce negative outcomes that have long term damaging consequences for the life chances of British children. That is why so many people choose to home educate. Many state educated children do not attain the skills and qualifications they need to succeed in life. The system is so bad that they have to reduce the difficulty of exams so that these educationally impoverished children have a chance of getting a ‘passing’ grade. This is why universities and commercial enterprises have to set their own exams to see who can do what after 100 candidates all with 5 grade ‘A’ A-Levels come to interview but none of them can spell.

Disadvantaged families, families in poverty, substance abusers, mental health cases, travelers, immigrant families, asylum seekers, trafficked children – none of these categories have anything whatsoever to do with home educated children, and it is illogical and offensive to mention them in the same breath as the unfortunates in that list. The Local Authorities already have many duties related to these groups. They cannot run the schools they are already tasked with organizing. New Labour ministers avoid them like the plague; what is it that they fear so much about home educators that they must lump them in with these trouble cases?

This is a direct attack on a philosophical difference that home educators have with the collectivists in New Labour. New Labour does not want any child left behind…from the indoctrination and brainwashing that creates mindless drones who will believe anything that they are told, who cannot think at all, never mind think for themselves. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’; look at the results of the schools they have been running. They produced a generation of people capable of enjoying ‘Lad Mags’, an epidemic of binge alcoholism, feral street children and decent people fleeing their ‘education’ system.

1.1.5 Local authorities, through their Children’s Trust, must have robust measures in place both to identify quickly when a child is not receiving a suitable education, and to follow through with effective tracking and enquiry systems. These measures should be at the heart of the local strategies for preventing negative outcomes for children and young people, and ensuring their safety and well-being.

The best way to ensure that children do not have ‘negative outcomes’ is to make the schools that they attend good enough to achieve these results. When they are able to make the schools perform properly, the incentive to home educate will be eliminated, and the only people left doing it will be those with children who have special needs. Until they have done this, they do not have a leg to stand on on this front, quite apart from the moral aspect of a parent’s right to educate and nurture their children in whatever way they see fit.

1.2.1 This document is issued under the section 436A (inserted before section 437 in Chapter 2, Part 6 of the Education Act 1996 (school attendance) by the Education and Inspections Act 2006), which provides that local authorities must have regard to statutory guidance issued by the Secretary of State. This document provides that statutory guidance and applies to England only. Local authorities in England must take this guidance into account and, if they decide to depart from it, have clear reasons for doing so.

My emphasis.

What this means is what I asserted before. These guidelines are not new law, they are guidelines, and as such, you are free to ignore them, just as the Local Authorities are free to ignore them.

1.2.2 This document is a revised version of original statutory guidance issued in February 2007, updated to place implementation of the duty in the revised strategic context following on from publication of the Children’s Plan (December 2007); to reflect priorities that emerged since the original version was published; and to reflect local authorities’ initial experience of implementing the duty.

Translation: “We could not have possibly put all of this in the original guidelines, otherwise there might have been a rebellion.”

1.2.3 Section 436A requires all local authorities to make arrangements to enable them to establish (so far as it is possible to do so) the identities of children residing in their area who are not receiving a suitable education. In relation to children, by ‘suitable education’ we mean efficient full-time education suitable to her/his age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs the child may have.

And here is the true purpose of this entire exercise.

This is the way they are going to get every child in England into and justify the existence of ContactPoint.

Quite apart from that, this section is absurd on its face. It is not the place of the state to determine what is or is not a suitable education. It is not the place of the state to say what is or is not an efficient education, and neither is it their place to mandate full-time education.

1.2.4 The duty applies in relation to children of compulsory school age who are not on a school roll, and who are not receiving a suitable education otherwise than being at school, for example, at home, privately, or in alternative provision.

The goal of these guidelines is to create a way to sweep up all the home educating children in the UK, identify them, categorize them and put them on a database, together with the names of their parents, siblings, ethnicity and other details. See below. Once again, children who are being educated at home, privately, or in alternative provision should not be subject to being identified for this purpose, since they are being eductated quite legally. Are they going to go to all the private schools in the UK and ask for their student registers? If the Local Authority has a duty to identify every child who is not on a school roll, how are they to know which ones are being home educated and which are in private schools? The only way to know would be to collect in a database, a list of all children who are in any type of school and then the numbers that are left are ‘at risk’, and lo and behold, further in the report, we have:

Access to rolls for all providers
6.19 When the named person(s) receive notification about a child believed to be in their area it may be necessary to check the child’s name and other details, if available, against all alternative provision rolls in the local area held by the local authority and schools to see if they are already registered. One way to achieve this is to have all names of school-aged children kept on a central database which is frequently updated and can be checked by the staff members who require access. (This is not a requirement to set up new IT systems for children not receiving education. See paragraph 6.37 for suggestions for utilising existing databases).

6.20 Another way to check a child’s name and other details would be via communication links with all educational providers: this includes all schools; Pupil Referral Units; custodial institutions and other providers of alternative provision (local authorities and schools should establish a contractual agreement that providers of alternative provision will keep a register to check if the child is registered with them.

God help you if your child has the same name as another child who is a bad egg deep in the system. All it will take is for one of these Apparatchiks to misidentify you and your life will be turned into a living hell. If you let them.

They are actually saying that PRIVATE schools must turn over the rolls of their students to the Local Authority. It simply beggars belief, but it is totally logical; they want EVERY CHILD IN THE DATABASE, and being able to afford private education is not going to be an exception.

1.2.5 In order to help local authorities achieve consistency in how they share information in order to meet this duty, this version of the guidance includes, at Appendix 1, a workbook that provides standard data definitions. The data definitions were produced taking into account the views of local authorities based on their experience of implementing the duty since its introduction in February 2007.

This is unacceptable. Period.

1.2.7 Local authorities have a duty to make arrangements to enable them to establish whether a child who is being educated at home (under section 7 of the Education Act 1997) is not receiving suitable education.

This is perhaps the worst part of all, and it is something we have covered at length. No public servant has the right or the ability to say what is or is not a suitable education, and by including this in the guidelines, they are opening the door for widespread harassment and abuse. Once again, for many parents the lack of provision of a suitable education by the Local Authority is the very reason why parents are opting to home educate. It is completely absurd that they should now be given guidelines that say they should pass judgement on families when they are manifestly incapable of providing themselves what they are looking for in a home educator.

What this boils down to is mandatory inspection. And if you do not measure up, you can be compelled to send your child to receive an inferior education.

1.2.8 ContactPoint, to be implemented across England by mid 2009, will help local authorities discharge the duty by recording the place where a child is being educated, where that is known. Where it is known that a child is being educated at home, that would also be recorded. This will enable local authorities to focus their efforts on identifying children who are not receiving education, and putting in place the necessary support. ContactPoint will also show whether a Common Assessment Framework has been undertaken with a child, and whether the child has a ‘lead professional’ co-ordinating any support required.

And there you have it. They are going to use ContactPoint to list all home educators and then pick them off one by one for inspection and shut-down. This section is completely absurd. It says that where a child is being EDUCATED at home, ContactPoint will enable Local Authorities to find children who are NOT BEING EDUCATED!

1.3.2 The duty to identify children not receiving a suitable education can make a cross-cutting contribution to a number of local priorities and should strengthen and complement existing duties. It should be incorporated into the local authority’s Children’s Trust governance and strategic planning arrangements, which are made under section 17 of the Children Act 2004, and the cross-cutting arrangements of safeguarding and inter-agency co-operation to improve the well-being of children. (Children Act 2004 Guidance http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/strategy/guidance/).

1.3.3 The relevant partner agencies are: (these are the partners referred to in The Children Act 2004 in relation to a number of duties)

• Education (maintained schools, independent schools, Academies, Pupil Referral Units, special schools and City Technology Colleges)
• Children’s Social Care
• Health (Strategic Health Authorities, Primary Care Trusts)
• Police and police authorities
• Youth Offending Teams
• Community safety teams, anti-social behaviour teams
• Young Offender Institutions
• Secure Training Centres
• local authority Secure Children’s Homes
• Housing providers.

Other key partners are

• HM Revenue and Customs
• Connexions
• statutory and voluntary youth services
• UK Border Agency
• the Fire and Rescue Service
• Other Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership agencies
• voluntary and community organisations.

There may also be others, depending on local circumstances.

1.3.4 Information Sharing Guidance was published April 2006 and can be found on the Every Child Matters website.

??!!

No doubt sensitive data from ContactPoint will be shared with all of these agencies.

Simply ASTONISHING.

6.24 Local authorities should not make “blanket” enquires (by email or hard copy). Contacting all local authorities with a list of children asking them to search their databases is seen as poor practice and the majority of local authorities will ignore this request, as it is time consuming with little reward (very rare that they find the child in their area). It is also not secure. Best practice is for local authorities to carry out thorough local checks in their own authority area before contacting specific local authorities that they believe to be linked to the child/young person that they are looking for.

Amazing. Fishing expeditions are ‘seen’ as poor practice, they are not ACTUALLY poor practice, and, “don’t bother doing it anyway, since your request will probably be ignored”. Well, I feel so much better that these goons are concerned about security!

Of course, we know that ContactPoint itself is not secure, and here, we can see an example of why that is the case. They are going to share information on every child they can get their hands on, between all agencies with a computer, and Local Authorities will be able to search private and public databases at will for any child that they cannot find in their own databases. This is going to be one of the leakiest databases ever…and it will be a database of CHILDREN!

It gets worse:

Useful information to share with another local authority in England
To enable local authorities to make their best efforts to search for a child/young person on behalf of the enquiring local authority the following basic information could be shared (as appropriate) with the named officer:

• Name (plus any know aliases)
• Date of Birth
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Parents/carers names including who has parental responsibility
• Siblings names
• Previous Address
• Previous school and date of last attendance
• Possible new address and school if known or suspected
• Previous home education
• Date child/young person left area
• If recent entry to UK – their country of origin.

Absolutely unbelievable and unacceptable.

6.26 Care must be taken to ensure information is factual and evidence based. (Also consideration should be given to guidance on “custodians of child protection register”

This is absurd. First, they want to check every home educator to make sure that the provision is ‘suitable’, and then, they want to make sure that information is ‘evidence based’. You cannot have it both ways; you cannot on the one hand lump all home educators in one basket and say that they are all putting their children at risk based on no evidence at all and then say that information should be factual and evidence based. In the law, you are guilty until proven innocent. You cannot enter someone’s house or data or communications without probable cause. These guidelines violate some of the most important principles of the law and of free countries, this is quite apart from violating the sanctity and centrality of the family.

6.27 The following may give an indication of the level of vulnerability of child:

• reason for leaving if known
• home educated child where the local authority considers that the parent is not providing a suitable education
• the child is or has been the subject of a child protection plan

[…]

You see? Suspicion is generated by the mere fact that parents are home educators. Unacceptable!

6.34 Local authorities should keep a record of children who are known to be educated at home by parents. Parents are not, however, required to inform the local authority if they decide to home educate a child who has not previously attended school.

This is insane. Local Authorities need to keep a record of all home schoolers (why?) but parents are not required to inform the local authority. How are the Local Authority going to keep records of all home educators, as the guidelines say they must? Any self respecting parent will not offer up their children to this system, and so when the Local Authority come calling and the parent says nothing (as is their absolute right), a conflict will occur.

This is bad guidance, and like the last set of guidance that ignored all the consultation entries, it is full of contradictions, prejudice, ignorance and offensive, immoral twaddle.

One thing is for sure; these guidelines will only affect the most vulnerable home educating families – the ones without money or influence, the ones who are debilitated by having children with problems. Any parent with a powerful solicitor can simply have a single letter written and these Apparatchiks will be frightened off.

These new guidelines are offensive. They are offensive because they illogical, and do not take the reality of home and state education into account. They do not take the needs of children into account. They do not take the rights of parents into account. They recklessly and violently violate the privacy of parents and children, and then share their sensitive and private data with anyone they care to, without the consent of anyone.

These guidelines are what we expected; another step in the incrementalist approach to total control and outlawing of home education in the uk.

Another interesting aspect of this is related to the German home educators experience of their Hitler written home education law (its completely banned). Germans wishing to home educate have moved to the UK and even to Iran to live freely. When the state finally decides to outlaw home education here, will they deny parents the right to move out of the country? Will it be the case in the future that everyone needs an exit visa to leave the UK? Just as it is in Germany and as I said before, if all of this is genuinely being done for the good of the children, how cold you possibly let them leave the fatherland to be educated outside of the German system in Iran, or Britain or the USA? Logically, you would have to bar all movements of all children out of the country so that you can ensure that they are receiving a suitable education in the state system.

Under ideal circumstances, we would never be confronted by Local Authority guidelines like this, or the sinister databases or anything else in this wretched document. In a a slightly less than ideal world, we would expect to see a union of all home educators in the UK to combine as a single voice to say that these guidelines are moot and will not under any circumstances be obeyed. There would be a fighting fund, the most powerful lawyers hired, a hell of a stink raised and the state humiliated and sent packing.

Sadly, we live in the worst of all possible worlds; there are many home educators who will feel that all of this is perfectly OK, who will go along with it and who will deride anyone who thinks otherwise.

We have Local Authorities and government bodies that are completely and willfully ignorant about and hostile to home schooling, who will do anything to stamp it out and will hurt any number of children that they can in order to achieve their nefarious goals.

This document is literally sickening. Every aspect of it is nauseating and what is most insulting is the fact that no matter who complains and no matter what logic is applied to it, it will be published as written, without change, because the evil people behind it (and some of the dimwitted on the receiving end of it) simply do not care about anyone’s rights.

Another nail in the coffin of Great Britain.

Read all our other posts on this subject.

The front page of The Times has as its story, with a HUGE headline:

The Times
August 6, 2008

Fakeproof e-passport is cloned in minutes
Steve Boggan

New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports.

Tests for The Times exposed security flaws in the microchips introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime. The flaws also undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week were worthless because they could not be forged

[…]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4467106.ece

And Martyn Thomas chimes in, echoing some strange Tory logic:

Martyn Thomas CBE FREng
http://www.thomas-associates.co.uk

The tests also raise serious questions about the Government’s £4 billion identity card scheme, which relies on the same biometric technology. ID cards are expected to contain similar microchips that will store up to 50 pieces of personal and biometric information about their holders. Last night Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, called on ministers to take urgent action to remedy the security flaws discovered by The Times. “It is of deep concern that the technology underpinning a key part of the UK’s security can be compromised so easily,” he said.

The ability to clone chips leaves travellers vulnerable to identity theft when they surrender their passports at hotels or car rental companies. Criminals in the back office could read the chips and clone them. The original passport holder’s name and date of birth could be left on the fake chip, with the picture, fingerprints and other biometric data of a criminal client added. The criminal could then travel the world using the stolen identity and the original passport holder would be none the wiser.

Furthermore, the thief could selectively replace the fingerprints and photo to make the most convincing fake ever. This is something that no one seems to understand; you can replace entries either in the database or the ‘cloned’ documents so that someone can most convincingly ‘become you’.

We have been saying all of this for years, and we have gone further, with more accuracy and prescience.

The fact of the matter is, no matter what anyone says, a database can never be ‘secured’ and no ‘urgent action to remedy the security flaws’ can ever protect these systems.

The only way to fix this problem is to actually make the passports secure. That means:

• Remove the RFID chips from all passports
• Dismantle the NIR
• Take the central passport administration computer offline, so that it is only accessible from inside a single site.
• Issue passports in line with our system, ISLAND.

Securing the passport by removing bad technology does not mean that you cannot use cryptography and modern technology to verify the authenticity of passports; on the contrary, you can have the best of both worlds (the privacy of a paper document and digital authentication) in a single system. We wrote about how to do this previously:

If any document is issued correctly, and is not tampered with, it must be assumed that the holder is the person named on the document, whether it has biometric information in it or not.

If the document has been tampered with, then the holder might not be the person named in the passport. This is the only type of check that needs to be made in passports.

Biometrics are not needed to ensure that the holder of a passport is the named person in the passport. Certainly, there is no need for a central database of all biometrics (photograph, fingerprint, iris scan) to check the identity of each person every time a passport is used. A simple test to see if the passport has been tampered with is all that is required.

This is how you do it.

1. Each passport or ID document contains a cryptographically signed digital portrait of the holder, signed by the passport issuing authority.
2. When your passport is swiped, your picture comes up on the screen, loaded from the passport, and NOT a central database
3. The digital signature of the passport photo is also downloaded.
4. A PGP-like signature check is done against the public key of the national passport issuing authority, which is stored on the keyring of the swiping device.

If the signature is good, the document is genuine. If the signature is bad, the document is a forgery.

This system does several things.

• It decentralizes the management of photo authentication.
• It stops the inevitable abuses of centralized databases.
• Each passport photo is digitally unique. This means that every time that you get your photo taken for your passport, it is a different cryptographically signed number that ends up in your passport. You will never have a unique identifier tied to your identity, even though its your face in every photograph.
• Big brother gets a kick in the balls.
• Passport/ID fraud is basically eliminated, except for the fake ones made to order at the request of MI6 and the like.

There is no need for the centralized passport biometrics database that they are planning; the means exist right now, with military grade crypto and digitally signed photographs that will create a rock solid, absolutely authenticatable, user friendly, non big brother solution to passport fraud, that protects documents and does not further erase our rights as free people.

The crypto to do this is in the public domain, and so zero-cost license wise. My solution is cheaper than the centrally held database solution.

Now of course, there is nothing to stop people from collecting these signature numbers, but if that is the only part of the passport that is readable, and this readable part does not contain your name or any other personally identifiable information, it will be harder for people to create a database connected to your biometric ID. If you are the nervous type you could change your id every month; in any case, I devised this ID scheme to demonstrate that there is no reason to create a centralized database from the outset. There are other, better ways to manage document authenticity. All someone has to do is simply THINK about the problem. Unfortunately, the people who are behind the deployment of this disaster are the companies that sell the systems that will be used to fleece the population for decades to come. Money is the true root cause for centralization, that and the lust for absolute control that slobbering pigs like David Blindkid and John Asscroft dreamed about.

It is only a matter of time now, before both RFID passports and ID Cards are scrapped.

They are not only perfect examples of the misapplication of technology, but they are immoral, illiberal, ineffective, not cost effective and socially corrosive.

First, lets start with a word from a QC:

‘I refuse to be fingerprinted’

Nigel Rumfitt QC, terrorism specialist, explains why he is opposed to compulsory fingerprinting at Heathrow.

Everyone using the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow for domestic flights will have to be fingerprinted. Who says so? Not Parliament. The British Airports Authority, a Spanish-owned private company, and British Airways say so. Why? It’s a government requirement, they tell us. But in free societies, government requirements come in the form of laws. Who made the requirement, when and in what terms?

Fingerprinting has been around for more than 100 years. In this country it has been used only to catch and identify criminals. No doubt that is why it carries a stigma. Compulsory mass fingerprinting is regarded as “unBritish”, but the present Government seems determined to change our attitude.

A few years ago, with little publicity, the law was altered to allow the indefinite retention of fingerprints and DNA taken from suspects later acquitted or even released without charge. Police powers of arrest have been extended recently, allowing the more widespread obtaining of this data. Nonetheless, the Government has not yet dared to make mass fingerprinting compulsory. What this Government fears to do openly it tries to do by stealth.

Because you cannot be compelled to provide your fingerprints, both BAA and British Airways are saying that by choosing to fly through Terminal 5 you are “consenting” to the taking of your prints. That is disingenuous, to put it mildly. True, some people will not mind; others will object, but will not be prepared to abandon an important journey in order to register that objection. In practice, and without legislation, we will have become a nation that restricts the internal movement of its citizens by government decree.

Imagine how people would have reacted in the 1950s to the proposition that before boarding the Flying Scotsman at King’s Cross you had to provide your fingerprints because the Home Secretary thought it a good idea.

These measures, it is said, will protect us against terrorism. That is nonsense. Modern Islamist terrorists want the world to know who they are. That’s why they make video wills to show everyone exactly who has been martyred for the cause. Would any recent terrorist outrage have been prevented by ID cards or fingerprint records? If it would, why bring in vital security measures by the back door and confine them to domestic flights?

Another danger is that, at Terminal 5, illegal immigrants can swap boarding passes with domestic passengers and get into the country unchecked. This is because greedy BAA wants all passengers – domestic and international – to mingle in the same shopping mall before flying.

If this is only about verifying identity at the gate, why take four prints and not just one? Why keep these prints on file for “only” 24 hours instead of destroying them at the gate? To what use will the prints be put in that time? The Data Protection Act, quoted by BAA, in fact allows police access to this material.

This is not about security. It is about paving the way towards the database state, making it easier to force us to “consent” to giving our fingerprints when we apply for a passport. That’s the final step before the compulsory ID card.

I already refuse to visit the United States because of oppressive security and I have indicated to BAA that I shall refuse to provide fingerprints unless I can be satisfied that it has a legal right to demand them. If the law has been changed to allow BAA to behave in this way, I shall find another airline.

Nigel Rumfitt QC is a specialist in serious crime, including terrorism.

[…]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/839199/Comment-%27I-refuse-to-be-fingerprinted%27.html

And this is the offending news:

Millions of passengers flying from British airports will be fingerprinted from next year under the latest controversial Government anti-terror plans.

The measures, which will apply to both domestic and international passengers, are being introduced despite opposition from the Information Commissioner, Britain’s privacy watchdog.

The Commissioner forced Heathrow to abandon a similar plan earlier this year after warning that it was potentially illegal under data protection laws.

Critics say the main reason for the scheme is that airport operators want to maximise profits by ensuring all passengers are able to spend money in ‘duty-free’ shops.

[…]

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

Courtesy of Richard Rogers, BAA, BBC, Fascist new Labour and millions of sheeple.

ID cards: aviation industry a political pawn say airline bosses

Britain’s leading airline bosses have accused the government of using their industry as a political pawn in the national identity card debate by forcing aviation workers to join the scheme next year.

In a scathing letter to the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, the chief executives of British Airways, easyJet, Virgin Atlantic and BMI said that forcing airport workers to have an ID card from November next year was “unnecessary” and “unjustified”.

All airport airside workers, who work in departure areas and on runways, must enrol in the scheme from next year under government plans, but the aviation industry is claiming it will bring no security benefits.

“First and foremost, no additional security benefits have been identified. Indeed, there is a real risk that enrolment in the national ID scheme will be seen to provide an added, but ultimately false, sense of security to our processes,” said the British Air Transport Association (Bata) letter, signed by airline bosses including Willie Walsh of British Airways and Andy Harrison of easyJet.

It also accused the government of singling out the industry for politically motivated reasons, contradicting previous pledges that the scheme would be voluntary.

“This supports our view that the UK aviation industry is being used for political purposes on a project which has questionable public support,” said Bata.

The first wave of the ID card scheme will see the cards becoming compulsory for non-EU foreign nationals living in Britain this year, and for 200,000 airport workers and Olympic security staff from next year.

[…]

Guardian

At last, someone in the Aviation Industry is showing that they have a pair.

We now have a new feature of BLOGDIAL. It is called ‘a B³‘. It means BLOGDIAL Brass Balls. It looks like this:

And the first ever award goes to the chief executives of British Airways, easyJet, Virgin Atlantic and BMI.

The ID card scheme is a total scam. Everyone knows it. Now, some of the most prestigious and important figures in industry and the economy are openly saying so.

Now is the time to re-affirm your stance of absolute non compliance. Jacqui Smith can go straight to hell and she can burn there with her ID card, started off by that imbecile Blinkett, carried by the elephantine liar Clarke to be fluffed by this revolting hideous fashionless shit eating rights destroying MONSTER.

Hopefully now the unions will get in line with ID card resistance and there will be even more energy directed against this immoral, illegitimate, illogical, authoritarian, money spinning nonsense.

Have you seen these posters on London Underground platforms:

New Big Brother London Underground Signs Stir Controversy

Upon entering the London underground following a rare trip abroad last week I was hit with a sudden reminder that I was entering back into big brother control central when I encountered rows and rows of advertising boards plastered with the same stark posters reading “I THINK I’M BEING WATCHED”.

Amidst the CBS all seeing eyes, the hordes of surveillance cameras and the constant announcements to report anything suspicious, another poster read “Oh boy, what a Wonderful City!”.

The bold black lettering on a bright white background instantly reminded me of the subliminal advertising billboards in John Carpenter’s classic dystopic movie, They Live.

Perhaps a more accurate phrase for the signs would read “I KNOW I’m being watched”.

[…]

http://www.infowars.com/?p=2865

I have an even better phrase. And a t-shirt to sell it:

6 June 2008

It has been learned that UK local authorities have been using RIP to spy into citizen communications and private data despite the assurances of Charles Clarke MP, in the attached letter, that this would not happen.

File names and title by Cryptome.
__________

Please feel free to publish the attached letter and/or this covering email.

This letter was sent about eight years ago as a reply to my Member of Parliament, Bill Cash, in response to the second of two letters I wrote complaining about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill that was then being considered by Parliament.

As you can see from the second paragraph on the second page, the Minister of State responsible for the legislation categorically denied that access to ‘communications data’ would be extended to local authorities.

As we’ve seen from recent media reports, this assurance has turned out to be entirely worthless.

—
Richard Lamont http://www.lamont.me.uk/

OpenPGP Key ID: 0xBD89BE41
Fingerprint: CE78 C285 1F97 0BDA 886D BA78 26D8 6C34 BD89 BE41

__________

Charles Clarke MP Letter: http://cryptome.org/clarke-rip-lie.pdf (4pp, 823KB)

Once more, we are taught the lesson that New Labour lies and lies and lies again. That is not a new lesson for anyone in Great Britain.

A more fresh lesson is that legislation must always be hermitically sealed; there must be no open ended provisions, no means to add to provisions in any way or change the meaning or scope in any way. If legislation that is leaky is passed, new provisions (in this case, allowing Local Authorities onto the list of organs who can use RIPA) WILL be added and there will be nothing anyone can do about it.

We must always remember; people who are willing to participate in mass murder are capable of doing any act that is less serious than murder, and turning Britain into a police state is less than murder…even though it can be likened to murdering Britain itself.

Even if you take the words of the porcine liar Charles Clarke at face value, this is another example of ‘good’ people bringing in power legislation that is later abuseable by bad people.

If there is anyone left who thinks that ID cards are not going to be used as a tool to abuse millions of people like RIPA is now being used beyond its original scope, they are completely, totally and probably mercifully, delusional.

ID card abuse will make these Local Authority RIPA abuses look like a 1950’s clip round the ear by the local bobby. They are going to unleash violations on an unimaginable scale and depth of penetration into the lives of the abused.

Remember the warnings of The Anonymous Email, that Andy Burnham said were:

Suggesting the Government will have knowledge of, and control over, your life through the National Identity Register is untrue. It is also nonsense to suggest either that “every outpost of the state” or private enterprises will have access to the register. The Bill sets strict terms on the limited number of public bodies with access to the register, while private organisations will be able to conduct verification checks only with the consent of the cardholder.

What we can take from this is that the Government will have knowledge of, and control over, your life through the National Identity Register, It is correct to suggest either that “every outpost of the state” and private enterprises who will also have access to the register. The Bill is unlimited in terms of the number of public bodies with access to the register, and private organisations will be able to conduct verification checks without the consent of the cardholder.

There. Via substitution he is being made to tell the truth.

We can see from these similar assurances of limited scope that everything anyone connected to the government has said about ID cards is a lie, and that they will break any promise they make to do with how they will be used, should they be rolled out.

Essentially they will bringing this sickening and immoral process to a national scale, affecting every single person in the UK, where a small college of twerps with overactive imaginations will determine wether or not anyone “digs with the wrong foot”.

We have been over this many times, and so have other people, at length.

You have been warned, and you know what to do.