Jan Bledsoe was shocked Thursday to learn she can no longer just swipe her finger across a screen at the local Jewel store to buy her groceries because the bankrupt company behind the technology no longer will process such transactions.

“I’m concerned because I didn’t know it wasn’t Jewel that I’d given my information and fingerprints to,” said Bledsoe of Lake Villa. “The girls at the Jewel were as surprised as anyone” that the system was shut down.

Bledsoe was among thousands of disappointed customers to learn that Solidus Networks Inc., a provider of payment processing, is no longer operating its biometrics unit. The firm’s failure prompted some financial analysts to question whether technology that relies on biological information to identify a customer is ready for the market’s mainstream.

[…]

Although biometrics is far from perfect, it offers consumers an option for making purchases with minimum hassle and no need to remember passwords.

“Commercial biometrics is inevitable,” said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley-based trend forecaster. “There are huge risks, but it’s just so cheap and convenient, people won’t be able to resist it. Whenever Americans face a choice between privacy and convenience, they always choose convenience.”

[…]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/

There are so many examples of Idiocracy out there, we need a category just 4 it.

Via the Guardian/Observer

Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.

Hmm, eligible, how grand – sounds almost postive. Now shall we count the number of ways a primary school child may exhibit criminal tendencies? No, let’s not suffice to say that young children are at a stage of life where they are full of energy, interact in the world in ways that are ‘irrational’ and ‘unlearned’, basically they make ‘mistakes’ as part of growing up. It is not a reason to target them as future criminals.

We can also think of further injustices in how this would be implemented – children of ‘high-risk’ adults would receive preferential ‘eligibility’ so presumably children of poor brown skinned muslim immigrants would be in there ASAP.

Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.

Why is a debate needed? Perhaps there should be a debate on how best to behead forensic police officers, after all ‘We Have The Technology’.
Some experts? How large a percentage and what research have they done, did the ‘experts’ say that criminal behaviour could be educated out or otherwise removed without the need to submit their DNA to a criminal database.

Does Gary Pugh even believe in ‘free will’?

‘If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,’ said Pugh. ‘You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won’t. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.’

But what does this have to do with DNA databases? In any case the vast majority of criminal activity can be dealt with without recourse to DNA profiling

Pugh admitted that the deeply controversial suggestion raised issues of parental consent, potential stigmatisation and the role of teachers in identifying future offenders, but said society needed an open, mature discussion on how best to tackle crime before it took place. There are currently 4.5 million genetic samples on the UK database – the largest in Europe – but police believe more are required to reduce crime further. ‘The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people,’ Pugh told The Observer. However, he said the notion of universal sampling – everyone being forced to give their genetic samples to the database – is currently prohibited by cost and logistics.

Pugh thinks that he (and his computer profiling) is in a better position to control a child’s future than the parents and teachers of the child – people with real human interaction. Having said that in the future any teacher is likely to have submitted to the NIR database (as being a person in a ‘position of trust’) so probably not not a reliable judge of character and rights.

Hardly gratifying to know Pugh’s only real concern about enmeshing the whole population is limited to cost and logistics, perhaps his ‘debate’ is only intended to further raise the profile of DNA databasing in government departments.

Civil liberty groups condemned his comments last night by likening them to an excerpt from a ‘science fiction novel’. One teaching union warned that it was a step towards a ‘police state’.

So many ‘steps toward’ over the last few years maybe we got to the zoo and haven’t noticed the lion closing its jaws around the hand of the fools offering snacks through the railings.

Pugh’s call for the government to consider options such as placing primary school children who have not been arrested on the database is supported by elements of criminological theory. A well-established pattern of offending involves relatively trivial offences escalating to more serious crimes. Senior Scotland Yard criminologists are understood to be confident that techniques are able to identify future offenders.

And why does Pugh want to initiate ‘debate’ with the government rather than ‘the country’? Because he knows he needs the knuckle of POWER to enforce his hideous ideas.

A recent report from the think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) called for children to be targeted between the ages of five and 12 with cognitive behavioural therapy, parenting programmes and intensive support. Prevention should start young, it said, because prolific offenders typically began offending between the ages of 10 and 13. Julia Margo, author of the report, entitled ‘Make me a Criminal’, said: ‘You can carry out a risk factor analysis where you look at the characteristics of an individual child aged five to seven and identify risk factors that make it more likely that they would become an offender.’ However, she said that placing young children on a database risked stigmatising them by identifying them in a ‘negative’ way.

Well this may or may not be true but it has nothing to do with DNA databases

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, denounced any plan to target youngsters. ‘Whichever bright spark at Acpo thought this one up should go back to the business of policing or the pastime of science fiction novels,’ she said. ‘The British public is highly respectful of the police and open even to eccentric debate, but playing politics with our innocent kids is a step too far.’

From the mistress of gross understatement this should be read as a damning condemnation!

[…]

Pugh, though, believes that measures to identify criminals early would save the economy huge sums – violent crime alone costs the UK £13bn a year – and significantly reduce the number of offences committed. However, he said the British public needed to move away from regarding anyone on the DNA database as a criminal and accepted it was an emotional issue.

Thus hoist by his own petard, this idiot shows that he wants a database that is NOT a criminal but a general databse, this man doesn’t believe in the principle of ‘innocent until PROVEN guilty’, he doesn’t care that a police database of the general population is an erosion of habeas corpus and the similar rights that have had to be fought for.

‘Fingerprints, somehow, are far less contentious,’ he said. ‘We have children giving their fingerprints when they are borrowing books from a library.’

And this is Right?

Last week it emerged that the number of 10 to 18-year-olds placed on the DNA database after being arrested will have reached around 1.5 million this time next year. Since 2004 police have had the power to take DNA samples from anyone over the age of 10 who is arrested, regardless of whether they are later charged, convicted, or found to be innocent.

And this is Right?

I repeat we are already at the zoo today, not tomorrow – and YOU are there too.

Concern over the issue of civil liberties will be further amplified by news yesterday that commuters using Oyster smart cards could have their movements around cities secretly monitored under new counter-terrorism powers being sought by the security services.

Of course this is further generalised surveillance that will not stop anything related to terrorism, there is no underground station or bus stop called ‘how to do jihad’, nor ‘semtex R us’, nor ‘At the age of five I spat on a dog’.

Privacy and Power

When I write and speak about privacy, I am regularly confronted with the mutual disclosure argument. Explained in books like David Brin’s “The Transparent Society,” the argument goes something like this: In a world of ubiquitous surveillance, you’ll know all about me, but I will also know all about you. The government will be watching us, but we’ll also be watching the government. This is different than before, but it’s not automatically worse. And because I know your secrets, you can’t use my secrets as a weapon against me.

This might not be everybody’s idea of utopia — and it certainly doesn’t address the inherent value of privacy — but this theory has a glossy appeal, and could easily be mistaken for a way out of the problem of technology’s continuing erosion of privacy. Except it doesn’t work, because it ignores the crucial dissimilarity of power.

You cannot evaluate the value of privacy and disclosure unless you account for the relative power levels of the discloser and the disclosee.

If I disclose information to you, your power with respect to me increases. One way to address this power imbalance is for you to similarly disclose information to me. We both have less privacy, but the balance of power is maintained. But this mechanism fails utterly if you and I have different power levels to begin with.

An example will make this clearer. You’re stopped by a police officer, who demands to see identification. Divulging your identity will give the officer enormous power over you: He or she can search police databases using the information on your ID; he or she can create a police record attached to your name; he or she can put you on this or that secret terrorist watch list. Asking to see the officer’s ID in return gives you no comparable power over him or her. The power imbalance is too great, and mutual disclosure does not make it OK.

You can think of your existing power as the exponent in an equation that determines the value, to you, of more information. The more power you have, the more additional power you derive from the new data.

Another example: When your doctor says “take off your clothes,” it makes no sense for you to say, “You first, doc.” The two of you are not engaging in an interaction of equals.

This is the principle that should guide decision-makers when they consider installing surveillance cameras or launching data-mining programs. It’s not enough to open the efforts to public scrutiny. All aspects of government work best when the relative power between the governors and the governed remains as small as possible — when liberty is high and control is low. Forced openness in government reduces the relative power differential between the two, and is generally good. Forced openness in laypeople increases the relative power, and is generally bad.

Seventeen-year-old Erik Crespo was arrested in 2005 in connection with a shooting in a New York City elevator. There’s no question that he committed the shooting; it was captured on surveillance-camera videotape. But he claimed that while being interrogated, Detective Christopher Perino tried to talk him out of getting a lawyer, and told him that he had to sign a confession before he could see a judge.

Perino denied, under oath, that he ever questioned Crespo. But Crespo had received an MP3 player as a Christmas gift, and surreptitiously recorded the questioning. The defense brought a transcript and CD into evidence. Shortly thereafter, the prosecution offered Crespo a better deal than originally proffered (seven years rather than 15). Crespo took the deal, and Perino was separately indicted on charges of perjury.

Without that recording, it was the detective’s word against Crespo’s. And who would believe a murder suspect over a New York City detective? That power imbalance was reduced only because Crespo was smart enough to press the “record” button on his MP3 player. Why aren’t all interrogations recorded? Why don’t defendants have the right to those recordings, just as they have the right to an attorney? Police routinely record traffic stops from their squad cars for their own protection; that video record shouldn’t stop once the suspect is no longer a threat.

Cameras make sense when trained on police, and in offices where lawmakers meet with lobbyists, and wherever government officials wield power over the people. Open-government laws, giving the public access to government records and meetings of governmental bodies, also make sense. These all foster liberty.

Ubiquitous surveillance programs that affect everyone without probable cause or warrant, like the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping programs or various proposals to monitor everything on the internet, foster control. And no one is safer in a political system of control.

The inherent value of privacy:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-114.html

There is another aspect to this that is worth mentioning again.

Each of the examples above refer to scenarios where there are two people who are interacting with each other.

Once you disclose to a police officer, his disproportionate power over you not only exists at that moment, but his actions further aggregate power in the police as a group, whereafter they can search for info on you in absentia.

The aggregated power of the police and of the state, holding all the cards and acting in secret to surveil and catalogue you creates a power that his without precedent in its scope and size.

Anyone who puts forward the mutual disclosure argument dimply DOESNT GET IT. Even if everyone everywhere had equal access to all databases, the public does not have the power of the law; the power to change the rules arbitrarily.

Take for example, the Chancellor’s recent budget. At the stroke of a pen, he is able to put 14p onto a bottle of wine. No vote, no right of redress, THAT IS THE NEW LAW and there is nothing you can do about it.

If we do a little substitution, it is not hard to see how this power over shops pricing wine translates into humans being forced to be fingerprinted like criminals for a database, without any reason other than “it can be done”.

This is how people were forced to wear yellow stars because they were Jewish during the Nazi era, only now, moves like this can be done on every level, because the database gives the state direct access to you on a personal level.

I have always held that there is nothing wrong with being thick. People can’t help being born stupid. If you ARE stupid however, you need to STFU when it comes to complex issues like privacy, databases and the state. These specious arguments: “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”, ‘mutual disclosure’, “they already know everything about us anyway” are all spawned from the mouths of the thick, the idiots, the morons, the dunderheads. They, with their simplistic ‘arguments’ always provide a rationale that is easier to digest, bad for the future, the one that lets the government off the hook, encourages the worst possible practices and to sum up, makes the whole world a shittier place to live in.

Heathrow airport first to fingerprint

By David Millward and Gordon Rayner

Millions of British airline passengers face mandatory fingerprinting before being allowed to board flights when Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opens later this month.

For the first time at any airport, the biometric checks will apply to all domestic passengers leaving the terminal, which will handle all British Airways flights to and from Heathrow.

The key here is domestic flights; that you are being treated like a criminal to travel in your own country.

These measures are extra and unnecessary and are the result of the collaboration of the architect and the vendors of fingerprinting technology.

The controversial security measure is also set to be introduced at Gatwick, Manchester and Heathrow’s Terminal 1, and many airline industry insiders believe fingerprinting could become universal at all UK airports within a few years.

These are not ‘security measures’ they are Security Theatre none of these measures can predict how a person is going to behave, and in order to stop bad behavior, that is what fingerprinting has to do, and it cannot do that.

This is a measure to control and track the movement of people, pure and simple. It is being introduced to soften up the public to the idea of universal fingerprinting. Since no one who goes through this airport is being checked against a criminal register, you will always be able to get onto your plane at Terminal 5, after having been fingerprinted. This will reduce the apprehension that many people have about being fingerprinted. The trap will be sprung however, when they instantly check your identity against the NIR when you ‘finger in’ and you are not allowed to board a plane because you have not paid your Council Tax.

That is the ultimate aim of all of this, and they can afford to throw away millions of scans in the first years of operation because what they will be gaining is a change in perception, and that is worth the lost data. In any case, they will start storing the fingerprints eventually and since no one will care, it will simply just be announced and that will be that. Even if people do care, no one in the UK seems to have the will to resist this garbage.

All four million domestic passengers who will pass through Terminal 5 annually after it opens on March 27 will have four fingerprints taken, as well as being photographed, when they check in.

To ensure the passenger boarding the aircraft is the same person, the fingerprinting process will be repeated just before they board the aircraft and the photograph will be compared with their face.

First of all, you have the right to refuse to do this.

Secondly, we have written about this before in detail.

BAA, the company which owns Heathrow, insists the biometric information will be destroyed after 24 hours and will not be passed on to the police.

They might not do this NOW but they could easily do it in the future at any time, and also, if the police demand it, they will comply instantaneously.

It says the move is necessary to prevent criminals, terrorists and illegal immigrants trying to bypass border controls.

This is an absolute LIE and they know it. See the two BLOGDIAL posts for a full explanation.

The company said the move had been necessitated by the design of Terminal 5, where international and domestic passengers share the same lounges and public areas after they have checked in.

Without the biometric checks, the company says, potential criminals and illegal immigrants arriving on international flights or in transit to another country could bypass border controls by swapping boarding passes with a domestic passenger who has already checked in.

They could then board the domestic flight, where proof of identity is not currently required, fly on to another UK airport and leave without having to go through passport control.

The truth of this is that Terminal 5 was built with this deliberate design flaw by Richard Rogers; instead of using walls to control passengers like every other airport, they made the deliberate decision to create a single area for all passengers, and then to use biometrics to segregate the domestic and international passengers.

This building was designed in this way specifically because they believed it was possible to do it and maintain immigration controls through biometrics instead of walls. They deliberately intended to have millions of people fingerprinted. This is why, in the two BLOGDIAL posts above, I call this one of the worst buildings ever made.

Most other airports avoid the problem by keeping international and domestic passengers separate at all times, but the mixed lounges exist at Gatwick, Manchester and Heathrow’s Terminal 1.

And all of a sudden, there is a need for this security theatre at Gatwick and Terminal 1? For decades people have been traveling through these airports without problems, despite the experience becoming increasingly unpleasant over the years, and the immigration controls have been enforced properly.

The fact of the matter is that fingerprint technology vendors have hoodwinked the government and industry. They have almost successfully pulled off one of the greatest hoaxes the world of business has ever seen. They have nearly succeeded in the greatest snake-oil transaction that has ever been.

Gatwick and Manchester currently deal with the problem by photographing all passengers as they pass through security, and checking the picture against their face at the departure gate.

This is less intrusive than being photographed AND fingerprinted. The fact of the matter is though that it is better to use walls; ARCHITECTURE to control people and enforce immigration laws.

Terminal 1 will soon introduce fingerprinting.

Civil liberties campaigners have raised concerns about the possibility of security agencies trying to access the treasure trove of personal data in the future, adding that fingerprinting “will make innocent people feel like criminals”.

Correct. It really is a treasure trove. Think about it: They be able to capture every travelers (British or not):

• fingerprints
• photograph
• passport details
• destination
• other itinerary data
• traveling companions

and through connection with other databases,

• credit card details
• spending habits
• home address

If you believe that the police do not want access to this, and to take it further, the MI5 will not have realtime back door access from day one of operations, you are COMPLETELY DELUSIONAL. This data is worth the weight of all the airplanes in the British Airways fleet. There is no way that they are going to passively sit back and let it evaporate.

There are also fears that fingerprinting will add to the infamous “Heathrow hassle” which has led to some business travellers holding meetings in other countries because they want to avoid the sprawling, scruffy airport at any cost.

Its already happening, and this fingerprinting nonsense, Fascist in nature and intent, is already putting off americans and others.

Although fingerprinting is carried out at some foreign airports – most notably in the US – as part of immigration checks for international arrivals, Heathrow will be the first to fingerprint domestic passengers before they board their flights.

Britain always seems to be the country trying hard to look toughest without understanding the real nature of the problems and the forces involved. Britain brings in ID cards; they are the worst, most invasive, most Fascist in the whole world. Britain brings in fingerprinting at airports; it is the only one fingerprinting for domestic flights, a totally unnecessary, stupid, over the top measure.

Britain is better than this, and the British are smarter than this.

Even if domestic passengers have a passport with them, they will still have to go through the biometric checks.

Which demonstrates that all of this is total Security Theatre. They are not interested in correctly identifying people so that the immigration rules are adhered to; were that the case, British Citizens carrying British Passports with them would be allowed to board domestic flights without being fingerprinted. It also shows that they do not trust the new Biometric Passports as a way to verify the identity of the holder.

Think about how ridiculous this is. These are the same vendors who say that the biometric fingerprint scanning identifies the holder and secures the passport, but when it comes to Terminal 5, this is suddenly not good enough, and the passport is useless for the purpose of identification!

Dr Gus Hosein, of the London School of Economics, an expert on the impact on technology on civil liberties, is one of the scheme’s strongest critics.

He said: “There is no other country in the world that requires passengers travelling on internal flights to be fingerprinted. BAA says the fingerprint data will be destroyed, but the records of who has travelled within the country will not be, and it will provide a rich source of data for the police and intelligence agencies.

Correct.

“I grew up in a society where you only fingerprinted people if you suspected them of being criminals. By doing this they will make innocent people feel like criminals.

It will turn them into suspects. It will violate them on an unprecedented scale.

The real question here is, “What are you prepared to do to bring back the society that you grew up in”.

“There will also be a suspicion that this is the thin end of the wedge, that we are being softened up by making fingerprinting seem normal in the run-up to things like ID cards.”

This is not a suspicion, it is a plain fact. This IS the thin end of the wedge, and it is one of several wedges that are going to meet together to slice the british public into mincemeat.

Mr Hosein claimed automatic fingerprint technology is only 90 per cent accurate at best, and clear fingerprints can be difficult to obtain.

True, but irrelevant. Even if it worked 100% of the time, the principle of it is wrong.

Simon Davies, of campaign group Privacy International, suggested a photograph alone would be a perfectly adequate – and much cheaper – way of identifying passengers.

“If they are photographing people anyway, why can’t that be used as a means of identifying them, rather than taking biometric data?” he said. “It would probably be 50 times more reliable at a 50th of the cost.

True, but what they will counter with is the studies showing that staff do not check photographs in IDs properly. “Only a machine can be trusted” they will say.

“Fingerprint recognition technology is far from perfect, and the experience in the US has shown that the information can only be used retrospectively, not in real time, as it takes so long to match a fingerprint to the one held on the database.

“I think once again we are seeing the introduction of technology whose benefits are illusory.”

The only thing that is not illusory about this is the money made by the vendors. Follow the money, and every time you come face to face with the real culprits, and on this particular trail, you will pass by Richard Rogers before you come face to face with the devil.

A spokesman for British Airways said: “We are supportive of the use of fingerprinting at Terminal 5. We need to make sure the right people get on the right flights and this will definitely help us to ease check-in and boarding procedures.”

They would say that wouldn’t they? What are they going to do, call it all off?!

BAA said the fingerprinting scheme was decided upon after consultation with the Home Office, and the company is keen to reassure passengers that their fingerprints will not be made available to any outside agency.

WTF?

“Fire is hot, but you can put your hand in it and not be burned”.

As I have been saying, this is a softening up exercise.

A spokesman said: “The data will be destroyed after 24 hours. It will not be made available to the police or anyone else. This is purely for border and immigration control.”

Immigration control is being re-imagined as a part of the police force. They are even calling it ‘Border Control Police’.

They cannot even lie convincingly.

International passengers will not be fingerprinted, as they must show a passport when they check in and before they board their flight.

So now, a passport is OK for identification!!
It is only BRITISH passports that are not good enough to identify the holder!!

YOU CANNT MAKE STUFF LIKE THIS UP!!!

However, the fingerprinting of domestic passengers is expected to be the first step in the increasing use of the technology for people coming to and from Britain.

Within the next few weeks BAA will announce plans for voluntary fingerprinting under a so-called “trusted traveller” scheme.

Actually, the whole thing is voluntary. You can refuse to submit to it, and they accommodate you. This article is incorrect in saying that it is mandatory.

Those willing to have their fingerprints and passport information stored would be able to bypass immigration queues by placing their finger on a scanner instead of waiting to have their passport checked.

And people WILL DO IT, which is the shocking thing.

The move follows a trial of the technology, known as “miSense”, at Heathrow last year.

non-sense more like!

In the long term, fingerprinting could become even more widespread when the Government introduces tighter embarkation controls next year, which have not yet been specified but could range from having to show passports more often before boarding or using biometric checks.

Officials began talks with the aviation industry within months of an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airlines in August 2006.

You see? an ALLEGED plot, not even a real one (not that that is a reason to give up your liberty). They do not even have to blow up the planes to push these measures through.

At the time, the Home Office refused to rule out the use of fingerprint and biometric checks as part of routine embarkation controls, and some industry insiders believe universal fingerprinting may be brought in when biometric passports are introduced in 2012.

One option could be to routinely check fingerprints against the criminal record database – a step which is currently only taken when immigration officers have a reason to be suspicious.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/07/nheathrow107.xml

And there you have it. At the end, an admission that they want to be able to run your prints against the criminal database every time you travel. This is not about immigration, this is about controlling the ordinary person. As the system marches on, and like US-VISIT, they catch only 1000 people at a cost of FIFTEEN MILLION dollars each, pressure will grow for the system to be used to catch any criminal of any kind, meaning that they will broaden the definition of criminal to people who have parking tickets, fines, ‘CCJs’ and any manner of ‘offense’ no matter how trifling.

We already know these systems are not about catching ‘terrorists’.

What else can I say, other than, “you have been warned”.

ID card retreat as new passport option offered
By Andrew Porter, Political Editor
Last Updated: 7:10am GMT 06/03/2008

British citizens will be able to choose between having an ID card or a new biometric passport, under new plans to be unveiled by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary.

In what will be seen as a watering down of the scheme, Miss Smith will stress that there is still a case for compulsory ID cards but that the scheme needs to be implemented gradually.

The Home Secretary will insist that Gordon Brown has not decided against the introduction of ID cards – a move which both Opposition parties are against.

But a previous plan, stating that by 2010 anyone applying for a new passport would be given an ID card as well, has changed. Now passport applicants will be given a choice.

Ministers will then wait to see how this voluntary scheme progresses before any expansion.

Personal details from both passports and ID cards will still be entered on the National Identity Register, Miss Smith will say. New biometric passports contain fingerprints and iris scans.

In particular, ministers want to see whether the technology works. Opponents of ID cards have argued that Government has a very poor record with IT systems and complicated Whitehall projects.

Under the plans, foreign nationals who want to settle in Britain from later this year will have to have an ID card.

And by next year certain workers in “key sensitive areas” like airports and ports will have to carry the new document. That will be part of long-term anti-terrorist measures…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/06/nid106.xml

Jackqui Smith Washes down her filthy Kebab with some Kool Aid.

This is not a retreat or a voluntary scheme as this newspaper mistakenly claims. It is however, an extraordinary article, and it reveals the long term plans of the government. They are not ‘waiting to see if the technology works’ they are waiting for it to mature so that the error rates are acceptable.

One thing is abundantly clear: they are planning to allow foreign governments access to the NIR. That is the only way that foreign ports will be able to see if an ID card holder is carrying a genuine ID card, and it is the only way that they can sell the idea of people accepting an ID card instead of a passport. Who would take an ID card that is useless for travel over a passport? And by the way, where are they going to store the record of your border crossing? How will you be able to prove that you entered and left Germany? They will doubtless keep a record; how will they keep this record, what will it consist of, and how does this method of border crossing benefit you, the traveller? It seems to me that the only entities that benefit are everyone OTHER than you, the traveller and citizen!

With a passport you have a record of where you have been, accessible by you without any need to cooperate with a third party. With an ID card only system, in order to see where you have been, you will have to swipe your card in a government terminal, whereupon they will show you a list of where you have been, in the same way that Oyster does. Something to think about, isn’t it?

This is how using an ID cart at a German airport will work:

• Your card will be swiped at the German border.
• The card reader will access the NIR.
• Your record will be displayed to the passport officer.

That is the only way that this choice of getting an ID card OR a passport will work. And of course, once your data is displayed, it is capturable by the Germans or anyone else who has access to the NIR. In fact it needs to be capturable so that the Germans have a record of your crossing, otherwise, there will be no record at all; not kept by you (no place on the card to keep it) and not by them.

Now to the part about the NIR itself. It is clear that someone has sat down with that Kebab scoffing scumbag and explained to her that…

THE FINGERPRINT IS THE ID CARD.

She has finally understood that if the NIR is in place, it does not matter that people have the physical card, which is a vestigial artifact of the days before ubiquitous computing. Your fingerprints are the card, and swiping the card in a reader, like a chip and pin reader, is no different to putting your fingerprint on a reader. It is only a slight modification to be able to show the name and face of whoever has their finger on the reader to the person who is trying to prove that,”you are who you say you are”. The one watt light bulb has lit above her pea brain, “Why do we need the card at all? its just a huge expense, and a symbol of resistance around which they can rally! If we quietly put them all in the NIR, when that process is finished, we can roll out the fingerprint readers and have the same system in place without the card step!!”.

This is very much how the conversation would have gone I imagine.

The above example now turns into this:

• Your fingerprints will be swiped at the German border.
• The fingerprint reader will access the NIR.
• Your record will be displayed to the passport officer.

same result, only without the card.

They are now going to be able to claim that the cards are voluntary, and they will not be lying. The power and evil of this system in in the NIR, and that is still on the cards. Yes, I typed that!

What is so great about this plan is that no one will take an ID card over a passport. Passports are familiar, have a far greater utility and perceived value. You get to take away a record of where you have been. Everyone will be fooled into thinking that they have made a choice against ID cards as they blithely put their fingerprints into the NIR; the actual goal of this system. The government will be able to claim that ID cards have been rejected, and are being dropped because the public does not want them, not because the government was wrong in trying to introduce them. They will have the NIR in place, with everyone in it, and they will have had their cake and eaten it.

It is clear that the focus should now turn completely to the NIR, as the card is being abandoned. Without the recent missing DVDR scandal, I would have said that this is going to be a harder thing to sell; in the VietNam War era, draft dodgers burned their cards as a symbol of resistance. The public can understand the idea of ‘not wanting a card’. Making them understand what a database is is a different matter entirely.

I am surprised (not) that the Unions are not making a noise about their members being discriminated against; why should they be singled out for abuse and violation before anyone else?

To sum up, in order for the ID card to be interchangeable with a passport, you need to give access to the NIR to foreign governments. That means the entire NIR will eventually exist in other governments databases, and in the hands of criminals.

There is absolutely no reason to manage document security in this way; and there are methods of issuing documents that make them secure but which do not have any of the negative side effects of centralized databases and unique numbers assigned to individuals.

Eventually, the NIR too will be abandoned as the understanding of precisely what it means dawns upon the public. It will probably take some more missing laptops or DVDRs to make it happen. It would be interesting to see what the reaction would be to all the members of the lower house having their bank details published on the internets.

Then they would understand first hand what all of this really means.

The ThreeBallot Voting System
Ronald L. Rivest
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge,
MA 02139
October 1, 2006?

Abstract

We present a new paper-based voting method with interesting security properties. The attempt here is to see if one can achieve the same security properties of recently proposed cryptographic voting protocols, but without using any cryptography, using only paper ballots. We partially succeed. (Initially, I thought the proposal accomplished this goal, but several readers discovered a vote-buying attack (see Section 4.4) that appears to be rather di?cult to fix without making the resulting system much less usable in practice. Currently, this paper should thus be viewed more as an academic proposal than a practical proposal. Perhaps some variation on these ideas in this paper might still turn out to be of practical use. The &lquot;OneBallot with Exchanged Receipts&rquot; system sketched at the end of Section 5.3.1, looks particularly promising at the moment. . . ) The principles of ThreeBallot are simple and easy to understand. In this proposal, not only can each voter verify that her vote is recorded as she intended, but she gets a &lquot;receipt&rquot; that she can take home that can be used later to verify that her vote is actually included in the final tally. Her receipt, however, does not allow her to prove to anyone else how she voted. In this &lquot;ThreeBallot&rquot; voting system, each voter casts three paper ballots, with certain restrictions on how they may be filled out, so the tallying works. These paper ballots are of course &lquot;voter-verifiable.&rquot; All ballots cast are scanned and published on a web site, so anyone may correctly compute the election result. A voter receives a copy of one of her ballots as her &lquot;receipt&rquot;, which she may take home. Only the voter knows which ballot she copied for her receipt. The voter is unable to use her receipt to prove how she voted or to sell her vote, as the receipt doesn’t reveal how she voted. A voter can check that the web site contains a ballot matching her receipt. Deletion or modification of ballots is thus detectable; so the integrity of the election is verifiable.

? The latest version of this paper can always be found at http://theory.csail.mit.edu/~rivest/ Rivest-TheThreeBallotVotingSystem.pdf

Introduction

Designing secure voting systems is tough, since the constraints are apparently contradictory. In particular, the requirement for voter privacy (no one should know how Alice voted, even if Alice wants them to know) seems to contradict verifiability (how can Alice verify that her vote was counted as she intended?). The proposal presented here is an attempt to satisfy these constraints without the use of cryptograpy. We get pretty close… Like most cryptographic proposals, ThreeBallot uses a public &lquot;bulletin board&rquot;–a public web site where election officials post copies of all of the cast ballots (there will be 3n of them if there are n voters) and a list of the names of the voters who voted. (Some states might use voter ID’s rather than voter names.) One key principle of ThreeBallot is to &lquot;vote by rows&rquot; and &lquot;cast by columns&rquot;. The ThreeBallot ballot can viewed as an array, where the voter places marks in rows corresponding to candidates, but then separates the columns and casts them separately, keeping a copy of one. ThreeBallot provides a nice level of end-to-end verifiability—the voter gets assurance that her vote was cast as intended and counted as cast, and that election officials haven’t tampered with the collection of ballots counted.

Background

We assume that the reader is somewhat familiar with voting systems. For more background, the following readings are recommended:

• Roy Saltman’s new book, The History and Politics 1 of Voting Technology [19] is an outstanding scholarly history of the evolution of voting technology.
• Andrew Gumbel’s book Steal This Vote [9] is an excellent, entertaining, and very readable review of election fraud in America.
• The Brennan Center for Justice has published an excellent report [1] on voting system security, with detailed discussions of specific threats and assessments of the risks they represent.
• Randell and Ryan’s recent excellent article, &lquot;Voting Technologies and Trust,&rquot; [15], which, like this paper, explores paper-based voting system architectures similar to those of cryptographic voting systems.
• Ben Adida’s recent PhD thesis [3] (particularly Chapter 1) reviews voting system requirements and cryptographic voting systems, before giving improved cryptographic voting systems.
• There are numerous web sites with information and links about voting and voting technology, such those of Doug Jones [10], myself [16], the CalTechMIT Voting Technology Project [14], ACCURATE [2], or the Election Assistance Commission [7], to name just a few. (Try googling &lquot;voting technology&rquot;.)

Each ballot has two parts: the upper &lquot;voting region,&rquot; and then the &lquot;ballot ID region&rquot; on the lower part. The voting region of a ballot contains the candidate names, each with an op-scan bubble that can be filled in by the voter. Each ballot has a distinct ballot ID, di?erent from the ID’s of other ballots on its multi-ballot and from all other ballot ID’s. The ballot ID’s on the three ballots of a multi-ballot are unrelated in any way to each other, they are merely randomly assigned unique ballot ID’s, with no cryptographic or other significance. The ballot ID might be a long (e.g. 7-digit) number which is essentially random, or some other unique identifier, possibly in barcoded form. For now, we’ll assume that the ballot ID’s are pre-printed on the ballots, but we’ll see that there are security advantages to having them added later instead by the voter or by the &lquot;checker&rquot; (see Section 3.4).

Filling Out The Multi-Ballot

• The voter is given the following instructions for filling out the multi-ballot. See Figure 2 for an example of a filled-out multi-ballot.
• You have here three optical scan ballots arranged as three columns; you will be casting all three ballots.
• Proceed row by row through the multi-ballot. Each row corresponds to one candidate. There are three &lquot;bubbles&rquot; in a row, one on each ballot.
• To vote FOR a candidate, you must fill in exactly two of the bubbles on that candidate’s row. You may choose arbitrarily which two bubbles in that row to fill in. (It doesn’t matter, as all three ballots will be cast.)
• To vote AGAINST a candidate (i.e., to not vote FOR the candidate, or to cast a &lquot;null&rquot; vote for that candidate), you must fill in exactly one of the bubbles on that candidate’s row. You may choose arbitrarily which bubble in that row to fill in. (It doesn’t matter, as all three ballots will be cast.)
• You must fill in at least one bubble in each row; your multi-ballot will not be accepted if a row is left entirely blank.
• You may not fill in all three bubbles in a row; your multi-ballot will not be accepted if a row has all three bubbles filled in.
• You may vote FOR at most one candidate per race, unless indicated otherwise (In some races, you are allowed to vote FOR several candidates, up to a specified maximum number.) It is OK to vote AGAINST all candidates. 2

Details

We now describe the ThreeBallot voting system in more detail.

[…]

Read the rest of this paper at Scribd.

By John E. Dunn
Techworld
27 February 2008

Criminals have assembled a huge database of hacked FTP server logins belonging to some of the worlds leading companies, a security company has revealed.

Finjan said it had stumbled upon a database containing account usernames, passwords and server addresses for a staggering 8,700 FTP servers, many of which were being used by US Fortune 100-level enterprises.

The hacked servers could be used to distribute crimeware by injecting iframe tags into any webpage stored on the compromised FTP servers. Indeed the server accounts were themselves being traded by a web application able to rank and price them according to their Google page rank for re-sale to other criminals.

The company found the database while examining what appears to be a sophisticated Russian crimeware hub built using a newer version of the Neosploit crimeware toolkit, sophisticated enough to offers its criminal users a SaaS (software as a service) interface for carrying out attacks.

The company didnt name the domains involved for obvious reasons, but the range of sectors and countries reads like a whos who of big business. FTP details for telecoms, media, online retail, and government agencies were all present, across every leading economy and beyond.

Using the Alexa.com domain ranking, Finjan found 10 of the top 100 domains in the database, 100 of the top 500 domains, and 50 of those between 500 and 1,000.

Breaking these down by location, 2,621 were in the US, 1,247 in Russia, 392 in Australia, 354 in Asia/Pacific. The rest were covered Eastern Europe, with only a handful in western European countries such as Germany and the UK, which accounted for 80 and 78, respectively.

“With this new trading application, cyber-criminals have an instant ‘solution’ to their problem of gaining access to FTP credentials and thus infecting both the legitimate websites and unsuspecting visitors, said Finjans Yuval-Ben Itzhak.

[…]

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=11561

I could have used substitution here to make this an article about ID cards and how ‘criminals’ are going to create tools to trade in the ‘identities’ of people, but this article was just too juicy as it stood.

Back in the day there were the forerunners of these tools, like ‘cc master’ (at least thats what I think it was called; it was something around on the old [1994/5] BBSes that you could play with if you wanted to get your machine virus’d). Now of course, they are running everything on the internets as services, like bugmenot, only much more serious.

The same thing is going to happen with ID details. Underground supermarkets are going to be created where you can buy the ‘identity’ of just the sort of person you need to commit a crime, and this will include fingerprints that will be used in software that uses playback exploits to fool the back ends that are being attacked. Even without that, simple Social Engineering will be made possible by collecting and studying the detailed identity records of some sheep, that can be inserted into a script for reading out, and all of this will be done in a slick service that you pay to access.

Imagine, you pay a subscription to a service that generates scripts for you to read over the telephone. You log in. You select your gender and accent type. The system then generates some scripts for you to read, and sets up VOIP calls for you to activate with a click of your mouse. The scripts are filled with the personal details of someone (bought on a DVD) and the call is made to their bank or building society, and the script provides you with a spiel that lets you transfer money to your own account.

You are paying for the right to use these identities and the related generated scripts; if you have success or not thats down to your mad skillz as a social engineer. Recommended Reading, ‘The Art of Deception’ by Kevin D. Mitnik.

The more scripts you read and the better you get at it, the more money you collect. Snarfed profiles are charged by how many people have used them; fresh, unused profiles are the most expensive (like fresh leads; they are for closers). Identities that have been passed around alot are nearly worthless, so you can read scripts generated for these in their thousands for only a few euros.

“I’m here from downtown, and I’m here on a mission of mercy….”

True!

From Mr Peter D. Hahn.

Sir, Your editorial “Liechtenstein loot” (February 19) correctly points to the complexities and sophistication of tax evasion among those wealthy enough to afford it. I can’t claim higher morals because I have never had the wealth to consider such a strategy, but I am deeply troubled by the FT’s seeming endorsement of Germany’s techniques.

Germany’s encouragement and payment for stealing property is something no state should ever engage in except if it means securing the life of its citizens (such as in the prevention of terrorism or drug dealing).

Had a tax inspector, an employee or another individual obtained the information and provided it to the German authorities without payment, I would surely support such efforts to prosecute those who have committed an injustice and avoided paying. However, the German government’s payment for such information is certainly a greater injustice.

The state that justifies immoral behaviour in pursuit of taxes is the state that can too easily justify spying on its own people for any disagreeable behaviour and here the Germans have a historical record that should suggest extraordinary restraint. This is governance at its worst.

Peter D. Hahn,

FEM Fellow,

Corporate Finance and Governance,

Sir John Cass Business School,

London EC1Y 8TZ

[…]

FT.com

What is happening in Britain today is so fundamentally wrong, so insane and un-British that there are very few people who do not see these wrongs for what they are.

Peter Hahn is merely the latest.

Every day we see more voices turning to the sound of BLOGDIAL. That is a good thing. It means that we are reaching a tipping point.

The other day I was in a cab heading to a fine restaurant in Soho, and the driver promised me that there was going to very soon be a mass uprising in the UK, because the people had been pushed too far.

Those words warmed my heart better than any Cognac ever could

This is the 1000th post on the WordPress powered BLOGDIAL, the 16,595th post in total, and our seventh year of publishing.

Thank you to all the people who posted on this blog over the years.

Thank you to all the lurkers who emailed tips, rants and praise.

Foreigners who repeatedly flout the rules when they are made to apply for ID cards will be thrown out, the Government said yesterday.

Immigrants will have to give two fingerprints, iris scans and a raft of personal details to the Home Office when the scheme is introduced for foreign nationals only later this year.

Ministers said that, if they fail to comply with these “primary requirements”, they could have their permission to stay in the UK revoked.

But papers released yesterday revealed that only serial offenders – who break the rules at least three times in five years – will face removal.

Initially, they will face only fines of £250 per offence. And refugees will face only fines – up to a maximum of £1,000 – as human rights laws bar them from being deported.

A consultation document on penalties under the scheme, which is a fore-runner of the national ID card for all British citizens, also said there was no power to jail anyone who failed to pay the civil fines.

But the offence of contempt, which can carry a jail term, “may be applicable”, it added.

Someone with indefinite leave to remain in Britain would only have their leave cancelled in “compelling circumstances”, the paper went on. Fines would be discounted for people on benefits.

The roll-out will begin later this year, with the children of foreign nationals also expected to carry the cards.

Opposition MPs said it offered a glimpse into how the ID card scheme for British citizens could work, when it is introduced from 2009.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: “This shows the kind of punitive measures that every British citizen can expect when ID cards are eventually rolled out nationally.

“ID cards for foreign nationals are not going to solve the problems of identity fraud and illegal working. All they will do is threaten the immigration status of hard working people who bring benefits to this country.”

But Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said: “Britain’s border security is currently undergoing the biggest shake-up in a generation, ensuring it stays among the toughest in the world.

“ID cards for foreign nationals will cement the triple ring of security protecting our shores, along with fingerprint visas abroad and a single border force here at home.”

Daily Mail

Look at the image they used to illustrate this article.

Its just the sort of photo they would use to inflame peoples emotions and get them on board with ID cards for foreigners.

But the question is this; how are they going to differentiate between those people?

Lets look at it from the policeman’s point of view shall we?

Obviously, the first person you stop is the Muslim on the far left in purple, ‘Number 1’. This guy is probably here on a passport with a Visa, and should be carrying his card.

‘Number 2’ we do not stop. She has her belly button showing, and is ‘light skinned’. The belly button, tight jeans and no bra means that she cannot possibly be a muslim, so we leave her alone.

Anyway she’s hot.

‘Number 3’ we pull over straight away. He looks ‘muslimish’, is wearing a cap and looks ‘shifty’. Frowning fits the profile. Stop.

‘Number 4’ STOP!

‘Number 5’ Call a WPC….STOP. Covered from head to toe, carrying heavy thick plastic bag.

‘Number 6’ Mouse brown hair, fashionable clothes, conscious of her hair. No stop.

‘Number 7’ Same as number 6.

‘Number 8’ Hot blond, no stop.

‘Number 9’ Nice handbag strap, caucasian, no stop.

Now, there is one problem with all the above:

EVERY ONE OF THE PEOPLE IN THIS PHOTOGRAPH IS A BRITISH CITIZEN!

Not one of them is required to carry or apply for an ID card of any kind, because they are all British and all of them were born right here in the UK.

This is the problem with what they are planning; it is the begnnning of ‘racial’ profiling on an unprecedented scale. That is the only way you are going to be able to pick up all the foreigners and get them fingerprinted. Then of course, after it is done (if it ever even happens) You will forever be pestering British Citizens simply because they do not ‘look the part’.

Then will come the calls for everyone to be put in the database, since to have only a section of the population under this system makes no sense at all, as we have said so many times.

Even if everyone were in the system, they would STILL use ‘racial’ profiling every day trying to hunt down the stragglers and the refusniks. This is a disaster in the making of the type that Britain suffered with its ‘sus law‘. Only it will be much much worse.

This is discrimination of the worst kind. It is also a breaking of trust in the same vein as the non-dom debacle; people who have lived here for decades are now to be treated as criminals, and subjected to a system created by habitual liars and incompetents who have so little care for human beings that it strains the imagination as to what it would be like to actually speak to these monsters in person.

The fact of the matter is, this is discrimination, pure and simple. A legal challenge is coming. An infrastructure for mass resistance is already in place.

This measure, this ‘dry run’ will be the death knell of this bad scheme.

From the Guardian

Passengers travelling between EU countries or taking domestic flights would have to hand over a mass of personal information, including their mobile phone numbers and credit card details, as part of a new package of security measures being demanded by the British government. The data would be stored for 13 years and used to “profile” suspects.

‘Profile’ what? A mobile phone number or credit card number tell you nothing unless you are also monitoring their usage, so can we assume that the government is interested in collecting blank data? Or that it monitors credit card activity and mobile phone usage? ECHELON suggests the latter, no?

Brussels officials are already considering controversial anti-terror plans that would collect up to 19 pieces of information on every air passenger entering or leaving the EU. Under a controversial agreement reached last summer with the US department of homeland security, the EU already supplies the same information [19 pieces] to Washington for all passengers flying between Europe and the US.

Two wrongs etc.

But Britain wants the system extended to sea and rail travel, to be applied to domestic flights and those between EU countries. According to a questionnaire circulated to all EU capitals by the European commission, the UK is the only country of 27 EU member states that wants the system used for “more general public policy purposes” besides fighting terrorism and organised crime.

This is an absolute disgrace and basically shows that the British government are bunch of power crazed authoritarian shits. It implies that some ‘validation’ would be required for any movement by air, sea or rail. This is only possible where you have a population with an ID card and attendant database. It also implies that you will need to ‘validate’ your credit cards, mobile phone purchases (and ‘up to’ 17 other things) within the same system. This is not so stealthy way of introducing the ‘need’ for mandatory ID systems through other legislation.

The so-called passenger name record system, proposed by the commission and supported by most EU governments, has been denounced by civil libertarians and data protection officials as draconian and probably ineffective.

The scheme would work through national agencies collecting and processing the passenger data and then sharing it with other EU states. Britain also wants to be able to exchange the information with third parties outside the EU.

Read the US, where your personal details are not subject to strong (but soon to be ineffective?) data protection laws

Officials in Brussels and in European capitals admit the proposed system represents a massive intrusion into European civil liberties, but insist it is a necessary part of a battery of new electronic surveillance measures being mooted in the interests of European security. These include proposals unveiled in Brussels last week for fingerprinting and collecting biometric information of all non-EU nationals entering or leaving the union.

If they insist where is the guardian’s reporting and analysis of their statements? An even better question is do you think these people have to justify their insistences to democratic scrutiny?

All airlines would provide government agencies with 19 pieces of information on every passenger, including mobile phone number and credit card details. The system would work by “running the data against a combination of characteristics and behavioural patterns aimed at creating a risk assessment”, according to the draft legislation.

“When a passenger fits within a certain risk assessment, he could be identified as a high-risk passenger.”

We have said numerous times that data doesn’t predict actions, there is sufficient legislation to identify and track suspects without collecting data about the general public. It is a fact and doesn’t become any less so when faced with increasingly irrational demands.

A working party of European data protection officials described the proposal as “a further milestone towards a European surveillance society.

Not towards, we are already there, this would simply make surveillance more extensive.

“The draft foresees the collection of a vast amount of personal data of all passengers flying into or out of the EU regardless of whether they are under suspicion or innocent travellers. These data will then be stored for a period of 13 years to allow for profiling. The profiling of all passengers envisaged by the current proposal might raise constitutional concerns in some member states.”

… but these will be ignored in the face of business lobbying and strongarm tactics from the US and it’s EU representitive, the British government?

The Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford said: “Where is this going to stop? There’s no mature discussion of risk. As soon as you question something like this, you’re soft on terrorism in the UK and in the EU.”

It will stop when people do not comply, these officials and bureaucrats think nothing of the general public, their job is to legislate and they legislate in accordance with their job description not democracy nor liberty nor egalitarianism nor any high ideals (and for the wrong sort of crazy dreams).

Britain is pushing for a more comprehensive system based on the experience of a UK pilot scheme that has been running for the past three years. Officials say Operation Semaphore, monitoring flights from Pakistan and the Middle East, has been highly successful and has resulted in hundreds of arrests.

The scheme has seen one in every 2,200 passengers warranting further investigation, with a tenth of those “being of interest”. British officials say rapists, drug smugglers and child traffickers have been arrested and want the EU scheme to cover “all fugitives from crown court justice”.

0.045% warrant further investigation, and so 0.0045% are of further interest. This is for flights to an area of the world where you may expect their to be an above average ‘level of interest’ 2.7 million ‘interesting people’ worldwide at that rate which of course would be an overestimate. And we haven’t even drilled down into ‘terrorists’ yet.

But Ludford said: “If you ask the UK government how many terrorists have been picked up, I don’t think you get a very straight answer.”

Because it is too embarrassingly small to mention? Because it contradicts the Climate of Fear? Because it is bad for business?

EU officials have asked the Home Office minister Meg Hillier for information about the arrests of suspected terrorists.

Do you know what I hate the most?

People who cannot see the world through the eyes of other people:

EU visitors to have fingerprints taken

This title is backwards. It should read, ‘Visitors to EU to have fingerprints taken’. But I digress.

Rory Watson and David Charter

BRUSSELS Every visitor to the European Union would have to provide fingerprints before being allowed to enter, under plans unveiled yesterday to clamp down on illegal immigration.

The move to record the arrival and departure of non-EU citizens and to store the data in a single European database is part of a wider overhaul of border security. It is aimed at the largest single category of illegal migrants: people who remain once their visa or permit has expired.

Franco Frattini, the EU Justice Commissioner, argued that the existence of the electronic register containing a visitor’s personal details and final destination would make it possible to identify overstayers.

The scheme, which must be approved by all 27 EU governments before it can come into force in 2013 as proposed, has been criticised by civil rights groups. They fear that it could lead to a “fortress Europe” mentality against foreigners and to identity theft if the data were lost or stolen.

[…]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

We have already talked about this, for years. It is bad, no matter who is doing it, and that is wether or not it is in retaliation for the mass humiliation of people from the countries in the EU, or because it is part of a wider plot.

What is galling to me are the reactions of the filthy, stupid americans to this article:

Oh well, just another reason for me to not travel outside of my own country.
RDM, Rockville, MD USA

My wife and I try to visit a different place in Europe every year or so. I guess we will start exploring more of the US for vacation if this goes through. Doesn’t the EU realize that they may be able to identify illegals but they still have to find them once they are in country?
JB, Sierra Vista, AZ USA

Well, I guess I won’t be visiting the EU anymore. I’ll travel my own country…there’s plenty to see here. This entire fingerprint / Big Brother idea is a waste! Both sides of the Atlantic just need to stop it. I’m not afraid of people. For every nut that comes over, there’s thousands of good, honest people. I can stand a nut or two every so often to be and live free.
DB, Atlanta,

Criminals are fingerprinted. This doesn’t send the right message to tourists. And as an American citizen I have no desire to illegally immigrate to Europe, Thanks.
chrysd, Lexington,

It is my finger, and my fingerprints. I will not be going to Europe if this passes. EVER.
Dave, Seattle, USA

These are the same subhumans who can stand by while people are lining up to be incinerated and not even ask a question. The huge lines at airports, international outrage, the previous reciprocal fingerprinting backlash when Brazil fingerprinted only americans….all of this means nothing, until it is actually your turn.

The scum of the earth is what these people are.

It is this same lack of empathy that allows them to sit back and do nothing while their military murders millions of people around the world. Then when it is THEIR TURN, the whole world is made to suffer for it, like it is some sort of unique tragedy.

And there are the usual ‘nothing to fear nothing to hide glove’ puppets, the ignorant who think its ‘no big deal’, the stupid who think it will ‘stop islamic terrorism’ etc etc; the same broken record Then there are the Brits who say, ‘dumb americans’. You get the picture.

Finally, there was one curios post:

I spent almost 2 hours queuing at Newark airport to be fingerprinted before I could enter the US. A week later I was pulled over in Vermont for driving 10 mph above the speed limit. Upon seeing my British driving licence, the policeman called up homeland security and was told there was no record of me entering the country! So much for the fingerprint system.
Calista, cambridge,

??!!!

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if all of this was an elaborate scam to sell equipment that didn’t even work!!!

We know that USVISIT does not count people out of the country as they exit, it just might be true.

More likely is that USVISIT is just a processing machine to capture the prints, names and addresses and photos of hundreds of millions of people. That is why the exit system doesn’t matter.

EU plans to require biometrics of all non-European visitors

By Stephen Castle
Sunday, February 10, 2008

BRUSSELS: All non-Europeans would need to submit biometric data before crossing Europe’s frontiers under sweeping European Union proposals to combat illegal migration, terrorism and organized crime that are to be outlined this week.

The only reason why this is being opened as a possibility is USVISIT.

And yet, the EU appears to be furious that the Great Satan wants more passenger data.

The plans – arguably the biggest shake-up of border management in Europe since the creation of an internal travel zone – would apply to citizens of the United States and all other countries that now enjoy visa-free status.

They would, however, allow EU citizens and “low risk” frequent travelers from outside the bloc to pass through automated, fast-track frontier checkpoints without coming into contact with border guards. Voluntary programs for prescreening such visitors, who would register fingerprints and other data, would be stepped up.

‘Voluntary’. A page right out of Tony Bliar and his venal musical chairs Home Secretaries and their ID Card farce.

The proposals, contained in draft documents examined by the International Herald Tribune and scheduled to go to the European Commission on Wednesday, were designed to bring the EU visa regime into line with a new era in which passports include biometric data.

No debate, no consultation, no warning, no rationale, just ‘this is the way it is going to be’. Pure dictatorship, pure fascism. Who has designed this system, why is it being put in place after centuries of people moving without problems and decades of free travel without Fascist measures?

The commission, the EU executive, argues that migratory pressure, organized crime and terrorism are obvious challenges to the Union and that the bloc’s border and visa policy needs to be brought up to date.

This is not a rationale, this is a complete lie.

for decades, ‘terrorism’ has been going on in europe, and in the case of Italy, the home of Fascism and Franco Frattini, the terrorism was callously engineered by the Italian government to…terrorize the good people of Italy. Terror is no pretext to abuse the people of europe in this way. Migratory pressure can be controlled by the ID cards that all EU citizens are already compelled to carry. These measures will not stop people coming to Italy in boats or walking into europe. It will only impact the law abiding and good people; in fact, this plan is a clever scheme by equipment vendors to create a market for themselves where millions of people will be forced to consume their services through contract with governments. Organized crime? Italy is the world capitol for organized crime, and yet, you could not have a more beautiful and well ordered country, where the people have a high standard of living, a high ‘index of happiness’ as do many counties of europe. This simply is not needed, and when they say that, “visa policy needs to be brought up to date” this code for, “we have to keep up with the americans”.

It also wants a new European Border Surveillance System to be created, to use satellites and unmanned aircraft to help track the movements of suspected illegal migrants.

All of this will cost money, contractors will make a fortune on it, it will not stop illegal working, or ‘terrorism’

If approved by the commission this week, the measures would need the approval of all EU states.

The United States routinely requires European citizens to submit fingerprints when crossing its borders and the commission’s document notes that America plans to introduce an electronic travel-authorization system for people from countries like Britain, France and Germany that are in its Visa Waiver Program.

And it is all pure evil, and we and many smart people have been saying so for years.

The commission’s proposals cover the Schengen zone, Europe’s internal free-travel area named after the village in Luxembourg near where the original agreement between five countries was signed on June 14, 1985. Twenty-four countries are now members.

It is unclear whether Britain and Ireland, which along with Cyprus are not members of Schengen, would opt into the program.

Each year more than 300 million travelers cross EU borders, but there is no obligation for countries inside the Schengen free-travel zone to keep a record of entries and exits of non-European third-country nationals in a dedicated database. Moreover, if the visitor leaves from another Schengen country, it is often impossible to determine whether or not the visitor overstayed his or her visa.

And that is the way it should be. Everything has been working without these measures, and these measures will not be effective, because, A) Terrorism is a false pretext, B) only law abiding people use passports, C) organized crime will not be impacted in any way.

The proposals, drafted by the European commissioner for justice and home affairs, Franco Frattini, suggest that non-Europeans on a short-stay visa would be checked against a Visa Information System that is already under construction and should be operational in 2012.

Fratinni the Fascist, strikes again. This evil bastard is, “…responsible for Freedom, Security and Justice.” What a joke. This evil man has consistently been for the erasure of freedom, measures that do not improve security, and that are unjust. He wants to censor the internet. Lets leave it right there. This is a very bad man.

Frattini also is calling for a new database to be set up to store information on the time and place of entry and exit of non-European nationals, using biometric identifiers. Once a person’s visa expired, an alert would go out to all national authorities that the visitor had overstayed his or her allotted time.

Fratinni is an imbecile. This database he is proposing will not catch a single illegal worker that does not use a passport, and these people number in the millions. Perhaps next he will advocate the re-opening of the concentration camps to store all the undesirables; by making this database, he will be putting in place the infrastructure to make it easy to do, just like his predecessors and inspiration the Nazis did. How can such a beautiful country produce such an ugly man?

Travelers from countries with a visa requirement would need to provide biometric data at European consulates before leaving their home country. Those arriving from nations not requiring visas, like the United States, would also need to submit fingerprints and a digitalized facial image.

Border control that is proportionate is what is required. There is nothing wrong with border controls as long as they are reasonable and do not interfere with the flow and freedom of people. For decades air travel has been a great boon to everyone. If there is a problem of too many travelers, this cannot be solved by fingerprinting everyone over the top Security Theatre and launching spy planes and surveillance drones.

But the European Union would try to make the system more user-friendly for Europeans and some categories of bona fide visitors by granting them the status of “registered traveler.” They would be able to have their biometric travel documents scanned and checked by machines.

Once again, none of this will stop illegal migration, illegal working, ‘people trafficking’, terrorism, organized crime or any of the things Fratelli claims he wants to stop. These are measures that will only work on the harassed law abiding public.

All Europeans should be able to use such a system when EU countries complete the task of issuing passports with two biometric identifiers, by 2019 at the latest. The 27 EU countries started issuing passports with a digitalized facial image in August 2006 and, in June 2009, will add the holder’s fingerprints. European residence permits will also contain the same identifiers.

All nonsense, and all measures designed to increase the cost of issuing and maintaining passports; this is the real reason why these measures are being proposed; vendors will have the opportunity to roll out several layers on top of the existing passports, each one being worth billions of euros.

Think about it, RFID chips mean the chips themselves manufactured in the tens of millions, the readers on a scale of tens of thousands, then there are the maintenance contracts. The same goes for fingerprinting; readers will need to be rolled out in the tens of thousands. Digital photograpy, whole new generations of equipment. Then the databases and associate software and hardware it will be run on. It is a contractors wet dream. Fratelli and the unelected, unaccountable EU commission are the people who are going to dish out this candy.

Non-Europeans could gain the same, fast-track status providing they have not overstayed previous visas, have proof of sufficient funds to pay for their stay in Europe and hold a biometric passport.

And of course, the illegals, who have no money, always overstay the visas they never apply for, will go around this system.

All non-European nationals would be asked to make an electronic application, supplying key data, before their arrival, allowing them to be checked against anti-terror databases in advance.

Migrants on foot? How many times do we have to repeat it?

The draft documents also highlight weaknesses in Europe’s efforts to guard its borders. One paper points out that, in the eight EU countries with external borders in the Mediterranean Sea and southern Atlantic, frontier surveillance is carried out by about 50 authorities from 30 institutions, sometimes with competing competencies and systems.

and nothing that Fratelli is offering will make it better. And he knows it.

The plans foresee increased use of satellites and unmanned surveillance aircraft to monitor unauthorized movements, and a computerized communication network to share information.

‘computerized’

Just like Buck Rogers!

Frattini also wants to see a bigger role for the agency that coordinates cooperation over external borders, known as Frontex. Although the agency has been criticized in some southern European nations for failing to match the scale of the challenge over illegal migration, the commission argues that it has achieved impressive results.

In 2006 and 2007 more than 53,000 people were apprehended or denied entry at a frontier and at least 2,900 false travel documents were seized. In addition, 58 people suspected of links to illegal trafficking have been arrested.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/10/europe/union.php?page=2

In other words, it has been just about as effective as USVISIT; billions spent to capture a handful of passports, and under one hundred criminals.

Pathetic.

Sadly we cannot expect anyone in Europe to take a common sense stance, put their foot down and say, “this is impossibly stupid”.

An ugly future, built by ugly people.

This poster:

is appearing all over London.

I wonder who is behind them?

Google says: Your search – DRD/Noid – did not match any documents when we search for “DRD/Noid”.

When we search for “H.M.P. London” the third result is a flickr page showing the posters plastered on a telephone booth near Holland Park.

Fascinating.

It would have been an even better poster if it had some government / bad contract style super small print that you could only see if you went up close to the poster, explaining why ID Cards are such a bad idea.

Still we have to award them an ‘A’ for effort; good job lads.

The great Neil Young says that music cannot change the world. This is essentially correct.

Gestures like this poster are, like music, moving and beautiful, but they will not solve the problem. They will not even convey enough information so that you can make a coherent argument. If you are going to make the effort to print thousands of posters, and then take the risk of flyposting them illegally, then you should make the best of that effort, and remove all ambiguity from the act. That means each poster should explain in detail what the problem is and what needs to be done.

Look at how the state does it:

look at how it is laid out, and the way it clearly and succinctly conveys important information.

If I were to design a poster, it would be a pastiche of the second one, with an appropriate text, so that everyone reading it would have the living daylights frightened out of them. THAT is the kind of poster that would be an effective information tool, of the kind that we need.

Perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, victims: we can be clear about three of these categories. The bystander, however, is the fulcrum. If there are enough notable exceptions, then protest reaches a critical mass. We don’t usually think of history as being shaped by silence, but, as English philosopher Edmund Burke said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’

This is as true today as it ever was.

There are many great quotes from Edmund Burke:

• The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
• It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

The last one there is particularly convenient to all those who are great (or who think that they are great) and who like to paint wild strokes with a broad brush.

Back to the first quote. If you have a voice and do not use it, if you have a constituency, no matter how small, and do not speak to it, you are a part of the problem. You are a bystander, a collaborator and a facilitator of evil.

It’s like watching people carted off in trains and saying, “…it’s not my job to protest that, there are professional protesters that have that job. Don’t bother me.” Even Naomi Wolf understands that:

…’the Founders did not intend for us to delegate defense of liberty to a professional class…’, and ‘it is for ordinary individuals to take on the responsibility’, to which I strongly agree.

But then she is talking about a country that had founders and a revolution. Its people still have a revolutionary spirit, and we are seeing the rebirth of it right now. Other countries are not so fortunate, and their ‘men’ act in a way that facilitates tyranny – they seem to feed off of it, and enjoy it.

Very odd indeed.

No one will be able to say of me, that I did not do my best, use my wits and my words to preserve the good. I never sat down and said, “its not my business” in any place that I ever lived.

That is the difference between real people and born servants, inured to slavery, locked into their lot in life…

Disgusting!

Poll shows growing opposition to ID cards over data fears

· 25% now strongly against their use, says ICM survey
· Majority concerned about sharing of personal details

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Wednesday February 6, 2008
The Guardian

The number of people strongly opposed to the introduction of a national identity card scheme has risen sharply, according to the results of an ICM poll to be published today.

Those campaigning against ID cards said last night that the poll, with results showing that 25% of the public are deeply opposed to the idea, raises the prospect that the potential number of those likely to refuse to register for the card has risen. If the poll’s findings were reflected in the wider population, as many as 10 million people may be expected to refuse to comply.

The ICM survey also shows that a majority of the British people say they are “uncomfortable” with the idea that personal data provided to the government for one purpose should be shared between all Whitehall-run public services.

The poll, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, shows that British public opinion is deeply split over the introduction of identity cards, with 50% against the idea and 47% in favour.

Recent disputes over the further delays to have hit the project have strengthened opposition to the scheme, with those who think it is “a very bad” idea rising from 17% last September to 25% now. This compares with only 12% who think that pressing ahead with ID cards, which will cost around £93 per person when combined with a passport, is a “very good idea”.

In the aftermath of the government’s recent embarrassing losses of confidential personal data, public opinion appears to have turned sharply against the idea of sharing information within Whitehall and the creeping introduction of the “Big Brother” state.

A majority – 52% – say they feel uncomfortable with allowing “personal information that is provided to one government department to be shared between all government departments that provide public services”.

However, the poll does show that clear support exists among the public for setting up a central identity register and collecting personal travel details on everyone coming in and out of Britain. It also reveals some support for the creation of a separate database about every child, including details about their parents and carers.

That ‘support’ is there because they have not asked the right question. If it is put to people that their details will end up being used as if they had an ID card and the NIR was implimented, they would all swing against it. That is obvious.

Phil Booth, of the No2id campaign, said: “With a quarter of the country deeply opposed to ID cards, and a clear majority reluctant to have their personal information shared even for public services, the government needs to fundamentally rethink its database state.

“These figures suggest that millions will simply refuse to comply.”

He said the results showed that between 10 million and 15 million could refuse to register for the card.

[…]

The first ID cards will be introduced in December this year for foreign nationals resident in the country.

That is discrimination, and it will not happen. Like we have said so many times, if you do not force everyone to have an ID card, mandating that a small group (brown skinned foreigners) to have them means that everyone who looks like a foreigner will be harrassed. This is clearly not doable.

It will follow a pilot scheme to be run in London from April to test the technology. The prime minister, Gordon Brown, has confirmed that legislation will have to be introduced before it becomes compulsory for British nationals to register for the ID cards scheme.

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/story/0,,2253081,00.html

That is not going to happen. Clearly.

What is most interesting about this is how people are going to react to the abominable temple to soft Fascism, Heathrow Terminal 5.

Millions of people are going to turn up there, and in a harassed state, will probably consent to being fingerprinted. That Concentration Camp like processing will go on and on, until they have the fingerprints and matched passport details of many tens of millions of people. Then, they can say, “we already have your details from your passing through Treblinka Terminal 5, as you can see, the world has not ended. If we give you ID cards, you will not have to have your prints taken wherever you travel; you will just have to swipe your card – we will speed you through if you have one”.

Two years down the line, at the current rate of throughput (67 million annual passengers, 11% travel to UK destinations, 43% are short-haul international travellers, and 46% are long-haul.) means that they will have at least 60 million records stored in their system, erring on the small side. Many of these entries will be of completely innocent British travellers, at least 11% of whom were traveling inside their own country.

Like I said before this building is designed to soften the public to the idea of being fingerprinted and surveilled, and it was done completely deliberately. Once millions have been violated by this monstrous building, it will be that much easier to slide ID cards between the metal contacts that, if they were to touch, would blow up the scheme in the face of that chunky mass murderer Gordon Brown.

Terminal 5 propaganda is already moving ahead at full steam, and of course, there is no mention of fingerprinting in this PR drivel.

I wonder what a mass refusal to be fingerprinted at Terminal 5 would look like? Or a mass stay away campaign, where people from all over the world refuse to arrive in or pass through Terminal 5 in protest at this evil Fascist police state temple, this foul abattoir where peoples dignity is ground up into hamburger, this Nazi inspired brainwashing tool where people are reduced to the level of numbered cattle.

The fact is that it is illogical to be against ID cards and the NIR but to then allow yourself to be fingerprinted at Terminal 5. All the objections to ID cards and the NIR overlap perfectly with the objections to that disgusting warehouse, and so, who is going to be first in the mass media to point out the problem with this bad building, and what are they going to do should people finally wake up and say, “I am a human being my life has value; my dignity and sense of decency demands that I will not to submit to this”.

They are producing THE PROBLEM:

Happy Mutant Profile
brianwood1

Website: www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~bmwood/

Bio: PhD student in biological anthropology, Harvard University

Recent Comments:
LEAKED UK GOV’T DOC REVEALS PLAN TO “COERCE” BRITS INTO NATIONAL ID REGISTER — MIRROR THIS FILE!
JANUARY 29, 2008 3:01AM

I grew up in the United States, and have immigrated to Denmark, which as mentioned by user FELSBY in the first posting to this discussion, is a state in which each resident has a “CPR Number” which uniquely identifies them in a state database. This unique ID is used in a variety of ways, and is employed by both private and public institutions for linking information to an individual. Contrary to Cory’s posting above, it is used in different government agencies, for example, one’s doctor uses the number, as does the civil registry of marriages, as does the university. Guess what? All is well here in Denmark. As for the US, I recently had a nightmare situation that could have been avoided if the federal government had a central database that contained either my physical or email address. My taxes were audited, and the notices were sent to the last address they “had on file” and these never reached me. Misery ensues. Keeping a database of individuals who reside in your country is a basic requirement for organizational efficiency. Employers, universities, charitable organizations, gyms, even BoingBoing all keep track of their users with unique IDs. Since we pay taxes and reside in a state, why shouldn’t the state keep track of its citizens using standard methods? Conspiracy theories aside, a national database and ID card has great merits. In my opinion, the Danish example shows that equating national ID system to RFID implants, fascism, or some type of New World Order misses the point entirely.

My emphasis.

Harvard, apparently, is producing people who cannot distinguish between a blog, a university, charitable organizations, employers and the state.

This is what we are up against; the supposedly brightest and best americans are amongst the most brainwashed and clueless people alive.

And this guy is VERY bright. He has a Computer Science: M.S. with distinction, and speaks four languages, including Swahili. From his CV:

Languages

Native English, advanced Swahili, basic Spanish, basic Danish
Programming Languages

C/C++, C#, Java, PHP, HTML, Javascript, Visual Basic, Perl

How is it that someone so educated, well travelled, deeply exposed to different cultures clearly capable of logical thinking be so utterly wrong about ID cards, when he is so clearly well informed about the nature of humanity, his place on this planet, his recent history, and how computers and databases work?

From all three of those angles (power corrupting, man being born free on the earth not as property, the recent history of the Soviet Union and Fascism throughout Europe), the nature of human beings has shown us that ID cards and their related systems are just not acceptable in the hands of any government. How can people like this get it so very wrong?

I am FLABBERGASTED and UTTERLY PERPLEXED.

For the millionth time…

Keeping a database of individuals is NOT a ‘basic requirement for organizational efficiency’. And even if it were, just because something makes a process more efficient that doesn’t immediately mean that it should be implemented. Culling all the starving in the world would be an efficient way of eliminating the problem of hunger…blah blah blah bad example blah.

Just because ID cards are ‘standard methods’ in many parts of the world, that does not mean that they are morally correct, or right, or that anyone should adopt them.

The citizens of a state are not the property of the state. To say that the state should keep track of THEIR citizens is to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship between a state and the people who live in it.

“We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around.”
Ronald Regan

Indeed. Do I really have to spell all of this out? Honestly!

The danish example shows that reasonable people can be overwhelmed and subsumed into a community that is totally inured to this form of slavery.

This person decides to immigrate to Denmark. He decides to live there by their rules; being a polite young man he is hardly going to come there with all his pesky Live Free or Die twaddle-baggage. He leaves all that behind, learns Danish and acts like a Dane. That means repeating like a robot that ID cards are good, he doesn’t see what all the fuss is about, and everyone who doesn’t think like him has ‘missed the point’. Yes indeed. Very polite. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

The actual point is his philosophy and personal standards are his alone, and they do not apply to anyone else. Our ideas about ID cards do not apply to this gentleman. Or the Danes for that matter. He can go there, live there, take their ID card, obey their rules until he dies. We accept this, and him, and ‘his’ philosophy.

The difference between this man and us is that his philosophy, his ‘opinion’, requires that we submit to his ideas of what is good and bad. His philosophy requires that we give up our liberties to satisfy his broken ideas of how the world works and the nature of human beings. If we are wrong, it affects only us, since we do not want to exercise power over anyone. If he is wrong, other people suffer as a consequence of the law rolling out his control measures. That is the basic difference between all the pro ID people and people who live free. They think they are right and everyone else is wrong and are prepared to force us to accept their view of the world.

Hey wait a minute…when I said this is what harvard is producing these days I was wrong; this is what harvard has always produced!

Every time we read comments to do with the issue of ID cards, there are always these imbeciles, who are not trolls, but honest simple folk who do not think too hard, who prop up the insane ideas behind ID cards. They are almost always people who are either brain dead, or people who have moved to Denmark, or Belgians, or Germans, or people from some Spanish or Portuguese speaking country who live in a country without a national ID card, and they always display a shocking and repulsive disregard for human dignity. Shockiing to me at least, and judging by how everyone rightly jupms (yes ‘jupms’) down the throats of these morons, many other people also take offense at these non thinkers who impurify our neural impulses with their statist electron powered drivel:

Patrick said, “British society wasn’t run by a fascist dictatorship for forty-one years in the middle of the 20th century. Unlike, say, Portugal.”

Patrick, how we define “dictatorship” can be argued subjectively. While GB hasn’t had an official dictator, it has a history filled with Kings that, for lack of a better word, were Dictorial in their actions. And my family lived under an oppresive government which was guilty of genocide (I’m Irish). It doesn’t take long to find a Top Dog who has abused his/her power (I live in Detroit!). And humans have very short memories. The Spanish and the Portuguesse seem to avoid their past, not review it in detail in an attempt to learn from it (sweep it under the carpet).

and…

BRUNO FIGUEIREDO, “I don’t mind surveillance on the street since I’m not doing anything wrong.”

Only until someone decides you ARE doing something wrong. (I mean, honestly, have you read 1984?) What about toll booths with RFID readers being used to hand out speeding tickets because you’re going a couple miles over the limit? What if you pop over to the neighbor’s to borrow a cup of sugar carrying the baby monitor while the baby naps? In my state, that’s child neglect. How convenient it must be for the department of children to have it all on Big Brother’s surveillance video. Criminalizing cake-baking.

Citizens shouldn’t be monitored in a free society for the convenience of the government or police. Citizens shouldn’t be treated like prospective criminals. And nothing, NOTHING in the world is scarier than a government saying, “Papers, please.”

These things creep. They always creep. Right now I’m in a battle with a local government body who won’t pay me for work I did until I give them personal documents that I am not required by law to give them. They keep demanding it for their record-keeping. I keep refusing.

I know it’s an idea that’s stronger in Anglo-American thought, but I truly don’t understand why other countries (particularly those that suffered under the Nazis) don’t shudder when a government suggests “identity papers” as a good idea.

(And for those of you not visiting the US because of our utterly moronic and invasive treatment of foreign tourists, I’m so sorry we’ve decided to suck and I hope one day we can have a tourist industry again, when we stop abusing them.)

go and follow it for yourself http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/29/leaked-uk-govt-doc-r.html

These people are the problem, and this ‘BRUNO FIGUEIREDO’ is the worst kind:

Heck, a few weeks ago an UK convicted paedo was arrested, gave a false name and they let it go. That could never happen in Portugal.

Yeah, right, Mr. ‘Boa Tarde’ Portugal is soooooo gooooood at catching criminals, especially of the ‘paedo’ type.

Another common trait of the pro ID people, they are to a man, totally delusional. Its easy to hate them, because they are actually attacking us by helping the people who are trying to enslave us. And being up against smart people like this makes the problem much worse, because they are more dangerous and potent than dumb people. They are the architects of the systems of fascism, and if they are not busy building the tools, they are eloquently explaining why they are so great and innocuous, backing it up with their in depth studies into the nature of man.

His flippant comments about the New World Order are telling; there is no ‘some type of New World Order’ the plan for a New World Order is utterly real, and the push to create it is an established fact. Its members discuss its implementation, aims and objectives openly now.

Finally, I use the language of hate because this man and his demented colleagues want to enslave me and all the members of my family, and my countrymen.

I will not have it.

Some unscrupulous litter-bug left a copy today’s Guardian on the floor of a train, but the proverbial silver lining is that my eyes were drawn to an article about a person under witness protection.

“The Witness Protection Scheme is designed to look after people who have essential evidence about some of the most serious offences, and who therefore face a real threat to their safety […] some of these are innocent bystanders […]
Individulas living under the scheme have to trade in their old life for a new one […] and changing their identity, with medical records and educational qualifications under a new name …”

I have mentioned (in passing) before that the NIR database cloud/grid/mesh will make maintaining the credibility of the Witness Protection Scheme very difficult. Currently your ‘identity’ can be decomposed and reconstituted quite easily by altering your official paper trail – and yet the witness protection scheme does not provide full untracability:

“In 1999, the IRA supergrass Martin McGartland survived an attempt on his life while living under an assumed identity in Whitley Bay”

Now consider that the ‘selling point’ of the NIR project is that your unique biometric information will be stored on the database and prevent people from assuming multiple identities. You run into a problem, in that there has to be the capability to completely expunge the record of a person – possibly across a number of linked (even transnational) databases and create a false history (which in turn will have have its own history forged – think timestamps!). Either the NIR has to be designed to be compromisable or schemes such as WPS have to be compromised.

—

And they didn’t deface the crossword either!!