here it is:

download the entire document here.

Leaked memos reveal ‘confusing’ ID card plans

By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:14am GMT 28/01/2008

The future of the Government’s identity card scheme is in confusion as it emerged that plans for a national fingerprint database may be quietly dropped.

MAY be is not good enough, and an NIR without fingerprints is still a pernicious and evil thing, of a kind that the Soviets would have wet their pants over…if they had the power to conceive of such a system.

At the same time, it appears that ministers are considering introducing a compulsory ID scheme by stealth, with plans that would require young people to obtain a card before being granted a driving licence.

We have said many times before, a driving license is a document certificate that proves you are competent to drive at a certain level, certain classes of vehicle. It should be used for nothing other than that, and what this immoral degenerate government is doing is a classic example of feature creep. Driving licenses are about road safety and nothing more.

The proposals were disclosed in two leaked Home Office documents and expose the lack of agreement within the Government over the extent to which ministers should continue with the commitment to ID cards.

A confidential document produced by the Home Office Identity and Passport Service and revealed in The Observer said: “We should test for each group we enrol whether the cost of fingerprints is justified by the use to which they will be put.”

First of all, these are the documents that we know about; heaven knows what else they have been discussing in secret. And of course they are doing it all in secrete because they instinctively know that what they are doing is evil and immoral. If any of this were of benefit to the public it would be done in public.

Secondly, the cost of fingerprinting is irrelevant, and once they go into any database, the use to which they will be put will always lead to a secondary use. Secondary use is one of the major, and most significant complaints about the NIR and ID cards, and not surprisingly, it is missed by the venal monsters who are in charge of cooking the witches pot of this scheme.

Asking people for their fingerprints so they can get a driving license is absurd; having someone’s fingerprints will not increase their skill as a driver, and it will not prevent accidents. None of these ‘security’ measures reduce crime. This is now a well established fact.

If you want to reduce traffic accidents, you make it easier to get driving licenses. Remove the barriers to people taking lessons and getting a license. There will be more skilled drivers on the road, less unlicensed drivers and a safer road system. But of course, ministers don’t care about road safety, they are desirous only of control over the individual at the minute by minute level, and they are, by their own language, looking for any way to get everyone on the database.

I 100% guarantee you that other, yet to be disclosed, leaked, secret documents state the following:

“…it is not imperative that we take fingerprints now; if we hold off on that part of the scheme, we still get a complete database and we can them include universal fingerprinting when that technology has improved. The increase in efficacy of fingerprinting technology in the future will help us make the case for it, and of course, everyone will already be conditioned to being on the NIR”.

You see?

A separate memo obtained by The People appears to contradict Gordon Brown’s insistence that ID cards will remain voluntary for everyone but foreigners living in the UK.

Headed “Options Analysis”, it says: “Various forms of coercion, such as designation of the application process for identity documents issued by UK ministers (eg passports) are an option to stimulate applications in a manageable way.

You see how they use the word ‘coercion’? Not persuasion, but:

co·er·cion /ko???r??n/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[koh-ur-shuhn] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–noub
1. the act of coercing; use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance.
2. force or the power to use force in gaining compliance, as by a government or police force.

This is what the NIR and ID cards is all about: the use of totalitarian government force to enslave the population.

“There are advantages to designation of documents associated with particular target groups, eg young people who may be applying for their first driving licence.”

The document adds that “universal compulsion should not be used unless absolutely necessary”.

Meaning that they need to have a pretext to bring it in? Like a ‘terrorist’ attack or some bogus emergency condition, or some crisis, like too many Eastern european people ‘clogging up the system’.

Once again, these problems can be solved without an NIR and ID cards. If you close the borders to all EU nationals, then the flow will be stemmed. But that is another question for another post.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: “The Government has seen their ID card proposals stagger from shambles to shambles. Now they plan to use coercion in a desperate attempt to bolster a failed policy.”

And you are going to do what? We still have not heard a commitment to the abolition of the NIR and the repealing of all biometric passports from the Tories. Do correct me if I am wrong about that.

Shami Chakrabarti, of the human rights group Liberty, added: “So much for a voluntary scheme. This leaked memo confirms what we have already known – that compulsion is the ultimate ambition of this scheme.”

I am not in the fan club of Liberty I am afraid, but their website has an interesting piece of history:

Liberty was founded in 1934 as the National Council for Civil Liberties, principally to monitor the policing of protests.

NCCL (renamed Liberty in 1989) has campaigned to protect and promote rights and freedoms for over 70 years.

Our founder, Ronald Kidd, created the Council because he was concerned about the use of police agent provocateurs to incite violence during the hunger marches of 1932.

President of the first Council was E.M. Forster, with vice-presidents including Clement Attlee, Aneurin Bevan, A.A. Milne, J.B. Priestley and Bertrand Russell.

With the UK’s complicity with torture and threats to privacy, free speech and protest rights in the news daily, over 70 years later, Liberty’s work is far from over.

As we have seen, using agent provocateurs is a long standing technique used by the police to create a pretext for clamping down on protest. That is another reason why demonstrating in the street is not only useless, it is dangerous. In the past, where it was impossible for people to communicate to millions of citizens unless you were working on a newspaper (and hence effectively neutered) demonstrations were necessary to literally rally support and act as a show of strength; to connect people to each other, to spread information rapidly and efficiently. Now of course, all of that can be done without going anywhere, at no cost. You also take away the enemy’s opportunity to spark off fake violence and induct the leaders into the police information systems, mischaracterize the legitimate concerns of fed up citizens and deflate movement.

A Home Office spokesman said: “When developing policy, it is right and logical that our first priority is to consider where ID cards can be of greatest benefit to the UK and to the individual.”

[…]

Telegraph

And there you have the mentality of these monsters perfectly encapsulated in a single sentence. Note that the person who said it is unnamed, so fterrified are they that their words will come back to haunt them.

These people are unaccountable, working in secret, without a care for the rights of the people for whom they work and to whom they are responsible.

This scheme is doomed to failure. The number of people who are now saying that they will not comply with it is growing every day. That they are still wasting time and money on it is a scandal.

By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor
Last Updated: 2:04am GMT 26/01/2008

The security of the online computer system used by more than three hundred thousand people to view the private details of children is in doubt after HM Government admitted it was not secure enough to be used by MPs, celebrities and the Royal Family.

Thousands of “high profile” people have been secretly removed from the ContactPoint system amid concerns that their confidential details would be put at risk.

This provoked anger from consumer groups and accountants who said the same levels of security should be offered to all British children regardless of their perceived fame.

HMRC was responsible for losing 25 million child benefit records and the latest admission will concern millions of people entrusting the online system with their confidential financial records.

[…]

ContactPoint has a list of those excluded from the new rules who must have their records kept on hard copies for “security reasons”.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to use the electronic system to make the Jan 31 deadline this week.

ContactPoint records contain children’s names, addresses, parent details, doctor details and other sensitive personal information, – all valuable to paedophiles.

On Friday, senior doctors said they had concerns over the security of the system – apparently confirmed by the the Government’s secret policy.

Mike Warburton, of the General Medical Council, said: “Either ContactPoint is a system which can guarantee confidentiality for all or they should defer plans to roll it out. It is extraordinary that MPs and others can enjoy higher security.”

Mark Wallace, of the Dr. Barnardos charity, said: “This double standard is unacceptable. If the online system is not secure enough for MPs, why should ordinary taxpayers have to put up with it?”

The system was uncovered by the Tory MP Andrew Robathan, who received a letter saying his children’s records could not be found online. He challenged ministers.

“Given our discussions on the efficiency of HMRC recently, how come I have also been sent a letter from my doctor saying I cannot find my children online?”

Jane Kennedy, a Treasury minister, told him: “There are categories of individual for whom security is a higher priority. Not just MPs – there are several categories – and HMRC does not have the facilities for their children to be placed online.”

[…]

INTERRUPTION!

This statement means that Jane Kennedy believes that there is a way to create a higher security system for celebrities and MPs that depends only on facilities and not the nature of data or databases!!!!!!

[…]

In a statement to The Daily Telegraph, ContactPoint confirmed the policy. “ContactPoint services are designed with security as an integral part of the service. We use leading technologies and encryption software to safeguard data and operate strict security standards.

“A tiny minority of individuals’ records, including MPs, have extra security measures over and above the very high standards of confidentiality with which ContactPoint treats all childrens’ data.

“The separate arrangements mean their doctors are unable to use the online service.”

The extra security applies to those in the public eye. Their details are thought to be stored on a highly-restricted database with extra levels of security.

ContactPoint stressed that all childrens’ details were secure.

[…]

Telegraph

And there you have it.

This blog, which is on our blogroll, is a sober voice to pay attention to:

Identity cards might not become compulsory for all Britons, Gordon Brown has appeared to suggest [at his monthly press conference].

Anyone getting a passport from 2010 will have to get a card, and ministers had said they would be compulsory for all if Labour won the next election.

But, in an apparent softening of that line, Mr Brown described compulsion only as an “option” which is “open”.

The press conference:

Question:
Do you think that in the medium to long term, to be effective, ID cards will need to be compulsory for British citizens?
Prime Minister:
That is the option that we have left ourselves open to but we haven’t legislated for it. [yet!]

I think over the course of the next few months people will see that there is some wisdom in the argument that we have put forward for identity cards themselves. If you look at the information that we are asking people to give for their identity card it is not much more than is actually required for a passport, but the advantage people have from an identity card is that that information cannot be used without biometric identification. So that is why we are starting with the foreign nationals and that is why we will move further, linking if you like passport information to biometrics over the course of the next few years, but we leave open a parliamentary vote on the decision about compulsion.

Well, there are all sorts of lies/mistakes in that response, such as the information to be stored* (or see BBC), and not answering the question, but let’s consider the issue of compulsion because this seems to be the hot potato at the moment.

Take care not to get drawn into whether or not ID cards will themselves become compulsory, because I think that as well as a ’softening of the tone’ as Phil Booth of NO2ID put it (indeed, perhaps Gordon is softening us up), we are being enticed on a wild goose chase – they don’t want us to consider or argue about what we should be concerned about.

And this is the National Register, the privacy demolishing database behind the cards (based on something that doesn’t function 100% at present).

(Not only because of the argument below, and that it is overkill, infringes on civil liberties, and probably won’t work, but also because here opponents to ID cards can find some common ground with supporters of the principle of ID cards but not this particular proposal.)

Once you are enrolled on the National Register, you are the card, in a sense – in other words, on accessing a service, you could just use a fingerprint or PIN. The card is surplus to requirements, really, unless it’s useful in circumstances to be able to simply show one (the lowest level of security envisaged by the Government’s proposals).

That said, it seems to me at least that Labour’s plan has always been to make ID cards compulsory: the IPS website is unequivocal (”Yes, it will eventually be compulsory”); Home Secretaries are unequivocal (”When we announced the decision, in principle, in November 2003 to introduce ID cards, it was made clear then that there would be a two-stage scheme. It was stated that the second stage would be compulsory—that it would apply to every UK resident”); Home Office Ministers too (”It is the Government’s policy that ID cards should eventually be compulsory”).

In short, it has been a fairly consistent public position of Labour’s.
I say fairly consistent… well, try Googling for “id cards compulsory”, taken together the first two results are amusing: the first article says, “Compulsory ID cards ruled out”; the second, “Move towards compulsory ID cards”; the two stories being just four months apart.
But if you read a lot of articles about ID cards, you’ll see these changes over time, and I think you’ll come to the same conclusion as me: that the intention is to make sure we are all enrolled on the National Register.

And we will be enrolled when we renew or apply for ‘designated documents‘. A designated document might be a passport – it could also be a driving licence, any ‘document’ the Home Secretary designates (after being approved by Parliament).
The Explanatory Notes to the Act say,

If a document is designated, anyone applying for one will simultaneously need to apply to be entered in the Register, unless he is already so registered (see section 5(2)). He would also need to apply for an ID Card unless he already has one. There is, however, an exception to the requirement to apply for an ID Card where the designated document being applied for is a British passport and the application is made before 1^st January 2010 (see subsection 6(7)). …
Under subsection (7) an application for a designated document must include an application for an ID card in the manner prescribed unless the application is being made before 1^st January 2010, is for a British passport and the application contains a declaration that the individual does not wish to be issued with an ID Card. Individuals applying for British passport can therefore choose to ‘opt out’ of being issued with an ID Card but only up until 1^st January 2010. The ‘opt out’ does not apply to the Register. All individuals who apply for a passport will be required to be entered onto the Register once the passport becomes a designated document.

In short, once passports become ‘designated documents’, you can opt out of being issued with an ID card until 2010, but you will nevertheless be compelled to enrol on the National Register.

Update
Question Time (BBC):

Mr Cameron asked if it was still government policy that ID cards would be compulsory for all. He read out a quote from Chancellor Alistair Darling, who said: “I do not want my whole life to be reduced to a magnetic strip on a plastic card.”The Tory leader added: “Compared with being Chancellor in his government being a magnetic strip on a plastic card is probably a welcome relief.”

If it was the policy of the government to press for compulsion, why did the PM say in an interview with The Observer that they would not be compulsory for existing British citizens, Mr Cameron asked the prime minister.

Mr Brown said he had made those comments because there had to be a vote in Parliament before they became compulsory. He asked if Mr Cameron supported identity cards for foreign nationals, which are being introduced this year.

Mr Cameron said he was against compulsory ID cards and asked why Mr Brown could not give a straight answer to the question.

“It is the government’s policy to move ahead with this,” said Mr Brown, depending on a vote in Parliament and how the voluntary scheme works.

Gordon does want compulsory ID cards and National Register enrolment for British citizens. It is that simple.
He told the Observer that, “under our proposals there is no compulsion for existing British citizens”. As you can see, that is not the truth. (see also Guardian and Telegraph)

* note however that this has gone from being “no more” or “the same as” with passports, or simply and merely “core identity information”, to “not much more” than “actually” required for a passport, honest guv.

[…]

http://ukliberty.wordpress.com/

I would like a Word Press plugin that scanned our blogroll and perhaps a list of RSS feeds, put summaries into WPadmin so that BLOGDIAL authors can cherry pick from them to save us copying pasting clicking and indenting manually.

In fact, the ultimate tool to do this would be a bundle for Textmate, that imports a list of posts and summaries as a new document with a ‘fetch’ keyboard shortcut, thereafter allowing another keyboard shortcut to present you with a ‘context selector’ of all the recent posts (like when you hit command shift b to turn a document into a blog post) so that you can import the post and then work with it. No doubt there will be more clever ways to present these lists, but the fact remains that we spend alot of time manually cross posting for comment and analysis and its a PITA that could be eliminated.

Students will be “blackmailed” into holding identity cards in order to apply for student loans, the Tories have warned.

According to Home Office documents leaked to the Conservative party last night, those applying for student loans will be forced to hold identity cards to get the funding from 2010.

Anyone aged 16 or over will be expected to obtain a card – costing up to £100 – to open a bank account or apply for a student loan.

The document says: “We should issue ID cards to young people to assist them as they open their first bank account, take out a student loan, etc.”

The only ‘difficulty’ in opening a bank account these days is the insistence on ‘official’ identification, and that requirement was a result of government legislation rather than the banks. It is quite simple to verify if a student attends a college or university by liaising with the admissions department, the combination of a university issued card and letter of enrolment should suffice.

Unfortunately these children will probably have been inured to the various incursions into their ‘privacy’ that we have all read about – metal detectors at school entrances, fingerprinting to use library books or at registration, etc.

The government had planned to start issuing the ID cards to people applying for a passport from 2010, but confidential documents confirm that the scheme will be delayed to at least 2012.

Not good enough, especially if the NIR ‘linked databases’ are being bedded-in anywa before then, and ‘voluntary’ cards issued almost immediately.

The biometric cards are due to be introduced for foreign nationals later this year, with the first expected to be issued to UK citizens on a voluntary basis from 2009.

As you see ‘2012’ is a red herring.

From next year, they will also be issued to people in “positions of trust” such as airport workers.

Edit to add: The government should also not be directly intervening in the terms of employment between a person and a private company. At most a private company that operates in a ‘secure environment’ should demonstrate the principle and efficacy of the company’s security audits when it tenders for its contract. As we know ID cards and biometric databases tell you nothing of a person’s intentions and as such should not be a condition of employment in any case.

The revelations have led to concerns that the government is planning to collect the fingerprints and other biometric details of more than two million young people entering higher education each year by stealth.

This is so ridiculous that anyone should see that the ‘need’ to create such a database is non-existant

Shadow immigration minister Damian Green called the plans “straightforward blackmail” to bolster “a failing policy”.

… and we reaffirm our commitment to dismantle the project completely?!?

“This is an outrageous plan. The government has seen its ID cards proposals stagger from shambles to shambles. They are clearly trying to introduce them by stealth.”

Indeed, they are so unpalatable that they would be rejected outright otherwise.

Guardian

Only 2 years late…

A piece on NIR and ID cards in light of the latest delay tactics of Grodon Broon.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2245836,00.html

“I’m optimistic that even if it starts to roll out, at some point down the line this is all going to start to fall apart,” says Neil Gerrard, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, and a sharp critic of the
plans. “I think it’ll be disputed by the courts. If you reach a point where somebody is being told, ‘You cannot be issued with a passport because you have not put your name on the register’, you’re bound to get human rights challenges to that.“

The link at top to a Blogdial post in early ’06 addressed the problem thusly…

I refuse an ID card, I will be unable to get a passport.

If I cannot get a passport, I am for all intents and purposes interned in my own country.

My government cannot deny my travel and/or entry and exit to my own country.

Therefore it follows: passports must not be required for a British citizen to transit UK borders.

Could this last part be true?

After hounding HMG / HMRC for a while with no answer forthcoming we are left with two possibilities.

Either they don’t know the answer, or they don’t want anyone to know the answer.

In the same piece, Nick Clegg shows signs of being coloured LibDem Yella (sic);

When we meet in his Westminster office, I read the quote out to him. Does he stand by it? “Well,” he says, “the first thing I’ll do, of course, is argue against the legislation.”

OK. But if Labour win the next election and the watershed moment of universal compulsion arrives, what then? He pauses. “I’m going to effectively lead by example. I just cannot envisage the circumstances in which I would, by compulsion, give up my data.”

[…]

Here’s a crass but unavoidable question, then. Would you go to jail?

“Well, I mean … I’d be prepared to go to court. I guess it would start with fines. We don’t know what the sanctions are going to be, but I can’t take my position – that I’m not going to accept
compulsion even if it’s written into primary legislation – unless I’m prepared to face the sanctions.”

He agrees that all this represents a big step, happily acknowledging that some of his colleagues advised him against it. His young staff make a point of reminding me that imprisonment would mean that their boss would have to give up his parliamentary seat. But is he really
prepared to go to such lengths?

This powderpuff politician needs to (1) grow some cojones, (2) stop posturing and stand by his principles, if he really has any.

Anyway, the argument is moot. This parrot is dead.

They Know It.

From Edri-gram:
====================================
8. ELOI – a French database to manage the expulsion of illegal migrants
====================================

On 26 December 2007, the French government published a decree creating the ELOI file, a database aimed at facilitating the expulsion of illegal migrants. In March 2007, the French highest administrative court cancelled a first attempt by the government to create this file, after 4 French NGOs, among which EDRI member IRIS, filed a case against the Interior ministry.

While the March text was cancelled by the Conseil d’Etat for procedural reasons only, the new version shows some important progress related to concerns raised by the NGOS. The main changes are that no data will be kept on visitors of illegal migrants in retention centres, and that personal data of citizens with which illegal immigrants are staying, when not in retention centres are kept for 3 months rather than 3 years.

While this step backwards from the government side is a direct result of the French NGOs action, the ELOI database remains unacceptable, according to the authors of the former complaint, with regards to the migrants themselves and their families. The duration of the retention of their data remains 3 years for most of the data, and data on their children are still kept in the ELOI file. Last but not least, the database still contains data on “the need for specific surveillance (of the migrant) with regards to the public order’. According to the NGOs, this demonstrates that the government makes a direct association between immigration and criminality.

Moreover, the decree contains new provisions, adding to the ELOI database an impressive amount of administrative and judicial data dealing with all aspects of the expulsion process, most of them to be retained for 3 years. In addition, a new purpose has been set to this file, which is to produce statistics on expulsion decisions and their actual executions.

These problems, as well as the Sarkozy administration setting up quantitative objectives – a minimum of 25000 expulsions targeted in 2008 – have made the French NGOs declare that the actual meaning of this file is the government willingness to manage the expulsion of migrants at an unprecedented level. They consider that with the ELOI database, this expulsion policy has reached an industrial level.

Decree n. 2007-1890 creating the ELOI database (only in French, 26.12.2007)

CNIL’s (French DPA) opinion on the draft decree (only in French, 24.05.2007)

French NGOs (CIMADE, GISTI, IRIS, LDH) joint press release (only in French, 03.01.2008)

IRIS dossier on foreigners and databases in France (only in French)

EDRI-gram: French high court cancels the creation of illegal migrants database (14.03.2007)

(Contribution by Meryem Marzouki, EDRI member IRIS – France)

So how long will it be before the French public are treated as Eloi too?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/story/0,,2240907,00.html

ID cards for foreigners within three years

… which is the modern-day, socially acceptable (to HMG) equivalent of the compulsory wearing of a Star of David. And the first step on the path to Idi Aminism, as you mentioned yesterday.

On BBQ they run HMG-approved, “ID-lite: it’s alrite” stories.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7186643.stm

But still quote BlindKid, telling it like it is:

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett, who introduced the initial identity card bill, said the scheme would not work unless everyone had to have a card. “In my opinion, without it being mandatory, there is little point in doing it,” he added.

And…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/humanrights/story/0,,2241005,00.html

FBI wants instant access to British identity data

… which is just incredible. For those worried by such schemes there are simple steps to avoid it, as Blogdial has repeatedly pointed out:
1. Don’t give anyone your personal data
2. Vote Tory/LibDem and let them know why you are prepared to support them.
3. DON’T GIVE ANYONE YOUR PERSONAL DATA.

Then, of course, there is the Prum Treaty, which gives anyone in the EU with access to the right computer, indirectly or directly, access to all your personal government-collected information. Do you know anyone who has heard of it, mentioned it to you, expressed their concern? I don’t.
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.12/prum-treaty-eu

It’s the secret tunnel through which personal liberty escapes, dug in the depths of night with a stolen spoon, and hidden from sight behind a poster of a busty wench… it goes unnoticed until one day…

‘That’s not Personal Freedom! That’s a papier-mache model of Personal Freedom!?!?!?! Hang on… OMIGOD Personal Freedom has has been whisked away down the secret tunnel behind the busty wench! How did we not notice!?’

‘I dunno… I’ve been sleeping in the same room as Personal Freedom for years and didn’t have an inkling anything like this could happen… ‘

How many times will people ignore the scraping sounds in the night before they wake up?

On a similar vein, after a year or two of ‘Facebook is fab, you simply must join and be my “friend”‘ articles, there is now a plethora of bleating, indignant tripe being written about how bad Facebook is, and how shocked these commentators are that Facebook has a very convoluted privacy policy, exploits your personal data to the absolute limits, and exists purely to make profit for people who are already incredibly wealthy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/10/privacy.it
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/20/facebook.privacy

‘Hang on, you seem to be fucking me up the arse and have been doing for some time but I’ve only just noticed!’

No pity for fools here. Just contempt for what passes as insightful journalism.

Gah!

Our unelected Prime Minister Gordon Brown still does not seem to have grasped the fundamentals of his NuLabour compulsory centralised biometric database the National Identity Register scheme according to this propaganda interview with The Observer newspaper this Sunday

Gordon Brown demonstrated how shockingly out of touch with the real world, by trying to justify the multi-billion pound compulsory national population surveillance and control infrastructure that is the National Identity Register, partly because of some small scale, unproven fingerprint biometric trials in some US and, allegedly, European shops, even though there have been no such successful trials in the UK, and no major UK retailer has decided that the idea is worth spending money on nationally.

The Yorkshire Ranter got in ahead of us, to point out some of the obvious flaws in Gordon Brown’s muddled answers to the rather soft and friendly questioning by The Observer regarding so called “ID Cards”.

Maybe when you go to a supermarket, as happens in some parts of the States and Europe, you are going to be safer, instead of carrying a credit card which can easily be stolen, to use your biometrics to shop.

This has to be some kind of record for biometric scienciness; the Government has historically always handwaved reality-based objections to ID cards away by claiming that we wouldn’t need them very often, whilst also floating insanely grandiose visions of biometric imperialism. Charles Clarke, we may recall, advertised them as “making it easier to rent videos”; as well as offering horrific new possibilities for total surveillance, this would have blasted the Government’s hazy costings down to nothing, demanding vast numbers of readers and numbers of transactions per second that even telecoms engineers would consider ambitious. To say nothing of insulting our intelligence.

This idea is both ridiculous, and, typically for Gordon Brown, a re-tread of a previously announced idea – see Gordon Brown – part 3 of the Chatham House speech on the 10th of October 2006, when he was still Chancellor of the Exchequer, trying unsuccessfully to pretend that he had a grasp on “security” and foreign affairs.

See also this NO2ID discussion forum thread on this latest spin by Gordon Brown.

See also Ideal Government, for another dissection of Gordon Brown’s ideas on “ID Cards” as outlined in the Observer interview.

We have not forgotten the other recent, dishonest and misleading attempts by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and by his “no longer a safe pair of hands” sidekick Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, who tried to pretend that the ongoing missing HMRC data .privacy and security breach scandal , which has not gone away, for which they are personally responsibler, would somehow have been less serious, if the the wretched biometric National Identity Register had been in place and linked to the missing Child Benefit Award database.

These political lies were punctured elegantly by this open letter from leading academic experts, who described them as a “fairy-land” scenario.

[…]

From Spyblog

Is any of this really a surprise?

Gordon Brown is a piece of shapeless grey clay in motion; imaginationless, artless, without personality or a soul; a creature, a tool, a lifeless monster. He has not a single idea of his own; his only reason for being is to attain a place where people will bow to him and where he can rub shoulders with ‘the great and the good’. This is why he hates Prime Ministers Questions he is not the PM to be grilled and made to look bad; he is there to shmooze with Richard Branson and make speeches on the New World Order world stage.

All that needs to be done is to completely refuse to comply with any aspect of the ID card scheme. The market is taking care of Mr Brown from their angle.

A bastard like Brown cannot survive a simultaneous attack from every side.

These people are so terrified of the public that they have to go out with security for even the smallest thing.

And while we are at it, look at the sort of FILTH these beasts eat:

Honestly, people who don’t know enough not to eat SHIT like that have no business telling ANYONE ANYTHING about ANYTHING.

We start the year in Britain with a challenge to our essential nature, for 2008 might turn out to be the year when we decide to rip up the Magna Carta.

Among the basic civil rights in this country, there has always been, at least in theory, an inclination towards liberal democracy, which includes a tolerance of an individual’s right to privacy.

We are born free and have the right to decide what freedom means, each for ourselves, and to have control over our outward existence, yet that will no longer be the case if we agree to identity cards.

Britain is already the most self-watching country in the world, with the largest network of security cameras; a new study suggests we are now every bit as poor at protecting privacy as Russia, China and America.

But surveillance cameras and lost data will prove minuscule problems next to ID cards, which will obliterate the fundamental right to walk around in society as an unknown.

Some of you may have taken that freedom so much for granted that you forget how basic and important it is, but in every country where ID cards have ever been introduced, they have changed the relation between the individual and the state in a way that has not proved beneficial to the individual. I am not just talking Nazi Germany, but everywhere.

It is also a spiritual matter: a person’s identity is for him or her to decide and to control, and if someone decides to invest the details of their person in a higher authority, then it should not be the Home Office.

The compulsory ID card scheme is a sickness born of too much suspicion and too little regard for the meaning of tolerance and privacy in modern life.

Hooking individuals up to a system of instantly accessible data is an obscenity – not only a system waiting to be abused, but a system already abusing.

Though we don’t pay much attention to moral philosophy in the mass media now – Bertrand Russell having long been exchanged for the Jeremy Kyle Show – it may be worth remembering that Britain has a tradition of excellence when it comes to distinguishing and upholding basic rights and laws in the face of excessive power.

The ID cards issue should be raising the most stimulating arguments about who we are and how we are – but no, it is not: we nose the grass like sheep and prepare to be herded once again.

It seems the only person speaking up with a broad sense of what this all means is Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, who has devoted much of his new year message to underlining the sheer horribleness of the scheme.

He has said he will go to jail rather than bow to this “expensive, invasive and unnecessary” affront to “our natural liberal tendencies”.

I have to say I cheered when I heard this, not only because I agree, but because it is entirely salutary, in these sheepish times, to see a British politician express his personal feelings so strongly.

Many people on the other side of the argument make what might be called a category mistake when they say: “If you’ve nothing to hide, why object to carrying a card?”

Making it compulsory to prove oneself, in advance, not to be a threat to society is an insult to one’s right not to be pre-judged or vetted.

Our system of justice is based on evidence, not on prior selection, and the onus on proving criminality is a matter for the justice system, where proof is of the essence.

Many regrettable things occur as a result of freedom – some teenage girls get pregnant, some businessmen steal from their shareholders, some soldiers torture their enemies, some priests exploit children – but these cases would not, in a liberal society, require us to end the private existence of all people just in case.

If the existence of terrorists, these few desperate extremists, makes it necessary for everybody in Britain to carry an ID card then it is a price too high.

It is more than a price, it is a defeat, and one that we will repent at our leisure. Challenges to security should, in fact, make us more protective of our basic freedoms; it should, indeed, make us warm to our rights.

In another age, it was thought sensible to try to understand the hatred in the eyes of our enemies, but now it seems we consider it wiser just to devalue the nature of our citizenship.

What’s more – it won’t work. Nick Clegg has pointed to the gigantic cost and fantastic hubris involved in this scheme, but recent gaffes with personal information have shown just how difficult it is to control and protect data.

A poll of doctors undertaken by doctors.net.uk has today shown that a majority of doctors believe that the National Programme for IT – seeking to contain all the country’s medical records – will not be secure.

In fact, it is causing great worry. Many medical professionals fear that detailed information about each of us will soon be whizzing haphazardly from one place to another, leaving patients at the mercy of the negligent, the nosy, the opportunistic and the exploitative.

“Only people with something to hide will fear the introduction of compulsory ID cards.”

That is what they say, and it sounds perfectly practical. If you think about it for a minute, though, it begins to sound less than practical and more like an affront to the reasonable (and traditional) notion that the state should mind its own business.

In a just society, what you have to hide is your business, until such times as your actions make it the business of others. Infringing people’s rights is not an ethical form of defence against imaginary insult.

You shouldn’t have to tell the government your eye colour if you don’t want to, never mind your maiden name, your height, your personal persuasions in this or that direction, all to be printed up on a laminated card under some compulsory picture, to say you’re one of us.

You weren’t born to be one of us, that is something you choose, and to take the choice out of it is wrong. It marks the end of privacy, the end of civic volition, the end of true citizenship.

[…]

Telegraph

The next UK Census will be in 2011. Help us stop it being run by an arms company with close links to the United States government.

What’s the problem?

The process of running the 2011 Census will be contracted out by the Office of National Statistics to a private company.

One of the two contractors in the final round of selection is the arms company Lockheed Martin, 80% of whose business is with the US Department of Defense and other Federal Government agencies.

This might concern you because:

• The Census rules mean that every household will be legally obliged to provide a wide range of personal information that will be handled by the chosen contractor.
• Lockheed Martin produces missiles and land mines which are being used in Afghanistan and Iraq and which are illegal in many countries.
• They also focus on intelligence and surveillance work and boast of their ability to provide ‘integrated threat information’ that combines information from many different sources.
• New questions in the 2011 Census will include information about income and place of birth, as well as existing questions about languages spoken in the household and many other personal details.
• This information would be very useful to Lockheed Martin’s intelligence work, and fears that the data might not be safe could lead to many people not filling in their Census forms.

Census Alert is therefore campaigning to stop Lockheed Martin from being given the contract.

The campaign is supported by the Green Party, politicians from Plaid Cymru, Labour and the Scottish National Party, and others opposed to the arms trade and concerned about personal privacy.

We are not opposed to the Census itself. Aggregated, the information collected is important in allocating resources to local authorities and public services.

But personal privacy is important too, and we are concerned that Lockheed Martin’s involvement could undermine public confidence in the process and lead to inaccurate data being collected.

What can I do?
There is still time to stop this happening and we are not calling for a boycott of the Census at this stage.
Before the final decisions on the contract are made, we are asking you to do the following:

Sign our petition opposing arms company involvement in the Census at:
Contact your MP and ask them to raise the issue in Parliament.
Contact your local Councillor and ask them to highlight their concerns about the allocation of local authority resources.

More about taking action on this issue

The 2006 Canadian Census campaign
Lockheed Martin were also involved in the 2006 Census in Canada, and a campaign calling for a boycott was organised by Vive le Canada and supported by progressive MPs in Canada’s parliament.

The campaign did not succeed in getting them removed. But it did achieve its aim of ensuring only civil servants handled the actual data, and a new government task force was set up to monitor privacy during the Census.

[…]

http://censusalert.org.uk/

and so on…

Of course, we on BLOGDIAL do not think you should fill out a census form at all, for many reasons.

I know nothing about the politics of this organization, but their “I am not afraid” campaign is something I can certainly get behind. I think we should all send a letter like this to our elected officials, whatever country we’re in:

I am not afraid of terrorism, and I want you to stop being afraid on my behalf. Please start scaling back the official government war on terror. Please replace it with a smaller, more focused anti-terrorist police effort in keeping with the rule of law. Please stop overreacting. I understand that it will not be possible to stop all terrorist acts. I accept that. I am not afraid.

Refuse to be terrorized, and you deny the terrorists their most potent weapon — your fear.

‘Terrorists’ do not want you to live in fear; they want you to get out of their countries and leave them alone. If you refuse to do that, then they will make you suffer the images and horror stories that they have suffered (only literally a million times worse).

Politicians are stoking up the fear of terror for their own ends. This has nothing to do with the true nature of these attacks, who is behind them and why we must view them in the correct context and solve the root problem; foreign policy.

EDITED TO ADD (12/21): There’s also this video.

And Chicago opens a new front on the war on the unexpected, trying to scare everybody:

Each year, the Winter Holiday Season tends to spur larger crowds and increased traffic throughout the City. As it pertains to shopping districts, public transportation routes, and all other places of public assembly, the increased crowds become a matter of Homeland Security concern. During this holiday period, as a matter of public safety, we ask that all members of the general public heighten their awareness regarding any and all suspicious activity that may be an indicator of a threat to public safety. It is important to immediately report any or all of the below suspect activities.

• Physical Surveillance (note taking, binocular use, cameras, video, maps)
• Attempts to gain sensitive information regarding key facilities
• Attempts to penetrate or test physical security / response procedures
• Attempts to improperly acquire explosives, weapons, ammunition, dangerous chemicals, etc.
• Suspicious or improper attempts to acquire official vehicles, uniforms, badges or access devices
• Presence of individuals who do not appear to belong in workplaces, business establishments, or near key facilities
• Mapping out routes, playing out scenarios, monitoring key facilities, timing traffic lights
• Stockpiling suspicious materials or abandoning potential containers for explosives (e.g., vehicles, suitcases, etc)
• Suspicious reporting of lost or stolen identification

This may be real or it may be a hoax; I don’t know.

And this is probably my last post on the war on the unexpected. There are simply too many examples.

[…]

http://www.schneier.com/blog

The answer to all of this is Ron Paul. His policies and thinking are in line with Mr. Schneier’s in that we have to look at the real problem, not episodes of ’24’ to find the solution to this activity.

I am doubtful wether begging for your rights to be restored is a good thing. These people do not listen to the electorate on any issue; it would be better for them to propose taking our liberty back, either through an election or otherwise.

Mass murderers are not the listening kind.

Clarkson stung after bank prank

TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has lost money after publishing his bank details in his newspaper column.

The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of 25 million people’s personal details on two computer discs.

He wanted to prove the story was a fuss about nothing.

But Clarkson admitted he was “wrong” after he discovered a reader had used the details to create a £500 direct debit to the charity Diabetes UK.

Clarkson published details of his Barclays account in the Sun newspaper, including his account number and sort code. He even told people how to find out his address.

“All you’ll be able to do with them is put money into my account. Not take it out. Honestly, I’ve never known such a palaver about nothing,” he told readers.

But he was proved wrong, as the 47-year-old wrote in his Sunday Times column.

“I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account,” he said.

“The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again.

“I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.”

Police were called in to search for the two discs, which contained the entire database of child benefit claimants and apparently got lost in the post in October 2007.

They were posted from HM Revenue and Customs offices in Tyne and Wear, but never turned up at their destination – the National Audit Office.

The loss, which led to an apology from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, created fears of identity fraud.

Clarkson now says of the case: “Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy.”

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7174760.stm

Like I said before Jeremy Clarkson is a total idiot.

What amazes me about people like Clarkson is that he thinks people should take his advice both before AND after his authoritative articles. He is the same breed of moronic ‘journalist’ that will not believe in anything unless he sees it himself. He is the same breed of person who supports war until he gets into the trenches himself, whereupon he becomes an ardent pacifist. He is the sort that is an atheist until he has his own religious experience, thereafter becoming a total fanatic. Now he is calling for the people who lost the discs to be tortured. Bravo Mr. ‘Face of Agromegly’; lets see how you react to the actual act of ‘sticking cocktail sticks in their eyes’. I wager that a total coward like Clarkson could not even watch a video of real torture, much less carry it out himself.

This is a man without a clue, without principles, without common sense. And this is the best that The Times can dredge up to publish on a regular basis. No wonder blogs and bloggers are so popular; for once, everyone with more common sense than Jeremy Clarkson (which means 90% of people in Britain) can publish clear headed thinking to millions of people for the price of some electrons.

The good thing about this is that the people who need an extra little push to understand why this, the NIR and ID cards are such a disaster will learn from Clarksons imbecile antics. And the lulz.

Or:
Paedophiles must guard Children
Fire must guard Gasoline
etc etc

MPs say losing computer data should be made a crime

Tania Branigan, political correspondent
Thursday January 3, 2008
The Guardian

Recklessly or repeatedly mishandling personal information should become a criminal offence, a committee of MPs urges today in the wake of the child benefit fiasco.

no, the COLLECTION of personal information under certain circumstances, should become a criminal offence.

A report from the justice select committee says there is evidence of a widespread problem within government and expresses concern that further cases of data loss are still coming to light, adding that concerns about systemic failings were raised two years ago by the man now in charge of the government’s review of security. The committee says that companies should be obliged to report information losses.

They have been warned repeatedly about the problems inherent in centralized databases which are in fact, not needed to improve services or provide greater ‘security’ of documents. These people, these computer illiterate dimwits are the criminals; they push on ahead at the urging of vendors without any care about the consequences or the wishes of the electorate, in a deliberate and evil bid to do this ‘Transformational Government’ magic trick, which will increase their power by orders of magnitude and enrich their friends. Yes indeed, these people are the criminals, and there are no two ways about it.

“The scale of the data loss by government bodies and contractors is truly shocking, but the evidence we have had points to further hidden problems,” warned Alan Beith, chairman of the committee. “It is frankly incredible, for example, that the measures HMRC [HM Revenue & Customs] has [now] put in place were not already standard procedure.”

What is frankly incredible, is that they have been warned about this specifically and everyone in both houses has read the details written in crystal clear english. There is no way that they can claim that they did not understand the consequences of this diabolical plan hatched by the vendors to make victims of the virtuous villigers of England by the voratious vacuuming of their vital data. They are guilty of not heeding the warnings, and going along with it in an act of flagrant negligence.

The committee says the government must find ways to minimise the risks inherent in maintaining large databases to which a large number of people have access and suggests that new offences might strengthen security procedures.

All the comittees and white papers that they can sit at and print will not stop this headlong rush into disaster. All centralized databases of innocent people must be destroyed. All planned databases like ContactPoint and the NIR must be stopped. Everyone everywhere must refuse to cooperate with any document or process that has been derived from an unreasonable use of their personal data. Everyone everywhere must refuse to allow their biometric data to be harvested for collection into these databases. That means no fingerprinting for any reason, no iris scans and no DNA swabs for anyone except those convicted of a violent offence.

Criminal offences under the Data Protection Act – such as unlawfully obtaining or disclosing personal data – only apply to people who are not the “data controller”. That means that although third parties who misuse the details can be prosecuted the people holding the information, such as large businesses or government departments, cannot be held responsible for breaches. Beith said: “Clearly, criminal sanctions are not the only ones you want to use. But perhaps the issue would be taken more seriously if there was a criminal offence at the end of the line.”

These are the words of a total imbecile.

Once the data is out, no criminal sanction can make it private again.. Its like trying to put an egg back together once it has been broken, you know the story Beith, Humpty Dumpty? Does that make this easier for you to understand?

The report also argues that the information commissioner needs more resources. At present his office’s budget is just £10m a year.

[…]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2234448,00.html

Well, what a surprise. They want MORE MONEY from the TAXPAYER to solve a problem that THEY CREATED out of THIN AIR by using the TAXPAYERS MONEY.

These people really are the criminals, that is absolutely clear.

Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act of 2007 or SAVE Act of 2007, among many things, amends the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to make the basic employment eligibility confirmation pilot program permanent; sets forth conditions for the mandatory use of the E-verify system; and requires: (1) employer/employee notification of social security number mismatches and multiple uses, and related information sharing with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); and (2) establishment of electronic birth and death registration systems.

The Act’s stated purpose is to coordinate with states to establish a common data set and common data exchange protocol for electronic birth registration systems and death registration systems requirements, and for such systems to align with a national model. Sound familiar? Like the Real ID Act, the SAVE Act would impose federal standards on states for what was heretofore a state program.

Three active federal bills contain the SAVE Act of 2007:
H.R.4088 12/5/2007 Referred to House subcommittee. Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities.

S.2366 11/15/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance.

S.2368 11/15/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.

H.R. 4088, SEC. 203 reads:

ESTABLISHMENT OF ELECTRONIC BIRTH AND DEATH REGISTRATION SYSTEMS.
(a) In consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Commissioner of Social Security, the Secretary shall take the following actions:
(1) Work with the States to establish a common data set and common data exchange protocol for electronic birth registration systems and death registration systems.

(2) Coordinate requirements for such systems to align with a national model.

(3) Ensure that fraud prevention is built into the design of electronic vital registration systems in the collection of vital event data, the issuance of birth certificates, and the exchange of data among government agencies.

(4) Ensure that electronic systems for issuing birth certificates, in the form of printed abstracts of birth records or digitized images, employ a common format of the certified copy, so that those requiring such documents can quickly confirm their validity.

(5) Establish uniform field requirements for State birth registries.

(6) Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, establish a process with the Department of Defense that will result in the sharing of data, with the States and the Social Security Administration, regarding deaths of United States military personnel and the birth and death of their dependents.

(7) Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, establish a process with the Department of State to improve registration, notification, and the sharing of data with the States and the Social Security Administration, regarding births and deaths of United States citizens abroad.

(8) Not later than 3 years after the date of establishment of databases provided for under this section, require States to record and retain electronic records of pertinent identification information collected from requestors who are not the registrants.

(9) Not later than 6 months after the date of the enactment of this Act, submit to Congress a report on whether there is a need for Federal laws to address penalties for fraud and misuse of vital records and whether violations are sufficiently enforced.

[…]

http://papersplease.org/wp/

I said before that any call for a White Paper or Public Inquiry is totally insane, and anyone who calls for one is delusional. As we have now seen, there has been a report that does nothing to stop the ID / centralized database juggernaut:

The Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) believes that the Government’s response to the interim Poynter report shows that they just don’t understand what has gone wrong. Their refusal to abandon the headlong rush towards Transformational Government — the enormous centralised databases being built to regulate every walk of life — is not just pig-headed but profoundly mistaken.

Both Alasdair Darling, commenting on the HMRC fiasco, and Ruth Kelly, telling the House about the loss of 3 million people’s personal information, told us that once `lessons have been learned’ and `procedures tightened’ the march to ever-larger database systems will continue.

Before Transformational Government came along, only small amounts of data were lost — but as the new databases cover the whole population, everyone’s affected now, not just a few unlucky people.

Transformational Government means putting all of the eggs into one basket and it is creating:

• The multi-billion pound identity card scheme, to hold data on the whole population
• The National Health spine, which will make everyone’s health records available for browsing by a million NHS workers
• ContactPoint which will record details on every child in England, with details of their parents, carers and indicators of whether they have any contact with social services. Three hundred thousand people can look that information up.
• A universal pensioner’s bus pass scheme which will hold the data on 17 million people, and in principle will let any bus driver learn your age and address — when all that it should record is an entitlement to free travel.

Ross Anderson, Chair of FIPR and Professor of Security Engineering at the University of Cambridge said, “the Government believes that you can build secure databases and let hundreds of thousands of people access them. This is nonsense — we just don’t know how to build such systems and perhaps we never will. The correct way to design such systems is to localise the data, in a school, in your local GP practice. That way when there is a compromise because of a technical failure or a dishonest user then the damage is limited.

“You can have security, or functionality, or scale — you can even have any two of these. But you can’t have all three, and the Government will eventually be forced to admit this. In the meantime, billions of pounds are being wasted on gigantic systems projects that usually don’t work, and that place citizens’ privacy and safety at risk when they do.”

Richard Clayton, FIPR Treasuer said, “Personal data ought to be handled as if it were little pellets of plutonium — kept in secure containers, handled as seldom as possible, and escorted whenever it has to travel. Should it get out into the environment it will be a danger for years to come. Putting it into one huge pile is really asking for trouble. The Government needs to completely rethink its approach and abandon its Transformational Government disaster.”

[…]

http://www.fipr.org/

The reason why no White Paper or report is going to stop any of this is that BILLIONS of pounds in contracts have been handed out to the friends and family of ministers and none of them are willing to stab their friends and family in the back.

It doesn’t matter what any report or paper says, they will push this until either the people revolt or the people give in. That is why anyone calling for reason is a fool. That is why anyone depending on the processes of democracy is delusional. The only thing that is going to stop all of this is an explosion of the type we saw with the poll tax, or some other similar mass revolt that cannot be ignored.

We all know what sort of shape they can take and marching is not one of them.

But you know this!

BBQ is at it yet again, with another ‘story’ by a ‘professional lying paid pro-id scumbag’ using PR scripted false logic to prop up the dying and decomposing corpse of the ID card scheme:

ID sites ‘aid underage drinkers’
By Chris Page
BBC Radio Five Live Report

Underage drinkers are making use of websites which churn out false driving documents and proof-of-age cards for as little as £10 each, the BBC has found.

Oh really? The BBC has ‘found’ this?

A simple search reveals a huge number of websites selling “100% convincing” fake IDs “guaranteed to fool anyone”.

And these printers have the absolute right to print whatever they like, and they have the absolute right to sell it to whomever they like. You, on the other hand, have no moral right to steal money from license payers and then publish propaganda on the behalf of PR companies and the government.

The sites carry legal disclaimers stating the cards are “novelty” products, not copies of official IDs. But youth workers told Radio Five Live Report they believe the cards are being marketed to underage drinkers.

That is a lie. ‘Fake’ IDs have been commercially available for decades all over the world. They exist for a reason and as a direct consequence of the insane and illiberal laws that try and micro manage everyone’s lives.

The very idea that there can be a ‘fake’ id is fallacious. There are many false assumptions wrapped up in the phrase ‘fake id’; the first is that a card can contain or represent your identity, that is false. Secondly there is the false idea that only an authority like the government can issue a ‘real’ ID and that all other issuers are somehow illegitimate.

Your identity cannot be reduced to a card. No matter who prints it, all of these cards have the same semantic value. A card issued by a government is no more legitimate than any other card produced by any other person.

By deliberately failing to say this, this reporter is re-enforcing the false paradigms of popular ID mythology; that a piece of paper or plastic legitimizes you and can represent you in any way. This is the big (and subtle) lie of this article and all articles like it.

Rigorous checks

Mike Davis, who owns a convenience store in Polzeath in Cornwall, seized 100 fake IDs in just six weeks during the school holidays. “I tell parents I’ve taken a fake ID from their child and they don’t know they’re available on the internet,” he said.

You have no right to seize or confiscate anything from anyone. You are not a police man Mr. Davis; in fact, you are a thief. You stole the property of those people who tried to buy alcohol from you, when all you were legally required to do is to refuse to serve them. People like Mr. Davis are part of the problem. They think it is their right to police the behavior of others; they are a major cause of the decline of Britain.

There is no reason why alcohol should not be sold to anyone who has the money to pay for it. Parents should be able to send their children out to the store to buy a quarter of whiskey if needed. They were able to do this for generations, and there is no difference between the people of today and the people of the past. The idea that alcohol is dangerous and to be feared is what causes the uniquely British form of rowdy alcoholism that plagues this country, evidenced by the innumerable splotches of curry colored vomit that you can find in the streets and doorsteps of every city on a Saturday or Sunday morning. All of them produced by people who are old enough to drink as defined by bad law. The French attitude to alcohol is far more sensible; drinking is just another part of life, not a big deal. But I digress.

But the websites appear to be well known to many young people under the legal drinking age.

Citation? Only BBQ can get away with this sort of lying, and then of course, they say that Bloggers are ‘not real journalists’!

After midnight in Belfast City Centre, one 17 year old said he had been spent several hours drinking in a bar after gaining admission with a fake student card.

This is just before he was about to be shipped out to Afghanistan to murder on behalf of a government that will forbid him to get drunk, but which will put a rifle in his hands to kill.

Plenty of others said they had just turned 18, but had been getting into nightclubs and bars for several years. In Liverpool, it was a similar story.

…and so what? So what if some teenagers have a beer or two? Its not the end of the world, and it certainly is not enough of a pretext to bring in universal compulsory biometric ID cards backed by a central database.

Which is what this low life scumbag article is all about.

“What else are you supposed to do at that age?” said one teenage drinker who started using fake ID when he was 15.

Hmmmm! “What a question”. They always pick the thickest, least representative voice to make some cheap point. This garbage is meaningless, in every way that something can be meaningless.

In both cities, most late night venues seemed to examine ID rigorously. But some clubs reportedly have a reputation as being an easy place for under-18s to have a drink. Door staff at these venues do not seem to be inspecting ID closely, despite many of their customers looking as if they could have been under 18.

They have such a struggle to stay in business with the swingeing taxes, absurd opening regulations, draconian smoking bans etc., they had better let in any and every punter because every penny counts. Just think about it; the immoral smoking ban has caused pubs to install outdoor heating so that the pub can extend its activities outside. These units use up an enormous amount of energy, the majority of which is wasted. The electricity and gas bills for this ‘outdoor heating’ must be a large burden for these beleaguered drinking houses. I feel their pain, and understand perfectly why they are doing what they are doing. In the final analysis, they will be driven out of business by government, who will no doubt in the future launch ‘incentives’ to, “restore the unique pub culture that once thrived in Britain”.

Strict laws

If licensed premises are caught serving under-18s, they face heavy penalties – including losing their license and fines of up to £5,000. The British Beer and Pub Association recommends that its members ask for ID if the customer looks 21 or under. It says that the licensed trade is turning away a million young people a year for being underage or having no ID.

One million people a year, who would be buying, say three pints each at three pounds each, that £9,000,000. And don’t forget the crisps. At one pound per bag.

“In the vast majority of bars and clubs, it’s impossible to get a drink if you’re under 18,” says Paul Smith, chief executive of the Bars, Entertainment and Dance Association.

Is it easier to buy a gun or a drink in the UK?

I wonder.

Five Live Report ordered a fake “driving permit” online and showed it to Inspector David Connery, the head of crime prevention at the Police Service of Northern Ireland. “It really worries me these fakes are out there,” he said, pointing out anyone found using one faces getting a criminal record.

Of course, that is absurd. Many companies produce ID cards that are no more ‘fake’ than the ones you can buy or make yourself with a laminating kit.

In the absence of bad laws that try to conrtol human nature and urges, the rationale behind ID cards disappears and these dirty lying articles disappear with them.

“The more discerning doorman will know it’s false – but on a busy night it could easily fool people. “If you are caught using a false ID getting into licensed premises you will be reported.”

You are in violation!

He also warns anyone “lending” their own genuine ID to underage drinkers could be charged with aiding and abetting an offence.

I think we can safely say that no one is paying attention to these bad laws, just as in the days of prohibition, the majority of people simply broke the law. And we know what the result of THAT was.

The BBC contacted several fake ID firms for an interview, but none responded. The site which comes out on top when you search for fake ID through leading internet search engines carries a warning addressed to the press. “We discourage the attempted use of our cards for the purposes of misrepresentation, both here and in the documentation supplied with our delivered fake ID products,” it states.

Bollocks. Why should they respond to a bunch of habitual liars who are out to misrepresent them and destroy their legitimate businesses? They say that they are producing ‘fakes’ in line with your own fallacious logic, so what more do you want? Of course, they want them out of business and state issued mandatory ID cards to be brutally enforced.

But youth workers and publicans say they are in no doubt that the fake cards are marketed to underage drinkers.

This is just hearsay, and totally irrelevant to the true thrust of this absurd piece of paid for trash ‘journalism’.

They argue that the firms selling the cards are immoral and endangering people’s licenses and livelihoods.

This is a perfect example of ‘in the box’, ‘night is day’ thinking.

Everyone has the right to print whatever they like. Everyone has the right to sell what they print. It is immoral to try and prevent people from printing what they like and selling what they print to whomever they wish. Publicans should not need a license to sell alcohol. The regulation of pubs is what is endangering peoples livelihoods, not the selling of food and drink, which is the very purpose of a pub.

Bill McComb, who runs several alcohol and drugs awareness programmes in Ballymurphy in West Belfast, says: “The companies know that young people are using these cards for an illegal purpose.”

And so? Once again, this is an assertion, not a fact, and even if it were a fact, this is not the point. The point is that the laws controlling alcohol in the UK are immoral, and they are being used as a another pretext in the arsenal of bullshit that is being trotted out to boost the case for total control everyone through the introduction of a totalitarian ID card.

A final point of interest; when you surf to the BBQ page where this rubbish lives, you will notice how it is formatted so that it is almost free of paragraphs. This article is designed for the lowest common denominator. Each lying thought is a single sentence on its own, so that the thickest most asleep reader can easily swallow the fallacies being rammed down their throats.

Five Live Report: The Faking Game will be broadcast at 1930 GMT on Sunday, 16 December. Or download the podcast from the Five Live Report website.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7144972.stm

We will give that one a miss, thanks.

Bastards.