… Good Intentions
June 27th, 2006Police will be able to pass details of child pornography offenders on to banks so that offenders’ credit cards can be revoked.
The Home Secretary has issued an order for the amendment of the Data Protection Act which will be read in both houses of Parliament.
The order was requested by credit card issuers and is the result of three years of negotiation between the industry and the Home Office, according to a spokeswoman for issuers’ organisation APACS, the UK payments association.
“We asked for this because at the moment if someone uses a card to purchase illegal pornography there is no way under data protection legislation for the Police to pass that information on to card issuers,” an APACS spokeswoman said. “We already have the power to take a card from someone, but if they committed one of these offences we wouldn’t know about it.”
Fair enough (although can a convicted person use a credit card in prison? Surely the problem is with people likely to reoffend being released on parole which is a slightly different issue.) but could this lead to banks refusing credit to, say, protestors arrested under the Terrorism Act who have had their NIR-linked police records or anybody else with certain behaviour frowned upon by the state. After all why stop at these bastards? Why should murderers be able to access credit, or (especially for banks) fraudsters.
Hmmm, start with the lowest of the low…
June 27th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
All these people have to do is use a service that shelters their identity, or use a false name to obtain credit locally. This is pure PR garbage, so that these companies can appear to be fighting this problem. Why dont they shut down the MERCHANT ACCOUNTS so that the stuff cant be SOLD in the first place?
By doing this, they will stop many people from getting access; their idea is like trying to soak up a burst dam with a paper cup downstream. Its much more sensible to turn off the tap behind the dam to stop the flow, and thats what shutting down the merchant accounts will do.
M2 is right of course, they start with this, and then use these regulations to automagically shut down any credit card they like for any reason. Thankfully when they do this to the wrong person, they will have a HUGE lawsuit on their hands, unlike if the Home Secretary shuts off your NIR account, where you will have no avenue of redress whatsoever. That is, if you are stupid enough to enter it should it get rolled out.
June 28th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Talking of PR garbage this press release in the Guardian takes the biscuit:
Record companies are hoping the mobile phone will help save the radio star after technology was unveiled yesterday that could allow listeners to buy any song playing on any station at the touch of a button. […]
blah blah, like radio playlists mean you can’t guarantee pretty much any song you heard will be played again somewhere within the hour. And if you don’t believe it to be PR read this drivel:
While tuning in to digital radio stations through headphones, listeners will be able to click a “buy” button on their phone and have the track downloaded to their phone. Each track will cost around […]
Tuning in through headphones! – who would have thought?
It’s quite laughable that a newspaper with a “Bad Science” column is so dependent on marketing guff for anything technology related.
June 28th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
“Bad Science” is just another form of scumbag PR used to sell garbage ideology, and we all know it. What I find perpetually astonishing is that these papers, day after day, year after year, keep reproducing PR releases without any critical analasys.
What the Guardian has done however (actually, what the interweb and blogging comments are doing) is slowly making this sort of crap impossible to get away with. If every article that is printed in the Guardian comes with a comments tail then what we have written here WILL be written there, and the PR will be despun on the spot. This means that PR will have to become more intelligent, detail oriented and bullshit free, and thats not going to happen soon…. but you know this.
June 29th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Except they bury anything too embarrassing, like the untrammeled torrent of truth hurled at Blair the other day. (and continuing).
Quote: “Rodent said “I had hoped we might get a response to our comments from the PM”. We did. This page is not linked to anywhere on the Guardian site now. Thanks for the debate though Tony.”
June 29th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
You see? But of course, you linked to it, and if all the other lusers who commented there also ran blogs and linked there, its visibility would be out of the Guardian’s control.
Its Game Over for the traditional press, and not before time. They have not only dropped the ball in technology, but they have more importantly totally failed in thier job to report the truth and to foment dissent where it is desperately needed.
DIE DIE DIE you scum and may you never rise from the ashes left over as we use your useless newspapers to burn down the House of Commons!