New immigration rules will force undocumented workers to be firedCarolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau(08-11) 04:00 PDT Washington – — People clamoring for a crackdown on illegal immigration got their wish with the Bush administration’s announcement Friday of sweeping new enforcement measures that will force employers to fire the millions of illegal workers they now employ.

“We strike at that magnet” of jobs, said Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, announcing a new rule holding employers liable for workers whose Social Security numbers do not match government records. The new rule takes effect in 30 days.

No state stands to feel the effects more than California, which has more illegal immigrants – an estimated 2.5 million – than any other state. California farmers are expected to be among the hardest hit with their heavy reliance on Mexican field hands, the vast majority of whom are undocumented. But service businesses will be heavily affected too, from hotels and restaurants to cleaning services and nursing homes.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein predicted a “catastrophe” in the state’s $32 billion agriculture industry as the new rules become effective with the fall harvest. But the proposal met no opposition from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, who issued a statement saying, “Securing our border remains a top priority for the New Direction Congress.”

This sounds like a declaration of war against business. Uncla Sam (yes, ‘uncla’) let all these people flood into the country, and now they are penalizing business for their lapses of security and imagination.

The rule that will require employers to fire employees unable to clear up problems with their Social Security numbers 90 days after they’ve been notified or face sanctions and a fine of at least $2,200 for a first offense. Up until now, employers have routinely ignored what are called no-match letters.

And this behaviour is quite right; it is not the job of business to sort out illegal immigrants from legal immigrants. The border starts at mexico, not the front door of some firm.

“In certain industries and in certain states, there will be a very significant impact on the functioning of businesses or entire sectors,” said Deborah Meyers, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “Some employers are going to find themselves having to fire significant portions of their workforces, and I think there will be employees – some who are authorized and some who are not – who will find themselves out of a job.”

Meyers predicted the fallout to be quite visible within six months.

[…]

And then they are going to do what and go where? Has anyone actually THOUGHT about that?

Business groups pointed out that a significant fraction of no-match letters – including 11 percent for the work-authorized foreign born – are in error because of name changes and clerical mistakes, and could cause trouble for legal workers. Immigrant rights groups said the rule could drive millions of illegal immigrants who are now paying taxes underground and drive businesses who depend on them to relocate overseas.

Here it comes….

The system also has a big loophole that some experts warn could lead to more identity theft. Social Security does not catch numbers that are valid but have been stolen and used by another person, increasing the incentive to steal valid Social Security numbers.

Which is an argument for biometric REALID.

Hiring undocumented workers has been illegal for two decades, but until now, employers were not held liable for fraudulent documents.

And quite rightly.

“This is going to cause a lot of pain, but that pain I hope will be an impetus for our nation to get realistic and fix our broken immigration system,” said Larry Rohlfes, assistant executive director of the California Landscape Contractors Association. “In the meantime, people are going to be hurt.”

That is an understatement, and what is broken is not the ‘imiigration system’ but border security in the south of the USA. That is where all of these illegal immigrants are coming from, not JFK.

Rohlfes predicted that many workers would not leave the country but go underground as unlicensed contractors, where they will not pay taxes. “It’s going to hurt our remaining workers because the underground economy competes with us and because they have much lower costs,” Rohlfes said.

That is exactly what (amongst other things) that they will do. There will be a huge parallel society where the suck law abiding pay the penalties of being law abiding and everyone else lives free.

Much will hinge on how effectively the administration enforces the new rules.

[…]

No, it will hinge on wether or not any business obeys this insanity. I suspect many will not.

About 12 million people are estimated to be in the country illegally, and about half a million more have been arriving each year. They have moved beyond traditional immigrant states like California and Texas and into the South and Midwest, where their presence has created a voter backlash and spawned state and local laws intended to make it difficult for illegal immigrants to work and even find housing.

Illegal immigrants make up about 5 percent of the civilian workforce, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Most have arrived since 1990. Many have children born in the United States who are citizens – which adds up to about 64 percent of the children in unauthorized families, or 3.1 million children, Pew estimates. Most illegal migrants crossed the border from Mexico and farther south, but about 40 percent arrived legally from all other parts of the world and overstayed their tourist or student visas.

And this is the big problem; what do you do with all the hate and resentment that is growing? What do you do with all the families where the children are citizens and the parents are illegal immigrants? Its a disaster. Some of the comments on this story have it just about right:

This could be the next tactic of the corrupt Bush administration in getting an Amnesty Bill passed. If they get a panic going in business and then get a panic going in the public, through the use of the media, they could appear to sway opinion in their favor. I already see a sort of panic on the rise anyway. The economy appears to be correcting itself to all of the scams and lawlessness. Weve run up the price of our homes just like we did stock in the thirties. We were willing to out-borrow the next. It works okay on the way up. Not so great on the way down. Then youve got the presses running full speed to finance all of the wars. I have seen this sort of article over and over recently. If this is a trick, I would expect a huge backlash to follow their actions.

and

I must say I’m shocked that Bush is actually doing something about this problem but I’m fairly sure that employers will just rehire the undocumented workers after the 90 days and start the process again. Currently employers have a year to figure out the status of their workers. The process is: hire, check their SS #, govt tells the employer the worker in illegal, employer has a year to check, at the year mark they realease the worker then rehire them and start the process all over again. The only thing that has teeth is if the govt actually enforces sanctions. I assure you employers are shaken up by these types of measures.

Talk about a work around!!!

and now we get to the meat in the hamburger:

As part of the stepped-up enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security said it would expand an electronic verification system called “Web Basic Pilot” to all federal contractors, as well as continue to train state and local law enforcement to help enforce immigration laws.

[…]

The number of Border Patrol agents is expected to rise to 18,300 by the end of the year; there will also be 370 miles of fencing along with other technology such as vehicle barriers and camera and radar towers that are now being constructed.

Also, the administration announced that it would implement a long-delayed exit verification system at border crossings to find out who is overstaying their visas. That program, called US-Visit, has been hampered by the cost and technological problems. The administration said it would plow ahead with plans to require all travelers to use passports, despite the enormous backlogs that delayed travel by U.S. citizens earlier this year.

[…]

SF Gate

And there you have it. We all knew in in advance that USVISIT was not about ‘terrorists’ but was instead designed to control genpop and that is exactly what they are going to do with it. Once they expand it to solve this ‘problem’ its effectiveness will appear to have greatly increased because instead of catching just 1500+ people in violation, they will be able to claim that they have caught millions of people, illegal immigrants, with the system.

In order to do it, they will have to get everyone into the system, the biometric net, so that they can scan people randomly, all the time and deny every sort of service to people who are not allowed to be in the USA.

All those ignorant hicks from the stix who deeply resent the Mexican invasion will line up to be fingerprinted, because it will force the invaders back to Mexico.

This is the cause they have been waiting for, sufficient reason to give up liberty that not only seems entirely reasonable, but which people will clamor for of their own free will….of which there will be nothing left after there is total compliance with the Quantized Human Pleb Grid.

This is the REALREASON™ why they left the borders open for so long; to create a crisis that would allow them to put everyone in this system under artificially created conditions where no decent person would object to being fingerprinted because the threat is real and obvious.

Maybe now we can see the purpose of all those concentration camps that are being manned right now; imagine all those hot blooded illegal immigrants getting mad about this and rioting in their millions. They will have to be rounded up and put somewhere.

Horrible!

On 23 July, the text of the EU’s draft Reform Treaty was released in French only. The English-language texts were released on 30-31 July, and to date (9 August) the draft Treaty is still not available in any other of the EU’s 20-odd languages.

The draft Reform Treaty would repeal or amend every single Article of the 62 Articles of the current Treaty on European Union (TEU) and would make 296 amendments to the 318 Articles of the current Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC). It would also amend or repeal most of the current 36 Protocols to the current Treaties as well as many Articles of the separate Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (the Euratom Treaty). Finally, it would add a number of new Protocols and Declarations to the Treaties.

The EU summit meeting (European Council) decided in June that these far-reaching amendments should be agreed by the end of 2007 and that the Reform Treaty should be ratified by June 2009 at the latest. In fact, the intention of the Portuguese Presidency of the Council is to agree on the text of the Treaty by mid-October. Taking account of the summer break this leaves very little time for civil society, national parliaments and the European Parliament to examine the draft text before it is agreed – and then once it is agreed, the Treaty will be presented to parliaments on a “take it or leave it” basis.

Moreover, the text of the Reform Treaty is completely unintelligible unless it is read alongside the existing Treaties. Furthermore, the full impact of many of the amendments to the Treaties set out in the draft Reform Treaty needs further explanation. Finally, there has been much public discussion of whether or not the draft Reform Treaty is essentially identical to the EU’s Constitutional Treaty of 2004.

In order to further public understanding of and debate upon the draft Reform Treaty, the following Statewatch analyses make the text of the draft Treaty comprehensible, by setting out the entire texts of the existing TEU and TEC and showing precisely how those texts would be amended by the draft Treaty. There are explanatory notes on the impact of each substantive amendment to the Treaties, and each analysis includes general comments, giving an overview of the changes and pointing out exactly which provisions of the draft Reform Treaty were taken from the Constitutional Treaty, and which provisions are different from the Constitutional Treaty.

There are 3 analyses, divided into ten parts.

Analysis no 1
– focusses on the issue of Justice and Home Affairs

Analysis no. 2 is the amended text of the TEU, and is divided into 2 parts:
– the non-foreign policy part of the Treaty (basic principles and key institutional rules of the EU) and
– the foreign policy part of that Treaty

Analysis no. 3 is the amended text of the TEC, and is divided into seven parts more or less following the structure of the Treaty:
– Part One of the Treaty on general provisions
– Part Two on non-discrimination and citizenship
– half of Part Three on the internal market and competition(except for the JHA clauses, which are the subject of analysis no. 1)
– the second half of Part Three, on other internal EU policies (such as social policy, monetary union and environment policy)
– Parts Four and Five, on the associated territories and external relations (including trade and development policy)
– Part Six, on the institutional rules(including the rules on the political institutions, the Court of Justice and the ‘flexibility’ rules)
– Part Seven, the final provisions

Analyses of the Protocols and Declarations, and the Euratom Treaty, will follow later.

[…]

Statewatch

Well well well.

On the fifth page of the first PDF, we have this:

Article 61 [67] (III-257)

1. The Union shall constitute an area of freedom, security and justice with respect for fundamental rights and the different legal systems and traditions of the Member States.

Sounds good doesnt it? but wait…

2. It shall ensure the absence of internal border controls for persons and shall frame a common policy on asylum, immigration and external border control, based on solidarity between Member States, which is fair towards third-country nationals. For the purpose of this Title, stateless persons shall be treated as third-country nationals.

WTF? Booooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!

My emphasis.

A common policy on asylum? Lets let that one lie for the moment.

This part of the document is not only outrageous, for a legal document, it is extremely vague. As far as I know, there is no legal relationship known as ‘solidarity’. This sort of language does not belong in a legal document, unless it is defined somewhere else with great precision.

This part also uses the phrase ‘which is fair’. This is entirely nebulous. What the Germans consider to be fair is anathema to the decent English. This treaty, if it is filled with this sort of garbage, is a dead document. Any lawyer who looks at it will destroy it without getting past the first five pages.

3. The Union shall endeavour to ensure a high level of security through measures to prevent and combat crime, racism and xenophobia, and through measures for coordination and cooperation between police and judicial authorities and other competent authorities, as well as through the mutual recognition of judgments in criminal matters and, if necessary, through the approximation of criminal laws.

This cannot work, because the laws of Austria are reprehensible if applied to an Englishman. There cannot be mutual recognition of Germany’s laws for example, because they have outlawed Home Schooling; should a Home Schooling family flee to the UK for freedom, if this treaty were in place, they would be extraditable for something that is not a crime in the UK.

4. The Union shall facilitate access to justice, in particular through the principle of mutual recognition of judicial and extrajudicial decisions in civil matters.

Once again, there is no way that the UK can recognize the myriad bad law that exists throughout the EU. It is not a problem that these countries have what we think is bad law, you simply do not subject yourself to them by no going there to live or do business. What is entirely wrong is that they want to force their law down our throats.

Article 62 [68] (III-258)

The European Council shall define the strategic guidelines for legislative and operational planning within the area of freedom, security and justice.

Unelected, unaccountable, undemocratic and totally insane.

Only a traitor would sign such a document.

There cannot be a referendum on this because no one in their right mind would sign up to it. This can only be brought in by compulsion, which will make all of its provisions void on their face.

In effect, this is a soft coup. You have no obligation to obey any of its provisions, and any government that ratifies this treaty is illegitimate.

Paul Craig Roberts
Lew Rockwell.com
Thursday Aug 9, 2007

This week the Russian and Chinese militaries are conducting a joint military exercise involving large numbers of troops and combat vehicles. The former Soviet Republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgkyzstan, and Kazakstan are participating. Other countries appear ready to join the military alliance.

This new potent military alliance is a real world response to neoconservative delusions about US hegemony. Neocons believe that the US is supreme in the world and can dictate its course. The neoconservative idiots have actually written papers, read by Russians and Chinese, about why the US must use its military superiority to assert hegemony over Russia and China.

Cynics believe that the neocons are just shills, like Bush and Cheney, for the military-security complex and are paid to restart the cold war for the sake of the profits of the armaments industry. But the fact is that the neocons actually believe their delusions about American hegemony.

Russia and China have now witnessed enough of the Bush administration’s unprovoked aggression in the world to take neocon intentions seriously. As the US has proven that it cannot occupy the Iraqi city of Baghdad despite 5 years of efforts, it most certainly cannot occupy Russia or China. That means the conflict toward which the neocons are driving will be a nuclear conflict.

In an attempt to gain the advantage in a nuclear conflict, the neocons are positioning US anti-ballistic missiles on Soviet borders in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is an idiotic provocation as the Russians can eliminate anti-ballistic missiles with cruise missiles. Neocons are people who desire war, but know nothing about it. Thus, the US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reagan and Gorbachev ended the cold war. However, US administrations after Reagan’s have broken the agreements and understandings. The US gratuitously brought NATO and anti-ballistic missiles to Russia’s borders. The Bush regime has initiated a propaganda war against the Russian government of V. Putin.

These are gratuitous acts of aggression. Both the Russian and Chinese governments are trying to devote resources to their economic development, not to their militaries. Yet, both are being forced by America’s aggressive posture to revamp their militaries.

Americans need to understand what the neocon Bush regime cannot: a nuclear exchange between the US, Russia, and China would establish the hegemony of the cockroach.

In a mere 6.5 years the Bush regime has destroyed the world’s good will toward the US. Today, America’s influence in the world is limited to its payments of tens of millions of dollars to bribed heads of foreign governments, such as Egypt’s and Pakistan’s. The Bush regime even thinks that as it has bought and paid for Musharraf, he will stand aside and permit Bush to make air strikes inside Pakistan. Is Bush blind to the danger that he will cause an Islamic revolution within Pakistan that will depose the US puppet and present the Middle East with an Islamic state armed with nuclear weapons?

Considering the instabilities and dangers that abound, the aggressive posture of the Bush regime goes far beyond recklessness. The Bush regime is the most irresponsibly aggressive regime the world has seen since Hitler’s.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts218.html

Things haven’t been this scary since ‘The Cold War’ an the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction.

It really has gone totally bonkers; what is worse of all is that such a small number of insane ‘people’ are the cause of all of it, and in the face of the opposition of literally billions of people, they are managing to do bad things, and get away with it.

Some will call for a world government to reign in rogue nations like america, and to prevent rogue nations from springing up. Personally the hegemony of the cockroach is preferable to the hegemony of one world government under the control of the types that run the EU and the CFR.

The answer has to be Baudrillard Mass Inertia where the billions in opposition to this insanity simply say ‘no’ and absorb and deflect and disobey every bad piece of legislation and every bogus edict until government gets the message and returns, spontaneously, to one of consent and not compulsion.

The poison of american insanity is spreading to the EU where they are now planning to roll out a USVISIT style system (despite the fact that this system is without merit by all metrics) and is going to demand VISAS for ALL non EU countries, including the USA, in a tit for tat face slap to the pig ignorant us government for treating EU citizens like garbage. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.

If Ron Paul becomes president, and the bookies are putting the odds of that taking place at an astonishing 15 to 1, then maybe we have a chance to stop all of this. I have said it over and over again; the only country that could reverse a downward spiral like is the usa, and lo and behold, many millions of americans are flocking to Ron Paul because they can feel their country slipping away from them, and sense that this man is someone who can be trusted. Finally.

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Thursday August 9, 2007
The Guardian

The future of the ID Card that is supposed to keep track of the population who are living in the UK working here is in doubt after ministers halted the programme this week. The moratorium follows an admission that the original £234b costing “proved to be optimistic”.

Unions say the 2004 estimate has now risen to £950b. The rollout to 15% of the population next month and 15 more by the end of the year has been cancelled.

The new computer system is supposed to underpin the introduction of “end-to-end management” of British Citizens through the National Identity Register (NIR) which oversees the Identity and Passport service. But Harry Fletcher, of Napo, the probation officers’ union, yesterday claimed the project, which is six months late and supposed to be in full operation by next July, was “close to collapse”.

The Ministry of Justice last night confirmed that a “rapid review” of the NIR system is under way. Ministers are to decide in mid-September how much of the project can be salvaged. It is expected that it will be adopted in a scaled-down form for the Civil Servants in England and Wales but is unlikely to be rolled out across the whole population. Cancellation could involve paying the contractors, EDS, a £50m penalty.

The system is supposed to provide a single database of all people in England and Wales and their histories, instantly accessible to the 700,000 staff in the Civil Service system. It is designed to give every person a number “for life” so that their record of offending, financial transactions, anti social behaviour and medical treatments can be logged.

The justice minister, David Hanson, has asked for a “full audit trail” on the £155m spent so far on the programme. The system has been tested on the Isle of Wight at a cost of £69m but they are not linked up to any other part of the Civil Service IT infrastructure. A similar trial planned in Northamptonshire did not go ahead.

Roger Hill, director of the Probation Service, told chief officers on Monday that the original costing had proved optimistic: “We have advised ministers that we will need to undertake a fundamental review of the work, to return to an affordable programme plan.” The director general of the NIR, Phil Wheatley, has told staff: “It is obviously disappointing that the ID Card project will not be provided as originally anticipated.”

Mr Fletcher said: “The whole project appears to have been badly managed since its inception. It is arguably an outrageous waste of public money. As a consequence of the problems, Civil Service staff will now have to use IT systems that are not fit for purpose.”

[…]

Guardian

Typical of the government to bury bad news in the summer.

Bald

“How are you going to get girls to have no hair?”

Unpaid fines may stop people leaving UK

• Home Office plan outlined in ‘e-borders’ scheme
• Huge amounts of data likely to be produced

Alan Travis, home affairs editor

Tens of thousands of people who have failed to pay court fines amounting to more than £487m would be banned from leaving the country under new powers outlined by the Home Office. Ministers are also looking at ways of using the new £1.2bn “e-borders” programme to collect more than £9m owed in health treatment charges by foreign nationals who have left the country without paying.

The programme, to be phased in from October next year, will also allow the creation of a centralised “no-fly” list of air-rage or disruptive passengers which can be circulated to airlines.

The e-borders programme requires airlines and ferry companies to submit up to 50 items of data on each passenger between 24 and 48 hours before departure to and from the UK. With 200 million passenger movements in and out of the UK last year to and from 266 overseas airports on 169 airlines, an enormous amount of data is expected to be generated by the programme.

Passenger numbers are expected to rise to 305 million a year by 2015 and ministers claim the £1.2bn programme is the only way to provide a comprehensive record of all those seeking to enter and leave the UK. The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, claims that the programme will create a kind of border control, with information being passed to police and security services before passengers board a plane, boat or train: “It will create a new, offshore line of defence – helping genuine travellers, but stopping those who pose a risk before they travel.”

However, the long-term nature of the programme means that by 2009 only half the passenger movements in and out of Britain will be logged in the e-borders computers, and even by 2011 coverage will have reached only 95%.

A Home Office assessment of the secondary legislation that is being used to implement the programme gives some early indications of who, other than suspected terrorists and international criminals, will be on the British no-fly list and be banned from travelling to and from the country. It floats the idea that provisions should be introduced to ban travel overseas for the tens of thousands of offenders who have not paid outstanding court fines or failed to discharge confiscation orders made against them. Although no official estimate exists of the number of people who have to pay court fines the amount they owe has now reached a record £487m, with a further £300m in unpaid confiscation orders.

Passengers will be further encouraged in future to book their tickets and check in online. Other suggested benefits of the e-borders programme include easier identification of those who falsely claim non-domicile or non-resident status to avoid UK income tax, thought to be costing as much as £2bn a year, and those who wrongly claim social security benefits despite having left the country.

[…]

Guardian

Like we have said so many times before; none of this is about ‘terrorism’, the original reason they gave for proposing all of this in the first place. It is all being done to totally control everyone in the UK.

The nonsense of unpaid fines is just that, nonsense. If they succeed in putting all of this together, your fines will be withdrawn from your account automatically without your consent.

This piece in the guardian gives you the reader a false impression of what is being created. Once all the tools are in place, they will not only be able to control who can and cannot leave the UK, but they will also control all of your money and movements as you live in the UK. They will be used to control who can and cannot have a bank account, or credit card for example. Who can and cannot travel on the underground or a train. Who can or cannot buy alcohol. They will do all of this with the ID card / NIR / your thumb, which will be the talisman without which you will be able to live.

They will keep registers for everything. By getting yourself on the ‘no underground list’ when you try and tap in to board a train, the gate will not open. When you try and buy a pint of beer your thumb will tell the barmaid not to serve you, because you are on the ‘no alcohol’ register. When you go to withdraw money, you will find your account locked because you are on the ‘no financial transactions’ register. Since you will be compelled to swiped for just about anything you want to do, the government will have total control over the goods and services that you will and will not, by decree, be able to access.

If you do not believe this, then you are a fool.

And as for non-domicile or non-resident claims to avoid income tax, the people who are doing this will simply leave and not come back to the UK, and spend their trillions in less hostile countries.

‘e-borders’ like USVISIT is an affront to decent people, will cost billions of pounds netting only a few petty criminals while making some IT contractors very rich. The population of Britain, and now passengers traveling here, are to be reduced to cattle by this proposal, and it is pure evil, just like USVISIT is.

Use the google to see what we have written on this.

Alan Travis of course, has no idea about what he is writing, failed to connect the dots between the proposed e-borders and USVISIT and how the latter has cost billions and caught only 1500 ‘criminals’.

The Guardian fails again. No surprise there.

Update…

You will remember that in the Soviet era and till today, as is the case today in many undemocratic and unfree countries, you have to get what is called an ‘exit visa’ in your passport before you are allowed to travel. This is completely abhorrent to all decent people. Only in totalitarian states does the government have the power to stop you from traveling outside of your country, and guess what, this is precisely what the proposals above create; an exit visa system for the UK.

By creating a list of people who cannot travel and checking your name against it in realtime, the government is essentially granting you an exit visa at the time you are checked. The permission to leave is the visa. The way things work in a free country, you can come and go as you please; its your private business. Britain is like this now; when you turn up at the airport, you simply show your passport and get on the plane and that is it; this is certainly true for people with nationalities that do not require a visa for entry, and it should NEVER be the case that a BRITISH person should be checked to see if their exit visa is in order.

Read this list of countries and their exit visa requirements:

Afghanistan
“The Constitution provides for these rights; however, certain laws limited citizens’ movement. The passport law requires women to obtain permission from a male family member before having a passport application processed. In some areas of the country, women were forbidden by local custom or tradition to leave the home except in the company of a male relative. The law also prohibits women from traveling alone outside the country without a male relative, and male relatives must accompany women participating in Hajj.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41737.htm

Algeria
“The law provides for freedom of domestic and foreign travel, and freedom to emigrate; however, the Government sometimes restricted these rights in practice. The Government does not permit young men who are eligible for the draft and who have not yet completed their military service to leave the country if they do not have special authorization; however, such authorization may be granted to students and to those persons with special family circumstances.” (…) “The Family Code does not permit married females younger than 18 years of age to travel abroad without their guardian’s permission.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41718.htm

Armenia
“The law requires authorities to issue passports to all citizens, expect for convicted felons; however, an exit stamp may be denied to persons who possess state secrets, are subject to military service, are involved in pending court cases, or whose relatives have lodged financial claims against them. An exit stamp is valid for up to 5 years and may be used without limit. Men of military age must overcome substantial bureaucratic obstacles to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41668.htm

Bahrain
“The 1963 Citizenship Law provides that the Government may reject applications to obtain or renew passports for reasonable cause, but the applicant has the right to appeal such decisions before the High Civil Court.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41719.htm

Belarus
“The Constitution provides for freedom of movement in and out of the country; however, this right was restricted at times. Official entry and exit regulations specify that citizens who wish to travel abroad must first obtain an exit stamp valid for 1 to 5 years. Once the traveler has a valid stamp, travel abroad is not restricted by further government requirements and formalities; however, the Government could intervene to invalidate stamps that had been issued.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41671.htm

Benin
“The Government maintained documentary requirements for minors traveling abroad as part of its continuing campaign against trafficking in persons.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41588.htm

Bhutan
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation “The law does not provide for these rights, and the Government placed some limits on them in practice. Citizens traveling in border regions were required to show their citizenship identity cards at immigration check points, which in some cases were located a considerable distance from what is in effect an open border with India. By treaty, citizens may reside and work in India. In addition, ethnic Nepalese claimed that they were frequently denied security clearances, which is a prerequisite for obtaining a passport form. The ethnic Nepalese said that since the clearances were based on the security clearance of their parents, the clearances frequently excluded children of ethnic Nepalese. All citizens must have a security clearance from the Government.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41739.htm

Brunei
“The Government restricts the movement of former political prisoners during the first year of their release.” (…) “Government employees, both citizens and foreigners working on a contractual basis, must apply for approval to go abroad, which was granted routinely.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41636.htm

Burma
“An ordinary citizen needs three documents to travel outside the country: a passport from the Ministry of Home Affairs; revenue clearance from the Ministry of Finance and Revenue; and a departure form from the Ministry of Immigration and Population. In 2002, in response to the trafficking in persons problem, the Government tightened the documentation process in ways that hinder or restrict international travel for the majority of women.” (…0 “The Government carefully scrutinized prospective travel abroad for all passport holders. Rigorous control of passport and exit visa issuance perpetuated rampant corruption, as applicants were forced to pay bribes of roughly $300 (300,000 kyat), the equivalent of a yearly salary, to around $1,000 (1 million kyat) for a single woman under 25 years of age. The board that reviews passport applications denied passports on political grounds. College graduates who obtained a passport (except for certain official employees) were required to pay a fee to reimburse the Government for the cost of their education.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41637.htm

Congo, Democratic Republic of the “Married women were required by law to have their husband’s permission prior to traveling outside the country.” (…) “Local authorities in the Kivus routinely required Congolese citizens to show official travel orders from an employer or government official authorizing travel.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41597.htm

Cuba
“The Government severely restricted freedom of movement…” (…) “The Government imposed some restrictions on both emigration and temporary foreign travel. By year’s end, the Government had refused exit permits to 836 people, but allowed the majority of persons who qualified for immigrant or refugee status in other countries to depart.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41756.htm

Ecuador
“The Government requires all citizens to obtain permission to travel abroad, which was granted routinely. Military and minor applicants must comply with special requirements.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41759.htm

Egypt
“Males who have not completed compulsory military service may not travel abroad or emigrate, although this restriction may be deferred or bypassed under special circumstances. Unmarried women under the age of 21 must have permission from their fathers to obtain passports and travel.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41720.htm

Equatorial Guinea “All citizens were required to obtain permission to travel abroad from the local Police Commissioner, and some members of opposition parties were denied this permission. Those who did travel abroad sometimes were interrogated upon their return.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41601.htm

Eritrea
“Citizens and foreign nationals were required to obtain an exit visa to depart the country.” (…) “Citizens of national service age (men 18 to 45 years of age, and women 18 to 27 years of age), Jehovah’s Witnesses (see Section 2.c.), and others who were out of favor with or seen as critical of the Government were routinely denied exit visas. Students who wished to study abroad often were unable to obtain exit visas. In addition, the Government frequently refused to issue exit visas to adolescents and children as young as 5 years of age, either on the grounds that they were approaching the age of eligibility for national service or because their diasporal parents had not paid the 2 percent income tax required of all citizens residing abroad. Some citizens were given exit visas only after posting bonds of approximately $7,400 (100,000 nakfa).”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41602.htm

Gabon
“The Government intermittently enforced an internal regulation requiring married women to obtain their husbands’ permission to travel abroad. During the year, there were numerous reports that authorities refused to issue passports for travel abroad with no explanation. There also were reports of unreasonable delays in obtaining passports, despite a government promise in 2003 to process passports within 3 days.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41604.htm

India
“Under the Passports Act of 1967, the Government may deny a passport to any applicant who “may or is likely to engage outside India in activities prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India.” The Government used this provision to prohibit the foreign travel of some government critics, especially those advocating Sikh independence and members of the separatist movement in Jammu and Kashmir.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41740.htm

Indonesia
“The Constitution allows the Government to prevent persons from entering or leaving the country, and sometimes the Government restricted freedom of movement.” (…) “The Government prevented at least 412 persons from leaving the country during the year. The AGO and the High Prosecutor’s Office prevented most of these departures. Some of those barred from leaving were delinquent taxpayers, while others were involved in legal disputes.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41643.htm

Iran
“The Government required exit permits (a validation stamp in the passport) for foreign travel for draft-age men and citizens who were politically suspect. Some citizens, particularly those whose skills were in short supply and who were educated at government expense, must post bonds to obtain exit permits.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41721.htm

Israel
“Citizens generally were free to travel abroad and to emigrate, provided they had no outstanding military obligations and were not restricted by administrative order. Pursuant to the 1945 State of Emergency Regulations, the Government may bar citizens from leaving the country based on security considerations.” (…) “In addition, no citizen or passport holder is permitted to travel to countries officially at war with Israel without special permission from the Government.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41723.htm

Jordan
“The law requires that all women obtain written permission from a male guardian to apply for a passport; however, women do not need a male relative’s permission to renew their passports. In the past, there were several cases in which mothers reportedly were prevented from departing with their children because authorities enforced requests from fathers to prevent their children from leaving the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41724.htm

Kenya
“Civil servants and M.P.s must get government permission for international travel, which generally was granted.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41609.htm

Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of “The regime only issues exit visas for foreign travel to officials and trusted businessmen, artists, athletes, academics, and religious figures. Short-term exit papers were also available for residents on the Chinese border to enable visits with relatives in bordering regions of China.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41646.htm

Kuwait
“The Constitution does not provide for the rights of freedom of movement within the country, freedom of foreign travel, or freedom to emigrate. The Government placed some limits on freedom of movement in practice.” (…) “Unmarried women must be 21 years of age or older to obtain a passport and travel abroad without permission of a male relative. Married women must obtain their husbands’ permission to apply for a passport. A married woman with a passport does not need her husband’s permission to travel, but he may prevent her departure from the country by placing a 24-hour travel ban on her through immigration authorities. After this 24-hour period, a court order is required if the husband still wishes to prevent his wife from leaving the country. In practice, however, many travel bans were issued without court order, effectively preventing citizens (and foreigners) from departing. All minor children under 21 years of age require their father’s permission to travel outside the country. There were reports of citizen fathers and husbands confiscating their children’s and wives’ travel documents to prevent them from departing.” (…) “The law permits the Government to place a travel ban on any citizen or foreigner who has a legal case pending before the courts. The law also permits any citizen to petition authorities to place a travel ban against any other person suspected of violating local law. In practice, this has resulted in many citizens and foreigners being prevented from departing the country without investigation or a legal case being brought before a local court.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41725.htm

Laos
“Citizens who sought to travel abroad were required to apply for an exit visa. The Government usually granted such visas; however, officials at the local level have denied permission to apply for passports and exit visas to some persons seeking to emigrate.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41648.htm

Lebanon
“All men between 18 and 21 years of age are subject to compulsory military service and are required to register at a recruitment office and obtain a travel authorization document before leaving the country.” (…) “Spouses may obtain passports for their children who are less than 7 years of age after obtaining the approval of the other spouse. To obtain a passport for a minor child between 7 and 18 years, the father or legal guardian needs to sign the request to obtain a passport.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41726.htm

Libya
“The Government requires citizens to obtain exit permits for travel abroad…” (…) “A female citizen must have her husband’s permission and a male escort to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41727.htm

Morocco
“The Ministry of Interior restricted freedom to travel outside the country in certain circumstances. In addition, all civil servants and military personnel must obtain written permission from their ministries to leave the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41728.htm

Oman
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, Repatriation, and Exile “The law does not provide for these rights; however, the Government generally respected these rights in practice.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41729.htm

Pakistan
“Government employees and students must obtain “no objection” certificates before traveling abroad, although this requirement rarely was enforced against students. Persons on the publicly available Exit Control List (ECL) are prohibited from foreign travel. There were approximately 2,153 names on the ECL. While the ECL was intended to prevent those with pending criminal cases from traveling abroad, no judicial action is required to add a name to the ECL.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41743.htm

Qatar
“In general, women over 30 years old did not require permission from male guardians to travel; however, men may prevent female relatives and children from leaving the country by providing their names to immigration officers at ports of departure. Technically, women employed by the Government must obtain official permission to travel abroad when requesting leave…”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41730.htm

Saudi Arabia “Citizen men have the freedom to travel within the country and abroad; however, the Government restricted these rights for women based on its interpretation of Islamic Law. All women in the country were prohibited from driving and were dependent upon males for transportation. Likewise, they must obtain written permission from a male relative or guardian before the authorities would allow them to travel abroad. The requirement to obtain permission from a male relative or guardian applied also to foreign women married to citizens or to the minor and single adult daughters of Saudi fathers.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41731.htm

Senegal
“Some public employees, including teachers, are required by law to obtain government approval before departing the country; however, human rights groups noted that this law was only enforced against teachers and not other public servants.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41623.htm

Seychelles
“Although it was not used during the year, the law allows the Government to deny passports to any citizen if the Minister of Defense finds that such denial is “in the national interest.””
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41624.htm

Singapore
“The Government may refuse to issue a passport and did so in the case of former ISA detainees. Under the ISA, a person’s movement may be restricted.” (…) “Male citizens with national service reserve obligations are required to advise the Ministry of Defense if they plan to travel abroad. Boys age 11 to 16½ years are issued passports that are valid for 2 years and are no longer required to obtain exit permits. From the age of 16½ until the age of enlistment, male citizens are granted 1-year passports and are required to apply for exit permits for travel that exceeds 3 months.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41659.htm

Sudan
“The Government denied exit visas to some categories of persons, including policemen and physicians, and maintained lists of political figures and other citizens who were not permitted to travel abroad.” (…) “Women cannot travel abroad without the permission of their husbands or male guardians; however, this prohibition was not enforced strictly, especially for NC members.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41628.htm

Swaziland
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation, “The law does not provide for these rights, and the Government placed some limits on them in practice. Citizens may travel and work freely within the country; however, under traditional law, a married woman requires her husband’s permission to apply for a passport, and an unmarried woman requires the permission of a close male relative.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41629.htm

Syria
“Travel to Israel is illegal, and the Government restricted travel near the Golan Heights. The Government also denied human rights activists, leaders of opposition groups, and other individuals permission to travel abroad, although government officials continued to deny that this practice occurred. Government authorities could prosecute any person found attempting to emigrate or to travel abroad illegally, any person who was deported from another country, or anyone who was suspected of having visited Israel. Women over the age of 18 have the legal right to travel without the permission of male relatives; however, a husband or a father could file a request with the Ministry of Interior to prohibit his wife or daughter’s departure from the country”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41732.htm

Tunisia
“The law provides that the courts can cancel passports and contains broad provisions that both permit passport seizure on national security grounds, and deny citizens the right either to present their case against seizure or to appeal the judges’ decision. The Ministry of Interior is required to submit requests to seize or withhold a citizen’s passport through the public prosecutor to the courts; however, the Ministry of Interior routinely bypassed the public prosecutor with impunity. The public prosecutor deferred to the Ministry of Interior on such requests.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41733.htm

Turkmenistan
“The Constitution does not provide for full freedom of movement; although the Government took steps to ease restrictions on freedom of movement, restrictions remained.” (…) “In January, the Government eliminated the exit visa requirement, following international pressure from the diplomatic corps, the OSCE, and the U.N. The elimination of the exit visa regime allowed the majority of citizens to travel abroad; however, the Government maintained a “black list” of those not allowed to travel. Some members of minority religious groups, regime opponents, relatives of those implicated in the November 2002, and those suspected of having “state secrets” were not permitted to leave the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41714.htm

Ukraine
“Exit visas were required for citizens who intended to take up permanent residence in another country…” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41715.htm

United Arab Emirates “Custom dictates that a husband can bar his wife, minor children, and adult unmarried daughters from leaving the country by taking custody of their passports.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41734.htm

Uzbekistan
“The Government required citizens to obtain exit visas for foreign travel or emigration, and while it generally granted these routinely, local officials often demanded a small bribe.” (…) “Authorities did not require an exit visa for travel to most countries of the former Soviet Union; however, the Government severely restricted the ability of its citizens to travel overland to neighboring Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Turkmenistan and restricted and significantly delayed citizens attempting to cross the border to Tajikistan. Authorities closed the border with Afghanistan to ordinary citizens.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41717.htm

Vietnam
“Although the Government no longer required citizens traveling abroad to obtain exit or reentry visas, the Government sometimes refused to issue passports. The Government did not allow some persons who publicly or privately expressed critical opinions on religious or political issues to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41665.htm

Decorating yesterday, without a radio, 2 Kate Bush thoughts.

1. The Man With The Child In His Eyes

This song has the most perfect, beautiful ‘ooooh’ of any song, surely. Yes, it does, and i did call you surely. It’s not lascivious, giving come-hither looks or being downright dirty like other oohs I could mention. It’s a luscious, loving, wonderfully rounded, beautiful ‘oooh’, the kind you’d have sung to you by the person who loves you most dearly.

2. Bloody pigeons

Thanks to her last album, Ariel, I now can’t hear a wood pigeon cooing without thinking ‘A sea of ho-ney, a sky of ho-ney’.

ID cards – some of the main corporate beneficiaries so far

Some in the IT industry are concerned about facets of the ID cards programme: the costs, the lack of a robust business case, and uncertainties over how well the technologies will work when applied to millions of people.

But not everyone is complaining. Indeed a by-product of the government’s decision to award a plethora of contracts under the ID Card scheme is that parts of the IT industry have signed up to non-disclosure terms, which has reduced significantly the number of cognoscente who could speak openly about the scheme even if they wanted to.

These are some of the organisations and individuals that have won contracts so far under the Identity Cards scheme …

PA Consulting (in part including Electronic Commerce Associates Ltd.) Approx £29.5m to £33.5m
Capita Resourcing – up to £5m
Field Fisher Waterhouse Appox £1.1m
Atos Origin IT Services UK Ltd – £1m+
Parity Resources – up to £1m
Glotel Technology – up to £1m
Sirius consortium (Fujitsu Services Ltd and Global Crossing Ltd and PWC) – £184,000
CESG Communications Electronic Security Group – £140,000+
Veredus London — £135,000+
Ernst and Young – £111,000
Partnerships UK – £93,000+
KPMG – £90,000+
Cornwell Management Consultants – £48,000
Shreeveport Management Consultancy – £43,000+
Sigma – £37,000+
The Metropolitan Police – £35,000
Axon Group Plc – £29,000
Excel Recruitment – £20,000
Whitehead Mann Ltd – £17,000
Alan Hughes – £16,000+
Office of Government Commerce – £12,000
Abbey Consulting – £4,000
Interleader Ltd – £2,000

Contracts worth up to £500,000

Adecco UK Ltd
Allen Lane
ASE Consulting Ltd
Capita Interim Management
Chamberlain Beaumont
Computer People
Crystal UK Ltd
Elan Computing Ltd
Electronic Computer Associates (novated from PA Consulting contract)
Hays Accounting
Hedra Ltd
Hudson Global Resources Ltd
Kelly Services
Logica CMC
Methods Consulting
Montpelier Contracting and Consulting
Northern Recruitment Group plc
OGC Accounting Service
Pendragon Information Systems
Real-Time Consultants plc
Ruillion Computer
Sand Resources
Search Total Recruitment Solutions
Security Printing Systems Ltd
Spring Technology
TAG TPS Ltd
The Nesco Group

Contracts under £50,000:

Angela Mortimer plc
Anite Public Sector
Beamans Ltd
British Print Industries Federation
Brook Street
Buchanan and Darby Associates
Business in the Community
Callcredit plc
CE Williams
Central Office of Information
Centre for Accessibility
Diane Bailey Associates
Donaldson’s
Drivers Jonas
ER Consultants
Equifax Ltd
Excel Recruitment
Home Office Cashiers
Ian Farrand HR Management Consultants
Ideas UK
Identix Ltd
Insight Consulting
Josephine Sammons Ltd
Kingston Communications plc.
Lambert Smith Hampton
Manpower
Michael Page UK Ltd
Minority Matters Recruitment
McCrindle Associates Ltd
OCS
Officeforce Ltd
Parity Training Ltd
Partnerships UK
Plain English Campaign
PicnicBox
Procurement Services Ltd
QDOS Computer Consultants
Q1 Consulting
Reed Accounting Personnel
Resource Analysts Ltd
RNA Ltd
Robert Walters
Security Services Group
SGS UK Ltd
Siemens Business Services
St. John’s Ambulance Services
Step Ahead
Streamline Financial Solutions
Telelogic UK Ltd
TK Cobley
The Whelan Partnership
The Whitehall and Industry Group
Turner and Townsend Project Management Ltd
White Young
Yale Data Management Consultant Ltd

[…]

http://www.computerweekly.com/

It doesn’t matter how many people they corrupt and who have signed NDAs. It is the people who are going to suffer at the hands of these companies who matter. It is their rights that are central to this, and despite what anyone says, the answer to all of this is ‘NO’ and HMG is wasting your money because in the end, this scheme will be dismantled if it ever goes into production.

There are some other interesting aspects of this list; the potential points for leaks are high in number. It cannot be possible that every one of the thousands of people who are going to be working on this will keep quiet. We can expect some leaks, if anyone decent works in any of these companies.

And finally, all the talk about open government (not that anyone with a single brain cell believed it) is further put to rest by everyone in this list being held under an NDA.

If this ID card scheme is so secure, then, like peer reviewed crypto (GPG etc) it should be possible for everyone to know how it works without compromising security. Security through obscurity is no security at all.

But you know this…

And now you can read about why this scheme is doomed to failure:

BBC’s File on 4 reveals defects in ID Cards scheme – with wide implications for government IT

Analysis/comment

A BBC Radio Four “File on 4” programme on 31 July 2007 on ID cards gave a useful insight into how ministers approve a major new IT-based project, then leave the rest to committed civil servants who have no clear what they’re supposed to be doing.

The broadcast included an interview with Computer Weekly’s news editor and several experts from the identity and IT community. It was apparent from the interviews that co-ordination and genuine accountability were lacking, or even absent, from the ID cards scheme, and that civil servants were trying to implement something indefinable that their leaders had decided to implement, nobody having a clear idea of the task that lay ahead.

This was the government machine at its worst: working in secret, having meetings whose minutes were secret, keeping secret “gateway” reviews of the scheme, and nobody having to account to ministers, stakeholders, the public, Parliament or the public over any decisions taken or not taken.

Carl Jung said that in all disorder there’s a secret order. Not in the case of the ID cards scheme, I suspect. Listening to the experts interviewed by the BBC I began to visualise the ID cards scheme as clusters of arms convulsing on an empty floor, none of them attached to a torso.

Peter Tomlinson an IT consultant and specialist in smart card technology told File on 4 he had attended government meetings where the ID card programme was discussed.

He was puzzled when officials from the Home Office, which was the department in charge of ID cards, didn’t appear to be present. “The meetings were called by people in the Cabinet Office. There were topics on the agenda that were set by people in the Cabinet Office and we kept on thinking: why are we not seeing people from the Home Office. Why are we not seeing technical people from the Home Office, or people involved in technical management? Eventually they began to come along but they never produced anyone who had any technical understanding of large-scale systems. We were just completely puzzled.”

File on 4’s researcher asked Tomlinson what questions had been asked at the government meetings he’d attended.

“Other government departments were asking the basic question: how will we use this system, and never getting an answer. No answer at all. ..It was my first real introduction to silo government. Individual government departments were completely independent of each other and now they were going to have to start working together. But they just did not start to do it.”

One of the government’s business justifications for the ID card scheme is that departments will be able to link into the National Identity Register to verify that citizens are who they say they are. But File on 4 found that departments have not assessed the costs of providing systems or software upgrades that integrate with the register.

Neil Fisher, vice president of identity management at Unisys, was also interviewed for the broadcast. Unisys is one of the companies that hope to join consortia bidding for ID scheme contracts.

Fisher had been talking to the Home Office about other computer projects he was involved in. He believed that work on these projects should have fed into the identity scheme. He, too, criticised a lack of co-ordination. He said it was difficult to find out who was in charge.

“I think there has been a realisation, as they have gone through this, that there are a lot of projects, even within the Home Office, being run by awful lots of different and smaller divisions in perhaps immigration, in law enforcement, in passport, and in ID cards, all of whom have a sort of relationship which was ill-defined.

“So [when I went] into a meeting invariably the wrong person from the wrong department would be there who could not speak for their colleagues in some other silo.”

He added that suppliers liked to talk to those who work within a well-organised chain of command. “But it just isn’t like that. I am not giving away any secrets here. The Home Office is quite a difficult department to run. It is like a herd of cats and it’s very difficult to herd cats as you know.”

Tomlinson said that as he sat listening to officials discussing the ID project at Cabinet Office meetings, he began to wonder whether it had really been thought through.

“We were asking questions like: how does one government department that is not the Home Office connect up to the identity card system? Where are the specifications for the communications protocols? How does the equipment get to be security certified? There was no work going on any of these technical topics…

“If you are going to design a large-scale system like this you first go and look at the volumes of transactions that are going to take place, how often are they going to take place and then we would see roughly how big it was going to be. You can’t specify a system unless you have these figures. There were about four of us who used to go to those meetings and we were all very puzzled. We said that this project is empty. It has no content.”

None of this can be blamed on James Hall, the affable, experienced, open and business-minded Chief Executive of the Identity and Passport Service. James Hall did not join the ID cards scheme until last October – three years after its inception; and in any case no individual civil servant, however deft his skills, can resolve the deep-rooted problems on the ID cards scheme which are arguably more to do with the anachronistic, cosy, closed-door culture of government than the action or inaction of any one person.

Several times during the File on 4 programme, Hall ably defended the scheme saying that it would continue to evolve. But some of those listening to him could be forgiven for thinking that he was saying in essence: things are not clearly defined at the moment and we’re at least partially reliant on suppliers defining things for us.

It’s the salesmen and consultants from suppliers that have pushed for ID cards; and so it will be, it seems, the technical people from some of the same companies that will be largely responsible for setting the specifications they will contracted to deliver against.

Very odd.

James Hall told the BBC’s researchers: “We have published a plan laying out our approach to the national identity scheme last December. Since January we have been in continuous dialogue with the technology industry and we have taken on board some of their thinking about the shape of the scheme and that’ll be reflected in procurement activity. And I have no doubt that once we into the procurement process we will continue to get innovation and good ideas from the market which will continue to refine our thinking about the precise details of how we deliver this.”

Martyn Thomas, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and visiting professor of software engineering at Oxford University Computing Laboratory, said the requirements for the ID cards scheme “are still not being articulated”.

He added: “Without a very clear statement of what the requirements are it won’t be possible to build a system that meets those requirements cost effectively.”

File on 4’s programme was specific to ID cards, so it’s easy to forget that there are much wider implications of the disclosures made in the broadcast. The civil servants we have met have been bright and committed. But it’s not their fault if they work without clear tasks, without leadership and in secret – so mistakes and inefficiency are hidden.

If the machinery of government is in such poor condition – and some parts of it seem to be – how can it be exploited for the purposes of huge, complex, risky, costly and ambitious IT-projects such as ID cards?

[…]

http://www.computerweekly.com/

Tony Collins is really on the ball. Astonishing stuff.

Doreen Lawrence attacks Tory frontrunner, saying black people will not vote for him

Patrick Wintour, political editor
Saturday August 4, 2007

Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, yesterday launched a fierce personal attack on Boris Johnson, saying he would destroy multicultural London if elected mayor, and that no informed black person would vote for him.

Ms Lawrence, who does not normally become involved in party politics, said she had been moved to make the criticisms by her anger at Mr Johnson’s attitude to the Macpherson inquiry in 1999 into the Metropolitan police’s failure to bring her son’s killers to justice 14 years ago.

Her intervention comes as David Cameron, the Tory leader, steps up his efforts to woo the black vote in the capital.

Ms Lawrence said: “Boris Johnson is not an appropriate person to run a multi-cultural city like London. Think of London, the richness of London, and having someone like him as mayor would destroy the city’s unity. He is definitely not the right person to even be thinking to put his name forward.

“Those people that think he is a lovable rogue need to take a good look at themselves, and look at him. I just find his remarks very offensive. I think once people read his views, there is no way he is going to get the support of any people in the black community.”

Mr Johnson wrote a series of articles at the time of the Macpherson inquiry, claiming some of its recommendations were born of political correctness and that the furore around the murder had created the whiff of a witchhunt against the police. The inquiry team found the police institutionally racist.

Mr Johnson was especially condemnatory of a “weird recommendation that the law might be changed so as to allow prosecution for racist language or behaviour ‘other than in a public place’.”

“Not even under the law of Ceausescu’s Romania could you be prosecuted for what you said in your own kitchen,” he wrote. “No wonder the police are already whingeing that they cannot make any arrests in London. No wonder the CPS groans with anti-discrimination units, while making a balls-up of so many cases.”

He argued that “the PC brigade, having punched this hole in the Metropolitan police, is swarming through to take over the whole system” and went on to say that he feared “what started as a sensible attempt to find justice for the family of Stephen Lawrence has given way to hysteria”.

In his articles – mainly in the Daily Telegraph – Mr Johnson also made it clear that he believed there had been “grotesque failures in the Lawrence murder case, and they may well have originated in racism”, adding the police officers “may have jumped to the wrong conclusions due to a racialist mindset”.

In another article, presumably for stylistic effect, he has referred to children as “piccaninnies” and described the “watermelon smiles of black people”.

Ms Lawrence said such remarks made it surprising that Mr Cameron was backing Mr Johnson. “[David Cameron] says he is trying to change the Conservative party from its past, and support multiculturalism, and bring in new communities, then supporting Boris Johnson is not a way of doing that.”

[…]

Guardian

This woman is insane.

Under ‘Red Ken’ Livingston, London has been turned into the very model of dehumanized surveillance grid living, where everyone’s privacy is violated routinely by a system that he personally implemented; the ‘Congestion Charge’. It was Red Ken who extended it despite the explicit objection of the majority of Londoners.

Under people like him, the so called ‘blacks’ will have an increasingly hard time as the biometric net / Quantized Human Pleb Grid is rolled out. They will be the ones routinely stopped and fingerprinted. They are already the ones most represented in the appalling and unprecedented DNA database. It is people like Boris who are for removing these monstrosities; she should be FOR him not AGAINST him.

This woman simply is not thinking:

She added: “He felt that people should be entitled to say what they want. It sounds to me that what he believes is that because something is said and done in private it is acceptable, but clearly it can never be acceptable to hold those views. Anyway, what is said in private normally manifests itself out in public.”

See what I mean?

Not once does this deranged person mention a single policy that Boris wants to implement. But this is not about policy. This is about the inmates taking over the asylum.

What has happened to her is unbelievably sad, but it has clearly caused her to become irrational. The media have made her into a sort of saint figure, and they listen to and print her every word uncritically. This is crazy. Her suffering of an unimaginable injustice does not qualify her to set the standards by which we should all live, and I deeply despise people who want to control what we can and cannot say.

Boris Johnson, as a British man® is free to write whatever he wants. This is the freedom that people in Britain have, and just because he has a sense of humor that someone somewhere might find offensive, this does not exclude him from running for office, and it does not mean that he would not make a brilliant Mayor of London. I would rather have a ribald Boris as Mayor of London tearing down the Congestion Charge system, anonymising the Oyster Card system, mandating that busses take cash, reinstating the Routemaster, overturning the smoking ban … returning London to what it is meant to be, than some politically correct, fascist police state facilitator who is turning the entire city into a giant concentration camp.

Increasingly, people are going to have to accept that people ‘say things’. All sorts of things. The internets can bring you these things instantly. This woman would have us living in a paranoid world where everyone is thinking one thing and writing another; where everyone is writing as if they are under surveillance, where their freely expressed thought can come back to ‘haunt them’ in the future, as PC witchunters Google their words for expressions of forbidden thought.

That is not a world where any decent person wants to live and work. It is the world of fascism, and people who say things like she does are the absolute enemies of mankind … and she has every right to say it, as wrong headed as it is. This unelected figurehead has the right to say whatever she wants, and so does Boris. That is freedom of speech in a free country. She should not be toppled from her position as a ‘community leader’ for spouting twaddle, and Boris should not be put off the list of Mayoral candidates for using his own unique brand of expression. Everyone can choose for themselves who they want to control London…that is where the person is elected.

But I digress…

Everyone is going to have to accept that people write what they write, and this has no bearing on the sort of person they really are, or what their policies are and how efficiently they implement them. If we do not accept this, then only the people who have never written are going to be ‘fit to be employed’ or ‘fit for office’. If someone doesn’t write, keeping their innermost ghastly thoughts (if a thought can be ghastly) secret and to themselves, this doesn’t mean that they are ‘nice’, or that they will be able to do the job well. If someone only writes smooth things, does this mean that we can trust them more? Of course not. What we have to talk about are ideas applied to problems and then performance and execution. Writing for fun or employment has nothing to do with either of those things, and these personal attacks on Boris Johnson are just childish, stupid and pointless. Opinion must always be separated from Policy. Informal thought written down is NOT POLICY.

Lets see what Boris wants to do with London / what he is informally thinking shall we?

Transport

A dedicated cyclist, Boris Johnson wants to get rid of “Ken Livingstone’s 18-metre-long socialist frankfurter buses” and speed humps “which necessitate the need for 4x4s”. He has attacked legislation on car booster seats for children as “utterly demented”.

He has bemoaned “the unbelievable and chronic chaos on the tube” and the state of the railways, observing: “The fundamental problem is not that the train companies are monstrously abusing the travelling public, though they are … Gordon Brown and the Treasury are … making them pay so much for the franchise that they simply don’t have enough to invest in services.”

I agree with all of this.

Marriage

“David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith are plainly right to extol the benefits of marriage, and, if a £20 tax credit would really begin to bubblegum together our broken society, then that would clearly be a price worth paying … It is outrageous that the benefit system should be so heavily skewed in favour of single parent families,” Johnson wrote recently.

Marriage is good!

Diversity and integration

The Tory MP has argued that society must “inculcate … Britishness, especially into young Muslims”, adding: “We should teach English, and we should teach in English. We should teach British history. We should think again about the jilbab, with the signals of apartness that it sends out, and we should probably scrap faith schools.

“We should forbid the imams from preaching sermons in anything but English … we cannot continue with the multicultural apartheid.”

Last year he said localism could lead to sharia law because “large chunks of the Muslim population” did not feel British. He added: “Supposing Tower Hamlets or parts of Bradford were to become governed by religious zealots believing in that system?”

The Mayor of London cannot forbid people from preaching in Arabic… or Latin for that matter. This is just TALK. Real democracies have checks and balances in place so that no matter what the personal opinions of elected officials are, they cannot violate your rights. Sadly, the Mayor of London can violate your rights willy nilly, and there is nothing that you can do about it. If a bad man, like Red Ken is in charge, then bad things like the Congestion Charge can and will happen. The rights of people in the UK need to be enshrined….but thats another blog post.

Inequality

He admits the low tax rates enjoyed by many in the City are “odd”, but argues: “Without their efforts, there would be no squillions, and a windfall tax might simply kill the goose.” He suggests philanthropy should be encouraged instead.

He has accused Labour of waging a middle-class war against “the bottom 20% of society – the group that supplies us with the chavs, the losers, the burglars, the drug addicts and the 70,000 people who are lost in our prisons … They keep them snared in a super-complicated system of means-tested benefits … They tax them an exorbitant proportion of their incomes.”

Completely correct, and he is completely right about Philanthropy, as are others.

The environment, Housing, Health its all good. This is a man who has some common sense, who is not in thrall to political correctness, which means that he is free thinking. We need free thinkers…heavens above, we need people who can THINK. That is why Boris Johnson should be Mayor of London. ‘Shock Jock’ Nick Ferrari is just thick, and anyone who used to be ‘ShowBiz Reporter at The Sun’ shouldn’t be left in charge of a ten penny piece let alone one of the greatest cities mankind ever created. Ken Livingston has been an unmitigated disaster. Whoever the lib-dems are fielding they are unelectable thanks to their absurd local income tax ‘ideas’.

and finally, a nifty comment from a real person:

Bye ken, and welcome Boris, who is someone who will say what we all feel, and not scared by the do gooder groups, who so many bow down to now!

– Graham, Southend on sea, UK

from This is London

See what I mean?…again?

Richard Littlejohn

Fancy a pair of those newfangled motorised roller skates? Careful, you could end up being branded a potential serial killer and forced to hand over your DNA.

Police chiefs want the power to take samples from people committing even the most trivial offences.

And where the first motorised roller skates go, the first motorised roller skates breath test will surely follow.

After all, the Old Bill have already breathtested one man using a child’s scooter with a strimmer engine attached and another riding a skateboard.

But you won’t have to be skating under the influence to be catapulted to the top of the “Most Wanted” list. You’d be breaking the law simply by using the skates.

Senior policemen and the Crown Prosecution Service agree that would be enough to justify you being forced to give a DNA sample on the spot.

Currently, they’re only allowed to take swabs from those convicted of crimes which carry a jail term.

According to one of the supporters of the scheme, Inspector Thomas Huntley, of the Ministry of Defence Police, failing to take a sample ‘could be seen as giving the impression that an individual who commits a non-recordable offence could not be a repeat offender.

“While the increase of suspects on the database will lead to an increased cost, this should be considered preferable to letting a serious offender walk free from custody.”

We’re not just talking reckless endangerment with a pair of turbo-charged roller skates, either. What they mean by ‘non-recordable’ encompasses anything from ignoring a stop sign or not wearing a seat belt to dropping litter or letting your dog foul the pavement.

HOW are the police supposed to know that the little old lady allowing her poodle to poop in a public place won’t go on to commit another Dunblane massacre? Or that the spotty youth casually dropping a KitKat wrapper in the gutter may not be the next Yorkshire Ripper.

You never can tell. Better to be safe than sorry. Open wide.

The step from not wearing a seat belt, or running a red light, to mass murderer may be a small one in the tiny mind of someone like the impertinent Inspector Huntley.

But it’s a giant leap in terms of liberty and the presumption of innocence.

What was that phrase again? We can’t be certain that someone could not be a repeat offender.

Of course we can’t. But our system of justice is based upon a person being innocent until proven guilty.

We don’t lock up shoplifters for life on the grounds that they might one day rob a bank. Nor should we be taking

DNA swabs from those guilty of piffling offences, just in case.

And while convictions for relatively minor offences are wiped clean under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, your DNA sample is for ever.

This is an attempt to establish a comprehensive national biometric database by stealth, because they know we would never agree to it voluntarily, just as the new passport regime is a way of bringing in ID cards by the back door.

How many politicians would be prepared to stand for election on a commitment: “Vote for me and if you forget to fasten your seat belt you will be forced to hand over a DNA sample”?

It’s monstrous, but it’s par for the course these days.

How many people voted for the thousands of new “criminal” offences brought in over the past few years?

How many of these exciting new crimes were brought in after a ‘consultation’ exercise, rather than a proper debate and vote in Parliament?

How many times have I written about this Government’s sinister determination to criminalise as many people as possible and pretend that a middle-class motorist doing a few miles an hour above the limit on a deserted motorway is just as much a villain as an inner-city mugger?

That’s what’s happening again in this case. It’s all in line with Labour’s love of surveillance and snooping and treating us all like criminals.

No one voted for officials to be given the power to come into our homes to prod our roof insulation and measure our conservatories, to use satellites to assess the size of our gardens for taxation purposes, or to rip open our bin-liners to check for the “wrong” kind of rubbish.

No one voted for the millions of CCTV and speed cameras on every street corner, or for the increasingly intrusive amount of personal information demanded even to get a bus pass.

There are already four million people on the DNA database – including one million who have never been convicted of any crime.

Curious how a government in thrall to “yuman rites” has such contempt for the right to privacy.

We already live in a punishment culture and we’re getting perilously close to a full-blown police state.

If we don’t want to wake up one day and wonder where the last of our liberties went, it’s time to get our skates on.

[…]

Daily Mail

You know its ‘Game Over’ when you agree with people like Litlejohn!

New biometric technology means one in the eye for airport queues

Beat the crowds at UK airports this summer by taking advantage of the latest biometric technology, says Emma Hartley

It’s been a bad week for the British airport queue. First, MPs said that standing in one could make you a “sitting duck” target for terrorists.

Then Kitty Ussher, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, warned that “Heathrow hassle” and long queues, particularly at passport control, were deterring business people from flying to London for meetings, which could have a long-term impact on the national economy.

Never has air travel been less glamorous for the British holidaymaker. The recent beefing-up of airport security, while understood and accepted with typical stoicism, has none the less turned foreign sojourns into an epic and tiring series of queues and checks.

But it needn’t be that way: there is a recently installed digital solution to at least half of the problem – the part encountered at the arrivals hall in the UK – available to those travellers classified as “low security risk”.

IRIS, an acronym for Iris Recognition Immigration System, is a service provided free at the point of contact by the Immigration Service, in which eight British airport terminals – four at Heathrow, two at Gatwick plus Birmingham and Manchester – have the facility to scan a human iris. As with a fingerprint, every iris is unique, even for identical twins.

The iris-scanning process takes about two minutes and no appointment is necessary; you just need to clear security at a participating airport, keep hold of your boarding card, and ask to be directed to the IRIS suite.

The particular infrared camera system used to power IRIS was developed by Sagem Défense Sécurité, a French company that has also developed iris-scanning applications for military use, but the basic technique involves taking simultaneous pictures on two light frequencies – ambient light and that from a light-emitting diode in the infrared region.

Paul Stanborough, managing director of rival outfit Aditech, explains: “It’s the red light that makes the picture of the iris unique. That’s the clever bit that generates the algorithm, coding the image and allowing it to be stored and found again.”

With the images of your irises held on a database, when you return to the UK you can skip the long queue at passport control and instead head for the IRIS gate. The queue here, by comparison, is determined entirely by the scheme’s uptake – only around 100,000 have enrolled so far, very few of whom will be travelling at any given time, so there is rarely any queue at all.

Moreover, the day when that line will be the same length as the others is a long way off, not least because access to the scheme is restricted to those deemed “low risk”.

Passing through the IRIS system involves simply gazing into a mirrored box at the recognition technology, which should spring the gate open within seconds.

IRIS users are and will remain almost entirely UK passport holders, according to Brodie Clark, the Government’s strategic director for border control. “It is possible, though, that if [non-British passport-holders] fly to the UK often on business and are not on any police watch-list, you may also be eligible,” he said.

Because the data is not stored on your passport but on the Immigration Service’s database, the scheme is unaffected by passport expiry. However, IRIS must be activated within six months of enrolling and is valid unused for two years but renewed every time it is used.

It is designed for frequent flyers, most probably business and solo travellers. It’s not without its pitfalls: if, for instance, someone takes a small child into the IRIS gate the technology will not work since it is designed for one person at a time. Similarly, a person wearing backpack-style hand luggage might create the impression of two people in the booth and disrupt the process, so all baggage must be put on the ground.

Until now, the system’s existence at passport control has remained a rather well-kept secret. The three other people who presented themselves for enrolment at Gatwick South Terminal during the 15 minutes or so I was there this week all said that they had heard about it in a roundabout way, through random browsing on the internet or from friends.

However, it is understood that the Government is about to launch a promotional drive to encourage greater use of the IRIS technology.

And the benefits of IRIS will be felt elsewhere in the airport, too. Since the time-saving benefits of iris-scanning are wiped out if you speed through immigration just to hang around at the baggage carousel waiting for your suitcase, the scheme indirectly encourages people to take less luggage when they travel, leading in turn to shorter check-in times.

Balm to the soul for Britain’s weary travellers.

[…]

Telegraph

This is a piece of blatant propaganda, placed by a PR company in the Telegraph, for money.

SHAME.

Today we learn that the DNA database has been accumulating records at one per minute, and that the government wants to be able to take your DNA on the street for dropping litter or not wearing a seat belt.

When do you think that this cartoon was drawn?

Click here to find out.

Everyone has been warned again and again about all of this….

gah!

by Steven LaTulippe

“If we have to use force, it is because we are America! We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further into the future.”

~ Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

Can Ron Paul really win? Does he have a snowball’s chance of becoming the next president, or are we all kidding ourselves?

At the moment, Rep. Paul’s quixotic campaign seems to be picking up steam. His recent fundraising statistics reveal a blossoming, internet-based movement that is uniting libertarians and other concerned citizens from across the political spectrum. His performance in the media has been sharp, and his organization seems to be honing its message.

While there are plenty of reasons for optimism, I think we need to be clear-eyed about the road ahead. If Rep. Paul somehow manages to remain a viable candidate and to seriously challenge his mainstream opponents, things will get extremely interesting. He faces a set of obstacles unlike any other candidate in my lifetime.

When evaluating his chances, it’s important to accept one fact about contemporary America: This is not a democracy, and certainly not a constitutional republic. America is actually a carefully concealed oligarchy. A few thousand people, mostly in government, finance, and the military-industrial complex, run this country for their own purposes. By manipulating the two-party system, influencing the mainstream media, and controlling the flow of campaign finance money, this oligarchy works to secure the nomination of its preferred candidates (Democratic and Republican alike), thus giving voters a “choice” between Puppet A and Marionette B.

Unlike the establishment’s candidates, Ron Paul is a freelancer running on three specific ideas:

• The federal government must function within the strict guidelines of the Constitution.
• America should deconstruct its empire, withdraw our troops from around the world and reestablish a foreign policy based on noninterventionism.
• America should abolish the Federal Reserve Bank, eliminate fiat currency and return to hard money.

This is not a political agenda. This is not a party platform. It is a revolution. The entire ruling oligarchy would be swept away if these ideas were ever implemented. Every sentence, every word, every jot and tittle of this agenda is unacceptable, repellent and hateful to America’s ruling elite.

The reasons for this are fairly obvious.

Through its control of the Federal Reserve, the banking elites make billions of dollars in unearned profits and exert enormous influence over the American economy. Countless industries and special interest groups (both foreign and domestic) have sprung up around our defense and national security budgets. The bureaucratic elites who dominate the federal government despise the Constitution’s limitations on their power and view the document as just an archaic “piece of paper.”

Anyone who believes these folks will simply “walk away” if Ron Paul is elected president obviously doesn’t understand with whom they are dealing.

When its authority over the Southern states was challenged in the 19th Century, the oligarchy suspended the Constitution and launched a bloody war that killed three quarters of a million people. They arrested newspaper editors, deported antiwar congressmen, and burned down several American cities.

A century later, the oligarchy nuked two Japanese cities, killing thousands of civilians in the twinkle of an eye.

When its marginal interests were threatened in Southeast Asia, the oligarchy launched a devastating war that killed over a million people and left the region marinating in toxic defoliating chemicals.

To further its interests in the Middle East, the oligarchy slapped horrific sanctions on Iraq that killed 250,000 children (and then trotted out Madeleine Albright – one of Clinton’s blood-stained trolls – to smugly declare that the deaths were “worth it”).

Keeping these facts in mind, we must ask ourselves a simple question: If the oligarchy was willing to behave this way to protect its often marginal interests, what would it do to stop a devastating assault on its very existence?

The attack on Ron Paul’s candidacy will begin in earnest when it appears he has an even remote possibility of winning. It will follow a fairly predictable path:

The first step is already in play. The establishment will start by simply ignoring him, by using its power in the mainstream media and their influence over campaign donors. If possible, they will find ways of excluding him from the debates.

This strategy is already failing. The internet and talk radio are outside the elite’s direct control and are being used effectively by Rep. Paul to “get the message out.” (And mark my words, sooner or later the oligarchy will come for the internet. This medium has been a royal pain in their derriere from day one).

If this strategy fizzles, the establishment will move on to ridicule and fear mongering. Ron’s ideas will be grotesquely distorted in establishment media “hit pieces.” They’ll say he wants to permit heroin use in public schools, or that he wants old people to die in the streets without their social security checks, or that he wants to allow greedy industrialists to dump toxic waste into our drinking water.

The next arrow in the oligarchy’s quiver will be scandal – real or fabricated. Usually, this takes the form of pictures, billing records, etc. involving financial or sexual hi-jinks. For folks with the right motivation and abilities, it would be child’s play to implicate him in some sort of phony ethical, moral, or financial skullduggery (e.g., doctored pictures, sordid media accounts from “eyewitnesses,” etc.).

If Ron somehow survives this assault, the oligarchy will move on to the criminal justice system. On some fine day, a stretch limo will pull up to the Capitol Building and one of the establishment’s consiglieres (Jim Baker…or maybe Vernon Jordan) will ooze into Ron’s office for a “chat.”

Maybe Rep. Paul forgot to fill out Form X109/23W on his 1997 income tax return?

Or maybe he drained a mud puddle when he built his new house…and maybe that puddle could theoretically be classified as a “wetland?”

Or, even better, maybe a close relative is in hot water with OSHA/FDA/IRS/you-name-it (federal prosecutors love to go after relatives in order to gain “leverage”).

Rep. Paul’s sentence could be lessened, of course…provided he agreed to drop his candidacy as part of a “plea bargain.”

Ayn Rand once stated that the hallmark of authoritarian systems is the creation of innumerable, indecipherable laws. Such systems make everyone an un-indicted felon and allow for the exercise of arbitrary government power via selective prosecution.

If this tactic somehow failed and it appeared that Rep. Paul was still a credible threat to win the presidency, then things could get dicey.

The establishment may decide to let him take office and then use their considerable influence to ensure his presidency ended in failure – mostly through their control of Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and the mainstream media.

The problem with this strategy (from the oligarchy’s perspective) is that it entails considerable risk. As president, Rep. Paul could use the substantial powers of the office to inflict untold damage to the imperial structure (especially if he chose to withdraw American troops stationed overseas). Worse, he could appoint anti-government “ideologues” to a variety of positions in the federal government.

The damage could take decades to undo.

If these options fail, the oligarchy could resort to various “extra-legal” strategies – anything from vote-rigging to trumped-up impeachment charges.

Either way, one thing is certain: The American establishment controls a world-wide empire, has the power to print the world’s reserve currency at will, and can enact virtually any law without constitutional constraint. Such power is rarely surrendered without a long, bitter struggle.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/latulippe/latulippe80.html

And yet, the very fact that Ron Paul has a real chance of overthrowing the empire demonstrates what I have been saying for years; if any country can pull itself out of the sewer and return to its proper state it is the United States of America.

No other country has the political mechanism to do it, no other country has a population with the will to do it, and no other country has the ‘staff’ to pull it off. That is why, despite all of the manifest evil that The Great Satan has done I still believe (as do many people) that it is possible for a revolution to happen in the usa that will completely turn that country around and make it, once again, the greatest country on earth.

In the wake of such a turnaround, Britain will surely follow, and all of our troubles here will be over.

By Michael Hampton

As you are probably aware, the greatest threat to your privacy and well-being stems from the government, whether directly or indirectly. Even the “freest” or “most democratic” governments have committed their share of atrocities, and even if you think you’re safe today, if the political winds blow in a different direction tomorrow, you could be the next victim.

Today, governments use databases to track virtually everything, including their own people. So an important part of protecting yourself is to minimize the amount of information governments have about you.

Unlike businesses, which use databases to reduce the costs of the products and services they provide on a voluntary basis, governments of all stripes use databases of people in order to track, monitor, forcibly control and even kill them more efficiently. Indeed, for a government, this is the only purpose for a database of people.

The most important thing to remember is that being innocent will not protect you. It didn’t protect Japanese-Americans in the 1940s, it didn’t protect people falsely accused of being Communists in the 1950s, and it doesn’t protect innocent people who have had their property wrongly seized or been killed in botched drug raids today.

Staying out of government databases, to the maximum extent possible, is the best way to protect yourself from whatever dark fate your government has in store for you tomorrow. These tips will help those of you who want to protect your privacy to do so without unnecessarily sacrificing your quality of life.

Government gets most of its information about you from you, so limiting the amount of information you give the government is the easiest way to protect yourself.

If you can avoid it, do not obtain a driver license or state ID card. The driver license, despite its dubious legality and its utter irrelevance to the physical act of driving a vehicle, has become so pervasive that virtually everyone now has one. Whether by accident or design, it stands as the de facto ID through which you’re tracked, even without the REAL ID Act, by local, state and federal government alike. If you must obtain one, then you can ensure that the information on it is out of date the moment it’s issued, by obtaining the license and then immediately — the same day — moving to a new address. You can also provide an address you haven’t lived at for years, if ever. The same applies to vehicle registrations. Keep in mind that governments don’t like it when the information you’ve given them is inaccurate or outdated, and usually have laws against it; however, such laws are virtually unenforceable.

Obtain a “fake” ID and use it wherever possible, but never with the government. Many places which ask for a government-issued ID these days have no legitimate reason to ask, or their reason for asking could be satisfied through other means. For instance, hotels ask for ID not because they need to know who you are, but because they want to know that you can pay for your room and any damages you may cause. This need could be met through the use of a credit card or through other means, but the prevalence of government ID cards has caused people to rely on them when other solutions would work as well or better. Jim Harper from the Cato Institute addresses this issue in his book, Identity Crisis. Never use your real name or ID unless the government has actually required it, and be aware that many places will tell you the government requires it, when it does not, such as for air travel. In the U.S., under common law, you may use any name you like, as long as you aren’t trying to defraud.

Do not give out your Social Security number, if you have one, to anyone except the government. Do not give it to your bank, nor your credit card issuer, nor anyone else, who isn’t actually required by the government to collect it. (Your bank does not need a Social Security or tax ID number unless you have an interest-bearing account.) If you’ve already given it to your bank, for instance, change banks.

On that note, do not keep large amounts of money in banks. All fiat currencies depreciate much faster than any rate of interest you’ll ever be offered; even interest-bearing offerings will lose money over the long term, adjusted for inflation. True money of intrinsic value, such as gold, silver and platinum, is much more stable, holding its value over the long term, and should be a significant part of any respectable investment portfolio, if not under your pillow.

Do not participate in the census. Sure, your local bureaucrats will try to guilt trip you into filling it out, because they get more of your money if you do. But census data is among the most detailed information the government collects, it’s been abused before, and government has no legitimate purpose for collecting most of what they ask for these days. The most they need to know is the number of people in your house, not even who they are, and even that is probably too much to tell them.

Be aware of what data government collects and how it uses that data. Remember that the use that seems benign today may turn malevolent next year, and by then it’s too late. Evaluate a government data collection program not just on its merits but its potential for misuse in the future. Ask yourself, What could Hitler do with this database? That will tell you what its true potential is. Keep in mind nobody saw Hitler’s evil coming; he looked like a perfectly normal politician to almost everyone, putting Germany on the path to economic recovery, right up until he started exterminating people.

Always remember that government is evil. Thomas Paine said, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” (And a growing number of people believe that government is an unnecessary evil which should be dispensed with as soon as possible so that we can finally have a civilized society.) As we all know by now, the Constitution is no guarantee that our government will remain in “its best state;” indeed, the government violates it with impunity by having its own court redefine what “is” — or the inconvenient word of the day — is. It’s only a matter of time before government violates your rights, if it hasn’t already, and it probably has.

This is why we were admonished by the country’s founders to distrust government. And that is the best advice of all.

Homeland Stupidity

U.N. rapporteur raps Britains’s law on fingerprinting foreigners
BC-UH-Britain-Racism
By Sara Sasaki

LONDON. July 18 – A special U.N. rapporteur on racism on Thursday criticized Britain’s new immigration legislation on fingerprinting and photographing all foreign visitors as a process 0f treating foreigners like criminals.

Ooudou Diene. on his last day of a six-day visit to Britain to conduct a follow-up of his report on racism, said at a press conference in London the immigration bill that just passed through Parliament on Wednesday “illustrates something I have been denouncing in my reports for four years.”

“It is the fact that, especially since Sept. 11. there has been a process of criminalization of foreigners” all over the world, he added.

The enacted legislation will allow immigration officials to take biometric data from foreigners age 16 and above as pari of measures to light terrorism, enabling them to check for past deportees and anyone designated as a terrorist by the justice minister.

But Diene warned that the fight against terrorism is being used against foreigners worldwide and governments are criminalizing them when they are actually supposed to protect them.

The measures of the new legislation exclude ethnic Irish and other permanent residents with special status, those under 16, those visiting Britain for diplomatic or official purposes, and those invited by the state.

But foreigners living in Britain without special permanent residence status such as those on a work visa will also be fingerprinted and photographed at immigration upon arrival.

Alter his visit t to Britain last July, Diene said racial discrimination in Britain is “deep and profound,” and expressed concerns over the treatment of Scottish indigenous people, Muslim and Hindu minorities living in Britain and new immigrants originating from Asia, the Middle East Africa.

[…]

http://www.debito.org/kyodo051806.jpg
http://www.debito.org/rapporteur.html

BRITISH visitors to America will be required to register their travel plans online 48 hours before departure, according to a bill expected to be passed by the US Congress this week.

This will cause even more people to choose other places to vacation, study, etc etc. Already people are turning their backs on the USA, and this will make it even worse.

Online registration will give US authorities the chance to reject travellers before they leave their home country. Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, said: “It will avoid the problem where somebody shows up at the airport in the US, winds up getting rejected and has to fly back.”

How many times does this happen, out of the millions and millions of people who persist in visiting that country? What are the facts?

The form will ask for passport number, flight number, purpose of journey and place of stay. It will be similar to the one passengers currently fill in mid-flight and, said Chertoff, would “probably be good for a year or so”.

Probably… ‘Or so’… Nice!

It could cause problems for visitors travelling at short notice although there will be some provision for last-minute bookings. The new 48-hour rule is expected to be implemented next year.

It WILL cause problems for visitors and what it will do is put the USA down on the list of places that immediately come to mind when you want to go somewhere just for fun. From now on, only people with a compelling reason will go to that place.

Chertoff denied the system was draconian in comparison with some European security laws. “In various parts of the continent if you don’t carry an identification card you’d be put in jail whereas in this country that would not be tolerated,” he said.

This line is the one that caused me to post this wretched garbage.

Everyone knows that the usa is trying to bring in a de-facto ID card, and that the states are, one by one, enacting legislation to forbid REALID. Everyone knows that you cannot get on an internal flight in the usa without ID. Everyone knows that the police can demand ID from you and if you do not comply, you get not only put in gaol, but tazered Check out the video of this very thing happening and read some posts on Papers Please! to find out what the truth about this really is.

Pocket Satan living dead faced Chertoff, consummate lair, fear-monger and un-American bastard has no business admonishing Europeans for their (admittedly very bad) ID policies when in his own country what they are doing and what he is personally responsible for is far far worse.

Travellers to America are already subject to photograph and fingerprint checks, causing long queues on arrival.

and ‘Sarah Baxter’, who wrote this garbage, forgot to say that this is the cause of the sharp and sustained decline in the visitor numbers to the usa.

The measure would apply to Britain and 26 other countries, mostly from the European Union, whose citizens are allowed to travel visa-free to America for up to 90 days.

And it is the money from tourists and businessmen from these 26 countries that is being blocked by this insanity.

The bill is part of a series of tighter border controls being introduced.

[…]

Times

No, it is part of the insanity that has gripped the usa. Get it right you idiot!

The visa applications of more than 100,000 people applying to enter the UK were left unprotected and open to manipulation, according to an official report into one of the biggest privacy breaches in recent history.

There are so many things we could do with this article, the first one being substitution for ContactPoint. But I think you get the message.

There are fears that some of the applications may have been doctored to allow terrorists and criminals to enter the UK. GCHQ, the government intelligence agency charged with tracing the applications, is finding it difficult to investigate the claims because of poor quality records.

This is bullshit. There are already enough ‘terrorists’ in the UK by their own reckoning they do not have to enter here by stealth to cause havoc. This logic is completely flawed. It could also have been used to get people in here who simply want to go to the pub.

Last night, politicians described the security failure as ‘shocking’ and said it fatally undermined the government’s claims that electronic ID systems could protect the UK from the heightened terrorist threat.

And yet these are the same people who voted for ID cards, and ContactPoint. THAT is what is shocking.

The findings of the three-month independent investigation into serious breaches of the the visa application process – focusing on system abuses in India, Nigeria and Russia – were slipped out on the last day of Parliament in an apparent attempt to bury bad news.

They always do this.

Its conclusions raise disturbing questions about Britain’s ability to police its borders.

NO IT DOESNT YOU BLOODY MORON.

What it DOES raise questions about, questions that you do not have the intelligence to pose, is how are they going to police ContactPoint and the proposed NIR if they cannot protect the integrity of a mere 100,000 Visa applications.

Once again, it is astonishing that they are not using cryptography to solve these problems. It is astonishing that the Visa system is so badly designed. It is astonishing that they are using contractors to do this job when it should be done ‘in house’ by civil servants.

The report focuses on a private company, VFS, contracted by the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to process the online visa applications of Indians wanting to visit Britain. It later won similar contracts in Russia and Nigera.

This is too important, hysteria over immigration and false fear over ‘terrorism’ or not, to be in the hands of a private contractor.

But in 2005 it became apparent that the system was chronically flawed. An applicant informed VFS and UK Visas, the government agency in charge of visa processing, that he was able to obtain confidential information – including passport numbers, criminal convictions, ethnic origin and travel details – about other users of the service. He also showed how he could amend other people’s visa applications online. But despite the warning, the system wasn’t shut down until May 2007.

This is very interesting.

When they say ‘an applicant’ they mean a Nigerian or an Indian or a Russian volunteered this information. I guess all the people trying to get Visas for the UK are not all bad after all!

What this bad article also does not say is that ContactPoint is going to be delivered online also, and that this means that people are going to get in there from anywhere also, and the records of children are going to be accessed.

These Guardian articles routinely fail to connect the dots and make the connections. They really do fail it over and over again.

The official report into the security lapse concludes that the government’s National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre – the former body charged with evaluating the security of IT projects – would have not approved the scheme if it had been asked.

This is irrelevant. The system of issuing Visas can be made infallible and secure and much more simple than it is now. If you have ever seen the absurd spectacle of Immigration officers with loupes inspecting Visas for forgeries at Heathrow you know what I am talking about.

This is how you might do it.

Firstly, Visas must be issued correctly. They must be issued with all the checks that they have been using historically to good effect.

Then, when the Visa is issued the visa number and an image of the Visa and its ‘owner’ are hashed together with GPG an this package is put on an immigration server that is accessible over the internets. When the person who has the visa arrives at Heathrow, all the operator has to do is check that the visa on the system is the one stuck in the passport. He checks to see if the entry has been tampered by checking the signature on the file. If someone got in there and swapped information or altered it, the signature will fail. This means that even if someone gets into the system, they cannot change entries because changing them breaks them; they become tamper proof.

After this, you will never again see people inspecting Visas for forgeries because they will be impossible to make. The only forged Visas in the system will be the ones put there by the ‘security services’…but that is another story.

This is a similar process to the Meau² named ISLAND decentralized passport authentication system. It is inexpensive, fool proof (even when it is being operated by fools) and can be done right now.

The report notes that FCO IT security advisers were not asked their opinion about the project and that no third party tests were carried out on the system. The Conservative shadow Foreign Office Minister, David Lidington, said he feared the system may have been exploited by terrorists and criminals.

[…]

Guardian

David Liddington is clearly a moron.