I notice two notices relating to banking this morning which threw up contrasting sentiments.

The first was a bus shelter advert for a high street bank written entirely in Polish. Quite novel I thought especially as they don’t have them in any other foreign languages around here. Obviously a case of a company seeing a market and responding accordingly.

The other notice was to inform customers of another high street bank informing their ‘customers’ that all withdrawals at the bank would have to be accompanied by two forms of identification (unspecified). Now as a feature of a specific account additional security could be a ‘good thing’, people could chose the level of security they wanted for their money and the bank could charge/adjust interset rates to cover the additional inconvenience .
They could even issue a card with a security code when the account was opened!!! Seriously, they could issue a bank card with an encrypted photo image that shows up when read (and PIN verified) in the bank for a nominal fee – if it were requested by the investor opening the account, I am sure Irdial has been through this before.
Anyhow I had negative feelings not so much for the level of security being ‘offered’ but that I feel that that particular bank is likely not to question the pros and cons of requiring ID cards information to operate a bank account in the future.

(an old article)

–

Did I mention ID cards?

It seems bizarre that a system that will supposedly reduce ‘illegal immigrant working’ will be ‘policed’ by the very employers that exploit non-official residents for labour.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) — It’s always interesting to me, that in my own country, I often get assignments where I walk into a room, and everyone looks and sounds different from me. Different language. Different culture. And sometimes, different beliefs.

On this story, I crossed such a threshold.

I stepped into the taxi depot that serves the Minneapolis – St. Paul International Airport, where drivers sit and wait for their next fare. In this crowded, noisy room, most of the cabbies are Muslims originally from Somalia.

“We’re doing a story about the conflict between the cabbies and the airport. The Muslim drivers have been refusing to take passengers carrying alcohol, such as wine or liquor purchased at a duty free shop,” I explained.

A group of men gathered around us.

“This is America, we have freedom of religion,” says one cabbie. We could see their feelings are intense — that the issue seems to cut to the core of their identity.

“The Metropolitan Airport Commission is discriminating against us Muslim drivers,” says Abdulkaddir Adan, a Somalian-American who’s been driving a cab in the Twin Cities for two years.

We asked Adan if he’d give us a ride, and let us interview him while he was driving. He agreed. CNN Photojournalist Derek Davis set up a “lipstick” cam, a small camera, positioned on the dashboard.

From the back seat, I asked why Adan would object if I were carrying alcohol.

“The one who drinks, the one who transports, and the one who makes a business of it, they have the same category,” he said.

“So, by my transporting my alcohol in your cab, you are sinning?” I asked.

“Sinning to God, yes,” he replied.

Adan is not alone. About three quarters of the 900 cabbies serving the airport are Muslim, and many have been regularly refusing passengers carrying beer, wine or liquor.

In the past five years, 5,400 would-be taxi passengers at the airport were refused service for this very reason, said the Metropolitan Airport Commission, or MAC. Last May, passenger Bob Dildine says he waited for 20 minutes, and five cab drivers would not give him and his daughter a ride. He was carrying wine he bought on vacation.

“They’re here to provide service to people,” said Dildine. “We were a lawful customer, and we were denied service. That’s not our way of doing things.”

MAC officials said they don’t know of any airport other than the Twin Cities where this has become an issue. MAC officials explain that the area has a growing population of immigrant Somalians, many who’ve sought jobs as taxi drivers. Last year, MAC consulted local Muslim leaders, who issued a fatwa, or religious opinion.

“It is expressly stated,” said Kahlid Elmasry of the Muslim American Society. “Transportation of alcohol for Muslims is against the Islamic faith, and therefore forbidden.”

Last September, airport officials sought a compromise, and suggested that distinctive lights could be put on the roofs of cabs operated by drivers who will not transport alcohol. That way, taxi starters — airport staff who direct people into cabs — could send passengers with alcohol to those drivers who have no objection.

“But the feedback we got, not only locally but really from around the country and around the world, was almost entirely negative,” said airport spokesman Pat Hogan. “People saw that as condoning discrimination against people who had alcohol.”

Right now, MAC says any cabbie who refuses a passenger carrying alcohol must go to the back of the line. No small thing, given cabbies often have to wait at the depot up to three hours for the next fare.

But because MAC officials have received thousands of complaints, they’re considering stiffer penalties: a 30-day suspension for a first refusal, a two-year suspension for a second.

“We’re now at a point where the drivers may have to make a choice,” said Hogan.

For Adan, the choice is clear.

“I would leave my job, instead of doing something that’s not allowed in my religion,” he said. […]

CNN

This sort of story is designed to drive people insane. Its very clever; it is a story about how america is changing (for the worse) but also how its principles are still intact (letting new people in to get on with their lives as they wish). This is a story that you cannot take at face value. It is a provocation, a red rag to a bull.

It is a story that is made to provoke bloggers to make links like this as a suggestion to these Taxi drivers, and to make other bloggers write that these people are going to end up in a paralell society, where they cater for their own needs while everyone else lives in ‘REAL-AMERICA’, where you can call a taxi and not have to think about the sensibilities of the hack, save that he wants to be paid.

But we won’t fall for it.

What would be interesting is this; imagine these (male) cab drivers deciding that they won’t carry females. There is nothing to stop them from coming to this decision….go for it dudes!

Maine overwhelmingly rejected federal requirements for national identification cards on Thursday, marking the first formal state opposition to controversial legislation scheduled to go in effect for Americans next year.

Both chambers of the Maine legislature approved a resolution saying the state flatly “refuses” to force its citizens to use driver’s licenses that comply with digital ID standards, which were established under the 2005 Real ID Act. It asks the U.S. Congress to repeal the law.

The vote represents a political setback for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Republicans in Washington, D.C., which have argued that nationalized ID cards for all Americans would help in the fight against terrorists.

“I have faith that the Democrats in Congress will hear this from many states and will find a way to repeal or amend this in the coming months,” House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview after the vote. “It’s not only a huge federal mandate, but it’s a huge mandate from the federal government asking us to do something we don’t have any interest in doing.”

The Real ID Act says that, starting around May 2008, Americans will need a federally approved ID card–a U.S. passport will also qualify–to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments or take advantage of nearly any government service. States will have to conduct checks of their citizens’ identification papers, and driver’s licenses likely will be reissued to comply with Homeland Security requirements.

In addition, the national ID cards must be “machine-readable,” with details left up to Homeland Security, which hasn’t yet released final regulations. That could end up being a magnetic strip, an enhanced bar code or radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.

The votes in Maine on the resolution were nonpartisan. It was approved by a 34-to-0 vote in the state Senate and by a 137-to-4 vote in the House of Representatives.

Other states are debating similar measures. Bills pending in Georgia, Massachusetts, Montana and Washington state express varying degrees of opposition to the Real ID Act.

Montana’s is one of the strongest. The legislature held a hearing on Wednesday on a bill that says “The state of Montana will not participate in the implementation of the Real ID Act of 2005” and directs the state motor vehicle department “not to implement the provisions.”

Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project, said he thinks Maine’s vote will “break the logjam, and other states are going to follow.” (The American Civil Liberties Union has set up an anti-Real ID Web site called Real Nightmare).

Pingree, Maine’s House majority leader, said the Real ID Act would have cost the state $185 million over five years and required every state resident to visit the motor vehicle agency so that several forms of identification–including an original copy of the birth certificate and a Social Security card–would be uploaded into a federal database.

[…]

News Dot Com

Well well well.

Does this mean that the drivers licenses from that Maine will not be good for travel inside the other areas of Soviet America? If that is the case, the free citizens of Maine will go berserk with rage when they are routinely denied travel ‘rights’ or are perpetually strip searched because they have deviant drivers licenses. This is commonly known as ‘discrimination’.

It is also what we call ‘soft compulsion’; make them need REALID by causing their lives to become impossible without it. Are all the banks in Maine who are going to be forced to require REALID for all transactions going to be under different rules than the rest of Soviet America? Will they then be prevented from making transfers to other banks from customers who have not presented REALID? These are the questions that come to mind. Hell, forget all of that, will they be able to drive cars in other states?

Maine is going to have to become like another country entirely if they are going to separate themselves from the biometric net. Its called secession, and it will be the best thing for them. They will have their international airport, where USVISIT will not exist, and then once again, at least in one place, america will start looking like America. With a capital ‘A’. Most importantly they will have their own foreign relations, ensuring that they have real, long term security at zero cost.

In a properly federated country, stuff like this can happen. After everything, this total nightmare, like I said before, if any country can come back from the brink of total destruction, it is the United States of America. These are the people who went to the moon, who built the internets…there was no place like it on earth.

And I’m not just saying that.

The question is, is this the beginning of the end for the biometric net? Will Maine and the other ‘REAL-AMERICA’ states get away with this?

I sure hope so.

Here come some big lies:

Huge majority say civil liberty curbs a ‘price worth paying’ to fight
terror

Research finds most support compulsory ID cards, with phone tapping, curfews and tagging for suspects

John Carvel and Lucy Ward Wednesday January 24, 2007 The Guardian

An overwhelming majority of people in Britain are willing to surrender civil liberties to help tackle the threat of terrorism, the nation’s leading social research institute will disclose today. The survey found seven in every 10 people think compulsory identity cards for all adults would be “a price worth paying” to reduce the threat of terrorism. Eight in 10 say the authorities should be able to tap the phones of people suspected of involvement in terrorism, open their mail and impose electronic tagging or home curfews.

The findings come from the annual British Social Attitudes survey, based on interviews with a sample of 3,000 adults by the National Centre for Social Research

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1997179,00.html

And a clever person on the FIPR saved me some typing:

would the replies have been different if the questions had been:

are you prepared to identify yourself every time you:

(a) take money out of the bank;
(b) want to enter a shopping mall/department store;
(c) [etc]; with those data being stored so the police, social security and your boss can check where you were and what you did at any time?

would you object to being detained for a week because an anonymous informer told the police that s/he thought you were up to no good – without the police giving you any further evidence and without you being able to challenge your detention?

people are always willing to give up freedoms if they think it’ll only affect “the other”, i.e. sinister people from “other cultures” (black, muslim, hoodie). as whatshername said, it’ll be too late if you wait until the [secret] police knocks on your door …

la lotta per la liberta (e gli liberti) continua!

John Carvel and Lucy Ward Wednesday are total scumbags.

They know perfectly well that biased and malformed questions are almost always used to generate this data; the fact that they did not publish the questions proves that they are culpable, or amongst the stupidest people in the country.

Everyone knows now that we are in the middle of a historic fight for the very soul of Britain. To let this sort of thing pass unchecked is simply CRIMINAL, especially since its appearing in the same paper that Henry Porter has been doing such good work in. They will know ABSOLUTELY that this report is totally bogus, because they work IN THE SAME TEAM AS HENRY PORTER. They will have read, without a doubt, the ‘Frances Stonor Saunders’ email. THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING when they publish this without question and put their names to it.

Dirty filthy animals, against Britain, against freedom; LIARS LIARS LIARS, COWARDS COWARDS COWARDS lower than any dog, suicidal, imbecilic…

FUCKING DUMBASSES.

… and they don’t even have the brains to point out that none of the measures proposed will actually do what HMG says they are for. Even HMG admits that ID cards will do nothing to stop ‘terrorism’.

The question is, why on earth do the editors of The Guardian allow this evil drivel in their paper?

The proposed separation of the Home Office into two departments is being seen in most reports as an overdue necessity, I have my doubts, especially as the Prime Minister seemingly approves of the idea.

Firstly the creation of a separate department for ‘Security’ implies that the current problems have a set of solutions independent (or abstractable) from other Departments. This is entirely untrue, most of the bad feeling towards the UK is a direct result of bad foreign policy backed up by bad ‘defence’ policies (then to spice the mixture up a load of nonsensical national legislation). If anything a security minister should be a junior official at the Foreign Office.

Secondly this move doesn’t do anything to REDUCE Governmental tinkering, paranoia-mongering and legislative fluff. More than likely this will create a situation where two programmes of legislation relating to ‘law and order’ will be fed through the parliamentary sausage machine with even less scrutiny and more chance of being voted through according to party whipping. Yes MORE of the same ‘need to do something’ posturing but with even less ‘joined-up’ thinking!

Thirdly this change is going to be rushed through which means instead of one ‘not fit for purpose’ government department there will be two slapdash mini-me versions. Presumably in the confusion it will be more likely that serial killers, rapists, embarrassing paperwork will go missing.

Fourthly the proliferation of biometric & database security peddlers will have an extra outlet to lobby government, and government an extra mouthpiece to voice its desires for these.

What the government desparately needs to do is to re-evaluate its ‘need’ to legislate in the face of reason, to massively scale back its meddling control freakery etc. of course this is not going to happen until the day someone walks into Whitehall whose heart is sick to the core of government insidiousness and arrogance. Certainly not a politician.

Gun shots ring out in the Bagdad night
Enter GI Joe in the Palace hall.
He sees the Iraqis in a pool of blood,
Cries out, praise god, we killed them all!
Here comes the story of Saddam Hussein,
The man the The Great Satan came to blame
For somethin that he never done.
Hanged in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.

Three bodies lyin there does GI see
And another man named Musta, movin around mysteriously.
Thats the way we do it, he says, and he throws a grenade
We are robbin your country, I hope you understand.
And we aint leavin, he says, and he stops
Its a hard job being here like we’re your cops.
And forever wer’re gonna be your cops
And they arrive on the scene with IEDs flashin
In the hot bagdad night.

Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Achmed and a couple of friends are drivin around.
Owner of ‘best taxi driver of Bagdad’ crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down
When GIs pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that.
In Bagdad thats just the way things go.
If youre Iraqi you might as well not show up on the street
less you wanna draw the heat.

Achmed had a partner and he had a rap for the cops.
Him and Jamal were just out drivin around
He said, I saw two men runnin out, they looked like terrorists
They jumped into a white car clenching their fists.
And miss GI just shook her head.
She said, wait a minute, boys, these ones aint dead
So they shot them there for all to see
And though these two could hardly more innocent be
They told all that they may have been guilty men.

Four in the mornin and they haul Rashid in,
Take him to Abu Ghraib and they bring him downstairs.
Lyndie looks out through one open eye
Points, glad you brought him in boys! he ready to die?
Yes, heres the story of Saddam Hussein,
The man the The Great Satan came to blame
For somethin that he never done.
Hanged in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.

Four months later, Bhagdad is in flame,
Chavez in south america, fightin for his name
While Haliburton still in the robbery game
Jihadi are puttin the screws to GI, lookin for somebody to blame.
Remember that murder called ‘911’?
Remember the man who they said got it done?
You think he’d like to play ball with the law?
Think it might-a been that phantom that you saw in Pakistan?
Just you forget the name of that man.

Dumb Joe Sixpack said, Im really not sure.
Uncle Sam said, a poor boy like you could use a break
You just dont get it, you dont know what’s at stake
Now you dont wanta have to pay five bucks a gallon.
Youll be doin society a favor.
That sonofabitch is brave and gettin braver.
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this nukular gig on him
He aint no gentleman jim.

Saddam could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much.
Its my work, hed say, and I do it for play
And when its over Id just as soon go on my way
Up to some paradise
Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice
And ride a virgin along a trail.
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man into a mouse.

All of Saddam’s cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus, he never had a chance.
The judge made Saddam’s witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the Arab folks he was just a crazy nigger.
Not one doubted that he coulda pulled the trigger.
And though they could not produce the gun,
The judge said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white military jury agreed.

Saddam Hussein was falsely tried.
The crime was mass murder, guess who testified?
Only his enemies and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride.
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of Uncle Sam’s hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to be from a land
Where justice is a game.

Now USUK criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Saddam got hung in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell.
Thats the story of Saddam Hussein,
But it wont be over till they clear his name
And leave the land he was from.
Hanged in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.

Thanks Bob… And thanks to the dude who mailed it to me.

Spire on Saturday was extremely good. First some great beer in KoKo bar (Goodramgate), which used to be a fabulous shop selling a myriad of bottled beers and now a lovely, cosy bar run by the same man. From the window we watched images of the East Window of the Minster projected onto the scaffolding that will continue to cover it for years to come.

The concert itself was a mix of classical, religious organ pieces, some accompanied by piano and tape, some vocal pieces, some individual chants, and solo offerings from Fennesz, Jeck and BJ Nilsen. Fennesz played in the Chapterhouse, with transmission into the Nave. It was interesting to wander from one place to the other, feeling the changing acoustics and feel of the rather subdued (for Fennesz) sounds.

For me, Jeck was the surprising highlight. From listening close to his set-up at the front of the Nave,  I wandered to the far end. Here, instead of the intense, personal feel of close quarters, his samples and loops of various organ and church sounds filled the huge space wondrously. It felt like the memories of centuries of ceremonies breathed themselves from the stones to fill the void. Something vaguely familiar, borderline comforting, yet still ethereal and untouchable swirled around, the huge and reverberating space preventing the sounds from coming into anything but the softest of focus.

Nilsen tried his best to send everyone into a coma, and it failed to move me at all. However, a final set of organ and vocal pieces including some Pärt sent me home with a warm glow inside.

Jason Singh, an officer with Northumbria Police, was the ringleader of a team attacking ATMs with power tools in professional, well planned raids across Tyne and Wear.

The 23-year-old police constable even used confidential information obtained from a Northumbria Police computer to target a vulnerable woman’s £30,000 savings.

[…]

Telegraph

Yet again this a demonstration of how ‘insiders’ can misuse database information, and how the importance being able to control access to personal information should be paramount.
Now if you consider that the government is doing as much as possible to convince businesses to use NIR/ID card information as proof of identity this will allow someone somewhere to correlate bank account numbers with NIR entries. Now if your bank starts deploying fingerprint activated atm machines it will take the minimum of effort for such an insider to link NIR stored fingerprint data to a certain bank account.
In addition this shows how detailed NIR information can become ‘valuable’ in it’s own right – in order to allow secondary crimes to occur.
The ‘proposal’ (assuming it already isn’t happening) to allow departments access to each other’s data will both make it easier to accumulate disparate data and for ‘insiders’ to hide their tracks more effectively.

Calling all composers – eleven notes in under eleven days
Could you compose a short piece to be performed on York Minster’s chime bells on Saturday 20^th January, as the pre-concert introduction to Spire a striking, magical exploration of sound and space which invites you to think again about the church organ?
This is your opportunity to step into the shoes of one of Britain’s most famous composers – Michael Nyman, who was due to perform a new work, but now has to be at the Sundance Film Festival.
The time slot is from 6.45 to 7.00pm and the promoters – SightSonic, Touch and the University of York – are hoping to feature two or three short works.
“It was a great shame that Michael had an unavoidable conflict, but we see this as an opportunity for other composers”, said Peter Boardman, chair of SightSonic. “The idea came out of a conversation with artists Paul Kaiser and Marc Downie of the OpenEnded Group, whose new work is being projected onto the East End of the Minster until 28 January. They set the challenge of composing for eleven notes in the remaining eleven days available.”
Dr. Tony Myatt, University of York Music department, who will be among the selectors, described the chime bell keyboard as a set of wooded levers – like a carillon, but not chromatic. “It has 11 notes, a diatonic scale spanning a 10th plus a sharp fourth. Considered in C, the keyboard is C to E’ (octave + 2 tones) plus an F#. The notation that I played was written in C, but the bells sound in D. The keyboard is played with the base of the hand (a vertically oriented loose fist, playing almost with the side of the knuckle of the 5th finger), normally using alternate hands. Some limited two part writing is also possible. I would estimate that one of the skilled Minster players could play semiquavers at  crotchet = 90. Because the keyboard is manual, only two notes can be played at any one time.”
The selected work will be performed by one of the members of the York Minster Society of Change Ringers. Entries should be sent to peter.boardman@york.gov.uk.
Spire has been performed at cathedrals and churches in Geneva, Linz, Amsterdam and Brussels in Europe and in Newcastle and Leeds Town Hall in the UK.  This production is a partnership between SightSonic, Touch and the University of York’s Concert Series, by kind permission of the Dean & Chapter of York Minster.

[…]

Any composers amongst us? I know there are…

Spire

Tickets

Minster

The criminal coward George W. Bush:

“I didn’t want to see him go through the trap door”

Without even the stomach to see his mortal enemy receive ‘justice’.

You cant make stuff like this up!

And The Times says:

Bush’s admission of mistakes seen as weakness in Baghdad
Stephen Farrell in Baghdad

In a region where admission of error is rare among leaders fearful of appearing weak, President Bush’s candour has been trumpeted by his enemies as a statement of defeat.

Sunni insurgents contacted by The Times after Mr Bush’s surge strategy was announced gleefully seized upon his remark: “mistakes have been made”.

Abu Mo’ath, of the ’Islamic and Nationalist Front for the Liberation of Iraq, said: “This strategy is nothing new ….but the new thing about it is the defeated accent of the American President Bush who always worked hard to appear tough and strong, and rejected any sort of negotiations about Iraq’s problems.”

Abu Qutada, an anti-coalition fighter with the self-styled al-Rashideen Army, said: “It’s very clear that America failed completely in Iraq in all aspects, as their politicians are saying.

“But we say defeated, not just failed, and they are nowadays desperate to find a way out of their troubles here.”

In the wider Arab world Al-Khaleej newspaper in the United Arab Emirates dismissed Mr Bush, saying “he has no more credibility, either in his country or abroad….his military forces are headed for defeat.”

Ibrahim Aloush, a Jordanian political analyst, said: “Until a few months ago, Bush and the Neocons were acting so pompously about their policy in Iraq. So where’s that triumphant look now? It’s definitely not there any more.

“The guy looks tired, literally beaten. And he was beaten in Iraq. Even if the admission of mistakes came in the fom of ’We weren’t doing enough’ that still remains a testimony to the valiant efficiency of the Iraqi resistance on the ground.”

And Fathi Khataab, in Egypt’s Islamist opposition al-Ahrar newspaper, shared the opinion of many that Mr Bush’s ’admission’ of defeat boded ill for the prospects of stability in the Middle East: “No doubt that the admission of mistakes in Iraq is a victory for the Iraqi resistance and a clear failure of the American administration in Iraq,” he wrote.

“Bush’s plans to increase the troops is proof of his failure. Because of this failure in front of the Iraqi resistance he has started searching for a victory in the region in Iran and Syria.”

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

[…]

“The illogic of waste”….yes indeed.

Blair launches new drive to let officials share data on citizens

Tony Blair will today spearhead a fresh government initiative to persuade voters they have nothing to fear from consenting to a relaxation of “over-zealous” rules which stop Whitehall departments sharing information about individual citizens.

How are people going to give ‘informed consent’? Is it not more likely that officials will be told to assume consent has been given unless specifically denied (and how effective is this likely to be)? And how will all this be regulated?

But the exercise was denounced by opposition MPs as a further lurch towards a Big Brother state even before the prime minister announces the formation of five citizen panels, each with 100 members, to examine the merits of such a change.

Just examine the merits? will these ‘citizen panels’ be fed with the sort of half truths and incomplete information that Civil Servants/Select Committees would rightly reject?

Officials were keen to emphasise that talk of a “single massive database” is misconceived. What is at issue is allowing individual departmental systems to talk to each other.

What is at issue is the ability for an individual to limit/prevent the damage caused by disclosure of personal information to all and sundry.

One official derided the condemnation likely to come from civil liberty lobbies, insisting: “At present we have some ridiculously artificial demarcations in government when Tesco and the credit agencies know more about us all than government agencies which are there to help you.”

Tesco is not a monopoly service provider and the information it gathers can be controlled to an extent by Data Protection laws which help prevent it gaining third party information. In principle and to a large degree Tesco only gathers the information you supply it with or allow to be made public. YOU CAN OPT OUT OF SUPPLYING TESCO WITH INFORMATION especially by not shopping there. In addition a lot of information held by State controlled agencies is potentially more damaging than that held by Tesco et al. (and I don’t even include covertly gathered ‘intelligence’).
There is no comeback from not supplying Tesco with information – it can’t fine you for not having a clubcard, or for not having a TV License, it doesn’t have powers to curtail freedom of movement or protest. It’s a shop – it just sells things.

The first target of the reforms is bereavement, when families under stress are required to notify a range of agencies that they have lost a loved one.

Work is still under way to establish the technical changes that would be necessary to make reporting a death a one-stop call. It is claimed such changes would help “early identification” and thus give warning that a family is struggling.

Surely it is better to question why so many officials need to be informed of a death.

But the Tories and Liberal Democrats have brushed aside promised safeguards and denounce the change as “an excuse for bureaucrats to snoop”. The NO2ID campaign to resist government plans for universal ID cards calls the proposals “the abolition of privacy”.

Manifesto commitments to overturn this please, all else is hot air.

It reverses the historic presumption of confidentiality, the campaign argues, something ministers deny. But the office of the information commissioner, whose task is to promote public access to official data – and to protect personal data – is taking a more benign view. The government’s intentions have been debated within Whitehall and were signalled as part of the reform of public service delivery in the documents published as part of Gordon Brown’s pre-budget report in November. “Citizens should be able to access public services in relation to changes in their personal or family life events through a single point,” said a document which promised a delivery plan in 2007.

If public services were handled at a local level more then the burdens would be easier to bear on both sides

Inside Whitehall the lead department on the proposed change is work and pensions, whose secretary of state, John Hutton, yesterday used an interview on BBC1’s Politics Show to deny that the change were too intrusive. The potential benefits were considerable, he said. “The government already stores vast amounts of data about individual citizens [why??? – mm] but actually doesn’t share it terribly intelligently across various government agencies. I had a case in my department about a family where someone had unfortunately died in a road traffic accident, and over the space of six months, on 44 separate occasions, they were asked by elements of my department to confirm details of this terrible tragedy.”

This burdensome red tape is entirely because the government is already too involved in people’s lives.

[…]

Guardian

This all follows on from the relaxation of Data Protection controls last July and is most likely a prelude for the most questioning Census ever in 2011. It’s like a real version of the boogeyman stories about drugs, the soft stuff leads onto the hard stuff and BAM! you’re hooked.

Government intrusion? Just Say No!

—

Hmm, I was trying to ‘Detox’

If you’ve traveled abroad recently, you’ve been investigated. You’ve been assigned a score indicating what kind of terrorist threat you pose. That score is used by the government to determine the treatment you receive when you return to the U.S. and for other purposes as well.

Curious about your score? You can’t see it. Interested in what information was used? You can’t know that. Want to clear your name if you’ve been wrongly categorized? You can’t challenge it. Want to know what kind of rules the computer is using to judge you? That’s secret, too. So is when and how the score will be used.

U.S. customs agencies have been quietly operating this system for several years. Called Automated Targeting System, it assigns a “risk assessment” score to people entering or leaving the country, or engaging in import or export activity. This score, and the information used to derive it, can be shared with federal, state, local and even foreign governments. It can be used if you apply for a government job, grant, license, contract or other benefit. It can be shared with nongovernmental organizations and individuals in the course of an investigation. In some circumstances private contractors can get it, even those outside the country. And it will be saved for 40 years.

Little is known about this program. Its bare outlines were disclosed in the Federal Register in October. We do know that the score is partially based on details of your flight record–where you’re from, how you bought your ticket, where you’re sitting, any special meal requests–or on motor vehicle records, as well as on information from crime, watch-list and other databases.

Civil liberties groups have called the program Kafkaesque. But I have an even bigger problem with it. It’s a waste of money.

The idea of feeding a limited set of characteristics into a computer, which then somehow divines a person’s terrorist leanings, is farcical. Uncovering terrorist plots requires intelligence and investigation, not large-scale processing of everyone.

Additionally, any system like this will generate so many false alarms as to be completely unusable. In 2005 Customs & Border Protection processed 431 million people. Assuming an unrealistic model that identifies terrorists (and innocents) with 99.9% accuracy, that’s still 431,000 false alarms annually.

The number of false alarms will be much higher than that. The no-fly list is filled with inaccuracies; we’ve all read about innocent people named David Nelson who can’t fly without hours-long harassment. Airline data, too, are riddled with errors.

The odds of this program’s being implemented securely, with adequate privacy protections, are not good. Last year I participated in a government working group to assess the security and privacy of a similar program developed by the Transportation Security Administration, called Secure Flight. After five years and $100 million spent, the program still can’t achieve the simple task of matching airline passengers against terrorist watch lists.

In 2002 we learned about yet another program, called Total Information Awareness, for which the government would collect information on every American and assign him or her a terrorist risk score. Congress found the idea so abhorrent that it halted funding for the program. Two years ago, and again this year, Secure Flight was also banned by Congress until it could pass a series of tests for accuracy and privacy protection.

In fact, the Automated Targeting System is arguably illegal as well (a point several congressmen made recently); all recent Department of Homeland Security appropriations bills specifically prohibit the department from using profiling systems against persons not on a watch list.

There is something un-American about a government program that uses secret criteria to collect dossiers on innocent people and shares that information with various agencies, all without any oversight. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect from the former Soviet Union or East Germany or China. And it doesn’t make us any safer from terrorism. […]

This essay, without the links, was published in Forbes.

They also published a rebuttal by William Baldwin, although it doesn’t seen to rebut any of the actual points. “Here’s an odd division of labor: a corporate data consultant argues for more openness, while a journalist favors more secrecy.” It’s only odd if you don’t understand security.

It also needs to be pointed out that all over the world, in countries without a widespread credit card system, most airline tickets, no matter what the destination, are bought with cash.

That means that any ‘third world’ traveller has been given a higher score thanks to this bogus metric, when in fact its absolutely normal to buy airline tickets with cash all over the world.

These people are totally insane.

But you know this.

Blair wants ‘super-Asbos’ for violent thugs
David Cracknell, Political Editor

TONY BLAIR is to mount a final assault on Britain’s thug culture by introducing restrictions that will curb potential yobs’ movements even before they have committed an offence.

After attempting to tackle antisocial behaviour, he is proposing to introduce a “violent offender order” (Voo) targeted at those whom police believe are likely to commit violence.

These new “super-Asbos” will be aimed not only at people who have a history of violent behaviour or who have just left prison but also those who may not yet have committed an offence.

According to a Home Office document outlining the plan, to be published next month, the measures will ban potential trouble-makers from certain areas or mixing with certain people, alert police when they move house and possibly force them to live in a named hostel, give details of vehicles they own and impose a curfew on them.

The orders will last for at least two years, with no upper limit. Any breach could lead to up to five years in jail. Ministers believe police will apply for 300 to 450 Voos each year.

The measures will be seen as a last-ditch attempt by Blair to rescue his legacy on law and order before he quits No 10 in the summer. Despite the prime minister’s boast that overall crime has been falling for the past decade, violent crime is rising.

A report out today, by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies in association with The Sunday Times, reveals that almost half of the offenders caught by police are getting away without a court punishment, robberies have risen and murders are up by a third. Street muggings remain stubbornly high.

The Voos are designed to be a “preventative measure”, according to the Home Office paper. “It would mean that, where an individual was known to be dangerous but had not committed a specific qualifying offence, restrictions could still be placed on their behaviour,” it says.

Like Asbos, the police or probation service would apply for the orders to the civil courts, where the threshold for proof is lower than in a criminal case. The document says the process will therefore be much quicker and hearsay evidence will be permitted to obtain an order against a suspect. Any breach of the order would be a criminal offence.

Unlike Asbos, which solely cover antisocial behaviour, Voos would be targeted at thugs who would be placed on the violent and sex offender register, a national database for intelligence on people deemed to be a serious risk to the public.

Ministers are concerned that the Asbo regime has failed to give police and the authorities enough powers to tackle potentially violent offenders.

The paper identifies a series of “risk factors” that could lead to a person being targeted for the new order. These include a person’s formative years and upbringing, “cognitive deficiencies”, “entrenched pro-criminal or antisocial attitudes,” “a history of substance abuse or mental health issues”.

Factors could also include a person’s domestic situation or relationship with their partner or family, as well as more obvious signs such as “possession of paraphernalia related to violent offending (eg, balaclava, baseball bat), or extremist material”.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, the civil rights campaign group, said: “Haven’t we seen enough already with Asbos and control orders? This sounds like another incredibly broad power, with more legislation — another quick fix undermining natural justice and not making us any safer.”

[…]

Times Online

Yes indeed; they called it… ‘Pre-Crime’

Minority Report is the cause for all of our woes. I can guarantee you that the computer illiterate sub-human trash of the likes of Bliar had no idea of what was possible (maxing out the Totalitarian vibe-wise) until he saw the Hollywood blockbuster ‘Minority Report’ (heaven knows he would never have read the book) and then, turning to somoene in his black lair he would have asked, “Could we actually do this?” whereupon some consultant disguised in human form would have said, “Yes, but it would take time“.

It was probably as stupid as that.

The totally seductive idea of being able to prevent crime, not just murder, but all crime, Pre-Crime style, probably made Bliar wet his pants. Knowing that a precognitive mutant solution was not to hand, he did the next best thing: Legislation.

Read the comments here, in response to this BBQ article. Critical mass is approaching, make no mistake about it. People are slowly waking up.

We even have words like this, which are as the sweetest music to my ears:

Mr Cameron! Make it part of your manifesto that you will roll back all the infringements on my long-held & fought for British rights & way of life and you will have this life-long Labour supporter’s vote.

And thats a promise.

– Ian Fergey, Braintree, Essex

From this article, on the outsourcing of M|5’s bogus ‘terror’ alert ‘service’.

Let the runaway chain reaction begin.

Finally, ‘The country that brought you Hitler’ brings you ‘the Prum Treaty’:

Police across Europe to share DNA database

David Rose
Sunday January 14, 2007
The Observer

Police and security services in the European Union will share access to an unprecedented range of individuals’ personal data under a radical package of measures to be discussed by EU justice ministers this week. It allows agencies in different countries to search one another’s databases – DNA records, fingerprints, vehicle details – and other personal information. Even if someone has no criminal record and their DNA is not on a database, police can ask their foreign colleagues to collect a sample.

The measures, known as the Prum Treaty, after the German town where it was signed, are being championed by Germany, which holds the EU presidency. Documents obtained by The Observer show that the Germans are also holding secret talks with top US officials in an attempt to conclude a data-sharing agreement with America – first for Germany alone, then for the EU […]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1989902,00.html

Almost everyone in the UK now knows reflexively why this is wrong.

At last, we are beginning to get results.

by Paul Craig Roberts

Bush’s “surge” speech is a hoax, but members of Congress and media commentators are discussing the surge as if it were real.

I invite the reader to examine the speech. The “surge” content consists of nonsensical propagandistic statements. The real content of the speech is toward the end where Bush mentions Iran and Syria.

Bush makes it clear that success in Iraq does not depend on the surge. Rather, “Succeeding in Iraq . . . begins with addressing Iran and Syria.”

Bush asserts that “these two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.”

Bush’s assertions are propagandistic lies.

The Iraq insurgency is Sunni. Iran is Shi’ite. If Iran is supporting anyone in Iraq it is the Shi’ites, who have not been part of the insurgency. Indeed, the Sunni and Shi’ites are engaged in a civil war within Iraq.

Does any intelligent person really believe that Iranian Shi’ites are going to arm Iraqi Sunnis who are killing Iraqi Shi’ites allied with Iran? Does anyone really believe that Iranian Shi’ites are going to provide sanctuary for Iraqi Sunnis?

Bush can tell blatant propagandistic lies, because Congress and the American people don’t know enough facts to realize the absurdity of Bush’s assertions.

Why is Bush telling these lies? Here is the answer: Bush says, “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

In those words, Bush states perfectly clearly that victory in Iraq requires US forces to attack Iran and Syria. Moreover, Bush says, “We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.”

What do two US aircraft carrier attack groups in the Persian Gulf have to do with a guerrilla ground war in Iraq?

The “surge” is merely a tactic to buy time while war with Iran and Syria can be orchestrated. The neoconservative/Israeli cabal feared that the pressure that Congress, the public, and the American foreign policy establishment were putting on Bush to de-escalate in Iraq would terminate their plan to achieve hegemony in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq would mean the end of the neoconservatives’ influence. It would be impossible to start a new war with Iran after losing the war in Iraq.

The neoconservatives and the right-wing Israeli government have clearly stated their plans to overthrow Muslim governments throughout the region and to deracinate Islam. These plans existed long before 9/11.

Near the end of his “surge” speech, Bush adopts the neoconservative program as US policy. The struggle, Bush says, echoing the neoconservatives and the Israeli right-wing, goes far beyond Iraq. “The challenge,” Bush says, is “playing out across the broader Middle East. . . . It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time.” America is pitted against “extremists” who “have declared their intention to destroy our way of life.” “The most realistic way to protect the American people,” Bush says, is “by advancing liberty across a troubled region.”

This, of course, is a massive duplicitous lie. We have brought no liberty to Iraq, but we have destroyed their way of life. Bush suggests that Muslims in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine are waiting and hoping for more invasions to free them of violence. Did Bush’s invasion free Iraq from violence or did it bring violence to Iraq?

It is extraordinary that anyone can listen to this blatant declaration of US aggression in the Middle East without demanding Bush’s immediate impeachment.

Republican US Senator Chuck Hagel declared Bush’s plan to be “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.” In truth, it is far worse. It is naked aggression justified by transparent lies. No one has ever heard governments in Iraq, Syria, or Iran declare “their intention to destroy our way of life.” To the contrary, it is the United States and Israel that are trying to destroy the Muslim way of life.

The crystal clear truth is that fanatical neoconservatives and Israelis are using Bush to commit the United States to a catastrophic course.

[…]

Anti-War

We of course, know that bush doesn’t know the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims:

[…] The Iranian government doesn’t ’sponsor terrorism’. The entire cause of ‘terrorism’ is USUKs interference in other people’s countries. Look at this documentary to find out just how IGNORANT Bliar and Bu$h are; the killer part is where the presenter recounts the event where Bu$h took some Shias and Sunnis to the Super Bowl. They talked. Somehow, the discussion came round to Islam, and someone mentioned that Sunnis and Shias sometimes….’don’t get along’, whereupon The Great Satan said, “You mean that there is more than one kind of muslim?”. […]

BLOGDIAL

If americans (and by americans, i mean the 50% that don’t agree with fascism) need to ‘step up to the plate’ and DO SOMETHING about the preparations for an attack on Iran.

At the very minimum, they (the 50%) should stage a seven day national strike. Everyone and every business that is against expanded war close up shop for one solid week.

Thats not so hard is it?

The UK Statute Law Database

The UK Statute Law Database (SLD) is the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom made available online. For more information about SLD and what it contains see Help

Statute Law Database

I remember reading a post on Blogdial maybe two years ago to the effect of this, putting all laws online for the public to see. This database has been online since late December and it’s a good START… and as much as they trumpet its success, there is still a problem:

Where’s the interaction?

Where’s the Wiki? Why can’t I add comments? How come we can’t vote on the laws in a digg-like fashion? Why aren’t challenges to the laws posted? Because none of this is any good when a list of many of the horrible laws that are in effect cannot be questioned and challenged within the powerful internet forum – does the gov’t think the public is just going to say “oh it’s really powerful to be able to look at my laws! Now I really now how to be good!” People want INTERACTION and EFFECT. Not just a list.
So while it’s nice that all the statutes are linked together, and are updated to reflect not-yet-enacted legislation, replete with amendments… without the “citizen-input” this program is incomplete. Nice though, to see a non-commercial copyright use program. Though I fail to see why commercial reproduction of the laws requires licensing… though that’s something I don’t quite have the time to fully look at.
I still have in my mind an idea for a citizen-made public wiki-type thing for all the laws in Canada… if only I had the capital and the programming chops. Maybe one day!

Greetings from Edmonton, in the middle of the first blizzard of the year. Stay warm, peeps.

If someone asked you, “Do you know the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents?” would you respond with a “yes” or a “no”? For me, it’s an immediate “yes”, as I imagine it is for most people (or so I hope). However, George Vaccaro has found out the hard way that some people simply do not know the difference.

The story, if you haven’t heard it by now, is that George, who is from the U.S., was in Canada and he had called Verizon inquiring what the fee would be per kilobyte (KB) while he was abroad. Verizon quoted him “0.002 cents per KB.” So George uses 35,893 KB in Canada and goes about his life. Upon returning home, he finds that Verizon has charged him $71 for his KB usage in Canada-a fee that equals 0.002 dollars.

To keep things short, George calls Verizon and informs them of this mistake. While on the phone, they confirm several times that the charge is “.002 cents per KB.” However, no one at Verizon seems to be able to tell the difference between 0.002 cents and 0.002 dollars. In fact, George recorded and posted the conversation he had with Verizon. It’s the most frustrating thing I’ve heard in a long time.

Why is it so frustrating? Because it should be very simple math. 0.002 dollars is equal to 0.2 cents, not 0.002 cents. Observe:

100 \times 0.002 = 0.2

See what I did there? I took 100 pennies (which is equal to 1 dollar) and multiplied it by 0.002. The result is moving the decimal place to the right two places, which gives me 0.2 cents. We can see right away that 0.2 cents-or 0.002 dollars-does not equal 0.002 cents.

The Verizon folks were simply taking 0.002 and multiplying it by 35,893, which returns 71.786-which they read to be 71 dollars and 79 cents. What they should have done is convert 0.002 cents to dollars, which would be 0.00002 dollars. If you take that number it multiply it by the KB usage you get what George should have been charged:

0.00002 \times 35893 = 0.71786

71 cents, not dollars (and Google agrees)!

This isn’t integral calculus or differential equations; it’s very basic middle (elementary?) school math. If a kid ever asks you “What will I ever use math for, anyway?” this story should give you an obvious response.

http://agoravox.com/article.php3?id_article=5458

[…]

Now do you understand?

Brown to end Blair’s terror strategy

[…]

Mr Brown, who backed the 2003 Iraq invasion, said he had since learned that only so much could be achieved against terrorists and religious fanatics by brute military force, intelligence, security work and policing. In terms that will appeal to many Labour supporters but anger Mr Blair — and some in Washington — he said the fight to stop “extremist terrorist activities” would only be won after world leaders triumphed in a peaceful battle for “hearts and minds”.

Suggesting that he would not follow Washington into any future military action against rogue nations such as Iran, Mr Brown said the kind of “cultural war” fought by the West against Communism in the 1940s and 1950s could be a “model” for the next chapter of the war on terror. […]

Telegraph

Gordon has no clue at all. Thats because he doesn’t understand the era that he is in.

There can be no ‘cultural war’ in this age, because of…The Internets.

All the people he is talking about waging a cultural war against are already completely immune from cultural attack; this is why they are in a state of unprecedented cultural cohesion and frictionless networking.

For example, have you ever noticed the insanely great music that accompanies the ‘Juba’ videos, or those ‘messages from the front’ where IEDs blow up armored vehicles? There is a huge culture of ‘Nasheeds‘ music made from only the human voice, which are:

Nasheeds (Arabic: ??????; also spelt Nasyid in Malaysia) are Islamic-oriented songs. Traditionally, they are sung a cappella, accompanied only by a daff. This musical style is used because many Muslim scholars interpret Islam as prohibiting the use of musical instruments except for some basic percussion. Despite what might be considered a handicap, Nasheeds are spreading across the music network as many people admire the purity and simplicity of the music.

Look at the guys in that nasheeds.com link. They are not going to swallow any propaganda, no matter how much it is sugared, and whats more, they are putting out their own thoughts ideas and music that outclasss and outperform anything that Gordon ‘The Grotesque’ Brown and his UK based PR scum-bags could ever come up with, the main reason being that they are on the side of righteousness.

The only way PM in waiting Gordon G. Brown can ever hope to take the UK off of the shit list is to REPENT and to totally disengage in the bogus ‘War on Terror’ and completely drop all of its hideous side effects. That means immediate withdrawl from all countries where this US led insanity is taking place, repealing all Bliar’s anti-terror legislation and measures, and promising never to follow The Great Satan into the abyss again. He might even consider paying reparations for the crimes that were committed by his government.

That is the only thing that will put it all right. You cannot tell one billion people that their religion is the new Communism that needs to be defeated, and then expect to win. Not only is Islam not analagous to Communism, but even if it was, the tools of any ‘cultural war’ are in the hands of everyone with a cellphone. Every blogger, email writer and text messager is a soldier in this war. There is no way that you can defeat that. To get a good understanding of what an insurmountable task this would be, should you be stupid enough to try it, read, ‘In the Shadow of the silent Majorities‘:

The whole chaotic constellation of the social revolves around that spongy reference, that opaque but equally translucent reality, that nothingness: the masses. A statistical crystal ball, the masses are ‘swirling with currents and flows,’ in the image of matter and the natural elements. So, at least, they are represented to us.

Written in 1978 and first published in English in 1983, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities was the first postmodern response to the delusional strategies of terrorism. At a time when European terrorists were taking politics into their own hands, Baudrillard was the first to announce that the “critical mass” had stopped being critical of anything. Rather, the “masses” had become a place of absorption and implosion; hence the ending of the possibility of politics as will and representation.

The book marked the end of an era when silent majorities still factored into the democratic political process and were expected to respond positively to revolutionary messages. With the masses no longer “alienated” as Marx had described, but rather indifferent, this phenomenon made revolutionary explosion impossible, says Baudrillard.

The mass absorbs all the social energy, but no longer refracts it. It absorbs every sign and every meaning, but no longer reflects them… it never participates. It is a good conductor of information, but of any information. It is without truth and without reason. It is without conscience and without unconscious. Everybody questions it, but never as silence, always to make it speak. This silence is unbearable. It is the simulation chamber of the social.

As a mere shadow cast by power, the silent majority and its hyper-real conformity have no meaning and nothing to say to us. To that, terrorism responds by an equally hyper-real act equally caught up from the onset in concentric waves of media and of fascination.

It aims at the mass silence, the masses in their silence. It aims at the white magic of simulation, deterrence, of anonymous and random control, and by the black magic of a still greater, more anonymous, arbitrary and more hazardous abstraction; that of the terrorist act.

Remarkably prescient, Baudrillard’s meditation on terrorism throws light on post-September 11th delusional fears and political simulations. MIT Press

“A ‘cultural war’ fought by the West against Communism in the 1940s and 1950s” cannot and will not work in the 21st century. The Mass will not accept any message, as Baudrillard points out so cleanly for us. The Internets prevent any lie from taking hold for too long, and they (The Internets and the people who operate in them) are getting stronger and stronger and better and better at doing this job.

Gordon Brown is an idiot, an member of the murder Inc. cabal cabinet, a criminal, a liar, a man without any new ideas, a man without morals and a real threat to the UK if this is the best quality of his thinking. Anyway, a man guilty of mass murder has no place being in charge of this great country. But I digress.

Check out these websites, where you can get your own Nasheeds:

http://www.islamway.com/
There are some Nasheeds buried in there; good luck finding them!

http://www.anashed.net/anashed/ashretah/jwad_al_fjr.html
This site has ‘the one with the horses’, ‘Jawad Al Fijr’ that you hear in all the videos.

http://www.nsheed.com/sounds/sounds.php?mqtaa=24
For the ladies?

http://nasheed.worldofislam.info/
500 megz of nasheeds here. Leech away.

http://www.streetdawah.com/nasheeds.html
Collections on CD.