“Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us,” Mr Thomas said.”

Well duh. I could have told you that for free and saved the glorious social democratic state a few quid on your wages.

The reality is this, those cameras need to come

down

, people need to tearing them down like the Berlin wall.

And people should not be paying taxes or accepting ‘social political punishments’ based on amalgamated lifestyle data, government departments should not be sharing information and the human ID radical quantized pleb-grid needs to be liquidated.

Goodnight.

Jultra is back!

the hideous disgusting turd, Gordon Brown tries use global warming as a political weapon against the population to mold them into a new shape, against a backdrop with a strong lobby in the establishment for more war and police-state measures, I think we need to take a much harsher approach and stop fucking around.

Some have said that the best thing for the UK (and especially the US) would be a military coup. That sounds a dramatic and dangerous proposition and indeed it is, but in all honesty, I don’t think it’s something that we can afford to rule out either. I don’t see it happening but quite frankly, the problem is, if you just carry on like this things are just going to continue to get worse, so some sort of really major revolt at least is necessary.

A state with cameras everywhere logging car journeys, sticking bugs in wheelie bins, house arrest, internment, biometric ID slave grids, information sharing, a new even more intrusive census etc etc etc is not a legitimate entity at all, it is now a vile and illegitimate mess (note legislation doesn’t make something legitimate) and it’s vital that we understand that these things are wrong and to put it bluntly, they need to be disposed of and there is a strong impetus to dispose of them.

People like Jultra really UNDERSTAND what is going on and what needs to be done to fix it.

Any glimmer of legitimacy is now gone or at the very very least flickering out, but personally I would say gone. In my opinion, the rule of law or the process of the rule of law is sufficiently compromised and twisted as to make its meaning overall considerably problematic. A strong contributory factor in this is a logged, watched society where everyone lives in some quantized pleb-grid, which itself also eats away at the very meaning of the law.

You see?!

When the state becomes a complete meaningless failure run into the ground by degenerate socialists like Gordon Brown and David Miliband obsessed by their own egos who want to hurt people with their stream of putrid filth and remold peoples’ lives as if the country were their private socialist toy factory, I think the state is something we have to reassess the legitimacy of, reassess the meaning of, and I’m sorry to say therefore I think the case for supporting a state gone malignant, also in light of these plans with council tax, green taxes and so on has to be very strongly reassessed and people should not feel that pouring money into this catastrophe is anymore an appropriate thing to do than pouring money into a pedophile ring. New and existing forms of taxation should no longer be accepted by rolling your eyes and treating it as a kind of tolerable burden anymore. They should now be challenged.

For how many years have I been talking like this?

Also, kind of on this point, the BBC needs to go, it has proved itself an utterly worthless heap of poisonous sickly drivel for the most moronic and politically-crippled in society. If it doesn’t want ads, then it should become subscription-funded or die. The concept of a ‘state broadcaster’ and TV tax is an archaic nonsense that belongs in the dusty wardrobe of history.

like everything else, you should refuse to pay for it point blank.

In the current climate though, I don’t think the state as it currently is; a grotesque monument to New Labour’s perversion and to the repugnant cowardice of the civil service and council workers, has any real legitimacy anymore quite honestly, it’s a broken, stained monster that people should now start rejecting and viciously chipping away at with a view to getting rid of what it has been made into, and where it is heading, and trying to restore it to something more appropriate.

Again, as I’ve said before, this is not a case of this policy is bad, that policy bad, the whole thing is bad. And yes, I feel that the UK is in real trouble, it is quite literally broken. I think we have to say that, we have to accept that and frankly there now needs to be an organised zero-tolerance movement against what it has become. […]

http://jultra.blogspot.com/

As it was in the case of the the Berlin Wall, the decent people need to come out en-masse and tear down all CCTV in a day of action to free us from surveillance. I have said this before. As in the case of the former East Germany, there will be many people who are actually FOR the surveillance of everyone. They will be pushed out of the way.

A critical mass of disgust is coming, and this mass is aggregating at a rate that is the cube of the square of the numbers of people who are pissed off at whatever new horror HMG comes up with. Soon this enormous mass will collapse into a black hole that will destroy this country. It will then be re-born, bursting into a Quasar of a new and better Britain, where the bright light of millions of suns will NEVER allow a Bliar or a Brown or a Reid or a Blunkett or a Straw to ever again soil this beautiful island.

The Times November 02, 2006

DNA pioneer accuses the police of being overzealous By Stewart Tendler, Crime Correspondent

The man who developed DNA testing in the 1980s has attacked the spread of data collection by police as mission creep. Sir Alec Jeffreys said that the tool, which was meant to catch criminals who reoffend, has created a vast database of gene profiles of thousands of innocent citizens.

Professor Jeffreys, who is head of genetics research at Leicester University, said: Now hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent people are populating that database, people who have come to the polices attention, for example by being charged with a crime and subsequently released…

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-2433318,00.html

Yet another scientist who’s work is being abused.

You remember Oppenhiemer and his post Manhattan success ‘Shiva’ quote don’t you? Google it if you haven’t got a clue about what I am talking about.

(I was thinking of some good wordplay for the title but the plain quote can’t be bettered)

The Telegraph

John Reid yesterday compared the technological advances needed to fight Islamic terrorism to Britain’s battle against the Nazis.

The Home Secretary invoked the spirt of great wartime scientists like Barnes Wallis, the inventor of the bouncing bomb, as he spoke of the ”enduring struggle’’ facing the country.

‘Enduring…’ oh dear, the shoddy rhetoric starts early, let us read into ‘enduring’ costly, irrelevant and misplaced.
This is the same government that tells us these “religious fantics” cannot be “reasoned with”?

And of course such unobjective faith in the power of technology belies the ‘irrational’ basis of government policy.

Mr Reid said he was setting up a taskforce drawn from business and the academic world to pool ideas that would keep one step ahead of al-Qa’eda, which is increasingly sophisticated in its use of computers and weaponry.

So Neu Labour Politician wants to ‘do something’:
1. Form a quango of acolytes
2. (If you haven’t been lobbied recently) ring up business for a product/’solution.
3. Comission a report to see if it is technically sound.

Western governments are already two steps behind their al-queda golem never mind one step ahead.

”It is a race between those who would find the weaknesses in our defences and use that to wreak havoc on our society; and those of us involved in a constant search to defend our country, our freedoms and our democracy,’’ he said in London. ”Just as the innovators Barnes Wallis, Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers were vital in our battle to beat the Nazis, so now we must be able to utilise the skills and expertise of all in our battle against terror.’’

Constant improvement of defences? I refer you to the W.G. Sebald passage I quoted last year

The comparison of the counter-terrorist campaign with the Second World War marks a step change in the rhetoric being deployed by ministers about the nature of the threat.

Mr Reid said, notwithstanding the prospect of obliteration during the Cold War or the IRA’s 30-year bombing campaign, that ”in the UK we are living through the most sustained period of severe threat since World War Two.

The only threat is that maintained, overseen and fed by this government.

He added: ‘This assessment is the diligent product of intelligence professionals. It is no exaggeration. On the strength of such an assessment it would be easy to pump up the politics of fear. But this is not the basis for advancing our values today.’’

Left is the new Right.

Mr Reid was attending a conference of businessmen and specialists from the security sector which has been developing new technology to combat terrorism and decrypt encoded computer programs.

The Home Secretary said that in the past in five years, 387 people had been charged with terrorist offences. Of those, 214 have already been convicted, with a further 98 awaiting trial.

How many people have been temporarily held/harassed by police using anti-terrorism legislationwithout final charges being brought? where all 214 convicted for ‘terrorism’ or rather for subsequent charges?

He added: “That is an indication of the scale of the threat which we face. In responding to it, the struggle has to be at every level, in every way and by every single person in this country. It is easy between trials and between headlines to forget just how deep this on-going struggle is.”

Mr Reid said the current threat was even more worrying than during the Cold War. ”For all the potential horror of Mutually Assured Destruction, the dangers were both stark and, in retrospect, the risks straightforward,’’ he said. ”It is folly to assume that the struggle to advance the values we prize most came to an end with the defeat of Soviet totalitarianism…We cannot underestimate the rate at which those who would do us harm innovate.’’

Coming from a ‘former communist’ the phrase “It is folly to assume that the struggle to advance the values we prize most came to an end with the defeat of Soviet totalitarianism” is rather terrifying is it not?

Mr Reid was shown some of the new security measures now being developed, including a screening device called a Tadar, which uses the body’s naturally-released electromagnetic radiation to see beneath the clothes of suspect passengers – though with a ”fuzzy’’ picture to preserve their modesty.

Concealed objects such as guns, knives or explosives – even those that are non-metallic – are exposed. Stephen Phipson, managing director of Smiths Detection, part of the group that organised the conference, said the machine, costing between £80,000 and £100,000 generated images with no risk to the person being inspected.

No,no,no! The point is not the dignity of whether some jobsworth can ‘see’ your tackle. It is that of ‘innocent people’ being able to live their lives without intervention (and being hammered into F.E.A.R. driven complicity).

He also envisaged architects building security devices into the design of buildings in future and welcomed Mr Reid’s idea of a taskforce to bring together inventive expertise from business and the academic world.

Architects should concentrate on not creating ugly rabbit hutches No one should pander to govenment rhetoric when going about their private business.

Normally, discussion pieces leave us with that empty feeling of, ‘yes, but what are you going to DO about it?’.

Well, here’s a piece – the leader piece in today’s online Grauniad – which fills that gap.

Warning over privacy of 50m patient files

Call for boycott of medical database accessible by up to 250,000 NHS staff

What you can do

!!! Immediate, and so unexpected as to be almost missable, is the link to The Proposed Solution.

David Leigh and Rob Evans
Wednesday November 1, 2006
The Guardian

Millions of personal medical records are to be uploaded regardless of patients’ wishes to a central national database from where information can be made available to police and security services, the Guardian has learned.Details of mental illnesses, abortions, pregnancy, HIV status, drug-taking, or alcoholism may also be included, and there are no laws to prevent DNA profiles being added.

The uploading is planned under Whitehall’s bedevilled £12bn scheme to computerise the health service.

After two years of confusion and delays, the system will start coming into effect in stages early next year.

Though the government says the database will revolutionise management of the NHS, civil liberties critics are calling it “data rape” and are urging Britons to boycott it. The British Medical Association also has reservations. “We believe that the government should get the explicit permission of patients before transferring their information on to the central database,” a spokeswoman said yesterday.

And a Guardian inquiry has found a lack of safeguards against access to the records once they are on the Spine, the computer designed to collect details automatically from doctors and hospitals. The NHS initiative is the world’s biggest civilian IT project. In the scheme, each person’s cradle-to-grave medical records no longer remain in the confidential custody of their GP practice. Instead, up to 50m medical summaries will be loaded on the Spine.The health department’s IT agency has made it clear that the public will not be able to object to information being loaded on to the database: “Patients will have data uploaded … Patients do not have the right to say the information cannot be held.”Once the data is uploaded, the onus is on patients to speak out if they do not want their records seen by other people. If they do object, an on-screen “flag” will be added to their records. But any objection can be overridden “in the public interest”.

Harry Cayton, a key ministerial adviser, warned last month of “considerable pressure to obtain access to [the] data from … police and immigration services”, but he is confident that these demands can be resisted by his department.

Another concern is the number of people who can view the data. The health department has issued 250,000 pin-coded smart cards to NHS staff. These will grant varied access from more than 30,000 terminals – greater access for medical staff, and less for receptionists. Health managers, council social workers, private medical firms, ambulance staff, and commercial researchers will also be able to see varying levels of information. Officials say the data will be shared only on a need-to-know basis. But Guardian inquiries show a lack of safeguards.

Although data protection laws supposedly ban unnecessary build-ups of computer information, patients will get no right to choose whether their history is put on the Spine. Once uploading has taken place, a government PR blitz will follow. This will be said to bring about “implied consent” to allow others view the data. Those objecting will be told that their medical care could suffer.

The government claims that computerised “sealed envelopes” will allow patients selectively to protect sensitive parts of their uploaded history from being widely accessed. But no such software is yet in existence.

It is being promised for an unspecified date. Some doctors say “sealed envelopes” may be too complex to be workable. The design also allows NHS staff to “break the seal” under some circumstances. Police will be able to seek data, including on grounds of national security. Government agencies can get at records, according to the health department, if “the interests of the general public are thought to be of greater importance than your confidentiality”. Examples given of such cases include “serious crime and national security”.The department’s guidelines say: “The definition of serious crime is not entirely clear … Serious harm to the security of the state or to public order, and crimes that involve substantial financial gain or loss will … generally fall within this category.” The health department says confidentiality can already be breached in such cases.At present, police have to persuade a GP, who knows the patient, to divulge limited facts, or insist on a court order.

Under the new system, data may be disclosed centrally and anonymously, at the touch of a button. Health department privacy advisers say they do not wish to allow police to have clinical information. But they are prepared to disclose patients’ addresses.Another safeguard initially promised was that all patients would be able to check their records on the internet for mistakes. But a system involving the issue of smart cards to patients has not yet been tried out.

Current criminal penalties are so weak they have failed to stop tabloid journalists and private detectives raiding such data on an industrial scale, according to a recent special report by Richard Thomas, the information commissioner.

Sir John Bourn’s National Audit Office also wrote a recent report warning of significant concerns among NHS staff “that the confidentiality of patient information may be at risk”. But officials persuaded the NAO to delete the warnings in the published version.The original draft said: “Patient confidentiality remains a controversial issue among critics … both as regards the adequacy of the planned safeguards to protect information, and whether patients should have a right to opt out of having their information recorded”.

Stunning! That those charged with serving your best interests treat you with such open contempt. You are meat. You are data. You are a commodity belonging to the nation, and anything you have or hold can be stolen and sold for ‘the public interest’. Are you ready to sold?

So, coming back to the good and bad of this article… it is a good stand-alone piece. However, no database now stands alone. It is clear from the above how police, immigration et al want access to every detail of peoples lives. This cannot be pointed out strongly enough. And it must be resisted with every fibre.

No apathy, apathy is complicity. No compliance, compliance is treachery. No NIR registration, registration is slavery.

What can you do? Today, against this NHS database, you can go back to the top and follow the link.

Wednesday November 1, 2006
The Guardian

Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, believes that patients do have legal rights over their medical records: “Write and insist that you are not put on the NHS data spine,” Prof Anderson says. “If enough people boycott having centralised NHS records, with a bit of luck the service will be abandoned.”

If you are concerned, you should discuss it with your GP. You can put a block on your own data by writing to:

The Secretary of State for Health
Richmond House
79 Whitehall Terrace
London SW1A 2NS

And send the same letter to your GP.

It should say:

Dear Sir/ Madam

I require you not to begin processing my sensitive personal data to the proposed NHS Summary Care Record on the Spine. It is likely to cause me substantial unwarranted distress because:

1. No ‘sealed envelopes’ yet exist to limit access

2. No online patient system yet exists to correct errors

3. Data uploaded may include genetic, psychological or sexual information

4. It is intended to make my data available to social workers, researchers and commercial firms

5. My consent will not be asked before beginning processing

6. Adequate criminal penalties against abuse do not yet exist

7. Police and other agencies can gain access to a potentially unlimited range of information about me. There is abundant evidence that computer databases – including police, vehicle licensing and banking computers – are routinely penetrated by private investigators on behalf of clients, including media organisations

8. 250,000 smart cards have been issued granting access to the Spine

9. The department threatens to withhold appropriate medical care to objectors

10. Doctors say there is no necessity to design the Spine in this way

For these reasons, among others, I strongly fear that I am in danger of having false or damaging health information fall into the wrong hands. My privacy is being unnecessarily violated.

Yours faithfully

[…]

Via Blogzilla

Personally I think points 5, 7 & 10 are compelling enough reasons for why this scheme is ‘bad news’ and point 2 (implicitly requesting online access) could actually make data safety worse.
Hopefully this means a progression in the mainstream media from the simple reporting of undesirable schemes and legislation into a more robust way of enabling their readers to oppose wayward Statist interventionism.

Now they need to do the same for the looming NIR roll out – and soon.

I look at this whole ordeal as not something funny as some people have made it out to be. To me it is mighty serious and since I evidently did observe something that at least Mr. John Doe on the street corner or Pete Andrews on the ranch has never heard about, is no reason that it does not exist. Even though I openly invited an investigation by the Army and the FBI as to the authenticity of my story or a mental or a physical examination as to my capabilities, I have received no interest from these two important protective forces of our country; I will go so far as to assume that any report I gave to the United and Associated Press and over the radio on two different occasions which apparently set the nation buzzing, if our Military intelligence was not aware of what I observed, they would be the very first people that I could expect as visitors […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Secret Cabinet memo admits Iraq is fuelling UK terror

Tony Blair’s claim that there is no link between Britain’s foreign policy and terrorist attacks in this country is blown apart by a secret cabinet memo revealed today.

Ummm we and every other person on the planet already knew this.

A classified paper written by senior Downing Street officials says that everything Britain does overseas for the next decade must have the ultimate aim of reducing “terror activity, especially that in or directed against the UK”.

The memo, circulated in recent weeks to ministers and security chiefs and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, outlines an extraordinary “wish list” of how the Government would like world troublespots to look in 10 years’ time. It also signals a drive to reduce Britain’s military commitments around the globe.

It admits that, in an ideal world, “the Muslim would not perceive the UK and its foreign policies as hostile” – effectively accepting the argument that Britain’s military action in Iraq and Afghanistan has served as a recruiting sergeant for Islamist terrorist groups. Publicly, Mr Blair has resisted this line fiercely. During his final speech as leader to Labour’s annual conference last month, he described such claims as “enemy propaganda”.

His cabinet allies have supported his position. Earlier this year, John Reid, the Home Secretary, said: “I think it is a dreadful misjudgment if we believe the foreign policy of this country should be shaped in part, or in whole, under the threat of terrorist activity, if we do not have a foreign policy with which the terrorists happen to agree.”

But the memo leaves no doubt that all foreign policy must be driven by the goal of thwarting terrorism in Britain. It demands a “significant reduction in the number and intensity of the regional conflicts that fuel terror activity”.

In other words, KNOCK IT OFF, COME BACK HOME and DONT EVER GO BACK.

After a decade, Iraq must have “stable central and local government, accepted by all sectarian groups”. Afghanistan must be “stable, democratic, with all territory under central government control”.

You guys just don’t get it do you?

WHY should Iraq have a central government? ‘What does this have to do with Richmond?’ is the test that you need to apply to every one of these pronouncements. Why should Britain have a say about anything that happens in Iraq? That is what caused this problem in the first place. You are all living on tenter hooks, paranoid, disrupted, humiliated and scorned…and for what? For precisely nothing, since these people have their own ideas about what is right and what is wrong, and they will live by those ways or die and take you with them. They resist living in ‘democracy’ in the same way that we would all resist living under pure Sharia; to the death. Only the most blinkered and uneducated buffoons can not see this.

Similarly, why on earth should Afghanistan be a centrally controlled democratic government? Who are you to make that judgement? You making these proclamations and then acting on them are the sole cause of everyone hating the UK second only to the USA. For the thousandth time, will you KNOCK IT OFF. What those people do has absolutely NOTHING to do with Richmond. You have no right to demand that they live in a democracy. You have no right to dictate anything to anyone. If you DO believe that you have the right to shape the destiny of hundreds of millions of people in other lands, then take the consequences, and don’t whine like babies when people are lining up to slaughter you.

Israel must have “secure borders” and live in “peaceful co-existence” with its Arab neighbours,

sure, but thats up to THEM isn’t it?

while Iran must have a “representative, tolerant government … no nuclear weapons” and “no sponsorship of terrorism”.

There you go again.

The whole reason why there is an Islamic Republic in Iran is because YOU DISMANTLED THE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT that was running there. What the Iranians have now is the government that they want. What happens in Iran is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

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?”.

You cant make stuff like this up.

A similar story is recounted about Bliar. These people, these ignorant animals have the gall to tell Iran how to run its affairs? It beggars belief.

The document concludes: “If all or most of the above were in place, threats from other sources of Islamic terrorism (eg Indonesia, Philippines, Nigeria) would be manageable or on the way to resolution. Any remaining deployments of the British armed forces should be seen as contributing to international stability and security.”

Indonesia, The Philippines, Nigeria? listing these countries shows that the person who wrote this memo is as ignorant as Bu$h and Bliar. No muslim in any of these countries gives a damn about the UK, and they would be more than happy to never have any hatred towards anyone. If you however, decide to land troops in their countries, try and stage coups there, stir up trouble and make a nuisance of yourself, you are guaranteed to face fierce resistance. This part of the memo shows that they know nothing and have learned nothing, not even from recent history…and by recent I mean the last five years. There is no problem between Indonesia, Philippines, Nigeria and the UK. My advice to you you JACKASSES is not to start one!

A Downing Street spokesman declined to comment on the memo. However, in an interview, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, played down suggestions that large numbers of British troops may soon be coming home from Iraq. “I think you’re perhaps a little impatient to see a huge change, which I don’t think we are yet in,” she said.

She acknowledged, how-ever, that Britain and America had failed, before going to war, to predict that “there were huge pent-up hatreds and resentments in Iraq which exploded once Saddam Hussein was deposed”.

[…]

Telegraph

You fail again and again. You know nothing about Indonesia, The Philippines, Nigeria and anywhere other than Richmond Upon Thames. Nothing wrong with that; just make sure that you NEVER interfere with any of these countries and how they are run. As soon as you try to interfere, you cause disaster. You always have caused disaster, and always will cause disaster. Solve your own problems, mind your own business and all the ‘terrorism’ will melt away. If you do not, it will be ramped up and your precious ‘democracy’ which you have already partially dismantled, will be utterly destroyed by your own hand.

No one wants your ‘help’ and no one needs your advice. Every educated person can see that you are amongst the biggest hypocrites ever to walk the face of this earth. The British people on an interpersonal basis are the best ambassadors for the UK, because they are decent, peace loving people, and amongst the most tolerant, creative and intelligent in the entire world. The same cannot be said about HMG sadly, and its brief should be confined to garbage collection; that way, no one gets hurt.

Anyone who mentions Iran, who says its ‘intolerant’ who creates and transmits bogus documentaries about, sharia, veiled women blah blah blah; these people are traitors and warmongers and liars and are completely insane.

Enough is enough. Britain has alot of healing to do, and the sooner it starts the sooner Britain will start to look like the place we all loved. The first step is the purging of the war criminals and their bogus anti-democratic legislation.

But thats another blog post!

Just as individual identity is fundamental to our face-to-face interactions, digital identity is fundamental to our interactions in the online world. Unfortunately, many of the challenges associated with the Internet stem from the lack of widely deployed, easily understood, and secure identity solutions. This should come as no surprise. After all, the Internet was designed for sharing information, not for securely identifying users and protecting personal data. However, the rapid proliferation of online theft and deception and the widespread misuse of personal information are threatening to erode public trust in the Internet and thus limit its growth and potential.

Microsoft believes that no single identity management system will emerge and that efforts should instead be directed toward developing an overarching framework that connects different identity systems and sets out standards and protocols for ensuring the privacy and security of online interactions. Microsoft calls this concept the Identity Metasystem. The Identity Metasystem is not a specific product or solution, but rather an interoperable architecture that allows Internet users to use context-specific identities in their various online interactions.

PDF

M$ has released a new paper ‘The Identity Metasystem: Towards a Privacy-Compliant Solution to the Challenges of Digital Identity’. The above is from the summary. This paper is flawed from the outset; the ‘problem’ of identity on the web is a vendor looking for a solution.

individual identity is fundamental to our face-to-face interactions, digital identity is fundamental to our interactions in the online world

This is not true. When I buy a newspaper from a street vendor, he doesn’t need to know anything about me to sell me an Evening Standard. When I buy a bouquet of flowers from a shop in the high street, the shop keeper doesn’t need to know who I am and where I live, or anything else about me. All they have to know is that my money is good. They can then deliver the flowers to wherever I say it should go. The second part of that quoted sentence, “digital identity is fundamental to our interactions in the online world” is simply wrong, for reasons I give below.

many of the challenges associated with the Internet stem from the lack of widely deployed, easily understood, and secure identity solutions.

This is not true; the problem is, as I say below, one of buggy whip manufacturers trying to sell their wares to bicycle makers. Poor analogy!

the rapid proliferation of online theft

Is caused by this misapplication of existing systems and a misunderstanding of what is actually required for an online purchase.

Microsoft believes that no single identity management system will emerge and that efforts should instead be directed toward developing an overarching framework that connects different identity systems and sets out standards and protocols for ensuring the privacy and security of online interactions. Microsoft calls this concept the Identity Metasystem.

Identity management systems are not needed. The onus needs to be swung back onto the user. Identity management systems will eventually be replaced by light systems where the users ‘identity’ is owned by the user. These bad, antiquated systems will eventually collapse like MS Passport collapsed, when the solution that solves the problem correctly is launched.

Identity, like cash, needs to be owned by the user, and it needs to be cash like, and not card like. The problems of CC fraud are caused by old style services trying to shoehorn ’70s style payment systems into a twentieth century shoe. The way forward is to literally let people own their identities, i.e., in systems that do not rely on you revealing who you ‘really are’ to get things done, but which rely on you managing your identity in a cash like manner. I have said this before on BLOGDIAL; your data has an actual monetary value and should be treated as a valuable thing, like precious metals etc.

Skype payments (and all payment systems like it) are a good example of a cash like identity system; they are light, limited in their exposure of user info, and the onus is on the user to protect a single piece of information; her login.

Skype doesn’t care who you ‘really are’ in order for you to spend Skype money (when they roll this out); its up to you to protect your user name and password, just like it is your responsibility to look after your wallet in your pocket when you are in the street. Oyster, for all its flaws (following people around) is the same. When you buy an anonymous Oyster card, no one will care who you are when you go and buy a Mars bar with it in a shop. Who you ‘really are’ is irrelevant to all transactions both online and offline; this is the paradigm (re) shift that identity system vendors resist but which has been in place for generations. It is only now that it is possible to know everything about someone when they grocery shop that companies are clamoring for ways to actually do this and harvest this data. It has never been needed and will be rejected wholesale when people cotton on (again) to how bad these systems really are for people and society.

You can buy with Skype money, have goods delivered to any address that you like, and be completely anonymous while taking full advantage of e-commerce. This is the way that identity should be managed; in light, not heavy systems, that are cash-like, where the onus on security is pushed (or released) back to the consumer. Chaumian e-cash did this beautifully; you should look it up as an example of how identity can and should be managed.

Biometrics, ID cards, iris scans and every other vendor created snake oil product to ‘secure’ identity and e-commerce is just that, Snake Oil. Twenty first century thinking and systems are what is needed and are what will eventually take over. Over zealous, pointless, vendor driven ‘solutions’ are detected as damage by ‘the internets’ and economics, and both of these will be automatically routed around, circumvented, defeated and replaced by systems that are both better and beneficial.

One thing is for sure, Microsoft will not be the vendor to come up with it. It will be someone like Skype, or its decedents that does it; some outfit that is light, decentralized, focussed and unfettered, unlike M$, which is encumbered, lethargic, immobile and who has been playing catch up since Netscape. It will not be Google either, as we have seen from the YouTube buy out. Whoever does it, this solution will change everything overnight. It will destroy the old (and wrong) ideas about identity, and then we will enter ‘The Third Bubble’.

Last night, I was watching the ‘Prime Sangeet Eid Special’ on PTV Prime, a music special, featuring some classic music clips.

One of the performers shown was a video tape of Ghulam Ali, performing ‘Chupke Chupke Raat Din’ live in the 1970s.

Honestly is was the most magical thing ever. These people are in direct contact with whatever is in charge of the entire universe…such music…

Amazingly, you can hear some of this on YouTube:

Chupke Chupke Raat Din

Another Ghulam Ali piece…

And something very beautiful:

Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam – Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959 )

In a perfect world, in a parallel dimension, some scientists made a giant antenna to transmit a message about the very essence of humanity to the stars. They chose a special recording to send as the message.

When it was decoded at the destination, long after the end of man…

This is what they saw and heard.

One in 10 of Glasgow’s call centres has been infiltrated by criminal gangs, police believe.

The scam works by planting staff inside offices or by forcing current employees to provide sensitive customer details.

The information is then used to steal identities and fraudulently set up accounts or transfer money.

The Customer Contact Association played down the extent of the problem but admitted it was a concern to those in the industry.

Det Ch Insp Derek Robertson of Strathclyde Police told the BBC’s Newsnight Scotland programme that there were a large number of call centres in the Glasgow area.

Recruit volunteers

“We have 300-plus, and we know that number is growing,” he said.

“I would say approximately 10% have been infiltrated in the past and we are working very hard to reduce that number.”

Detectives believe that criminal crews are sent out to recruit volunteers to work in the centres.

Once they agree, they are asked to supply financial information in return for a fee.

Another tactic is to identify pubs where call centre workers visit and intimidate the employees to pass on the details.

Det Ch Insp Robertson said: “There are a number of different ways to do it.

“We know of organised crime groups who are placing people within the call centres so that they can steal customers’ data and carry out fraud and money laundering.

“We also know of employees leaving the call centres and being approached and coerced, whether physically, violently or by being encouraged to make some extra money.

“And of course you have the disgruntled employee who may turn their hand to fraud just to benefit themselves.”

However, Anne Marie Forsyth of the Customer Contact Association played down the extent to which criminal gangs had managed to manipulate the industry.

She told the programme: “I think what Derek is talking about is the financial services sector, but the contact centre sector is far wider with travel, health, insurance and lots of others.

“Nevertheless it is obviously a concern and it’s a concern for all businesses.

“CCA membership has been very active over the last couple of years over sharing and exchanging data in this area. There is lots and lots to learn because business has got to be one step ahead as fraud increases.”

Call centres have become an increasingly important source of jobs.

Scottish Enterprise estimates that the industry employs about 18,000 people in Glasgow alone.

Across the UK the number is closer to 800,000. Median wages for those answering the phones are about £14,000.

The union, Unison, said that most call handlers working for established companies would be well trained and well monitored.

Dave Watson, their senior regional officer for Scotland, said that the biggest concern over security centred on out-sourcing companies which had high staff turnovers.

Mr Watson told Newsnight Scotland: “I think the real issue here is there are opportunities for criminal gangs to infiltrate staff where you’ve got high turnover and employers are desperate to recruit anyone to fulfil a particular contract.

“So what companies need to do is maximise their in-house operations and where they are using out-sourced providers they do that with the same standards that they require with their in-house operations.”

Det Ch Insp Robertson said call centre fraud was now a top priority.

His officers regularly monitor local jobs pages and contact new call centres.

He said: “That’s the only way to get ahead of the criminal – by pro-actively targeting the organisation before they recruit their member of staff. We are actively working on that.” […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6089736.stm

And surprise surprise, no mention of the NIR, the previous scandal of Identities for sale from inside Whitehall, and we have been here before.

The habitual and deliberate failing to connect the dots practiced by BBQ imbeciles, in this case, one ‘Raymond Buchanan’ is simply appalling.

It doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate from this and previous examples to see that if the NIR is rolled out as planned, it will be a piece of cake for anyone to get into the most intimate details of a a British citizen. It will be even easier than is the case in this ‘article’, because NIR access will be widespread, with terminals everywhere, plastered with Post-It® notes sporting privileged user passwords….

You get the picture.

For you people that DONT get it (BBQ dunderheads who lurk on BLOGDIAL) this is just the tip of the iceberg. If the NIR is rolled out, people will be able to investigate you without having to commit any sort of crime or deception. The NIR will provide a ‘service’ where you, the man in the street, can check if someone has a criminal record or not. If you think that it is outrageous that ‘criminals’ are getting into call centres, imagine the scenario (you do have SOME imagination dont you?) where all you have to do is pay to get access to anyone’s details, and its all perfectly legal. The logical conclusion will be that if you are allowed to access this part of a person’s life (criminal record), why not let people access everything else? This WILL happen if the NIR is put in place, and people stupidly enroll in it.

By not connecting the dots, by brainlessly boosting the idea of biometrics, by letting it slip again and again, deliberately, and with malice of forethought, you, you ignorant BASTARD are a part of the PROBLEM.

Or maybe I have it all wrong.

Maybe BBQ Glasgow exists in a parallel universe, where there is no Whitehall, no Bliar, no NIR, nowhere else that HMG IT has been corrupted from the inside, no broken DVLA, where Google is actually ‘Google Glasgow’ where you can only search inside that universe, where the police have never sold surveillance to criminals. You get my point, and there are many more that I could have sourced and quoted. If I felt like it, I could even extrapolate this story to the call centres in other countries, that have the billing records of millions of Britons on tap.

But why go there?

This is irresponsible journalism…or it would be if what BBQ did really was journalism, and not wildly biased propaganda on behalf of every punter with a fist full of fifties.

This story was brought to you by an very vigilant virologist, its veracity verified and its verse vectored to me for vilification.

The anonymous cowards are at it again at BBQ, this time with a completely biased, PR pumped piece promoting Biometrics.

This ‘guide’ says everything that is not important about Biometrics in the present context and leaves out everything that is important, i.e. the databases that will be used to abuse you should you be fool enough to ‘enroll’.

Lets take it apart piece by piece:

Biometric technology uses computerised methods to identify a person by their unique physical or behavioural characteristics.

Developments and uses have increased with demand to match concerns over international, business and personal security.

Biometrics is more personal than a passport photo or Pin, using traits such as fingerprints, face or eye “maps” as key identifying features.

Uses range from building access and laptop security to identity cards and passports.

However, there are concerns about the storing of biometric data and its possible misuse.

There are concerns are there? Do tell. There are no sidebars for related links on this evil piece of propaganda; that is because it is a piece of propaganda, and not a news item. They don’t want you to think about the implications of being fingerprinted and then stored in a database that every jobsworth in this land will be able to query.

Note how they left out the uses of Police identification, and the history of fingerprinting as being for criminals. which is exactly the sentiment that they are trying to overcome.

Each one of the leafs in this vile document has a pathetic disclaimer attached to the bottom. These are not there to provide the much vaunted BBQ ‘balance’ but exist merely so that when (if) anyone bothers to complain to BBQ about this brazen piece of paid for PR, they can point to these weak, near meaningless lines as proof that they are giving ‘both sides of the story’ . Its pure tosh of course, and these vermin, the unnamed animals that authored this are fully aware of what they are doing – pushing a single point of view on behalf of HMG and the vendors that want to fleece the entire population.

A brief glance at the face is enough for most people to identify one another. Face recognition technology can be just as swift.

2D face recognition involves making a unique template from measurements between key points on the face.

This can be done from a live image or from a clear photograph – a method being used with the issue of new biometric passports in the UK.

Face recognition is being used by some authorities to scan crowds to identify suspects whose faces have been logged on a database.

However, some of the technology may be easy to fool through ageing or face coverings and there are privacy concerns over surveillance uses.

You see? Seven words as a disclaimer. Not on any level is that ‘balance’ not even numerically. But we all know that the BBQ is biased, and actually, I don’t have a problem with it being so; what I detest is that they force you to pay for them to lie to you, and then they claim that they are not biased at all. That is beyond evil.

There are some great Flash explainers in there. Pity no one there had the guts to make one of them describing how once you are in there, you cannot get out, and how every time these systems are put in place, they are always abused by governments, and that these systems are indeed, the hallmark of a totalitarian state.

Iris scanning measures patterns on the coloured part of the eye – the iris.

The tissue has a unique pattern of markings which does not change and is different for each eye.

Iris scanners read from the outer edge towards the pupil, detecting and plotting the markings.

Data is saved and stored within a chip, on a passport or ID card for example, which will be verified when the eye is scanned in future.

While iris scanning is fast and accurate, its accuracy can be affected by objects obscuring the eye and may not be suitable for people with cataracts.

Not even a moral objection, just a technical one. Pathetic.

Using fingerprints is the oldest method of identification.

In the digital world, the fingerprint is electronically read by a sensor plate.

The corrugated ridges of the skin are non-continuous and form a pattern that has distinguishing features, or minutiae.

The minutiae can be plotted and joined up to form a template that can be stored and compared against fingerprints in the future.

Some readings may be affected by fingerprints that have been damaged through injury and some sensors may not be able to read fingers that are too wet or too dry.

Yet again, another technical objection. Nothing about humiliation, degradation, violation, databases, fallibility, an the fact that this whole scheme will not solve a single one of the problems fraudulently touted by that subhuman adulterer Blunkett and his Elephant eared swine of a colleague. That is who you are in service to, BBQ anonymous intellectual cripples; those are your masters, and you will burn in HELL for serving them.

Finally we end with a pitiful glossary:

Identification/One-to-many: Sample is compared to all biometric data saved in a system. It seeks to find an identity, rather than verify a claimed one.

Verification/One-to-one: Comparison of sample with previously enrolled template to determine if from same person.

Slaps: Fingerprints taken by simultaneously pressing four fingers of one hand onto a scanner.

False Acceptance Rate: Probability that a system will incorrectly identify an individual or fail to reject an impostor.

False Rejection Rate: Probability that a system will fail to identify a registered user.

Enrolment: Process of collecting a biometric, converting it into a biometric reference and storing it for later comparison.

Liveness detection: Ensures only characteristics from a living person can be stored, read or used.

Multimodal Biometric System: A system that uses two or more biometric characteristics or sensor types.

[…]

BBQ

Missing from this list are some of the words I used above, but most the important, glaring, obvious omission is a definition for the word…

‘DATABASE’

How could this POSSIBLY have been left out? You know how. This is PROPAGANDA, in full caps.

Shame shame shame on who ever produced this, and I think that they feel this shame, since they are too ashamed to put their names on it as the authors. Vile, nasty, dirty, cowardly, underhanded garbage.

I read this story at the lovely Al Jazeera today, a story that I have not yet seen anywhere else:

US troops call for Iraq pullout

More than 200 men and women from the US armed services have joined a protest calling for American troops in Iraq to be brought home, organisers say.

The soldiers said they did not think it was worth their while to be in Iraq and questioned the use of repeated tours of duty.

The campaign, called the Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq, takes advantage of defence department rules allowing active duty troops to express personal opinions to politicians without fear of retaliation.

The appeal posted on the campaign’s website at www.appealforredress.org said: “As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq.

You can read the rest at Al Jazeera

We could perhaps criticize the soldiers for not going all the way, risking full-on court martial and the whole lot, but I wouldn’t expect anyone with a family to do that, it’s just… far too self-sacrificing to be done by Americans on a wide scale. What they’re doing instead is intelligently speaking through a loophole that has been used before, effectively. If this picks up steam, it could get interesting, that is if anyone knows about it. Like I said above, I haven’t seen this story ANYWHERE but on Al Jazeera, so perhaps it’s being successfully buried by “teh mna.”

Regardless, what I want to get at is… if a few soldiers with brains can do this, where the hell is everyone else? This is an easy thing to do, the soldiers know the system, how it works, and they’re using it to their advantage. While they’re not fully refusing to co-operate – I can sort of understand that due to the reasons I spelled out above – this is at least something that piques my interest. These are average soldiers – nothing could ever be more media-friendly. But watch the media try to pull an Ann Coulter and bend the story into something ridiculous and insulting and full of glitz and mega-sports-channel style election graphics that somehow convinces Average Joe American (though, givent the current hemmorhage of stupidity in the US media the past couple of days, that may not happen). Or worse yet it just… won’t be reported on. At all. That’s what I’m betting on. We’ll see what happens.

Combine it with despair-filled articles like this, and maybe something good will happen for a change?

(sorry to push things down with yet more American news, but this is fun stuff! C’mon! Maybe I’ll post some retarded Canadian news soon. There’s plenty of it going around right now.)

The latest Olbermann special comment mentions the new Juba Video, which was transmitted on network news in the usa. Have you seen it? It’s brutal.

It has some of the same music that appears in ‘The night of Bush capturing’ 1st person shooter.

I had heard about ‘Juba’ but have not till today, seen him in action.

So lets get this straight; there is a sniper, called ‘Juba’ who has a rifle not only equipped with a powerful scope, but also video camera with a telescopic lens.

Thats just too much.

Those poor boys, being blown away for no good reason. It’s all bad…all bad.

And take a look at these soldiers, pissing their pants as they face death.

And now imagine being Drafted.

If Your Fingerprints Aren’t Down You’re Not Coming In

UK Government wants to control where citizens go to get drunk. Will people start caring more about the liberty crushing surveillance society now?

Steve Watson / Infowars.net | October 23 2006

The drinks are on Big Brother.

The British government has announced that it wishes to send nationwide a previously localized program of mandatory fingerprint scanners at the entrance of every pub and club in major UK cities. Under such rules If you want to have a drink in the trendiest places in the UK you will have to be fingerprinted.

As usual this is being sold as a way to reduce alcohol related crime and weed out troublemakers. We’re all suspects now, we’re all possible criminals and we all need to be scanned and catalogued in order to save civilized society. The young hoodlums are taking over and we must all be considered dangerous in order to stop them.

The move to introduce the scanners is being sold to club and bar owners with the promise that they can stay open longer if they implement it. If they refuse that nice little earner they will simply be shut down as new licenses stipulate that a landlord who doesn’t install fingerprint security and fails to show a “considerable” reduction in alcohol-related violence, will be put on report by the police and have their licenses revoked.

What’s more, reports detail the fact that all clubs and bars that have this forced upon them, or choose to willingly use it, will be hooked up to a centralized database in order to easily share the biometric information. Access to this database will also be granted to the police and the government.

We have previously been told that it is just a matter of time before the fingerprint replaces cash and credit cards.

As a citizen of the UK I have not known a time when civil liberties have been under attack from so many angles at the same time. In the name of the war on crime, the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on binge drinking, the war on anything the government can’t be bothered to attempt to get to the real cause of, we have to relinquish our privacy.

Big Brother Is watching… And listening and shouting and scanning and taking your fingerprints and swabbing your DNA. Lets take a snapshot of a typical day in Britain should all these things be fully implemented.

You get up to go to work and walking down your residential street you are picked up by multiple cameras within minutes of leaving your house. Before you board the tube or the train you may have to relent to going through the high-tech body screener for detecting would-be terrorists. Place your hands above your head and wait for the machine to produce a naked picture of you on a screen.

If your ‘re lucky enough not to have to go through one of these you will certainly be picked up by the the face scanning cameras which are programmed to sound an alarm when they spot suspicious behaviour, such as waiting somewhere for a prolonged period of time or just walking in a suspicious way.

Should you drop some litter or act out of turn the cameras may even start shouting at you in order to publicly humiliate you and let everyone else around you know what you’ve done. This way you might be shamed into never stepping out of line in that way again.

You swipe your electronic travel card over the reader and a unit of travel credit is deducted. This sends a signal to the central database reporting your whereabouts. You could still use cash but the fare has been raised so high for cash users that it seems ludicrous to opt for that.

Those who are lucky enough to work out of the big cities or those who drive to work will have their movements and personal behaviour monitored by traffic cameras all over the country. They will also be tracked at all times by the black box locator within their vehicles.

Once you get to work you are continuously monitored from the moment you enter the building until you leave.

After work you may go for a drink. Once you have had your fingerprints scanned to enter you may also have to undergo a DNA swab test for drug use. If you refuse you are recorded as suspicious and may even be arrested at which point your DNA will be forcibly taken anyway.

This will be added to the national DNA database which is also hooked up to the central UK citizens database which eventually will contain the DNA of everyone no matter whether or not they have committed a crime. You will not have access to this information but the government will. They may even sell the information to private companies should they wish to. The Information will be stored on the database forever.

If you do manage to get in the pub for a drink you will be able to pay for it much more quickly and easily if you have an implanted microchip. Just wave your arm over a reader and it will pick up the chip’s signal and deduct a beverage credit accordingly. A chip may also eliminate the need for an ID card, travel card, medical card and the like. No need to carry cumbersome wallets or handbags anymore!

Perhaps you will not have worked hard enough this week to earn enough beverage credits though. Oh well never mind time to go home. When you get back remember to put out the trash. Make sure the bag is not too heavy though or more refuse credits will be deducted from your allowance. And don’t forget to recycle or you could get some jail time.

Just before you turn in check your personalized cctv channel and report any suspicious activity in your neighbourhood. You can then go to sleep safe in the knowledge that you are ‘secure beneath the watchful eyes’ of Big Brother.

In the UK we are the most observed population outside of North Korea. Britain is the surveillance bench mark, the rest of the Western world is a close second. As Henry Porter Commented in last week’s London Observer, It’s time to wake up to what we have become and stop allowing limits to be put on our liberty. It’s now or never.

[…]

http://www.infowars.net/articles/October2006/231006prints.htm