Britons face 11 ID checks a year

Passports are commonly used to prove identity

UK adults are asked to prove their identity (ID) 11 times on average each year, research from Manchester Business School has found. Laws meant to combat money-laundering and terrorism mean Britons are increasingly being asked to produce ID.

Buying an airline ticket, leasing a property, opening a savings account and registering with a doctor require ID.

And according to the research, by 2010 Britons will be asked to produce ID an average of 17 times a year.

Consumer burden

Most [consumers] are frustrated to be asked to produce documents such as passports and driving licences, often a number of times by different departments of the same business Rob Laurence, GB Group

Technology firm GB Group, which commissioned Manchester Business School to undertake the research, said UK firms and government agencies were making up to half a billion identity checks on customers each year.

This could place a great burden on individual consumers who had to produce passports or driving licences to prove who they were, the group said.

For example, those moving house may have their identity checked more than five times throughout the process by different organisations such as estate agents, solicitors, financial advisers, lenders and the Land Registry.

“Most [consumers] are frustrated to be asked to produce documents such as passports and driving licences, often a number of times by different departments of the same business,” Rob Laurence, GB Group spokesman, said. […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5193986.stm 

A vigilant BLOGDIAL lurker points us to this flagrant piece of PR being hosted free of charge at the BBQ (free of charge apart from the fistful of fivers it took to get it published.)

This story has no author. That is the most telling thing about it. It is a pure regurgitation of a press release from GB Group, who used the cover of Manchester Business School to produce this thinly veiled call for an ID Card to ‘make peoples lives easier’. You will note that there is no link to N02ID in the ‘related links’ sidebar.

The BBC should always be forced to divulge how these ‘stories’ or ‘pieces’ have come to be published in a ‘story audit trail’ so that we can see who the biased writers are, and identify the PR companies that have priveledged access to the BBC.

In fact, if they won’t do it, we can do it ourselvs in a Web 2.0 mashup style, where people can report PR injected BBC URLS in a database, so that we can correlate the authors, businesses and PR firms who are squirting stories into BBQ. Hmmm, “Will someone do it” is the question we ask aloud.

In a sharp escalation of their crackdown on Internet gambling, United States prosecutors said yesterday that they were pressing charges against the chief executive of BetOnSports, a prominent Internet gambling company that is publicly traded in Britain, and against several other current and former company officers.

Federal authorities arrested the chief executive, David Carruthers, late Sunday as he was on layover at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on his way from Britain to Costa Rica. In a hearing yesterday in Federal District Court in Fort Worth, he was charged with racketeering conspiracy for participating in an illegal gambling enterprise.

Also at the hearing, the court granted the government’s request for a temporary restraining order preventing BetOnSports from accepting wagers from customers in the United States and requiring it to return money held in the accounts of American customers.

In addition to Mr. Carruthers, the government filed charges against 10 other people involved with BetOnSports and with three Florida marketing companies that prosecutors say were involved in promoting illegal gambling.

The charges, particularly those against Mr. Carruthers, who runs a company that has been a symbol of the investment potential of offshore casinos, raise complex legal and political questions. And they are the most direct attack in several years on offshore Internet casinos, setting up a showdown with an industry that has grown increasingly brazen in promoting online wagering in the United States.

The gambling sites allow people to place bets on sporting events and play casino games like blackjack from their computers. The companies keep their computer servers in places like the Isle of Man, Antigua and Costa Rica, where BetOnSports has its operating headquarters. […]

Prosecutors assert that under the Federal Wire Act of 1961, the providers and promoters of Internet sports books and casinos are participants in a criminal enterprise.

The fact that these operations are legal in their home jurisdictions “does not entitle them to do business in the United States,” said Catherine L. Hanaway, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, which brought the indictment. The charges announced yesterday indicate that “their efforts to avoid U.S. law enforcement will be challenged and brought to justice whenever possible.”

In addition to Mr. Carruthers, prosecutors brought charges against Peter Wilson, BetOnSports’s media director; Gary Kaplan, the company’s founder; and several of Mr. Kaplan’s relatives, whom the indictment alleges were involved in the business. The indictment was returned June 1 but was sealed until yesterday. […]

The indictment seeks to have the accused forfeit $4.5 billion in holdings. […]

Ms. Hanaway, the United States attorney in Missouri, said the arrest happened during this visit because “it’s when we knew he was coming.” Asked whether it presented a challenge to prosecutors that Mr. Carruthers is not an American citizen, Ms. Hanaway said, “Thus far, no.” […]

Sue Schneider, publisher of Interactive Gaming News, an online magazine focusing on the Internet casino industry, said the charges would have at least one major chilling effect on the industry’s officers. “I imagine the number of executives coming through the U.S. on connecting flights will come to a screeching halt,” she said. […]

New York Times

My emphasis.

Firstly and OT, they probably knew he was passing through the US because the airlines are giving people’s itinearys to the feds on a regular basis.

Secondly, this is all wrong. BetOnSports is a 100% legal operation. It is not incorporated in the US, does not have any servers in the US and is in no way a US legal entity. Its owner is not a US person. It is however, on the internet, and las time I checked, the US does not own the internet, so why they think they can arrest the owner of this business is arrogance beyond comprehension.

If someone in Spokane wants to connect to BetOnSports with their browser, that is THEIR business, and it is not correct that the US government should arrest people from other countries who are going about their lawful business. If they want to stop internet gambling, then they should do what China does and block sites. Then of course, they would face a Supreme Court challenge, and they dont want that, so they take the easy route of arresting an innocent person. Shameful behaviour.

If the tables were turned, all americans would be OUTRAGED if one of their citizens was arressted while ‘on layover’ through Germany because he published texts in the USA that are illegal in Germany.

This situation is no different. Jurisdiction is a real and necessary thing, so that people in different places with different moral standards can live in peace. america is violating this rule by arresting people who are not breaking the laws in their own countries. All business men, if they have any brains at all are avoiding the US like a plague.

We can add this example to the one of the NatWest Three who have just been extradited without any basis at all, for crimes committed in the UK that have nothing to do with the US.

UPDATE

Read the PDF of the actual indictment, which says that they took over ONE BILLION dollars in bets, and that they BetOnSports must forfeit 4.5 BILLION dollars!

Now, what on EARTH was Carruthers doing on a commercial airline flight if they have as much money as this indictment alleges? Anyone with that much turnover flies private aviation by default.

I smell some inflated figures!

‘Anti-terror style “control orders” could be used to disrupt the activities of the gangsters at the top of organised crime, the government says.’

‘The government brought in control orders to target terror suspects who could not be prosecuted in courts. Control orders allow terror suspects to be tagged, confined to their homes and banned from communicating with others.’

(In other words, without a trial, they can tag you and put you under house arrest, and no communicating means no visitors, no mail, no phones, landline or mobile, and no internet access). First it was terrorists, now gangsters, what next?

Note further: ‘The plans also include introducing new laws to target people on the periphery of criminal activity and moves to increase the amount of data sharing between public sector agencies.’

Right, so they’ll be able to extend these to people they allege might be involved, and severely reducing the protections under the Data Protection Act.

Big Brother or what? Doesn’t this sound a little like a fascist or communist dictatorship? Hitler? Mussolini? Idi Amin? Saddam Hussein? Stalin? Nicolae Ceau?escu?

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictator
“In modern usage, dictator refers to an absolutist or autocratic ruler who governs outside the constitutionally normal rule of law with checks and balances, usually through a continued state of exception. However, unlike the original Roman dictators (who were a constitutional institution), modern dictators rarely give themselves the title “dictator”; it is generally used by their opponents as a pejorative term for totalitarian rule, just like despot and tyrant (also unlike their counterparts in Antiquity). “

At least some have wit. For example, Idi Amin Dada, who had been a British army lieutenant prior to Uganda’s independence from Britain in October 1962, subsequently styled himself as “His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, King of Scotland Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.”

Oh, and the Crown Prosecution Service have decided not to prosecute any police officers over the killing of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes on London’s Underground (metro), but will prosecute the police in general under the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act for “failing to provide for the health, safety and welfare” of Mr Menezes on 22 July.

So they can shoot you now to and get away with it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5187752.stm

[…]

Snarfed from a thread on Digg.

As they Stand They Point Everywhere:

The four large upright blocks pointing outward are oriented to the limits of the migration of the moon during the course of the year.

An eye-level, oblique hole is drilled from the South to the North side of the center, Gnomen stone, so that the North Star is always visible, symbolizing constancy and orientation with the forces of nature.

A slot is cut in the middle of the gnomon stone to form a window which aligns with the positions of the rising sun at the Summer and Winter Solstices and at the Equinox, so that the noon sun shines to indicate noon on a curved line.

The cap stone includes a calendar of sorts, where sunlight beams through a 7/8 inch hole at noon, and shines on the South face of the center stone. As the sun makes its travel cycle, the spot beamed through the hole can tell the day of the year at noon each day. Allowances are made because of variations between standard time and sun time to set the beam of sunlight at an equation of time.

The site was chosen because it commands a view to the East and to the West and is within the range of the Summer and Winter sunrises and sunsets. The stones are oriented in those directions.

The Guides Explained

A massive granite monument espousing the conservation of mankind and future generations. Sources for the sizable financing of the project choose to remain anonymous. The wording of the message proclaimed on the monument is in 12 languages, including the archaic languages of Sanskrit, Babylonian Cuneiform, Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Classical Greek, as well as English, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Spanish, and Swahili.

The guides, followed by explanatory precepts, are as follows, the words are exactly as the Sponsors provided them: […]

http://www.thegeorgiaguidestones.com/stones.htm

The Culling is Coming…

The stones say:

• Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature
• Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity
• Unite humanity with a living new language.
• Rule Passion – Faith – Tradition
• Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
• Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
• Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
• Balance personal rights with social duties.
• Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.
• Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.

Police call for tracker chips in paedophiles
David Leppard

BRITAIN’S most senior policeman is proposing that electronic chips should be surgically implanted into convicted paedophiles and dangerous sex offenders so they can be more easily tracked.

Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said the implants would be tracked by satellite, enabling authorities to set up “zones” from which sex offenders would be barred. These could include schools, playgrounds and former victims’ homes. Any attempt by the offender to enter the zones would trigger alarms in a monitoring centre, enabling police to act.

Jones, whose association represents all 43 chief constables in England and Wales, said the scheme would help to reassure the public at a time of mounting concern about the government’s handling of sex offenders.

“If we are prepared to track cars, why don’t we track people? You could put surgical chips into those of the most dangerous sex offenders who are are willing to be controlled,” he said.

His comments follow the announcement last month by John Reid, the home secretary, of a review of the way paedophiles and other sex offenders are treated on their release. […]

He said he was aware that civil liberties groups would object to the idea of a “Big Brother” monitoring system but emphasised that the chips would be implanted only with the agreement of sex offenders and would be targeted at those guilty of the most serious crimes.

“You could have a pilot scheme for the people who represent the highest risk and who would voluntarily want to go into this. You’d be surprised how many would be willing to submit to that kind of control,” he said. […]

The chips — inserted beneath the skin under local anaesthetic — could also monitor the heart rate and blood pressure of the offender, alerting authorities to the possible imminence of an attack.

Dr William Harwin, of the cybernetics department at Reading University, said such tags were now widely available: “Similar tracking chips are already extensively used on pets and livestock.”

Supporters believe implanted chips would be more effective than electronic tags on ankles or wrists because they cannot easily be removed.

Figures released by the Home Office last month showed that since 2001 more than 3,300 sex offenders had been punished for absconding or failing to tell police where they were living. […]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2272338.html

1/ We are not ‘prepared to track cars’.
2/ People are not cars.

Police DNA database ‘is spiralling out of control’

Secret emails show private firms store genetic data from innocent victims

Antony Barnett, investigations editor Sunday July 16, 2006 The Observer

The security of the police National DNA Database is in question following the disclosure of confidential emails which reveal that a private firm has secretly been keeping the genetic samples and personal details of hundreds of thousands of arrested people. Police forces use the company LGC to analyse DNA samples taken from people they arrest. LGC then supplies the information to the National DNA Database. Yet rather than destroy this afterwards, the firm has kept copies, together with highly personal demographic details of the individuals including their names, ages, skin colour and addresses.

In a separate twist, evidence has emerged that the Home Office has given permission for a controversial genetic study to be undertaken using the DNA samples on the police database to see if it is possible to predict a suspect’s ethnic background or skin colour from them. Permission has been given for the DNA being collected on the police database to be used in 20 research studies […]

The Home Office emailed LGC with its concerns: ‘From a [DNA Database] custodian and Data Protection Act perspective, it is important that there are no demographics linked to these retained profiles. Otherwise, suppliers would be building up subsets of the National DNA Database.’ The company admits that is has been doing this. It states: ‘All the information is on [our system]. We do in effect have a mini-database.’ One of LGC’s directors is Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and it has several contracts with companies in the pharmaceutical, biotech and chemicals industry. Although there is no evidence that the firm has used the DNA records for other commercial purposes, opposition MPs are calling for the Home Office to launch an investigation. Lynne Featherstone, the home affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: ‘This might be more cock-up than conspiracy, but the Home Office must investigate whether DNA taken from thousands of innocent people has not been abused.’ […]
The genetic research is being carried out by Jon Wetton of the Forensic Science Service. An FSS spokesperson said the aim of the research was to reduce the time taken to identify a suspect .’ […]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1821749,00.html

My emphasis.

At last, we see the results of the DNA database, and government databases in general as they reveal their true natures; Racist tools of absolute control.

Not only has this data been illegally and imorally retained by the contractor that was doing the work, but a secret, Nazi style race experiment was ORDERED by the Fascist Bliar government.

At any other time between the end of world war two and the end of the twentieth century, any politician involved in such a disgusting, immoral and wrong project would instantly resign and then be aressted, but today, they simply get away with it.

All you sheeple, you morons, you Facist Facilitators, you Upstream Warmongers™ THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.

You can see from the link to Jon Wetton’s name above that he is publishing his research:

Inferring the population of origin of DNA evidence within the UK by allele-specific hybridization of Y-SNPs.

Wetton JH, Tsang KW, Khan H.

The Forensic Science Service, R&D, Trident Court 2960, Solihull Parkway, Birmingham Business Park, Solihull B37 7YN, UK. jon.wetton@fss.pnn.police.uk

Marked differences in Y-SNP allele frequencies between continental populations can be used to predict the biogeographic origin of a man’s ancestral paternal lineage. Using 627 samples collected from individuals within the UK with pale-skinned Caucasian, dark-skinned Caucasian, African/Caribbean, South Asian, East Asian or Middle Eastern appearance we demonstrate that an individual’s Y-SNP haplogroup is also strongly correlated with their physical appearance. Furthermore, experimental evaluation of the Marligen Signet Y-SNP kit in conjunction with the Luminex 100 detection instrument indicates that reliable and reproducible haplogrouping results can be obtained from 1 ng or more of target template derived from a variety of forensic evidence types including, blood, saliva and post-coital vaginal swabs. The test proved highly male-specific with reliable results being generated in the presence of a 1000-fold excess of female DNA, and no anomalous results were observed during degradation studies despite a gradual loss of typable loci. Hence, Y-SNP haplogrouping has considerable potential forensic utility in predicting likely ethnic appearance.

Now, if this research has come from the immorally stolen DNA of the British public, then anyone who works with this data has comitted a crime. Scientists are morally obligated not to use the results of work done on people without their consent. If PubMed have published this immoral work, then they are culpable. Anyone who derives anything from this work is also culpable.

This article is being sold for Thirty Dollars. Anyone who is selling this document, if it is tainted, is culpable.

As for Lord Stevens, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the ex Metropolitan Police Commissioner “…the most successful Commissioner in modern times” is the head of the private company that won the contract to fleece the British people of their DNA for their racist, immoral, unpardonable, unspeakable, hideous, Mengeloid madness. That is the least surprising aspect of the whole sordid affiar.

According to this article it costs between $100-150 to get a DNA profile done. That means that with three MILLION profiles on file, they have charged at least THREE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS for this ‘service’, and now that ANY OFFENCE is arrestable, it means that MILLIONS MORE people will be DNA swabbed at this same price. That my friends, is what we call a licence to print money.

It’s all bad business. Note finally that the enemies of the people the members of parliament call only for another toothless investigation and not the wholesale destruction of the databases.
DIE DIE DIE you animals!

Meth crackdowns employ IDs, signatures

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (AP) — Showing ID isn’t just for smokes and beer anymore.

Starting Sunday, cold and allergy sufferers in Illinois will need identification and they must be willing to sign a log before they can buy a popular decongestant that’s also used in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine.

State police have seen a huge jump in the number of meth lab busts in recent years — from just 24 in 1997 to nearly 1,000 each of the past three years — and the number of Illinois cases has risen to third in the nation.

The state tried pulling pseudoephedrine-based medications off open shelves and putting them behind the counter last year, but Illinois remained a magnet for meth makers because other state’s had even stiffer requirements, Attorney General Lisa Madigan said.

Oregon, meanwhile, started a registry for cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine and saw its methamphetamine lab discoveries dropped by more than half last year.

“Our hopes are that we will see similar numbers,” Madigan said.

She and others hope that by further limiting access to the drug found in non-prescription medications such as Sudafed, Tylenol Cold and Claritin D, will curb the growing problem.

Just the requirement that buyers show ID may deter many meth users, who are often already paranoid because of the effects of the drug, said Master Sgt. Bruce Liebe, who heads the state police meth response team.

The newly required logs could also become a powerful investigative tool for law enforcement, said McLean County Sheriff Dave Owens. The logs will be confidential in most respects, but available to police for drug investigations.

Some pharmacists aren’t as optimistic. They say the new law will give them headaches by forcing them to check IDs, log every purchaser by name and keep track of medication so buyers don’t exceed 7.5 grams of pseudoephedrine a month, which authorities say is enough for daily recommended dosages of the decongestant. If they don’t follow it, they could face $500 fines and possible criminal charges.

Bill Martin, who owns an independent pharmacy in Bloomington, decided to simply stop selling the cold and allergy remedies rather than deal with it.

“We just didn’t want to hassle with the paperwork. We sell so little of it that we just pulled it off the shelves,” Martin said.

Shoppers, however, say they’re willing to wait if the new law reverses the rise of the highly addictive, homemade drug.

“You can’t be in that big of a hurry if it helps the kids — not just the kids, everyone,” said Nancy Harvey, 54, of Normal.

As of October, 37 states had some sort of restriction on the sales of pseudoephedrine, from requiring a prescription to simply limiting the number of packages purchased at one time, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Since then, Michigan has also restricted sales.

Nationally, lawmakers wrote federal restrictions into legislation to extend the Patriot Act, but those restrictions weren’t included in the temporary renewal that was enacted, and its fate in Congress this year is uncertain.

Illinois officials acknowledge their new law isn’t perfect.

For now, purchases will only be logged at individual stores, meaning meth producers can still stockpile medications by hitting several pharmacies. Madigan hopes to develop a statewide database. Walgreens, based in Illinois, is considering its own database for its nearly 500 stores statewide, as well, spokesman Michael Polzin said.

Lynn Webber, who owns an independent pharmacy in Bloomington, said the state might be overreacting at the expense of customers and pharmacists.

“We’re jousting at windmills,” Webber said. “It’s a terrible addiction, but it’s such a small percentage of the drug users.” […]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-14-meth-crackdown_x.htm

The problems with this are many but the main one is that, it will not stop the purchase of ‘cough syrup’ by the microsopically small, statictically insignifigant, puny group of people who want to use it to make another product, and it will allow access into the lives of ordinary, law abiding people. It will allow companies to create a database of everyone who has bought this product. It will allow all the bad things we constantly talk about when we discuss this.

It is the wrong headed idea of having to show ID to do something that has reared its ugly head again, and of course, when everyone in that sleepy country is used to showing ID for anything and everything, they will switch to ‘only REALID is real ID’ and then the entire population will be caught in the snare.

From the guardian pipes:

NHS database ‘will damage privacy’

Doctors have criticised the massive new health service IT system, claiming the project will harm patient confidentiality.

They said there were serious issues of security once 50 million patient records are stored on one database.

The barbed comments from doctors are the latest set back for the £12.4 billion IT scheme, which has been shrouded in controversy.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, several frontline medics questioned the wisdom of putting the medical records of the UK population on to one central computer.

Consultant Michael Foley said suggested that the huge sums of money invested in the database would be better spent improving patient care.

Passwords to existing patient records were sometimes shared and computer screens left on in open view, he said.

“Insufficient attention is paid to confidentiality and security, even though staff can be disciplined for breaching rules on electronic data protection,” he said.

“When the medical history of the whole population becomes available on a central computer the potential for loss of confidentiality is obvious.”

Mr Foley, a consultant anaesthetist at the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough, said: “Workers in hospitals or general practice surgeries might seek inappropriate access to medical records because of curiosity or malice, commercial gain, or simple error.

“If screens are left on in open areas or passwords compromised, tracing of access for disciplinary purposes would be difficult. If challenged after a breach of security one could argue that data were requested accidentally. I occasionally enter a wrong number into the radiology viewing system and see unwanted images. Such errors are inevitable.”

The concerns will give succour to critics of the Government’s National Identity Register, which was recently lambasted in internal emails by senior Home Office officials. An Home Office insider who wished not to be named said “these are exactly the same concerns which we will be unable to address with the new Identity Card system, and unfortunately will make implementation of the system more difficult in the face of increased public concerns about the ability of Government databases to securely store private information about individuals”. A spokesman from No2ID added that “this is only the tip of the iceberg the NIR will not only store health records but provide a complete audit of an individual’s life, it is inconceivable that the Government still wishes to pursue this path in light of all the recent developments”.

Naturally the guardian just reprinted a Press Association article and I had to put the last paragraph in to show the sort of simple additions that need to be done to articles in order to inform people, rather than relate isolated facts

I imagine the printed version will include such detail!!!

–

Part two (Salami fascism):

From the guardian’s film section;

Among those interviewed for Sabina Guzzanti’s “satirical documentary” Viva Zapatero! is Furio Colombo, a former editor of the Italian leftwing daily L’Unita. He recalls how his family kept bound editions of the newspaper from previous years. As a boy, he says, he used to leaf through the volumes from the years that saw the rise of fascism. “I remember I used to wonder why people didn’t see,” he tells Guzzanti, “because at first there were so many who later became anti-fascists, and even joined the Resistance, who took part or said weak-kneed things like ‘Despite everything, Italy’s still a democracy.'”

But, looking through the yellowing pages, he gradually realised how Mussolini had established his dictatorship almost by stealth. “The second volume was more fascist than the first, the third was more fascist than the second, and the 10th was infinitely more fascist than at the beginning, so that by the end of a year of bound volumes, there was fascism.”

Police confiscated a Klingon Bat’leth in a raid on a house in Gloucestershire. It was subsequently used by them to promote the nationwide knife amnesty that was taking place in the UK last month.

Is it REALLY possible that not a single police officer in Gloucestershire has never seen Star Trek TNG?

Is it REALLY possible that not a single journalist that was spreading this story has never seen Star Trek TNG, and did not point out to the police that …. using a Bat’leth to promote a knife amnesty is … very funny.

This piece comes from HELLO magazine.

Please do not ask me what I was doing reading it.

Perhaps this is why, according to British Telecom, 48% of all landline users, including non-BT customers, are ex-directory. And the figure has been climbing steadily. Add to that Britain’s legion of mobile phone users, virtually all of whom are not listed on any directory, and you have a nation that wants to be left alone. […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5168570.stm

Now. The obvious next question is this; do all these people who jump at the chance of being ex-directory also understand what it means to be forced to carry the new ID card and register for the evil NIR?

SURELY if they were iinformed of what it means, they would be against it en-masse.

The article also has this:

HOW TO VANISH
Be ex-directory
Opt out of edited electoral roll
Tick boxes to stop third parties getting info
Join Telephone Preference Service

How will you be able to ‘vanish’ if you are on the NIR? Did the idiot Finlo Rohrer even THINK about this as he was writing this piece? It beggars belief that with the recent leaked emails that the light bulb didnt go off in his head…. Heh…now its ME being dumb!

Clearly all the people who are ex-directory if given the choice would ‘opt out’of the NIR/ID shenanigans. This statistic is heartening. It means that people still value their privacy and are willing to protect it as long as it is easy for them to do so.

That means that we have to create a solution that makes it easy for people to opt out of the NIR should HMG try and roll it out. It also means that in the new system where we take control of our identity documents, we need not only to contact all of these people, but to make it easy for them to use it and thereby destroy the previous system of state controlled identity by default.

Beware of card tricks

The government claims that national identity cards will help to counter terrorism, illegal immigration and ID fraud. That’s rubbish, says Henry Porter, and in fact there is something much more sinister about them – they will fundamentally alter the relationship between citizen and state, and make slaves of us all

Tuesday July 11, 2006
The Guardian

The other day I went to see my publishers in central London and prepared for the usual performance at the entrance, which involves me writing my name, the name of my editor and the time in a book. On this occasion the man asked me to type the details into a keyboard then angled a camera on a stalk into my face. I typed away but held one hand in front of the lens before moving swiftly out of the camera’s field to make for the lift. “Hold on, sir,” shouted the security guard after me. “You can’t go in unless you’ve had your picture taken.”

“I can,” I said, “because you have no right to take my photograph without my consent. And you most certainly don’t have it.”

A week later I was confronted with the same piece of equipment at my gym in west London. Again I placed my hand over the camera lens and to the baffled receptionists quoted the Image Retention Act 2002. There was, of course, no Image Retention Act in 2002, or any other year. That time, they let me in. By my next visit they were waiting for me. The receptionist stood back out of range of my hand and snapped my picture before I had time to react.

To many, my behaviour would seem unreasonable. After all, my picture is taken hundreds – maybe thousands – of times every day in London. But that is not my objection. What bothers me is when someone puts my image, my name, the place and time together. That is information of a personal nature, and is an invasion of my privacy.

I have exactly the same response to the ID card and the much more sinister National Identity Register (NIR), which one day will track each one of us through almost every important transaction of our lives. Emails leaked to the Sunday Times at the weekend suggest that senior civil servants in charge of key aspects of the scheme, Peter Smith and David Foord, have grave doubts about the practicalities of introducing the card. This may be reassuring to some but the argument against this folly must take place on every level. I am instinctively against them, politically against the card and the NIR – and, if it doesn’t sound pretentious, philosophically against them too.

At a stretch, I would carry a voluntary little plastic ID card, because I have no objection to identifying myself when it is my choice. I don’t mind taking my passport along to the bank or showing my driving licence to collect a parcel from the post office – but I am preternaturally against the state forcing me to supply biometric measurements and 49 separate pieces of information about myself to a database which will be accessed by God knows who without my permission or knowledge. I am genetically incapable of submitting to such a process. I cannot do it. I will not do it, and I pray that when the public understands how this scheme will profoundly alter the relationship between the individual and the state thousands more will recoil and say the same. […]

First things first; well done Henry, you have your brain switched to ‘on’.

Now. What on earth would a gym need to take your photograph on entry for? If they issue you with a photo ID, you show it when you enter and thats it. They are doing this because they can. The correct response is not to do a ‘crazy dance’ and make up false laws etc etc. What you do is, you call the manager over there and then, and then say to her, “I will not allow you to photograph me as I enter the club. If you do not stop this, I will cancel my membership right now, and write an article in The Guardian explaining why I have cancelled my membership. You are a private organization, and you have the right to do whatever you want inside your own club. I on the other hand, will not pay you to violate my privacy.”

That is how you lay your cards out. This is about money at the end of the day, and if you were to do as I said, not only would the practice be stopped at your gym, but everywhere that is doing this would be stopped.

Like I have said on BLOGDIAL again and again; do not do anything that does not directly contribute to giving you the result you desire. Crazy man act achieves nothing. Covering the camera at your publisher does nothing. You need to make sure that everyone knows what you think and why, and that you WILL NOT tolerate it, and will withdraw your money, and spread the message to everyone else using the same service should the business in question refuse to comply.

As I said, I am instinctively – genetically, as I put it – opposed to ID cards and the Identity Register. I am also politically opposed because as the government database grows, I believe there will be a commensurate lessening in the state’s respect for each one of us. We will be reduced to the great mass of classified specimens, pinned down and itemised like dead butterflies in a showcase. Because of the power it possesses over us, I believe the government will gradually become less accountable and less responsive to the needs and wishes of the people. Whereas once politicians were our servants, they will become our masters and we their slaves.

I have philosophical objections, too. In a free country I believe that every human being has the right to define him or herself independently and without reference to the government of the time. This, I believe, is particularly important in a multicultural society such as ours. The ID card and NIR require and will bring about a kind of psychological conformity, which is utterly at odds with a culture that has thrived on individualism, defiance and the freedom to go your own way.

And it will remove the right of those who for whatever reason wish to withdraw from the cares of the world and the influence of society, to resort to the consolations of solitude and privacy without inspection from a centralised authority. Privacy, anonymity and solitude are rights, and we are about to lose them for ever.

People say that everything about you is known already. Someone has calculated that each of us appears on up to 700 databases. But the real point is that everything that is known about you will become linked up on the NIR. The register will take on a life of its own, for once you set up a system like this it becomes ineluctably compelled to find out more and more about you. That will be its hardwired purpose.

Imagine handing over the keys to your home when you are out at work to allow some faceless bureaucrat to rifle through your desk and drawers, your photograph albums and children’s school reports, your bills and love letters. That is the kind of access they are going to have, and it is going to grow as time goes by and we become accustomed to this unseen presence in our lives.

Well, it’s not for me. I cannot do it. I will not do it, and I hope you won’t either. […]

The Guardian

I am sad to say that alot of what is happening today, the bad stuff, has everything to do with genetics…genetic deficiency. But I digress.

What we (you, I and everyone else) needs to do is to now execute a plan to remove control over our identity documents from administration by the state. The noble No2ID, in the wake of the leaked memos are now calling for everyone to write letters to their MPs and the newspapers. This is totally pointless. The MPs are the ones that have created this insanity. The newspapers are staffed almost without exception by idiots from top to bottom. We need to take an action that will give us what we want, and remove from the government what they should not have; the ability to administer identity.

If we do not do this, and take the postmen, the Eloi, the morons the uneducated along with us, nothing is going to change, and, as you remark in your article, the next generation will suffer the consequences. Indeed, if the ID card scheme is shelved for now and done in 2026 as some have predicted, that is precisely what will happen. We now have a golden opportunity to re-engineer our releationship with government. Identity is a key element of how man relates to government; if we take permanent control of our identities and remove that control from the state, we immediately take a step towards making government into a service that serves the constituent.

Every totalitarian state uses ID cards to control populations in a fine grained way. We need to prevent this from happening in the UK, and we can do it, with a scheme that is British in nature, highly efficient, very private and ‘secure’ iin that the documents are unforgable.

What’s that you say? “How can it be done?”

The document is coming.

The US Census shows that there are about 300 million people living in the USA.

Suppose that there are 1,000 terrorists there as well, which is probably a high estimate. The base-rate would be 1 terrorist per 300,000 people. In percentages, that is .00033%, which is way less than 1%. Suppose that NSA surveillance has an accuracy rate of .40, which means that 40% of real terrorists in the USA will be identified by NSA’s monitoring of everyone’s email and phone calls. This is probably a high estimate, considering that terrorists are doing their best to avoid detection. There is no evidence thus far that NSA has been so successful at finding terrorists. And suppose NSA’s misidentification rate is .0001, which means that .01% of innocent people will be misidentified as terrorists, at least until they are investigated, detained and interrogated. Note that .01% of the US population is 30,000 people. With these suppositions, then the probability that people are terrorists given that NSA’s system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.0132, which is near zero, very far from one. Ergo, NSA’s surveillance system is useless for finding terrorists.

Suppose that NSA’s system is more accurate than .40, let’s say, .70, which means that 70% of terrorists in the USA will be found by mass monitoring of phone calls and email messages. Then, by Bayes’ Theorem, the probability that a person is a terrorist if targeted by NSA is still only p=0.0228, which is near zero, far from one, and useless.

Suppose that NSA’s system is really, really, really good, really, really good, with an accuracy rate of .90, and a misidentification rate of .00001, which means that only 3,000 innocent people are misidentified as terrorists. With these suppositions, then the probability that people are terrorists given that NSA’s system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.2308, which is far from one and well below flipping a coin. NSA’s domestic monitoring of everyone’s email and phone calls is useless for finding terrorists.

NSA knows this. Bayes’ Theorem is elementary common knowledge. So, why does NSA spy on Americans knowing it’s not possible to find terrorists that way? Mass surveillance of the entire population is logically sensible only if there is a higher base-rate. Higher base-rates arise from two lines of thought, neither of them very nice:

1. McCarthy-type national paranoia;
2. political espionage.

The whole NSA domestic spying program will seem to work well, will seem logical and possible, if you are paranoid. Instead of presuming there are 1,000 terrorists in the USA, presume there are 1 million terrorists. Americans have gone paranoid before, for example, during the McCarthyism era of the 1950s. Imagining a million terrorists in America puts the base-rate at .00333, and now the probability that a person is a terrorist given that NSA’s system identifies them is p=.99, which is near certainty. But only if you are paranoid. If NSA’s surveillance requires a presumption of a million terrorists, and if in fact there are only 100 or only 10, then a lot of innocent people are going to be misidentified and confidently mislabeled as terrorists. […]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/rudmin1.html 

“Slowly developing cognitive deficits as demonstrated so clearly by the president can represent only one diagnosis, and that is… presinle dementia” Dr. Joseph M. Price, The Atlantic, October 2000

You Tube

Gentle reader, did you know that in April President Bush went to Stanford University to speak to the Hoover Institution fellows at the invitation of former Secretary of State George Shultz but was not allowed on campus? The Stanford students got wind of it and blocked Bush’s access to the campus. The Hoover fellows had to go to Shultz’s home to hear Bush’s pitch for war and more war.

A person might think that it would be national news that Stanford University students would not allow the President of the US on campus. It happened to be a day that hundreds of prospective freshmen were on campus with their parents, many of whom joined the demonstration against Bush. I did not hear or read a word about it.

Did you? I learned of it from faculty friends in June when I attended Stanford’s graduation to witness a relative receive her degree. The June 16 edition of The Stanford Daily reprints its April 24 report of the episode. […]

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07082006.html

This is what I call news…news that is not reported.

Incredible. SHAME on all the us ‘journalists’.

MI5 has secret dossiers on one in 160 adults

The Government was accused last night of hoarding information about people who pose no danger to this country, after it emerged that MI5 holds secret files on 272,000 individuals – a staggering one in 160 adults.

MPs and civil-rights campaigners said resources should be concentrated on combating genuine threats – such as Islamic terrorism – rather than storing personal and political data about innocent citizens.

Figures released by the Home Office last week reveal that another 53,000 files are held about organisations, but 110,000 files have been destroyed since Labour came to power in 1997.

The information was obtained by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who believes he was the target of MI5 surveillance in the Eighties because of his activities as an environmental protester.

Five years ago he won a High Court ruling giving him access to his file, which ended the security services’ blanket exemption from the Data Protection Act.

Last night, Mr Baker said: ‘I don’t believe there are 272,000 people in this country who are subversive or potentially subversive. It suggests to me that there are files being held for not very good reasons.

‘We want the security services to be effective. We don’t want them going down blind alleys and wasting their resources on people who are no threat to the country.’

Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty, said: ‘We need to be sure that MI5 officers are not keeping files just for the sake of it.

‘Resources should be concentrated on gathering information on those who pose a real threat to this country.’

But intelligence expert Rupert Allason believes information should never be thrown away.

He said: ‘A security agency is only as good as its files and it should never give up a personal file – even when somebody dies.

‘It is enormously important for agents running a current operation to be able to look back 40 or 50 years and see links and connections.’

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We are not prepared to comment any further than the information given in the answers to the parliamentary questions.’ […]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Astonishing isnt it? Keystone Kops in full effect, and it betrays the true nature and agenda of this form of government; they want to create files on everyone just because they can.

Rupert Allason is wrong about keeping files. What needs to be done is to remember the last 40 or 50 years of foreign policy, and how it has gone disasterously wrong. Had this been done, no government would have gone into Iraq, because it would have been abundantly clear from the historical record that these actions always end in death and disaster.

MPs and civil-rights campaigners said resources should be concentrated on combating genuine threats – such as Islamic terrorism – rather than storing personal and political data about innocent citizens.

Would those bee the same nincompoop MPs that unanimously voted to go into Iraq? Those MPs are the genuine threat to the British population, those idiots who voted again and again for every illiberal, morally repugnant piece of legislation over the last five years because they are ignorant, mindless drunkards, dullards and jackasses.

And as for those well intentioned ‘civil liberties campaigners’ lets call a spade a spade; they are nothing more than impotent professional cry babies who get rolled out to present a case (poorly) whenever a new measure is about to be introduced, who lack the creativity to make anything real happen, lack the power to stop a single piece of legislation and under whose watch, London has become a prison of CCVT cameras, all without a single call to disobedience or action, where such action would be rallied around and followed enthusiastically by the fed up bee hive residents of this overheated and opressed city.

David Leppard

TONY BLAIR’S flagship identity cards scheme is set to fail and may not be introduced for a generation, according to leaked Whitehall e-mails from the senior officials responsible for the multi-billion-pound project.

The problems are so serious that ministers have been forced to draw up plans for a scaled-down “face-saving” version to meet their pledge of phasing in the cards from 2008.

However, civil servants say there is no evidence that even this compromise is “remotely feasible” and accuse ministers of “ignoring reality” by pressing ahead.

One official warns of a “botched operation” that could put back the introduction of ID cards for a generation. He added: “I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail.” Another admits he is planning Home Office strategy around the possibility that the scheme could be “canned completely”.

In one e-mail the prime minister is personally blamed for the fiasco with his proposal for a scaled-down or “early variant” version. “It was a Mr Blair apparently who wanted the ‘early variant’ card. Not my idea,” writes a top Home Office civil servant.

The e-mails expose another crisis for John Reid, the home secretary, who has already labelled his department as “not fit for purpose” following the recent foreign prisoners scandal.

The correspondence has been leaked by a senior official close to the Treasury. He acknowledges that the documents will infuriate ministers because they contradict the government’s public statements on ID cards.

Blair has repeatedly trumpeted the scheme as a centrepiece of the government’s efforts to combat terrorism, illegal immigration and crime. Ministers have rounded on critics who say the government has underestimated the cost and complexity of the technology.

Last year ministers rubbished claims by the London School of Economics that the scheme was too unwieldy and would cost as much as £19 billion, compared with the government’s estimate of £6 billion.

The government proposes that all Britain’s 50m adults will eventually carry the cards, which will include biometric data such as digitally encoded fingerprints or iris scans that could be checked against a huge database. The cards are to be introduced voluntarily from 2008 but, if re-elected, Labour proposes to make them compulsory for everyone over 16.

The e-mail correspondence last month was between Peter Smith, acting commercial director at the Identity and Passport Service, the Home Office agency set up to bring in the cards, and David Foord, the ID card project director at the Office of Government Commerce, which is responsible for vetting the project to ensure that the Treasury gets value for taxpayers’ money.

They reveal that the government is “rethinking” the entire scheme with an alternative “face-saving” compromise, which Smith blames on Blair. This “early variant” plan appears to involve collecting and storing biometric data on a temporary ID register but makes no mention of actually using it on cards.

However, officials doubt that this will work. Foord writes: “Just because ministers say do something does not mean we ignore reality — which is what seems to have happened on ID cards until [the contracts were due] to be issued and then reality could not be ignored any longer.”

He adds: “Even if everything went perfectly (which it will not) it is very debatable (given performance of government IT projects) whether whatever [the register] turns out to be (and that is a worry in itself) can be procured, delivered, tested and rolled out in just over two years and whether the resources exist within government and industry to run two overlapping procurements.

“What benchmark in the Home Office do we have that suggests that this is even remotely feasible? I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail.”

He reveals that the contracts for the ID card scheme are under threat because of “the amount of rethinking going on about identity management”. He also says they are “[un]affordable”; “lack clear benefits from which to demonstrate a return on investment”; and suffer from a “very serious shortage of appropriately qualified staff”.

Foord says: “I do not have a problem with ministers wanting a face-saving solution but we need to be clear with . . . senior officials, special advisers and ministers just what this implies.” He then warns of a “botched introduction” of the scheme, adding: “If it is subject to a media feeding frenzy, which it might well be close to a general election, [it] could put back the introduction of ID cards for a generation and won’t do much for IPS credibility nor for the government’s election chances.”

Acknowledging these concerns, Smith says his IPS agency is planning around the possibility that the entire protect will fail. In a June 8 e-mail he writes: “We are designing the strategy so that [other contracts such as a contact centre for passport queries] are all sensible and viable contracts in their own right EVEN IF the ID card gets canned completely.”

In public, ministers have so far given no hint of any private fears about the viability of the scheme. But senior officials admit privately that the Home Office has abandoned its timetable for introducing cards.

Foord writes: “This has all the inauspicious signs of a project continuing to be driven by an arbitrary end date rather than reality. The early variant idea introduces huge risk on many levels.”

The problems in designing a workable system have meant a delay until March 2007 in putting out contracts to tender to private companies to build and manage the scheme. They had been due this summer.

Another official involved in the project said: “Nobody expects this programme to work. It is basically on hold while ministers rethink their options. It’s impossible to imagine the full scheme being brought in before 2026.”

The disclosures will be seized on by critics who say it is too expensive, unworkable and a breach of privacy. The Tories plan to scrap the cards and use the money to build prisons.

Simon Davies, a member of the LSE team that said costs could rise to £19 billion, said the rethink was “a vindication of all the concerns we have expressed about the costs and viability” of the scheme.

Last night the Home Office said it remained committed to an ID card scheme but had always maintained its introduction would be an “incremental” process. The cards are expected to cost about £93, which each citizen must pay when getting a new passport from 2010. […]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2262437_2,00.html

My emphasis.

Note that there are no references to how the public will totally reject ID cards; their only concerns are their own complete incompetence, lact of trained staff and the unworkability of the project.

Note how they say that they will not be able to introduce the cards for a generation. This means that the steady Eloiification of the population will intersect with a point in the future where computers are absolutely ubiqutous and such a roll out will be not only possible, but easy. Computer literacy in that generation will be far more widespread, so there will be many people who are able to staff the project at all levels.

Now is the time for alternatives to document security to be pushed hard to the public; ones that do not rely on a central database, ones that are not contingent upon expensive and unreliable commercial and bespoke software from third parties. Hmmm.

In a perfect world, a pronouncement like this, one admitting the powerlessness of government would be the singnal to take down the surveillance network as it stands right now. All Congestion Charge cameras to be destroyed, all CCTV cameras pointing into public spaces knocked out. It is clear that these people can only do what they are doing because everyone complacently lets them. Any mass action is irresistable, wether it is the removal of all CCTV/CC cameras or the refusal to pay any tax, or register in an ID card scheme. It doesnt matter what you are talking about specifically, the numbers are the only thing that matters, and we have them and will always have them.

Sadly, there are still some people who do not understand this. I posted a package to someone the other day. The counter staffer asked me for the post code. I gave it to him. He then read out the street from his UNISYS terminal. He asked me for the street number. I gave it to him. He then read out the name of the business, and then printed out the postage sticker. “Thats cool” I said. He replied, “Yes, Big Brother is everywhere, you can’t escape it!”. Sensing an opportunity to spread the anti-ID message, I fired off, “This stuff is not the problem, ID cards are the REAL problem, and you must make sure that you don’t register for one. If everyone refuses, they can’t possibly bring them in.”. Then it started…

“Yeah, but they will bring them in anyway”
“No they won’t; it will be like the poll tax. Everyone refused to pay it and it died”
“Yeah, but they still brought it in”
“No, they did not, we pay rates today not a poll tax”
“But they still brought it in”
“The poll tax is completely different from rates; the poll tax was totally defeated. What you pay today is based on the value of your property and it has nothing to do with how many people live in your house. That is what the poll tax was. ID cards CAN be defeated, just like the poll tax was.”
“Yeah but it makes no difference to me because I’m still paying a fortune”
“If you dont want ID cards, you dont have to have them, thats the point”
“Yeah but they will still briing them in.”

Ooooo kkkkkkkkkk……..

And this, I fear, is the problem. This genial idiot is the sort of person who will be the interface between you and the NIR. They will accept anything that is put in front of them; they have no idea of literally any concept of morality or the reality of ‘the other’. They are the people who when told that pressing a button someone will recieve an electric shock, press the button without any hesitation. They are without imagination, human drones, Eloi, animals, sub human, and the worst thing about them is that they have the vote, which means that they have control by proxy over how the world evolves. This is unnaceptable to anyone with even half a brain cell.

This is undoubtedly what the NWO/PNAC brigades believe; you can cut with a knife the swelling contempt for these types they must feel when they meet the hoards of Eloi that infest the world. From their perspective these people don’t deserve rights, freedom or anything that the previous generations of real people were given, or took for themselvs. This is the licence they need to install dictatorship over the whole world; the ingnorant blathering of postmen who accept dictatorship and tyrrany as inevitable, and who will obey any order given to them without question.

Ask them to stay at work one second after 5:30 however, and you will have a revolt on your hands.

The Home Secretary John Reid has ruled that Gary McKinnon can be extradited to the USA.
This decision comes despite the large number of people who have personally written to the Home Secretary on behalf of Gary. The next stage in the legal process is an Appeal to the High Court.

Oh and Lucile gave one of the most discerning comment