BLOGDIAL : We are the best

'Stealing songs is wrong' lessons head for UK schools

Published Thursday 5th August 2004 16:30 GMT

At the beginning of last month the British Government launched a "Music Manifesto" to promote music in schools. But already this typically Blairite bundle of good intentions is being hijacked (with not a little cooperation from the minders in Whitehall) in order to inflict copyright lessons on schoolchildren, from pre-school onwards.

The launch itself produced a small fissure in the musical community, with composer Julian Lloyd Webber amongst others boycotting it on the basis that the manifesto didn't actually come in with any funding for activities and instruments. And at the launch EMI commented: "We would like to see schools teaching copyright awareness so that pupils understand its importance not only to those contemplating music as a career, but to society generally" (both these reported here).

EMI, one of the manifesto's founding signatories, is a singularly appropriate sponsor of this particular spin on music for kids - not a lot of pigopolists have classic songs specifically about them. But other grinding axes can be heard.

A half-day seminar on copyright education took place two weeks ago, and there the Times Educational Supplement reports that "Estelle Morris, the arts minister [she gave the keynote], education and music industry professionals expressed concern that children were increasingly downloading illegally copied material from the Internet." And according to The Guardian EMI is planning a conference for teachers, and "working on lesson plans to explain copyright properly." [...]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/05/uk_school_copyright_lessons/

Passport ID Technology Has High Error Rate

By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 6, 2004; Page A01

The State Department is moving ahead with a plan to implant electronic identification chips in U.S. passports that will allow computer matching of facial characteristics, despite warnings that the technology is prone to a high rate of error.

Federal researchers, academics, industry experts and some privacy advocates say the government should instead use more-reliable fingerprints to help thwart potential terrorists.

The enhanced U.S. passports, scheduled to be issued next spring for people obtaining new or renewed passports, will be the first to include what is known as biometric information. Such data, which can be a fingerprint, a picture of parts of eyes or of facial characteristics, is used to verify identity and help prevent forgery.

Under State Department specifications finalized this month for companies to bid on the new system, a chip woven into the cover of the passport would contain a digital photograph of the traveler's face. That photo could then be compared with an image of the traveler taken at the passport control station, and also matched against photos of people on government watch lists.

The department chose face recognition to be consistent with standards being adopted by other nations, officials said. Those who drafted the standards reasoned that travelers are accustomed to submitting photographs and would find giving fingerprints to be intrusive.

But federal researchers who have tested face-recognition technology say its error rate is unacceptably high -- up to 50 percent if photographs are taken without proper lighting. They say the error rate is far lower for fingerprints, which could be added to the chip without violating the international standard.

The new system would differ from U.S. requirements for many foreign travelers, who are fingerprinted when they apply for visas to visit the United States. The visitors then have their fingers scanned when they enter the country to compare against the data on the visa.

Similar requirements are to be imposed for travelers from countries whose citizens do not need visas to come to the United States, who will be fingerprinted when they arrive in the country.

"I don't think there's a debate," said Charles L. Wilson, who supervises biometric testing at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an arm of the Commerce Department. "Fingerprints are much better."

The concerns come at a time of heightened terrorism alerts and urgent calls for changes in national security from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Among its many recommendations were quick adoption of biometric passports and more secure drivers' licenses, though the commission did not specify which type of data should be used.

Last weekend, government sources told The Washington Post that a South African woman was under investigation for possible terrorist connections after she apparently walked or swam across the Mexico-U.S. border last month. The South African passport she presented to authorities at McAllen-Miller International Airport in Texas appeared to have been altered, the sources said, leading to her detention.

The State Department settled on face recognition as the biometric to comply with specifications set by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a Montreal-based standards agency affiliated with the United Nations.

In seeking to have countries use one common biometric to aid anti-terrorism efforts, the international group designated face recognition two years ago in part because it would be easiest for most countries to implement and it was deemed the least likely to raise privacy concerns.

"Facial photographs do not disclose information that the person does not routinely disclose to the general public," the group said in a final technical report issued in May. "The photograph . . . is already socially and culturally accepted internationally." [...]

Murphy declined to comment on the State Department's decision not to include fingerprint data in the passports.

Some said the government feared a potential backlash.

"The simple answer is that they don't want to put in a fingerprint biometric because they don't want to deal with the political recriminations" said Robert D. Atkinson, a member of a national security task force at the nonprofit Markle Foundation, which studies digital issues. Atkinson also heads the Progressive Policy Institute, a part of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Privacy advocates argue that taking fingerprints is no more invasive than face recognition, and certainly not more than other Bush administration initiatives launched since Sept. 11, 2001, that have sought to link databases of buying habits, bank accounts and other personal information to try to predict terrorist activity.

The fingerprint data could be placed on the passport chip but not saved in a database, they said, removing the concern over a central government repository. The data on the chip is simply matched against a finger scan when the traveler arrives at the passport control station.

"My passport belongs to me," said Ian "Gus" Hosein, a senior fellow at Privacy International, a Britain-based advocacy group. "They should not be using this as a back door to international databases." [...]

Washington Post

Astonishing; which "privacy advocates" in particular are saying that fingerprinting is no more invasive than photographs?

Firstly, the way fingerprints are made is more invasive, because it involved physically touching a scanner. By that definition alone, it is more invasive. There. I said it twice.

And look at this line:

The fingerprint data could be placed on the passport chip but not saved in a database

So, they are going to set up systems to capture this accurate data, and not store it? When has a government EVER voluntarily done this? ISLAND uses a variant of this system but it is designed to protect peoples rights, whereas government documents exist to curtail and or control your rights. There is no way, that this initiative will happen in this way at the initiation of a government department. That is a safe bet, and if I were to make this bet, it would be one that I would be happy to loose.

Photographs are acceptable, Fingerprints are not. Photographs are OK because they are there to be read by a HUMAN not a MACHINE. Quickly verifying a fingerprint can only be done by a computer, and humans should not submit themselvs to machines to prove their identity. As I said before, the only thing that needs to be verified is wether the passport has been tampered with or not. You do not need fingerprints to do this, nor do you need centralized databases or unreliable facial recognition software. Cryptographically signed photographs are 100% reliable as a means to authenticate the origin of a signature / signer. This is all that a passport needs.

This strange article goes on to repeat the myth that new measures are needed to help prevent "terrorism". To repeat for the benefit of people who have trouble with this, no biometric, no identity measure of any kind will prevent another attack. People with legitimate access and idnetity papers will commit new atrocities. Making everyone submit to this virtual gaol of unsmiling faces is not going to prevent or even delay the inevitable. Only withdrawing from the pointless expansionist, adventurist and insane policy of meddling in other countries affairs will put an end to this "threat".

As for the "my passport belongs to me" line by Gus Hosein, dream on Gus. American passports state explicitly that they are the property of the american government:

In most European countries, the passport belongs to the citizen, who has a right to travel to any country that will accept him or her. The only exception is that passports may have to be temporarily surrendered by people on bail and awaiting trial if there is a risk that they might abscond.

The situation is different in some countries such as the United States (where only about a quarter of citizens have a passport anyway) which hold that the passport is state property which may be withdrawn at any time. A United States passport reads "U.S. Government Property: This passport is the property of the United States Government. Upon demand made by an authorized representative of the United States Government, it must be surrendered." Other countries with such policies include Thailand and Malaysia. Prominent people with left-wing views, such as Paul Robeson, had once been prevented from traveling abroad by this method by the US government. However, the US Supreme Court held in the 1958 Kent v. Dulles case that the right to travel was an inherent right which could not be denied to American citizens.
From Here

"Most European countries" does not include the UK, where the passports clearly state that, "This passport remains the property of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and may be withdrawn at any time".

So, it seems that we have to create a new, independent passport issuing authority, that issues tamper evident documents that once purchased, belong absolutely to the person to whom the document was issued. We then have to get all countries that are not involved witht this insane "war on $you_name_it" to accept them as proof of identity, so that we can travel freely on these documents.

The nationality aspect of passports is used to control economic migration; this is why you dont need a visa to travel inside "safe" countries if you have a passport from the right country. You are assumed to be rich enought to enter just by having the correct paperwork. Obviously we have to deal with this problem; Visa requirements for these new passports is the obvious first way to address it, but what is more interesting about this idea is the potential for reputation based documentation to replace national reputations as a way to control the huge flow of people all over the world.

If you buy one of these ISLAND passports, and you begin travelling on it, obeying your restrictions and building up a record of good travel behaviour, this can all be stored on the document so that when you want to travel, your reputation as being a good risk can speed your visa applications or even gain you an instant waiver status. Your passport would have the same reputation as, say, a French passport; you dont need a visa to go to most places on it, simply becasue its French, or in the ISLAND case, because your reputation is so good.

Whatever the final shape of such a class of documents takes, it is clear that we can no longer have documents issued to us by governments, and rely on these as our sole means of identification for travel. Before anyone mentions it, a driving licence should be administered by government, but they should not be dual use documents; they should exist only to prove that you have the training to be able to drive, and nothing more. The right to travel however, has nothing to do with training. You have the right to travel, or you are a prisoner. It is as simple as that. If any government can restrict your movements by withdrawing a document, you are a prisoner of that government. Period. By removing state issued passports from the international travel equation, people become more free instantly.

Some thoughts:

These new passports would need to be goverened by treaties.
These treaties would only come about as a consequence of a total a collapse of the present government controlled passport systems in each country, after a mass refusal to travel or submit to the new passport regulations.
This independent body that issues documents; it should not be a single body at all, but should be a technological framework that certified professional people can use to issue documents. This would mean doctors, solicitors and other trustworthy people.
These new passports would not give you the right to travel; you already have that at birth. They would instead, be a key to entering another jurisdiction, so that you satisfied the requirements of that jurisdiction. Obviously, coutries wanting to take advantage of the skills and tourism trade from other countries would need to think carefully about how they are going to address these new documents.

Some stuff to read:

He burned his passport!

Way, Way ahead of the game are World Service:

The World Passport represents the inalienable human right of freedom of travel on planet Earth. Therefore it is premised on the fundamental oneness or unity of the human community.

In modern times, the passport has become a symbol of national sovereignty and control by each nation-state. That control works both for citizens within a nation and all others outside. All nations thus collude in the system of control of travel rather than its freedom. If freedom of travel is one of the essential marks of the liberated human being, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, then the very acceptance of a national passport is the mark of the slave, serf or subject. The World Passport is therefore a meaningful symbol and sometimes powerful tool for the implementation of the fundamental human right of freedom of travel. By its very existence it challenges the exclusive assumption of sovereignty of the nation-state system. It is designed however to conform to nation-state requirements for travel documents. It does not, however, indicate the nationality of its bearer, only his/her birthplace. It is therefore a neutral, apolitical document of identity and potential travel document.

A passport gains credibility only by its acceptance by authorities other than the issuing agent. The World Passport in this respect has a track record of over 40 years acceptance since it was first issued. Today over 150 countries have visaed it on a case-by-case basis. In short, the World Passport represents the one world we all live in and on. No one has the right to tell you you can't move freely on your natural birthplace! So don't leave home without one!

[...]

LEGAL VALIDITY AND USAGE OF WSA DOCUMENTS:
The de jure (official) and de facto (case-by-case) acceptance of the WSA passport is the world customary law basis for the passport. The customary law validity derives from the acceptance or recognition of the passport by governmental entities.

Yet even if no nation-state had ever recognized the validity of the passport, the WSA passport still would be valid based on Article 13, Sections (1) and (2), of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United Nations adopted and proclaimed on December 10, 1948. Article 13(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state," and Article 13(2) states: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including [one's] own, and to return to [one's] country." The passport also derives its world human rights law basis from documents that further support the right to freedom of travel such as the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as other regional and multilateral agreements.

Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world have used their WSA passport to claim their right to travel and for identification. Whether or not a consular official at an embassy recognizes your WSA passport does not determine the validity of the document. The fact that the WSA passport has been accepted de jure (officially) by 6 countries (Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Mauritania, Tanzania, Togo, and Zambia) and has been accepted on a de facto (case-by- case) basis by more than 150 countries establishes the validity of the World Service Authority passport.

It must be understood that, simply because a country has granted de facto recognition in the past, there is no guarantee that you will get a visa from said country. The particular national official (whose nation-state one is trying to enter) often has sole discretion regarding whether or not a visa is granted. Therefore, because national immigration and border controls are arbitrary and discriminatory and, thereby, in violation of the UDHR, you must assertively demand that governments recognize your rights.

The WSA passport differs from national passports because the WSA passport identifies the bearer as a human being rather than as a national subject. Despite the fact that all Member-States of the United Nations are obligated to uphold and respect human rights (Articles 55 & 56, UN Charter), all violate them in practice by virtue of their national exclusivity. Therefore, although everyone has the right to travel anywhere in the world, there is no guarantee that the nation-states will uphold this right. Thus, the WSA passport is a tool to help facilitate the realization of human rights -- specifically, the right to travel. The WSA focuses on the right to travel because it is often the basis for the attainment of other rights, such as freedom from torture, persecution, arbitrary imprisonment, and discrimination, as well as the right to due process. It is our advice to all WSA passport holders that, instead of first trying to get visas from difficult-to-enter countries such as the United States, you first try to obtain a visa from a country that has granted de jure (official) acceptance: Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Mauritania, Tanzania, Togo or Zambia. Obtaining a visa does not obligate you to visit that country. However, the fact that you have obtained visas from any country gives immediate credibility to the passport in the eyes of officials from other more difficult-to-enter countries.