National Identity Cards - C/D?

Plus, I don't believe them when they say what will "not be in the database" because unless that database is public (which would be even scarier) then they can have whatever they like in it.

And I don't believe it will do a bloody thing about identity theft, either...

Blunkett's comparison of his fight for ID cards with Castle's for union law reform is ridiculous. If he really thinks that the introduction of ID cards will ward off an otherwise inevitable national crisis he's been reading the Daily Express for too long.

Also, it will cost a bomb.

It's not a case of "I've never done anything wrong so I have nothing to fear" because what if they change the rules about what is considered wrong? What if NOT carrying a national ID card becomes a crime?

Oh, it almost certainly will.

xpost - Kate you have def joined the mindmeld!

...

Ohmigod, you're right, I *AM* thinking about naked Jeff Goldblum! How did you know?

i was one of the 'lucky few' who got this weird voicemail spam advertising the dvd release of 'minority report': the phone rang as it wd for a voicemail, and when i picked it up i got this weird heavy breathing shit, then some assorted noises and the ad. it did actually freak me out, and make me want to cut rupe murdoch and tom cruise into iddle bitty pieces. intrusive twats.

(I wonder if the government can somehow use our mindmeld against us... imagine if they could tap in!)

"I see they're bringing in identity cards. What's the fuss? I used to have one when I lived in South Africa for years."

It's not the card itself, its the information linked to it that bothers me. If it was like the ID cards of any other european nation, where the cards simply identify you as a resident of whichever country, with more or less information on them depending on the country, then they wouldn't be so bad but the fact that given the right computer a card could access everything from tax records to medical records, to whatever, now that is somewhat scary.

Grrr, use other terms please.

David Blunkett, British Authoritarian.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1083046,00.html

The whole turning up at the police station with your id within 7 days is just ridiculous. All the contientous citizens will pootle along with id cards, and whoever doesn't have one just won't bother turning up! What are they going to do then?!

The whole thing is a shambles because it's rushed and hasn't been thought through properly. Unless you know exactly how the system is going to be used at the very start it's a waste of time doing anything, as they'll get so far down the line before realising that the system they've got in place won't do what they finally decide they want it to do. There've been so many projects in the past that have ben abandoned, or don't work as well as they should.

a bit of a contradiction there, i shd think.

I've never met a refugee yet that wasn't facing an insurmountable hardship at home, either politically or economically. People with multiple science/maths qualifications arrive here and are willing to clean toilets for cash in hand so they are not reliant on benefits - it is the employers that take them on in this way who are the real villains here, because they're getting a subsidy in terms of not paying tax on behalf of the worker and paying him/her under minimum wage. As my pal Hari said in the papers this week when refusing some literary prize money given by the Mail, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are taking the old Tory exhortation to 'get on your bike' at face value and are being kicked for it.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2002/03/alanmoulder/images/ninband.jpg

wd that be joh4nn h4r1? who supported the war that 'made iraq safe' so that iraqi asylum seekers are now being flown back? and who willingly worked for jeffrey archer?

Will this be the end of ID cards?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7103566.stm

Political rumour had it that the idea was going to be scrapped anyway and perhaps Darling would be the sacrifice. But it looks like he may be gone before he gets a chance to be pushed, if you follow my odd reasoning.

No, because they'll pretend that front-end biometric security will somehow magically make the back-end more secure as well. Like as if everybody here using great passwords would stop me getting the ILX office junior to send the precious ILX database on CD by fucking TNT.

If a disc is password protected (as these were) how easy is it to break that password?

It seems to me from a brief reading of the news that there were procedures in place to stop this kind of thing happening and some idiot broke those procedures. If this is the case how can people like the Chairman of Revenue and Customs and even Darling himself be held accountable?

Did Brown rape a black cat about two months ago? He just can't catch a break these days.

Indeed, Cameron must be thinking "it's too easy - all I got to do is pay some low level revenue guy to lose a couple of discs and I'm up four points...".

If a disc is password protected (as these were) how easy is it to break that password?
given that these chumps' password is highly likely to be 'passw0rd', it's very likely I would have thought.

If this is the case how can people like the Chairman of Revenue and Customs and even Darling himself be held accountable?
Either the procedures were shit, or they were only paid lip-service. That they could have been broken *at all* points to institutional failure. Also the chief's head has to roll, even if he didn't know what was being done in his name. Or it used to be like that, anyway, and 25 million names leaking means they can't just fire the junior.

He apologised for what he said was "an extremely serious failure" but insisted people were not at risk from ID fraud

How does he work that one out?

Let's say for instance I was the captain of a large passenger liner and my look-out was unable to see an iceberg because someone had lost the keys to the binocular cabinet would I, as captain, be responsible if we then hit that iceberg? I suppose if I might be if I hadn't put in place procedures to cope with a non-binocular finding situation.

That they could have been broken *at all* points to institutional failure

Why does it? Surely it's just one idiot not following the rules? There's no suggestion (is there?) that this is what they always did.

Also the chief's head has to roll, even if he didn't know what was being done in his name

But why?

Yes, you would. And if you somehow survived, you'd be hauled up in front of the Board of Trade to explain why idiot boy up the pole had no binocs.. Which is presumably why you'd resign first go down nobly clutching the wheel.

Surely it's just one idiot not following the rules?
For important stuff, the rules should be designed so that if one chump breaks them, somebody else catches them at it!

But why?
Because the buck stops somewhere, and it doesn't stop with the most-junior-possible scapegoat.

xpost
Good point, but then where does it stop? Surely if someone had to check everything that everyone did nothing would ever get done? I don't understand the world of work. Or anything.

But why?
Because the buck stops somewhere, and it doesn't stop with the most-junior-possible scapegoat.

True, but why does it have to go to the top?

Size of the fuck up rather than the size of the original error. Something this big that gets on the news requires more than a lowly civil servant getting his arse kicked.

xpost
Well, you only check the important stuff with that level of detail. Eg Banks rarely leave £25 million quid lying on the bus, because they have procedures in place that once a big chunk of cash is moving, it gets double-signed-out and is always guarded etc.

But, yes, even the best procedures ones fail: there was a case in the States this year where a set of live nuclear warheads were left unguarded in an unsecure area overnight, because the procedures broke down. And the shit for that one is also rolling way up the hill.

If your procedures were great but somehow failed by total mishap, then there's a shitstorm but you keep the job. If your Big Plan for Important Data was "look after this stuff, lad, eh?" you're out the door. It comes all the way up to you because you are The Boss, and supposed to be In Charge.

And there's the argument that the whole responsibility things works like this - big boss gets paid a lot, and takes plaudits, even when success is really do to with underlings. You can't claim that success are yours but failures someone else's. Of course, we could stop paying nonsense CEO and senior managers silly money based on this premise, but hey ho.

Also, if the buck stopped low down, then the people up top would be less likely to bring in procedures to minimise risk. And the public need to see that someone has acknowledged there was a mistake and fallen on their sword to restore trust; that might not make sense, per se, but if no-one resigned, then you would get contempt added to lack of trust, which is a bad position for any public service to be in.

lol labour

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Two-CD-Rs-Have-data-on-them-some-sort-of-database_W0QQitemZ290184203092QQihZ019QQcategoryZ88433QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

^^^

Well done that man

LA Times: 'oh those wacky UK people'

"The difference is, this is information you are legally compelled to give to the government," said Privacy International's Hosein. "You are not compelled to be a customer of T.J. Maxx."

Hey, it's T.K. Maxx over here.