UK ID Cards: The Catastrophe Waiting To Happen
Whatever the reasons for New Labour thinking that it would be a good idea to have a central government database containing all the information on everyone in the country and a compulsory identification card to go with it, the excuse is always that it will protect the citizen.
This excuse, of course, could also be more honestly described as a massive and deliberate lie.
The government has proved that both it and any department, agency or institution within New Britain’s leviathan establishment treats all data collected and stored regarding the people of the dis-United Kingdom with utter contempt. Most of it is also available to be sold to any commercial enterprise from this country or any other, which is prepared to grease the necessary palms.
Jackie Ashley writing in The Guardian highlights the fact that all or any of this data will leak and slop into the hands of criminals and terrorists as a matter of course and that we will all be placed under great danger because of this.
The government is making all of us less secure and more prone to attacks from identity-theft fraudsters, common or garden criminals or, yes, hardened terrorists and this is being forced upon a population which is very aware of the dangers and does not want the scheme under any guise.
Once the IT spivs have trousered the billions which this will cost and proved that they cannot manage to keep the data even slightly secure, they will be off and leave some incapable minister to bluff and bamboozle about how things are going to be mended, when he cannot even turn his own laptop on or send an email because he is too technically inept.
Jackie Ashley says:
We know that millions of sensitive details will be lost. We know that material of huge use to criminals will be sent in the post, stolen, mislaid, dropped in car parks, will fall off the back of lorries and will be sent by accident to radio talkshow hosts. We know this because whatever the system, whatever the rules, from Tyne and Wear to Iowa City, they are operated by humans. And people get bored, tired, drunk, have bad days, think they’re about to be fired, are greedy and, in general, make mistakes.
The government is going to introduce a single system for all our identities. And I promise, you can’t trust it. First, it will leak like a battered old bucket. Oh yes, there will be ministerial statements. Apologies. Inquiries. Expensive new IT consultants will be brought in. Tough and unbreakable procedures will arrive. And still it will leak like a battered old bucket - except that it will be the most expensive battered old bucket in the history of the world, and we will keep pouring in money to the IT industry in the years to come.
Within the comments which follow, CaptainNemo says:
Quite agree. And whats more all this data will be passed to the Amerikan dept of homeland security, or whoever it is:
This is all driven by Amerika and its phony war on terror.
Our Government is enthusiastically going along with this. Of course they reckon, as we see from other recent events, that they will be above these repressive schemes, but the rest of us wont.
Any time I wish to send money abroad, via bank transfer, and within the EU, the transaction details are passed to the Amerikans. And if I wish to get on a ferry from John o groats to the Orkney Islands I will,from may this year,have to show my passport.Remember all those WWII films where the plucky escapees are on the train and here come the gestapo checking everyones ID? It is already happening here. Roadblocks, ID checks on internal flights, passports to go to the Isle of Wight.
Anyone who thinks this stuff is somehow for our benefit is deluded. This is the State going for total control, and the end of this road is an implanted ID chip linked to the mobile network and/or GPS which will track our movements and doings 24/7.
Paranoid? Realistic more like.
Welcome to Orwells dystopia.
Alisdaircameron (though probably not that one) says:
The ID cards scheme as proposed by NuLab is almost certain to wreck the country on an unimaginable scale: financially, an open cheque is being offered to favoured corporate consortia who by now are hugely experienced in gouging the UK taxpayer for every penny, then coming back for more; politically the already fragile ties between the individual and the state will be severed, as a confrontational relationship between the two is established by statute; constitutionally, the nationalists will have a field day, as wily foxes like Salmond can use the issue to further emphasise the remoteness and callous disregard of centralising Whitehall/London; in security terms, we will be less safe (9/11 bombers HAD legitimate ID)thanks to a false sense of security in an utterly fallible and breakable system; no impact will be felt by the relatively small number of benefits cheats as their deceptions don’t involve identity, but black market working, while too many deserving claimants will miss out as “Computer says no”;community cohesion will suffer as those with certain disabilities and from certain ethnic minorities can not be reliably recognised by biometrics technology (again too many “Computer says No”s)
http://www.idtrail.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=689I could go on, as the list of major flaws in the proposal, both ethically and technically is enormous (oh, and those who say other states have ID cards, well they don’t, at least nothing like the ones proposed for the UK).
This issue is a bellwether for NuLab and indeed the whole of the self-serving political classes as they sit separately and (in their eyes) above the mere plebs of the general population: back ID cards and show themselves to be undemocratic,idiotic power-crazed tin-pot despots, incapable of reason, decency or morality, or back down. Gordon Brown does not have an enviable record for responsibly backing down when plainly wrong, or for ever acknowledging he is wrong, let alone apologising or taking the rap for mistakes.
Glad you’ve seen the light Jackie, but too many of your colleagues haven’t.
Charliezulu:
I retired last year as an information security manager, and I make 2 points:
1. No laptop is ever 100% secure. There is statistically a 10% chance each year that it will be stolen or left on the train. Therefore sensitive or personal data should NEVER be on a laptop. Encryption is available, and can be effective, and if the MOD laptop had no whole disc encryption then heads must roll, ((my organisation installed whole disc encryption 10 years ago. It is cheap, easy and effective). Effective - BUT - many of our users, and I’m sure they are typical, were so stupid they taped the password to the laptop. When token based security is used (smart cards, SecureID cards etc) then I have seen these kept with the laptop too;
2. ID cards will reduce security, not enhance it. How so? Public and officials will place great reliance on the cards. There is rubbish talked by Brown about being protected by biometrics. Rubbish! How many biometric readers will be scattered around for all those pernicious occasions when the card will demanded? THEY WILL BE FORGED. PERIOD. And fingerprint readers can be tricked easily and cheaply. I have no doubt that other biometric devices will also be cracked in the future.
Blair and Brown have turned New Labour (spit) into the Nazi Party of Great Britain. It comes to something when we turn to the House of Lords for our civil liberties - for there at least is an honest debate, unencumbered by the payroll vote.
Stygian has this to say:
What we are seeing is part of the bigger nulabor agenda of social re-engineering. For this to work, not least to prevent opposition, target objectors, suppress evidence of nulabor wrongdoing, and neutralise whistleblowers, it is necessary to have every detail of every citizen in the land. This is consistent with the nulabor policy of Control or Destroy. It has already been documented how our personal data will be shared by a myriad of government departments, quangos and local government groups, right down to the so-called ‘community’ ( aka nulabor social control mechanisms ) groups such as forums. As well as using this personal data as a protective means for nulabor, it can also be used as a weapon, i.e. not only to exploit information already within the database on any individual, but, AS IS ALREADY HAPPENING, to fabricate material upon individuals arbitrarily deemed to be a potential threat to nulabor. What nulabor are doing is far in excess of the worst Orwellian nightmare, and entirely in keeping with what is expected of a government where the corruption is absolute, lead from the top down, and out of control.
Go and read the original page from the links above. There are many, many similar comments about the dangers of this pernicious system which is being foisted on New Britain by New Labour.
We cannot, as citizens, deploy a national database with information about our political masters with ease, but we can each observe and track what politicians do at every opportunity and declare their corruption and ineptness whenever we see it.
It comes down to whether you want to live in a free country or whether you are stupid enough to believe New Labour lies.
Gordon Brown’s Useless Government Endangers People - Again
Yet again, as if this is now the primary purpose of government, the data of millions of people have been lost.
This time, the transport secretary, Ruth Kelly, has had to admit that over 3 million learner driver details have been lost in America.
The loss has happened from a so-called “secure” facility in America, where a commercial operator sees if it can make some money from people taking the driving test. If you are old enough, you might remember the days when it was possible to take a driving test without having all your details sold to all and sundry in the hope that they might be able to make a quick buck out of you.
If you think your own data may be amongst those lost with the other 3 million plus people and you imagine the government will contact you to give you advice, forget it. They say that because they don’t think there was any finanacial data loss, they cannot be bothered.
The government also said that the only way to provide a good service to learner drivers was to share data on them with commercial operators, which is, of course, complete and utter nonsense at best and a barefaced lie in all probability.
The government, however, is no doubt still hell bent on the idea that all your medical records will be made available for loss or theft or criminal or blackmail or terorist purposes and that ID cards will still be forced on everyone against their will, to make sure that all data on everyone can be lost from one central location and used by any terrorist operation on earth.
Expect the next shamefaced announcement from Gordon Brown’s “government” (ha!) to be that they have lost absolutely everything on absolutely everyone, but don’t panic. There is no reason to assume that there is any criminal or terrorist involvement at all.
Stop Press: News just in says that the government has now actually lost Gordon Brown.
Already Discredited UK Government Loses More Data
Do you remember how the British government lost the details of some 25 million people because it was too tightfisted to separate out the details of the information requested between two government departments in order to make it anonymous, could not be bothered to encrypt or otherwise protect it and just bunged it in the internal post without tracking or other protection?
Of course you do! Since it was almost half the total population of Britain whose details were lost and who are now open to identity theft, other crimes or terrorist attack because the government could not be bothered about its citizens, you are very likely to be affected.
However, if you are feeling left out because you think your government has not broadcast your personal details to the world in general, there is still hope.
They are continuing the process on a smaller scale with driver records from DVLA.
Of course, if you still think the government has not yet sent your personal data to a crime syndicate, you could write to your MP and ask for assurance that you are not going to be left out of this wholesale leaking of information.
The Register reports:
Unencrypted computer discs containing the names and addresses of 6,000 Northern Ireland motorists has gone missing in the post.
The material, which was sent from Northern Ireland Driver and Vehicle Agency to the UK’s main Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea, is reckoned to gave gone astray in a sorting centre in Coventry. The agency has written to drivers involved apologising for the slip-up.
For a quick analysis, vnunet quotes this:
Alan Bentley, regional vice president of security managers Lumension (formerly PatchLink) commented:
“This latest security blunder will no doubt undermine consumer confidence. Unless decisive and effective measures are taken to protect data leakage, exposure to identity theft will get worse. Unfortunately, even the most vigilant consumers are not immune – it is no use shredding your personal details, if they keep ending up lost in the postal system.
“The proliferation of data loss due to the inappropriate or sometimes criminal use of removable media devices has reached alarming levels and these publicised incidents are becoming commonplace. The only way to eliminate data loss from removable devices is to take control of the flow of inbound and outbound data from your endpoints and encrypt the data during transmission.”
-
Recent Posts
-
About and Stuff
At the moment it is about wondering whether this is really such a good idea after all.
Site Podcasts 
Audio RSS Feed
-
Popular Tags
anti-terror laws banking bankrupt britain Business catastrophe conspiracy corporatism corruption crime and punishment cyber crime data loss data loss scandal deception delusions disasters dodgy deals failure fiasco freedom free markets george bush gordon brown government Home Office human rights hypocrisy ID cards idiocy imbeciles incompetence Jacqui Smith jobs for the boys lies market forces money New Britain New Labour NHS politicians scandal stupidity tony blair untrustworthiness War on Terror