Will we ever be safe?
February 20, 2007 Posted by mitch | politics | 0 Comments
I really don't know where to start with the UK's Prime Minister Tony Blair. I'm referring to a reply he made with regards to an e-petition the UK people had against their National ID card system that is currently being proposed(and I'm sure one is in the works here knowing our government...).
His comments... scare me actually... If there is a national ID system and your complete identity is contained in that system. A system that would be run and under the complete control by our government (or any independent entity), makes it more likely to be abused. All it would take is one person to make a typo when updating your information, or one false positive on a biometric identification, or hundreds of other possibilities, and you could end up being detained in jail for an undetermined length of time because of your possible terrorists connections. Being in technology myself, and knowing what I do, I really don't want to trust my life on a system like this. It screams to be taken advantage of and exploited just like our current system is(and will be).
And to help better illustrate my point... I'll quote a comment from slashdot, made much better than I could(they are quoting directly from Tony Blair's reply email):
it is clear that if we want to travel abroad, we will soon have no choice but to have a biometric passport.This is a red herring that is repeated with annoying frequency. ICAO requirements [icao.int] state that the only required biometric is a digitised photo, which new UK passports already contain [bbc.co.uk]. There's no need for fingerprints, retinal scans, etc.
Secure identities will also help us counter the fast-growing problem of identity fraud. This already costs £1.7 billion annually.The majority of fraud reported as "identity fraud" is credit card fraud. ID cards will be no use at stopping this, unless you require people to show their ID when buying anything. In particular, the "£1.7 billion" figure is nonsense [spy.org.uk].
I also believe that the National Identity Register will help police bring those guilty of serious crimes to justice. They will be able, for example, to compare the fingerprints found at the scene of some 900,000 unsolved crimes against the information held on the register. Another benefit from biometric technology will be to improve the flow of information between countries on the identity of offenders.Nice to know that the Government has already gone back on its assurance in 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] that the ID register wouldn't be used for "fishing expeditions" - also nice to know that our details will be shared with some unspecified other countries.
The additional cost of the ID cards is expected to be less than £30 or £3 a year for their 10-year lifespan.Not according to an independent report [lse.ac.uk].
This is a comment by Catullus and the full text is available here.  So... if worst comes to worst... what country will I have to go to to avoid such stupid, idiotic thought processes from our elected officials? They are *supposed to be SMARTER* than the average person. In this case, if they really are... they are damn good at hiding it, and it would also mean they have something much more sinister in mind.  We all should be very afraid. Now that your aware of this information, go watch V for Vendetta again.
