Security management Toolkit

Story: Home Office looks to high street for ID biometrics

• 
• 

Total cluster****

Oh yes it is a mess all right.

: The whole conception is a mess and a badly
: thought out one. The purpose for it's being
: has not been well justified or explained and
: it seems like the proverbial sledgehamer
: to crack a walnut.

Absolutely right. The system has not been created yet, so there is still time to stop it all stone dead in it's tracks, sit back and have another think about how these problems can be solved without spending the GDP of a fairly large African state on the plan.

: But

Damn .. you just had to go and do a "but" there didn't you :-)

: unless the undesirable ability for arrest and
: detention pending identification and right
: to reside is permitted by law

That is not the sort of "Freedom" that my grand-relatives fought for .. in fact it is exactly the sort of behaviour they fought to defeat.

: it seems that we are going to get ID cards like
: the rest of the EU.

Actually I'm pretty much assuming that we won't. There is no way on this Earth that NuLabor will be getting back in again and all of the other parties have said, flat out, they will take the whole thing down.

: The get out is the (unlikely) affirmation from
: David Cameron that the whole concept, other
: than for airport and similar vulnerable point staff,
: will be scrapped when the Conservatives hit power.

I'm quite possibly out of date here, but I thought he had just said that he would take it down. There is already a purpose built, closed cell scheme designed explicitly for the purpose. Why kick it out in favour of a generic "open to all and sundry" scheme like this. This would be a major step backwards, just to appease. Madness. No thanks.

: Must admit that for very many years I carried
: an ID card and it didn't bother or grossly
: inconvenience me and that, at my age now,
: it doesn't really bother me personally as I have
: no intention of registering for an ID card.

Ahhhh .. Common problem .. The ID card has diverted your attention from the actual issue .. the database.

If you carried a military or Police ID card, you did so for a very specific purpose. That purpose was to prove to the gate guards that you should be allowed through and not shot at. Not surprised you didn't mind holding it if that is the case ;-) Military and Police hold a special position in society and need those ID cards to prove that special position. In neither of those cases was there a monster database with all your private information, open to virtually every public employee in the country and heaven knows who across the channel.

It is the database, the National Identity Register that is the main problem for most of us. It WILL leak, President Brown actually said the other day that he could not guarantee the security of government held data. We all already knew that of course, but even the PM has now put that assertion on the public record. That database is ID theft on the hoof and that's only one point against it. There's so many more.

: But certainly expect non citizens that, shall we
: say do not appear on the electoral roll, to have
: ID documents.

They already do, or they wouldn't get an ID card in the first place. Don't let the spin masters smoke screen that fact. The card is granted based on other documentation .. THIS documentation. The card is no better than the documents it is based on. It is basically a monstrously expensive receipt for a bunch of other documents. That money could be spent on actual security improvements.

They are using people's fears to try and chip away at the edges of the constituency. It is a cynical underhanded technique that has been used before. Compare and contrast the people who did this in history with the current mob. They are in some really nasty company.

I'll remind you:

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

Same strategy. Pick off the ones "we" don't care too much about and work your way inwards. By the time it gets to you, it's a done deal, too late to yell about it any more.

Papieren Bitte.

• 
• 

• 
• 
• 

Full Talkback thread