Went along to an informal group meeting this evening where I started to receive background information about the NO2ID campaign, a single issue group to raise public awareness of the governments proposals for "identity cards" which are not just about the need for people to carry a card to prove their identity, but also about the National Identity Register (NIR) a register of the entire UK population that will include 50 categories of "registerable fact" on everyone in the country.
The NIR will potentially be the key to the total life history of everyone, retained on file for ever.
I have a number of concerns. UK Government does not do major IT schemes with any degree of success. Data disks,laptops and personal data go missing all the time, corrupt officials give people access to police and DVLC records and for those who say that if you have not done anything wrong you have nothing to worry about, I ask you this, if somebody blags your identity by access to the NIR how do you re-establish it?
Other simple things include the time taken when you will have to attend an interrogation centre to prove your identity. These centres already exist and are currently used for personal interviews for passports.
Then there are the Billions of pounds of tax money that will go in set up costs and the estimated £93.00 that each and every one of us will find so that we can be processed.
Why does our government wish us to go through this process? Well it was a Labour manifesto commitment in the 2005 General Election allegedly to protect us from terrorism (although the reasons that the Home Office give keep shifting).
NO2ID are campaigning against the 'database state' which is what they call the tendency to try to use computers to manage society by watching people. There are many interlocking government plans that do this. Together they mean officials poking into your private life more than ever before.
Personal freedom is worth fighting for.
Look at the right hand column of links to the Youtube video or visit the NO2ID website and make a start.
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2 comments:
One of the most frightening aspects of the NIR is the use that New Labour intends to make of our fingerprints.
On 20th Feb 2007, Tony Blair publicly stated W.R.T. fingerprints on the National Identity Register (NIR):
"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." See:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/20/nidcards20.xml
Paragraph 170 of the Home Affairs Select Committee Report on ID cards:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmhaff/130/13007.htm#a28
states that: “The National Physical Laboratory's feasibility study noted that in one-to-one checks good fingerprint systems were able to achieve a false match rate of 1 in 100,000”.
With a projected 60 Million people on the NIR and with a false match rate of 1 in 100,000, we can expect about 600 incorrect matches for each crime scene fingerprint.
It is worth noting that if the 900,000 crime scene prints that Mr. Blair mentioned are compared against the NIR, this will result in 600 x 900,000 = 540 million false matches.
Since there are only 60 million people on the register, this means that everyone on the register will (on average) match with the prints found at 9 of those crime scenes.
I think this goes to demonstrate the sheer insanity of only one small aspect (and the degree of understanding that Blair and Brown have) of the consequences of the system.
We can add to that:
The oppressive level of surveillance and control that the NIR will give the Government over the people.
The potentially catastrophic effects of cyber-terrorism on a system on which the entire infrastructure of the country is based.
Brian
Thanks for the comment and inputs
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