The Observer: Brown to let shops share ID card data
Gordon Brown is planning a massive expansion of the ID cards project that would widen surveillance of everyday life by allowing high-street businesses to share confidential information with police databases.
Posted on August 6th, 2006 at 7:43 am
| See also • silicon.com: The A to Z of biometrics • silicon.com: The A to Z of ID cards • Soaking up the leaks |
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Filed under Affronts to democracy, Brown, Chicken Nuggets, ID cards |
http://postmanpatel.blogspot.com/2006/07/fingerprinted-dna-sequenced.html
Fingerprinted, DNA sequenced, photographed .. we know who YOU are. From womb to tomb.
519 search requests have been dealt with by the DNA Database Custodian since 2004 from countries outside the UK, and responses provided back to the Nationa Central Bureau for Interpol.
If you have your eyes photographed to check for retinal adenopathy and macular degeneration, undertaken using digital imaging, you can easily have a look at them … if you make a Freedom of Information request.
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The fact of life is that is data is available it will be abused. The Police National Computer is a source of income to many cops who will readily convey information to ex coppers who run detective agencies - I have benefited from this.
A fellow director of a company’s wife was / is a VAT official who regularly provided detailed financial information about competitor companies.
It is a commonplace that if you make a substantial cash payment into major bank someone will contact you stating the fact that you have and offer a range oif investment services. I have received a letter from the Royal Bank of Scotland this week to this effect about a current account not earning interest.
If you visit the Trafford Shopping Centre in Manchester your car number plate is read and any PNC information regarding the car or owner may be passed on to their security staff - overdue fines, handling stolen credit cards, stolen vehicle etc.,… this presumably happens in many other places. Sanderson Computers used to have details on their website.
Personal data is a commodity, which has a price .. look at the wholesale theft of personnel details of Government employeees to defraud the Tax Credit system.
I was vert taen by an interview with Jeremy Greenstock on TV this week re the UN resolution and criticism voiced by an Ex Ambassador in the FT.
He dismissed any such letters because to the Prime Minister they would simply be dismissed.
This Government - and it’s many myrmidoms have no concern for criticism - only that expressed in polling data and even then their self assurance, arrogance and concet carry them forward as it did with Mrs T over poll tax.
The one rdeeming feature - which you point out , is that these computer systems controling the daya are so badly designed and implemented and training so perfunctory and unsatisfactory that any concerns are blunted by the in built incapacities of the system.
The most worrying to me is the DNA Database - a psychiatric nurse I know recently had to report non-compliance with a drug regime of an asylum seeker to the Police as a fairly routine matter. She was asked and greed to fingerprinting and swabbing, a new procedure she was assured when dealing with recording any Police records of any asylum seekers. The authorities seem heel - bent on getting as many people onto the DNA Database as possible - now over 3.5 MN and rising daily - and removals are dropping alarmingly. See item quoted for details.
I think the headline is a tad misleading, in that — at least according to the report to which you link — the proposed sharing is strictly one-way; the scheme is that the police are notified, presumably by the central computer, when someone on a watch list uses his ID card to verify (e.g.) a credit card purchase.
As I understand it, much the same thing happens now when the police are looking for someone; they obtain a court order for banks and credit card companies to noftify them when and where his cards are used.
It’s perhaps not widely known, but HM Customs and the Inland Revenue had long had, and used, similar powers to check people’s loyalty card history; if a self-employed painter and decorator, for example, is fiddling his taxes he’s very ill-advised to use a loyalty card when he buys materials from a DIY store, since if he does, someone from the Revenue is quite likely to turn up and ask him why he was buying all this paint and wallpaper when he reckons he wasn’t doing much work.
Its now a moneyspinner,according to the times. By my reckoning, it could pay for itself in to 30 years .
Our deranged leader thinks this is going to be a major plank in the next election. “We are committed to making you pay for a vast, cumbersome and insecure surveillance resource for the convenience of the the state and commercial sector” sounds like a winner to me
Putting aside the more ludicrous ideas like fingerprint readers on cars, Gordo is putting a bunch of bankers to work looking for ways to bastardise the ID card scheme into a weapon against (petty) fraud and theft, in order to cover the bills.
What happened to all those scary terrorists/immigrants taking our jobs? And does Gordon know that ‘corporate governance’ doesn’t mean business gets to define law?
I’m looking forwards to a mass card-burning. Question- will the cards be Government property?