h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'They just seem like very practical photo ID cards that are easy to carry around and that come in handy in all sorts of situations.'

...And may become compulsory.

They are cumpulsory already. And so? In Canada I *had* to have a social security card. It wasn't useful for most situations I needed ID for though as it didn't have a photo.

I guess I just don't see how carrying a national identity card infringes on my human rights.

az

Needing a government permit to live in one's own country.

"Needing a government permit to live in one's own country."

Yes, because there's no such concept of an "illegal immigrant" in countries without compulsory ID, is there? Everyone is entitled to claim its "their country" just whenever they feel like it.

Really, all the ID card adds is a way of *proving* that it *is* your country.

Not that I'm in favour of the kind of ID system where police can stop you on the street and ask for it at random, that's just OTT and rather scary. But until we manage to create a single world state (and probably even then) we need some way of deciding who it is we're willing to support with our Welfare States.

Ok, the tail light example was a bad one. use palming a sachet of drugs to be found in the search instead.

the detail doesn't matter, it is the ease of abuse.

Identity cards are not really a problem if they are done right, and brought in in the right way, for the right reasons, and presented honestly.

unfortunately none of these are the case in the uk.

it is being presented as an anti-terror measure, but it won't actually affect the problem.

For it to work, the cards have to be very hard to forge, hard to get illegally, easy to check, and compulsory that you carry them at all times.

I used to drive a car, which developed a fault in the brake light, just as I was being followed down hill be a police car. talk about bad timing

the response to this was to require me to nominate a police station to take my documents into within seven days to prove that I was me, and the car was the car it claimed to be, and it was legel.

None of this would have stopped me from being someone else, in a stolen car which had not yet been reported, on the way to commit murder by doing a hit and run on someone I knew.

Similarly, unless I am required to carry the card at all times, it won't help them to spot that I am part of a terrorist organisation, any more than it did in spain where id cards are compulsory, so they are miss-selling the outcome of id cards, and asking for a backlash when it doesn't work.

In principle, I have no problems with carrying photo id. my passport contains my picture, and if I renew my driving license, it will also contain it. when I reach 60, my bus pass will contain it as well.

However these are all relatively easy to forge, or to get using the methods show in "day of the jackal", even though the system is supposedly improved to prevent it.

The only way to stop them being forged is to use expensive anti-fraud techniques, which mostly don't work any way.

Most antifraud techniques work by the card having information embedded in it which enables them to test that the you using the card was the same person who got the card. All this does is proves that the card is not a cheap forgery.

To get any further, you have to have the system connected to a nationwide checking system, which not only checks that the card is your card, but checks that the information about you does not belong to someone with a different name as well, and thus that it is not a second identity for you.

The problem with this is that the error rate is such that you will get misidentification of duplicates where no such duplicates exist in anything bigger than london.

Additionally, the technology to read these more expensive cards is more expensive, on the order of hundreds of pounds each, so the policeman in the street, or the checkout operator in the supermarket won't be able to have one to do the detailed checks anyway.

Even if the machines were cheap, you would then create a record in the national database every time you used your id, and of course nobody here objects to the insertion of software that monitors their webbrowsing habits into their computer without them being told about it, do they?

So, yes I am happy to carry photo id, but I am not prepared to be told that I must carry photo id.

Even more important, I am not prepared to carry id which lets the govenment track my movements in detail without my knowledge, and let them charge me for the privilage.

Also, having been told I must have such id, I am not prepared to have some undisclosed punishment impossed for having my wallet stolen, and thus not having such id with me.

I don't mind making it easier to identify myself as me, just all the other problems that go with making identity cards compulsory.

and this is before you get to the problems of identity theft under such a system, as the american soldier found out when his wallet was stolen in the us, and he has had to carry proof of innocense with him for years until they actually capture the person who is using his papers to commit frauds and crimes in his name.

In the uk, we already have systems in place which supposedly identify us uniquely. our house is identified by postcode and house number, and if we are over 16, we have a national insurance number.

However we already have cases where they will only accept the card, and not the number, and other cases where they accept any number, which doesn't get checked.

There were a lot of cases of mass benefit fraud a couple of years ago where people got benefit using a card despite the fact that companies employing the people with that code still had the real people working for them.

Any system of identifying people is open to abuse, either by being to liberal and thus easy to forge, or to illiberal, and thus onerous to actually use and with massive potential for civil liberties abuses.

How do you spell 'Paranoid' H-O-M-E-L-A-N-D-S-E-C-U-R-I-T-Y

I came across this at work through a link on a homepage for a university in Texas. Apparently all Texans must be on the lookout for 'suspicious' stuff like:
-Someone showing unusual interest in utilities, government buildings, historic buildings or similar infrastructure. Pay particular attention to someone photographing, videotaping, inquiring about security, drawing diagrams or making notes about such facilities. (If they say they are architecture students don't believe them)

-Suspicious or abandoned packages, luggage or mail in a crowded place, such as an airport, office building or shopping center. (If you find an unclaimed bag in the middle of Lubbock or some other little cowtown, its probably a bomb left by the A-rabs, not just a bag of dirty laudry someone forgot while loading their car)

-A stranger loitering in your neighborhood or a vehicle cruising the streets repeatedly. (Are you sure those guys in the black and white car are really cops? Maybe the IDs are fake. They could be terrorists! or worse, students from out of town!)

-Someone peering into cars or the windows of a home. (Only terrorists, criminals and salesmen are curious to know if anyone is home)

-A high volume of traffic going to and coming from a home on a daily basis. (Obvious the sign of a drug dealer, terrorist, amway distributer, large family or popular teenager)

-Someone loitering around schools, parks or secluded areas. (Only terrorists spend time hanging out in the park )

-Strange odors coming from a house or building. (Tell the Special Agent in Charge of the armed seige that your goulash always smell like that, I'm sure he'll understand)

-Open or broken doors and windows at a closed business or an unoccupied residence. (How do I know its an unoccupied residence if I don't look in the windows?)

-Someone tampering with electrical, gas or sewer systems without an identifiable company vehicle and uniform. (Like the FBI agent that is installing your phone tap)

Mean people suck, mean cops really suck

For some cops any challenge to their authority, any arguement or attitude, seems to be considered a threat to their safety and therefore an excuse to use force. Admittedly there are bad apples in every profession, but I think the jobs seems to attract a certain type of bully that all too often is given carte blanche to boss people around and hurt them if they don't obey. The cops that did this should not be scolded or reprimanded or disciplined. They should be kicked off the force and arrested for assault and battery.



From the The Oregonian (Portland Ore.)

by Steve Duin

Even blind old ladies terrify the cops
Sunday, April 25, 2004
She was 71 years old.
She was blind.
She needed her 94-year-old mother to come to her rescue.

And in the middle of the dogfight -- in which Eunice Crowder was pepper-sprayed, Tasered and knocked to the ground by Portland's courageous men in blue -- the poor woman's fake right eye popped out of its socket and was bouncing around in the dirt.

How vicious and ugly can the Portland police get? Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner. This 2003 case is so blatant, the use of force so excessive, the threat of liability so intimidating that the city just approved a $145,000 settlement.



http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oreg...ssf?/base/news/1082807738251705.xml

An excellent article today in Salon.com about the White House's efforts to claim it has the right to lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely without trial or access to counsel or any form of criminal charge. I think we should start calling Bush the Sun King, since he seems to believe HE is the state and can chuck people in the Bastille anytime he wants.

From Salon

Above the law
The Bush administration is arguing that it has the right to lock up U.S. citizens forever -- without evidence, witnesses, lawyers or trials. If the Supreme Court agrees, will this still be America?

April 28, 2004 | U.S. Supreme Court justices listened skeptically last week as Solicitor General Ted Olson argued that foreign detainees being held in U.S. military facilities in Guantánamo Bay have no right to seek relief from U.S. courts. Wednesday, Olson will be back before the court, this time arguing in two historic cases that the government has the authority to lock up U.S. citizens, too -- without charges, without a lawyer, without a trial, without any rights at all -- simply by declaring them "enemy combatants" in the administration's war on terror.

Having government agents sweep U.S. citizens off the streets and into prison cells, holding them incommunicado for as long as the government likes -- it sounds like a dark fantasy of life in a totalitarian state, the kind of thing we're supposed to be fighting against in Iraq. But this is no fantasy. In the cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, the Bush administration is advancing a vision of governmental power that is both far-reaching and unprecedented, at least in the United States of America. And it is a vision -- like the one the administration articulated Tuesday during Supreme Court arguments on the secrecy of Vice President Cheney's energy task force -- that leaves sole discretion, sole authority, and almost unfettered power in the hands of the executive branch.

It's easy to become blasé about liberties lost in the Ashcroft era. The lines between foreign intelligence efforts and criminal investigations have been blurred; the government has more power to snoop, to search, to study your financial transactions and examine your reading habits; foreigners have been detained, immigrants deported. "There are so many things," says Elliot Mincberg, legal director for the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way.

But the administration's arguments in the Padilla and Hamdi cases have activists and analysts on both the left and the right alarmed all over again. Timothy Lynch, director of the conservative Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, says the Bush administration is advancing a "sweeping theory of executive power" that could lead to "dangerous" legal precedents. "If the administration were to prevail in Hamdi and Padilla, there would be no limit to the number of people who could be arrested here totally outside the normal criminal process, people arrested without arrest warrants, people not going before judges, people being held in solitary confinement in prison facilities right here in the United States," he said.

see the rest at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/28/combatants/index.html

Its a good job its the land of the free.....

There's a saying that all a despot needs to succeed is for good people to look the other way. The FBI and CIA already scare people this side of The Pond. Add in the Commander in Chief of the largest army in the world and......

I hope their awake on Capitol Hill.

well, you wouldn't think so from their record since bush was elected.

they are currently rubber stamping policies which will make them sleepwalk into another 9/11.

especially as regards israel.

I posted this on another thread: F19585?thread=252800&post=5245159#p5245159

It is from yesterday's address by Bush and the Q&A after. Check the thing in its entirety on the Whitehouse website linked at the top of my posting.

Eye-opening, if frightening....