Sinster censorship caused by Part P

[bigcat]

Stefek Zaba wrote about ID cards:

Benefits: there is none. The arguments for are simply specious.

Cost: large, money that could be spent doing some very useful things instead.

Risks: anyone undertaking even basic history or political study will begin to see there are significant risks in giving government / one group of people complete legal power over another. Anyone with a clue as to whats going on in the world will realise that IRL no system or group of people is beyond abuse, ie it will be used abusively. It is inevitable given the wide variety of human nature, the non existence of any perfect human-nature filter, and the many limits of the technologies involved.

Law and order: the day it becomes a criminal offence to walk down the street is the day the law will have lost all credibility and all respect. This is what happens when ID cards are introduced. Their mission creeps until it is a criminal offence to walk down the street without the card. Our lowish crime rate has a lot to do with respect. When that is lost, crime goes right up.

Seriously if anyone thinks its a non issue they must have no education about fundamental concepts of law, government and society. There seems to be much more awareness about this stuff in the US, where their struggles are so much more recent than ours, and in some cases ongoing.

In the UK are people so remarkably unaware that they might actually vote it in.

NT

[Andrew Gabriel]

Iris scanning includes a check that the pupil responds to changes in light level, so it isn't fooled by holding up a photograph of someone's iris. That reflex doesn't always work in blind people (actually I know an otherwise normally sighted person for whom it doesn't work either).

Anyone trying to leave their fingerprint on the back of my eye will find themselves coughing up their testicles...

[Andy Hall]

Indirectly it does, because it discourages people who may be competent to do so from doing what would other be fixed wiring and which is intrinsically safer.

[Bob Eager]

Exactly. Part P does not control extension leads. It does control extra sockets. Thus people will just use lots of extension leads (probably partly coiled/rolled).

Cringe.

[Alan]

In message , [e-mail] wrote

Respect for the Police within the group of my 'law abiding' friends has fallen dramatically as more notice more and more Police tax collection points on our major roads.

[John Rumm]

It is nothing to do with him being blind (although that may impact the mechanisms that try to verify the eye is "live") - it it to do with uncontrollable eye movements. There are a number of medical conditions that cause this even in fully sighted people.

In itself blindness does not rule out iris scans... but much depends on the cause of the blindness. Not having eyes for example would be a pretty good non starter.

Iris scans and retinal scans are two very different things. The latter is far harder to do quickly however without sophisticated medical scanning kit - not at all well suited to a quik ID check.

[John Rumm]

The ICAO (is that the right ETLA?) will require a biometric on passports

- however all they *require* is a digitised facial biomtric - i.e. a photograph.

It is the UK gov that is attempting to add FUD to justify their case by saying that fingerprint or iris scans etc will also be required - they won't, and there is currently no international treaty setup to use them should it be there.

(Although the US are toying with the idea of RFID enabling passports to facilitate quicker checks on them at immigration desks. This add the reassuring prospect that someone will be able to skim all the usefull informatiion from your passport just by walking close by you!)

[John Rumm]

Yup, that is why to fool them you have to cut out the pupil of the photo and look through the hole while the photo is scanned ;-)

[John Rumm]

There have already been studies that show a correlation between a rise in general crime in an area, and saturation with said yellow boxes. It seems they encourage people to be less cooperative with the police in general.

[bigcat]

Nothing wrong with a license to drive, the annual slaughter justifies some basic checks on competence. Drivers license is not an ID card that must be carried to avoid prosecution.

However there is no comparable justification for a compulsory ID card.

NT

[chris French]

In message , Alan writes

If they are law abiding what is the problem?

This 'tax'is easily avoided by dint of not breaking the relevant law.

[Andrew McKay]

Shhh! There might be terrorists reading this newsgroup....

Andrew

[Huge]

That and their function as dispensers of crime numbers rather than solvers of crime.

[Huge]

Tell that to the Birmingham Six, or the assorted mothers incorrectly jailed for killing their SIDS children.

And you have, of course, practised with your longbow every Sunday?

The concept of poor law not crossed your mind?

[Stefek Zaba]

Definitely iris, not retinal scanning (which is what you sketched).

is the authoritative source.

Stefek

[Andy Hall]

I think the bees might suspect.......

[Stefek Zaba]

Just so. One of the absolutely crucial distinctions that's very rarely mentioned in general discussions is between 'supervised' and 'unsupervised' measurement of the sample biometric. 'Supervised' means there's a trained, motivated person watching you present the biometric - e.g. at border control points. 'Unsupervised' sampling, at ATMs say, allows the whole range of photos, gummi-bears, and all the rest of the equipment-fooling stuff to be deployed by the attacker.

Oh, and then there's 'stupid', which is doing it over the Net an trusting the attacker's computing equipment. Doesn't stop some people saying 'and ID cards will work for electronic commerce, too!'...

Stefek

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 23 Apr 2005, Rob Horton wrote

-snip-

If they've deregulated, it's from a position which was way, way more more draconian than Part P.

I've just spent a fortnight in New Zealand, much of which was doing small jobs for my mother-in-law -- one of these was to install a PIR light in the garage.

I established early on that to do any work -- anything at all -- which breaks into the main circuit is prohibited unless done or certified by a registered electrician. It was thus illegal for me to wire the light into the lighting circuit via a junction box (which is what I'd planned to do.)

The retail industry there accommodates this by selling PIR units with a plug -- one version plugs into a mains point, while another has a bayonet plug to fit into a light socket. The mains or light socket, though, must be an existing one: it would be illegal to install a new point or a new light socket unless qualified/certified, as that job would require breaking into the main circuit (which isn't allowed).

[:::Jerry::::]

justifies

The point I'm making is that like it or not any of the present ID type cards could and probably will be (if there is not a specific ID card) made into a 'sudo ID card' [1] and it's carrying made compulsory, if passports and drivers licenses are converted into 'sudo ID cards' that alone will cover most of the adult population [2] - it's just a mater of what information will be held on the card and why.

If HMG want us to have compulsory ID cards then we will have compulsory ID cards, like it or not.

[1] talk has already started about converting passports into sudo ID cards, whilst holding the same sort of info as the proposed ID card, and if HMG wishes to go down this route they don't even need to place the decision before Parliament AIUI - Passports being Crown and not Parliament granted. [2] yes it would be possible not to have any type of ID card but will people really want to give up the 'right' to either go out of the country or drive ?...

[:::Jerry::::]

friends

In one respect you are quite correct, but when speed limits are reduced for no real reason and soon after a camera is erected you really do have to ask what the real reasons are, now it could be that they want to piss off so many motorists that they stop using their cars and thus reduce the number of cars on the road but the more likely reason is that it's a location that will generate income (what ever the official line says).

I know of two cameras that have been erected within the last 18 months, both are sited for income generation rather than any safety issues relating to speed, one is blatantly miss sited in so much that the real danger point on the said road is a mile further down the road (were people have been run down whilst crossing) *after* the camera - drives can and do still exceed the speed limit at the danger point....