(no subject)

[andrewducker]

At this precise moment I cannot think of a single way that ID cards would be dangerous to me.

Someone care to enlighten me?

Comments

[diffrentcolours]

A good start is this: it costs three billion pounds which could be much more effectively spent on different solutions to the problems which ID cards claim to address.

Maybe that's not putting you in immediate danger, but it's making us less secure against terrorism than we could be, for example.

[trashcanglam.livejournal.com]

You could cut yourself on the sharp laminated edges.

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

That's what I was thinking. Them things hurt worse than paper cuts.

• And if ingested, you could choke on them.


• Being buried alive by them.


• Attempting them to use them to build a bridge over the Royal Gorge in Colorado. They'd never hold a person's weight.


• The lamination, if held just right, could reflect the sun in your eyes, which could be annoying and dangerous in the proper circumstances.


• One could use their natural springiness to launch a small projectile with sufficient force to possibly break the skin.

Define "dangerous"?

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... and give your true opinion of whether anyone could ever get access to your details from a government computer?

Someone else will give the "we don't need to prove why we shouldn't have them, they haven't proved that they are worth doing, and so shouldn't be done" bit.

I wrote a long reply pointing out "Brazil" (the movie) and lots of other things, but I think the BBC News article covers most of it, particularly once you skip past the "there's no justifiable reason for having one" arguements at the top.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3731465.stm

I see no reason why the DVLA needs to know whether I'm claiming benefit, why the passport office needs to know how many penalty points I have on my driving licence, why the police need to know that I had my appendix out 30 years ago ... but there are abuses possible by having a joined up system.

Knowing the identity of a suicide bomber *after* the bomb has gone off doesn't help much (assuming you can find the remains of the ID card!), and if you know beforehand, stop him/her!

With a joined up card, then police taping of a "you" that attended a political rally as a student will be available to not only the police, but potentially to the passport and immigration service and, before long, in a reciprocal arrangement, with immigration and police forces across Europe and the US. So when you try to travel to the US and find your visa denied, they won't have to explain why, but it will be because some one said that you were at a communist rally or a "stop the war" march.

The danger is the feature creep mentioned in the BBC article.

Of course you may trust the government and everyone that can get access to the government files totally, and you may believe that dud data could never be put in there, and that no employer, credit card company etc. will ever have access to your medical records, employment history, political activism history etc. but I *don't* believe that.

And I believe the money planned to be spent on ID cards, could be spent on other things that would make our countries safer.

And the 1000 pound fine for not updating your address with the central database fast enough ... and the potential criminal offence for not carrying your ID card with you at all times ...

... it becomes a tool of social control, police demanding to "see your papers", tracking where you go, what you do, building up profiles etc.

But finally it comes down to whether you feel it is right for the "government" to keep track of what each person does, or whether we have a right to privacy and freedom. I already have a driving licence, a National Health card, a National Insurance number and a passport (and an expired gun licence!).

I would prefer a world where I'm not CCTV'd 24 hours a day, every movement recorded in a computer etc. but it is going that way ... maybe fighting it is like fighting electric lighting ... eventually pointless.

That's about it as far as I am concerned but I'm sure other people will have stronger reasons.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

Yes, all those reasons.

Another thing that's potentially dangerous is that the police and government are fundamentally just people who are sometimes in error and occasionally malicious.
Suppose they said something about you that was a lie or a mistake, and you had no real way of correcting it, and yet every official entity for the rest of your life would read and believe that lie/mistake about you?

It happens with credit ratings now. There is a theoretical process for fixing them, but it's long winded and, as I understand it, it's up to the victim to prove the error, which isn't easy.

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Knowing the identity of a suicide bomber *after* the bomb has gone off doesn't help much

It heps a lot if you then identify their friends who are also contemplating suicide bomberhood.. or making bombs too.. or storing them at their homes.

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

"They that can give up essential liberty for a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[andrewducker]

Oh My God! You're channeling Ayn Rand!

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Never read her. Have you?

I was quoting Benjamin Franklin, actually, bless his heart.

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[andrewducker]

I've read 'enough' Ayn Rand (in this case, not very much, but enough to realise that the ranting of her libertarian fanboys conveyed her attitudes far too well).

In any society you _have_ to compromise with those around you. What works for a heavily spaced society with a neighbour 3 miles down the road does not work when you're packed in 300 people per building. An essential liberty in the 18th century is not one now.

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

What works for a heavily spaced society with a neighbour 3 miles down the road does not work when you're packed in 300 people per building.

Er, Franklin may have lived in the 18th century, but he lived in Philadelphia, London, and Paris - cities where people were packed in 300 per building. Crowded cities are not an invention of the 21st century.

An essential liberty in the 18th century is not one now.

*blinks* That's a very sweeping statement. Which liberties were essential in the 18th century and are not now?

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[andrewducker]

Well, the right to bear arms so you can help your country defend itself, for instance.

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

No one should be allowed to join the army from now on, then?

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[andrewducker]

I believe it's traditional to have different rights and duties from the individual.

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

And this connects with your previous comment how?

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[andrewducker]

While I do not believe that people have a right to arm themselves, I believe that agents of the state should, in certain circumstances have that right.

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Okay.

Let's get back to ID cards... why do you feel they're necessary?

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[andrewducker]

Oh, I don't. In some ways, from a systems point of view, I think that having a single method of identification would be handy for me. And from a computing point of view. the current mishmash of different non-linked systems irk me aethetically.

But I can see problems too (single point of failure and all that), and i don't view it as necessary. I just don't see what all the fuss is about. France and Germany have had them for decades without anyone being rounded up and shot and i'm not sure exactly where the problem with them lies.

So I thought I'd ask, and so far nobody has really managed to give me anything other than "It's a single point of failure, so when it fucks up everything would be fucked up." which, while it's a sign that a really robust system would be needed, isn't really what I was hoping for.

Re: Define "dangerous"?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

France and Germany have had them for decades without anyone being rounded up and shot and i'm not sure exactly where the problem with them lies.

Well, I dunno about Germany (I mean, East Germany, West Germany, probably had some considerable differences about the importance of ID cards, don't you think?) but France, from what an ex-girlfriend of mine says, deals with the ID card issue by having one that is known to be very easily forged. (I've seen her ID card, and it certainly looked easily forgeable.) So the French don't care that they're legally required to have ID cards, because anyone who really wants to buck the system can. Or so she said. The French are so cynical. ;-)

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

That's funny, I thought exactly the same thing!

Was this perchance after reading a certain LJ pst on the subject?

[drplokta]

If it becomes compulsory to carry one, you will be committing a criminal offence (or perhaps just a civil offence with a £2000 fine) if you forget your wallet when you go out of the house. If a national ID card becomes the universal accepted form of ID, then you're really fucked if you lose it. The vast amounts of money and resources spent on an ID card system won't be spent on actually preventing terrorism. Your local night club will be able to demand to see your ID card as proof of age and then capture your address and send you junk mail -- this has happened in the US. There will be an increased likelihood of your personal details being sold to a stalker or a private detective, as so may public and private officials will need access to the ID database. You'll have to watch David Blunkett posturing on TV more frequently than if there were no ID cards being introduced.

That should be enough to be going on with.

[derumi.livejournal.com]

Well, if it has RFID embedded into it like some have speculated, then going to foreign countries could make it easier for technology-advantaged criminals and terrorists to identify and target you. I mean, carjackers in Florida already have been targeting German tourists by their rental car plates.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

A few thoughts: 1. All they will do is further regulate law-abiding citizens. Terrorism is just the latest excuse, previous reasons have been to tackle benefit fraud, or illegal immigration, or whatever Daily Mail readers are currently most pissed off about, and if the Tories get back in it will probably be single mothers again.

2. Further to the above, anyone who wants or needs to forge an ID card will simply do whatever is necessary to do it. After they are introduced, you can already picture the news stories about how good the forgeries are, and how identites are still being stolen, which means it will have solved nothing and the country is no safer.

3. I already know who I am, and I don't want to live in an Orwell novel or a Gilliam film: if you haven't seen Brazil for a while, watch it again and see how when an imperfect and impersonal system screws up it can also screw up our lives, even when we try to do the right thing, making the system more important than the lives of the people, and creating another underclass. Best not to chain ourselves to this beast, it will bite us in the ass sooner or later.

[makyo.livejournal.com]

About five years ago, my cousin Neil lost his driving licence - in the sense that he couldn't find it, rather than he had it taken away from him. So he rang up the DVLA and said ``Can I have a replacement please?''
They replied (paraphrased) ``Who the hell are you? We have no record of you ever being licensed to drive.''
``Er what? I passed my test fifteen years ago. I got flashed by a speed camera a couple of years ago - surely there's some record of that on your system?''
``Nope. You are not currently licensed to drive. And it would be a serious offence for you to do so.''

So he had to take his test again. He had a couple of lessons, to prepare, and five minutes into the first one, his instructor said ``OK, so how long have you actually been driving?''
``Fifteen years.''
``Thought so. This is ridiculous - you're a better driver than I am.''

So he took his test, passed with flying colours, and the examiner said ``Obviously you're a competent and experienced driver. What's going on?''
Neil explained the situation and the examiner said ``Ah. Thought so. You're the ninth person in this district, this year, to tell me that story...''

Through no great fault of his own (apart from the inadvertant loss of his driving licence, of course) he had to take his driving test again. He was without a car for several weeks (which was extremely inconvenient as he lives in a rural area), and now has to pay higher insurance premiums than he should do (because officially he's now only been driving for a few years, rather than nearly twenty). If he'd been stopped by a policeman and asked to produce his licence, he'd have a criminal record now.

The thing is, though, the DVLA have decades of experience of running database systems with tens of millions of records. And, demonstrably, they screw up more often than is generally believed, causing inconvenience and expense to those unfortunates whose records get lost or corrupted. But they're pretty much the best we've got.

When the new national ID card database system screws up, the potential adverse effects are so much greater: possible imprisonment, large fines (a thousand quid is the current suggested going rate for not having a valid ID card when/if they become compulsory), denial of access to various essential public services, etc. And it will happen. Because the Home Office don't have decades of experience running database systems with tens of millions of records, so they're not going to be as good at it as the DVLA even.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

As a German who's had an ID card since her 16th birthday, I actually miss it. Basically, you get the card when you register in the city where your primary home is. When you change primary residence, the address on the card is changed. The cards are printed centrally, and take 6-8 weeks to renew or replace.

I've often wished for an ID card when I found myself armed with the usual two bills (bank and utility), trying to prove I existed and was indeed living at the address I claimed to live at.

The ID card is also handy for travelling within the European Union, because it's accepted instead of a passport as valid ID.

I first needed a passport when travelling to the Czech Republic in 1998.