John Rumm wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

All that information will be on a database somewhere anyway. Can't see
the
problem with centralising it.


That is exactly the problem. It puts all sorts of information together
that before would have taken a reasonable amount of effort for someone
to gather, and will by default, make it available to anyone who wants to
see it.

(Yes I do mean "anyone". You make a system all pervasive and available
to a wide range of "people in authority", and even without any malicious
intent it will be compromised and publicly visible - long before it is
even finished. It only takes one badly configured router or wireless lan).

Rather than preventing identity theft, it will simply make it easier to
do and much harder to detect.

If you integrate the system into all facets of daily life, then far from
preventing terrorism, it will simply become a new target for it.

It would be one of the largest and most complex IT projects the
government has ever taken on. They do not have an impressive record it
this arena.

Remember there is a technology gap between organised crime and
government. However, there are no indications that the government is
going to catch up any time soon ;-)

So in exchange for costing an obscene amount of our money, can you see
any tangible benefits it would bring?


I have been trying to think of ways to disrupt the distribution of ID
cards once Tony forces them through (lets face it the battle was lost
before it even started). The best idea I can come up with is to pretend
you have a medical condition that stops you from being able to sit still
long enough for them to get good bioinformatic data. For instance if
they have retina scans just keep looking the other way when they tell
you to look into the camera. If it's finger prints just move your finger
as it scans. We might not be able to stop it but if enough people look
the other way (sorry for the pun )) we might be able to make it cost
so much that they give up. After all they can hardly arrest you for
looking in the wrong direction can they.

I'm fairly confident that the government will screw up the
implementation to the point where it won't work anyway. After, of
course, wasting billions. Time to vote Liberal I think.

What I would like to know is this - why do they have to know someone's
name to know if they are doing something wrong. Surely whether what you
are doing is wrong, be it speeding or blowing things up, it is
irrelevant what your name is? Therefore why do we need an ID card to
stop criminals?

--

.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`· Shallow Sea Aquatics .¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·
.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯ http://www.shallowsea.com ¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`