In article ,
(Huge) writes:

That and the application of 25kV to the SmartMedia contacts.

If they have a proximity loop, the normal flexing from keeping
the thing in a pocket or wallet creates hairline cracks which
instantly kill the loop. I assume they will be of the type
which are designed to destroy themselves if tampering is
suspected, in which case this disables the chip anyway, even
if the SmartMedia contacts are still OK. I've used these at
work where they are both the ID card and the payment card for
all the vending machines and resturant. They last me about
2 years before a hairline crack disables the chip, and the
company has to go back through all the vending machine records
to work out how much money I had left on the card when it died.

--
Andrew Gabriel

Stefek Zaba wrote:
Huge wrote:
That and the application of 25kV to the SmartMedia contacts.
I hope you're not suggesting that citizens should interfere with this
valuable piece of Crown property. Besides the moral horror that such an
action engenders in all upstanding citizens, you'd be commiting a
specific offence under the proposed Act, as far as I can see: under
Subsection 1 of Section 13, one is required to noitify the Authorities
if one knows, or has reason to suspect, that the card has been (among
other things) tampered with, damaged, or destroyed;

That could happen any time the card is read, so one should probably
notify ones suspicions to the Authorities every time the card has been
used. Presumably the Authorities have the clerical staff in place to
deal with possibly dozens of such letters from every citizen every week.

failure to so notify shall, under Subsection 6 of the same Section
13, render one liable to a civil penalty not exceeding 1,000 notes.

Oh, a civil penalty, it's nice that we're not going to be criminalised.

So make sure you keep your card well away from that van der Graaf
generator, Huge!

Or at least take the card out of his trouser pocket before applying said vdG

Owain

Huge wrote:

Oh, no. Indeed not. Not at all, no. Absolutely not. I was just
tinkering with the ignition system on my car and just coincidentally
happened that the HT output got into my ID card, which I carry
everywhere with me, being a good and upstanding citizen (aka
"mindlessly obedient drone").

OK, last week it got boil washed, 13 times. And the week before I took
it scuba diving. And the week before *that* it went in the concrete
mixer. I'm just unlucky, I guess.

That will be 15 times 300 quid to you gov'ner... ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

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On 30 May 2005 09:08:05 GMT, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:

In article ,
(Huge) writes:

That and the application of 25kV to the SmartMedia contacts.

If they have a proximity loop, the normal flexing from keeping
the thing in a pocket or wallet creates hairline cracks which
instantly kill the loop. I assume they will be of the type
which are designed to destroy themselves if tampering is
suspected, in which case this disables the chip anyway, even
if the SmartMedia contacts are still OK. I've used these at
work where they are both the ID card and the payment card for
all the vending machines and resturant. They last me about
2 years before a hairline crack disables the chip, and the
company has to go back through all the vending machine records
to work out how much money I had left on the card when it died.

Maybe the card suppliers to HM Government haven't spilled the beans on
this 'side effect' yet.

MM

On Mon, 30 May 2005 15:42:43 +0100, Derek *
wrote:


On Mon, 30 May 2005 09:29:45 +0100, MM
wrote:

So many people will be hit with unexpected fines that this alone will
make the system unworkable. Crikey, we've seen what a song and dance
the media (rightly) can make about some old dear who's been refused
operations four times.

In those instances AFAICS the authorities just tough it out no
concessions made. The furore dies down in a few days.

Did we ever get to hear what happened to that poor woman who's
operation had only a 50% survival probability and had been
cancelled "N" times.

I believe she did finally get her operation, which was successful.


Imagine hundreds of thousands of voters
suddenly with a demand for a thousand quid on their doormats because
they dropped their card or placed it too close to static or something.


I'm not so sure, one hears very few complaints nowadays, (in fact
*zero* IME), about the civil penalties that they stick on you for
getting your tax return in late.

Just in the last few days the government has been flying kites
about making graduates work 'till they are 70 before they can get
the state pension, raising the cost of the V.E.D. to Ca £900 for
what they term "gas guzzlers", and fining 10 year old kids £30 for
dropping sweetie papers *as if* they'll be able to collect that
from chav scum.

All without as much as the slightest whimper of protest that I've
noticed from the docile Great British Public.

Yes, I wonder whether the public would bat an eyelid if Government
paddy wagons roamed the streets demanding the first-born. They'd
probably just go back to watching Big Brother and making a mental note
to afford more booze and fags this week. "But send us back the
clothes, like. We can sell 'em on eBay!"

MM

I wrote:

..... But they seem to confirm them: whole-DB-match was done only for
fingerprint *enrolment*, to check that similar prints hadn't already
been enrolled, while verification was limited to 1-to-1! For iris,
Daugman's encapsulation seems to mean that the trial was 'forced' to do
1-to-many - but note that there weren't 'many' even at the end of the
trial, and only the last enrollee was matched against all the others!

It wasn't quite as daft as that, on full reading. They preloaded the
fingerprint DB with 1.1million dabs from wrong 'uns (actually, they'd be
*mainly* wrong 'uns; but since a couple of years ago prints are now kept
for anyone *arrested*, regardless of whether they were charged or
convicted: http://www.policereform.gov.uk/docs/...ng_mar044.html);
and the iris DB with 110,000 iris scans. So for fingerprint and iris,
enrolment checks were done 1:many against a 'large' number of
pre-existing should-definitely-be-non-matching biometrics; though in the
case of iris it was one-thousandth the size of the proposed DB (we'll
have 100 million iris scans from 45 million residents + few million
longer-term visitors), and a similar ratio for dabs (there seem to have
been 10 dabs/person, so 50million people = 500million dabs, 1.1mill is
one-fivehundredth of that size).

Stefek