by Keith Locke
The UK has announced that all foreign workers – including New Zealanders on the traditional OE – will now be required to carry a photo ID containing biometric information.
These “identity cards for foreign nationals” are the first part of the roll out of a new National Identity Service in the UK. The biometric information – a fingerprint – and identity details will be held on a chip in a card, and this information stored on the “national identity register”.
According to the UK Home Office website and the Act, up to 265 Government agencies and 48,000 private businesses will be able to access the register to peruse a person’s name, address of present and all previous residences, gender, date and place of birth, immigration status, fingerprint, facial image, iris scan and indices to other Government databases. The purpose of this is “to help them establish the identity of their customers and staff”.
If we could trust every private business and government agency to only use the national identity register for identification purposes, there would be little to worry about. But the potential for abuse of this information is enormous.
The UK Information Commissioner Richard Thomas in 2004 questioned why so much personal information was required, and why such a range of bodies would have access to that information. He stated that
The measures in relation to the National Identity Register and data trail of identity checks on individuals risk an unnecessary and disproportionate intrusion into individuals’ privacy.
Others oppose the scheme due to the immense cost, potential for identity theft, and the fact that the scheme has been pushed by the private technology companies that will profit hugely from the scheme.
New Zealanders and other foreign workers are the guinea pigs in this scheme, the first compelled to have ID cards. British High Commission to New Zealand spokesperson David Rose reassured the public that privacy concerns were unwarranted:
The only people who really have any need to worry are the illegal migrants or illegitimate employers.
Others worry. Thomas again:
My anxiety is that we don’t sleepwalk into a surveillance society where much more information is collected about people, accessible to far more people shared across many more boundaries than British society would feel comfortable with.
I too fear sleepwalking; that compelling NZ and other foreign workers to carry such ID in the UK will normalise this invasion of privacy, so that if the idea to extend the requirement to UK citizens and to New Zealand is raised, it won’t seem such a big deal.
It is a big deal.
Published in Justice & Democracy by Keith Locke on Sat, January 16th, 2010
Tags: green party nz, identity cards, OE, UK
More posts by Keith Locke | more about Keith Locke
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Gossip hearsay and rumour will become fact – the quality of data in, oft has little relationship to the facts.
The hardest I have seen a Civil Servant work is in Covering Their Ass. They will Say Anything.
The Poor Pommies are most likely frightened their wars may have consequences. No fair when they shoot back eh?
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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You might have nothing to fear now, because I assume you are a law abiding citizen. But what will happen if a future government decides to change the laws? Will a universal ID system hinder you attempts to oppose draconian laws such a government might try to implement?
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She’ll be right, Trev!
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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Put your money where your mouth is, Hidden-behind-a-Nom de Plume-Bro, and reveal your true identity to us. You have nothing to fear. Real name. You have nothing to fear. Address. You have nothing to fear.
Or are you all bluster and bullsh*t?
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Good luck trying to get a national Id card in the US.
The federal government tried it a few years ago it was called Real Id, thanks to this wonderful thing called the US constitution and the power of the states to nullify federal law, it went down to a bunch of states passing their own laws all nullifying the federal law.
Stand by to watch other federal laws including Odumbo’s healthcare bill go down to nullification as well, its already on the ballot for the state of Arizona.
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If they’re recidivist, does that mean that they’ve already been sentenced once, to something that kept them criminal?
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May I suggest that we put our own house in order first before complaining about laws at the opposite side of the planet.
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Do ya Trev?
Do ya?
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Here’s an original idea then, just don’t visit.
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That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all week.
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But USA INS requires all migrants to carry an govt ID card to get a job – and my landlord, bank and university wanted to see it too.
And even if you’re a citizen, see how far you get without your federal govt id number – the banks I dealt with required social security numbers before they’d let me even open a bank account, every govt agency required it for everything – drivers licence, etc. As for *flying* in the USA – good god, the databases!
The USA has the most minimal privacy laws protecting individual’s data of any western democracy. I don’t see the states fighting any of that.
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Samiuela, I think we’re a long way from the old east, your naivety would be comical if it wasn’t so sad.
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There is nothing to fear from a National ID card that is limited to the details that are appropriate FOR a National ID card.
Specifically (and I am using the US for an example because it is familiar to me) a National ID card has to provide ONLY the data that is necessary to validate that I am :
1. A Citizen (or my immigrant status).
2. The correct possessor of the card.
3. Legally permitted to own firearms ( not a convicted felon or declared mentally incompetent ).
It does NOT have to have my name, address, date-of-birth or any other such thing on it. Those are NOT within the purview of the Federal government.
Such a card is certainly possible. Assign the person a number (associated with the card), the database search on the number verifies the recorded biometrics against a DB which contains only the required information. The rest of the information has to be obtained through the court system or some other measures as it is now. The fact is that it needn’t be a card. It need merely be the number and a fingerprint scanner. The data can be matched quickly (based on having an index number) and verified, given the small amount of data that needs to be transmitted.
Nobody has yet implemented such a system. The problem with the UK implementation is the wealth of information embedded in it. None of which is any business of the government to know or provide. The closest thing to it is the internal-passport required in the old Soviet Union.
One does wonder if everyone is really paying attention because both sides of this argument tend to be disingenuous about the reality.
I don’t object to the card, I object to having my life history available through it, as any sensible person should.
How to enable identity theft. One has to wonder what these people are thinking. I certainly can’t accept it as being appropriate, but I expect it nonetheless.
BJ
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I worked with an East German, and he commented to me that gradually (especially after 2001) the Western nations were becoming more and more like East Germany (with regards to government surveillance and restriction of civil liberties). I think there are two points he was making; firstly about the erosion of civil liberties in the West, supposedly in response to the threat of terrorism; and secondly that East Germany was not quite as bad as the Western propaganda portrayed it (not to say that it wasn’t bad).
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It is the idea to extend this to all British citizens.
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Let’s talk about China rather. China has reliable real time facial recognition applied to images from ubiquitous govt surveillance cameras.
Oh. One second. We have ubiquitous surveillance cameras right here in clean green Aotearoa. Not in Kawakawa but in the cities where most Kiwis live.
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well the ‘Clean Slate’ Act was passed primarily because we’d crminilazed too many Kiwi’s with Something, Sometime….
in some senses we are overpoliced, not always though
last time i checked, the cold war was over.
everybody would like to survive well
if that’s ok, i mean
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He was, clinically – quite mad Bro. Not a Good Look
no.
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Being likened to a mad, drunken McCarthy can’t have done much for his self esteem either.
Talk about kick’im in the guts, Trev!
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Benjamin_b [talking about protesters with loudhailers at the ASB tennis]
The quoted article is complaining about free speech – There is no nation on the planet where the right to have freedom of speech includes the right to be heard. Protestors are routinely “managed” to minimise their effectiveness.
As to ID cards – BJ is (as often the case) on the money – a national ID card is possible without it containing very much personal data. But all governments (not just authoritarian governments) desire to limit the power of the citizens, and ID cards are a step in that direction.
If ‘we’ (any national ‘we’) have ID cards with all the data the Brits are planning, then identity theft will become far more widespread; it’ll go from being static in the airwaves to you can’t trust who anyone is.
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As to ID cards, a simple ‘info-lite’ card in place makes it very much easier to beef it up with add-ons as required – thin edge of the wedge.
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I have a fundamental objection to the police or any other organisation monitoring my private communication. I personally have nothing to hide, but if I address an Email to an individual, I expect that it will only be read by the intended individual. I don’t care if the communication is as benign as an invitation for someone to come to a barbeque, it is not intended for anyone else to read full stop (which is incidentally why I wish more people would use encryption with their Email).
If the price of privacy is some criminals get away with crimes that might have been caught by more surveillance (and I’m not convinced this is the case), then so be it. I don’t want to live in a police state, no matter what the political leanings of the government are.
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samiuela – have you followed the latest Facebook development, where your ‘friends’ are invited to opine as to what you might do – “Would samiuela kill a person?” etc. Thrilling stuff!
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New Scientist has an article entitled “Blueprint for a better world”, one of the things they list is that we keep a genetic data base to help solve crime.
They also have an article about a “surprising (study) result” showing tasers not as harmful as people think. I’ve posted them previously.
Btw what is “green” about Keith’s obsession with civil liberties. Most people are law abiding and happy that the authorities (who work for us) keep checks on the bad guys?
You people (Keith and supporters)are not representative of the general population. In total you do more harm than good to the green cause.
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New Scientist listed a genetic data base as an aspect of a better world!
Abandon your beliefs everyone – New Scientist!
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I think it would be a good idea, if we could make sure there were sufficient protections against abuse of the system, such as (1) police don’t control it, and have to go through the courts to access it, (2) samples not filed by name, but by a random code that can be separately matched to a name when necessary, (3) database only contains records of the ‘junk DNA’ that is used for identification, not the non-junk DNA that can be used to make predictions about the person’s disease susceptibility.
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I have two objections to what you wrote:
1) How do you define the “bad guys”? Are these people who are engaged in criminal activity, people who might potentially be engaged in criminal activity, or people the government decides are “bad” because they oppose government policy?
2) Even if I agree with the definition of “bad guys”, I don’t want the police also keeping check on everyone else. Why would they do this … well of course they will trawl through communications between “good guys” in order to find “bad guys”, if they are allowed to. If you fish for long enough I guess you will stumble upon some “bad guys”, but in the process you trample on the privacy of a whole lot of innocent people; is this too high a price to pay?
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“Most people are law abiding and happy that the authorities … amass a detailed data base of personal information about each and everyone of us…
jh, are you in collusion with Big Bro?
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Voila:
http://www.newscientist.com/special/blueprint-for-a-better-world
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just because it’s published in a magazine, doesn’t make it necessarily the last word on the subject.
FWIW, protestestors and unionists are scattered through many demographics in NZ – as events like the ‘81 springbok tour protests, or the 2003 anti-war marches, will vouch. When it comes down to it, most of the intelligent adult population (OK, so I’m creating conditions that whittle down our 4 million population …) will show some interest in politics, and a whole lot more if something happens right on their back doorstep.
Currently, with a Recession worldwide, which in some economic jurisdictions is looming to Depression-level, people with intelligence are using any kind of information they can access to make decisions for their own best interests, which in NZ is often a balancing of trade-offs between allowing foreign interference, and maintaining our own national sovereignty.
Who, and from where, has the right to spy on our population, are valid concerns. The changes that have been made since 2002 in the international arena of surveillance law is a concern for any citizen with half a brain, no matter what one’s personal politics or profession happen to be.
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in nz it is an archaic, specious, emotive, set of moveable goalposts.
the only serious thing is how some people will believe anything.
Fly: My take on te frere grandee is that he was taught commies are bad 60 years ago – he just hasn’t been updated…
What is good is that he does more to centralize and promote the Green Party than any paid ad could do ! Hmmm…
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“His mask has slipped badly lately, revealing his true identity”
Has it?
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Yes. A brief slippage, but flies eyes are quick.
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Tell me more Fly…
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Can’t. Mouthparts sealed. Besides, I’m off for a paddle across the estuary with my son.
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Ha ha, yeah OK.
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who talks to ya when no one else will – you little green dynamo Bro…?
Sit here and tell me how we gonna beat the Aussies at Cricket eh?
without selecting you or i that is…
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ASHES IN HIS MOUTH!!!
So Big Brother is in full support of the new surveillence authoritarian society that is gradually eroding our freedom of movement (and speech), if at the same time he extols the virtues of the great free-enterprise system then I am afraid his words will become ashes in his mouth.
I will tell you all why in the next post!!!
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jh, you wonder what is the link between a sustainable society based on a sustainable economy and concern for protecting our civil liberties. A sustainable society, as we know it, is as dependent on us retaining our civil liberities (which is a vital part of the democracy we have inherited across the generations of the emancipation of the people from government tyranny) as it is the environment on which our economy is based.
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A sustainable society, as we know it, is as dependent on us retaining our civil liberities (which is a vital part of the democracy we have inherited across the generations of the emancipation of the people from government tyranny) as it is the environment on which our economy is based.
….
and its is every womans right to have as many children as is culturally appropriate and societies duty to support them if they don’t have the means to support themselves…. and it is labours right to move to which ever country they want to….. we shouldn’t read other peoples emails because it’s rude (even if they are discussing blowing up ‘planes)….. prisoners should be deprived of liberty and nothing else… [Green Party views?]
ps one I get a few boy racers in my street doing wheelies and since there’s one out there now, I’m throwing in a reminder that you Greens stimy any attempts to come down firmly on them.
ps, ps sustainability is something the greens dabble in.
ps,ps ps
I have been reading :
* Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action By Elinor Ostrom and I think it has important implications for a discussion re management of the foreshore and seabed, but that can wait until the general debate.
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Here’s another item for the general debate:
Since I saw poneke mentioned (favourably) by Big bro, I wondered what position the NZ Skeptics society take on the issue as (I think) Poneke and Dennis Dutton are members
I found links to a couple of interesting podcasts
Unwarranted skepticism; disbelief in a finite world
The Slippery Slope of Conspiracy Theories
and
Is Economics a Science or a Religion?
http://skeptics.org.nz/
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jh
Civil liberites are universal in concept.
1 Family Support and WFF are programmes which both Labour and National have continued while in government. Their predecessor was Family Benefit, this policy has been around for decades and in some forms exists in all western nations. It’s about the concept of cross subsidy providing for family as the children will later work and provide for those in retirement.
2. Greens support political refugees, so does New Zealand it is government policy.
Economic migration (labour) occurs under our filling local skilled worker shortages. The Greens more than other parties favour educating local workers.
As for surveillance – no right of search and seizure without probable cause is a civil liberty from across centuries. No one is saying that where there is probable cause there should not be some interception of communications.
As to prisoners, Greens prefer rehabilitation with the loss of liberty.
As to Greens getting in the way of getting boy racers, how dare they … what were they thinking. Just goes to show those civil libertarians take some things far too seriously. I mean we all know Greens don’t really like people who drive cars, so to stick up for the rights of boy racers is a sign of a real committment to their civil liberties.
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As we know BB is extoling the virtues of our surveillence society to the full and it seems that people like him are taken in by the mantra ‘War on Terrorism’ or in the eighties it was the ‘Cold War’. I don’t know exactly what he stands for or whether he is just opposing the Greens for the he!l of it.
If his like-minded group (comrades!) are of the libertarian persuasion and adhere to ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, and the great private enterprise system then the surveillence authorities that they fully support may very well backfire on them. One only has to look at National and ACT’s backers to see that they are very large monopolistic corporations who have formed themselves onto a global oligarchy. Their puppet governments may not necessarily support ‘private enterprise’, ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’.
As for the percieved threats from those terrorists from the Islamic countries, well yes the threat is real, and yes they are carried out by fanatics. Why do these fanatics go around hurling bombs at planes, railway stations and embassies etc.?
BECAUSE THEY HAVE A CAUSE
The cause may be justified even if their actions are very wrong and the cause that comes to mind is Israels treatment of the Palistinians in West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the US’s uneven brokering and backhanded support. When these injustices are rectified the fanatics will have no cause, their followers will go back home and they will cease to be a threat to the west.
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> As we know BB is extoling the virtues of our surveillence society to the full and it seems that people like him are taken in by the mantra ‘War on Terrorism’ or in the eighties it was the ‘Cold War’.
And the puritanical war on that other thing! Altered States of Mind are not permitted, nor is discussion or collusion to do so. Death to Cognitive Liberty. So help me God! I shall so uphold the law!.
Yeah Right…..
The Green Party’s Drug Policy is where on this? Frog? Anyone?
2500 people were killed in Thailand (Search NZ News for “Police, Yabba and Drug Intelligence” and tell me that a normal person reading this wouldnt think that on good authority Yabba had killed them all. It didnt.
It was the State Police, their names were on a list! Some who died were children, mere collatoral damage in an end justifies the means kinda way.
Even the media is dishonest.
Same over the RSA and Cannabis. Even that was a cooked story!
(the Manager of the said RSA’s former profession? Wouldn’t have been locking up the occasional Christchurch pot smoker would it?.
Look at the evidence in the article, what Yabba? They havent found any yet! Now read the headline again. “New Meth Drug Rocks NZ” – Gilding the lilly a bit there, Mr Mills?
Hell this Yaba stuff is so dangerous and the ‘list makers and watchers’ have our interests at heart… i’d sell my soul for this kind of protection!
Well I have news for you, you just did.
Further, You sold it to Police Headquarters in exchange for a lie.
Yabba has been tracked by National Drug Intelligence ever since they first formed the Bureau. They even lied (to you) about that.
Those who exchange freedom for security deserve neither.
The Green Party are pretenders to human rights as long as drugs are off the agenda.
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I gather that the original issue here is information on identity cards?
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We wouldn’t be referring too one of those identity cards one needs to buy some of the drug we drink? How good is that ‘integrity’ of information when hundreds of cards are confiscated on attempted entry to licensed premises yet countless more ‘get through’. We turn fraud into a recreational sport. (besides every kid knows it’s easier to buy pot! no ID required)
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Zillions of people:
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/protesters-converge-waihopai-spy-base- 3340131
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This may help explain the green parties obsession with surveillance:
Islamophobia’ and the Left-Islamist Axis
Those on the far-left who promote the notion of widespread ‘Islamophobia’ are arguably racially obsessed, and the idea of the West being at heart a corrupt, racist, and imperialist phenomenon is central to their worldview. As a result, they have formed a strange coalition with Islamist groups who they have tried to enlist as part of their Trotskyist plan for ‘revolution’.[2] In recent years, the anti-war movement has been central to this marriage of revolutionary left-wing politics with the Islamist far-right. In Britain, the Stop the War Coalition has seen groups such as the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and George Galloway’s ‘Respect’ party making common cause with supporters of Islamism and terrorist groups such as Hamas.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=447
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Rent-a-mob demonstrators outnumbered by media, it would seem.
Tragic.
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The ‘anti’ out-numbered the ‘pro’ 10 to 1.
Hilarious!
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jh – not by any stretch of the imagination (even your impressive one) did that help to explain anything!
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What makes you Nattys ignorant is your unwitting support of Nz’s open and Local Revolution that is happening every Day.
Weath by stealth and privelige by pallor….
You think the Guns won’t come out?
I wouldn’t worry about the Russia of 90 years ago – we have far more urgent and profound problems of our own.
Switch off your cpu and take a look around perhaps?
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Valis says:
“Of course, a Trotskyist revolution for New Zealand. Obvious isn’t it. ”
I’m not up on the varieties like you!
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