I think you are clutching at straws to be honest to try to make a point. Define a lot? The context of my comment was the point that we don’t have freedom of speech and there are plenty of laws that prove that.
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If everyone had an access to a legal advice in the same manner some celebrities do, the statistics would look totally different.
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I like the idea of a card, but not what it represents
Just popping this gently here…
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I don’t get the privacy argument. Doesn’t the government already have all that information (passport, birth register if born in UK, driver’s license, etc) anyway?
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Google has more information on us than the government has ever had
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Yep, that’s why it’s almost illogical to argue it. The only downside is the cost of producing and maintaining the cards and the system
I don’t usually post to wiki articles, but this sums it up quite nicely… it’s the databases of your biometric data and what the gov then do with it that is the issue
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My only objection is the complete hash the government made of upgrading the NHS computer systems and the original card scheme. A huge budget will be agreed and it will over run and go over budget by obscene amounts with the private companies making tens or hundreds of millions out of it
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A huge budget will be allocated and a shitty legacy “consulting” company like the one behind TSB’s disaster will be chosen.
Edit: maybe I’m wrong on the TSB case but you see what I mean anyway.
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Not sure that is factually correct. TSB’s debacle has nothing to do with outsourced private companies. Their IT infrastructure and change was led by IT professionals within the bank
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Passports and drivers licenses are not mandatory. The end goal of an id card is for them to be mandatory so that you must have them on you at all times. They track citizens and have no real other purpose.
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They turn citizens into suspects.
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I’m not sure how a passive, unpowered smart card “tracks” you in any way. It’s not like they’re asking you to keep an always-on radio transmitter that tracks & reports your location all the time.
we are surrounded by rfid readers, not much of a step to ubiquitous tracking.
Actually, we all carry a ubiquitous tracker as it is!
This is fairly recently, I think:
or this?
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The end goal of the id card system that they tried to introduce was for it to become a mandatory id card, something we don’t have, and the last time we had on was a world war.
With a mandatory id you no longer are a free person in any normal sense, you are no longer a UK citizen by just existing, you now have to prove you are by showing your mandatory id that you must carry with you at all times.
I’m not sure people really think through the consequences of systems like these.
The UK has a government that has always been a fairly “nanny” like government, they have introduced many systems meant for one purpose only to use them for multiple other things as well (internet filters for example).
To your actual question, passive cards are used to track people every day, every time you swipe the London underground or bus, every time you go into work, every time you go to tesco with your clubcard. Its ridiculously easy to track and implement systems to track passive cards.
The difference is these are independent non-governmental voluntary systems.
A national id cards purpose is to identify a citizen. It does not stop crime, or terrorism. A mandatory id card that you have to carry allows the police or government to check you are a citizen, don’t have it on you? jail presumably. Attach it to travel and you now are required to show a mandatory national id every time to try to go anywhere. And that’s just a simple use case for them. After all why not require id cards for travel? The wikipedia article on it is actually pretty decent and shows an example of the planning of feature creep even as the system was just in the trial voluntary phase.
I guess the question i would ask is what is the purpose of an id card?
And are you really happy being required by law to have an id card with you at all times to prove who you are and that you are allowed to be here? (even walking the got for 15 minutes at night)
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I am sure you own a smartphone or laptop and go online, post comments on forum like this. You voluntarily give away more information posting here and elsewhere that government can ever acquire by issuing ID card to you. The purpose of ID card is convenience. Just like it is convenient to use payment cards instead of cheque books.
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Yes. Voluntary. If I chose to (and depending on the type of information I do) i could not use those systems or use systems that are more secure.
Just like right now I can choose to go outside without a wallet or id, pay for food with cash, or i could take if (drivers license) and pay for food with a card.
Convenience for what? They were to become mandatory.
ID cards are not mandatory in half of the EU countries…
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