I do find the debates about the proposed ID card scheme very interesting, so here’s another link to The Register that discusses the state of play:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/25/id_card_goes_icao/

For non-UK people, the UK government has been proposing for sometime that giving everyone in the country an ID card will be in everyone’s best interest, stopping fraud, fighting crime, helping old people cross the road, and will also save small kittens from trees. Wishy washy liberals like myself have been asking repeatedly how exactly the ID cards differ from passports and credit cards, and how exactly uniting things into one place makes anyone more secure rather than more easy to impersonate… Without much of a decent answer.

Here’s my personal highlight from the article:

supervision of enrolment would “reduce” (sic) the likelihood of fake biometrics being successful, and details of how the Government proposes to stop this becoming a simple key to ID fraud cannot be provided “in order to protect the integrity of the National Identity Register.”

Effectively, it’s a system which by design puts all of its eggs in one basket, and is dependent on that basket being made impregnable via measures which the Government will never reveal or discuss. Trust us…

Doesn’t that inspire confidence?

You might have heard that a chap (suspected suicide bomber) was shot by police on the underground today. My brother was on the next carriage along on the train. He’s a bit shaken but otherwise fine. It’s certainly a small world.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4706787.stm

So, I guess this is a test… And my response? I’ll still use the underground when I need it, just like I would before. We can’t stop our lives because some idiots are running around with badly made bombs strapped to their body and hideously distorted misreadings of the Koran stuffed in their heads. There are always going to be nutters in the world, whether they are organised or not, so there’s no point in living in fear.

However, to show you that I do take these things seriously, if I were with my brother now I’d probably offer him a pint of beer rather than a cup of tea. Yes, it’s that serious (and then we’d take the tube to the pub).

Of course terrorists are going to try again after today’s ‘attack’, although, at the time of writing, that word glorifies what’s been the most rubbish attempt at terrorism I know of. The IRA killed civilians when they weren’t even trying to, and indeed were often deliberately trying to avoid killing them!

But these terrorists will try again. They always do. That’s the point of terrorism, it will always exist when you have different levels of power in the world and the powerful is acting in ways that appear to be exploiting the weak (the truth of this doesn’t matter, it’s all about perception). Whenever you have underpowered groups who resent larger, more powerful groups you will always have terrorism. No amount of sabre-rattling or gun-toting will change this.

You can’t wave a magic wand and make terrorism go away, and you certainly can’t wage war with it, because that legitimises it by creating fear in the population but is ultimately about as productive as karate at getting rid of mist. Terrorists are bullies with bombs. If you stand up to them by refusing to change and get on with your life as before then eventually they are forced to grow up and recognise that their methods have no place in the world. If you start chasing them around, fighting with them, then you’ll only get their mates involved.

It took around 25 years before the IRA eventually realised that bombing wasn’t working and their public face, Sinn Fein, got properly involved with politics and the peace process. We didn’t change after 25 years and over three thousand lost their lives. America has decided to try things a different way, and I the body count in Iraq is already over twentyfive thousand, some say it may be more like one hundred thousand. I know which way I think looks like being the best approach. If you are suggesting we stop being ‘so passive’ and getting on with our lives, I’d like to know the option that you’re presenting, because the US model has been an abysmal failure, especially for the people of Iraq who are suffering bombings every few days of increasing strength. They are dying right now from terrorism, and that is terrorism that would not be happening if there wasn’t this stupid ‘war on terror’.

You fight the bullies and his mates stand up, you ignore him and he realises that he’s not getting anywhere and eventually has to try something else. It takes time, and lives will be lost, but we cannot change for them.

bzz

bzz bzz

[silence]

bzz bzz bzz

[silence]

It seems that there’s a group of people who haven’t worked out that they’re just being really irritating. More ‘bombs’ in London, tiny ickle ones this time. It appears that one of the people who detonated one of them didn’t even manage to kill himself.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4703777.stm

Of course, there will be an impact on trading in London, and that’s a real shame for the small shop-holders who rely on the summer business. Terrorists: scourge of the individual trader. Seriously, losing a few days trading and the subsequent lower rates can really put a crimp into the livelihood of a small business owner. I find it really annoying that the people who lose out in these things are never really the people the terrorists are trying to attack (not that I want terrorists to hit their targets, but at least if there is some sort of legitimacy in their aims they could be taken vaguely seriously).

It’s great that’s there’s apparently no deaths and only one person injured (one of the bombers), but this whole thing really is just annoying, like a mosquito you can hear but never quite slap.

bzz bzz bzzgger off.

New Labour: We have a bright vision for the future, where we will defend the rights of all to their own freedom. We want to encourage all people to unite under a banner of peaceful communication and to support a diversity of lifestyles. By encouraging identification we hope to allow people the freedom to explore the world in greater security. We might not be the very best at everything, but we’re probably the best option you’ve got at the moment.

Conservative: We have a vision of a protected nation, a nation where each person can compete fairly, and honestly, with other people from their local community, their own country, or representing their nation. We must defend the security of our people against those who would intrude and try to restrict our industries. We will use identification to prevent people from falsely gaining entry to restricted areas, and to promote open discussions of how to preserve national identity in the twenty-first century.

Liberal Democrats: We might have a leader who looks a bit silly, but our ideas always seem to look fresh compared to the competition. We’re not quite sure how we manage this, because basically we’ve been saying the same things for years and people still aren’t listening to us. Certainly you can work on making sure everyone has a networked identity, but we think as long as the people closest to you know who you are then it’s not going to do any good to any wider organisation to try and generate some massive scheme that boils people down to a string of simple bits of data. We do try new things sometimes, but we have a sneaking suspicion that the other groups just watch us, steal our best ideas, and then use better marketing to take all the credit. If only someone would stop thinking of us as ‘that group that had power so long ago’ then maybe we’d be able to make this world better for everyone.

Sony: We have a bright vision for the future, where we will defend the rights of all to their own freedom. We want to encourage all people to unite under a banner of peaceful communication and to support a diversity of lifestyles. By encouraging identification we hope to allow people the freedom to explore the world in greater security. We might not be the very best at everything, but we’re probably the best option you’ve got at the moment.

Microsoft: We have a vision of a protected nation, a nation where each person can compete fairly, and honestly, with other people from their local community, their own country, or representing their nation. We must defend the security of our people against those who would intrude and try to restrict our industries. We will use identification to prevent people from falsely gaining entry to restricted areas, and to promote open discussions of how to preserve national identity in the twenty-first century.

Nintendo: We might have a leader who looks a bit silly, but our ideas always seem to look fresh compared to the competition. We’re not quite sure how we manage this, because basically we’ve been saying the same things for years and people still aren’t listening to us. Certainly you can work on making sure everyone has a networked identity, but we think as long as the people closest to you know who you are then it’s not going to do any good to any wider organisation to try and generate some massive scheme that boils people down to a string of simple bits of data. We do try new things sometimes, but we have a sneaking suspicion that the other groups just watch us, steal our best ideas, and then use better marketing to take all the credit. If only someone would stop thinking of us as ‘that group that had power so long ago’ then maybe we’d be able to make this world better for everyone.

So who will get your vote in the next year?