ID

[liadnan]

Intriguing article in El Reg picking up on a story in the Observer that people around Gordon Brown are seriously floating what has been thought of as the paranoid nightmare of ID cards: ultimate function creep whereby every electronic transaction in the UK would be linked to ID - and thence to loyalty card schemes.

With any luck this will be what kills the whole idea.

Comments

[tybalt-quin.livejournal.com]

Tescos: Every little [bit of your DNA] helps.

Squicking bastards. They'd better not campaign around my way next election, not if they're planning to leave with their eardrums intact. And the squickers slagged off my alma mater about the costs - this plan would take the GNP of a fast developing country.

[liadnan]

The cost is probably going to be the real killer -I'd forgotten you were LSE-, which is why I am surprised that Gordon's people, when he's supposedly always been lukewarm about the project, are on board. Perhaps it's indicative that he's moving into basing his thinking on what he'd do in No 10 rather than in No 11.

[tybalt-quin.livejournal.com]

The whole thing's a dodo from the start. The cost is astronomical. No government IT project has taken place on time or on budget. The technology isn't even there yet and there's no guarantee of security (in fact, that's the reason they've put the plans back for the moment). Plus no one has addressed the chicken and egg situation of how do you prove who you are when you hand your DNA over? What happens if someone gets an ID card using someone else's papers? the whole thing is one of those issues that sets me off like a crazy woman. And the way the government briefed against the LSE (and OMG how could you forget my Commie credentials?!) when their estimate is looking positively conservative right now, just makes my blood boil.

:breathes:

I wouldn't vote Labour if the alternative was 50 years indentured servitude to ant people on a distant mining colony for minimum rations and where you're forced to have sex with Bernard Manning clones.

[liadnan]

I might actually draw the line at the Bernard Manning clones.

[eccles.livejournal.com]

Right that's it, I'm leaving the country :-)

[liadnan]

Yes, it's not as though your impending removal to the US has involved heaps of id-related paperwork and proving you weren't a Nazi before you were born or anything after all...

[eccles.livejournal.com]

And the rest.

Actually come to think of it, the whole process would have been a lot easier if there had been one huge integrated db. It would reduce the whole application down to a single subject access request under the data protection act.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The good news is that the track records of government IT projects suggest this one will come in about 200 years over schedule and trillions of pounds over budget.

[liadnan]

That's fine, so long as the cash for the overspend is borrowed from my hypothetical great grandchildren rather than paid by me immediately. All hail the Debt.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Entirely unrelated but what is the difference between being repealed and being revoked?

[liadnan]

Off the top of my head I think repeal is a term of art about what you do to statutes: a repealed statute is of no effect [usually] from the date of repeal. Revoked is to be interpreted as an ordinary english word, and would also be used in respect of, say, statutory instruments. (It may also have the connotation that the revoked instrument is to be taken as never having effect, whereas a repealed statute continues to have effect with regard to matters before the repeal unless the contrary is specifically stated.)

I may not be entirely correct on this, and there may be some more precise distinction but it isn't coming to mind at present.