The UK's Total Surveillance 439
Budenny writes "The Register has a story in its ongoing coverage of the UK ID Card story. This one suggests, with links to a weekend news story, that the Prime Minister in waiting has bought the idea that all electronic transactions in the UK should be linked to a central government/police database. Every cash withdrawal, every credit card purchase, ever loyalty card use ... And that data should flow back from the police database to (eg) a loyalty card use. So, for example, not only would the government know what books you were buying, but the bookstore would also know if you had an outstanding speeding ticket!"
Only those who have something to hide need fear (Score:5, Insightful)
Abuse of the info will happen, so let it never be allowed, anywhere!
"I have a right to buy those, but please officer don't tell my boss or my wife or my kids!"
*gasp* (Score:2, Insightful)
In all seriousness, this scares the bejesus out of me... and I don't even live in the UK. This would make Big Brother a whole lot bigger... do people really need the government "watching out for them" every step of their lives? And what's with the reverse-feedback? I could see some useful situations (i.e. a bar could see that a patron had a DUI and call him a cab), but overall it seems rather Orwellian.
Terrorists (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorists!
And I do mean it. They're bad, bad folks who use scare tactics and incite the fear of getting blown up to control the population into obeying their demands.
Yeah, that's right. Your beloved government fills all the requirements for the word "terrorists". Just like the other side of the pond.
Re:Terrorists (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, government is no better than the idiots scrabbling around in caves hiding out. Both use fear to get what they want.
Transparant lives. (Score:3, Insightful)
My take is that this is a game of government and business ganging up on the rest of society in the name of security. Government is the daddy, business is the favorite trusted son, and everything else is their hunting ground. The conservative dream. [amazon.com]
Ryan Fenton
I smell FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
God, talk about FUD..... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Truman show (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh wait - its a bad thing, not having a life of my own...
Oh dear (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone remember the scare about the NSA commissioning programs that could pull together information on individuals from all over t'interweb and produce coherent, intelligent reports on behaviour patterns etc? The idea being that all of this data is available, but it's so massive and disparate that it would be almost futile to draw anything useful from it.
Seems kind of obsolete now, doesn't it.
Re:Visitors (Score:2, Insightful)
I for one will stay clear of this country... I just prefer to keep my privacy and not get shot.
Bye Bye British Democratic Heritage (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Visitors (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't be silly, we only shoot people if they live in the same house as a terrorism suspect. Stay away from them and you'll be fine. Unless you carry a table leg in a brown bag of course.
You should worry about bad bookeeping (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah let's give the cops more power and more data to peer into and let's give them more of an excuse to wave a piece of paper in my face and tell me "I don't care what you say, this piece of paper says I'm right and you're going to jail.." Yeah let's do that.
Too Complicated (Score:3, Insightful)
A much easier system would be to just let the government decide what you can eat, where you can go (and when), and what you can read (if anything). In fact, let the government set your schedule, issue you a uniform with a number on it, and install a chip in your head so you can be tracked 24/7.
Only then will we be safe from terrorists.
Tin foil hat brigade? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to the world of.. 1984 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*gasp* (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear UK people, it would be a good idea to invest in somthing like anonet [anonet.org] today since soon your msn/skype/aim/yim/gmail/email/computers/routers/a
laugh at me if you must, it will be abused, hacked, sold, stolen, exposed at some point
Not entirely sure the story is correct though.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nowhere have I seen anything that suggested this data will be available to 3rd parties such as shops but for sure, they want the data from shops.
Anyway, the UK government have a terrible record for producing big systems either to time, budget or function so we'll have nothing to worry about for ten years by which time it will have bankrupted us and will use kit no longer available and crash out with errors and timeouts all over the place. It will probably be a doddle to hack too so at least the crims will get something useful out of it.
Re:Terrorists (Score:2, Insightful)
And if we didn't know that Dubya is incapable of coming up with something that wicked, one could say that the Saudis (who are known to sponsor Osama) got prodded by your favourite villain. Cui bono [wikipedia.org], said the Romans. Thus, we should nuke US, not Iraq for 9/11! With someone brighter than Dubya, this could be more than a crackpot conspiracy theory.
If you read Lenin's works, he made accurate predictions and plans for WW2 in 1914, when WW1 just only started. He knew that communism won't be able to win just yet and that it's incapable of winning during the time of peace. The plan involved pairing up with Germany and then stabbing them in the back. Stalin didn't have as much insight and let himself get caught with the pants down with Plan Barbarossa -- just as his troops finished demolishing their own defenses and started cutting down the barbed wire on the border. Read Lenin and Suvorov if you want to know more.
Islamists use terror tactics because it often works. If the target concedes, islamists win; if the target fights back, islamists get more support. UK and US governments piggyback on their successes, and thus have a vested interest in having them _not_ destroyed.
Re:*gasp* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tuesday morning sarcasm (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you're being sarcastic, but it's not information being free - it's information being collected to control the masses - thus being a complete solution for the removal of freedoms.
A total surveillance society is a mere 10-20 years away. Every traffic light I approach I am taped. My face is scanned every time I go to a baseball game. The SCOTUS already upheld that I do indeed have to provide ID to a police officer even if I am not suspected of any wrong doing, at their whim.
Biometrics are the rage. Biometrics and RFID will be on my passport, in my license. The REAL ID act officially creates a national ID in the US. And so on...
While the US is behind the UK in terms of true overall survellance, it's not that far. 20 years from now, when facial recognition is perfected - or some new technology that can ready our DNA from a small distance exists - you won't need customer loyalty cards anymore.
And people will accept it all - because it will all happen slowly, over time, and add seeming convenience to everything. Why carry an ID or a credit card? The police car will instantly recognize you, know exactly where you've been in public in the past few days, weeks, months... Everywhere your car travels, RFID tags or your cell phone will give away your location and be recorded.
See, aside from the DNA sniffer... all of this is reality now. 1984 was a little ambitious - we needed a few more years to totally accept living in a police state, but that's because there was no MySpace back then to distract us from the realities of government total awareness.
Yeah, lable me a tin foil hat person, but I'm going to hold out as long as I can - no EZPass, no customer loyalty cards, a new non-RFID passport, etc., etc. I may go down, but not without some degree of a fight.
Re:Terrorists (Score:1, Insightful)
When Israel drops bombs from planes onto villages to deter the population from supporting the civic group Hezbolla, that is terrorism. When Hezbolla retaliates, sending rockets into the nose of the Jew, that is terrorism. When the United States starves an entire nation because it doesn't like its leader, that is terrorism. The USA-Israel-Britain axis is the largest terrorist group in the world. You don't have to expand the definition of terrorism for this to be true.
This has all the hallmarks of......... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Announce insanely over the top version of whatever it is you want to do
2) Sit back while the population freaks out for a while and make a token defence of it
3) Back off to the point you originally intended and watch the population sigh in relief your "capitulation" in the face of their protests.
Generally, if there's one thing to realise about New Labour it's that things don't leak from a source close to anyone in the government unless there's an agenda behind it.
No FUD (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Only those who have something to hide need fear (Score:5, Insightful)
Only those who honestly believe that this Government could organise an IT project in a datacenter need fear. The insane rantings of Blair and his Home Secretary Of The Month would be pretty damn terrifying, if I ever thought they will manage to build it and make it work. But there's very little evidence they will suddenly develop this ability.
Blair likes gigantic IT projects because they sound shiny and tough, and send taxpayers' money to Crapita by the billion. At which point a nice big chunk goes straight into Labour Party coffers. There's no real expectation that they'll need to do any real _work_ to continue being funded, thank God.
Re:Only those who have something to hide need fear (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all of them morally wrong. Past examples of 'things to hide' included race, religion and political affiliation. Putting the power to determine what is hide-worthy and infinite surveillance in the same hands effectively gives a small group complete control of a population. Control is not the foundation of a democratic government.
Re:Terrorists (Score:2, Insightful)
A little information... (Score:3, Insightful)
Statistically, that's not true. Smokers cost the NHS less over the course of their lifetimes on average, because they tend not to live as long.
This may be counter-intuitive, but it does illustrate very nicely how dangerous a little information can be. Not that this is at all relevant to the current discussion, of course. ;-)
Re:I was afraid for a moment. (Score:3, Insightful)
Contrary to prevailing beliefs on Slashdot, governments can become very efficient indeed when they have a mind to be. Case in point, the Holocaust. It was probably the most efficient government operation ever conducted. Executions continued even while under soviet bombardment and practically right up until the red army marched into the camp gates. Source [acusd.edu].
Godwin's Law, blah, blah. For a more mudane example of government efficiency, remember that only two things are certain. Death, and Taxes.
Re:Tuesday morning sarcasm (Score:5, Insightful)
And then be shocked to discover that most of your countrymen think moving into fascism is a good idea. At best, they will say that they do not support fascism - unfortuantly what they do support will look and act like fascism - just without the historical baggage associated with the term.
Instead of jumping right in organizing a rebellion (which, let's face it, is a lot of hard work and unlikely to succeed, at least in the the short to medium term), it's a lot easier to see if leaving the country is an option (assuming you can find somwhere on the planet to go) and if it is an option, take it.
Re:Tuesday morning sarcasm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Only those who have something to hide need fear (Score:3, Insightful)
People like this Minister will keep trying (and spending taxpayer money) until they get something that works "good enough".
The pretty & shiny ability of being able to get information on anyone anytime is just too attractive to control freaks like these types of guys.
Re:Tuesday morning sarcasm (Score:3, Insightful)
A poem comes to mind.... (Score:4, Insightful)
of gunpowder treason and plot.
For I see no reason that gunpowder, treason,
should ever be forgot.
Re:Tuesday morning sarcasm (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, why spend the effort to destroy when you can much much more easily disable?
For the same reason that V didn't simply disable the House of Parliament: the act of destroying - particularly by means of a well-aimed bullet - is intended to send a precise message to the authorities about the relative balance of power between the government and the people.
Re:Information overload (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see a lot of benefit from plugging supermarkets or bookstores into a crime database; their products are uncontrolled and their employees are not trained for apprehending or detaining suspects. The danger in proposals such as this is the so-called "cooling effect" that it has citizens. It begins a drift away from "presumed innocent." Instead, a book-purchaser is considered possibly criminal by default. In the same way that racial profiling causes minorities to mistrust police, so policies like this will (along with the inevitable screw-ups and abuses of information that will occur) will cause a mistrust of bookstore employees and the government.
The job of the government is to serve the people, not to make its own job easier.
Re:Only those who have something to hide need fear (Score:2, Insightful)
Could you imagine if they put an RFID into us [like in "Demolition Man"], and then they put and rfid device into the money! in the coins! or in the paper!
won;t somebody please think of the children!
Citizens of earth...this will be your last chance to escape to a new world! a world of liberty! a world of peace.
Re:Only those who have something to hide need fear (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't surprise me to see people being locked up because the system thinks they're escaped crims or terrorists because they have a similar name. OK, you get out again in a few months but try rebuilding yor life/career after that and keep smiling.
Re:I was afraid for a moment. (Score:3, Insightful)
Whilest it would provide a fair amount of amusement to me to watch the government screw up an IT system yet again (or rather, EDS or other complete idiots they decide to contract who have shown on numerous previous occasions to be incapable of running an abacus, let alone a national computer database+network), I can think of better things for my taxes to go on.
And you can guarantee that before there is *any* chance of the system being scrapped, it'll have to have been kludged and band-aided (expensively) a few hundred times over the course of several decades.
I might be slightly more inclined to spend that kind of tax money if the result is the people responsible for building a flawed security hole ridden system ending up in jail, but that's never going to happen - they'll just take a big payoff and wait until the next month when the govenment contracts them to screw up another project for an extortionate sum of money.
Forgive my cynicisim, but I've seen the same companies being contracted and screwing up in fairly major ways time and time again - when will the government learn to blacklist companies who cause major screwups or cost overruns?
Cardinal Richleu's quote (Score:3, Insightful)
We all do, say, buy, or otherwise involve ourselves in things that might not put us on everyone's best person of the year list. If you have access to enough information about somebody, simply through selective presentation one can create a danmning image of an otherwise innocent and decent indivual.
"And I see you bought drain cleaner, fertilizer, and firecrackers sir, clearly you are trying to build a bomb"
This is definately a serious potential for massive abuse.
Re:customer loyalty cards (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Labour party are socialist, not liberal (Score:3, Insightful)
A Lot of Fuss Over Nothing (Score:2, Insightful)
And to whoever it was who said about discussing policy in the UK rarely happens and policy discussion goes on all the time in the US: a seperation of powers only works if they are pulling in different directions.
Re:Tuesday morning sarcasm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Changed sides (Score:3, Insightful)
See, this is one of the problems. Not to pick on you, but let me use your anecdote as an example. People who think 'ok, I trust my government, let's go along with them and give up a tiny bit of privacy to get all this security they're advertising.' And they ignore us 'nutters' who are screaming things like "slippery slope! 1984!" thinking that we're just overreacting. But now fast forward 5 years and oho, look who was right! The government especially always lives up to the old saying "give em an inch and they'll take a mile." People need to understand that whatever the government is asking for, it has more than just the advertised motive. Whether for good or ill (usually ill with respect to the populace) there are more issues at stake than what they tell us because that's what politics is, it's a game of chess, a subtle pawn move today sets up the checkmate tomorrow. Every government in the history of man has sought to expand its own power, that's a rather strong precedent to go against. (And I don't care about the pedantic historian who posts with a few counterexamples, over 1000s of years, such examples are anomolies.) It always amazes me when ignorant people just assume new powers will be used for good because the government so far has been good. This is especially risky in governments where we change leaders every so often. Sure, you may trust the people in charge today, but 10 years from now will you have the same faith in the leaders elected then? You'd better because those laws won't be going off the books, not w/o a revolution.
I hope you personally have learned from your mistake of supporting any loss of freedom, no matter how trivial, and are preaching the word of caution to others. It's a bum deal, never willingly give up what you would otherwise fight to protect, even if you trust the current government.
Re:Tuesday morning sarcasm (Score:2, Insightful)
It probably fits.
Maybe 'Reaming Out'?