Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The Beginning Of The End For Identity Cards?
25 million peoples identities on the loose.
Names, addresses, dates of birth, Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance numbers and bank or building society account details, stuffed unencrypted onto two CD's by a junior official in a government department and lost in the post.
I can, and do, encrypt the files on my Mac with a click of a mouse but officials dealing with valuable and sensitive data, our data, don't even bother to do that.
Government assurances on the safety and confidentiality of the public's most private details will, finally if belatedly, surely wake up those complacent sleepy sheep who constantly bleat: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear."
Whether you've got anything to hide or not, you've got everything to fear.
Government assurances that our bank details are safe are a red herring diverting attention away from the most dangerous aspect of this incredible fiasco. Every parent should be gravely concerned not by the possible loss of their cash from a bank account, which can be averted by the simple means of changing passwords and monitoring accounts or, for the really paranoid, changing accounts, but the more dangerous and long-term implications of their children's names and dates of birth possibly falling into the wrong hands.
It is not so easy to change the names and dates of birth of our children, and while details of bank accounts may become obsolete fairly quickly, our kid's details will not, and could easily be sat on for months and years before being used for criminal means.
As for the assurances from government that this could never happen to data gathered for the National Identity Register, the heart of the ID card scheme, surely anyone who believes that must be extremely simple, to the extent of not being merely a sheep, but a dead sheep.
This incident is a grim insight to the realities and costs of living in a surveillance state, whose government and officials are obsessed with the collection of data concerning every aspect of the individual citizen's life not, as they would have us believe, for our benefit and safety, but to better control our lives.
HOME
Names, addresses, dates of birth, Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance numbers and bank or building society account details, stuffed unencrypted onto two CD's by a junior official in a government department and lost in the post.
I can, and do, encrypt the files on my Mac with a click of a mouse but officials dealing with valuable and sensitive data, our data, don't even bother to do that.
Government assurances on the safety and confidentiality of the public's most private details will, finally if belatedly, surely wake up those complacent sleepy sheep who constantly bleat: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear."
Whether you've got anything to hide or not, you've got everything to fear.
Government assurances that our bank details are safe are a red herring diverting attention away from the most dangerous aspect of this incredible fiasco. Every parent should be gravely concerned not by the possible loss of their cash from a bank account, which can be averted by the simple means of changing passwords and monitoring accounts or, for the really paranoid, changing accounts, but the more dangerous and long-term implications of their children's names and dates of birth possibly falling into the wrong hands.
It is not so easy to change the names and dates of birth of our children, and while details of bank accounts may become obsolete fairly quickly, our kid's details will not, and could easily be sat on for months and years before being used for criminal means.
As for the assurances from government that this could never happen to data gathered for the National Identity Register, the heart of the ID card scheme, surely anyone who believes that must be extremely simple, to the extent of not being merely a sheep, but a dead sheep.
This incident is a grim insight to the realities and costs of living in a surveillance state, whose government and officials are obsessed with the collection of data concerning every aspect of the individual citizen's life not, as they would have us believe, for our benefit and safety, but to better control our lives.
HOME
Labels: Brown, Children, Computer, ID Cards, Labour, Politics, State
© Colcam 2005-2007
