Baron von Lotsov

Sorry about the poor quality video but it should at least give you the gist of how well it went.

ID card protesters say Home Office is stifling public debateLatest Scottish news and headlines from Scotland | stv.tv | News

On this thread there are two people who were invited by our government because they are 'stakeholders', i.e. people who normally vote Labour and are just the kind of people who would benefit from them. Well not exactly though, even the people the government invite have more affection for our position than that of the government. The same deal with the one at Cambridge University, indeed one of the invitees there was handing out NO2ID literature at the meeting before it was due to start. We are everywhere!


NO2ID :: View topic - STV: ID card protesters say Home Office is stifling public..

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"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have..."

Baron von Lotsov

The story continues. Nine people have been arrested for attending a 'public consultation'!

Nine Arrested After Protest At Ministers Identity Cards Meeting (from The Herald )

They make the laws up as they go along.

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"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have..."

cassie

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The problem with these protestors is the lop-sidedness of their campaign, their protests!

Whilst they are being diverted into campaigning against ID cards, the private, commercial sector is hoovering up vast amounts of personal information about individuals which they can use or share amongst themselves generating income, without any safe guards for the individual citizen. It is common knowledge that there are people who, using established public records - electoral rolls, BMD registers etc - plus credit agencies, can already glean much information about us. This is part of the problem in trying to maximise witness protection, for example.

Try getting an insurance quote online for example. For buildings and contents insurance, the address is not sufficient. For car insurance, much more than vehicle details and the prospective policy holders' address is required.

When one phones many organisations now, the call is highjacked and often recorded - for training purposes, y'know!

Two wrongs don't make a right, but the anti-ID card brigade would get more sympathy and support from me if it included the commercial plundering of our personal details in its campaign. Quite simply, what is the point of stopping one hole in our privacy, if an even bigger and even less restricted hole is left untouched for our identities to be leached away? Remember, most [if not all] ID theft is effected by means of applications being falsely submitted in the private, commercial sector for money or goods!


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Baron von Lotsov

You will be pleased to know that we do cover all of the private stuff as well as public sector. We started with the view of removing the ID card because this was considered to be by far the most serious threat, but not on its own but the databases that are behind it that you don't see. We are fully aware that such information will be very likely exploited by the private sector, indeed we know it will. What with public sector and private sectors 'working together' this is even more likely to be the case.

I think the bottom line is that information is power and power is control. The public are being fobbed off that this is to protect them but the opposite will be true. It's a very serious problem but few see the full extent of it. We have to get popular public support though or else the government will claim we are a bunch of extremists. What the East German Stazi did is quite a graphical illustration and hence we used it to grab people's attention. Now though it seems the police have demonstrated that we are living in a police state already. From what I gather so far the arrests were unlawful.

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"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have..."

Baron von Lotsov

Here, it seems we have some friends in high places.

Canvassing for David Davis? Well, don't take my car - Telegraph

Isn't it lovely to have some people from the press who write for influential papers like the Telegraph regularly pop into your forum to see how things are going?

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"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have..."

Tom Collier

While I sympthise Cassie with your concerns about the private sector and think the private sector can be extremely bureaucratic, for me the issue of ID cards is basically about having to have one under pain of a criminal sanction.

Intellectual property aka information is an intrinsically problematic area. For those who want to find out the location, let alone the condition of someone in hospital or prison will be familiar with the havoc that the data protection act has wrought. The human right of privacy has introduced the possibility of the rich claiming privacy even when in a public place and well used to being photographed (see Niomi Cambell).

I think there needs to be some sort of system for patenting. I think you obviously can contract out of information being passed on. And there is a good argument for insurance providers to be limited by regulation, so they do not just provide to the very few through strenuous questioning (though there is the argument that this would not make economic sense for them anyway.

However, the issue about ID cards for me is not simply about the government knowing my mobile telephone number. As you say, this sort of information gets passed around and once given out you have few realistic options to stop it. The fundemental objection to ID cards that I have is that if I change my mobile number I HAVE TO tell the government, and pay for the priviledge, even if I am robbed. Furthermore the element of having to have one is a massive corrosion of the idea that the state should justify itself to citizens and not vice versa. Why should I have to have a card so that I can prove to the government who I am? I have never denied being who I am and besides which having a disguise or deceiving is not in itself a crime (see Sherlock Holmes). The state should have to justify itself when it intervenes in your life. You only need a driving licence if you want to drive, a passport if you want to travel.

You should not have to pay to have a card to allow you to be alive in your own country.

The ID card debate is not simply about data control.

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Tom Collier

Baron von Lotsov

Yes, that is basically our argument that it changes fundamental rights we have held over centuries, and coupled with that is how much power the government can acquire when it knows where everyone is all of the time. For example just by knowing your telephone number it can build up an incredibly detailed dossier on all of your personal life. Your friends, who you do business with and millions of other data mining applications, indeed I expect just by this sort of thing they could build up personality traits and that is only with your phone number. Another big one of course is your web details; there you are completely exposing yourself if they have every web page you have ever visited.

You might think the info is too much for them to process but computer power is very cheap these days. It doubles every 18 months as well and this is why they want this information. There will be no more democracy once a dodgy government uses all of this to stay in power and the biggest danger of all is that it is all so complicated that few see the real threat. The ones that do are often experts in their field and we have a fair few of them backing us as well including top professors of computer science at Oxford and Cambridge.

Indeed its interesting to see how this protest is working out since we are finding that even their own advisors are telling them it is a bad idea, even Microsoft, which was very much in bed with the government over IT contracts warned against it. The government have no one left with any standing that will publicly back it, but still they march on undeterred. This should indicate the importance they place on this scheme being introduced one way or another.

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"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have..."

Baron von Lotsov

Does anyone fancy a giggle?

Even though these cards are not exactly a laughing matter there is humour that occurs quite often with the cat and mouse game the government plays with your taxes to buy support for their scheme. You will be pleased to note on this occasion your taxes are going to good use though. They have just paid for this expensive/flashy looking site. Please indulge yourself in the comments posted by 16-25 year olds on their views of the scheme.


A word from the Home Secretary | ID Cards

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"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have..."

Baron von Lotsov

OK people, an update on the situation. Nine people were arrested for breach of the peace and a bit of a campaign was starting up to raise legal fees to take the blighters on. We had a very winnable case with reliable video evidence from STV and generally something we could have easily won. Now it transpires the NO2ID Nine have been receiving letters from the Scottish prosecution department informing them the case against them has been dropped. They are delighted with the outcome.

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"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have..."