NO2ID News No. 44
27 April 2006
Last push before local elections
With the local elections just a week away it's not too late to contact your local
candidates and ask them their position on the National Identity Register and
ID cards. Make it clear to them that you will never vote for a supporter of compulsory
registration or ID cards.
May's Passports renewal campaign launches - 'renew for freedom'
At our London volunteers meeting last week (18th April), NO2ID announced our
new "renew for freedom" campaign. A factsheet and renew for freedom
website were also launched. The aim is to encourage supporters to renew their
passports in May, ahead of the linkage between the passport and the National
Identity Register. Last month the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, said that "anyone
who feels strongly enough about the linkage [...] will be free to surrender their
existing passport and apply for a new passport before the designation order takes
effect." As detailed in our factsheet it is possible to renew your passport
at any time without having to pretend the dog ate it.
The price of a standard 10-year adult passport is set to rise to £93 when the
ID card scheme kicks in. If you renew now you get 10 years of freedom for just
£51 rather than waiting to pay £93 for lifelong surveillance.
The UK Passport and Identity Service(UKIPS) is currently phasing in new biometric
passports(digital facial image only at present) which contain an RFID(Radio Frequency
Identification) chip. May 31st is the last date on which it will be possible
to guarantee not getting an RFID chipped passport. To get an old-style 'digital'
passport you have to use the Premier (one day) renewal service, costing £96.50,
in a provincial Passport Office that isn't issuing passports from the main production
area (this will not work in London). Check the NO2ID discussion forum for news
of which passport centres people have used.
UKIPS is also building a network of 69 new interrogation offices for face-to-face
interviews for all first-time passport applicants. When the ID card scheme begins
to roll out they will extend interviews to all passport applications, including
renewals, for the purpose of fingerprinting applicants and enrolling them onto
the National Identity Register. As Baroness Seccombe put it during and ID card
debate in the House of Lords last year: "How many people know that when
their passport runs out they will be summoned to an interrogation centre before
being allowed to buy a few cans of beer in Calais?"
A passport that lasts until May 2016 will take you through not only the next
general election, but the one after that! £51 spent in May could prove to be
one of the wisest investments you and your family ever make in their privacy
and freedom. It's that simple.
More details and downloadable Factsheet.
N.B. At peak capacity the Passport Service issues over 300,000 passports per
month. It is not our goal to crash the system or inconvenience families wanting
to go on holiday in the summer.
What's next?
New local groups
New groups are being set up around the country every week. Recently set up local
groups include Leek, Morden and Doncaster.
List of groups
27th April - North Staffs NO2ID Meeting
Thursday, 27th April 8pm at the Swan pub, St Edward Street, Leek, the first meeting
of the North Staffs NO2ID group. As it's a largely rural area, it is planned
that meetings will be moved around to also take in Cheadle, Biddulph, Stoke,
Hanley and Newcastle. Contact
leek@no2id.net for
more details.
2nd May - Glasgow NO2ID Meeting
Tuesday, 2nd May 7.30pm at Mono. We have to start arranging a NO2ID Scotland
public meeting to take place later in the year. We also need to decide if we
are going to plan any stunts to go with the new Renew for Freedom campaign. Everyone
is very welcome to attend. Hope to see you there! (Alternative arrangements:
If for any reason Mono is not suitable on that evening then we will instead go
to Laurie's across the road).
More details
3rd May - Science and Technology Committee Evidence Session
Wednesday, 3 May 9.30am in Committee Room 8, Houses of Parliament, Westminster.
Evidence regarding the technologies supporting identity cards will be heard.
from a range of experts.
More details
5th May - The ID card debate - seminar
Friday, 5th May from 7pm to 9pm at 89 Bickersteth Road, Tooting, London SW17.
Organised by the Mauritian Lawyers Society. Free admission. Contact Salina Somanah
on 020 8516 7730 or 07870 773 792 for more details.
11th May - Swindon NO2ID Meeting
Thursday, 11th May 7.30pm at the Clifton Inn , Clifton street (off Kings Hill),
all welcome. Contact Lynda at
swindon@no2id.net for
more details.
16th May - NO2ID Volunteers Meeting, Central London
Tuesday, 16th May 7.00pm central London venue to be confirmed. All are welcome
to NO2ID's next volunteers' meeting. The meeting will have a theme of 'Work
and ID cards', looking at issues such as Criminal Records Bureau checks and the
National Identity Register. The meeting is free to attend but we will be asking
for donations to help cover the cost of the room hire.
4th July - Homeland and Border Security Conference (£695+vat)
Tuesday, 4 July at QEII Conference Centre, London, UK. a one-day event that will
look at the next steps for the security community. Featuring "key figures
from the IT sector, government, the police, justice, and the international community".
Cost - £695+vat for private sector, £175+VAT for public sector.
More details
What just happened?
Swindon NO2ID makes ID cards a local election issue
The Swindon NO2ID group has been working hard making ID cards and the National
Identity Register(NIR) an issue at the May 4th elections. Each of the 70 council
candidates have been surveyed. Group co-ordinator Lynda Warren said: "We
have asked candidates to return their responses in good time for us to notify
the electorate of their position. All replies will be posted on the public forum
(
www.talkswindon.org).
Let the debate begin! Indeed, it already has!" Swindon Borough Council passed
a motion opposing the use of national ID cards for access to local services in
January of this year.
Pennine Way sponsored walk ends
Congratulations to NO2ID supporter Bob who has completed his sponsored walk of
the Penine Way. Its not too late to
make
a donation.
National Union of Journalists(NUJ) Supports resistance to ID cards
At its Annual Delegates Meeting last month the NUJ passed a number of motions
against ID cards. The motions declared total opposition to the ID card scheme,
affiliated the NUJ to NO2ID and called on the NUJ to campaign against the National
Identity Register.
UK Identity and Passport Service (UKIPS) publishes plans
UKIPS
have published their 10 year corporate and business plans and their "Framework
Agreement". The agency proclaims that their mission is: "Safeguarding
your identity", whilst their vision is: "Leadership in identity authentication
and verification". The business plan states that: "From late 2007,
we expect to pilot the recording of additional biometrics for passports (fingerprints),
which will enable us to create second-generation biometric passports designed
to keep us in line with developing European Union (EU) standards." Yet another
reason to take part in our renew for freedom campaign.
International Civil Aviation Organisation(ICAO) admits that e-Passport may
serve as a beacon
In a supplement to
the ICAO e-passport specifications, upon which new UK biometric
passports are based, they have admitted the risk of skimming(
unauthorised
reading by eavesdroppers). The report says: "The e-passport
may serve as a 'beacon' in which the chip emits when initially activated data
(the UID number) that might allow identification of the issuing authority." The
report goes on to recommend that states do not transmit a unique identifier(such
as the National Identity Register Number) from their passport chips but acknowledge
that some may states may choose to for security reasons. The UK Passport and
Identity Service(UKIPS) say that UK passports will be protected against skimming
by an "advanced digital encryption technique". In January it was
reported that the Dutch biometric passport had already been cracked.
Correction to last newsletter: Transformational Government - Implementation
Plan published
In our last newsletter we reported on the publication of the government's Transformational
Government Implementation Plan. In our piece it may have seemed that we suggested
that Andersen Consulting(which has been re-branded as Accenture) was involved
in the Enron scandal. It was of course another part of the Andersen group, the
accountants Arthur Andersen, who were linked to the Enron scandal. Andersen Consulting
was a separate unit of Andersen Worldwide and in 2000 broke its ties with Arthur
Andersen, changing its name to Accenture in 2001. In the 1990s Andersen Consulting
oversaw the NISR2 project to modernise the national insurance computer system
which ran three years behind schedule and cost more that twice the original projected
cost.
Charles Clarke: ‘Ordinary people have the right to be protected’
The Independent this week published
an
edited version of a speech given by Charles Clarke this evening at the London School of Economics.
"ID" in the news
Schneier:
ID cards will worsen ID theft - ZDNet
Security expert Bruce Schneier has
slated the UK's ID card scheme, saying that not only will it not solve e-crime,
it will also make ID theft worse.
Head
of visitor tracking program wants global ID system - GovExec.com
The head of the Homeland Security Department's visitor tracking program on Tuesday
called for the creation of a "global ID management system" to make
travel easier while enhancing security.
Andy
Burnham has another snipe at the LSE Identity Project Report - Spyblog
Junior Home
Office Minister Andy Burnham is, yet again, hiding behind Parliamentary privilege
to repeat his false accusations about the alleged authorship of the widely
quoted London School of Economics Identity Project Report.
ID
cards 'taking focus away from e-crime'- ZDNet
The government is ploughing too many
resources into the ID cards scheme while failing to fight e-crime, a member
of the House of Lords has claimed. Lord Erroll today said plans to roll out
ID cards in the UK have been promoted by the government as a way of fighting
crime, but he questioned their validity.
ID
card spending doubles to £56m - ZDNet
The new Identity and Passport Service will
spend £56m on setting up the controversial ID cards project this year.
Tony
Blair's authoritarian populism is indefensible and dangerous - The Guardian
24/4/06
The rules of parliamentary procedure are arcane and the vast majority
of electors assume that ID cards are little more than a driving licence with
chip.
Providers
identify glitches in the state ID card plan - Sunday Telegraph
In
the next few weeks the Home Office will invite tenders for work on the flagship
national identity card programme. It is set to cost billions of pounds, create
the most comprehensive population database the world has seen, and is already
being called Labour's "plastic poll tax".
Labour
U-turn over ID card medical details - The Sunday Times
Identity cards are
to carry medical details, despite repeated government assurances that concerns
about privacy meant it would not happen.
Britain's
liberties: The great debate - The Observer
I have nothing to hide,
but I fear this scheme beyond any of your measures, for it is the dream of
every authoritarian government to be able to monitor its citizens around the
clock.
'Big
Brother' scheme axed - The Guardian
A £400m scheme to create a new national
population database dubbed a building block of the "surveillance society" was
finally killed off yesterday. Des Browne said this should be done through the
national identity card scheme instead. The decision is expected to add £200m
to the cost of the ID card scheme.
Move to store
'ID card' details for children - The Scotsman
A register of children's details
similar to that to be kept under the government's controversial ID card scheme
has been recommended by officials.
Minister
in race to push through ID cards - EPolitix
The government will push ahead
with the introduction of identity cards so the Tories cannot make the policy
an election issue, according to a Home Office minister.
Aussies
to get pseudo-ID Card - The Register
It looks like an ID Card. It smells
like an ID Card. Heck, it even spooks you like an ID Card. But, as Australia's
carbon copy Commonwealth Prime Minister says, "it ain't no ID card".
City
card planned for Westminster - Card Technology Today
Westminster is to become
the first council in London, UK, to launch a chip-based city card for its residents.
The card, based on the Oyster card platform will be used for leisure services,
library services, youth passport payments and public transport.
(Please send me any items of interest you encounter - Editor(newsletter@no2id.net)
)
Publication details: © NO2ID 2010 - This document may be freely redistributed
in one-to-one communications or physical copies as long as it is reproduced
in its entirety including this notice. It may not be mass-mailed without
the prior permission of NO2ID.
Newsletter Archive
