13 September 2007
SAY 'NO2ID' AT PARTY CONFERENCES
NO2ID have joined forces with Friction.tv (Channel 5 News partners) so that you
can have your say on the National Identity Scheme and the database state at
three of the upcoming party conferences. Friction.tv will be recording 3 minute
'vox pops' on the topic of your choice at the LibDem, Labour and Tory
conferences, and the most popular subjects will be broadcast on Channel 5 News'
YOUR VIEWS segment.
Liberal Democrats: Brighton Centre, 15th - 20th September
Labour: Bournemouth International Centre, 23rd - 27th September
Conservatives: Winter Gardens, Blackpool, 30th September - 3rd October
If you can't get along to any of these, then please visit Friction.tv on the web
and add your comments to the current ID cards debate -
http://www.friction.tv/debate.php?debateno=851 - or even start your own.
Thank you to everyone who responded to last newsletter's request for volunteers.
We are looking for still more people to help leaflet each party conference,
dates and locations as follows:
Cooperative: 12th - 15th September, Westminster
Plaid Cymru: 13th - 15th September, Llandudno
Green: 13th - 16th September, Liverpool
UKIP: 5th - 6th October, Limehouse, London
SNP: 26th - 28th October, Aviemore
If you can help - you may even be attending as a party member - please send an
e-mail to volunteer@no2id.net with the name of the conference you would like to
help with in the subject line.
What's next?
Local groups news
We have local groups all over the country and in 36 of the 69 locations of ID
interrogation centres (see www.no2id.net/getInvolved/idCentres.php). If you can
help to set up a local group in one of the remaining towns then please contact
us at (office@no2id.net). A full list of local groups can be found at
www.no2id.net/localGroups
Saturdays 1pm - 3pm - NO2ID Edinburgh street stall
Every week, weather permitting, you will find our campaigning stall at the east
end of Princes Street, opposite the Balmoral Hotel. Do drop by for a chat. New
volunteers - please contact John (edinburgh@no2id.net), and for more group
information see http://www.no2id-scotland.net/edinburgh/
Most Saturdays 2pm - NO2ID Glasgow Street Stall
Most Saturdays there are stalls in Glasgow city centre (usually Buchanan Street)
from about 2pm. Volunteers are always welcome, please contact Geraint if you
would like to help: glasgow@no2id.net.
17th September - Manchester NO2ID at Manchester University Freshers' Fair
Monday 17th September - Thursday 20th September, 10:30am-4pm: Manchester
University Freshers' Fair. We will be encouraging the creation of a Students
Against ID society at the Manchester Uni Fresher's Fair. If you are a Manchester
Uni student and able to help us with this, please mail us on manchester@no2id.net.
18th September - Glasgow NO2ID Meeting
Tuesday 18th September, our regular fortnightly meeting at 8pm in Mono. All
welcome. Map: http://www.glasgow-no2id.org.uk/meeting.html
Passport interrogations (Glasgow)
Glasgow NO2ID are keen to hear from anyone who has been summoned to attend the
interrogation centre at Blythswood House after applying for their first
passport. Please contact Geraint at glasgow@no2id.net or Charlie at
myspace.com/no2idglasgow
20th September - NO2ID Edinburgh meeting
Thursday, 20th September 7pm at the Quaker Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace,
Edinburgh EH1 2JL. The Scottish National Entitlement Card is an ID card in all
but name. A million of them have been given out to pensioners and the disabled,
who were given to believe that they were applying for a new type of bus pass.
However it is planned to be a multi-purpose entitlement card which will be used
to give access to libraries, health services and so on as well as travel. John
Welford returned his card and has been battling with the authorities against
this scandalous deception for over a year in an attempt to be given a simple bus
pass. He will tell his story at the meeting.
Saturday 22nd September - NO2ID Cambridge Stall
Saturday, 22nd September 10am - Cambridge NO2ID'S next street stall will be in
the usual spot outside Cambridge Guildhall. Location Map:
http://tinyurl.com/eo42r. As ever, volunteers to help very welcome - please
email cambridge@no2id.net, or text/call 07710 469624 if you can make it.
2nd October - Highbury NO2ID at Islington Council meeting
Tuesday, 2nd October 7:30pm. Highbury NO2ID has a question tabled at the
council's public meeting. The meeting starts at 7.30pm and you will need to be
there at this time, however our question has an early slot on the agenda and you
can leave afterwards. NO2ID supporters are very welcome to come along! Venue:
Islington Town Hall, Upper Street, Islington, N1 2UD. Contact highbury@no2id.net
for more information.
13th October - Manchester NO2ID Street Stall
Saturday, 13th October 1-3pm in St. Anne's Square. The main objectives of the
afternoon will be to raise awareness among the public, engage people in
discussion about the NIR, and collect petitions for the NO2ID petition to keep
people in touch with the campaign. We'll meet in the square itself at 1pm to set
up shop; feel free to join us to lend a hand or just chat. You don't need any
experience or equipment, just a bit of time to spare and a friendly smile!
17th October - Manchester NO2ID Meeting
Wednesday, 17th October 7-9pm in the upstairs function room of the Town Hall
Tavern, Tib Lane, Manchester. Sadly, this venue is not wheelchair-accessible;
please contact us if you have accessibility needs. At our monthly meetings we
discuss the state of the NO2ID campaign, what we've been up to recently and
where we're going in future. Everyone is welcome, newcomer or not, curious or
committed. The Town Hall Tavern serves reasonably-priced, good quality food
until 8pm so you don't need to pop home for tea - you can even order your meal
brought up to the function room.
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What just happened?
Cambridge NO2ID kicks off the campaigning season
The autumn NO2ID campaigning season got off to a strong start in Cambridge last
Saturday. We ran a stall all day at Cherry Hinton festival, and in addition to
signing up dozens of new supporters, also had a visit from Cambridge MP David
Howarth, who has supported the campaign since 2004:
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ajwatson/no2id-photos/07-09-08-Cherry-Hinton/). By
coincidence, The Cambridge Evening News also chose Saturday to run a short piece
we'd contributed on why it would be a bad idea to expand the National DNA
Database to cover the entire population: (http://tinyurl.com/258p7f). Meanwhile,
on the same morning, local radio station Q103 was giving NO2ID yet more
publicity by running a news piece on our objections to ContactPoint, the new
children's database:
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ajwatson/no2id-audio/07-09-08_Q103_0700.mp3).
That's a lot of campaigning for one day!
'Brits back biometrics' - so says CPP Identity Protection
This week the CPP Group plc, a company that "operates in the emerging Life
Assistance market" put out a press release trumpeting that the British public
are in favour of biometrics. The group say that this is shown from a poll that
they conducted. The company's press release is not forthcoming with the
questions asked, or the actual poll data - but that didn't stop the media
dutifully repeating the company's claims. The 'View London' website for instance
clearly decided to pump the story up a bit when they proclaimed: "The majority
of Britons are prepared to surrender their fingerprints and iris identities to a
central government database in order to fight crime, a survey suggests." Most
other media outlets picked up on the claim that "80 per cent of Brits say they
would be happy to swap their Chip and PIN keypad for a finger print reader"
though for some reason some reports forgot to mention that amongst the people
asked it was only "if it meant their personal details were safer". A December
2006 article 'A finger on the pulse' in 'The Banker' magazine pointed out that
there is "consumer resistance" to biometrics. In the article Charlie Harrow,
product manager at NCR's financial solutions division pointed out the problem in
the biometric versus PIN debate: "A PIN is a secret and a PIN can be changed if
it's compromised, and you have different PINs for different applications. With
biometrics, none of these things are true. A biometric is a unique identifier,
but it's not a secret."
Worldwide 'Freedom Not Fear' demonstrations
'Freedom Not Fear' is the slogan of an anti-surveillance demonstration to be
held in Berlin on 22 September. A coalition of German civil rights
organisations, professional bodies and political groups is backing the protest,
opposing biometrics and RFID in passports, ID cards and chip implants. The
German demo will be one of several taking place around the world on the same day.
See www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/125/116/lang,en/
Data-sharing and the abolition of privacy... not such a new idea
The government's plan to abolish privacy through the wholesale sharing of data
across government has been about longer than one might think. Back in
October 1996 when Labour was still in opposition Geoff Hoon, then party
spokesman on Trade and Industry responsible for "the information superhighway",
gave a telling interview to Wired Magazine. He said: "At the moment
we have a principal that information collected for one purpose should not be
used for another purpose. I'm not sure we're going to get the benefits of
integration if we can't provide information across departments. Removing those
limits, though, will be a big issue in the UK. That is something that we will
have to debate. It's not something that I could say that either the Labour Party
- or indeed the public - are ready for."
Of course there has been no debate over data-sharing. Hoon went on, showing an odd conception of privacy: "Personally I think the important thing about privacy is that if information is held about people,
it is held accurately. I think we need to be much more determined to allow
individuals access to information that is held about them, and much more
determined to ensure that it is accurate."
Ghana National ID Card TV Advertisement
In Ghana the government have been using a rather strange television advert to
promote their national ID card scheme. The ad features a choir of singers and a
karaoke style display of lyrics such as: "Our nation calls for duty now, all for
one and one for all". You can watch the video and sing along at
(http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=8087405).
Perhaps the UK government will commission a UK remix.
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"ID" in the news
Fears over NHS e-records system - BBC News Online 12/9/07
A key plank of the £6.8bn NHS IT upgrade project in England has come under
attack from MPs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6991540.stm
Matching genes for criminal injustice - The Register 12/9/07
Next week, the Nuffield council on Bioethics is set to publish its thoughts on
the ethics of using biometrics as forensic tools. In the lead up to the
publication of the report, to be entitled The Forensic Use of Bioinformation:
Ethical Issues, the debate about the use of DNA, particularly, has intensified.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/12/dna_database_debate/
ID cards 'fundamentally flawed' says face recognition expert - Daily Mail 11/9/07
Plans for identity cards are "fundamentally flawed" because people are so bad at
comparing mug shots to living people, a scientist has warned. Plans to use
computer face recognition software to identify criminals captured on CCTV are
similarly flawed.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=481261&in_page_id=1770
Social security scheme for residents - GulfNews.com 8/9/07
Dubai: The more than five million population in the UAE will be brought under a
social security scheme as the Emirates Identity Authority (EIA) strengthens the
ID card scheme, a top official said. "Once implemented fully, each resident and
UAE national will be a 'number' to us and the information will be stored in the
database for all government and non-government services".
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/09/09/10152365.html
Plan to put everyone in DNA database hinges on human rights case - Out-Law 7/9/07
Lord Justice Sedley's proposal to put everyone in the UK on a DNA database would
be dependent on a British man's case against the UK at the European Court of
Human Rights (ECHR), according to a privacy law expert. Michael Marper is
objecting to the retention of his DNA information on the Home Office's database,
despite the fact that he has never been convicted of a crime.
http://www.out-law.com/page-8455
Trial by biometrics: How do telephone lie detectors work? - BBC News Online 7/9/07
Britain's largest local authority, Birmingham Council, is to install a telephone
lie detection system in an effort to combat benefit cheats. Software that scans
speech patterns is being trialled for weeding out benefit cheats.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6983359.stm
All UK 'must be on DNA database' - BBC News Online 5/9/07
The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA
database, a senior judge has said. The present database in England and Wales
holds details of 4m people who are guilty or cleared of a crime.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6979138.stm
(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.
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