NO2ID News No. 46
25 May 2006
Not too late to promote our 'Renew for Freedom' campaign
There are just a few days of our renew for freedom campaign left. Now is the
time to encourage friends and family to renew their passport for almost half
the predicted cost of the forthcoming ID card/passport and without compulsory
fingerprinting, iris scanning and entry on to the National Identity Register.
Many supporters have sent emails to people they know highlighting the benefits
of early passport renewal. For instance over at www.elephantintheroom.info you
can read the text of an email that one supporter sent to around fifty of his
friends - a number of whom went on to renew their passports. Please if you can
spare a few moments spread the word.
During May a diverse and growing list of organisations have signed up to the
campaign including: Liberty, Privacy International, the Green Party, the Scottish
National Party, Our World Our Say, Stop the War, A World to Win, UKIP, the
Countryside Alliance, Statewatch, Globalise Resistance, New Alliance, Corporate
Watch and the Liberal Democrats, whose Home Affairs team this week renewed
their passports to demonstrate their opposition to ID cards.
£51 spent renewing your passport could prove to be one of the wisest investments
you and your family ever make in their privacy and freedom. It's that simple.
For more details and to download our factsheet go to http://www.renewforfreedom.org/
What's next?
New local groups
We have new local groups in Eastbourne, Deptford, Colchester and Bath . A list
of groups (and a new interactive map) can be found at
www.no2id.net/localGroups
NO2ID Art Exhibition
Brighton and Hove NO2ID will soon be calling on artists across the country to
submit work for a unique exhibition in autumn 2006, drawing together the best
creative ideas on the theme of identity and what it means to be entering ‘the
database state’. The exhibition of work by illustrators, painters, cartoonists,
filmmakers, textile designers, ceramicists, sculptors, photographers and animators
will help visualise the implications of ID cards in our society. Entries will
be judged in 3 categories: professional and student artists, adult amateurs and
under19s. The panel will be looking for great ideas as much as skilled and polished
work. NO2ID Brighton and Hove are also looking for sponsors as well as artists,
contact
brighton@no2id.net for
more details.
25th May - Eastbourne NO2ID meeting
Thursday, 25th May 7.30pm at the Underground Theatre, Central Library, Grove
Road, Eastbourne, roughly 1 min walk from Eastbourne station, and 2 mins from
central bus stops in Terminus Road. National coordinator Phil Booth will be speaking.
at the event.
27th May - Bristol NO2ID benefit gig
Saturday, 27th May at The White Bear, top of St Michael's Hill, £3. Featuring
the Grumpy Man DJs, Paul Bradley from The Organelles, Mephisto's Island and Chris
Beckett. For more info contact Dave Gould(
bristol@no2id.net)
30th May - First meeting of Bath NO2ID
Tuesday, 30th Mat 7.30pm at the Garricks Head, Bath. It's a nice, quiet little
pub next to the Theatre Royal on Sawclose. For more details contact
bath@no2id.net
30th May - Cambridge NO2ID pub meeting
Tuesday, 30th May 7.00pm at The Old Spring, Ferry Path, Cambridge CB4 1HB (
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=545469&y=259411&z=0&ar=Y).
Come along to meet fellow ID card opponents, get a badge and window sticker,
and plan future activities. For more details contact
cambridge@no2id.net or
text/call Andrew Watson on 07710 469624, or just come along on the night.
30th May - NO2ID Glasgow meeting
Tuesday, 30th May 7.30pm in Mono, King Court, King St. near the Trongate. Alternative
venue if Mono has a noisy event that night: Laurie's bar,
across the road. For more details see
http://www.no2id-scotland.net/glasgow/meeting.html
1st June - NO2ID Milton Keynes meeting
Thursday, 1st June 8.00pm at the Church of Christ the King, Frithwood Crescent,
Kent's Hill, Milton Keynes. Make a note in your diary now! See
http://www.mkno2id.org/ or
contact
milton.keynes@no2id.net for
more information.
3rd June - NO2ID Cambridge will have a stall at Cambridge Strawberry Fair
Saturday, 3rd June. Volunteers are needed to man the stall for 2 hour shifts
from 10am until 10pm: please contact
cambridge@no2id.net,
or text/call Andrew Watson on 07710 469624. We signed up 500 supporters in 5
hours last year - I'd like to triple that number this year. (Strawberry Fair
info:
http://www.strawberry-fair.org.uk)
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.
See
http://govnet.co.uk/security/index.php
What just happened?
Renew for freedom news
On May 15th campaigners from NO2ID Glasgow staged a stunt at Glasgow Passport
Office as part of the renew for freedom campaign. Dressed in white boiler suits
and wearing barcode masks they hung banners on the side of the passport office
and posed for press photographers before queuing to renew their passports.
However their renewal was cut short when they were told by the head of security
that the facility for handing passport applications in at the door of the office
had been "suspended". The campaigners, who were joined by local member
of Scottish Parliament Patrick Harvie, had to make alternative renewal arrangements
but on the plus side had a much better story to offer the local media.
Meanwhile NO2ID Brighton activists converged on Ship Street Post Office, in
Brighton on May 10th, to put over the message: Renew your passport and buy
ten years of freedom from the Government’s ID card scheme. The Grim Reaper
- with scythe in one hand and a passport in the other - became a focal point
for passers-by as hundreds of passport renewal fact sheets were handed out
and the message was blared out on a megaphone. Southern FM covered the story,
which went out to around 350,000 listeners on their drive time show. Extended
coverage was also used by Capital Gold Sussex on the 6 o’clock news.
Other NO2ID groups around the country have managed to get a good deal of
local press coverage for the campaign, well done to all involved.
Dutch ID “tombola” fails to cut crime
Compulsory ID in the Netherlands has become a “tombola”, says national daily
De Volkskrant. Fines for non-compliance are being left up to the “mood” of individual
police officers. The obligation to show ID was introduced on 1 January 2005 as
an anti-crime measure. A full evaluation will be held in 2008, but the Dutch
Public Ministry is already admitting that the new law has had no noticeable influence
on crime rates, the paper claims. In fact, one minor crime wave may actually
have been triggered by compulsory ID - thefts of identity documents have increased.
By the beginning of May, 81,709 fines had been handed out for failure to
show ID, the Dutch monitoring centre MMI reports. About half of those fined
refused to pay and are being taken to court. It also notes some function creep.
Banks have taken to scanning people’s ID as a condition of keeping their accounts
open.
Double Dutch Fines
A further illustration of the of Dutch ID cards fiasco is the fact that minor
offences such as cycling without lights or urinating in a public space are now
being double fined (one fine for the offence itself and one for not showing a
valid ID). Those most fined were beggars, tramps and young people(the minimum
age for ID cards in Holland is 14). Jurisprudence over the last year shows that
a few thousand of the fines were in fact illegal because there was no valid reason
for demanding identification. The Dutch government is planning a central database
with the biometric details of every person obtaining a new passport. From August
2006 a picture will be included on the chip, later on fingerprints of both index
fingers will be added.
Government have no cash for inquiry but ID cards budget is ok
The Home Secretary, John Reid, has announced that the Home Office cannot spare
any funds for a full public inquiry into the bomb attacks that took place in
London last year. But how does that square with the money to be spent on ID cards,
which in any case will not prevent such incidents from occurring? The home office
in response to a written question on 10th May stated that they have evaluated
the effectiveness of ID cards in contributing to preventing and disrupting terrorism,
but they went on to say that "for reasons relating to national security,
it is not possible to go into details". In fact the recently released "narrative" into
the events of last July reveal that the police were able to identify the "bombers" from
membership and credit cards within just a few hours. If a full public inquiry
would be a misdirection of funds, what would compulsory biometric ID cards be?
Minister calls for better CCTV in order to integrate with National Identity
Register
The BBC reports that Baroness Scotland has called for higher resolution CCTV
equipment, which, she believes, could be used in conjunction with the National
Identity Register to identify criminals.
http://www.no2id.net/news/newsblog/?p=405
"ID" in the news
Some 2,700 people have been wrongly labelled as criminals by the Criminal Records
Bureau (CRB), it has emerged. The mistakes have led to some people being turned
down for jobs.
The Home Office faced fresh controversy last night after ministers were accused
of accidentally repealing the law which makes it an offence to have a forged
passport. In an extraordinary development, it was claimed that Labour's Identity
Cards Act had repealed the existing laws before the new laws to replace them
come into force. Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, said: "This
latest Home Office disaster has accidentally made it legal to own a false passport."
Pet Shop Boys' ninth album touches on regime change, immigration, ID cards and
the politics of fear. On Integral, the poker face slips slightly: as he protests
against ID cards, you catch the faintest tremor of rage in Neil Tennant's voice.
The most common retort against privacy advocates - by those in favor of ID checks,
cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures - is
this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?" Some
clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause
to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong,
and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something
wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right
as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a
wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining
the human condition with dignity and respect.
When they make the film of the great ID card fiasco, it may well open with a
dinner at the National Liberal Club, where the Great and Good of the IT industry
warn of impending doom.The Real Time Club has invited Professor Ian Angell of
the London School of Economics to dinner to explain just how bad it can be.
Following the news that 1,500 UK passports have gone missing in transit to Government
agencies in the past two years, revealed in a Parliamentary Answer to Stewart
Hosie MP (SNP), it has now been revealed that 646,323 passports have been lost
or stolen passports since the Identity and Passport Service's launch in December
2003 to this March.
IT professionals appear split over the introduction of identity cards, with slightly
more coming out against the planned scheme than in support of its introduction.(42%
Yes, 58% No)
A Home Office department is fingerprinting under-fives, and may include babies,
in a biometrics ID scheme. The trial ends the department’s technological taboo
on enrolling very young children in identity checks. Details of the scheme emerged
after the Home Office released an internal report under the Freedom of Information
Act. The UK could be one of the first countries to fingerprint under-fives –
and possibly the first. When Malaysian police last year proposed fingerprinting
of babies there were strong protests from civil liberties groups in the country.
An internal investigation at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has found
that civil servants are colluding with organised criminals to steal personal
identities on "an industrial scale". Ministers have been privately
warned that the investigation will show that hundreds of thousands of stolen
personal details have been ripped off from official databases, often with inside
help. Key personal details such as national insurance numbers can be used to
commit benefit fraud, set up false bank accounts and obtain official documents
such as passports.
Expensive, insecure and ineffective. The government's ID cards scheme has been
slated by a researcher at IBM. Michael Osborne attacked the project on the grounds
of cost, among a number of other reasons.
(Please send me any items of interest you encounter - Editor(newsletter@no2id.net)
)
Publication details: © NO2ID 2010 - This document may be freely redistributed
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