In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:49:51 +0100
<1360922.HC8R1bCLWY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> No ID Card Function Creep? Pull the Other One
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Now, tell me again why we should trust the UK government over ID cards? At
> | least it seems a few other people are beginning to have their doubts:
> |
> | The government should limit the data it collects on citizens for its ID
> | card scheme to avoid creating a surveillance society, a group of MPs has
> | warned.
> `----
>
> http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/06/no-id-card-function-creep-pull-other.html
The problem is not in the ID cards, but in the usage of
information related thereto. Briefly put, an ID card:
- has an identity
and is associated with records, each of which has:
- a location
- a time
- potentially, an action e.g., credit verification for purchasing
In the case of Oyster, it's apparently a tracking system
for the purpose of bus/subway fare. A vaguely similar
system (FastPass), which is attached here to vehicles,
allows tracking of a vehicle as it drives over one of
the San Francisco Bay Area bridges. It is not clear to
me what Caltrans, the managing authority for FastPass
(AFAIK), stores in the way of credit info.
An ID card is basically a public key into a number of
databases, all of which could conceptually be joined
together to figure out exactly where a person is at any
time of day.
Is this evil? Wish I knew for sure. Makes me nervous, though,
if not carefully controlled.
>
> RMS Adds a Little Oyster Sauce
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | I refrained from commenting because I have big problems with the Oyster
> | system.
> `----
>
> http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/06/rms-adds-little-oyster-sauce.html
>
An interesting suggestion, making a tiny Faraday cage,
so that radiation (microwave, presumably) can't get into
or out of the card. Of course the powers-that-be might
frown on that sort of thing.
>
> Last week:
>
> ID Cards: Scandalous as Well as Idiotic
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | In other words, the UK government is trying to use a kind of financial
> | blackmail to keep its idiotic projects going: continue or cough up. And to
> | add insult to injury, it cloaks its activities in secrecy. What a morally
> | corrupt bunch.
> `----
>
> http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/05/id-cards-scandalous-as-well-as-idiotic.html
The trouble is that a dollar bill is an ID card as well --
though not a remotely readable one (unless one waves it
around and someone else has some sort of laser scanner).
Since dollar bills are freely transferable (they have to be
to make payments!), there's not much in the way of identity
issues except that someone might steal the actual bill
(muggings, robbery/theft).
That might be the essential difference.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Linux. Because life's too short for a buggy OS.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
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