We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Supermarkets have begun trials on coordinating RFID tags and security cameras in order to reduce theft as the first step in converging logistical and surveillance technologies.
The first step has already been taken through trials at a supermarket in Cambridge, where RFID tags were used to identify a purchaser through a security camera. In this particular case, a second camera at the checkout was used to ensure that the item was purchased legally.
The technology is also utilised on the London Tube.
Transport for London is also using RFID-style chips in its new Oyster smart cards to allow users to travel around the tube network. The intention is that registered users will have information such as their names and addresses stored on the cards, which would eventually replace season tickets.
A spokesperson for TfL said that the entry and exit points of each journey made by Oyster users were recorded and that, technically, it would be possible to track people through the tube network. Nicole Carroll, marketing director for TranSys, the consortium responsible for implementing the system, told the Guardian that all the journeys made by a user would remain stored in a central computer for the lifetime of the card.
The article produced a link to one of the lesser known groups within civil liberties and demonstrates the diversity of organisation that these concerns attracts. The campaign, known as Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy and Invasion and Numbering, or CASPIAN, is opposed to loyalty cards as those who opt out of obtaining a card tend to pay higher prices as the cost of preserving their privacy.
They also provide the answer for that burning question…With all the pain and suffering in the world and people starving in [fill in location here], how can you justify spending your time on supermarket club cards?
The answer includes: My passion happens to be preserving personal freedom, staving off totalitarianism, and resisting Orwellian intrusions.
Sentiments we can all agree with.
Over wide areas of the urban first world, the Panopticon State is already very much a reality. Folks like us, the contributors to White Rose, Samizdata.net and the grizzled veterans over at Privacy International cry out warning pretty much daily alerting people not so much about the simple fact of surveillance per se but rather surveillance plus data-pooling.
Yet it is important to draw people attention to the basic facts and encourage them to notice the evidence right in front of their eyes, peering down at them like menacing mechanical crows perched on metal branches jutting from walls everywhere, that we are increasing under surveillance by the state directly…
…and by companies whose surveillance footage states are increasingly reserving themselves the right to gain access to on demand…
But the people who would like our every move recorded and subject to analysis are not fools. They would rather you did not actually notice what is before your very eyes and so we are seeing the second age of CCTV: more aesthetically pleasing and less intrusive cameras, rather than the stark utilitarian carrion crows which currently predominate…
…rounder, blending in with the background…
…looking more like the lighting fixtures than the all-seeing-eye.
The second age of security cameras is at hand…still quite literally staring you in the face, but increasingly hiding in plain sight, counting on a mixture of clever design and the fact that familiarity breeds contempt. But Big Brother is still watching, only with a little more style and taste now. That just makes it more dangerous.
From WorldNetDaily:
Congressional investigators say they can’t assure the public that individuals’ personal data is being adequately protected from unauthorized reading, alteration or disclosure.
In a survey of 25 federal agencies and departments, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found a lack of compliance with the federal Privacy Act of 1974 significant enough to conclude “the government cannot assure the public that individual privacy rights are being protected.”
“Federal agencies are not following the law and, as a result, the personal data of citizens may be improperly collected and poorly protected,” Brase adds, “One system of records holds data on 290 million people. If that system happens to be one of the systems that’s out of compliance, the privacy rights of every citizen have already been violated, perhaps many times.”
This from Harry Mount in the Telegraph today, on speed cameras:
Speed cameras are no longer about safety – even the official at the Department of Transport, who I talked to yesterday, acknowledged, “We’re moving away from calling them safety cameras” – and all about raising cash. And when policemen’s eyes are full of pound signs, they can’t see whether your driving is dangerous, and they couldn’t care less, even when they claim otherwise.
It’s worth reading more of it of course, but that struck me as the killer para.
Silicon.com reports that David Blunkett is being called upon to incorporate his national ID card proposals into wider strategy to boost the adoption of smart cards for authenticating use of e-government services.
Concerns have been raised in a new policy framework on a ‘joined-up’ e-government smart card strategy issued by the e-Envoy this week that local and central government bodies will develop their own card schemes that will not be interoperable and result in people carrying a wallet full of different cards for different services. The document said:
The rollout and development of smart card schemes across the public sector has to date been somewhat fragmented and co-ordinated, resulting in duplication. If this continues, smart cards will not fulfil their potential to impact significantly on the e-government agenda and support e-commerce.
‘Multi-application’ cards have been touted by the e-Envoy for some time and another possibility put forward in the framework is the piggybacking of government services onto new or existing private sector schemes.
The Telegraph reports:
The introduction of identity cards is still some years away, Tony Blair indicated yesterday. Although he supported ID cards in principle, he said huge logistical and cost issues must be resolved.
In the long term it was right to move towards a system of ID cards. But it was not a quick fix for dealing with the influx of asylum seekers.
Mr Blair’s concerns are well-placed given Whitehall’s experience with less-ambitious IT projects.
The ID card is to be backed up by a “citizen’s database” on to which the details of 50 million people aged over 16 would have to be entered. The intention is to use biometric data – such as an iris recognition system – to verify a person’s identity. But this technology would be hugely expensive.
So no change of mind, just an administrative delay. In the meantime, we blog away…
From Liberty’s press release:
Shami Chakrabarti is to be the new Director of Liberty. She succeeds John Wadham who has been appointed Deputy Chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
…
Shami Chakrabarti joined Liberty in 2001 as the group’s ‘In-House Counsel’ and is now recognised as one of the UK’s leading authorities on anti-terror laws. She says that the measures adopted by the Government in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks have made her “ashamed to be a lawyer.”
The Guardian reports:
All asylum seekers who fail to register with the government should be deprived of access to British schools and hospitals, the former cabinet minister Stephen Byers said yesterday in a controversial speech designed to reassure working class voters that Labour understood their concerns about immigration.
At his monthly press conference yesterday, Tony Blair promised that the government would go further on asylum, and said he thought identity cards were right in principle even if the logistical cost was daunting.
In principle there is a case, in my view, for Britain moving towards … ID cards. However, there are huge logistical and cost issues that need to be resolved. It’s worth looking – which is what we are doing – at how you can resolve them, but it’s not a quick-fix for the system because of the amount of time and the logistical process in introducing them.
Mr Byers, in his proposals on illegal entrants who fail to claim asylum, proposed that all employers should get automatic fines of £2,000 for each illegal immigrant found at work.
This would make the body creating the demand for labour – the farmer, hotel or restaurant owner, multinational company or government department – take responsibility for the people employed on their behalf. Special squads should target known areas of illegal working.
Britain has a murky record of official secrecy which stretches back to the Elizabethan era, the BBC points out.
“We won’t get those new books for two more years,” laments Morrison, who teaches in Manchester, Mo., near St. Louis.
To a large extent, this leaves secondary and even grammar school teachers relying on their own wiles to incorporate 9/11 and the events that have followed in rapid fire order into the classroom.
“The integration is challenging,” Morrison says about bringing Sept. 11 material into her lessons. Morrison says that last year she juxtaposed the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa with Al Qaida’s Osama bin Laden. “Would Villa be considered a terrorist today,” Morrison asked her class?
History is more important than this. History is more important than a teacher’s personal agenda. If we can’t rely on teachers to present facts rather than opinion who can we rely on?
Which isn’t to say that history is a collection of numbers and facts. It is much more than that. But it is important to look at history objectivly and without bias. Coming to the argument with many preconceived notions and biases, as these teachers appear to have, does nothing for the students. In fact, it hurts them. History becomes meaningless if it changes to fit a bias. Orwell taught us that lesson. History is written by the victor, but we must make sure that it is also true. If not, then we have lost it.
“Obvious parallels exist especially when looking at World War II.” Some are well-trod ground: 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, for instance. Others are more subtle. For instance, Chase says she asked students to compare the internment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s to the increased scrutiny Arab-Americans have come in for following 9/11.
At the same time, it is important to look at history from all sides. America is not perfect. But is it really fair to compare increased scrutiny to the Japanese interrnment? Did FDR come out days after Pearl Harbor and urge Americans to not lump all Japanese together? I don’t remember hearing that speach.
This is why I want to teach. I think that many teachers have lost their way in their zeal. There is far too much emphasis on groups and collectivism in schools today. There is far too much PCness in schools today. There are far too many biases in schools today. And far too little honest teaching. History transcendes politics. At least it should. If it doesn’t, we are in danger of losing it.
via USS Clueless
Andy Duncan over at Samizdata.net gives 20 reasons why ID cards are wonderful. Frankly it’s a fraud, he can’t provide even one…
Who’d have thought it? The UK Department of Health has said ID cards are the best way for removing health tourism from the UK government’s dreadful National Health Service (NHS). What a coincidence that the Home Office, which has been struggling for decades to find a problem necessitating an ID card solution, are trying to introduce just the very thing. And at this exact moment in time? Fancy that.
And here’s the best part. State-subsidised UK family doctors already refuse people access rights to their medical lists, if they don’t have the correct UK citizenship qualifications or residency permissions. Yes, the very people whom the ID card is supposed to prevent abusing the glorious wonders of the NHS, are already prevented from abusing it, at least up to the point the government is prepared to stop them. And whatever happens, the Department of Health have said, nobody will ever be refused emergency treatment, whatever their circumstances.
So currently, without ID cards in place, all those whom the state deems invalid for NHS treatment must go to Accident and Emergency departments, which will treat everyone who turns up regardless of status. And in the envisaged ID card NHS future, all those whom the state deems invalid for NHS treatment must go to Accident and Emergency departments, which will treat everyone who turns up regardless of status. Err…Doh?
The only solution to stop ‘health tourism’, where hapless British taxpayers are forced to subsidise the health needs of various global parasites, is to abolish the NHS. Immediately.
That way, everyone pays for what they need, or insures themselves against what they might need. And Britain can start becoming a welcoming place again, which people only come to for its wet Welsh weather and its fine Breakspear ales, rather than trying to sponge off our coerced goodwill after fighting their way through malevolent Blunkettesque security, at the ports of entry, before finding the nearest organised crime ID card forger.
Is this solution too simple, or should I be strung from the nearest lamp-post for daring to suggest that the great white elephant of our wondrous National Health Service should be slaughtered right here, and right now? String me up, baby. It can’t come a moment too soon.
Via Samizdata.net
This Telegraph piece by John Mortimer is a characteristic mixture of good ideas and bad ideas, of humbug and whatever is the opposite of humbug. I’m sure that all White Rose readers would (a) agree with that characterisation, but (b) argue fiercely about which bit is humbug and which not. Which is the whole idea of this blog. Nevertheless I’d file it under White-Rose-relevant, so here are a few sample paragraphs to make that point:
So, through much of my life, I have witnessed what seemed to be a slow but measurable improvement in the administration of the law. That improvement was to continue, strangely enough, only until the advent of a Labour Government that seemed to have been born without a single civil libertarian instinct.
So now jury trials are to be diminished, previous convictions will be allowed in evidence so defendants will be convicted on what they did in the past, the presumption of innocence has been severely dented and the great principle that a guilty act must contain a guilty intention will be held not to apply in rape cases.
The right to habeas corpus has been denied in certain cases, where suspects may now be held in prison without the hope of trial or charges levelled against them. Just as shamefully, Tony Blair seems about to agree that British subjects should be subjected to what is a parody of a fair trial in Guantánamo Bay. Our great constitutional liberties, struggled for down the centuries, are now being denied.
The righteous wrath of Rumpole will be raised by the intention of the Home Secretary to remove sentencing from judges and hand it over to the vote-hungry hands of politicians anxious, as judges are not, to score political points and please the newspapers.
And so on and so forth. Read at will. Agree, and disagree.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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