29 April 2009

David Blunkett’s latest comments on the National Identity Scheme are at best absurd. The circular logic deployed by the former Home Secretary borders on mendacious.

In words described as ‘a major shift’ (Evening Standard) and a ’significant U-turn’ (Guardian), Blunkett called at a trade conference yesterday for the ID card and National Identity Scheme to be scrapped in favour of introducing compulsory biometric passports for all. (1) But the descriptions are wrong.

To be clear: Blunkett, the godfather of the National Identity Scheme in its original form in 2003 – and before that of the ‘entitlement card’ – is suggesting scrapping a nominally ‘optional’ (2) biometric-based, database-backed ID card, that you would be compelled to register for on applying for a passport, and replacing it with a compulsory, biometric-based, database-backed passport. (3)

He then added: ‘Most people already have a passport but they might want something more convenient to carry around than the current passport and may be able to have it as a piece of plastic for an extra cost.’

The former minister suggests something smaller and more ‘convenient’ – a wallet-friendly card perhaps? (4)

NO2ID (5) spokesman Michael Parker said:

Since he left the cabinet, Mr Blunkett’s comments on the identity scheme have been variously confused, reckless and wrong.

His latest addition is bafflingly to advocate replacing one scheme with another that is almost identical – all under the guise of a U-turn. This is deranged.

It doesn’t matter what shape it is or what they call it – you would still be interrogated for your personal details; they would still take your fingerprints; and there would still be a database through which the Home Office would track you for the rest of your life.

Blunkett’s approach to ‘abandoning ID cards’ is remarkably similar to the smoke and mirrors approach taken by the Home Office itself earlier this week when announced that the Interception Modernisation Programme in the form of a ’super-database’ of all communications traffic would be ‘dropped’… Yet, the substance of the scheme – to intercept and store all the details of to every citizen’s every communication for official use would be kept intact – just the practical problems of storage and management delegates to Internet Service Providers themselves.

ENDS

NOTES
(1) See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8022791.stm
(2) The Identity Cards Act 2006 allows the Home Secretary to ‘designate’ documents that would require registration on the National Identity Register database before they can be issued – for example, passport, CRB certificate, or driving licence, without which you would ‘voluntarily’ be choosing not to travel, work or drive.
(3) The upgrade of passports under Royal prerogative without debate in 2005 has been used since then as a pretext to build sytems that are intended to be part of the wider National Identity Scheme. With the objective of merging the two the UK Passports Agency has been absorbed into a rapidly expanding Identity and Passport Service.
(4) The current proposal for the ID scheme is that an ID card would either be purchased with a passport as a package, or might be obtained separately for a £30 registration fee. Once a citizen’s personal details have been registered on the database, part of the application process, the legislation says an identity card must be issued itself, and the citizen would be obliged to keep all details updated for life.
(5) NO2ID has been since 2004 the national non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate.php for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing, and http://www.no2id.net/datasharing for how it all fits together.

Embargol 00:01 Monday, 27 April 2009

The Home Secretary today makes a delayed announcement of a consultation on proposals for the so-called Intercept Modernisation Programme. It has been widely reported for some months, and plans were acknowledged by Lord West the security minister last week[1], that this would place Home Office ‘probes’ in the datacentres of every British internet provider at an estimated cost of £12 billion.

This would allow direct skimming of all traffic, making it massively easier to intercept email and monitor individual’s web use using existing powers. The Home Office would become a clearing-house, able to provide data ad lib to other government agencies. It would also become possible for the first time to collect and store details of all communications by everyone in the country so that government agencies could investigate friendship networks and personal habits using data-mining techniques [2].

Guy Herbert, General Secretary of NO2ID [3] said:

Just a week after the Home Secretary announced a public consultation on some trivial trimming of local authority surveillance, we have this: a proposal for powers more intrusive than any police state in history.

Ministers are making a distinction between content and communications data into sound-bite of the year. But it is spurious. Officials from dozens of departments and quangos could know what you read online, and who all your friends are, who you emailed, when, and where you were when you did so – all without a warrant[4]. Tracking your your every move is more efficiently creepy than reading your letters.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) See, for example: The Register ‘Spy chiefs size up net snoop gear’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/21/imp_dpi/

2) As suggested by Sir David Omand in his ‘A discussion paper for the ippr Commission on National Security for the 21st Century’ ‘Finding out other people’s secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules.’ – But the Home Office’s use of such a super-database is not limited to intelligence work – see note 4.

3) NO2ID is a national, non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate for a list of other ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing, and http://www.no2id.net/datasharing for how they fit together.

4) Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Home Secretary’s – not a court’s – warrant is required to read mail or listen to phone calls. But all the following may authorise themselves to examine communications data for their own purposes:

• 43 police forces in England & Wales
• 8 police forces in Scotland
• Police Service of Northern Ireland
• British Transport Police
• Port of Liverpool Police
• Port of Dover Police
• Royal Military Police
• Royal Air Force Police
• Civil Nuclear Constabulary
• Ministry of Defence Police
• Royal Navy Police
• Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs
• Serious Organised Crime Agency
• Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency
• United Kingdom Border Agency
• The Prison Service
• Approximately 474 local authorities throughout the UK
• Approximately 110 *other* public authorities, including almost all government departments, and Serious Fraud Office, Independent Police Complaints Commission, Charity Commission, Gambling Commission, and Royal Mail, to name only a few.

(source: report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc0708/hc09/0947/0947.pdf )

17 April 2009

Of over half a million uses of surveillance powers by officials each year only about 12,000 (or 1 in 400) is by a local authority[1]. Yet the review of the powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 announced by the Home Office today [2] chooses to emphasise the tiny minority of cases where local authorities (rather than the police, government departments or quangos), are involved in what is called in the jargon ‘intrusive surveillance’. It proposes a new official code of practice will deal with recently publicised abuses.

The monitoring of private telephone and internet communications, which the Home Office is currently working massively to expand, is not counted as ‘intrusive surveillance’. The collection of information about travellers’ movements through e-Borders scheme or of car journeys using automatic numberplate recognition by traffic cameras, is not within the official definition of ’surveillance’ at all.

Guy Herbert, NO2ID’s [3] General Secretary, said:

This is yet another sickening con-trick from an incurably mendacious department. The Home Office is taking advantage of the publicity surrounding a handful of special cases out of millions, to pretend to be limiting the surveillance culture that in fact it is rapidly expanding.

Who decides when watching you, bugging you, checking who you telephone, and overseeing what you read online are justified? The bureaucrat’s answer is the same organisations doing the snooping. We don’t need more codes of practice, a different set of boxes to be ticked. We need independent assessment of every surveillance request by a magistrate or judge, who can look at the facts, not the procedure.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) Source: Annual reports of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner
http://www.surveillancecommissioners.gov.uk/docs1/osc_annual_rpt_2007_08.pdf
and the Interception of Communications Commissioner
http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc0708/hc09/0947/0947.pdf

2) Home Office press release
http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=398807&NewsAreaID=2

3) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing, and http://www.no2id.net/datasharing for how it all fits together.