Barcode Nation

One of the big hopes of civil liberties campaigners is that a change of government will bring an end to Labour’s creeping surveillance state. Of course the reality will be somewhat different, but if the politicians keep to their word, we should at least see an end to ID cards and ContactPoint.
 
But when might that [...]

It seems not a week goes past now without another example of public sector officials misplacing our private data. The latest dose of stupidity comes from a NHS Trust staff member in Lancashire. The health worker lost a memory stick being used to backup 6,000 records from clinical databases at HMP Preston.
The memory stick was [...]

This blog post now featured on openDemocracy
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On 29 January the EEMA (European Association for e-identity and Security) and the Digital Identity Forum are holding a seminar entitled “The Business Use and Applications of the UK National Identity Card”
Have a read of this from their website:
Over a period of time, public opinion, as measured by opinion [...]

Welsh Lib Dem AM Peter Black brings our attention to Cabinet Minister James Purnell who has misplaced important documents for a second time.
Rather than poke fun at the unfortunate Mr Purnell, I’d like to second what Peter Black says:
The purpose of this post is not to draw attention to Mr. Purnell’s double whammy, though he [...]

The Liberal Democrats have uncovered figures that show nearly 50,000 Government security passes have been lost or stolen since 2001 - that’s 16 per day. Over 37,000 of these were from the Ministry of Defence.
A MoD spokesman said: “There are approximately 108,000 personnel in the Armed Forces and the number of lost/stolen ID cards for [...]

NO2ID Birmingham united their local politicians earlier this month in the fight against ID cards. They composed a letter to the local press to protest against the introduction of ID cards for foreign nationals. It was signed by 5 MP’s (2 Lib Dem, 1 Lab, 1 Ind Lab, 1 Con), 13 City Councillors (Lib Dem, [...]

Have a read of this article from the Calgary Herald, describing the experience of Alicia Paziuk who suffered a case of identity fraud this year.
According to the article, 10,000 Canadians suffered from identity fraud in 2008, losing a total of $8.8m. But what interests us is the psychological effect on the victims:
“It really can shake [...]

The Government’s much-derided ID card scheme has become a reality. According to Computer Weekly, the first ID cards were issued to foreign nationals in Sheffield on November 25.
 
40,000 are expected to be in circulation by April 2009. From 2010, the cards will be issued on a voluntary basis to young people and to the rest [...]