Compulsory Identity Cards?

[Invictus_88]

True, I don't have to. It's just a bad habit. No less, the ID Card project is a silly one at best, and potentially damaging.

This British government has enacted more punitive laws than any other, has flirted with trial without jury, has been complicit in torture, has turned a blind eye to electoral fraud and tried to enact the original Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill! Liberal my arse.

Now they wish to charge me several hundred pounds for a card which shall keep information they've no right or permission to have, on a database they are patently incapable of competently managing (or constructing within the stated budget), to help me do things I am quite capable of doing already.

I agree with the evolution of government toward competency and service to humanity, not toward a technical ideal with huge costs, clear risks and few in any discernible benefits.

Governments struggle to run themselves, and they've buggered up every IT system, project and network exposed to them. Maybe someday they could handle the biggest database yet, but not in the foreseeable future.  

[loIitoads]

Invictus_88

True, I don't have to. It's just a bad habit. No less, the ID Card project is a silly one at best, and potentially damaging.

This British government has enacted more punitive laws than any other, has flirted with trial without jury, has been complicit in torture, has turned a blind eye to electoral fraud and tried to enact the original Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill! Liberal my arse.

Now they wish to charge me several hundred pounds for a card which shall keep information they've no right or permission to have, on a database they are patently incapable of competently managing (or constructing within the stated budget), to help me do things I am quite capable of doing already.

I agree with the evolution of government toward competency and service to humanity, not toward a technical ideal with huge costs, clear risks and few in any discernible benefits.

Governments struggle to run themselves, and they've buggered up every IT system, project and network exposed to them. Maybe someday they could handle the biggest database yet, but not in the foreseeable future.

How then will they learn to effectively run databases if they cannot experiment? The short term does carry risks, but the longer term benefits are more than enough to counterweight them.

(By the way, your avatar is sitting atop the 'quote' button for me, I blame this computer's crap resolution, but maybe I'm wrong, is it the same for you?)  

[Invictus_88]

They have no right to experiment with the safety of their citizenry; the State only rightly has what powers it is given, and the powers the government now tries to exercise have been assumed by it, never yet given to it.  

[Mr. Bono Vox]

Pokegirl Princess Lolicat

Invictus_88

True, I don't have to. It's just a bad habit. No less, the ID Card project is a silly one at best, and potentially damaging.

This British government has enacted more punitive laws than any other, has flirted with trial without jury, has been complicit in torture, has turned a blind eye to electoral fraud and tried to enact the original Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill! Liberal my arse.

Now they wish to charge me several hundred pounds for a card which shall keep information they've no right or permission to have, on a database they are patently incapable of competently managing (or constructing within the stated budget), to help me do things I am quite capable of doing already.

I agree with the evolution of government toward competency and service to humanity, not toward a technical ideal with huge costs, clear risks and few in any discernible benefits.

Governments struggle to run themselves, and they've buggered up every IT system, project and network exposed to them. Maybe someday they could handle the biggest database yet, but not in the foreseeable future.

How then will they learn to effectively run databases if they cannot experiment? The short term does carry risks, but the longer term benefits are more than enough to counterweight them.

(By the way, your avatar is sitting atop the 'quote' button for me, I blame this computer's crap resolution, but maybe I'm wrong, is it the same for you?)

Well should they be allowed to? One of the main purposes of government is to protect the nation and the people. Surely they are putting at risk the people for no good reason, and thus failing one of the main purposes of government? Furthermore, why should we trust the government, or in fact, anyone with a huge database filled with personal information?  

[loIitoads]

Mr. Bono Vox

Pokegirl Princess Lolicat

Invictus_88

True, I don't have to. It's just a bad habit. No less, the ID Card project is a silly one at best, and potentially damaging.

This British government has enacted more punitive laws than any other, has flirted with trial without jury, has been complicit in torture, has turned a blind eye to electoral fraud and tried to enact the original Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill! Liberal my arse.

Now they wish to charge me several hundred pounds for a card which shall keep information they've no right or permission to have, on a database they are patently incapable of competently managing (or constructing within the stated budget), to help me do things I am quite capable of doing already.

I agree with the evolution of government toward competency and service to humanity, not toward a technical ideal with huge costs, clear risks and few in any discernible benefits.

Governments struggle to run themselves, and they've buggered up every IT system, project and network exposed to them. Maybe someday they could handle the biggest database yet, but not in the foreseeable future.

How then will they learn to effectively run databases if they cannot experiment? The short term does carry risks, but the longer term benefits are more than enough to counterweight them.

(By the way, your avatar is sitting atop the 'quote' button for me, I blame this computer's crap resolution, but maybe I'm wrong, is it the same for you?)

Well should they be allowed to? One of the main purposes of government is to protect the nation and the people. Surely they are putting at risk the people for no good reason, and thus failing one of the main purposes of government? Furthermore, why should we trust the government, or in fact, anyone with a huge database filled with personal information?

People naturally distrust the government and computers, when they have no real reason to. Why would the government bother themselves spying on common people? Additionally, you would have no reason to fear their information systems unless you were committing information crimes. People have a jumped up view of their own importance to the government. They don't give two shits about spying on Joe Bloggs.  

[[Finrod]]

The Government's problems with databases (and indeed, all major software projects) is not an issue of lack of experience.

Indeed, they are unsurpassed in their experience of failing software projects. The cycle of a typical government software project (as viewed from someone who has been on the inside):

1 - Reasonable project objectives set.
2 - Objectives expanded over-ambitiously
3 - Invitation to tender issued
4 - Warnings on scope and/or timescale ignored
5 - Contract awarded to lowest (or only) bidder
6 - Costs and/or schedule increase
7 - End users consulted (too late)
8 - Requirements change
9 - Supplier realises they are overcommitted
10 - Customer realises supplier is overcommitted
11 - Requirements change
12 - Costs and schedules increase
13 - Project failing but hailed as a success
14 - Testing scheduled but largely bypassed in an effort to claw back budget/time
15 - Project fails so badly that it can't be hailed as a success
16 - Staff changeover
17 - Goto 1. Repeat

The problems are caused by structural issues over the way that Government does business - it's not set up to do software:

-Projects must not be led by a specialist in civil-service-world.
-Committees to "sell" the idea which promptly overexpand the objectives.
-"Software is easy"
-"Software is magic and can do anything"
-"We've got to do something big and dramatic"
-Changes of personnel at policy level (reshuffles of ministers) causing a total change in requirements
-Standard civil service delays having huge impacts because the software platform or core software doesn't stand still over the several years that government projects tend to take - and big, dramatic, sellable magic-software projects are going to take a while at the best of times.
-Changes in political emphasis over the time that it's taken causes requirements changes
-Government guidelines to ensure value for money impose stupid financial targets and requirements (don't even ask about the issues with underspends if you run a government budget ...)

That recent debacle with the junior doctors MTAS database - which had far less security than Gaia, for example. Or the National Gun Database - a project that would not have taxed an undergraduate is 10 years late and still not in. Or Libra (a multimillion poind caseworking system for magistrates courts which came in £50 million over budget at about quarter of a billion - and just delivered Office Automation!). Or ...

(It's not just our Government - the US, Canada, Australia, France - I have horror stories worldwide)

In order to get a big software project working, Governments have forst got to learn to do small software projects. The chance of success for the National ID Register is optimistically less than about 2%, I'd say. But the failure could be nasty (screwed up records, poor security, duplicated entries, extremely slow access/crashes when needed, etc.)

The danger is not necessarily what the Government could do with all of your identity details, movement records and medical details easily accessible, but what other people could do with it - because this will be one hell of a honeypot. All you need for identity theft in one handily accessible location.

And for organised crime bosses, this database is a must-have. Underground police work becomes a thing of the past.
Witness protection schemes? What are they?
Terrorists want a target list? Just sort by feature.

If your identity is stolen, how the hell do you get it back? At the moment, with it dispersed, it can be regenerated and reclaimed. When it's all in the Register, whoever has stolen it, has it. Passports, birth certificates, marriage certificates, dental records become as legally non-binding as the MOT certificate is today (take a look at one. It states on it that it is not a record of the MOT pass but merely a printout of the true record, which exists only on the Department of Transport computer)

On the coolness front, the £20 billion that the Government will spend in screwing up a National ID Register could get us from a standing start to our own manned moonbase. And that's not an exaggeration (Infrastructure, testing, spaceport, training, design and construction of two or three series of man-rated launchers and about 15 lunar missions). To me, that would be far cooler.  

[Invictus_88]

You had a strong argument already, but your closing paragraph pushed it over into unassailably strong!

wink  

[[Finrod]]

With regards to the dangerous incompetence of Government handling of personal details on IT systems:

I rest my case  

[Warnersister]

Boy, do I feel vindicated today. I just went back and looked at my opening post and I think it has just been reinforced.

DW  

[loIitoads]

[Finrod]

With regards to the dangerous incompetence of Government handling of personal details on IT systems:

I rest my case

As soon as I heard this, I thought 'yea... we can wait a few years for ID cards yet.' For the time being, I'm totally against them if they can manage to ******** up something like this.