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Security Uncategorized

Contracts for British National Identity Card System to be opened up.

Another grand IT project, another chance of fiasco

The technology needed for a national ID system may be hard to come by, says Michael Cross

The back end for the system will be divided into two contracts the larger of which is a GBP500m contract to supply basic passport systems and a separate GBP300m contract to supply the National Biometric Information Service, which will store fingerprints and facial images. The production of the card itself will be yet another contract to be contested at a later stage.

The division of the contracts this way is reportedly to reduce the likelihood of the ID card system being scrapped by a future government as the systems will be required even if only as part of the future passport service.

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Uncategorized

Overwhelming sense of dread? You need Elder Sign

Categories
Movies Reviews

Review: Watchmen

Watchmen

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Movies Reviews

Review: The Young Victoria

The Young Victoria

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Security Uncategorized

Taking Liberties with the British Library

The British Library are housing a new exhibition titled Taking Liberties, which examines current debates about vital rights and freedoms in society: detention without charge, the right to privacy, devolved government, free speech and so on.

One important feature of Taking Liberties is an interactive activity available both in the gallery, and online here. You are placed right in the centre of current debates about vital rights and freedoms in society: detention without charge, the right to privacy, devolved government, free speech and so on.

Taking Liberties Interactive is the online part of the exhibition.

Categories
Computing Surveillance

Surveillance State: No worries, nobody’s watching

Telegraph: Only incompetence will save us from Orwell’s surveillance state

The vast amount of data now being generated, and the impossibility of looking at it all, is, together with bureaucratic incompetence, the best guarantee we have that we’re not going to wake up one morning and find we are living in a version of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

True to an extent but the worry is that eventually when the state realises that the flaw in the system is the human element they will move towards more and more automated systems that can’t be bargained with, can’t be reasoned with and doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear.*

Seriously though, the failures of major IT projects like the NHS database might be the one thing that prevents the implementation of the National Identity Register and if they don’t then I can guarantee that Britain will end up with one hell of a flawed database with people being misidentified as benefit cheats or fraudsters or in extreme cases terrorist suspects due to the incompetence of the data entry.

* The Terminator (1984)

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Copyright Uncategorized

Darknets: The future of P2P will be private networks out of the sight of the copyright police

Ars Technica: Darknets and the future of P2P investigators

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Politics Surveillance Uncategorized

The abusive relationship that are we are stuck in with the British government.

Charlie Brooker vents in his inimitable fashion about the state of British politics. To politicians, we’re little more than meaningless blobs on a monitor.

My personal snapping point was reached last week, at the precise moment Jack Straw announced the government was vetoing the Information Tribunal’s order for the release of cabinet minutes relating to that whole invasion-of-Iraq thing

I agree that many of the British people will reach their own snapping point with regard to our government sometime soon and that perhaps the state of the economy will be the metaphorical straw that causes them to stop rolling over and accepting the ongoing series of government malfeasance.

Categories
Movies Reviews

Review: Rachel Getting Married

Rachel Getting Married

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Politics Uncategorized

British ‘careless’ with liberties

BBC News reports that former shadow home affairs minister David Davis believes that British people have been “careless” with their civil liberties, but that is beginning to change. Speaking at the Convention on Modern Liberty on Saturday, Mr Davis said people were growing increasingly angry at government intrusion in their lives.