Take Jane: a video from NO2ID on the dangers of Britain's burgeoning surveillance state
The UK NO2ID group has produced a fantastic video about one of the dangers of Britain's new database state: Take Jane tells the story of a woman whose vengeful ex- is able to follow her around because she has to update the national ID database every time she moves, and any database that has that many people who are allowed to consult it will have someone her ex-husband can bribe to let him know where she's living at all time.
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Everyone's seen The Last Enemy, right?
(Watch it free online at the PBS website.)
The number of people I've heard here spouting the nonsense "If you've done nothing wrong then you've nothing to fear".
Sheep.
I signed up for NO2ID's mailing list, and within 7 days had received over a dozen emails. After requesting they take my details off the email list, the emails didn't stop. Eventually, after two years or so of trying various methods of asking my details to be removed from their email list, the emails finally stopped. I know other people who this has happened to as well. You have been warned.
As opposed to say, her husband working for (or being able to bribe someone at) a utility company, which would have the exact same information.
I agree with privacy concerns. I just don't think "because it could be abused" is ever a good idea to nix an idea in it's entirety. Understanding the potential for abuse is what you use to make systems better.
Plus, I'm a data nerd at heart. A national database has the potential to be wonderfully efficient. So put as many checks on it as necessary, but don't kill the idea because it 'could be abused'.
If that was valid logic, we should get rid of email (actually the whole internet), libraries, telephones, banks, and about a million other things.
#3:
Consider it an object lesson in the dangers of having your personal information in a database that you don't control.
I guess.
This is purely a fictional scenario. Now, as for terrorists taking photos of their targets with big- ass telephoto lenses, that happens all the time....
I agree with the whole no2id thing, but why does it have to be done at the expense of promoting anti-father stereotypes.
I get the premise that this woman's ex-husband must be a dangerous psychopath.
But you have to ask yourself would the story work in reverse? Could you imagine a man in a video seeking sympathy for his crusade to keep his daughter away from her mother?
It is also pretty anti-family. We are supposed to accept that the best solution to little Janey's problem is that her mother runs off with her - denying her access to her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Are they all a bad influence? In the case of a dangerous lunatic isn't the solution that this person be supervised and treated? Rather than have the entire family destroyed?
If you think about it this video is playing into an unspoken agreement among many people - that a mother should have a right to take "her" children away from their father.
As an audience we are asked to accept a background story of a man who is not in jail, has not committed any crime , probably has a job and is required to pay support. Yet not someone who needs supervision by society as a whole - but still someone who should not be allowed to see his daughter at all - and that goal being so important that an acceptable loss to the child is the entire rest of her family.
Hmmm. You don't actually have to *live* at the address you register for your ID.
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To give another point of view in the matter:
Sweden has always had a big-brother type register, where your social/fiscal ID is your birthdate plus four digits and everyone has an ID card. This is used everywhere to check your ID, from your dentist to the utility company or even the bouncer at the pub. And people can check online what anyone earns. There are even books with the names and addresses of the 1000 richest people in Sweden as your tax returns are public as well.
And they really don't understand what's the problem with that...
I'm not a Swede and have a problem with this openness at the cost of privacy, but have lived in Sweden for 10 years, and can really testify that it makes life very smooth. You move into a new flat and within minutes you have fixed your electricity, phone, broadband and TV connections. Not that any of this efficiency would ever happen in the UK of course...
Good point Wilco. Trouble is, in Britain, it won't be like that. Politician? Nope, you'll be exempt. Celebrity, footballer's wife? Exempt. Army? Police? Exempt. Just plain rich? Exempt. Plus of course it will be private companies / a private company that has the contract - you'll have to pay to see what they have (you know, like those repugnant credit checking companies that are already out there stopping you getting a mortgage or whatever?). Last but not least, of course, is the fact that it will be a total effing c*ck up when it is implemented and the information will be wrong, dead people will be getting summoned to court, that type of thing. It's Britain - it won't be transparent and it'll be expensive rubbish.
No2ID coordinator Phil Booth sez, "FYI, unless something technical went wrong - which we'd resolve as soon as
we could after it was reported - NO2ID sends out one e-mail per fortnight
(our newsletter) to people subscribed via the website. And, occasionally -
probably no more than 3 or 4 in any one year - alerts to people who have
provided a postcode if there is something significant happening in their
area. Most people keep informed via their local groups, some of which run
their own mailing lists - from which you are able to unsubscribe yourself.
The only NO2ID lists that get traffic of that level - 7 per day - are our
internal or local group *coordinator* (i.e. committed activisits) lists."
Wilco wrote: "Hmmm. You don't actually have to *live* at the address you register for your ID."
Yes you do - read the Identity Cards Act 2006:
"Schedule 1.
1. The following may be recorded in an individual’s entry in the Register—
(a) his full name;
(b) other names by which he is or has been known; (c) his date of birth;
(d) his place of birth;
(e) his gender;
(f) the address of his principal place of residence in the United Kingdom;
(g) the address of every other place in the United Kingdom or elsewhere where he has a place of residence."
The whole scheme seems very authoritarian to me, even sinister. How long will it be before they want to chip us at birth? I for one will be rioting in the streets before that happens.
If I'm just being paranoid, which I sincerely hope, then it's all just another big fat waste of taxpayers money.
Ether way, what's wrong with a passport, drivers license or birth certificate?
@ FWD #3 - I have been subscribed to No2ID's list for ages, and never receive more than one email every couple of weeks. I don't know how you managed to be getting so many.
RE ID cards - they are hateful, and the reason that I probably will not be voting Labour next time round. The thing is - I think the bastards are canny enough to introduce them by stealth. Powerless groups - eg refugees (I refuse to use the loaded term asylum seeker), foreign nationals, children, people on benefits - they will be forced to get them first, and then before we know it, over half of people will have them, and everyone else will not be able to function in society without them.
This makes me very angry. I am fully prepared to join in with civil disobedience.
@ Raphael:
It is also pretty anti-family. We are supposed to accept that the best solution to little Janey's problem is that her mother runs off with her - denying her access to her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Are they all a bad influence? In the case of a dangerous lunatic isn't the solution that this person be supervised and treated? Rather than have the entire family destroyed?
Yeah, well, that sounds good until you realize that men like this think nothing of threatening, harassing, and even killing any family, friends or organizations you dare get help from. Women fleeing from abusive husbands have had family members houses broken into, family and friends (and the families of those family and friends) threatened with injury or death, shelters shot up, the work places of family and friends called as part of harassment strategies, etc.
And this is even assuming the woman has any family or friends left (or any who are brave enough to get caught speaking with her) after years, and sometimes decades of determined, relentless isolation and abuse.
It's just not always as easy as holing up at grandma's or a friend's house. Especially once grandma gets knocked around by a furious ex while you're out buying groceries, or your friend gets telephoto stalker pics of her own kids at their daycare hand-delivered to her mailbox.
oh, yeah...and nine times out of ten, law enforcement can't or won't do diddly squat until the dude goes Waco. Restraining orders only help up the ante on his charges once you're dead. Up until that point, though, psycho exes are really good at skirting the law, or just avoiding getting caught.
"Those pics of my sister-in-laws kids? Lovely kids, aren't they? Well, they were in public view, so I didn't really commit a crime taking a picture of them. I just thought they were so adorable. And I sent the pictures I took directly to their parents, so they could see their lovely kids having fun. Aren't I nice!"
Oh, certainly, attack the technology, not the human flaws that abuse the technology. Prediction: one dude out of a zillion misuses a freaking SPOON and suddenly there's anti-spoon videos crop up, anti-spoon foundations emerge about spoon awareness, and task forces around the world clash with anti-spoon protesters.
What about the individual's right to live a quiet, anonymous life completely free from intrusive cameras?
#17, i have to agree - it's so very easy to over complicate this argument. I think my right to exist shouldn't be down to a piece of plastic and a database
I don't get it either. I have to admit, I am from a country were we have a national database. But these kinds of problems are extremely rare, because any access to these informations is tightly monitored and can be traced back to the person who did it. I even personally know a former policeman who accessed this database as a favour - probably a paid one - to a friend. Within two weeks he was questioned by their internal affairs unit and eventually lost his job, because he could not give a valid reason for his enquiry.
You may, or may not be convinced by measures like these. And I think a certain mistrust against the actions of any government is quite healthy. But especially the americans who criticize national databases should keep in mind that their country - contrary to european countries - has effectively no privacy-law whatsoever. You are concerned about a database run by the government, but see obviously no problem when the same informations - and many more - are held, sold and processed by private companies. Why is an ID issued by a commercial entity so much better then a national ID? Why do you have more trust in Lexis-Nexis then in your government?
i wouldn't mind id cards if i had any trust whatsoever that the people in charge of running the scheme weren't going to be completely feckless, corrupt, jobsworth, incompetant retards.
This being england i am 100% sure they will be.
plus, doesn't a passport fulfill all the requirement of ID cards for any serious use you might be able to conceive of?
I don't get why the English are so freaked out about ID cards. Come on guys, you are on CCTV already all the time, which is much more 1984 than having an ID register. And an ID card would mean that you do no longer have to present your utility bill to open a bank account. Anyway, I predict it's easier to phone the electricity company and get the address using some flimsy excuse than to get access to the national register...
Anonymous (sic) says: "And an ID card would mean that you do no longer have to present your utility bill to open a bank account."
You're not getting the bigger picture I'm afraid anon - it's British (well, likely English). It won't be there to make life easier, goodness me know. It's there for the government to sell to the Private Sector who will then be able to do as they see fit with the info. One thing they most 100% assuredly won't do is use it to make things more straightforward. Britain is in the EU but you think that means intra-EU travel is any easier? Of course not - you have water-stealing goons and queues up the wazoo at any airport you care to go to. It's naive to think this is done for citizens, it's done for government. Period.