Thursday, June 10, 2004

The UK's Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, has expressed his "increasing alarm" at the UK government's proposals for a national identity card.

The Home Office responded predictably by attacking the Commissioner and with the usual idiotic claptrap about modern ID cards in 21st century Britain.

"EU interior ministers have agreed that within 18 months passports from EU citizens will contain one or two pieces of biometric data, a digitised face photo (compulsory) and a fingerprint (optional)." Actually I've no problem with digital photos on passports. Now, the databases retaining the digital information from the photos and how, where, when, why and by whom they are deployed, they're different questions. No awkward questions like this are really going to get addressed by the likes of David Blunkett, though. Biometrics, the solution to all ills. Sigh.
Author Bruce Sterling says the net is a "god-awful mess" with virus writers, spammers and scammers and organised crime wreaking havoc.Author Bruce Sterling says the net is a "god-awful mess" with virus writers, spammers and scammers and organised crime wreaking havoc.Author Bruce Sterling says the net is a "god-awful mess" with virus writers, spammers and scammers and organised crime wreaking havoc.

"This is the birth of a genuine, no-kidding, for-profit ... multinational criminal underworld," he said. "I don't see any way it can't happen. We're going to end up getting pushed around by bands of international electronic thieves in a very similar way to the way we've been pushed around by gangs of international Mafia and international Mujahideen terrorists."

Sterling reckons we need a lot more tech savvy law enforcement forces on the ground and fewer dopey laws created by gesture politics.

I've always liked Sterling. Talks a lot of sense.

Meanwhile the EU are concentrating on introducing more laws to produce a uniform approach to combatting "cybercrime". Sigh. There's no such thing as "cybercrime" just crime. And crime is now facilitated by hi tech tools. We need sufficient numbers of law enforcement people enobled in the art and craft of new technology, not more inappropriate laws.