Flights at risk as pilots refuse to accept 'demeaning' ID cards

[helimutt]

Glad to see the UK government are listening!

So the online petition went really well then. Now they want us to have security ID cards but we don't have to carry them? Eh? FMOB!! This government really are clueless!

Number10.gov.uk Airsideid - epetition response

[BarbiesBoyfriend]

'Don't have to carry them'..............................yet.

[Maxbert]

I'm going to stick my head out from the JetBlast burrow where I usually dwell, as, having read through the whole thread, there is more than just Pilot input here-

I live in Luxembourg, and have done since 1973 (I was 5...). I hold a British passport, born in London of a British father and Italian mother. Up until a few years ago, I could renew my passport at the British Embassy in Luxembourg, and did so many times. Things changed, and now the Embassy in Paris handles passports for Benelux countries, Switzerland, France and the French DOM-TOMs. Why? God only knows, presumably it is for someone's "convenience", although not mine... Anyhow, the whole process has become considerably more expensive, time-consuming and inconvenient.

But here's the thing- Maybe not this year (when my passport is due for renewal), but certainly from 2012 according to the Act of Parliament and assorted information I have read, my details will also be included in the NIS, or whatever the database is called.

WHY?

I don't live in England, have no connections with the UK now other than by birth, but if I want to renew my documents this becomes mandatory.

So- I am applying for Luxembourgish nationality, and will renounce the British, if only for peace of mind. That being said, it is important to point out that Luxembourg has far, FAR more info about me on file than the UK does, including tax information, details about my children, medical info, etc...

Strangely, this bothers me far less than the idea of the UK having info on me- I suppose it's cultural (had a Luxembourg ID card since I was fifteen, IIRC), and it's part of the way of life on the Continent. Also, to date, nobody has come knocking on my door in the wee hours- Why should they?

ID cards bring undoubted benefits for all the "legitimate" identification purposes mentioned in posts above.

So- I am not anti ID card, nor, really, anti centralised DB, just as long as none of our governments turn all Terry Gilliam on us, which they could at any time, whether Luxembourg or England.

Two other brief points:

At some point, even given data-mining tools and whatnot, there will be just so much information that there will not be enough people or time to analyse it all- We will be just as anonymous within an ocean of information as within a desert of information.

Finally, RFID does not necessarily have to be your enemy- Luxembourg public transport recently introduced the "E-Go" card (clever, eh?) to replace paper tickets / cards. At first I thought "Uh-oh, all my movements will now be tracked"- Well no- No personal data has to be given, you saunter up and request a monthly ticket, pay for it (cash is fine), they take a plastic card, zap it, and you're on your way, once you have validated it at a base station to activate it. Thereafter you swipe it nowhere, it contains only data about its validity. This is a huge step backwards, as at least the old paper versions had a date stamp on them so you could tell when to renew them!

Maxbert's 2 €cent's worth...

[airsound]

Interesting article in the (London) Independent, Friday, by Brian Eno

Nobody bothers about civil liberties until they've gone. As the old country song warns: "You don't miss your water till your well runs dry."

We are letting the well run dry, allowing little bits of our civil freedoms to be chipped away by paranoiac governments who assure us we can trust them – and consistently betray that trust.

We are gradually sacrificing what has taken hundreds of years of civilisation to achieve, which is a condition of some kind of liberty. It may not be evident to everyone yet, but we have lost so much freedom in the past 10 years. When the Government passed its "anti-terror" laws, it reassured those who campaigned against them that they would only ever be used in the most extreme circumstances.

But these are completely vague laws which enable a government to arrest almost anybody for almost everything.

Within a couple of years they had been used to eject an 80-year-old heckler from a Labour Party conference, to arrest a woman for reading out the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq, and to freeze the assets of Icelandic banks in England. This is the problem with vague legislation of this type: it invariably gets called into use whenever anybody does anything that the Government finds embarrassing or the police find inconvenient.

It criminalises the behaviour of concerned citizens and thereby encourages disengagement and apathy. By preventing people from taking part in critiques of governance it increases the gap between rulers and ruled: it is fundamentally anti-democratic.

I worry about initiatives like identity cards and computer databases because they could be a step towards a police state, with completely innocent people being held in custody because of software malfunctions.

It is incredibly sad that these moves towards a police state should have happened under a Labour government. Gordon Brown should think about the serious problems that need to be solved – such as climate change – and direct his government's efforts towards that.

Sorry if it's slight thread drift - but maybe it's not drifting too far.

airsound

[A and C]

Money well spent?

With the financial problems the goverment is having I see they are trying hard to hide the back tracking on the targets to reduce child poverty.

Perhaps a wise goverment would scrap thet identity card idea and use the money for something that would benifit the most disadvantaged people in the UK rather than trying to control us all with these unwanted cards.

[mbriscoe]

By passing an RFID chip over a card reader you are also passing it over a small induction loop that temporarily gives the small charge required for the transmission of the information. There are no batteries involved so there is no capability for continuous or intermittent transmission as speculated.

Didn't someone do a demonstration in the USA recently where they drove around managed to interrogate a significant number of RFIDs in US passports(?).
Passport RFIDs cloned wholesale by $250 eBay auction spree

I think what worried people in the UK is that the government (and particularly the present one) have a terrible record with any sort of computer / IT project with them going way overbudget, being late and insecure.

They initially talked about a completely voluntary ID card system at low cost then started to introduce by stealth in different areas, the cost has increased with talk of £1000 fine for not notifying of any changes - a new card has to be issued after a marriage name change and paid for. It is obvious that we will be eventually required to carry them all the time eventually if the government gets its way.

There has been a lot of spin about them so it is hard to get the complete true story - I get the impression that most non-police users will possibly not be accessing the full details on the card so it is just another piece of plastic with name and photograph. Even the average police office on patrol might not be able to access it.

We have the Home Secretary going around saying that there is overwhelming public support for them but every independent survey has shown the complete opposite and most opposed to them.

[mbriscoe]

So as I understand it, staff will be issued with one and under legislation they could just bin it and never look back as they are not required to carry it. So what's the point?

Once you have a UK ID card there is a £1000 fine for its loss according to press reports.

[llondel]

Once you have a UK ID card there is a £1000 fine for its loss according to press reports.

All the more reason to keep it in a very safe place at home and never carry it with you.

Although, if you don't have to show it to anyone, how do they know you've lost it?

[SR71]

Big databases scare me. Those who administer them scare me even more.

I thought distributed systems were better?

I've always wondered why our industry is being targeted?

Surely a packed football stadium represents a far larger captive audience if you had inclinations in the direction of "terror".

I believe football fans are in favour of ID cards.

Try them first would you...

[four_two]

It's not just the ID card that's the problem, it's the database(s) that sit behind them.

A large DNA database
Councils who spy on citizens
National Health Service database
Records of phone calls, mobile phone texts,emails etc.
I've already had my service records stolen/ lost and possibly my DWP one too by government agencies, when they are all linked it will be a really valuable resource for someone. Legal or illegal.

I've actually still got my ID card from WW2, I can remember my mother saying to me"you can throw that away, you won't need it anymore"!

[hellsbrink]

Excellent idea, SR71, and I think Cardiff and Millwall should be the ones who get the trials first!!

[EGLD]

While the arguments, IMO, about a central database and its security are relevant, I believe they are missing the real argument

That this undermines basic principles that should provide the foundation of our society, the right to privacy and freedom from state monitoring and interference should be held above all else, even if we have to accept (as we always have) crimes committed by those abusing those freedoms, less we become a prison island before we know what's happening

As Mark Thomas continually and tireless repeats; in a free democracy we should not be controlled and answerable to the state, the power lies with the people and the state is put in place and answerable to us

Whilst I wouldn't consider myself an out and out Tory, I'm already looking forward to the evening in front of the telly in May 2010 when I can watch scum like Jackboot Smith ousted by their constituents

Well done BALPA

Someone with nothing to hide but lot's to fear

[call100]

It's nice to see people actually articulating the real reasons why we should be against the proposed NID.......
Calls for a General Election must be started at every level......It is either that or sooner or later there will be blood on the streets again...

[Sciolistes]

'Don't have to carry them'..............................yet.

Of course, it is creeping legislation. Tell them they don't need to carry them and they acquiesce. Then change the law. Standard management technique is to ask for something outrageous, then back off and get the subject to accept something less outrageous but more than they would have done in the first place.

Maxbert,

Luxembourg has far, FAR more info about me on file than the UK does, including tax information, details about my children, medical info, etc...

Indeed, but that information is generally static in nature. Governments have always known the political affiliations, family history, etc of its people. Even before the fountain pen was invented. The difference here is that the information can and ultimately will be correlated to real-time activities. This is dangerous, because it means that people who are currently tolerated(in the loosest sense of the word) can be retrospectively deemed undesirable by the the State. It isn't about that fact that you do no wrong and have done no wrong, it is about the definition of 'wrong' in the future.

At some point, even given data-mining tools and whatnot, there will be just so much information that there will not be enough people or time to analyse it all- We will be just as anonymous within an ocean of information as within a desert of information.

Yes and no. We can imagine that the requirements for such a system were sold and built on a naive notion of the types of queries that will be posed. But as always the intended use of the system will change once it is online as said experience increases and further changes are applied. Basically, it may be crap for its intended naive purpose initially but the strategy and function will change over time in unpredictable ways.

Also, clearly with such vast and obviously complex relationships between the data, expect significant errors in the entry and capture of the data and queries to drag up and warrant investigation into bemused and confused ordinary members of the public.

[Checkboard]

It's pretty obvious that by "not required to be carried" the government mean that you will not be required to produce the card for a random stop, however, producing the card will be required to pass a security point.

If you know that you will be passing a security point in your day's work, you will have to carry the card.

[nilcostoptionmyass]

Our glourious home secretary is currently squirming on national tv bbc1,being questioned by marr about her expenses.This government are not to be trusted in any way, the dvla sell our info to companies etc etc,our info is left on trains, bars etc.

Balpa, you have my complete support.

in order to stop this we need to have our companies on board, and stand together.

[BigGrumpyAlien]

Here's an idea then......

One card, and it becomes your National Insurance No, your NHS No, your Driving Licence, your Tax No, your police record No.....could even be your employee No....

no need now to have plastic company airside logo cards....

no need to have CRC checks every time you change employer(oops that might make some people redundant)

Think of all that plastic, effort time and money savings that could be employed by such a system.....think of the planet......or even think of the tax cuts we could have by scrapping so much.....

Now there's a thought....

[call100]

Originally Posted by Checkboard

It's pretty obvious that by "not required to be carried" the government mean that you will not be required to produce the card for a random stop, however, producing the card will be required to pass a security point.

If you know that you will be passing a security point in your day's work, you will have to carry the card.

This is in no way true. The legislation actually states (as it stands) that no one can demand to see your NID. In the aviation world it's only use would be (as it stands) to enable you to have a CRB check using the NID as proof of identity. You will have no further use for it. You will be able to stuff it where the sun don't shine. The only ID you will need to enter the airport will be current Identity cards.
What the future holds is a dark and dangerous place. However, at the moment all the Government want is that people sleepwalk into accepting them as they have done in accepting all the anti civil liberty legislation passed.
They have targeted areas that the 'General Population' would not have any complaints about. On the surface they would see Immigrants and Airport workers given the ID. Without knowing the situation, they would not see anything wrong with Governments Security spin.
Once everyone in major airports had them, that would be a large chunk of people in every major city already carrying them when the Powers that be decide they are compulsory for everyone.

EGLD........Good post. Although I have not decided on where to vote yet, don't dismiss the Lib-Dems who are very anti NID.....
Good site......Home Office Watch

Sciolistes...Excellent post.

[FairWeatherFlyer]

Big databases scare me. Those who administer them scare me even more.

I thought distributed systems were better?

It depends what distributed means - the term is often misused by those who should know better. A modern set of databases (no paper, no microfiche!) that happen to be distributed geographically but with administrative links, good comms and common keys is little different to a traditional 'centralised' database (for data mining).

As you point out, administration is the key issue. Security, integrity, access control, audits, legal (data protection) rights, retention periods is what it's all about. The commercial world is starting to wake up on these issues, i have no idea what the governement's doing. The only guarantees are that government projects will go over budget and they won't insure for data losses.

[rigpiggy]

Kind of like our National do not call database, with 5000$ fines, that were sold to telemarketers worldwide. Now you get bothered from all over.