College student Lara Hayhurst was not prepared to let officials treat her little pet like Osama ‘fin’ Laden… Forgive the pun but the story is quite funny, well, mainly because she got away with it.
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The BBC reports that Big Blunkett is proposing to introduce yet more draconian powers to lock up suspected terrorists without a fair trial. The new proposals are an extension of the current anti-terrorism laws rushed into being after September 11th. Those have already been condemned as creating “Guantanamo Bay in our own back yard”. The new proposals would see British citizens tried partly in secret and denied access to the evidence against them. They would also reduce the burden of proof from “beyond reasonable doubt” to “on the balance of probabilities”. Speaking on the Today programme, Senior lawyer Baroness Kennedy described the proposals as “a disgrace”. She went on to say:
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe February 2nd, 2004 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Paul Smith is a man with a profound interest in driving and road safety. As a driver myself I, too, have a vested interest in these matters. Whenever I depart from point A I much prefer it to be overwhelmingly probable that I will reach point B with all my favourite limbs and organs in situ and functioning as nature intended. The British government and its various agencies claim that they share this interest as well. Moreover, they assure us that the solution to the problem lies with forcing everyone to drive more slowly and punish those drivers who fail to comply. Hence the virus-like proliferation of the ‘GATSO’ or ‘Speed Camera’ which (just by complete coincidence I am sure) has also raised tens of millions of pounds for the public coffers from already over-taxed motorists who infringe blanket and arbitrary speed limits. In response to the wave of discontent this has caused, the government, the police and the various lobbyists that support them, have doggedly stood their ground and explained that, yes, it is all very regrettable but the point of the GATSO’s is most assuredly not to raise revenue (no, perish the thought!) but merely to save lives. In other words, they are relying on the canard that freedom must be sacrificed in order to achieve safety. Well, they are wrong and Paul Smith has made it his business to prove, publicly and beyond argument, that they are wrong. His website, Safe Speed, cuts a swathe through the cant and the piety:
I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you! Mr Smith has amassed a treasure trove of documentary, audio and video evidence that entirely discredits the myth that
So if you are one of those people who thinks that the GATSO is a life-saver, you know exactly what to do. In the meantime, more power to Paul Smith and his campaign for common sense and reason. When we eventually win this battle, the victory will be due in no small part to the dedication and integrity of people like him. Cross-posted from Samizdata.net. January 28th, 2004 | Comments are closed
A three-dimensional mug shot may soon be the only ID you’ll ever need Wired reports. DuPont Authentication Systems and A4Vision, a company that sells facial-imaging products, have developed a biometric security device that generates in-depth, three-dimensional facial portraits similar to holograms and secure enough to be embedded in documents. Using A4Vision’s Enrollment Station, people can have their 3-D facial image embedded in a film called Izon and registered as digital data in a database in less than 10 seconds. The device outputs both a 3-D biometric template and a standard color image of the person. The image in the biometric template carries enough detail to view a subject’s head from ear to ear. The template can be affixed to cards or passports; once the image is embedded, users need only be scanned to see whether their facial characteristics match. The biometric data obtained is more comprehensive than 2-D imagery since it contains information along three axes instead of two. Donald P. D’Amato, a biometrics expert at Mitretek Systems, a nonprofit research organization says:
Right now the device is said to be accurate enough to distinguish between identical twins. Working with SRI International’s twin registry, the company has tested the device with 36 twin sets, and it was able to distinguish one twin from the other. Accuracy is a big concern. Identity theft appears to be the fastest-growing crime in America, with identity-related crimes projected to rob the global economy of $24 billion this year. If not well-protected, biometrics may cause even more spectacular cases of ID theft, such as the gummy bear fiasco. Evans says 3-D facial identification is secure, however, because the facial image is only stored with the holder of the biometrics data.
January 26th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
An excellent summary of the issues that slipped under the radar over the Christmas period (the summary, not the issues…). Biometrics, surveillance, RFID, data retention and more…
Please read for an overview of the last year’s developments and links to relevant coverage. Silicon.com also has a useful section Protecting Your ID special reports that is worth checking out. January 22nd, 2004 | Comments are closed
Silicon.com reports that the controversial radio frequency ID (RFID) tracking tags will become ubiquitous in consumer goods but privacy issues, standards and cost need to be addressed first, according to a senior executive of UK supermarket chain Safeway. Safeway ran an RFID pilot with Unilever last year on 40,000 cases of Lynx deodorant tracking them from the factory through to the shelves of three stores and, in an exclusive interview with silicon.com, Safeway CIO Ric Francis said that while the company has no immediate plans to use RFID, the pilot did enough to convince him that the technology is absolutely key to the future of the retail sector.
The hope is that once the standards are in place and the cost of the RFID chips drops, then the technology will become an unseen and accepted part of shopping. January 22nd, 2004 | Comments are closed
A kind reader provided a link to an article by the BBC warning that snooping powers given to more than 600 public bodies look set to create a small industry of private firms that will help process requests for information about who people call, the websites they visit and who they swap e-mail with. One firm, called Singlepoint, has been specifically created to act as a middleman between the bodies that want access to data and the net service providers and phone operators that hold it.
Singlepoint spokesman explained that without Singlepoint it would be more difficult and costly for public authorities to request data as they would have to set up relationships with all of the UK’s communication service providers. Instead, Singlepoint was setting up a system that would automatically route requests for information to relevant net or phone firms. The Home Office estimates that up to 500,000 requests per year are made for information about who pays for a particular phone or web account. About 90% of these requests are for subscriber information. Singlepoint estimates that there could be millions of requests per year. Most of these requests are made by the police but approximately 4% are made by the many public authorities that have had new powers granted under RIPA (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act). Other firms are starting to set themselves up as trainers for people within public bodies involved with investigations. the Home Office was keen to get firms offering courses because the police did not have the resources to take on the training of these public body workers itself. Bodies granted snooping powers include the Serious Fraud Office, all local authorities and councils plus other organisations such as the Charity Commission and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science. When proposals to grant these snooping powers were first aired in mid-2002 they were greeted with alarm by privacy advocates and civil liberty groups. A campaign co-ordinated by the FaxYourMP website prompted the government to withdraw its proposals. However, following a consultation exercise the proposals were resurrected and the powers granted in a series of statutory instruments issued in November 2003. January 21st, 2004 | Comments are closed
Wired reports that customers will want to control exactly who knows where they are and when now that wireless companies can track a mobile phone’s location. Bell Labs says it has developed a network software engine that can let cell users be as picky as they choose about disclosing their whereabouts, a step that may help wireless companies introduce location-based services in a way customers will find handy rather than intrusive. Under a federal mandate requiring that cell carriers be able to pinpoint the whereabouts of any customer who calls 911 during an emergency, expensive network upgrades have made wireless companies more anxious to deploy services that can exploit these new capabilities for a profit. Examples of such services would typically include the ability for restaurants and other businesses to send a solicitation by text message to a cell phone when its owner wanders within range of those merchants. Other applications might include the ability to locate co-workers and customers. While many cell-phone users might like to be notified of a nearby eatery or find it helpful to let others keep track of their movements, most would rather not expose themselves to round-the-clock, everywhere-they-go surveillance. However, given the real-time requirements of transmitting information over a telephone network, it can be difficult to program a wide range of options for individuals to personalize preferences such as when, where and with whom to share location information. One solution is to hard-code a network database with an “on-off” switch that activates or deactivates a service, for instance, during a window of time with set hours such as peak and off-peak. Bell Labs said it used a “rules-driven” approach to programming that can take personalization to a less-rigid level without bogging down the computing power of a network. January 21st, 2004 | Comments are closed
Police are set to get a host of new powers to crack down on anti-social behaviour. Officers will be able to close down drug dens within 48 hours, and keep them shut for up to six months. For the first time, the Government’s Anti-Social Behaviour Act gives police-style powers to accredited private security guards. Later in the year, security guards and Community Support Officers will get further powers under the same Act. Also introduced are controversial new police powers to disperse groups of people who have gathered in an area designated an anti-social hotspot by the local council. The host of new powers created by David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, were designed to target yobs, nuisance neighbours, vandals and drug dealers who make life a misery for law-abiding residents. New restrictions on air weapons, raising the age for legal possession from 14 to 17, also come in today. It will also be an arrestable offence to carry air guns in public “without lawful authority or excuse”. January 20th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
I’ve just done a posting at Samizdata about the phenomenon of excessive regulation, so excessive that even if an organisation wants to obey it, it can’t. It’s just too voluminous, too complicated, sometimes even too contradictory. (One of the Samizdata commenters told of how his encryption duties seemed to require some sort of infinite regress and were un-obeyable.) The White Rose Relevance of this is, Cicero apparently said:
Which means that in practice the law becomes whatever those in charge decide to make it. And that is the point at which White Rosers should sit up and notice, because that is when people who make trouble for the authorities by saying things that the authorities disapprove of, get prosecuted not for their wicked sayings (which might be a rather hard charge to make stick and would anyway draw attention to the sayings) but for non-compliance with plumbing regulations, for failure to fill out the proper forms concerning employee sick-leave, for baking bread of the wrong size and shape, etc. The completely we are all likely to be breaking this or that law, the more completely they have us by the proverbials. T. M. Lucas also commented as Samizdata, drawing the attention of its readers to a series of posts his blog has on these themes. January 16th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Wired reports that the companies and organizations behind radio-frequency identification tags are scrambling to improve their image by promising to protect the privacy rights of consumers, after they were caught trying to dig up dirt about one of their most effective critics. They also announced development of devices that disable RFID tags, which they are placing on everything from shampoo bottles to suit jackets in the United States and Europe. Privacy groups, led by Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (or CASPIAN), fear that businesses and governments can use those signals to track individuals’ movements inside stores and in public places. One organization may have been shamed into soliciting CASPIAN’s advice, however. The Grocery Manufacturers of America this week inadvertently sent an internal e-mail to CASPIAN suggesting it was looking for embarrassing information about the group’s founder, Katherine Albrecht. The e-mail, written by a college intern at GMA, reads:
Wal-Mart, which tested RFID tags and readers in at least two of its stores last year, said it would adhere to the RFID privacy guidelines published by EPCglobal, the EPC standards body. The guidelines require companies to publicly state how they plan to use data collected from the EPC tags. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark insists:
CASPIAN’s Albrecht said she welcomes tag-killing technologies, as well as the overtures by RFID users who want to work with her.
January 13th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
First of all, the new European arrest warrant was exercised today for the first time. Michael Kurt was wanted in Sweden on drink-driving charges and was arrested in Alicante. He will be taken back to Sweden. The arrest warrant is valid in eight Member States: So far only eight states have adopted it: Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Moreover, another system is being introduced to provide every EU citizen with a smartcard. These health insurance smartcards will replace the E111 and other forms that allow every EU citizen access to the health systems of other Member States. These smartcards will eventually include the bearer’s medical records and any other information deemed appropriate. The information here is taken from Ireland, and there does not appear to be any corroborating information at the Department of Health in the UK. The European Public Health Alliance has one or two articles on the new smartcards. The draft regulation that I have not fully read is located here. This new system standardises the information on citizens’ health held on databases throughout the European Union. In Member States where no cards exist at present within the healthcare system, these will be introduced. In most Member States, a European card will be introduced alongside the existing systems. It is in those countries where no system exists at present, that this proposal can act as a stimulus for standardising government databases and producing another precursor to a formal identity card. Whilst electronic systems are here to stay, there are few safeguards against the dissemination of personal information. This is not noted in the draft EU regulation and presents another route by which the privacy of individuals may be undermined as ease of administration gains a higher priority than the right of the individual to safeguard and police his personal data. January 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
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