UK Government May Ignore ID Card Opposition 52
DangerousBeauty writes "Yahoo has an interesting article up about the introduction of id cards in the United Kingdom. The main concern of people is that the UK Government has decided to ignore thousands of people who have said they opposed the cards because they commented via the internet."
In the immortal words.. (Score:2, Offtopic)
Nice, ignore the comments you asked for! Ssssssmart!
Re:In the immortal words.. (Score:1)
Thousands of people? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Thousands of people? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thousands of people? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Thousands of people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy to ignore (Score:2)
I don't think I made myself clear. When I said 2,000,000 opposed, I should've said that this figure was actually the number of people marching through the streets of London in protest. In fact, the majority of the UK population were against a war in Iraq.
Somehow, I doubt this will change your opinion.
Re:It won't (Score:2)
I'm not going to get into a full-on debate about the legitimacy of the war in Iraq. That decision has already been made, despite the general concencus of the population.
You make a good point about the opinions of those in charge may often be better informed than that of the public, and I cannot dispute the example you have given.
I will pose one last question: if those in charge were so well informed, why is it that a) the information used to attain this position was not shared; and b) we have yet to see
Re:How so? (Score:2)
My post was misleading: 2,000,000 was the total number of anti-war demonstrators that marched through central London.
The actual proportion against the war was greater than 50% of the population (IIRC 70-80%).
Re:How so? (Score:1)
So what? If it's such a big deal, get his out of office. I'm sure there's a mechanism in England for doing that. Otherwise, accept the fact that England is not a democracy.
Re:How so? (Score:1)
Re:How so? (Score:1)
They only want comments... (Score:4, Insightful)
why should goverments care about internet posts? (Score:2, Insightful)
I will use the postings on Slashdot as an example of why it doesn't matter. First that's remember how many times people will be psamming from diffrent accounts over and over just to bitch and moun. Second the qualilty of the complaints might have been good from some people but what about the countrless other people who basiclly
Re:why should goverments care about internet posts (Score:1, Insightful)
> internet complain about?
Because this was a Government consultation exercise that asked for commments to be submitted by email as one of the response mechanisms.
It wasn't a 'this suxxors dudes' post on Slashdot. We sent in reasoned comments based on the cost, civil liberties and feasability of the proposed plan and expect to have them taken seriously.
Also because copies of some of the responses were sent to MPs and responsible ministers by fax and e
The question is: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The question is: (Score:3, Interesting)
How funny is that? The British need to vote out the "liberal" party to prevent 1984 and those of us in the US need to vote out the "conservatives."
It just goes to show that people in power don't have any goals other than increasing their power. Their political positions are just the means by which they think they can get the most votes.
Re:The question is: (Score:2)
Re:The question is: (Score:2)
It seems to me that the British voting public voted [New] Labour in as an alternative to the almost-two-decade rule of the Conservatives, rather than for any ideological political reason, such as a leaning towards policies with a higher degree of socialism.
British voters need to sit up and pay attention, and vote to reflect their personal ideologies, not just voting for an alternative. I'd love to have a more liberal ruling party (I generally vote Liberal Democrat), but do the people in my constituency fe
Re:The question is: (Score:2)
However, my pessimism tells me that, people being people, all political groups will fall prey to corruption given time.
Re:The question is: (Score:2)
Do you really think this will lose New Labour the next election? I have my doubts. For them to lose, the British public need to stop being so fucking apathetic to issues that affect them (how much did the anti-War movement fade when war was declared?) and check the box of another party. This in itself is another problem -- who are people going to vote for? The Conservative party is even more right-wing than New Labour, and wouldn't've hesitated to send British forces to Iraq, nor I doubt hesitate to imp
Re:The question is: (Score:2)
It's hard to say, probably not. But even a reduced majority can have a chilling effect on the more way-out tendencies of governments.
Re:Nothing right-wing about the Labour party (Score:2)
OK, it may be unfair to label New Labour right-wing, but they're certainly no longer left-wing, are they?
Re:Nothing right-wing about the Labour party (Score:2)
I would've equated Democrats to the Liberal Democrats in the UK and Republicans to the Conservatives. IMHO, the Labour Party used to be a lot more left-wing than they are now, and perhaps may have been considered more left-wing that the Liberal Democrats, but hunger for power has comprimised the ideological framework of their politics, and seen them make a beeline for the political majority, which I believe lies somewhere right of centre in the UK.
Please note that this only my opinion of UK politics, and
Re:Nothing right-wing about the Labour party (Score:2)
I've always taken the meaning of liberalism to meen freedom, which should be distinguishable from socialism. However, the Liberal Democrats are both a liberal AND socialist (to some degree) party since being formed from the older Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party (an off-shoot from the Leftist Labour Party of the 1970s and 1980s).
I did a quick google, and found the following resources (definitions, not spin):
Enjoy.
Re:Nothing right-wing about the Labour party (Score:1)
I would say that this is half-true - I think that most of the Labour Party is far more left-wing than Tony Blair, but they don't want to risk going against him. Tony Blair and his entourage, who currently control the Labour Party, are unquestionably right wing. Just look at their policies: from charging student tuition fees to PFI to maintaining exactly the same tax plan as the Tories, and now this. These are not exactly left wing views.
I have supported
See the big picture (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider this move together with existing laws to deny people the right to protect their data with encryption, and the increasing number of urban and traffic surveillance cameras, an increasing number of which are to be upgraded to use AI able to recognize vehicle registration number plates (i.e. "license plates" in the US) so any vehicle's location can be pinpointed and tracked in real time. They have also revealed that they are developing technologies to track your location in real time via your mobile phone more easily.
I even saw a piece in one of the more respectable UK papers that described another technology currently in development that allows them to use shortwave EM from mobile phone masts to "X-Ray" buildings - allowing them to monitor your activities inside your own home or office, with the resulting computer generated images being automatically transmitted to a remote receiving station at some arbitrary location. These can be forwarded over the internet or whatever in real time to whoever has authority to see them.
So very soon it will be entirely possible for the authorities to know cheaply and routinely exactly where you are all the time and precisely what you are doing. Without even getting out of their seats, for God's sake!
Judging by the number of urban surveillance and traffic cameras about, we're not really all that far away from that situation right now, as it happens.
Just think for a moment, people: this may all seem reasonable to you now, but are any of you old enough to remember reading George Orwell's "1984" and shuddering with horror at the very idea of living in such a world? I can tell you that the police state we are now heading for would have been completely unthinkable as recently as 1975. After all, wasn't that precisely why the people of Britain fought the second world war and endured the tension of the cold war - to prevent enslavement by a totalitarian regime? Wasn't it? Well it seems to have all been a waste of time because that is exactly what we are headed for now.
The public are being very naive if they think that these surveillance capabilities will only ever be used principally to catch those we people we currently think of as criminals. History has shown time and time again how governments don't often relinquish powers which suppress dissent and maintain their own hegemony, instead they use them to squash opposition while they continue to increase those powers. And "criminals" includes whatever people the law says. In such totalitarian regimes, "criminals" can mean protesters and dissidents of all kinds - like authors, journalists, even people who just said the wrong thing in public - ordinary people like you and me, law-abiding as we understand the term now.
Once ubiquitious surveillance has been a commonplace for a few years and we are all used to it being used to track lawbreakers, it won't seem such a shock when the odd government department is occasionally caught using it for their own nefarious purposes. Just as governments at both ends of the political spectrum have already been caught time and time again using any and all available surveillance technologies to defeat their political opponents.
If current public apathy is any guide, a few years down the road after that such incidents will be off the front page (if they make the news at all) and won't even cause raised eyebrows.
By that point, if not well before, organized public opposition to any government policy will have become practically impossible as the authorities will always know in advance exactly what you are planning and will put a stop to it before it happens. In fact that's already similar to what happened at this year's (and last year's) UK May Day celebrations.
As for the justification that it will make it easier to catch criminals - let me remind you of the incisive words of Benjamin Franklin (often quoted
Re:See the big picture (Score:3, Funny)
You're new here, aren't you?
Re:See the big picture (Score:2)
I don't why but I tend to imagine that the mean and the modal) age of the slashdot crowd would be around the mid-to-late-twenties. Perhaps because that's what it's like where I work, and I'm 40 so I'm used to experiencing a bit of a generation gap. I don't know where all the other old tech guys went.
Re:No problem... (Score:1)
We do have virtually no members of that conservative government in the current conservative government. A better reason for not voting for them is that they're week and ineffectual.
Personally, I think that if any party chose a pro-consumer stance, they would make some serious gains in the polls. The conservatives aren't likely to do this though. Most of their members have links to multinationals. I'd say a promise to cut VAT would be a vote winner ac
EU (Score:1)