There's an interesting piece in the Guardian about the government's planned child database. This will record comprehensive personal information about every child in the UK on a single central government database.

People like me see this is normalisation of the surveillance state, acclimatising children to lack of privacy at an early age. My belief is that it will inevitably link up one day with the planned ID Card National Identity Register (NIR) to create a cradle-to-grave state surveillance system.

The government say this is rubbish. Only essential data will be held and this will be secure and carefully protected.

So why, as the Guardian reports, will celebrities be allowed to "opt out" of having their kids on the database? Why would they want to opt out of supposedly secure and innocuous database? Presumably because it might in reality be potentially dangerous breach of privacy.

And what exactly is a "celebrity"? Some people would undoubtedlly include politicians in that category.

So let's see if I understand this. There is no threat from this database when it comes to us and our children having our privacy invaded. But when it comes to the politicians who created the damn thing - they reserve the right to opt out.

How long before they also get to opt out of the NIR?

Even up here in Edinburgh I can smell the stench from Whitehall.


children NIR privacy surveillance state ukpolitics

The government has today confirmed plans to make it an offence to possess images of extreme sexual violence. Those convicted could face three years in prison.

As is usual for this government its plans are wrong in many different ways.

The new law follows a campaign begun by a mother whose adult daughter was killed by a man who possessed such extreme images. My utmost sympathy for her loss doesn't stop me from opposing her campaign.

For a start the new law is built on a logical fallacy: Many violent criminals possess violent images so anyone possessing violent images should be considered dangerous. Hmm. A bit like saying that many dogs are white so any animal that is white is probably a dog.

Then there's the vital philosophical issue. We will be jailing people not for doing anything or hurting anyone but simply for possessing and looking at pictures.

This is not the same situation as with child porn. Under the new law people could go to prison for possessing pictures of consenting adults. The proposals include material that simply "appears to be" life threatening, even if it turns out to have been staged.

It's not quite "thought crime", but it's getting close. "Sight crime" anyone?

Some people are already saying that the law is unlikely to be enforced because of these difficulties. That's not much of a consolation - bad law is bad law and sets a bad precedent. It's also likely to have an effect even if not enforced - that's what happened with Section 28. A lot of people involved with alternative sexuality between consenting adults are likely to feel themselves under threat. Services for these people are likely to cease and communities close.

A large number of people who are no threat to anyone will suffer the fallout of this unnecessary and ineffective extension of censorship.

Living is a free country means accepting that some people will say, do and watch things that we don't like. With this law Tony Blair is showing his contempt for such freedom.

For more information see backlash.


backlash censorship freedom ukpolitics

Home Secretary John Reid has agreed with his EU counterparts that in future all air travellers within the EU will be fingerprinted. This is intended as a security measure.

So how is this going to work? Do the EU governments have a database of the fingerprints of every potential terrorist? Of course not. The government plans biometric based "positive profiling" long before the flight.

"Department of PreCrime" anyone?

And there are there are other implications. For the profiling to be carried out in advance the fingerprinting needs to be carried out in advance. Which means when you buy your ticket - fingerprinting at the travel agent. What when you buy online? For that the government will need to be able to reliably link your identity and credit card to your biometrics.

But what use will biometrics be on their own? To perform positive profiling they will also need to be able to link your biometrics to information about your life and habits. They will therefore need a large database of information on every citizen that is linked to identity and biometrics.

You can probably see where this is going by now.

Tony Blair's government has been trying without success to justify imposing on us compulsory biometric Identity Cards and a huge, intrusive National Identity Register (NIR). None of their arguments hold water, the NIR is just part of an authoritarian government's natural desire to build a surveillance state.

If Reid has convinced the other EU governments to agree with this biometric profiling idea, the government can now turn round and say that they must implement the NIR in order to comply with EU agreements. So they persuade the EU to implement a policy that forces them to do what they wanted to do anyway then blame the EU for it. Clever.

Unlike some people I don't believe the government has invented the recent terrorist scares. However I do believe that they have shamelessly exploited them to push forward their own dangerously illiberal agenda.

Tags: NIR UK privacy biometrics ID CardsIdentity Cards John Reid

I'm never slow to criticise the police or security forces when they do something wrong. So it's only right that this time I express my respect and gratitude to those who foiled the planned massacres in the sky. It appears to have been an excellent operation that proves the value above all of human intelligence (HUMINT).

I cannot even begin to understand the motives of the scum who planned this, nor find adequate words for my contempt. Not only were these bastards attempting to murder thousands of innocent people but they chose peak holiday season. Those planes would have been packed with families - not just men but also old people, children and women.

For those who attempted this massacre there can be no justification, no understanding, no forgiveness.

If I was given ten minutes alone with one of those behind this plot then I would quickly lose any veneer of civilisation and revert to being a very, very angry animal.

But we have to avoid that sort of reaction. That's what the terrorists want. They want us to over-react, both as individuals and as a society.

The biggest danger is a backlash against the Muslim community.

As an atheist I don't like Islam any more than any other religion. But this was not an "Islamic plot". Terrorism is an offence against Islam and those who planned it have no right to call themselves Muslims.

All true Muslims will condemn this murderous plot as will all other decent people. We must not let the terrorists turn us against each other.

Any anti-Muslim backlash would be a victory for the terrorists.

The New York Times has today published a photo of 62 year old Thelma Arnold of Lilburn, Ga. What makes Ms Arnold newsworthy? Nothing - except that she is AOL searcher number 4417749.

Last weekend AOL mistakenly released a huge file containing data on the searches performed by many of its users. This data was all, of course, entirely innocent and anonymous. So if the users had nothing to hide they clearly had nothing to fear.

Except that you can learn a lot from a seemingly innocuous data trail.

With very little effort the NY Times identified "Searcher 4417749" as Ms. Arnold. Her searches had included "numb fingers", "60 single men", "dog that urinates on everything", "landscapers in Lilburn, Ga" and "homes sold in shadow lake subdivision gwinnett county georgia".

At a stroke AOL had released online an entire picture of her life and those of her friends. Such is the power of a vast, centralised collection of seemingly trivial pieces of information. As Ms Arnold said: "I had no idea somebody was looking over my shoulder".


The UK government's proposed compulsory ID Card scheme with its central National Identity Register (NIR) won't hold details of your web searches. It will contain an audit trail with a record of every time your Identity Card is checked against the central database. This data won't even be anonymous - it will be recorded against your identity and even your intimate biometric data.

Imagine how detailed a picture of your life someone could obtain from that data, especially if, as Gordon Brown apparently wants, ID Cards become used in every walk of life.

When your NIR data falls - by accident or design - into the wrong hands your privacy will be compromised beyond repair. Anyone with access to that information will have a picture of your entire life far more complete than the one we have about 62 year old dog owning widow Thelma Arnold of Lilburn.


You may have nothing to hide but you have everything to lose.



Tags: AOL privacy ID Cards identity cards 4417749 NIR Gordon Brown Thelma Arnold