Support Digital Rights

[drplokta]

There's a new pledge on PledgeBank for people to sign up to pay £5 per month to set up a UK digital rights organisation. If they get 1,000 pledges, then it will happen. 31 so far, including me, but it was only created yesterday.

Go here if you want to sign up. And spread the word.

Comments

[andrewducker]

Its harassment pure and simple, and a national ID database makes it much easier to do.

I agree with the former, but not with the latter. For the people in charge, getting information back from all 26 databases isn't a problem. It's a problem when the low level bureaucrat you want to actually do something for you needs information.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Actually no... If its 26 databases they need to file 26 requests with 26 people to fulfill them. Thus there's 26 times the chance that one of these people will go to the Guardian and leak the fact that someone is abusing their power.

And do you seriously think that the new system will be any easier for the general public to do anything with? Our interests come a distant last place in any considerations of the system design.

[andrewducker]

And do you seriously think that the new system will be any easier for the general public to do anything with?
From what I've read about what they're doing with it, yes, I do.

So far the vast majority of your arguments have been "The government is doing something, therefore it will be bad." I have to say that I don't feel that way...

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

The most charitable view of the ID card system possible is that the government is doing something for its own convenience, at vast expense to the general populace. There is little evidence that the system will reduce costs in the long term, indeed quite the reverse, so this will be a lonmg term additional expense we're subject to. Any extra convenience this might bring to people is incidental, and, with the burden of having biometrics measured regularly etc. etc. and the large cost, they are overall likely to make life harder not easier.

The government is doing something for itself, and charging us for it, and offering no coherent reasons for why we should want it. To me, opposing it sounds like avoiding being sold a pig in a poke, not just mindless oppositionism, which is how you're caricaturing the argument.

But it seems your mind is made up, and you aren't prepared to look at the ways it can, and will, go wrong or be abused. You're actually sounding like some of the undergraduates I know who are in favour. I had thought you weren't that naieve. Maybe I was wrong.

[andrewducker]

you aren't prepared to look at the ways it can, and will, go wrong or be abused.

I very much am.

But my response to "It can be abused in way X" is to find a way of doing it that doesn't allow that abuse, not to say "Well we shouldn't do it then."

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

find a way of doing it that doesn't allow that abuse

But there is no evidence that the government is actually interested in doing this. There are ways of setting up an ID card system that has a smaller chance of abuse, such as that porposed recently by the LSE. This has been wholly rejected by the government. There are also substantial technical issues about making the scheme workable at all, but they're ignoring this as well.

When the Information Commissioner says the introduction of ID cards is 'sleepwalking into a surveillance society', and is also ignored by the government, then we should be worried. I'm surprised you're not.

It seems to me that you're more than 'not worried' about ID cards, but are actually quite enthusiastic for what seem to me are all the wrong reasons. I thus don't think there's much point continuing this.

[andrewducker]

I've said that a centralised database would be easier to maintain and keep accurate than a whole bunch of little databases.

Other than that I haven't been in favour of them at all.

I'd agree that the government doesn't seem to be taking the right tack with them - but that (to me) is reason to push for them to be implemented correctly (and in a voluntarily capacity), not to push against them entirely.

But I think you're right - we can probably leave this here.