Sunbeem posted: << From this perspective I view the oncoming compulsory identity card with some interest.
The chip within could be surprisingly capable. >>
Indeed!
Remarkable coincidence! I intended to post a question yesterday to our UK colleagues about this phenomenon, but I ran out of time. Having read this, I'm glad I was delayed.
First the question, then the context:
Are any of our members in the UK aware of a television drama mini-series (five 90-minute episodes) produced in the UK (probably one of the independents rather than the Beeb), and presently being telecast by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in the USA under the title, "The Last Enemy"? Episode 1 premiered on PBS here last Sunday evening; subsequent episodes will run weekly through the week ending November 9. (That's the week of the national elections in the US. Is PBS is making a subtle statement with its programming?
) Because the independent affiliate of PBS that purchases the rights to show these British dramas sometimes changes the titles for US distribution, I'll have to make my point with a synopsis of the plot setup.
The Last Enemy concerns the development of "Total Information Awareness" (TIA), a (purportedly) somewhat futuristic integrated network of every surveillance and information-gathering medium and device in the UK and linked to a compulsory national identity card. (This kind of scheme is highly relevant in the US, because congressional outrage recently (about 3 years ago, I think) prompted the Pentagon to cease a program to developa rudimentary form of domestic TIA that actually had the same name and purpose as the fictional (?) British scenario.) In the aftermath of the London station bombings (summarized in the plot in the singular as the Victoria Station bombing), British intelligence develops TIA so as to give the government a real-time surveillance capability (both real-time observation and archival storage) of every person's whereabouts and activities at any given moment. When the drama begins, TIA is well under way, but not yet complete.
The plot driver is a British mathematician who returns home to London, after four years self-imposed isolation in China, to attend the funeral of his brother, a relief worker in refugee camps on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border who reportedly died when his vehicle hit a land mine. The mathematician immediately becomes a person of great interest to the unknown agencies within the intelligence community, and learns in the process that much has changed during his absence.
In addition to the usual action-drama content, there's some thoughtful stuff going on in this script. One of the subplots is the inefficiency of the human portion of the surveillance system caused by compartmentalization of information within the intelligence apparatus. More than one intelligence entity is interested in the mathematician. Each entity knows *about* the other's interest, but none knows *who* is interested, or why. Complicating things further is the presence of a wild-card agent whose whose identity is known to British intelligence, but not his affiliation or purpose. It's entertaining to anyone who appreciates dark humor. (Orwell would have approved.)
Why does the trend toward universal surveillance bother me? Two general principles: (1) Any technology developed by a government *will*, sooner or later, be used; and (2) any abuse of that technology that has the effect of making the job of the person using it easier, or relieving the boredom of constant surveillance, will occur.
Two reported examples of these principles come to mind, one in the UK and one in the USA:
1.) Two or three years ago the NY Times (I think, I didn't make a record) ran an article about security screeners in the UK secretly distributing photographs of females being searched and joking among themselves about the physical attributes of a person being screened (presumably from behind one-way glass or while viewing a closed-circuit monitor at a remote location).
2.) This past week there was another report of the disclosure that the National Security Agency, which is permitted to monitor overseas calls and calls to and from the United States involving foreign nationals, has been routinely listening to, and recording, personal calls to and from the United States between US citizens assigned overseas and other US citizens at home. Additionally, the report stated instances where the intelligence operators monitoring the calls shared (via email, presumably) the index locations of the records of intimate conversations, adding descriptive notes such as "Wow, this is hot!"
nhmaf posted: << Well, at least things haven't gotten as bad as in (not-so)Great Britain, where they have ID cards >>
Sorry, but I'm not so certain of that, *particularly* if the federal "Real ID" requirement for a uniform driver's license format is not repealed after the election. If Real ID is fully implemented, the US *will* have a national identification card, but published (and paid for) by each state, the District of Columbia, and all other US territories, etc., that issue driver's licenses. BTW, the big fight is about money; the states claim they don't have the *many* $millions necessary to implement this scheme.
