The Register reports that the government is funding a project that may lead to a fingerprint security network being placed in the nations pubs and clubs. The technology, (dubbed the ‘InTouch’) manufactured by UK Company Creative Code, is being tested by South Somerset District Council in Yeovil. It is described as "a data sharing and finger characteristic recognition technology".
The article quotes Julia Bradburn, principal licensing manager at South Somerset District Council as saying:
"The Home Office have looked at our system and are looking at trials in other towns including Coventry, Hull & Sheffield."
The Register claims Gwent and Nottingham police have shown an interest, and that the neighboring town of Taunton is planning to install the system in 10 pubs and clubs.
Creative Code describes the benefits of its technology as follows:
"InTouch takes the form of a linked membership network which enables participating venues to make an informed choice about who they allow to enter their premises, in order to make their venue a safer and more enjoyable place to visit.
The InTouch system comprises a function which gives participating venues the opportunity to record any incidents members may be involved in. The ability to record incidents on a member’s profile allows venues to monitor the behavior of individuals involved in alcohol related crime and disorder, and also enables venues to exclude persistent offenders.
If any member has an incident posted on their profile by one venue, this will be shown on their profile when they next attempt to enter an alternative participating venue. This function will assist venues with decisions to admit or refuse entry."
Comment
In the past you would only have your fingerprint taken if you had committed (or were suspected of) a crime. Now it seems, the government views all of its citizens as potential troublemakers and criminals.
It has been suggested that the technology helps to crack down on the worst aspects of binge drinking and alcohol related violence. If that were the case, why would the fingerprinting be mandatory for all customers? The whole system is premised upon the argument that ALL citizens must surrender aspects of their identity data, in order to reduce difficulties from a worrisome minority.
The same government, encouraging the introduction fingerprinting, has recently been introducing biometric palm scanning systems into UK schools. The guidelines state that they do not need to seek parental permission to do this. (Link) Acceptance of this type of technology is thus inculcated in a generation too young to understand its implications.
Many people assume that fingerprints and biometrics automatically guarantee greater security, but this is not the case. What is to prevent someone from stealing the database upon which this information is stored? Or even, (in a more gruesome scenario) actually removing a person’s hand in order to gain access to their finger/palm print. There are many kludges, hacks, and simple human holes in the system, these will inevitably be found by those determined to do so.
Fingerprint and biometric data is far more personal than a password, it is not something that can be simply changed when it is compromised. Therefore the implications of its theft or misuse, will have serious ramifications.
Finally, what is more worrying still, is the development of a trend in which the government reserves the right to make increasingly draconian demands for the surrendering of such personal data from its citizens. We are becoming enmeshed in a web of data-tracking, profiling and surveillance that will prove increasingly difficult to escape from.
The implications of this are indeed quite frightening. Once governments have the capacity to track and spy upon citizens, to deny or allow access as they wish, they will have a truly ferocious level of coercive power. The question then becomes, who will watch the watchers and control those who have the system of control? If human history is anything to judge by, once given such absolute power, those who possess it, will find themselves corrupted by it, in ways which may prove troubling to behold.
This is just about the coolest thing anyone has ever done with a podcast we've made. These guys are total fun, and yet they make the point in the sweetest and most positive way possible.
Brian Haw is once again.. "Hero of the week!" Deservedly so. Way to go Diggers Story... Peace!
In yet another example of the extraordinary death of freedom in America, on October 17 2006, George Walker Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act 2006 which states,
(A) The term 'unlawful enemy combatant' means -
(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense. Which means, that any citizen of the United States can now be imprisoned indefinitely, without trial, and tortured, should the President of the United States, or his Secretary of Defense, declare them an "enemy combatant".
Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Law Professor was quoted in a television interview on the Countdown news program with Keith Olbermann as stating,
"If you even give material support to an organisation that the President deems as connected to one of these groups, you too can be an enemy combatant, and the fact that he appoints this tribunal was meaningless, standing behind him, was his Attorney General, who signed a memo that said that you could torture someone, you could do harm to someone, to the point of organ failure or death. So, if you appoint someone like that to be Attorney General, you can imagine who he's going to be putting on this board"
He later added,
"People have no idea how significant this is, really what a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did, what the President signed today, essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values. It couldn't be more significant.
The strange thing is, we've become sort of constitutional couch potatoes, the Congress just gave the President despotic powers, and you could hear the yawn across America as people turned to "Dancing with the Stars" It's other-worldly!"
As Keith Olbermann pointed out, ultimately this means that the only thing keeping any American citizen out of Guantanemo Bay, is the sanity (or otherwise), of the President of the United States.
Do you feel like gambling the future of your freedom on your President's soundness of mind America!?
I'm pleased to say that I'm finally ready to officially announce the arrival of a new website I've created. It's called 'Citizen Scoop' and I hope that it may prove interesting to some of you. :)
Its designed as a supplemental resource for this years 'Citizen Journalism and Podcasting' panel at the UK's annual podcasting shindig PodcastConUK. I'm pleased to announce that I'm chairing that panel, and have high hopes it's going to be a great success.
The first two podcasts are already up on the site and contain some cool conversations with BBC broadcaster and podcaster Chris Vallance and new-media specialist, podcaster, filmaker and web-head CC Chapman.
NB This is not an attack against anyone's value system.
It is an attempt to point out that our value systems and beliefs can be hi-jacked and manipulated by unscrupulous people, and that the electoral process is part of this hijacking.
Tony Blair feels there should be no limit on the number of DNA samples held on the national database. Speaking at the Forensic Science Service headquarters in central London the Prime Minister said,
"I think the politicians are more resistant than the public. I think the public think if this is helping us track down murderers, rapists...then go for it."
Coming from a leader who rarely bothers to ask the public what they think about anything this is pretty rich. Of course a politician claiming to speak for people he never consults is nothing new, and if all else fails, scaring the public into surrendering freedoms is always a useful tactic. One which this government has shown no unwillingness to use in the past.
The current administration has consistently shown an extraordinary willingness to infringe upon the freedoms of its citizens. This latest statement joins a long list of such pronouncements and efforts, all of which follow an unrelenting pattern of attempting to restrict and control the freedom of the population.
These have included, (but are not limited to) a manufactured debate on the need for a national identity card, the introduction of number-plate recognition systems, calls for biometric scanners, and the (almost unnoticed) installation of the highest number of CCTV cameras per-head of population on earth.
In a rare moment of political candour, the Prime Minister did manage to clarify exactly how many DNA samples he felt the State should be able to hold by saying,
"The number on the database should be the maximum number you can get."
Well that'll be everyone in Britain then Prime Minister! (Link)
Dissident Vox investigates the life and work of the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovkskaya, who was brutally murdered on the 7th October, by an unknown assassin, in the lift of the Moscow apartment building where she lived. He also takes a look behind the veil of Vladamir Putin's Russia, and digs out some biographical background on the current Russian President.
Intro Russia's most famous nuisance 13 Dead Journalists The Soviet Past Gulag Kolyma Putins Russia The new rich & the old poor
Putin biography - Youth The KGB Years The rise of the unexceptional man President Putin
After watching this video, smuggled out of the country after last months demonstrations by Trade Unionists on September 13, doing a few brief searches, and a small amount of reading, I know a little more.
I know that Zimbabwe is a country in terminal decline. That it has the highest HIV rates in the world, with malnutrition at very high levels, and that 3000 people die every week. 80% of its population are unemployed, and life-expectancy is 37 for men, and 34 for women. The lowest in the world.
I know also that the country is in the grip of a vicious economic crisis and that inflation has spiraled to 1200%. Many hundreds of thousands of people are now homeless, hungry, and desperate.
The countries President Robert Mugabe has been in power for 26 years, he praises the actions of the Police engaging in the extra-judicial beatings shown in this video footage.
Finally I know that the kind of treatment handed out to these people is both commonplace, and deeply offensive. That if help is not found, or action taken, it will continue to unravel, with even more horrifying and terrible consequences for the suffering people of that country, and the Continental region of Africa as a whole.
The Guardian newspaper reports today on the growth of a blogging culture among Iran's conservative Islamic clerics, and states that,
"Following the example of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ayatollahs, seminary students and theologians are receiving training in setting up their own weblogs." (Link)
Iran is said by many human rights groups to be the worlds biggest prison state for reporters and according to the association Reporters without Borders, 13 of the countries journalists and bloggers were jailed during 2005 alone. Threats, detention, summons and arrests of reporters who are critical of the regime remain commonplace, and many journalists are only able to remain out of prison by paying very high bail. (Link)
I've just spent a surreal 30 minutes over at 'webcameron', the brilliantly named, and cunningly contrived attempt, to portray Conservative party leader and Prime Ministerial hopeful David Cameron, as both web-savvy and stylishly informal.
My initial impressions, are that an awful awful lot of focus group planning, and My-Space market research has gone into moulding and shaping something designed to look, as if it was thrown together by a happy accident.
The whole site has the kind of low-level polish, that you would normally associate with something like a boy band or an MTV 'reality' show. You get a sense that the people involved in its creation have spent both hundreds of thoughtful hours, and tens of thousands of pounds, creating just the right level of 'amateur chic' to appeal to their target demographic.
Like almost everything else created by our modern political leaderships, it's amazingly short on depth, and frighteningly long on surface. It also seems to foreshadow the next staged electoral farce. Where we will probably see the lumbering Labour party lizards, led by the terribly dour and terminally uncool Gordon Brown, battling a fresh-faced version of the old boy Etonian Tory network, reinvented for the 21st Century, and fronted by the awkward hipster chic of Mr David Cameron.
Judging by this early effort, it promises to be both a truly bizarre spectacle and a well planned foregone conclusion. All the early running has Cameron ahead by a very long political mile.
The British political establishment and those who give them their marching orders, are well aware of the damaged credibility, and shortening shelf life of this present government. Currently mired in an unpopular war, and damaged by years of lying, it seems unlikely that they will be able to carry off another electoral term, without exposing the elite's policy agenda to a level of unnecessary scrutiny.
Thus it is, that with the launch of 'webcameron', we are beginning to see the pointless political posturing and positioning, that is the prelude to a changing of the political guard. One designed to placate the restless disaffection of the British public, and to convince us all that we really do live in a truly interactive and representative democratic society. The truth of course, is something very far away from this, and no amount of clever contrivances can disguise the shallow and callous centre at the heart of the British political machine.
