If you don't want ID cards to be introduced

He might not have officially paid any NI or tax in his life, but I
suppose he's paid rather a lot of indirect taxation on almost everything
he's bought.

If, as was said, he worked on building sites, there's a very good chance
he was taxed at source.

Far from being a sponging ****, he's a bloke who's mostly paid his way
all his life. Probably moreso than many others.

 

What I actually meant was that the innocent to guilty hit rate tends to be a
bit on the high side, but it works your way as well. If you can be locked
up forever on suspicion then isn't that a death sentence, albeit a very slow
one? I mean, if you can't prove your innocence because nobody is interested
in evidence and nobody can speak in your defence because there isn't a trial
and maybe there aren't even specific accusations for you to refute then what
hope do you ever have of regaining your life?

Yes it might, and that is one of the purposes of the law - to ensure that
when horrible things happen and people think of revenge that what is handed
out is justice. If the law isn't about justice then it has no place and
justice does not come from hidden accusations, secret evidence or indefinite
detentions. What they bring, to return to a theme, is witch-hunts and one
of the things with witch-hunts is that when you start them you always find
witches.

So you're right, at the moment we do have the luxury of a liberal attitude
and what we should do, right now, is enshrine it and make it untouchable so
that when terrible things happen and we all want revenge we have a system
that ensures justice.

No, I said you would accuse _me_ of being melodramatic. Which you just
have.

Fair's fair, you're getting just as tetchy as I am. My honest view is that
the war question is pretty much dead now. When the lack of WMDs became
known and the general crapness of the intelligence became public knowledge
we lacked an effective opposition to the government to bring it down. Since
the shakey legal footing for the whole thing became public we've had a
general election, which has returned the same leader. I think the
government was very, very wrong, but I also think they've got away with it.

I more meant that if you think that we need to oppress people for their own
good then I hope your work ends there as opposed to you taking it further.

If that's an opinion that you hold then I'm not sure I can help you explore
it through discussion. From my persective the view that you can not oppress
people for their own good, only the good of those doing the oppressing, is
so axiomatic that I wouldn't even know where to start opposing you.

Well, other than perhaps directing you to "1984", where O'Brien speaks with
Winston[1], but I doubt that's what you're looking for.

So no, I'm not bored with the debate, just unsure what you would like to
debate.

[1] http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/20/, start reading from
"He came closer to the bed", about 1 page down.

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I could have hanged from anybody, actually. The post was unrelatedto Porl,
could have been to anyone else.

Er... 10 hours, there's been a small bomb in the Basque country this
morning, no personal injuries.

I see ID's more useful for citizen use. For example, I have a digital X.509
certificate with my ID number on it, thanks to it I did my taxes in just 3
minutes in the www.AEAT.es site (shite design, but functional), payment
included. How do you do it in the UK? Or think of having a shop, what is
safer, a bloke with a credit card without or with an ID with his picture
proving he is the card owner?

 

You can make a new one. Being the daddy's bitch of E Wing. Or getting into
comedy shenanigans at the expense of the soft warden while avoiding the
wrath of the regimental but wily scottish one and teaching the young
scampster on the bunk below all the tricks.

Well as I said it's pretty difficult to apply justice to someone who's just
blown himself to pieces while gassing the underground system. I'm not au
fait with the legal recourse available in such circumstances, I don't think
there's really a precedent in this country.

I am tetchy, but not with you. I'm tetchy about the "line" having "been
drawn" at all. And I see the ID card debate as possibly being a distraction
as he slips out the back door instead of being strung up by his knackers.

No, you're right, oppression is the wrong word. Restrict is a more
appropriate term. People sometimes need to be restricted in some of
their...less savoury penchants and habits. That's why we have laws.

 

About 10 minutes, but I fail to see how having a card would reduce the time
it takes. How does yours work?

What difference does it make? Does he have money / credit / beads or not? I
am a 'shop' and couldn't care less (within limits) who I sell my services
to, as long as they pay.

It's also worth noting that the ID card does not prove he's the card owner,
doe it?
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Stolen cards.

A picture usually helps. That is all the biometrics available so far

 

Not relevant. See below

If you have a picture on the credit card, then you don't need an ID card.
If you don't have a picture on the credit card, the ID card does not
indicate if you are the legal holder of the credit card in question........
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Quite honestly the sensible system would be a single sign on bio chip
card. DSS, NHS, Bank, door entry etc. Unfortunately getting all of
those disparate bodies to cooperate is unlikely. The whole idea is a
dud.

Hog

 

Catman proposed

OK, unless your name is John Smith it usually would. Of course there
may be exceptions, but I think the law of averages is against that
possibility.

 

Of course it doesn't. At best it indicates that you have the same name as
the credit card holder.

I suspect you think wrong. Try reading a phone book some time.

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Unfortunately getting all of

And it's the single best reason for ID cards.

 

Wow, I'm convinced. Not. Is that really the best they can come up with?

 

Except, AFAICT none of the things he mentioned are ID cards. They are
entitlement cards. There is a difference.
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question........

Ok, but leaving aside the fact that CC are not the main reason for
ID's, I prefer trusting a document from a government to trusting a
document from a bank that can be anything Caiman Islands (er, I was
gonna write Gibraltar based.

Please note: I don't care a damn bleed about who does Gibraltar belong
to.

 

Neither do most people here apart from the blue-rinse
hang-em-and-flog-em brigade..

Phil

 

What is then?

Heh. So why do you need to trust it anyway? Genuinely curious.

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I suppose that the same for having papers stating that you own your
home, or the fact that you attended a university and successfully got a
degree, or the fact that as a health insurance payer you deserve
attention in a hospital, etc. Documents seem to be a successful
invention of mankind as long as they help trust.

Fear for Big Brother? I insist, they already know everything about you.
Many more things than those stored in the dozen fields in an ID. How
much you earn, what you spend your money in, where you spend it,
when... many, many things. If you have a CC in your wallet, please
write on it "Big Brother Inside".

When you receive a Nigerian scam, you perfectly know it is not the
person it claims to be. An ID trusted by an authority that you trust
helps you make sure you are dealing with the right person. Simply take
a look at all the digital certificates market (simply said, ID's) out
there for knowing who you are dealing with.

BTW, Spaniards are used to ID cards and the new generation of ID's
including digital X.509 certificates has been cheeried.

 

Hmmm. Seems a pretty poor reason to me. The papers that you seem to be
comparing an ID card to are for a very different purpose. They indicate,
or in some cases convey 'ownership' of a piece of valuata.
The hospital treatment one always amuses me. I mean, are they *really*
going to turn someone away if they don't have a card?

They may well do, and then again they may not. In any event I fail to see
why I should make it easier for them to manage that information unless
there is some tangible benefit (that *I* actually would see as a benefit)
to me, or my society. So far that has utterly failed to be demonstrated.

Is this really the best argument in favour of spending *billions* of pounds
of tax? We already have this information so why not have an ID car? Does
that not strike you as just a teensy bit silly? Apart from anything else,
*if* all this information *is* available to any 'big brother' why do we
need ID cards? And so the argument turns.

Not true. It might well be carried out by someone using their real name.
That is not the scam.

You reckon a Nigerian scammer couldn't get an ID card?

Erm no it's not. Not at all. It's a certificate that a document was created
by a specific identity. Unless you are thinking of something else by
'digital certificate'

Lucky you
I'd be all behind them if anyone could show what use they are. Come up with
*one* example of where an ID card is useful that cannot be equally served
by any one of the documents I already posess?
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"valuata"?

Well, an identity is something that is actually owned. There are
several million people in the world who legally lack it and are not
accepted officially by any country, thus lacking all kind of rights.
The UN has an agency for them, but can't remember the name.

Try a private hospital ;-)

Ok, then the government may do good usage of ID's, or may not. (in your
words)

benefit)

May I ask how much did it take you your last sales declaration? I did
it in just 1 minute, payment included, with an X.509 ID based
certificate.

(Numero de Identificacion Fiscal) Having a unique code for everyone
greatly simplifies all IT tasks, and IT helps us in every day life (at
least, IT pays 50%+ of the UKRM salaries, I guess

Consider also the costs of not having them.

Er.. geting lost, sorry?

Right. Do you give the same amount of trust to a private company or to
your own government?

Sometimes

Ok, see above, the one minute taxes declaration and payment. Right, can
be done with a user/pass pair, but that's a rather weak protection of
data.

In general, ID cards are used everywhere in Spain as a way to prove
identity, not only to a fascist-police-officer, but in any deal. Remove
them and people will be rather upset.

BTW, which are the documents you use in the UK? Complaints here are
having driving license, health card and ID in separate cards.